Posts Tagged ‘murder-suicides’
Yes, we SHOULD call them “restraining order suggestions” (Certifiably Insane Protection Orders in MN; meanwhile, more “Fatherhood” in KS) [[Orig. Aug. 7, 2009]].
[[Title & Shortlink added Dec. 1, 2023 to refer to this post]]
[Feb. 17, 2016 UPDATE NOTES:
This post originally published over five years ago — on August 7, 2009. For more recent focus of this blog, see more recent posts (2016, 2014) which focus on systems operations, and consolidation of economic power from outside state lines (divorce and custody remaining under state jurisdiction, as well as domestic violence prevention orders).
I am currently working on posts regarding the Greenbook Initiative (2000-2008) and involved parties, on the NCJFCJ, on IDVAAC, and the “DV cartel” as identified by its participants (centralized, coordinated, and stuck in a policy rut) on the HHS and USDOJ grants stream.
I look up nonprofit organizations functioning as social policy conduits for a small group of inter-related professionals who cut deals with each other on what to minimize, what to focus on. These represent a much larger pattern throughout government, not just relating to domestic violence itself.
Many times by the time individuals find out about the policy deals that were cut, their lives, or kids are “gone.” If not physically, often in all the other critical aspects of life which people NOT entrenched in some of these systems may still take for granted. For example, the ability to get to and from, and hold a job once one has been hired, or completing projects for clients inbetween police events, court hearings, and ongoing threats to one’s personal safety and particularly, financial survival (i.e., ability to sustain food, housing, transportation, etc.). This comment added 2/17/2016 //LGH]
(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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How can we analyze policy inbetween these leading, bleeding headlines?
Maybe if I intersperse headlines, policy talk, and commentary I can get through another day without mourning evidence of national return to stupidity day.
Man, then about 19, begets child; mother (now in other state) age not mentioned
Separation happens; Dad gets custody, Dad remarries (in which order?)
Dad has two more children and, now 34 himself, is accused of molesting his first one, now 15.
DCFS removes daughter he is allegedly molesting from his custody — SORT of, not quite!
Pissed off, or coldly determined, Dad obtains gun — or grabs one he already owns.
Before much of anything is discovered (LEST it be discovered?)
He simply heads two doors down, kills foster Dad, attempts to kill foster mother, DOES kill his own daughter,
What a life she led with her FATHER, a STEPMOTHER, two stepsiblings, and being molested, ALLEGEDLY.
SOMEONE TALKS. She gets out, but not safe. Now she’s dead.
Oh yeah, and not one to go to prison, her father also shoots himself, fatally.
Her MOM was in another state — WHY?
Just another small, friendly, Tennessee Town.
Does anyone know her brief life well enough to tell its brief story? Because when these things happen
at home, the theme is NOT telling anyone outside the family; collusion is the order of the day.
THIS ARTICLE IS FROM TODAY — August 4, 2009
QUIZ — from what YEAR are the orange quotes mid-article?
ANSWER BELOW.
Color Code:
- light blue — quotes the article
- black — my comments
- orange — quotes from a different article (speech, to be precise).
Police: Dad fatally shoots daughter, foster dad
(AND, SELF) (AND TRIES TO KILL FOSTER MOTHER, too)
DYERSBURG, Tenn. – Neighbors in Tennessee are asking why a teenage girl
fatally shot by her father was placed with a foster family just two doors down
after he was accused of abusing her.
Omitted from this lead sentence — ONE WEEK after . . . . .
I believe one of the tags on this one might be “AFTER SHE SPEAKS UP” (if it was the daughter, or her mother, or her stepmother)
This puts a CHILL on reporting abuse…
As dads disappear, the American family is becoming significantly weaker and less capable of fulfilling
its fundamental responsibility
of nurturing and socializing children and conveying values to them.
In turn, the risks to the health and well-being of America’s children
are becoming significantly higher.
Christopher Milburn, 34, killed the 15-year-old and her foster father and
wounded her foster mother before taking his own life Sunday, authorities said.
Sounds like a virtual honor-killing of some sort..
Children growing up without fathers, research shows, are far more likely to live in poverty,
to fail in school, to experience behavioral and emotional problems,
to develop drug and alcohol problems,
to be victims of physical abuse and neglect and, tragically, to commit suicide.
{{THis being a case in point, I suppose?}}
{{The order of events is reversed. Victims of physical (and sexual) abuse are often
turning to drugs, alcohol, and other risky behaviors as a result, per a decade-long
(and basically ignored by the fatherhood movement) Kaiser/CDC study (see blogroll to right), completed the
year before THIS quote I am inserting to this recent Tennessee tragedy.}}
Neighbor Frank Hipps said Milburn was good friends with Todd Randolph, the 46-year-old foster father,
and had worked for him in the past. Hipps, who had known both men for about eight years, said he didn’t know
the details of the abuse allegations but questioned why the girl had been placed so close.
Maybe he didn’t know them so well as he thought.
Who paid WHOM to get this daughter switched only 2 doors down, instead of the Dad switched out of the neighborhood?
Dad used to work for the foster father? Just HOW inbred was this town, exactly?
A mature 46 year old man, foster father, married, and a daughter in the home.
Let’s do the Father/Daughter math: 34 – 15 is HOW old was he when he got a woman pregnant?
Legally old enough: 19. Probably just out of high school.
“That kid shouldn’t have been in that house,” he said.
I agree. I think she should’ve been with her mother.
“This might have been preventable if she had been placed with foster parents out of the community.”
MIGHT is true, especially if he still knew where she was ….
OR for SURE if the man had been in jail for molesting his daughters, which is where child-molesters belong, at least to start.
Neither police in Dyersburg, in northwestern Tennessee, nor child services agency spokesman Rob Johnson
would elaborate on the abuse allegations other than to say the investigation began last week.
The girl, whose name was not released, had been staying with Todd and Susan Randolph
while the state Department of Children’s Services investigated, Dyersburg Police Capt. Steve Isbell said.
WHo paid WHOM to put her there? Come’ ON! !!! Give the girl a fresh start!
Susan Randolph, the girl’s foster mother, was released from a Memphis hospital Monday.
Frank Hipps’ wife, Tammy, said the 15-year-old was Milburn’s daughter by a previous relationship.
He was married and the couple had two younger daughters.
The court probably saw a stable TWO-parent family, it probably had at least HEARD about
the great crisis of fatherlessness we’ve been plagued with as a nation for the past about 15 years
(This girl was born right around the time this doctrine took nationalized, Congressionally recognized wings..
She must’ve been born around 1994. See below. Gee, by then, my In-the-home husband had already
started assaulting me, between babies. WHat a coincidence that, unbeknownst to me, my government
was aware of the crisis and addressing it. . . . . Oh, excuse me, not the crisis of child molestation or
domestic violence, but of FATHERLESSNESS.
The girl’s mother was living out of state
{{HOW COME SHE LOST CUSTODY?}}
and police were waiting for her to arrive before releasing the girl’s name, Isbell said.
Police found the teenager and Todd Randolph dead at the Randolph home and Milburn about a block away,
dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
One less child molester, allegedly, OR man who didn’t trust the legal system to get the truth out of his innocence.
Guess they must do things different in Family Court in Tennessee; he’d have been FINE if he could just connect
with some PAS-theory court professional and discredit whoever was alleging the abuse. Unless it was the girl…
Charles Wootton, 71, who lives across the street from the Randolphs, said he heard five pops. He looked out the window
and saw Randolph on the ground near the mailbox.
“My wife opened the door and walked out and seen the blood. That’s when I called 911,” he said.
Wootton said neighbors started to gather at the Randolphs’ house and a nurse performed CPR on Todd Randolph,
who had been shot through the neck. {{FOR THE CRIME OF . . . . . . . ??}}
Wootton said when he first looked at Susan Randolph, he thought she was dead, too.
“She told me who did it,” Wootton said.
The Randolphs have two young children who were at their grandparents’ house during the shootings, Wootton said.
Wootton had moved to the neighborhood about two weeks ago, and Todd Randolph had mowed his yard several times.
“The people around here are just about the friendliest you’ve ever met,” said Wootton. “I don’t know what happened to that guy.”
MORAL OF THE STORY: FRIENDLY PEOPLE CAN STILL MOLEST THEIR CHILDREN. WHO REPORTED? THE DAUGHTER?
THE NEW WOMAN? ONE OF HER MANDATED REPORTERS.
Isbell said Milburn had no criminal record in Dyersburg, a city of approximately 18,000 people about 70 miles northeast of Memphis.
Tammy Hipps said Milburn worked as a counselor at the McDowell Center for Children,
which helps at-risk and troubled children.
Well, was he falsely accused or properly accused?
If properly, then again, let’s note here: PERPS like places that give them access to CHILDREN, esp. troubled ones.
The shootings came just over two weeks after Jacob Levi Shaffer of Fayetteville, a small Tennessee town
near the Alabama border about.
70 miles west of Chattanooga, was accused of fatally stabbing his estranged wife,
three members of her family and a neighbor boy to death on July 18.
He also is accused of beating an acquaintance to death in nearby Huntsville, Ala.
BEFORE or AFTER she became “inexplicably” “estranged”??
Perhaps stories like these are why the word “RESPONSIBLE” was added to things like, “National Fathers Return Day?”
One Congressional discussion of which I give, below:
FROM THE CONGRESSIONAL RECORD:
| Lieberman, Joseph[D-CT] | ||
| Begin | 1999-06-17 | 10:13:34 |
| End | 10:21:48 | |
| Length | 00:08:14 | |
Leading off with African Americans and teen pregnancies, he relates:
Mr. LIEBERMAN.
Mr. President, I want to say just a few words on the jarring statistics from that report and column for my colleagues.
Of African American children born in 1996, 70 percent were born to unmarried mothers. At least 80 percent, according to the report,
can expect to spend a significant part of their childhood apart from their fathers.
We can take some comfort and encouragement from the fact that the teen pregnancy rate has dropped in the last few years. But the numbers cited in Mr. Kelly’s column and in the report are nonetheless profoundly unsettling, especially given what we know about the impact of fatherlessness, and indicate we are in the midst of what Kelly aptly terms a “national calamity.”
It is a calamity. Of course, it is not limited to the African American community. On any given night, 4 out of 10 children in
this country are sleeping in homes without fathers.
COMMENTARY:
(THis mental image appears to be far less vivid than the ones of SOME fathers doing horrible things when they DID or DO live
with their children..
Like beating them. Or having sex with them. Or beating their mothers. Or simply refusing to work OR help around the home. Or,
engaging in multiple sexual relationships with other women while married. Or verbally berating a mother in front of the children.
SOME Dads are great Dads and SOME Dads are a terror. Likewise, SOME Moms are great Moms, and SOME Moms are negligent
or bad Moms. It is also harder for a mother to care properly for her children, or in the best manner, which she is afraid of being assaulted
over a minor issue by the Dad when he comes home. If he does that day. Are these senators thinking about these images when they
shudder and are aghast at a home without a Dad).
Many homes were without Dads during the World Wars I, II, Korean War, Viet Nam War, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other places
men (and women) have been sent because men decided to make war with each other, in the name of peace and democracy and self-protection.
Some homes of law enforcement officers are now without Dads in them because their Dad responded to a domestic violence dispute, and
caught a bullet, generally also taking out the attacking father as well.
MY Dad’s home, growing up between two of the abovementioned wars was without a Dad in it because, guess what: His Dad (a fireman),
got tired of beating his German immigrant wife and abandoned her with three children. He witnessed this growing up.
He went on to become a successful scientist, raise children he did NOT beat (at least I wasn’t and I never saw my siblings taking this),
studied hard, worked hard, sent ALL children not just to, but also through college also, and left an inheritance. And provide for, from what
I am told/understand, not only his own mother, but also a younger brother who never quite got it together, possibly related to something that
happened when he WAS with that abusive Dad, or what, I was never told. That brother also served his country as a soldier, and died before his time,
never having married or had children.
My Dad NEVER put his children (all daughters) in contact with the abusing/beating/abandoning father, ever, in his lifetime.
I never regretted this, that I can recall. How can you regret something you never saw, where the only thing you knew about him was,
he beat the grandmother that I DID know (a little bit).
