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AFCC’s Family Court Review Editorial Board and Their Respective Affiliations. [Publ. May 21, 2018, with March 21, 2022, update for re-posting].

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Post title: AFCC’s Family Court Review Editorial Board and Their Respective Affiliations. [Publ. May 21, 2018, with March 21, 2022, update for re-posting]. (generated case-sensitive shortlink ends “-92R”) (5,600 words as copyedited 2022,**)

The table at the bottom of this post isn’t current (of course — its’ now 2022!) but outlines  as a straightforward visual the various countries AFCC board members come from  — most are still from the USA — and emphasizes their affiliations.It’s good to remember. This could be said of many publications, but in the context of the family courts, #FamilyCourtReform (common term on Twitter now), and #FamilyCourtReformists (my version of the same), it matters.  Remember, the editorial board of the journal isn’t the same as the board of directors of the private association.  Both should be kept in mind, and the latter’s tax return and filing history. As shown, it’s actually a minor — pretty small — organization.

#FamilyCourtReformists don’t like to talk about AFCC, at least not to criticize it, and don’t want us to either, especially not where they’re found among colleagues arguing with known AFCC membership — so that is EXACTLY what I do.  For all I know the #FamilyCourtReformists may also be majority #AFCC, those that are practicing lawyers, psychologists, or who run nonprofits doing business with divorcing families (or the family courts).  If so, however, that’s not acknowledge on their websites, generally.  I’ll say it again — without the truth of the membership organizations coming out (especially this one) and how active AFCC is in training judges and family lawyers, custody evaluators AND collaborating throughout (and all along) to frame and reframe “domestic violence” — alongside presentations by US federally-funded DV nonprofits (specifically, Battered Women’s Justice Project (BWJP.org), formerly doing business under the nonprofit which came up with (?) or at least promoted “The Power & Control Wheel” at “TheDuluthModel.org”

(more) 2022 UPDATE COMMENTS:

Nearly four years later (late March, 2022), I have re-publicized this post on Twitter, perhaps and put a link to here on a new post (full title with short-link ending “-dXu”  shown below) just for that purpose. To do so I’m changing revised the border and emphasis colors from bright red to a darker red and corrected a margin issue, but no other major editing planned. (I did some copyediting for clarity and in a few places where I thought the wording was “cogent” (good) formed call-outs looking approximately like this (larger font, this background-color)


Why Now? As sometimes happens I was reviewing Admin Dashboard for a different post from May, 2018 and found this one instead. WordPress, or at least this theme, organizes the Search Filter (when using “by Date”) by month and year, one month at a time in a drop-down menu). I was actually about to re-arrange and re-publish my 2018 Table of Contents…

“Now” is because of current events (explained more on the new post calling attention to this one’s contents) and because I wanted to…  //LGH March 21, 2022).

. . . . . .  [A passionate rant-update used to be here… I moved it, and have now deleted it…//2022]

Now that I’ve just had my say, I expect I’ll taken that “say” to a new post linking to this which will shorten the introduction to this one but keep its few other format and copyediting (for clarity, and a few “call-outs” sections) parts.

Here’s where all that went, just published March 21, 2022:

Journals, Their Editors, Sponsors + Publishers | #FamilyCourtRvw: The Voice of AFCC w Help from Hofstra — Editorial Board and Access-Visitation Grants as I re-explained/posted May 21, 2018. [Repost with my March 21, 2022 Update**]. (short-link ends “-dXu”)

If I could have five-line titles (or post “subtitles” as some magazines do), this one would be, approximately: Why #FamilyCourtReformists (#NFVLCgwu #NSPC et al.) pushing #VAWA Reauthorization with #KaydensLaw Don’t/Won’t/Can’t expose AFCC]

Because that is indeed what is on my mind at the moment...


There is a list of “tags” at the end and readers as always can submit comments.

“PROLOGUE” — my “Why” other than, “It’s Time!…” [[as written in May, 2018]]

In the prologue I have a few resources and links to further explore “State Access and Visitation Programs” grants (Federal to State government entities under HHS, CFDA #93597)) which exists to “support” the states in establishing the types of services likely to be now part of any family court process.  That is, if there’s any way once litigation or even motions to hear begin, more personnel, services or players can be added in and blamed on one or both parents to justify.  The infrastructure (network) already exists, and business and services are going to be flowing through it to sustain the investment so long as we (the public) allow this to continue.

