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

Published “WYSIWYG.”  The “ReadMore” link will be much closer to the top in a day or so. Revisions for basic copyediting and for better flow likely to continue over the next few days. The theme is important and timely; thank you for tolerance of the initial version in my voicing my concerns. //LGH.

THIS POST IS: Coercive Control and Co-Opted Conversations in Connecticut (Rutgers Professor Evan Stark, his wife Yale MD, Ann Flitcraft, Serial Global BIP Entrepreneur(?), Safe&Together’s David Mandel) = LGH’s FrontPage Sept. 2, 2019 Subsection #2 (Short-link ends “-aUL,” published Sept. 7, ca. 7,500 words):

“BIP” – Batterers Intervention Program”

I’d said and I still feel that:

…Many of us who’ve lived with in-home violence (rarely restricted to the home environment only) could “write the book,” on coercive control, probably without that label.   Some have written their own personal accounts, but the moment this goes into “the conference circuit” that’s not really in good company — and without the travel budget (etc.) impossible to keep up with AND manage one’s own life AND continuing research.

I say, why MUST we support all these professions which then have networked nonprofits, publications, policies and of course RoundTables with people basically in agreement with SOME of the basics — like the health paradigm, coordinated community response, and in general sticking the public with if not the costs of domestic violence, the costs of treating and “preventing” it…?  And why must “father-engagement” be central to all forms of abuse prevention, whether in child welfare services, or in the family courts, in child support agencies, in prison/re-entry situations — at all points?

 

While the term “Coercive Control” now has specific meanings, including a legal one in the UK (since it  became an official crime in 2015), I’m also using it to describe a type of coercion in those co-opted conversations (around the field of domestic violence and protection from abuse, stopping violence against women, etc.).  Hopefully by the end of this post, readers will understand that co-opting conversations in these fields exists; that there are “on the table” and “off the table” topics, with certain career academics in certain fields (particularly sociology and psychology) and their backers making the call. And that this is an effective form of coercion, to cut-off other plausible explanations of why it seems just SO hard to stop violence against women, and to explain the behaviors of the family court systems, here and abroad.

Doing so is morally and ethically wrong, although probably not legally wrong, that it’s been chronic in this field since “domestic violence” became a word, that is, just about from the start.

Note:  laws against battering women and protests of it is not synonymous with the usage of the term “domestic violence” and development of a major state-funded industry around it, a key part of which includes NOT talking about the state-funded marriage/fatherhood/family values” industry.

One analogy for the word “table” above would be “roundtable.”  There have been major round-table conferences and/or consultations on this topic (some even called that); defining features of any RoundTable are who convenes it, who is or is not invited to present, and where they occur.  Also who sponsors them.

Publications catering to fields and professions (i.e., research, publication, practice etc.) which rely so heavily on state (i.e., government) funding also impact what ideas are and are NOT in significant circulation.

PREVIEW

(Up front: more text, my voice.  Below: more pictures, links, and quotes)

Most of this post was previously published on my main (Front) page for at least a year.  I removed it on Labor Day, (Monday, Sept. 2, 2019) to condense that page.

On finding new information since adding this segment to the Front Page (in January or as late as December, 2018), i.e. especially since obtaining my copy of Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life book, (<~~that link is to a title search so you can see where it’s being promoted (notice url domain names..including “global.OUP.com”) New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2007, hereafter “the Coercive Control Book”), ….

…based on this new information and on general principles (reviewing some of my existing links,** and my ongoing awareness of the expansion of this field internationally, and from all of the above, my perspective about a year and a half later), I decided to develop this post further before publishing and to prioritize publishing it first among the many (about six or seven) other Front Page extracts which became separate posts now in draft.

In other words, it’s not going to be just a “block-copy, paste, re-publish as a separate post” project!

To completely distinguish previously published (2018) and my progressive updates since (Sept. 2 – 7, 2019) is probably impossible, but I’ll leave several indicators throughout the post below.

**(Especially from a long post, of Stark’s testimony January 2016 on a Connecticut Task force on Children Exposed to Violence).

I posted some of the new (to me) information on the Front page (pending publication of this post first among all the (about six) off-ramped sections during a “massive edit”) because I believe people deserve to have it brought to their attention promptly. Coercive Control conferences continue.  People have been arrested for violating the new (2015ff) law against it in the UK, there is  plenty of social media “buzz” around the theme.

IF there is major co-opted conversation, any censorship, or significant reporting gaps in those from the USA running (personally or professionally and in publications as only the internet and certain types of academic journals can do…) to the UK and elsewhere pushing programming, the “left-behind” sector in THIS country more acutely aware of how this field was set up and run — and what elements are historically omitted from its history — that information should be publicized, however imperfectly, as fast as possible.

Such reporting is, I’d say, right now about THIRTY YEARS behind in awareness.  Mathematically speaking, given the distribution and publication networks and proliferation of DV organizations and university centers (or “Centres” as it applies),  for every professional who claims “30 years experience” there are probably many more individuals who have 10, 20, or 30 years “in your face” experience off exactly what “coercive control” looks and acts like. Many of (us) HAVE been speaking out all along– but we cannot keep pace with Oxford University Press, Sage Publications, Wiley On-line (Taylor & Francis) AND government-sponsored “Centers” at various universities, or simply on their own specialized websites ending “*.org” in the USA, or “*.org.UK” or *.co.UK” etc. …

Unlike the academic professionals, many of us continue to get killed off over time (“roadkill,” or some of the children do). I’ve read of various professionals dying of old age or cancer (Schechter, Pence, others) but not so many being murdered, jailed, extorted or being full-time occupied in economic survival from onslaughts (so to speak) via the family court systems. That is a genuine hindrance. This doesn’t seem to slow down others publication and conferencing while we are so occupied, speaking for myself and others I have known over the years.

So, built-in “institutional” issues include access to funding and of course, access to media (which requires generally, access to funding).  How many ideas are being squeezed out of consideration simply because those with better financial incentives and job stabilities for the respective authors (pardon me for making this reference again, but with  existing PhDs, JDs, and so forth) to NOT talk about what I’ve been blogging about for ten years now?  And what I am a witness was basically unearthed (at least the basics of it) a minimum of twenty years earlier (that is, 1999)? And if you include Liz Richards (NAFCJ.net) claim of having started in 1993, make that about twenty-seven years.

Having done that, now I’m working to get this post out so I can in good conscience shorten the footprint (some quotes, links, and discussion of the “new information”) left behind) making sure nothing is lost in the move.
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