However, while Sen. Lieberman was making this speech, about a decade ago, I was for the first time in a full decade of substantial
domestic violence in MY daughters’ lives, with them at an overnight, stay-away camp, a music camp, which we had managed to get
to no thinks from the father who never left. For two weeks, I was not going to be abused at night and was around people who actually
treated me respectfully, and I worked along side them in my profession. We had had a real push getting up there, and were punished
soundly for having left, but during that week and seeing the response to us getting free from abuse for only (and not entirely; there was
a dour-faced, rules-of-camp breaking midweek visit, where $20 was casually tossed at me so I might have enough gas to get back home)
I MADE UP MY MIND that this domestic violence restraining order was GOING to be filed, and I’m “out of here.”
How ironic that i didn’t know what was being prated and pronounced in Washington, D.C. at this time.
Here’s the rest of this little 8 minute speech, in case you WOULD like the names of some of the prominent thinkers behind this
June 1999 presentation to the President of the United States, and get a glimpse inside the working of great, Constitution-respecting, minds
when left unsupervised in the Capital of our beloved country:
We can take some comfort and encouragement from the fact that the teen pregnancy rate has dropped
in the last few years. But the numbers cited in Mr. Kelly’s column and in the report are nonetheless
profoundly unsettling, especially given what we know about the impact of fatherlessness,
{{Gee, that must have been a grass-roots appeal from the teen mothers for help, or their mothers, or
theirs sisters. WHERE did this knowledge about the impact of fatherless come from, given the
establishment in 1994 of: (A) The Violence Against Women Act (help some women leave, rather than
stay, in abusive, dangerous relationships) and (B) Also in 1994, the National Fatherhood Initiative.
(Should I compare months of incorporation as nonprofit with the passage of the law?)}}
and indicate we are
in the midst of what Kelly aptly terms a “national calamity.” It is a calamity. Of course, it is not limited to
the African American community. On any given night, 4 out of 10 children in this country are sleeping in homes without fathers.
(CONTINUED QUOTE, in different format..):
At the end of this column, Michael Kelly asks: How could this happen
in a Nation like ours? And he wonders if anyone is paying attention.
Well, the fact is that people are beginning to pay attention, although
it tends to be more people at the grassroots level who are actively
seeking solutions neighborhood by neighborhood.
{{Evidence being….. WHO?? Time frame? Organizations? Written declarations by any of these?}}
The best known of these groups {{in fact the ONLY one named here..}}
is called the National Fatherhood Initiative.
{{Possibly because of its funding? and prominence of who’s in it?}}
I think it has made tremendous progress in recent years {{CONTEXT 1994-1999}}
in raising awareness of father absence and its impact on our society and in mobilizing a
national effort to promote responsible fatherhood.
Per the HHS TAGGS search on its name:
| Fiscal Year | Grantee Name | State | Award Number | Award Title | CFDA Number | Sum of Actions |
| 2008 | NATIONAL FATHERHOOD INITIATIVE | MD | 90FB0001 | NATIONAL FATERHOOD CAPACITY BUILDING INITIATIVE | 93086 | $ 999,534 |
| 2007 | NATIONAL FATHERHOOD INITIATIVE | MD | 90FB0001 | NATIONAL FATERHOOD CAPACITY BUILDING INITIATIVE | 93086 | $ 999,534 |
| 2006 | NATIONAL FATHERHOOD INITIATIVE | MD | 90FB0001 | NATIONAL FATERHOOD CAPACITY BUILDING INITIATIVE | 93086 | $ 999,534 |
| 2001 | NATIONAL FATHERHOOD INITIATIVE | MD | 90XP0023 | THE RESPONSIBILE FATHERHOOD PUABLIC EDUCATION PROGRAM | 93647 | $ 500,000 |
And for column width, same search (common field: Award# / CFDA Code)
| Fiscal Year | Award Number | Action Issue Date | CFDA Number | CFDA Program Name | Award Activity Type | Award Action Type | Principal Investigator | Sum of Actions |
| 2008 | 90FB0001 | 09/25/2008 | 93086 | Healthy marriage Promotion and Responsible Fatherhood Grants | DEMONSTRATION | NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION | CHRISTHOPHER BEARD | $ 999,534 |
| 2007 | 90FB0001 | 09/21/2007 | 93086 | Healthy marriage Promotion and Responsible Fatherhood Grants | DEMONSTRATION | NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION | CHRISTHOPHER BROWN | $ 999,534 |
| 2006 | 90FB0001 | 09/25/2006 | 93086 | Healthy marriage Promotion and Responsible Fatherhood Grants | DEMONSTRATION | NEW | CHRISTHOPHER BROWN | $ 999,534 |
| 2001 | 90XP0023 | 04/09/2001 | 93647 | Social Services Research and Demonstration | SOCIAL SERVICES | NEW | HEATHER THURMAN | $ 500,000 |
I’d DONE data entry before, and typing. Do you know what the odds of someone even on no sleep, and having a sugar buzz, making THAT many
mistakes in 4 entries (fatherhood, responsible, and public, plus “Christopher” spelled wrong. Same grant, 3rd year, “Christhopher Brown” entered a
samesex marriage, apparently and changed last name “Brown” to his partner’s name “Beard”?
This database exists so the public can search on it. Hmmm…… I wonder if they know to search for misspelled names…. and key terms.
AND SINCE 2000– seen below:
Funding for the “Father Organization” in this “national effort”
| 93.086: Healthy Marriage Promotion and Responsible Fatherhood Grants | $1,999,068 |
However the funding for the wild oats it sowed, under this # 93.086:
(I JUST LEARNED) I believe that this code only arose (emerged naturally of course) in about 2006. However, as of 2009,
it is still not a searchable agency code on the USASPENDING.gov. Either in listing “all” programs, or under the agency it belongs under
Hmmm — $2 million less in California for our shelters? (yes, yes, I realize this is federal, not state, spending).
2000-2009 NFI Funding: (See bar chart): Well, I guessed this may not be responsible “Spelling” on whoever entered the data,
but . . . .
When we simply search only the word
“fatherhood” under “recipient” for FY2000-2009,
we get an entirely different picture (also diff’t database):
Top 5 Known Congressional Districts where Recipients are Located 
| District of Columbia nonvoting (Eleanor Holmes Norton) | $6,942,352 |
| Maryland 08 (Constance A. Morella / Chris Van Hollen) | $2,625,112 |
Yes this is definitely an “up from the people” grassroots movement,
and not a DC.-down
initiative, surely. They are just responding to (a certain sector) of their constitutents, and from Washington, acting on it. I know straight out of
getting out of my house safe, the FIRST thing on my mind was telling Washington, I needed (well, another) father in the home, since now
I was a “female-headed” household and my children, while this Domestic Violence Restraining order was in effect, were sleeping in a fatherless
home and in danger of (NOT) learning the rights values. They were learning that that stuff they witnessed growing up was illegal. And how to
leave a dangerous relationship and start to recover.
Of course, family court was there waiting for them to go UNlearn those values, fast, and that the 14th Amendment is just a theory.
Top 10 Recipients
| NATIONAL FATHERHOOD INITIATIVE | $11,067,190 |
| FATHERHOOD INITIATIVE | $8,673,900 |
| INSTITUTE RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD | $6,557,520 |
| INST FOR RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD & FAM RE | $1,500,000 |
| INST FOR RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD & FAM. REVITA | $300,000 |
| INST FOR RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD & FAM. RE | $99,350 |
| INST FOR RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD & FAMILY REVI | $-14,518 ** |
93647 word “fatherhood”
Was that misspelling intentional? I mean, it WOULD complicate a search by Award Title
Searching, CFDA 93647 (Not the CFDA actually assigned the word “fatherhood” in its description) & word “fatherhood” (“keyword in award title”):
Exact same search, different fields, so you can see grantee, principal investigators….
i.e.,
“It did this ALL on its own altruistic self, and I’m just reporting on it here.”
The President (is this the same one that signed that 1995 proclamation? about fatherhood?)
SEARCH ON ALL grants, with only the word “fatherhood” in the grant (not grantee) title, produced
358 records, of which here are the 1995-1999 ones:
| 1999 | INST FOR RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD & FAM. REVITALIZATION | WASHINGTON | DC | Non-Profit Private Non-Government Organizations | 90XA0005 | REPLICATION & REVITALIZATION FATHERHOOD MODEL | 93670 | OTHER | NEW | $ 300,000 |
| 1999 | INST FOR RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD & FAM. REVITALIZATION | WASHINGTON | DC | Non-Profit Private Non-Government Organizations | 90XP0014 | EVALUATION OF THE INSTITUTE FOR RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD | 93647 | SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS) | NEW | $ 180,000 |
| 1999 | OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, RESEARCH FOUNDATION | COLUMBUS | OH | State Government | R01HD035702 | IMPROVING AND EVALUATING NLSY FATHERHOOD DATA | 93864 | SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS) | NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION | $ 139,665 |
| 1999 | UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH | MINNEAPOLIS | MN | State Government | R40MC00141 | AN INTERVENTION FOR THE TRANSITION TO FATHERHOOD | 93110 | SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS) | NEW | $ 344,470 |
| 1999 | UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA NORMAN CAMPUS | NORMAN | OK | State Government | R40MC00110 | AMERICAN INDIAN FATHERHOOD IN TWO OKLAHOMA COMMUNITIES | 93110 | SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS) | NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION | $ 149,507 |
| 1998 | OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, RESEARCH FOUNDATION | COLUMBUS | OH | State Government | R01HD035702 | IMPROVING AND EVALUATING NLSY FATHERHOOD DATA | 93864 | SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS) | NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION | $ 104,927 |
| 1998 | UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA NORMAN CAMPUS | NORMAN | OK | State Government | 1R40MC0011001 | AMERICAN INDIAN FATHERHOOD IN TWO OKLAHOMA COMMUNITIES | 93110 | SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS) | NEW | $ 154,395 |
| 1997 | OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY | COLUMBUS | OH | State Government | R01HD35702 | IMPROVING AND EVALUATING NLSY FATHERHOOD DATA | 93864 | SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS) | NEW | $ 119,899 |
| 1995 | ADDISON COUNTY PARENT & CHILD CENTER | MIDDLEBURY | VT | County Government | 90PR0005 | RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD PROJECTS | 93647 | DEMONSTRATION | NEW | $ 85,000 |
| 1995 | INST FOR RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD & FAM. REVITALIZATION | WASHINGTON | DC | Non-Profit Private Non-Government Organizations | 90PR0003 | RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD PROJECTS | 93647 | DEMONSTRATION | NEW | $ 85,000 |
| 1995 | INST FOR RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD & FAM. REVITALIZATION | WASHINGTON | DC | Non-Profit Private Non-Government Organizations | 90PR0004 | RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD PROJECTS | 93647 | DEMONSTRATION | NEW | $ 85,000 |
| 1995 | ST. BERNANDINE’S HEAD START | BALTIMORE | MD | Non-Profit Public Non-Government Organizations | 90PR0002 | RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD PROJECTS | 93647 | DEMONSTRATION | NEW | $ 85,000 |
| 1995 | WISHARD MEMORIAL HOSPITAL | INDIANAPOLIS | IN | County Government | 90PR0001 | RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD PROJECTS | 93647 | DEMONSTRATION | NEW | $ 85,000 |
Notice the variety of recipients, including Universities (this will be useful for later “evidence-based data” resulting from grants to study the topic.
Notice that the TYPE of grants appears to be either “new” or “noncompeting.” Hmmm.
AND NOW Sen Lieberman is reporting on this grassroots movement.
Along with a group of allies, the National Fatherhood Initiative has
been establishing educational programs in hundreds of cities and
towns across America.
It has pulled together bipartisan task forces in
the Senate, the House, and among the Nation’s Governors and
mayors.
YES< there’s ONE thing that a bipartisan majority male Congress and the Nation’s (also primarily male,
if I’m not mistaken??) can unite on, and that the problem with the nation
relates to a lack of male (father) influence on young children throughout the land.
Presumably, these children that are spending, probably, the majority of their waking hours
in school, are not connecting with any decent father figures or adult males and learning from them
good values.
I wonder what the male/female ratio of teachers is in the nation’s elementary and high schools….
It has worked with us to explore public policies that
encourage and support the efforts of fathers to become more involved
in the lives of their children.
Last Monday, the National Fatherhood Initiative held its annual
(FIFTH?) national fatherhood summit here in Washington. At that summit, Gen.
