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

ABOVE: New, Improved HHS Grants Database “TAGGS” image accompanying the label “DECISIONMAKING.” (?!!). I understand the trend towards “actuarial-based data-analytics” justifying (or, replacing personal accountability for) human decision-making, but it’s still weird… See also (on this blog or separately) NCCD (Oakland, CA nonprofit) and its’ various trademarked decision-making software for use in public institutions worldwide….

KEY ASSERTION:

Evidence is practically slapping us in the face that the domestic violence field, while organizations named after stopping or being against domestic violence still involve plenty of women and what may looks like some truly feminist ones, has still been co-opted by, in fact, groups favorable to fathers’ and mens’ rights & programming FIRST, and “if we can get some safety added on to it — through technical assistance and training the judges, law enforcement, professionals– =so much the better for the PR,” despite all the rhetoric, as an afterthought.

POST SUMMARY & “GUIDE to CONTENTS”

This post is over 16,000 words, a “two-for-one.”  I decided to keep the dense-verbiage section near the top because of relevance, even though it moved the more colorful, visually fun and “higher curb appeal” logos of various organizations (see sampler here) lower down on the post.

I also, regrettably, felt it necessary to separate a discussion of key responsible fatherhood timeline events which anyone concerned about domestic violence ought to, by now, know by heart — but I doubt most do.

RE:  “SHOW and TELL.”  I tell first, but then near top of the post, show a certain California judge promoting Domestic Violence Coordinating Councils, plus some background on the Administrative Office of the Courts and its timing to increasing federal involvement in state-level family court jurisdiction and subject matter … THROUGH the Child Support sector (access & visitation public laws) of the 1980s and 1990s.

Further down, after showing more of the DV Networks (colorful logos of key some key groups, echoes a recent post on them) and another on “Strong Field Project” representing one health-foundation-funded Statewide DV network..and some of the PRIVATE-sector DV Industry collaborations (networking).

…you’ll see a logo for the MCBW —

and below that, discussions of the “TREATMENT AGENDA” response to domestic violence, as well as evidence of a Minnesota-based “DV Coordinating Council.” In looking at one of the Supervised Visitation Providers involved (?) with this one, I also noted form the tax returns that they are keeping $290K of assets with a certain “community foundation.”  I couldn’t find that Community Foundation as a separate business, but did run into the larger one it’s under.

It’s a general reminder to  continue to pay attention to COMMUNITY FOUNDATIONS as FUNDING POWERHOUSES which attract and can incubate programs without clear awareness by the public of these programs’ funding.

 I also show that one of the key people at MCBW, who is also a lawyer, has strong connections to both the Battered Women’s Justice Project (which is to say, “Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, “DAIP” and with this connection, again, a focus on treatment/supervised visitation/trainings, etc.) and AFCC. 

In fact, here’s that quote (but to link to a person’s name, read the post!):

____has served as faculty for the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, the National Judicial Institute on Domestic Violence, the Center for Court Innovation, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, and the Minnesota Judicial Branch.

Same individual, being interviewed as faculty over at the “Center for Court Innovation” shows her BWJP/AFCC value systems — use kids as bait for ordering behavioral modification services for batterers because, after all, the “Coordinated Community Response” (courts + service providers in loco parentis) really, if trained by the right groups (=”us.”), will be wise and powerful enough to protect the children and persuade the children — and the primary care-taking parent attempting to limit the influence of abusive role models on growing children s/he is supposed to raise into upstanding citizens and participants in a law-abiding society — into accepting what’s best for themselves (link provided lower in the post):

[MCBW Interviewee]: Some judges, some court practitioners do see that perpetrators will be motivated by their kids, and access to their kids. So family court judges and family courts have this opportunity, and the proper motivation, to get perpetrators into services and into programs, to keep an eye on that perpetrator—to be like a mentor, to be a coach, to be a motivator to keep that perpetrator from using coercive and controlling violence, and they can order graduated visitation, graduated parenting time.

[CCI Interviewer]:  So the judges can use this leverage—access to the children, basically: “You can get thus and such visitation under these conditions if you receive these services, if you engage in this particular program?”

Kids as Bait for Violent (the focus being on primarily male) Offenders. What a “great” idea for kids and the nonviolent parent too. Great or not, it’s an idea that the DV Cartel has “bred into” the response to domestic violence.

[MCBW Interviewee]:  Yes, and it’s not only that it is an effective motivator for change, but its also completely logically tied to what is best for the children. We do want children to be able to have healthy relationships with both parents and it’s in the children’s best interest if we are able to figure out how to work with the perpetrator over time and help them develop their [[“his or her”] parenting capacity.

The steady money, moral “prestige,” and social/professional connections in the “working with the perps” fields, not to mention the conference circuits, must just be coincidental.

Finally, or close to finally, I show the MCBW discussion at a New York-based influential organization, “Center for Court Innovation,” how highly she values batterers intervention and co-parenting (despite the presence of domestic violence individual families) as best for all involved.

 I spent a few days attempting to make this one SHORT post of 8,000 words, but some of this information belongs in one place.  Dedicate some reading time, be prepared to bookmark some of the links for future reference, and you will not be disappointed.  Here goes….

What are the footprints, the TELLs

of the coordinated DV Industry Cartel?

TELL:  I use the word “tell” in its poker sense to make my point.  There are many gambling idioms in common speech.  Click here to see some.

I don’t play poker, but in case the term isn’t familiar, check here: “Do you know what is more powerful than a poker tell? Understanding the difference between poker tells and behavioral information can have a profound impact on your game.” … [they describe the need for an accurate language to describe the tells]

Let’s define a “poker tell.”

