Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History

[[Title & Shortlink added Dec. 1, 2023 to refer to this post]]

THIS POST IS: Yes, we SHOULD call them “restraining order suggestions” (Certifiably Insane Protection Orders in MN; meanwhile, more “Fatherhood” in KS) [[Orig. Aug. 7, 2009]].

(Short-link ends “-ez” and post is about 10,600 words.  Including many quotes…and the text of a Kansas Senate Bill starting a “Fatherhood Initiative” — and the entire text of the U.S. Declaration of Independence (trying to see if there’s a disconnect somewhere between those two?)

I also respond to some news articles at length on the timeline in the first article shown below.) (Parts of this post also refer to the Inter-American Council on Human Rights (IACHR) for a domestic violence (“DV”) case from Kansas (Claudine Dombrowski) which appealed that high up for justice…) //LGH 12/1/23.

Today’s [Aug. 2009] headlines are right on topic with yesterday’s post. . . and the one referenced above….

Mr & Mrs. OUELETTEs, MINNESOTA, 2 accounts of 2,100 on the web, from Kare11News.

(1) Wife had order of protection against husband prior to murder-suicide

(2)  Harris man gave up guns before strangling wife, hanging himself

Well, I swore I was NOT going to blog on this today, but I fear that these are indeed possibly copy-cat murder/suicides.  It is now “out there” in the news as a possible way out of an emotionally embarrassing and humiliating situation.

Read THIS one, and then see if you can tell which parts were certifiably insane public policy, and how many warning signs people ignored.

And I’ll tell you why this one chills me, and makes me glad to be alive today.

(TOP of post — Minnesota.  BOTTOM — Kansas.

They relate.)

Blogger’s Preface

At this point, it seems to be “certifiably insane public policy” to expect women to trust, or men to respect, such restraining orders, when clearly they don’t — I already blogged on this re: the woman in Pennsylvania who fought back.

Recently, I wrote about a father accused of molesting his (teenaged) daughter who, seeing as she was only moved 2 doors down, and into the home of a man that used to be the same father’s employee (say, what???!?).   Within one week, Dad had killed: daughter, foster father and himself, and almost killed foster mother, too.  So THAT helpful ruling got 3 people dead and one injury.

Great going, child protective services in that region of Tennessee.

Here’s another one that slipped through the cracks somehow, and at several different points.  What “gets” me about this one is realizing several domestic violence prevention groups, nonprofits, that have been getting millions upon millions of federal dollars, over at least a decade in grants to provent violence locally, rurally, and in Indian tribes, as well as technical assistance grants to, I guess, “get the word out.”

So far, I can see they are doing a great job with putting together literature that’s already on the web somewhere, positioning themselves as the experts, consulting in private with other professionals about what to do, and keeping a body count.  Which hasn’t substantially changed (per these counts) statewide in Minnesota within a decade.

So either the state is raising more suicidal or unable-to-handle-stress people, or immature young adults who then continue the immaturity into adulthood and parenthood (referring to the fathers in this case), or something. . . . . . Or so many people are being born each day that they STILL don’t know the warning signs of danger, and are talked into minimizing them.

Let’s maybe add ONE more “lethality risk” — trusting in protection orders to start with.  

That’s for the courts and for the women alike.  And encouraging a woman to do so (or continuing to present them as viable alternatives — when in fact they are panaceas too often) also places her in risk, given the facts.  Ignorance of them is NOT bliss. . . .

When police DO respond in time, they run the risk of death themselves.  When they do NOT respond in time, typically Mom, and sometimes Dad, are killed, and sometimes more.  Or otherwise traumatized.  SO . . . . .   what else is available?

CONSIDER THIS ONE:

• State:  Minnesota
  
• Body Count:  2, no responding officers or bystanders killed this time.
  
• Orphans:  3, ages 10 (boy), 8 & 8 (twin girls)
  
• Who are they now living with?  Relatives.
  
• Did they witness the murder  – – of their mother by their father, YES, the girls
  
• Did they try to intervene and fail? – — YES, an 8 year old girl tried to save her mother.
  
• Was 911 called? – — YES, by an 8 year old daughter?
  

• Was the call heeded (it seems No), or interfered with (yes, by the father)? – – – read below.
  
• Was that restraining order as written certifiably insane?  – — ABSOLUTELY.  (And it seems identical to the one I got many years ago.)
  
• Does making a restrained person turn in his or her guns always save a life? – — NO.  Other weapons also can kill (apparently here, hands).
  
• Or, a person not allowed to get a gun could get a friend’s (or in a recent case girlfriend’s gun).
  

• Are risk assessments going to redeem lives from living in fear (or being lost)?  – – – I’m  not sure.  I’m of the current opinion, NO, unless the woman herself takes them seriously and takes serious actions not reliant on 911 to ensure safety.

So, let’s talk about the body counts vis-a-vis the legal terminology:

When you think about it, and read the results, even calling these things “protection orders” makes zero sense.  They are restraint requests.  A man without restraint is ordered in public by a judge to show restraint.

WHO is to protect, in “protection order”?  The power of the state?  Does the state, like God, declare “protection” exists because it ordered this?  And is the state, in so doing, lying to the protected parties?

I think so, basically.  

Here’s a perhaps (I ALWAYS say “perhaps,” or try to) more viable protection order:

A trained, armed mother with an attitude to match, telling the man who just received the judicial order, that she is going to take the boundaries of the property seriously, and understands all laws regarding the 2nd amendment, and any contingencies.  IN other words, she needs to be more determined and more aggressive than the person who formerly attacked or threatened her.

So do the people surrounding or dealing with her on this issue.

Alternately, a “not in the same state” “county” “500 mile radius” mother, and kids.  And the kids could be told the truth about why this is happening, in age-appropriate terms but without name-calling or derogatory treatment of their father.

But of course that would screw up “access visitation” and “National Fathers Return Days” somewhat….

NOW, this mindset is not typically the state of a woman who has gotten to the point of requesting such an order from her husband, right? The request for an order represents to an abuser an ESCALATION in OPPOSITION to SUBMISSION.  How’s he likely to respond?

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