Colin Powell, and an impressive and wide-ranging group of experts
and advocates, talked in depth about the father absence crisis in our
cities and towns and brainstormed about what we can do to turn this
troubling situation around.
And Last June, 2009 President OBAMA, had a “town hall on fatherhood”
which was visited by a major representative in the Violence Against Women movement
(see last post). 15 years later, these articles are still leading, suicides (NOT by the troubled
teens, bu tby at times the fathers who troubled them….) are still happening. Well, the
doctrine’s NOT about to change, it must because THAT murderous, suicide-committing father
HIMSELF had no father model in his life.
There are limits to what we in Government can do to meet this
challenge and advance the cause of responsible fatherhood because,
Because — Because — Because, “regretfully” I supposed according to this point of view,
the FOUNDING Fathers put LIMITS to government into the U.S. Constitution,** and a few
MORE also made their way into the Bill of Rights as Amendments.
(**To appreciate the link — or be tempted to read it, hover cursor over it)
I can’t WAIT til the “Equal Rights” Amendment makes it in, if it ever will.
Of course I would settle for an enforced and respected 14th Amendment:
after all, it is hard to change people’s attitudes and behaviors and
values through legislation.
Possibly because the purpose of legislation is to express THEIR attitudes, by laws they voted on,
or their elected representatives did. Possibly because the purpose of government is to PROTECT
the inalienable rights of citizens….
But that doesn’t mean we are powerless,
Yes, time has shown that the federal grants systems, and initiatives, and private deliberations IS a
way to get around the danged legislation that has made “us” (Who all agree about this fatherhood crisis)
so “powerless.”
nor does it mean we can afford not to try to lessen the impact of a
problem that is literally eating away at our country.
How do you know it’s a PROBLEM and not a SYMPTOM of another problem?
In recent times, we have had a great commonality of concern
expressed in the ideological breadth of the fatherhood promotion
effort both here in the Senate and our task force, but underscored by
statements that the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary
of Health and Human Services have made on this subject in recent
years. Indeed, I think President Clinton most succinctly expressed the
importance of this problem when he said: {{in 1995….?}}}
The single biggest social problem in our society may be the growing
absence of fathers from their children’s homes because it contributes
to so many other social problems.
Again, in your opinion, supported by government-funded research with the premise already supposed.
AS WE CAN SEE BY THE ABOVE NEWS ARTICLE. THE REAL PROBLEM WITH THE SITUATION, AND
WHAT CAUSED THE MAN TO KILL 2 (NOT INCLUDING HIMSELF, AND THE FOSTER MOTHER HE TRIED TO KILL)
was HIS INDIGNANT FEELINGS ABOUT, WELL THE FATHER-ABSENCE IN HIS ADOLESCENT DAUGHTER’S LIFE.
IT WAS, REALLY, LOVE IN ACTION.
(FOR REFERENCE: This was the Monica Lewinsky president, right?
Well, I guess we can overlook that because he has just flown to North Korea,
with a shock of white hair and looking dignified (and leaner) to attempt to retrieve
two FEMALE journalists sentenced to 12 years of hard labor. I hope he succeeds.
However, his signing of that 1995 Memo sentenced women here locally to some unbelievable
long-term trauma, because of its chilling effect on the 14th Amendment (and others)
and the placement of daughters and sons in the household of men who abused (or are
abusing) either them, OR previously their mothers) (case in point).
So there are some things we can and should be trying to do. I am
pleased to note our colleagues, Senators BAYH, DOMENICI, and
others have been working to develop a legislative proposal, which I
think contains some very constructive and creative approaches
Yup, parTICULARLY creative with the laws, due process, and the titling of the
various grants involved. Let alone the use of them, or the monitoring of their use
if any indeed actually takes place.
in which the Federal Government would support financially, with
resources, some of these very promising grassroots father-promotion
efforts,
WOULD support? WOULD support?
Check HHS’s CFDA# 93.086, “promoting responsible fatherhood and healthy marriage” for yourself on THIS site:
http://usaspending.gov (under “SPENDING” “GRANTS”)
and also encourage and enact the removal of some of the
legal and policy barriers that deter men from an active presence in their children’s lives.
A “LEGAL BARRIER” MUST REFER TO A LAW, RIGHT?
Another thing I think we can do to help is to use the platform we
have on the Senate floor–this people’s forum –to elevate this
problem on the national agenda. That is why Senator GREGG and I
have come to the floor today. I am particularly grateful for the
cosponsorship of the Senator from New Hampshire, because he is the
chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Children and Families.
YES, I AM SURE WE ARE REALLY, REALLY CONCERNED ABOUT CHILDREN AND FAMILIES
MORE THAN CHARACTER, OR LEGAL RIGHTS OF MEN AND WOMEN BOTH….
We are joined by a very broad and bipartisan group of cosponsors which
includes Senators BAYH,
BROWNBACK, MACK, DODD, DOMENICI, JEFFORDS, ALLARD,
COCHRAN, LANDRIEU, BUNNING, ROBB, DORGAN, DASCHLE, and
AKAKA. I thank them all for joining in the introduction of this special
resolution this morning, which is to honor Father’s Day coming this
Sunday,
but also to raise our discussion of the problem of absent fathers in
our hopes for the promotion of responsible fatherhood.
Senator GREGG indicated this resolution would declare this Sunday’s
holiday as National Fathers Return Day and call on dads around the
country to use this day, particularly if they are absent, to reconnect
and rededicate themselves to their children’s lives, to understand and
have the self-confidence to appreciate how powerful a contribution
they can make to the well-being of the children that they have helped
to create, and to start by spending this Fathers’ Day returning for
part of
the day to their children and expressing to their children the love they
have for them and their willingness to support them. [Page: S7164]
The statement we hope to make this morning in this resolution
obviously will not change the hearts and minds of distant or
disengaged fathers, but those of us who are sponsoring the resolution
hope it will help to spur a larger national conversation about the
importance of fatherhood and help remind those absent fathers of
their responsibilities, yes, but also of the opportunity they have to
change the life of their child, about the importance of their
fatherhood, and also help remind these absent
fathers of the value of their involvement.
We ask our colleagues to join us in supporting this resolution, and
adopting it perhaps today but certainly before this week is out to
make as strong a statement as possible and to move us one step
closer to the day when every American child has the opportunity to
have a truly happy Father’s Day because he or she will be spending it
with their father.
I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.
Just for a reminder:
– Slavery Abolished. Ratified 12/6/1865. History
1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,
shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
– Citizenship Rights. Ratified 7/9/1868. Note History
1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States
and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens
of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;
nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
WELL, wordcount 5216, enough for today.
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What kind of choices are THESE for women!?! 1. Marry, legally WIN custody of child from former partner, and possibly die, possibly with others. 2. Due to “unhealthy alliance (marriage?),” Get a domestic violence restraining order and possibly die. 3. DON’T seek a domestic violence restraining order, and possibly die.
Or, 4. like I did
a. Obtain a domestic violence restraining order, in hopes NOT to die.
b. See ex given almost immediately (Search this blog for “Access Visitation Grants” or “SAVP”) liberal, unsupervised overnight visitation.
c. Comply with it, consistently, and try to insist he does also
d. After warning authorities and all involved of one’s concern about abduction, (and seeking child support enforcement), have them abducted an overnight unsupervised visitation to nearly permanently (or permanently) lose contact with them.
That at least beats some of the ALTERNATE version of Choice 4 (Obtain a Restraining Order)
4.d.1 REISER: YOU go “MIA” on an unsupervised visitation exchange of the children, and show up years later (as part of a plea bargain of DA’s with husband who murdered you, with kids present), a few (less than 6) feet under — Google “Hans Reiser,” only a moderate tweak of too many others to categorize, where MOM was either murdered, or an attempt was made to murder her, during an exchange.
4.d.2. CASTILLO, GONZALES, CONNOLLY, OTHERS, SOME OF THEM NOW BEFORE AN INTERNATIONAL COURT: After warning the courts and others that you feel visitation is unwise (or he just failed to return them at the appointed time), have your children drowned, shot, hung, or gassed to death – on an overnight visitation. Note, like some of the driving theories behind families, this is now international in scope.
4.d.2.a. Possibly go homeless from inability to retain work after so many years in the system, and so much prolonged exposure to stress and trauma that chronic PTSD, plus the unstable job history renders one unemployable.
(I know currently two women who became homeless after the custody switch following domestic violence, and many more who are impoverished and unemployed, but thankfully not yet homeless).
There are endless varieties of option 4, and sequential consequences to it, none of them, for the most part, helpful for the children, or society at large, so long as the current AFCC-run, Mediation-focused, due-process eradicating family law system continues to be the next step after domestic violence restraining orders. The venue, players, and stakes just get higher, if this be possible, than when they were originally. And are likely to remain so until one of these 3 possible consequences follows, at which point, there simply is no more money, or press, or government program to be squeezed out of the situation, just possibly a few press headlines for the first one below:
1. Someone is killed.
2. Someone, or both parents — and their allies — are destitute.
3. All children have turned 18.
NOW ABOUT THE PAST 2 SUNDAY/MONDAYS IN THE GOLDEN STATE, THE STATE OF THE +/- $1 MILLION/YEAR OF ACCESS VISITATION GRANTS FUNDING (AND I HAVEN’T EVEN POSTED THE HEALTHY MARRIAGE DEMONSTRATION GRANT INFO YET) . . . . WHICH HAS (FYI) BEEN GOING ON AT LEAST SINCE 1998. . . . . (which for all I know simply represents when the on-line database geared up)
Some readers may wonder why the motto (top right, button) on this blog reads:
Not a private matter —
why “family” “law” hurts us all
Just another two sunny Mondays in Sunny California
illustrate the under-publicized dangers of actually
WINNING in court:
1. Under, “win custody and possibly die”:
Monday, 07/06/09 San Jose
No independence week for her:
Bitter Ex Loses Custody, so “Wins” with a Gun.
THEIR Daughter, Her StepDad, the Neighborhood, and everyone else involved, LOSES.
Two reported dead at San Jose townhome after shooting and hostage situation
By Mark Gomez and Lisa Fernandez
- Shortly after 8 a.m. Monday, a neighbor bleeding from a gunshot wound ran by Anthony Gallardo’s San Jose townhouse shouting that a man had shot his wife in the arm and taken her hostage.
- A relative who asked not to be identified said Coffman was wounded in the earlobe by a gunman who had entered his home and taken his wife hostage. Gallardo let the neighbor and a hysterical 9-year-old girl into his garage to call police.
- The woman had recently won a drawn-out and bitter custody battle with her ex-boyfriend over the 9-year-old girl, the relative said.
- That was how a 5 1/2-hour standoff started in the upscale Montecito Vista townhouse development Monday. It ended when San Jose police, failing to make contact with the gunman, entered the townhouse and found the bodies of a man and woman.
- Police declined to identify the victims but said the shooting appeared to have stemmed from “a family dispute.
- Damon Cookson, manager of an evacuated mobile home park near the townhouse, said mobile home park residents were let back into their homes at 2:45 p.m.
- Police had evacuated homes in the townhouse complex and a mobile home park located next door so quickly that some left their homes shoeless, without money or cell phones. Other residents were picked up by friends or relatives so they didn’t have to stand outside in the sun.
According to the “Healthy Marriages and Responsible Fatherhood” advocates, she did the right thing. She had a man in the home and was married to her; possibly she ran across one of their ubiquitous classes and, or had a religious conversion, and realized that having children with boyfriends (as opposed to committed and financially self-supporting, faithful spouses — like, say, Steve McNair?) was not the upright thing to do for herself, health, or her daughter. Perhaps there was even a child support order in place on the Dad, which may or may not have contributed to the bitterness of the divorce. THAT 9 YEAR OLD GIRL WAS IN A HETEROSEXUAL 2-PARENTS, MARRIED HOUSEHOLD. HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES WOULD’VE HAD NO ISSUES OR INTERVENTIONS IN PLACE FOR THIS HOUSEHOLD.
Perhaps the man who married her (let’s hope) really loved her, and vice versa, enough to take public vows and make it legal. ACCORDING TO THE DESIGNER FAMILY MENTALITY, THIS ONE SHOULD’VE WORKED. SHOULD THEY TAKE IT BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD AND PUT A FEW $$MILLION ON HOLD BEFORE SOMEONE ELSE GETS KILLED AND SOME OTHER KIDS ARE ORPHANED? WAS THIS HOSTAGE/SUICIDE/FEMICIDE SITUATION PREDICTABLE?)