A key part of any power network is one which involves judges, lawyers, and “social scientists” with a token nod towards the issue of domestic violence advocacy… Or faking domestic violence /family court reform advocacy by talking about the symptoms, assuming/alleging causes without even exposing the private power networks’ intersection with public institutions, public funding, and centers at both private and public universities.

AFCC’s “international interdisciplinary” academic journal abbreviated “Fam.Ct.Rvw” and published on-line, is produced jointly (but under AFCC “auspices” and as its voice) through a private university in New York State called “Hofstra. I’ve established recently again on separate posts (referencing the new Editor in Chief) how Family Court Review, the publication, is indeed “the voice of AFCC,” or this could be obtained separately through a Google search.

All people involved in family courts should understand the relationship and note the names of those involved in this private association’s and its members’ private relationship with a private university aimed at “transforming the family court system” — globally, to align policy in the US, for example, with polices overseas — by “subject matter jurisdiction.” Much progress has been made towards ITS (not necessarily individual citizens’, parents’ (mothers or fathers) or children’s goals of justice, due process, and the ability to lead lives without being forced into the “behavioral health/Mental Health Archipelago.”) goals.

Also, on AFCC’s Twitter account (“@AFCCTweets”) I learned that recently it participated with UK (England Wales mostly?) federated “RELATE” charity (with Janet Walker representing both groups) in a 24-hour “Consultation” February 2018  at St. Georges (Windsor Castle) (See next three images, for more, search my Twitter account “LetUsGetHonest,” or theirs)

What about concerned citizens’** response to all this (these power networks in the private arena calling down funds from the public arena to regulate and profit from regulating “families and children…”?

What should our response be?
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Evaluate, Coordinate, call “Alienator!” Pt. 4– Three AFCC Ph.D.’s on ONE case & “PAS” = 2011 NH Supreme Court custody reversal. And what’s Warshak got to do with it? [First publ. June 15, 2011, not on blog TOC yet].

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This post title with a “shortlink” attached is:

Evaluate, Coordinate, call “Alienator!” Pt. 4– Three AFCC Ph.D.’s on ONE case & “PAS” = 2011 NH Supreme Court custody reversal. And what’s Warshak got to do with it? [First publ. June 15, 2011, not on blog TOC yet]. (WordPress-generated, case-sensitive shortlink ends “-JR”. Note: for normal URLs (web addresses), upper or lower case alpha doesn’t seem to matter, but I’ve learned that within this domain (WordPress) and in such short-links, it does.

LGH UPDATE NOTE:  My current table of contents only goes back to Sept., 2012; this is a June 15, 2011 post (early on in this blogger’s learning curve!) so would only be found by search, some other link reference to it, or by Year/Month/Date through the “Archives” (by month) on this blog.  

I added some quick (not thorough) updates on Overcoming Barriers at the bottom in response to a comment submitted March, 2016…including tax returns, California corporate registration (Massachusetts could also be searched). 

For a December 2017 Update (which at first I thought might fit in here), see:

Revisiting Reunification Camps and Treatments, The good Clinical Psychologist Just Want to Help Traumatized People and “Families in Transition” (or “Transitioning Families”), the Good, Ole Court-Ordered (and of course (™)’d Service Model) Way. Case-sensitive shortlink ends “-8cC” and this was written Dec. 16, 2017, starting as a post update to [another] one for which I wanted to cite to this older post on reunification camps for “estranged” families, but from different angle of approach, as that one explains in the first few paragraphs.  After that, on “Revisiting Reunification Camps,” above, I get into looking at what isn’t apparently a large operation, but one with connections in more than one state to the family court system.  It’s in draft, but will be a short post and out Dec. 16 or 17, 2017. [Published Dec. 21 + (additions/clarifications) 22nd] //LGH.
I expect to publish (shortly) a follow-up to the Reunification Camps post above, some information I came across recently which connects the AFCC-drenched providers of at least three camps (Two mentioned here, one featured in my recent post above], the new one trademarked only 2016 (described in the above post) whose lead psychologist apparently was on-call from the NCMEC (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children) who shortly after Jaycee Dugard (and the two children born to her 18-year-long kidnapper rapist and herself) were rescued, was put in touch with Dugard who then (2009/2010) got a $20M settlement from the State of California and set up the JayC Foundation (of very modest size, but it seems in part supporting the reunification camps used ALSO to force-feed alienated children back in to the parent’s life, particularly in cases where the alienation is connected to litigation around the issues of abuse/domestic violence by the “targeted” parent (the one the kids don’t want to see).
(TRANSITIONING FAMILIES, STABLE PATHS (Abigail M. Judge (“clinician”) Boston, S.Florida, with involvement from Transitioning Families clinician R. Bailey. who has a recent book out co-authored with one of the co-founders (mentioned below in THIS older post) of “Overcoming Barriers.”  In addition, in the context of a recent case (2015) of Judge Gorcya and 3 children aged 9-14 ordered into “juvie detention” for refusing to have lunch with their father then, at last check, attempts to get them for aftercare into some Reunification camp — the Detroit Free Press (now part of USA Today franchise) reporting said the Judge was hoping to get them into Warshak’s “Family Bridges” or one modeled on it — in Toronto, Canada!!, while Dr. Bailey was quoted in the context).  I’m taking bets (just kidding) on how long Gorcya has been (if she is) an AFCC member and how much of that county’s system the association controls. Michigan is also long home, at least by organization name, to a batterers’ intervention coalition (BISC-MI).  //LGH 12/22/2017.


I was just going to add a very short update (that comment, it seems, in March 2016), but instead added a section on renewed Parental Alienation discussions, and the socialist “re-education camps” in Viet Nam after South fell to the North, in 1975.  Similar in other countries.   Major quality and scope difference — but force is force, and at some levels, it’s also a form of psychological, personal violence. In my opinion.  So, the original (written/published in 2011) post begins in maroon font and below a double-line after the following paragraphs and a few quotes:

Speaking of how to continue keeping “Parental Alienation” conversation going — and ordering services to undo it through the family courts — I recently noticed that a “Dr. Craig Childress” (Craig A. Childress, Psy.D.) is resurrecting parental alienation under a different theory; I have some comments on it over at Red Herring Alert (a wordpress blog).  “Same old, same old” with new window dressing and tactics (Childress recommends pressuring providers who do NOT recommend IMMEDIATE, safety-for-the-child total separation from the alienating parent (i.e., “mom” typically) through their licensing board, if this could be categorized under some existing DSM-defined disorder.  

You cannot really argue with self-referencing, self-congratulating circles of experts on this matter which is why I recommend a more interesting angle of approach:  If they incorporate, find tax returns and corporate records; if they get contracts with the courts, or government grants to run “reunification camps” and similar therapy for parental alienation (in its old or new classifications), pay attention to the details!

The technique and ability to re-indoctrinate people in groups, as well as children, was also in common use in socialist countries; I believe the term used was “re-education camps,” referring to those in South Viet Nam after the fall of Saigon in 1975:   Search “Vietnamese Re-Education Camps: A Brief History” (that’s supplemental reading, from a man’s father’s oral history — he lived through such camps — from “Choices” program at Brown; see website) or  “Vietnamese Re-Education Camps” from “VietNamWar.info.”

The second link introduces and describes the various levels.  I wonder, in the USA, why the country is so heavily invested in a class of professionals whose purpose seems to be behavioral change and keeping up-to-date with tactics and strategies for re-indoctrinating children, women and men into their proper social relationships with each other and particularly after one or more of the same has spoken out about some prior injustice, or sought to escape being subjected to abuse by a family member.  These camps apparently went on from 1975 – 1986 until people still being held were allowed to emigrate to the US.

 “Vietnamese Re-Education Camps” from “VietNamWar.info.” Posted 4/17/2014 by “kubia”

Following the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, Vietnamese Communist government began to open hundreds of “re-education” camps throughout the country. Those camps, as Hanoi officially claimed, were places where individuals could “learn about the ways of the new government” through education and socially constructive labor.