A poker tell is a behavior that is correlated with a specific piece of information. This information can pertain to the quality of a player’s hand, the emotions a player tends to experience during a particular action, or even the coping mechanism a player uses to hide his behavior.

…This is a perfect example of how the way we describe behavior can significantly alter our reads … Without using the proper descriptive language we lose a lot of vital information.

…What we just described is a practical way of expressing tells at the table and is something every single player can do by approaching the identification of tells in a systematic and ordered fashion.

It’s my belief that every single player has a some sort of tell, some tells just take longer than others to identify. Tells can be found in many places on the human body, it’s just a matter of time before you hone in on the right place to look.

Key phrases for this context being “identifying in a systematic and ordered fashion” and “honing in on the right place to look.”  If you are forced into a high-stakes poker match where the outcome is life or death, how well would you focus?   Would you want to “hone in” on indicators of which way the outcome might go?

Meanwhile I am “telling” readers (in the common usage of that word) that there appears to be a “cartel” of corporations and individuals working with and for them, organized around this field to restrict outside participation or confrontation of the protected turf.  I am identifying the turf and the tells that I have become aware of  through long-term exposure (not participation!) as systematically as possible.

 DV:  DV obviously is short for “domestic violence.”

The DV cartel (my term) can be identified by key players and organizations, their networking, and their shared jargon, i.e., “tells.”   I’ll show these three, below:

• Insisting on the Multidisciplinary Response to Domestic Violence  
• Coordinating the Community (of professionals, anyhow) Response [“CCR”]
• Coaching others to form local “Domestic Violence Coordinating Councils* organized at the County level.

*DV Coordinating Councils as a Concept:  Pushed since 1992 by an AFCC/ NCJFCJ well-known Judge: http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/Domestic_VIolence_Council.pdf  “REDUCING FAMILY VIOLENCE:  THE ROLE OF THE FAMILY VIOLENCE COUNCIL” by Judge Leonard P. Edwards (Juvenile & Family Court Journal, 1992). A brief resume shows that in 2002-2003 he was also President of NCJFCJ.   (In fact that resume was posted at NCJFCJ, and gives the link for his fuller one).

RESUME OF JUDGE LEONARD P.EDWARDS (ret)

Judge Leonard Edwards is a retired Superior Court Judge now working as a consultant and teacher. In his work he provides technical assistance to the courts of California and courts across the country, particularly in areas involving children and families. Judge Edwards served for 26 years as a Superior Court Judge in Santa Clara County, California. He sat as a domestic relations judge and as a juvenile court judge. He also served for six years as Judge-in- Residence with the Center for Families, Children & the Courts, a division of the California Administrative Office of the Courts.

The “CFCC” appears to have come into existence around 2000? underneath the AOC.  The AOC (Administrative Office of the Courts) is the staff of the Judicial Council.  The AOC came under fire for being over-bloated and many other things. Strategic Evaluation was commissioned and a May 25, 2012 Evaluation Report written.  This lengthy report, also featured in some of my later 2014 posts and some “sticky” ones, gives some of the history of centralization and “moving up” the responsibility for the state’s courts to the state level.  It also describes delegation of functions.

THE REPORT on the AOC, with its section on the CFCC Division IS RECOMMENDED READING for understanding many things which may relate to complaints about the family courts nationwide. Information on the AOC’s/CFCC begins on page 81:

(from a 2012 “SEC” CALIFORNIA-SPECIFIC REVIEW Of the Administrative Office of the Courts)

Division Description

The Center for Families, Children and the Courts (CFCC) was established in February 2000 through the merger of the Statewide Office of Family Court Services and the Center for Children and the Courts.

An Statewide Office on Families was merged with a Center on Children and the Courts.  Consolidation, Year 2000

The Statewide Office of Family Court Services was created by a 1984 legislative mandate to provide leadership, development, assistance, research, grants, education, and technical support to the state’s family court services programs through direct services and community partnerships.

• READER ALERT:  I’m interrupting the quote from the report to emphasize events of 1984, 1988 and 1997, quoting other sources.  I will continue in the next yellow-highlit box below those quotes.  This is relevant and “deep” information that shows the timing of the A/V increasing activities, which should be laid alongside whether OR NOT the domestic violence agencies saw fit to inform mothers about them.  There’s no question that, overall, the leadership of the key organizations were reasonably aware of the same…BEFORE passage of the 1994 VAWA (!!!)
• Larger context, about a key AFCC,NCJFCJ (two private 501©3/nonprofit judicial (and for AFCC, other court-connected professionals) membership associations), and AOC/CFCC–connected & (Santa Clara) county judge pushing certain kinds of programming, including but not limited to Domestic (“Family”) Violence Coordinating Councils…  FYI, In California at least now, judges are state, not county, employees…

Also (federal level) in 1984, the “Access and Visitation” program was enacted. As I went looking for a Congressional Research Service report on this, I found it posted at “Fearless Fathers” who’d picked it up on one of my posts — dated 12/5/2009 (!!).  This has a few other links on the topic.  Note — I’d only discovered what happened in 1984, as posted (summarized) in 2000, in the year 2009….

Congress and Fathers Rights: the Ice Age of Awareness December 8, 2009 by fearlessfathers

 You want to know why family courts are harassing you to pay child support (whether or not your job situation has changed) – or unreimbursed medical expenses (that your ex-wife asks family court to recover for her while she is not using your health insurance that covers your kids) and does not give the first dam of your visitation rights? Search not any more. That’s all in Carmen D. Solomon-Fears’s report 97-590 this report titled “Child Support Enforcement and Visitation: Should There Be a Federal Connection?” posted in Let’sGetHonestBlog. And this is to cry.

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