History of domestic violence, stalking, or other criminal activity, or NO history of domestic violence, stalking or other criminal activity, her attempt to pursue child support on behalf of the child, the answer is: YES. Being stuck in family court is rough on everyone. Rules of evidence are weakened in this venue (See link in my last post), making hearsay accusations easier. Psychology reigns, and there are people who profit from this. Money trades hands for sure.
YES, in the fathers rights vs. feminists (supposedly this is the war) climate overall, it was probably predictable, though maybe not perhaps not the timing of it.
Will people sit up and take notice, and change policies because of this death?
I doubt it.
She was married to Coffman, who texted the relative short updates all day long. The woman was a respiratory therapist at a local hospital.
(More detailed background story, and link, on this case at bottom of today’s post)
This case was not a week old before another one in Northern California hit the press, and the late-night TV stations:
2. Monday, 07/13/09, Novato (not including multi-county Amber alert)
File Under, “Win a temporary domestic violence restraining order, and possibly die, leaving your infant with Child Protective Services,
after she experiences a nice little kidnapping.”
(Did the infant witness her mother being beat to death with a baseball bat also?)
Actually this was a SUNDAY, and the father was caught, apparently on Monday. Good thing, being as he was a murderer, son of a murderer, a child-stealer, his brother had a drug habit and he himself was in the family porn industry (makes one question the advisability of the match, for sure). I wonder if Access Visitation Grants funding would’ve come into play under THIS one. Maybe when he’s been in prison long enough, they will come after him to make contact with his daughter, after all, there IS a plague of fatherlessness, and he WAS (apparently) his little girl’s father.
Which is likely what he was thinking when he killed the Mom and kidnapped her, too. How DARE that woman separate me from my kid and accuse me of violence! I’ll show her what violence is!
I cannot stand to read every report on this one…
Porn King’s Son held in Baseball-Bat Beating Death
NOVATO, Calif. — A 1-year-old girl was safely recovered early Monday and her 27-year-old father in custody after he allegedly brutally beat the girl’s mother to death with a baseball bat, authorities said.
He was suspected of beating Danielle Keller several times with a baseball bat before fleeing with the girl — who was celebrating her first birthday — and threatening to kill any law enforcement agents who came into contact with him, according to police.
The baby has an age. The murderer kidnapper father has an age. Is there any particular reason why the Mom in this story doesn’t merit one?
Family members told KTVU that there was a history of domestic abuse and restraining order had been issued against Mitchell in both San Francisco and Marin. Keeler’s mother, Claudia Stevens, said Mitchell had stormed into her Novato home three weeks ago and threatened violence. He also had been making threatening phone calls, she added.
…And this did not result in his IMMEDIATE arrest and incarceration for violation of restraining order WHY?
Mom didn’t know? Courts didn’t function? Mother still traumatized, didn’t register the importance of this? Police were called on the violation, but didn’t do anything? Police weren’t called? Police reported, but no one prosecuted? No precedent that this was a danger sign existed?
3 weeks. Hmmm. Was the case was in family court? Had they been to the mediator yet? Did the mediator say to them, as the mediator did to ME (shortly after I filed domestic violence restraining order with kickout, AFTER the violence had escalated to the guns, knives, serious injury phase,putting this “family matter” at a clear domestic violence, felony, not misdemeanor) “just peaceful communications about the (children)” — and totally failed to specify: Place of exchange. TIME of exchanges around holidays. Or child support, resulting in the soon thereafter need to resort to welfare, until I could rebuild some income.)
Excuse me. File under,
“Another needless death, another burden on California taxpayers, another traumatized little girl,
family, and neighborhood”
(I imagine it also might be filed under, don’t hook up with men involved in the porn business. What are women, desperate these days? Was she attracted to his testosterone? There are down sides of too much of that, I suppose….)
This is a cruel thing to say, but I am searching about for WHY this bloodshed just doesn’t stop, no matter how many policies or laws are in place. There HAVE to be a few consistent reasons. Added to my concerns are, why is that our nation is raising — or inhabited by — so many dysfunctional adults of criminal nature.
Perhaps the problem is with the concept of the Nation (as opposed to individual families) raising them. But, as I say sometimes, this is a family law blog, not an education blog. Perhaps the problem is religion, as I KNOW this is a factor in many domestic violence cases. Perhaps the problem is LACK of religion (morality / common sense // ethical behavior). Perhaps the problem is an alienated populace — from each other as well, except within the various cliques. Perhaps the problem is fatherhood vigilanteeism (actually, I think this is VERY close to the truth, and filed, at least in part, under religion). Perhaps the problem is that reaction against feminism, AND against the perceived lack of religion nationwide, breeding neo-con and worse versions of what went before.
OH — PERHAPS it’s that we don’t teach women how to defend themselves, or that this is a feminine and desireable life skill.
PERHAPS it’s that we don’t teach women boundaries, and how to defend themselves.
PERHAPS it’s that WE think someone else is teaching or doing something else that, in former centuries, “we” had to do ourselves. Like, raise and prepare food, learn to read, teach our kids to read, and so forth.
LAST ONE, MORE RESULTS. . . .
Amber Alert Novato, Search Results 48,000
Brewer, Victoria E. & Derek Paulsen (1993, November). A Comparison of U.S. and Canadian Findings on Uxoricide Risk for Women with Children Sired by Previous Partners. Homicide Studies, 3(4), 317-332.
Bunting, Helen. (2008, February 19). Women and Daughter Killed in Chile’s Latest Femicide. The Santiago Times, http://www.santiagotimes.cl/santiagotimes/news/feature-news/woman-and-daughter-killed-in-chile-s-latest-femicide.html
Bunting, Helen. (2008, February 6). Femicides in Chile: 10 So Far This Year; Three in 24 Hours. Santiago Times, http://www.santiagotimes.cl/santiagotimes/news/feature-news/femicide-chile-10.html
Bunting, Helen. (2008, January 24). Three Femicides Recorded So Far in 2008. http://www.valparaisotimes.cl/content/view/296/1/
And the well-known, and still not part of policy in family court matters, studies by Jacquelyn Campbell:
- Campbell, Jacquelyn C. (2004, December). Helping Women Understand Their Risk in Situations of Intimate Partner Violence. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 19(12), 1464-1477.
- Campbell, Jacquelyn, Carolyn Block, & Robin Thompson. (1999). Femicide and Fatality Review. Next Millennium Conference: Ending Domestic Violence. http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/184570.pdf
- Campbell, Jacquelyn, Nancy Glass, Phyllis W. Sharps, Kathryn Laughton & Tina Bloom. (2007, July). Intimate Partner Homicide: Review and Implications of Research and Policy. Trauma, Violence & Abuse, 8(3), 246-269.
Oh, Mea Culpa. The word “femicide” is for a specialized field of study. Maybe it’s under “homicide/suicide.” Better also be more specific, since “homicide/suicide” would jam my software again, too large.
San Jose homicide/suicide— Google results
Was THIS one avoidable? Answer: YES!
“San Jose man recounts murder-suicide that left wife dead.”
Mercury News, 07-10-09 8:49am updated
The couple had long been leery of Liang and worried he could be capable of violence. A 2003 stalking charge was dismissed against Liang for threatening to kill the two of them, even though Coffman said neither he nor his wife were called as witnesses.
Ying He and Liang came to the United States from China in 1999, Coffman said. They had a baby girl in the Bay Area on June 14, 2000. Liang sent the girl to live with his wealthy parents in Guangzhou, and because Ying He had pending immigration status, she couldn’t freely travel between the countries.
In 2006, Ying He discovered her daughter and Liang were living in Southern California. She also discovered, Coffman said, that her ex-boyfriend, a gambler, was short on cash.
“They made a deal,” Coffman said. “Brandi said she’d give Nelson some money and he said he’d give her their daughter.” {{NO CONTACT WITH MOM FOR SIX YEARS…..}}
But Liang reneged on his part of the deal, Coffman said, and disappeared with the girl. Coffman and his wife hired an attorney to find Liang and fight for full custody. After about two years, Liang and the girl surfaced again in Southern California. In March, Liang didn’t pick his daughter up from school one day, and police reports show Liang told school officials in Arcadia that he no longer wanted to care for his child. He was soon arrested and pleaded no contest to child endangerment. The girl was put in state care
Let’s get that timeline again:
2000 — baby born
Shortly thereafter — Dad sends baby away, no contact with mother.
2003 Dad found stalking and threatening to kill Mother AND her new husband. (SOUND FAMILIAR?) Doesn’t apparently even make the DA’s radar, although there are anti-stalking laws in California, and stalking has been listed for many years among lethality indicators. Perhaps he also had some concept of maybe extorting the new couple (in re: gambling habit?).
Also (sounds like my own case in this regard), stalking as seen as irrelevant to child’s welfare. Dad retains custody, and this couple is not really on the map, or the child, legally speaking??
Unclear (here) whether they still thought daughter was in China (no mail or phone contact?)
2006 – child is located, and mother and new husband invest money and time attempting to get her in their household.
Father receives money in exchange for daughter, obviously they were trying to settle out of court. Father agrees, takes money, and doesn’t turn over daughter. Possibly the FBI should’ve been involved here?
2008?– Father, changing his mind again, abandons daughter (note: that he sent his daughter back to China MIGHT be an indicator he didn’t want custody, right?) and the state picks her up. It MIGHT be deduced from the court records, by “the state” that a parent who wants the daughter, and is in a stable situation, exists. However, that parent was a mother….
2009 – April. State figures it out, and gives child back to mother. Child-endangering, stalking Dad still has visitation rights:
Liang still had visitation rights and weekly phone calls.
Why doesn’t that surprise me? You still in favor of shared parenting, frequent visitation, fathers — ANY fathers — return day? If not, find out which Congressmen (and if any women) voted for this in 1998 and 1999 in the U.S., and write them why they should re-think the resolution — what WAS that about, opting for population control by homicide/suicide??
Which tells you about family court in California: Far be it from Family Law Judges to notice that trivialities such as sending kid back to China, where her own mother couldn’t nurture or see her for YEARS, while staying here and racking up a gambling debt, stalking and threatening to kill the mother and her new partner, and child endangerment by abandonment, should be taken into account in designing a custody/visitation order!
On Sunday, the day before the shooting, Liang called to speak with his daughter, asking her strangely specific questions about her schedule. Coffman believes Liang was casing the family for the attack.
My question: WHEN did Coffman or his wife hear of those strangely specific questions? Was the daughter alarmed? DId no one catch the anomaly. That instinct of “this is strange, isn’t it?” can save lives — in a family, even if the state misses the boat… I suspect they hadn’t processed that information yet, and didn’t think that Liang would act so quickly.
ALWAYS play it safe!
I see we bloggers are going to have to work harder at getting the news out: Before entering family court situations with difficult custody battles, get martial arts training — and exerrcise your second amendment rights.
QUESTION OPEN: WHY DID THE COUPLE COME TO THE U.S. TO HAVE THE BABY?
ENDNOTE: China is known for not valuing girl babies as much as boy babies.
But the U.S. ought to have understood when children are viewed as poker chips in a high-stakes custody battle.
I think this one might be more gambling debt as much as jealousy contributing to the problems
IT TAKES MORE THAN MONEY TO BE A GOOD SECOND DAD WHEN THE FIRST ONE WAS A NUT CASE.
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“Wife fought off Pa. man killed in shootout.” Maybe–MAYBE, Forget the Restraining Orders, Remember 2nd Amendment? Or, toss a coin…
Part II of II on “Responsible Citizenhood” is in labor.
The waters have broken, and there is a flood of information and synthesis of concepts gushing forth on many topics, and my brain is dialating. They will have to be posted in stages.
Translation: I am being a Responsible Citizen (see prior posts) and exploring who is my Congress, the Constitution, who is funding whom, and finding all kinds of juicy information on whose idea was it to reinstitute a national religion called Fatherhood, funded by all of us. I have also located a few new (to me at least) search tools How many thoughts have been provoked!
But, this (relatively) recent news alert reminded me, that Part of Responsible Citizenhood might entail learning how to handle a gun, and being willing to use it during a home invasion. Even a home invasion by an estranged husband:
Wife fought off Pa. man killed in shootout
by Michael Rubinkam
Let’s look at this headline again. This woman fought him off, and neither she, nor any of her offspring got killed. If you look up the articles and read the details, she made a mistake, which, if you read below and see how WIGGLY Pa considers the “PFAs” when it comes to what they mean, is almost understandable. But once the situation became clear, she took QUICK action to protect her children, get free, and call for help.