In 1975, it was estimated that around 1 to 2.5 million people1, including former officers, religious leaders, intellectuals, merchants, employees of the old regime, and even some Communists, entered the camps in the hope that they could quickly reconcile with the new government and continued their peaceful life. However, their time in those camps did not last for ten days or two weeks as the government had claimed.

Re-education Camps Levels

The re-education camps were organized into five levels. The level-one camps which were called as study camps or day-study centers located mainly in major urban centers, often in public parks, and allowed attendees to return home each night. In those camps, some 500,000 people2 were instructed about socialism, new government policy in order to unlearn their old ways of thinking. The level-two camps had a similar purpose as the level-one, but attendees were not allowed to return home for three to six months. During the 1970s, at least 200,000 inmates entered more than three hundred level–two camps2.

The level-three re-education camps, known as the socialist-reform camps, could be found in almost every Southern Vietnam province containing at least 50,000 inmates2. Most of them were educated people and thus less susceptible to manipulation than most South Vietnamese in the level-one and two camps. Therefore, the inmates (or prisoners) in these camps had to suffer poorer living conditions, forced labor and daily communist indoctrination.

The last two types of camps were used to incarcerate more “dangerous” southern individuals – including writers, legislator teachers, supreme court judges, province chiefs – until the South was stable to permit their release. By separating members of certain social classes of the old regime, Hanoi wanted to prevent them from conducting joint resistances and forced them to conform to the new social norms. In 1987, at least 15,000 “dangerous” persons were still incarcerated level-four and level-five camps2.

Camp Conditions and Deaths

In most of the re-education camps, living conditions were inhumane. Prisoners were treated with little food, poor sanitation, and no medical care3. They were also assigned to do hard and risky work such as clearing the jungle, constructing barracks, digging wells, cutting trees and even mine field sweeping without necessary working equipments.

Although those hard work required a lot of energy, their provided food portions were extremely small. As a prisoner recall, the experience of hunger dominated every man in his camp. Food was the only thing they talked about. Even when they were quiet, food still haunted their thoughts, their sleep and their dreams. Worse still, various diseases such as malaria, beriberi and dysentery were widespread in some of the camps. As many prisoners were weakened by the lack of food, those diseases could now easily take away their lives.

Starvation diet, overwork, diseases and harshly punishment resulted in a high death rate of the prisoners. According to academic studies of American researchers, a total of 165,000 Vietnamese people died in those camps4.

The End of “Re-education” Period

Most of the re-education camps were operated until 1986 when Nguyen Van Linh became the General Secretary of the Communist Party. He began to close the harsher camps and reformed the others5. Two year later, Washington and Hanoi reached an agreement that Vietnam would free all former soldiers and officials of the old regime who were still held in re-education camps across the country and allowed them to emigrate to the United States under the Orderly Departure Program (ODP). As of August 1995, around 405,000 Vietnamese prisoners and their families were resettled in the U.S6.

– See more at: thevietnamwar.info/vietnamese-re-education-camps/..

The forced “Reunification Camps” (far less harsh, but still forced, and still designed to produce an attitude change) have their professionals willing to engage in these practices.

I think it must take a certain kind of mentality, if not personality aberrancy, to believe in this and what’s more preach about it and take in business to engage in it.

For some reason, those “Re-education camps” remind me of, though lesser in degree, the same idea as, for example, “overcoming barriers.”  It’s still based on force — and who knows how many similar programs are operating around the country.  As I write this, the Grazzini-Rucki runaway teens were reported (in 2016) to being re-indoctrinated to like their father (who they’d run away from as young teens), while the mother, until recently, was incarcerated for parental interference.  See my more recent 2016 posts).

Here’s a sample.  I see he’s from Pasadena, California (Los Angeles area).  To see it in better formatting (the “copy” function sometimes removes all spaces between words!) click on link:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/165394444/Dr-Craig-Childress-DSM-5-Diagnosis-of-Parental-Alienation-Processes#scribd.

C. A. CHILDRESS, Psy.D.LICENSED CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST, PSY 18857

 547 S. MARENGO DR., STE 105 • PASADENA, CA 91101 • (909) 821-5398
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DSM-5 Diagnosis of “ParentalAlienation”

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