This is not, folks, how it often plays out. Who knows whether, God, fortune, or luck played a role, but we DO know this woman didn’t stop to debate, and she also didn’t panic and go dysfunctional. May I propose that this woman listening to her INSTINCTS and acting on them may have prevented a higher body count. LESSON ONE: Don’t jerk around with someone who has just crossed a boundary. Don’t second guess instinct. And (next time) don’t compromise one INCH on an existing protective or restraining order — it sends a mixed message, and could lead to this.
May I propose something else? I suggest that lawmakers and courts consider that women are people too, and smarten up to having us believe the fiction and play the slot games with any intimate partner who has been battering us in the home, or threatening to, etc. May I suggest that instead of — or in addition to — DISarming him, they somehow ARM her, and if she’s not trained how to do so, get her some professional responsible training. It could be mace, it could be pepper spray, but constitutionally, it could be a gun, too, at least in the home.
Given the options, she has hope, luck, prayer, and walking around the neighborhood with her instincts on alert, her antennae up, and then trying to also rebuild a life. “LIFE, LIBERTY, and PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.” Now what was that first one again?
Detriment: May give a whole new picture of “motherhood” to “fatherhood” people who don’t believe women should be allowed to separate, do not have equal rights, and VAWA should go back to where it came from.
In this above statement, I omitted the comma between “fatherhood” people and who don’t believe. This is generous on my part, because I am conceding that there could be people all excited about and promoting fatherhood who DON’T believe these things. In fact, I don’t really believe this. I think that what the “fatherhood” movement is about is that the genetic / gender / biological composition of a family and household (one man, one woman, both married) is more important than the character or behavior of such families. I am not the only person who believes this. Some data is here (hover cursor for my comment. Note: This dates to 2002, almost 7 years ago. .http://www.canow.org/fam_report.pdf.
Now, when I married, I picked someone of the opposite gender, rather than someone of the same gender and, when it came to wanting children, either adoption or a sperm donor. This is probably because of how I like my sex, and the other versions didn’t concern me.
However, when I realized that my opposite-gender person’s main concern was my gender and household function ONLY, and not me as a person — and began physically punishing me for showing up as a person like him, and expecting to pursue some personal goals, not only the laundry/cleaning/nursing/f____ing role (in addition to supporting him in his business, and — if I wanted necessities — also working myself in and/or outside the home for pay) — I made a determination that behavior was the determinant, not gender, or a two-parent status. The MAIN reason I did this was because we had children, and it was a damn lousy role model they were being exposed to. The children were of my gender, and they were being taught how this one was somehow inferior and equipped with fewer rights, if any, and no boundaries or ability to say NO without taking retaliation for it. THAT’s a lousy role model, and he got himself evicted, not after several warnings.
I suppose you would like me to get to the story here, how THIS woman saved her life, her children’s life, but alas, not the pursuing policeman’s life, or her husband’s (although I lay that one as his responsibility — no one forced him to threaten his wife with a gun or kidnap his child, or place himself above a clear law he knew was in place upon him).
YATESVILLE, Pa. (AP) — Hobbled by a broken ankle, the estranged wife of a man killed in a shootout with Pennsylvania state troopers managed to fight him off as he threatened her with a gun before he kidnapped their 9-year-old son, the woman’s friend said.
The order of events is a little jumbled in the paragraph. The AP wanted it out fast, I guess, and so we get this:
- A. Her ankle was broken
- B. She was estranged from her husband
- C. He was killed by PA state troopers in a shootout (i.e., he was shooting back).
- D. 1. She fought him off 2. while he threatened her with a gun.
- E. He kidnapped their 9 year old son.
Having been through a FEW of the events above (not including the shootout), let me put it, I suspect, chrono.
- B. Cause of broken ankle — don’t know and probably not relevant.
- D.2 He threatened her with a gun
- D. 1 THIS MOM FOUGHT BACK.
- E. THEN (having been fought off), he grabs their son and dashes off (probably in a car).
- C. State troopers, apparently, caught up with him, and I’ll gol-dang bet he shot first. Predictably, they shot back.
- Thank God the state troopers had some firearms training, so HE got killed, not his wife and not the son he kidnapped, this time.
First of all, let’s deal with the grammar dishonesty (gender bias?) with B. “She was estranged from her husband” which has an element of the truth, and distorts the actual context. This is such common press practice in domestic violence homicide (or incident) reporting:
LEGALLY, it appears he’d acted first, and she had responded with a “protection from abuse” order. Unless the news disagrees with the judge that is THE most relevant factor in the case, apart from this incident. It most certainly is prime factual, legal and emotional dynamic CONTEXT of the incident. “She was estranged” could’ve been, she got tired of his dirty socks around home, she wanted to pursue another affair, or he did; he refused to work OR was an alcoholic, she was bored, he was using drugs or alcohol, or they had other “irreconciliable differences.” “She was estranged” already must minimized the truth. If a protective order was in place, and these reporters are not aware enough yet that this produces LOTS of hot news leads in the form of crime reporting, they need to review the job descriptions — or their editors do. (To tell the truth, I didn’t notice this the first time through the story myself, although I have always thought it an odd phrase).
B. THEY were estranged. or, better,
B. “In _____ (date) (or how recent), she obtained a PFA (say it: “protection from abuse“) order (in what court, or county), forcing him to leave the family home.
It is so typical of abusers, abuser enablers, and for that matter, the bulk of the family law system, to IGNORE THE ACTIONS and TALK ABOUT WHO “WAS” WHAT RATHER THAN WHO “DID” WHAT. IT”S PSYCHOLOGY NOT EVIDENCE. THIS IS NO ACCIDENT!
From the 2002 California Family Court Report (link above): (under “Loss of Due Process”)
A. Lack of procedural and evidentiary due process,since the Family Code was
separated from the Code of Civil Procedure and the Evidence Code in
1992.
Alas (and the emphasis of other articles on this event) — – Mad Dad was not in a compromise mood, and shot at responding officers. Terribly, he got a cop, too. Again — and these officers WERE brave, and they DID stop a kidnapping in process.
That’s about a recipe for suicide by cop. Whether or not he had thought THIS far ahead, one thing is clear: He’d pre-meditated far enough ahead to bring a gun and point it at his wife.
I experienced a decade of being exceedingly afraid of my husband in the home, being traumatized, and eventually being sure enough (because he talked about it often enough, fantasizing about this, and telling me, so, or otherwise bringing it up casually in conversation: “I’ll just have to kill you.” At this time, both our children were under 8 years old.) This has caused economic devastation upon me, my daughters, and people associated with both him, and us. It has wasted taxpayer funds year after year (in family law, where our case shouldn’t have been at the time) and taken almost 20 years of the prime working years of my life and trashed them repeatedly, under threats, stalkings, intimidations, sudden appearances at my home, and in general, one hell of a mess. He is still only working part-time, if that, doesn’t pay taxes (I don’t because I don’t earn enough), he is not financially independent yet and, because of this and unfortunately, neither am I. Our state is broke (supposedly) which is headline news, and is getting people very short-tempered in general.
I wonder, and I DO reflect — SUPPOSE I HAD FOUGHT BACK, AND NOT ONLY THAT, THREATENED BACK: IF YOU EVER DO THIS AGAIN, YOU’LL BE MISSING A BODY PART. OR DEAD! And then dropped everything until I had learned self defense.
Or, I had told been less committed to my marriage vows, and dumped his ass out on the street — in other words, brought it to a head earlier. WHY did I not do that? (a number of reasons: #1. VAWA and awareness of DV laws was not commonplace. #2. I’d never had a similar experience where I had to set a boundary with a violent man before, and wasn’t acquainted personally with such situations. #3. self-defense and handling a gun is not a typical part of the public school education, and not exactly promoted, as in, exercising 2nd Amendment rights, in general. We are not hunting our food, but buying it, for the most part (or growing it). I was not raised in urban areas, where awareness of guns and gun violence was commonplace, but in more rural; people shot deer, or sometimes squirrels, not people! I also wasn’t raised on TV.
School rewards taking orders and obeying rules, at least theoretically.
And that’s not “feminine” behavior.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
WHAT IF MEN UNDERSTOOD – – – REALLY UNDERSTOOD – – – THAT EVEN WITHIN A RELATIONSHIP, A SMACK WILL BE SMACKED, BACK, HARDER, BECAUSE IT’S SO OUT OF ORDER? WHAT IF WOMEN WEREN’T SO DESPERATE TO SURVIVE ECONOMICALLY, OR FOR SEXUAL ATTENTION, OR TO HAVE A MAN ON THE ARM, THAT NONE OF THEM COMPROMISED?
WOULD THERE STILL BE FAMILIES AS WE KNOW THEM NOW?
Maybe the fatherhood guys are “right.” Maybe (from that perspective) if men are not needed to provide for and protect women,and defend them from other suitors, stalkers, or rapists, or to help them, particularly when they are more vulnerable, pregnant and raising young kids, the differences between the sexes (as to functions in life) would so blur, that, well, the drive to achieve and provide would diminish, the wheels of the economy would crumble (and a lot of faith institutions also), and life just wouldn’t have that same glow, or afterglow.
Without the primal urge, there would be no skyscrapers (9/11?) or cathedrals, and no empires, multi-national or otherwise. Maybe. life just wouldn’t have that zest and drama. Newspapers would need to find other ways to sell the products, if there weren’t crises to report.
Well, that’s a larger topic. But it seems a natural question: If the nuclear family ain’t what protects, and provides for its young, the only alternative is for equality of income. NOW, Papa Obama and the majority of Head Start, Zero to Five, Administration for Families and Children, (sorry sir to pick on you, this wasn’t your idea to start with) might be out of work. ONLY if the ONLY way to produce income is a “job” that MUST be done outside the home, ONLY then is it essential to have the other functions of raising a family: care, daytime feeding, and education — to be done by someone else, institutionally.
However the people so vigorously promoting this solution ONLY (and highly suspicious of, say, the homeschooling option which is a lot more fluid, lets mothers network and find each other’s long suits, collaborate locally to find the best teachers (including some of each other, as well as hired professionals), and fire the lousy ones — now THAT’S a plus) and actually have a better understanding of who their children are, and possibly better relationships with them, not rigidly defined ones) — these people — and I coudl show you, or you could look for yourself — are THEMSELVES either inheriting wealth, or have sufficient assets to go fund ggovernment policy, publicize and drive various programs through and teach THEIR young how to own businesses and produce passive cash flow, themselves.
Then who would work in the businesses they own? There has to be a steady population — and the majority of the population — that does NOT know how to live independently from the government, or the “employee” situation — or life would, well, it just wouldn’t work right. Who would work the factories, produce the many, many terrific products we enjoy in this country, the material prosperity, the varities of fast foods (and agencies pronouncing that fast foods are bad for you), and all that?
(Along with the domestic violence kidnappings, suicides by cop, traumatized kids, and sometimes dead people, that go along with when this doesn’t work out so well…..).
Well, that dialogue is what I get for thinking. It’s Monday night quarterbacking, I guess, “what-if” scenarios. I cannot turn back the clock in my own case. The fact is, if I hadn’t been who I was, probably the genetic and particular DNA of my two wonderful daughters (who are probably not reading this, yet), and with whom I am NOT spending any more time, would not have been born. I have already determined (and she’s spoken with me recently) that woman number two was targeted for a certain gullibility and in a certain venue, for use to get the kids away from me. He’s out on the loose again, troubling me, because I’ve been contacted, and her, because of what that indicates.
HOWEVER, the rest of this post, below, shows how the local Women’s Resource Agency describes why women should keep coming, keep asking for “PFA” orders and keep playing the odds, because, it’s after all, only about ONE out of THREE cases that violates these orders, and “NOT ALL” do “WHAT HE DID.”
Well, in school, 66% is not a passing grade. Last I heard, 70% was. We are talking 66% success rate when the other 33% (add your decimal points later) might get killed and result in this. We’re not talking about graduating from high school, but living out a normal lifespan, and not in terror, trauma, or having to before a child is ten, witness a homicide. Or two. Or being kidnapped. About officers NOT having to make that sacrifice, and THEIR children lose a Daddy also. How is THAT “promoting responsible fatherhood.”
I think that the time of restraining orders may have passed, and that we probably need to focus on both attitudes, cultural values and self-defense techniques (including weapons if necessary) that make it ABSOLUTELY clear that any such violation of a personal boundary in the form of a HIT will be met with equal, and to make a point, slightly greater responding force to emphasize the unacceptability of it.
I think local communities will have to figure out processes, not “states” they wish to achieve. And this requires being realistic about restraining order and a valid understanding of what abuse IS.
I have one: ABUSE is violating personal boundaries (and, most time, state criminal laws) in order to establish a “giving orders” situation between what should be intimate partners. As such, it qualifies as “two-year-old” behavior and should result in the adult who has regressed to it, and thinks that 2009 is, in fact, closer to 1920 (when women finally got the vote) should be treated like the two-year-old mentality of, the world should conform to you when you don’t like it, without your submitting to some process of negotiation, compromise, or humility. I would like to add that, as I recall this, I always wondered why our daughters didn’t go through the famous “Terrible Twos” {is this an Americdan term only? I don’t know…} rebellious stages. I remember this at the time also. It could be that we weren’t dumping them off in daycare, where they needed more attention, oir it just possibly could’ve been that we had a much larger Terrible Two in the home, in the form of their father, and they knew this.
Only when it’s UNacceptable throughout society to beat women, and terrorize anyone, will this stop. The only acceptable reasons for doing anything like this in defense of life’s essentials — and these do not include maintaining a status quo in which the abuser’s world is perfect, and his ego cannot handle rejection, the need to apologize, or occasional value conflicts. The heart of any really good intimate relationship would do real well to closely resemble what’s written in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, which most of us (and our legislators) have apparently forgotten.
I happen to be a Christian, and my faith tells me about when this will, and will not happen. I have had to often re-evaluate the duality (us/them) and domination (Christ came once and was humbled/crucified voluntarily, but will return in authority as king and by force put down all rebellion, bringing in world peace), and I assure you, in the many, MANY years I have been around and working (through music) in several faith institutions, the music is terrific, but within white (in particular, but not only) Protestantism, nondenominational especially, equality of women is “anathema” and these places are producing wife-beaters and wife-killers. They do not communally or prominently acknowledge the laws of the land in their hearts, and many (those who do not ordain women, or and hate even the concept of them in leadership, let alone of gays, or lesbians) , despite sometimes sheltering a battered woman, or helping her (i’ve been helped a few times recently), they will NOT stop sheltering the doctines and attitudes that produce more batterred women, and more overentitled men. this is behind the “fatherhood” movement, and it produces a form of social schizophrenia, in which we have a public school system where “God” is not allowed, or prayer, yet public policy where “faith-based” advice and policies are promoted. Well, which is it, folks?
That’s all the psycho- social-analysis for this post. What’s below (written earlier) relates more directly to this particular domestic violence double-homicide, kidnapping, assault, and tragedy which began with “she was estranged,” and a look at the neighborhood response.
What probably kept that woman and her children alive was her willingness to fight back. What put her at risk was compromising the existing restraining order (including drop off at curb), and (possibly) her not having the means or intent to, at ALL times since it was issued, NEVER compromise it AT ALL. ONE means might be for her husband to have understand that she understood her 2nd Amendment right to self-defense, and having it in the home, AND her willingness and intent to act on it, if even 3 yards of a restraining order was violated. This sends a clear message, and would put that man back in a place to reconsider whether he wants to test the limits, or can talk or plan, or manipulate his way out of obeying that order.
The courts need to do more to communicate this necessity to women who have just separated. They need to understand that NOW, it’s OK to take a personally aggressive stance and back it up with a willingness to act if boundaries are violated. That IS, after all, WHY the “United States of America” is no longer a British colony, or any other colony (so far), and we might do well to keep communicating this principle to our young, boy and girl alike. Not to belabor the point, but our schools absolutely do NOT, do this at this point, and I say, intentionally so. You can’t “manage” people so well who understand their self-worth.
However Susan Autenreith may have been raised, at the crucial time, she found something within herself to say No, and stand up to this. Having made a mistake, she didn’t condemn herself or try to talk out of the situation. Gun meant FIGHT BACK, YELL DIRECTIONS TO HE KIDS, & CALL FOR HELP.
How Logical Is This?
~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
About that MOM?
Let’s go chrono, OK?
Not all (female) readers have been through the process of, say,
(1) childbirth,
(2) being assaulted, threatened, intimidated, battered, and in short abused, or other situations which tell you “Danger! Danger!,”
(3) filing and getting a PFA (domestic violence restraining, or etc.) order with kickout, indicating “Danger! Danger!” to all and “STAY AWAY!” to Dad, (and, you can’t buy guns, either, or own them), and then
(4) IMMEDIATELY after these at least actions (applying for a temporary, filing with judge, getting it signed, serving the husband (which then in effect throws him out of the house in some manner), going to court for a hearing to have it made permanent, having it made “permanent” (i.e., facing the ex in that court hearing), and meanwhile attempting to explain this to one’s children in terms they can understand why he can’t live here anymore, then — with a restraining order in effect — typically the NEXT stop is the mediator who will then proceed to act as though there wasn’t really, any serious domestic violence (other than, meetings may be separate) and say, “OK, so long as it’s peaceful communications around the children” and then design some visitation plan any other divorcing couple might have, even the most amicable divorces. Which appears to have happened in this place.
In 1992, Jack Straton, Ph.D. (NOMAS: National Org. of Men Against Sexism) recommended a cooling off period.
So far, no one has figured this out, evidently.
(5) Agreeing, after this, to a custody/visitation exchange plan which basically has a split personality:
Hey, he was so dangerous, you had to get a judge to tell him to stay away, and order no weapons in the home, BUT . . . .. BUT . . . . . it’s OK to give this same, by now pretty distraught or indignant/upset man access to the fruit of his loins, regularly . . . . After all, what about a child’s right to bond with both parents?
This, I say, gives the man, the woman, and the children a mixed message. I have also learned (the hard way) since, the courts ALSO are getting contradictory messages (and funding) about these matters. IS domestic violence a crime, or not a crime?
And so we get cases like the Autenreiths, where Dad didn’t LIKE having that protective order in place, and made this clear with a 9mm. His girlfriend helped him get a gun. Again, his girlfriend.
WHICH BRINGS UP THIS POINT: Telling a man to not own weapons, and get rid of any he does own, doesn’t prevent him — in the least — from grabbing one from a friend who has one (or in this case, a girlfriend buying one for him. I believe this is called a straw purchase, and laws exist to address this, but still, it points out that generally there is a way around the law for those who intend to find one).
(How long were they separated? How hard is it for a man with a plan to get around a piece of paper?)
in order to STOP the cycle of abuse which, without intervention, generally does one thing — escalate, until someone is killed, or more than one,
WHAT ARE THE ODDS? HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW THAT MAN? HOW WILL HE RESPOND TO THE PFA?
=======
HERE IS THE RESPONSE REGARDING “PFA’S” TO THIS PARTICULAR ASSAULT, BATTERY, CHILD-KIDNAPPING, THREATS, CAR CHASE AND DOUBLE-HOMICIDE. I HAVE EMPHASIZED ANY AREAS THAT SHOW UNCERTAINTY, LOOPHOLES FOR DANGER:
WOMEN’S RESOURCES OF MONROE COUNTY (PA): PFA’s WORK IN MOST CASES
By Andrew Scott
Pocono Record June 12, 2009
A protection-from-abuse order [“”PFA”] may be just a piece of paper unable to stop the likes of Daniel Autenrieth, the Northampton County man who threatened his wife at gunpoint, kidnapped their son and led police on a high-speed chase that ended in a fatal shootout in Tobyhanna.
{To review: PFA, then:
- DEAD PEOPLE — 2, OFFICER, MAN
- WOUNDED — 1, OFFICER
- VERY TRAUMATIZED — 9 YEAR OLD SON, MOM, OTHER KIDS}}
The fact remains that most people with PFAs filed against them comply with those court orders and don’t do what Autenrieth did. So although PFAs aren’t absolutely guaranteed to stop someone who’s unbalanced or really intent on doing harm, people who are being physically abused or feel threatened with physical harm in relationships still should apply for PFAs.
{{Perhaps they should also buy a Lotto ticket?}}
That was the message at a Thursday press conference at Women’s Resources of Monroe County in Delaware Water Gap. Women’s Resources is part of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence, which provides a network of advocacy, legal, counseling, medical and other support services for domestic violence victims.
. . .
In Pennsylvania, PFA violators can face up to six months in county jail and fines of up to $1,000, depending on the severity of the violation, said Wendy Bentzoni, a detective with the Monroe County District Attorney’s Office.
If a woman requests a PFA against her husband and he consents to the order’s terms
- Being evicted from the home he/she shares with the plaintiff/victim and having no contact with that person.
- Being evicted, but being allowed to have contact.
- Being allowed to stay in the home as long as there is no physical abuse or threat of physical abuse.
In Pennsylvania, a PFA can be in effect for any length of time up to three years, depending on what a judge rules or what the parties involved consent to in each individual case. If the defendant doesn’t violate the PFA, the order simply expires when its time is up.
In Pennsylvania, a PFA can be in effect for any length of time up to three years, depending on what a judge rules or what the parties involved consent to in each individual case. If the defendant doesn’t violate the PFA, the order simply expires when its time is up.
Of the 450 PFAs granted in Monroe County last year, more than 125 were violated by defendants, Bentzoni said.
{{OK, Let’s look at that. Suppose it was 150. 150 violated out of 450 is 1 out of 3. That means for every 2 that WERE kept (as far as they know — by whether or not a violation was reported or not) 1 was not. How do you like them odds? Your PFA has a 33.33% of being violated (in which case, see above for potential risk/fallout).
In some cases, getting a PFA filed against an abuser can worsen the victim’s situation because the abuser sees it as the victim trying to take power away from the abuser{{WHICH IT IS INCIDENTALLY}}, she said. Desperate to retain that power over the victim, the abuser might become even more dangerous.
“Against someone with no fear of the law or jail, a PFA might not be the best action to take,” Kessler said. “In that case, we explore other options with the victim. The goal is to get the victim out of a vulnerable position.”
If the abuser is the sole breadwinner for the victim and their children, fear of losing the abuser’s financial support also might deter the victim from applying for a PFA, Kessler said.
Well, I know in my case it sure delayed getting one. Often economic abuse can precede physical.
Economic abuse can precedes and enables the physical AND IS PRE-MEDITATED. If the targeted person can’t afford to get away, or see how they could conceivably do so, they will take their chances staying, possibly. What a great choice — homelessness or increasing domestic abuse.
So, it seems to me if we want a less violent world, the most sensible thing would be focus on teaching children and young people how to become economically independent. In a wonderful contradiction of intent, we DON’T! The entire public schools system in the U.S.A., for the most part, consists of teaching children how to be submissive and take orders, leave the thinking up to the experts, who will grade them, and prepare them for this: College, and Jobs. Not, College and BUSINESSES. Or College, and understanding the economic principles that would help them become business owners, investors, cash-stream producers, foundation producers, and independent thinkers. How hypocritical.
And that includes independent thinking about how to survive financially should they choose to have children, or should they not choose to have children, but set up housekeeping (and sleeping) with a partner that might become sick, injured, or — face it – incarcerated. They should not have to go nurse off Dad, or Mom, or Big Brother the Welfare State, in this case. The goal should NOT be lifetime jobs, but lifetime progression towards financial independence. They cannot do this if they aren’t studying people who have accomplished this, and the basic principles of wealth.
We should also teach them not to let any partner or potential partner disarm them economically — whether it be job, or bank account, or credit, or access to transportation etc. That any such action is aggression, and dangerous to their welfare, creating an artificial co-dependence. They should know this going into relationships.
Now right there, we have a SERIOUS problems. Many world religions don’t accept this, and are not likely to.
Well, maybe they should, in the US, then lose their tax-exempt status. Believe me, I’ve thought of it. Because if they are contributing to the climate of “It’s OK to dominate a woman by any means (or weapon) that comes to hand, because it makes you more of a man,” then they should have to fork over the taxes that society might need to take care of the resulting mess.
And I’ll tell you another “secret” (not a real secret) — one I’ve been thinking about more recently. The majority of these institutions are in a co-dependent and domination relationship within their own ranks. If they didn’t dominate and under-educate them on their own sacred scripts (men and women alike), in the US, at least, many people would not be so dependent on spiritual, social, and emotional nourishment on the weekends and maybe ONE weekday. But that is another post, and probably, blog.
We ought to teach, besides, reading math writing, sport and the arts (to put it roughly) the PROCESSES and VALUES OF:
Self-sufficiency, Self-defense, and self-discipline, to the point of in-depth excellence and mastery in one primary area. With that I believe will come sufficient self-esteem not to enter into too many co-dependent relationships.
I recommend reading John Taylor Gatto’s short book called Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, in which he says, plainly, that the seven lessons he, as a teacher (and at the time NY State Teacher of the Year” actually is teaching is not “relevance” and “interrelationship” of subjects, but the exact opposite. Specifically, in order from the chapter: “The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher,” they are:
- CONFUSION
- CLASS POSITION
- INDIFFERENCE
- EMOTIONAL DEPENDENCY
- INTELLECTUAL DEPENDENCY
- PROVISIONAL SELF-ESTEEM
- ONE CAN’T HIDE.
The next chapter is called the “psychopathic school” after which he details his efforts of getting a little girl who read beautifully out of a class of bad readers. The girl (reading aloud beautifully) tells him how the administration had explained to her mother that she was, in reality, a “bad reader who had fantasies of being a better reader than she was.” Then, the author relates how the principal tried the same thing on him: how was he, a substitute to know whether or not this child could read.
MY EXPERIENCE: This actually is at the heart of the educational AND the family law system of “experts.” My “sin” was homeschooling the children, and having fantasies (as do many single mothers leaving abuse) that we could make a sound decision on behalf of our sons and daughter, after we’d made just about the soundest one around — LEAVING the situation!
Consider this:
Our form of compulsory schooling was an invention of the State of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted — with guns — by about 80% of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost being Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard. (p. 25,
There is more, but as I review those 7 lessons above, I can’t help thinking about the uncommon similarities between abuse — even it’s definitions — and the family law system, as well as the concept of using another abusive system to handle abuse by one person towards another in the presence of children.
Is ALL conflict bad? No, conflict involving true self-defense, or boundary violations.
Is marriage, or an “intimate partner relationship,” a person as property contract? A relationship as property contract? I believe the law calls it a FIDUCIARY relationship. As such, no one has a right to commit what in other context would be a crime, to protect loss of contact with this former sexual partner, parent of one’s children, children, or the breakdown of a relationship.
WHEN IT GETS TO THE POINT OF PFAs and RESTRAINING ORDERS, the enforcement should be thorough, immediate, clear, and strong. The dialogue above illustrates why, in practice, it ain’t. SO the conflicts go on, and escalate.
I have taught lots of children (and adults) in lots of venues and classrooms, and non-class situations. There are always rules ,and in-progress negotiation about common standards, there is always a dynamic flexibility within the group, there is the matter of consensus and critical mass.
The superb choir that got me going into music was about 40 in number, and we stood in mixed quartets, holding our own parts, produced records, soloists, and in general moved mountains and kicked butt musically. It was powerful stuff. We rehearsed almost daily and worked to pay for some of our own needs (including uniforms, painting the room, and going to conferences). We associated after school (and sometimes before) and in other venues than school; we ate, played, and attended concerts together.
Since then, I have sung in (and sometimes directed) choirs numbering from approximately 12 up to over 100. The ideal size (and one of the best choirs I was in) was about 18, or very maximum 20, if they were professionals and unified. I have had a little choir of only 11 do amazing things, because it was small enough to be responsive.
I have always thought it odd that the top ensembles are generally smaller than a typical public school classroom, and many of them not much larger than a large family, with a cousin or two. It brings out the best when there is a unified goal that is reasonable (but still stretching limits) to the people involved. The best choirs also were VOLUNTARY, not compulsory. They chose challenging music (to keep the participants growing) but always taking into account that the audience might not feel so esoteric in general. They mixed and matched, but they HAD to set a fairly high standard technically and musically – or in portrayal.
How does this relate to the Wife who Fought Back?
The system they were ensared in was too large, and is ruling and prognosticating by “the odds.” MOST people (translation: men) do not violate the PFAs, after all, just over 125 out of 450 did in this particular area. Therefore, the women should keep on coming, because what else could they do? It MIGHT not result in this, after all, NOT ALL men do what Mr. Autenreith did.
And we have this growing crisis of “fatherlessness”? That’s a fatherless family, and it just made a peace officer’s kids fatherless, too. I wonder what kind of father the nine-year old will make, should he become one.
I think the doctrine is becoming a little self-defeating, if not downright dangerous. I mean, this is all about the children, right? It’s all because children in single-parent families are at risk.
Well, yeah, with some vigilantes running around the place . . . . . However, if she’d been armed and determined…
I think we (Responsible Citizens) need to take a serious look at the Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher and ask, is this what we are willing to be taught, as adults, by our elected officials? I mean, the same values ARE shared, it is the “Hidden Currriculum” overall, I’d say. And it’s downright un-American, including “parenting classes.” The government already had a shot at the majority of the children in this country, through the public school system. If it were my kids, and the teachers failed, I’d go find me a new teacher and system.
OH, I FORGOT TO MENTION — I DID. AND MY CHILDREN WERE STOLEN ON AN OVERNIGHT VISITATION (UNSUPERVISED) PRECISELY BECAUSE I DID. AND PUT BACK IN THE SYSTEM, BECAUSE THEIR MAMA HAD ALREADY FIGURED OUT THAT THE 7 LESSONS WERE BOGUS.
This is a system that brooks no competitors. It allows some, but scoops up any stragglers, and family law is a great place to find them, and weaken them for the snatch.
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How bad Is it? ~ Skirting the Truth at Cairo, Telling it in America, Turned Down at Brown, Left to Tell after Rwanda
I was told to shorten my titles. This was the original:
In Cairo, Obama Delicately Skirts the Issue of Islamic Violence Towards Women, but Chesler (Honor Killings), LetsGetHonest (DV and Christianity), Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Infidel), Nonie Darwish (They Call Me Infidel), Immaculee Ilibagiza (Left to Tell, 91 days in a Rwandan bathroom) shoot from the hip on the dangers of ANY pride/shame/hate-based culture
Note: Of the above “notables” obviously President Obama’s OFFICE outranks the rest of us, but I’ve put 4 famous female voices (& mine) to 2 male to underscore, well, who and what the others have downplayed
[Have been told to shorten the posts, too, not just the titles. Working on it!]
This post, July 2 (2 days before “Independence Day” USA) had been on hold. Unlike several women featured here, I added my voice to theirs, telling it like it is, then self-censored out of fear: I felt MY contribution was too radical, too out-spoken, and too indignant.
Well . . . .
BUT, I have noticed the headlines since July 2nd — a litany of murder/suicides, family annihilations, and slaps on the wrist for men punching, stalking, kidnapping or threatening to kill women, after which they then kill. I had my children stolen for daring to report abuse, violations of court orders, and for refusing to “submit” to arbitrary orders on how to dumb down my smart daughters. I know what “shunning” is. I know what “enabling abuse” is.
I have never experienced fundamentalist Islamic violence against women, but the sense of the Christian version of it over here is starting to feel like a sort of ritual purging process. It is starting to ffeel like “No Exit” unless there is a miraculous parting of the Red Tape, a CLOUD covering my behind and a FIRE leading the way. We already tried the “appeal to reason” paradigm, or the “appeal to law” ONE, ALSO. We also did the “it’s not in your best interest” reason, but some people will pay a lot of money for the privilege of refusing to stop abusing. Like they say, truth is on the auction block, and was sold cheap, Lies fetched a higher price.
I pay attention, and have SEEN Protestant so-called Christian Caucasian men drilling young men how to dominate women twice their age in the name of their god, and been subjected to this as well. Recently. Yeech — Retch! What kind of “sanctuary” is that??
However, now that a suburban California back yard finally released ,29-year-old Jaycee Dugard and her 11 year old and 15 year old girls fathered by the man who kidnapped HER when she was only 11, I felt this post is quite appropriate:
This case is shocking for its combination of statistics (18 years! Missed opportunities! “We never knew!” “But they looked like a nice couple!” “I spoke with Jaycee on the phone, she was courteous and professional” (She was not only a sex slave, but also supported this man’s business while living in shack-like conditions in a back yard with her kids). A WOMAN called the police reporting that people were living in the back yard. Like my calls and reports to police that another man, their father, was going to kidnap MY daughters, her voice was not heard.
Are we willing to listen and change behavior YET? The behavior “we” need to change is to get smart and act on hunches. While people who take the scriptures too literally are castigated and censored, disdained in public media, how about some of us in the U.S. start taking the 3 charters of freedom: Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights literally for a change? Starting by knowing their INtents based on their CONtents! And then recognizing that humanity is a DNA thing, not a color thing or a gender thing! And the usage of “all men are created equal” in the first was NOT “men vs. women” and did not say, although it was so practiced, “all Caucasian landowning males.” It meant ALL EQUAL and not to be colonized, or, like Miss Dugard (sr.) was, pimped.
I am United States citizen by birth, and was never beaten, or degraded because of my gender before I married. Nor was I forced into marriage. But women of faith or no faith nowadays who attempt to leave, risk being stripped of children, or killed, for the act of — leaving their marriage and asserting legal rights they already have.
While our current President has described the angst and sense of loss he felt not having his father in his life growing up, the rest of us describe some of what it’s like to be a target of violence and punishment for the crime of having been born without a Y chromosome, for some, a life sentence punishable by death.
President Obama, pre-election, helping out Senator Bayh in Indiana, with some more Mother-Omission:
2006 – EVER TRYING TO RAM THROUGH ANOTHER BILL, FINE-TUNING & REDEFINING FATHERHOOD AND HEALTHY MARRIAGE
As one of my fellow-bloggers commented in Indiana Mothers for Custodial Justice: Evan Bayh is not his Father’s Son,
Senator Evan Bayh’s (fatherhood-promoted) own father Senator BIRCH Bayh, was in favor of equal rights for women: so much for a chip off the old block, and passing down values from father to son, politically.
According to this post (Verifiable Here) both Senator Evan and then-Senator Obama co-sponsored YET ANOTHER “Healthy marriage and Responsible Fatherhood” bill, which was defeated in 2006.
Like this Senator, and another well-known FR attorney from the Chicago Area, both the Senators also remembered all the Hoopla around Father’s Day, Fatherhood, Father Celebration, and etc., etc. (can we say “patriarchal?”) in June PR (June is Father’s Day month, FYI), but forgot the same on Mother’s Day, in May. Actually, in 2009 and (I found) 2008, PR around now-President and then-Senator Obama eclipsed this acknowledgement of where they came from, literally (they had mothers, right?), as the word “Mother” has become, as I blogged elsewhere, virtually invisible linguistically in connection with “families” on the whitehouse.gov site. The preferred term, for those of you not in the know, is “Parent” when it comes to the divorce situation, and “Women” when it comes to who’s having violence (including murder) perpetrated against them by, often enough by the father of mutual children.
~ ~ ~ ~
It is difficult to control a population aware of their “unalienable rights,” not intimidated by verbal derogatory talk, or economically dependent upon abusers or captive to them by the threat of death as they leave. Now one factor that often gives a mother courage and motivation to LEAVE abuse is precisely her motherhood, so no wonder it would be threatening to any:
Fear/Shame/Pride-based culture or religion.
The mother/daughter/son bond, culturally needs to be degraded and broken (stepmothers will do) if we are to have a truly sheepish culture that will do what they are told without protest. Family Court venue is GREAT for this, and I happen to believe was designed for the purpose, despite all the hoopla from under-funded (??), under-recognized (????????) fathers, especially those who like to minimize their own violence towards their own women, often prompting separation, which even that bill (above) recognizes is a primary cause of separation!
@@@
The link “parsing Obama” caught my attention, and led to an article from “Real Clear Politics” on the Cairo Speech.
I have just written on “Women” vs. “Mother” and the weak (# occurrences) presence of both when it comes to Family Issues being discussed under the current US Administration’s “White House” page. Not only were the words barely absent, but their usage (which I didn’t analyze and post — but noticed) was also weak. In looking for the word “mothers” I would have to assume that after the age requiring home nurse visitations, we don’t exist. For example, the President’s own mother was transformed into the word “parent” in a sentence highlighting absence of a father. To people who haven’t been through systemic prejudice against their “mothering” it may not register, but when examined, it’s blatant PR omission. It undermines the credibility of the whole page. (granted, the month was the month of Father’s Day, however, if someone has a record of this page during May and wishes to countradict my post, please feel free to comment).
SIMILARLY, when it comes to speaking in this nation, Egypt, the mention of Islamic violence (not bias, but violence) toward women, the omission is just as loud.
So, I just slapped up the article, with someone else’s commentary on it, for your consumption. Then I searched out and pasted up interviews, articles or book reviews from several women who do NOT Delicately skirt the issue of violence towards women, and hate talk in general. Two of these women came to America, and one of them, since coming, has converted from Islam to Christianity.
A third woman from Rwanda didn’t convert, but was already Christian. Her story isn’t about gender violence, but it was another “can’t put down” book of survival in the face of hate, and refusal to hate back. The individual verbal abuse or hate talk that often DOES escalate to physical domestic violence got me (in marriage, after marriage) sensititve to moods and fluctuations in language that might indicate an “event” about to erupt also precedes genocides or attempted genocides. The speech sometimes works the speaker or groups of speakers up, or justifies the abuse. Whether the Holocaust or Rwanda, hate talk is a danger sign. Just as PTSD from domestic violence does indeed have similarities with PTSD from actual war.
So, this had me also noticing books and commentaries on the languages preceding genocides or attempted genocides; Rwanda had caught my attention earlier from the book on which the movie “Hotel Rwanda” was based. This book details times when pastors protected, and times when pastors betrayed, those that were being hunted down. So I include the “Left To Tell” book because it seems relevant.
And I added my two bits. And a few links indicating that this fatherhood stuff is turning to vigilante behavior, unfortunately. And pointed out, again, what our Declaration of Independence was about….
On my blogroll to the right, is a little Youtube showing just how low my President bowed, casually, quickly, to the leader of a Muslim country, in the company of Queen Elizabeth and a G20 meeting. This disturbs me, and was of some serious debate in a blogtalkradio dialogue (as I recall the source, anyhow) moderated by Dr. Phyllis Chesler and Marcia Pappas of NYS NOW. Is he the leader of the free world, or at least part of it? Then what’s that obeisance about? Would he kneel to the Pope to be politically correct, kiss the ring and insult all those boys and girls abused by priests, and the concept upon which this nation was founded, Bill of Rights Number I?
I myself am VERY disturbed at how domestic violence killings are starting to take on a vigilante nature, as if in retaliation to a woman leaving a family, or exposing a sin, how DARE she? As a mature woman and mother who has been dumped by the roadside by a combination of my own family and my ex-batterer, apparently for — again, exposing family something or other — I am thinking about:
- How
- Why
- Who ARE these people?
- What IS this world?
How many OTHER myths have I believed about life, my country, my family, the legal system, etc.? I will tell you one I have let go of: “The American Dream.” I have switched this my dream from anything material, and am changing it to a character issue, a personal one with myself.
I am calling upon the combination of my God (NOT the one that is a respecter of persons, or genders, or legalistically profiling and whimsical in judgment, that I have seen in certain places), and my courage, and putting my intellect a good bit lower, respectively, than it used to be. Plus, from within, my emotions of concern and compassion for others, and whatever picture I can imagine. Indignation about injustice only goes so far, and as the injustice basically never stops, another motivation must be found.
I think part of the trouble around here is that people pretend to be neutral and detached (a high value) when they aren’t anything of the sort. They can incite to violence, ride roughshod over families, due process, and civil rights, as easily as any other nation or culture, but claim this is based on “evidence-based practices.” In one place on this post, I included a Rwandan woman — the issue was not on men versus women, but the same principles: hate talk towards a certain group of people (Tutsis) and how quickly it ignited.
We have become an incredibly morally bankrupt place (as well as fiscally — and they are related), while drowning in certain materials and products. However, the solution to this is not to be found in the institutions, but rather in the people who are aware that these institutions are not going to replace human basic functions of: produce, protect, educate, alleviate, CREate (when it comes to arts, ideas, concepts, etc.), that which we have procreated. If you’re new to this blog, you’ll notice that when I have a strong emotional reaction to a certain thing (or idea), I pile on labels, like sauce on a hamburger, or whipped cream on a milkshake, or, . . . . or. . . .
I was referring to the churches, some of which I left voluntarily, and one of which I got thrown out of last month for being female, having understanding of a Biblical passage, and speaking up (even with permission). How dare I think I knew something!
See:
“Family Values” Pundits not so upstanding themselves.
This is a new site to me: REAL CLEAR POLITICS. This dates to June 2009
I simply posted the whole article. Any italics are my emphasis, some (not all) of the other style changes are mine, too:
Did Obama Say Enough About Women’s Rights?
Posted by Cathy Young | Email This | Permalink | Email Author
As I said in my previous post, I had a largely positive reaction to Obama’s Cairo speech. However, I agree with David Frum’s criticsm of Obama’s comments about women’s rights — which should have been a key part of an “outreach to Muslims” speech. In contrast to Obama’s strong affirmation of the principles of democracy, his discussion of women’s issues and Islam was too general, too weak, and afflicted with excessive even-handedness.
{{with which “even handedness, as I have beLABORED in previous posts, the Whitehouse.gov agenda on families is not even remotely afflicted. It flat out ignores the fact, practically, that mothers exist. Period.}}
Here is the passage in its entirety: (OBAMA):
“The sixth issue that I want to address is women’s rights
“I know there is debate about this issue. {{“debate”?!?}} I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality. And it is no coincidence that countries where women are well-educated are far more likely to be prosperous.
Now let me be clear: issues of women’s equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam.
{{EXCUUUUUSE me? Is this or is this not a dodge, or an understatement? Was there a political or safety reason for this understatement at this particular conference?
http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/211/are-honor-killings-simply-domestic-violence
I have posted an excerpt below. And photos. OK, now you may continue reading President Obama’s speech…}}}}
“In Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia, we have seen Muslim-majority countries elect a woman to lead. Meanwhile, the struggle for women’s equality continues in many aspects of American life, and in countries around the world.
Our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our sons, and our common prosperity will be advanced by allowing all humanity – men and women – to reach their full potential. I do not believe that women must make the same choices as men in order to be equal, and I respect those women who choose to live their lives in traditional roles. But it should be their choice. That is why the United States will partner with any Muslim-majority country to support expanded literacy for girls, and to help young women pursue employment through micro-financing that helps people live their dreams.”
Frum takes issue, in particular, with Obama’s remarks about the head-covering issue: he points out that not only “some in the West,” but many women in the Muslim world regard the hijab as a symbol of female submission (not to God but to man), and that many women who “choose” to cover themselves (sometimes not only their hair but their face) do so because of coercion and intimidation either by family members or by radical Islamic militias. I do believe Obama was right to affirm a woman’s right to choose hijab; quite a few Muslim feminists regard it as a legitimate and positive form of religious expression, no different from the Jewish yarmulke, and quite a few moderately traditional Muslims are alienated by the categorical rejection of the hijab as oppressive. However, it would have been fitting to balance his statement with an assertion of a woman’s right to choose not to cover their hair — a right that, in some countries, they are denied not only by informal pressure and harassment, but by law and official policy.
As for the rest of this passage, it was nice of Obama to assert the importance of educational opportunities for girls and women, but that’s about as uncontroversial as it gets: who, except for the Taliban, disagrees? In all too many Muslim countries, the main problems facing women are far more severe: forced marriage, vastly unequal treatment when it comes to divorce and child custody, and socially sanctioned violence. How can one talk about women’s rights in the Muslim world and not mention honor killings? Or the horrific recent public flogging by a Taliban militia in Pakistan of a 17-year-old girl whose apparent offense was to have stepped outside her house without a male relative escorting her? Or cases in which Islamic courts have sentenced rape victims to death for fornication or adultery when the rape could not be proved under a stringent standard requiring two male witnesses? (While we’re at it, how about the fact that in Islamic courts, the word of a female witness is officially given half the weight of a man’s?) What about female genital mutilation? Against the backdrop of these genuine horrors, literacy programs and micro-financing for young women’s employment look like a rather feeble response. How about first ensuring that the girl who participates in a literacy program doesn’t get brutalized for showing a strand of hair in public?
In this context, Obama’s comment that “the struggle for women’s equality” is also a problem in America is also, to say the least, unhelpful. Yes, there are still gender disparities in the U.S., though I think many of them are due to, as Obama put it, women not making the same choices as men. But to mention what sexism still remains in American society in the same breath as the violent misogyny and patriarchal oppression still pervasive in much of the Muslim world today is a truly misguided attempts at even-handedness. It’s a bit like saying that of course it’s a bad thing that of course it’s a bad thing that Joe locks his wife in the closet, beats her senseless, forbids her to talk to any other man and monitors every penny she spends, but hey, Bill spends only half the time his wife does on housework and child care and treats his own career as more important than his wife’s, so if he voices disapproval of Joe he’d better mention his own failings too.
Yes, of course it’s not only in Muslim countries that women face severe oppression. (The issue of women being elected to lead in deeply patriarchal cultures is a separate, and fascinating, one, but I don’t think it’s a good measure of the overall status of women in society.) And I know there is a vigorous debate about whether Islam is inherently more female-unfriendly than other major religions and whether an Islamic feminsm is possible. Nonetheless, the fact remains that in recent decades we have seen a rollback of women’s rights in many societies — sometimes a drastic rollback — due to the influence of Islamic extremism. Obama’s failure to mention this fact was extremely disappointing. Talk about a missed opportunity. In my previous post, I said that Obama’s comments on women’s rights deserved no more than a B-. Analyzing them now, I’m lowering the grade to a gentleman’s C.
I give it an “F.” See below:
PLEASE READ THIS ARTICLE: I PASTE ENOUGH TO ENCOURAGE YOU TO GET OVER THERE AND READ IT!
Dr. Phyllis Chesler:
Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence? (title is URL)
by Phyllis Chesler
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2009
Families that kill for honor will threaten girls and women if they refuse to cover their hair, their faces, or their bodies or act as their family’s domestic servant; wear makeup or Western clothing; choose friends from another religion; date; seek to obtain an advanced education; refuse an arranged marriage; seek a divorce from a violent husband; marry against their parents’ wishes; or behave in ways that are considered too independent, which might mean anything from driving a car to spending time or living away from home or family. Fundamentalists of many religions may expect their women to meet some but not all of these expectations. But when women refuse to do so, Jews, Christians, and Buddhists are far more likely to shun rather than murder them. Muslims, however, do kill for honor, as do, to a lesser extent, Hindus and Sikhs.
{{Everything underlined here, was an issue in my Western, non-Muslim marriage. I snuck education. I was stalked, through my own family and individually for leaving to the point that I have had major fear to finalize this divorce, and have not; I experienced retaliation consistently of engaging in activities outside the home, specifically anything that related to my former profession. This retaliation could come in the form of interfering with me getting out the door, or sabotage — allowing me to start, but making it hard to complete, a simple season’s engagement; complaining about or withholding funding for something as elementary as a simple black skirt and shirt to perform in; display of weapons immediately after returning from a rehearsal, leaving the car with insufficient gas to get back from one, and other night-mare-inducing behavior. This extended also to times my daughters were engaged in music as well; UNBELIEVABLE. I have watched my piano be physically attacked, buried under virtual trash, and then I was mocked for not practicing it enough, which I barely could find time to do in a day. I left home once, with an infant, in another state, for a week. I was given extra tasks to complete before leaving, and I came back to a house that was dangerously trashed –NO dishes had been done, broken glass on the floor (and we had a baby), and a special plant/bush I’d given him had not been watered, and was dead. Food in pots was moldy; I was stunned. In subsequent (to marriage) public times, in court, he repeatedly talked about the condition of the house, as if I didn’t also work, or was solely responsible. I had an unbelievable time getting access to a car, which was resented.
Finally, when I was able to leave the family home for two weeks, for a music camp, with daughters, when I returned, I’d been thrown out of the bedroom, a lock installed, and in short, this was when I determined to leave. These TYPES of activities continued, to this day, post-separation. Every decision I made that entailed putting daughters in a music class, or lessons, was permitted reluctantly, but eventually stopped. Then public declarations were made that I was isolating and depriving them. I attended a VERY liberal Midwestern college, and as a young person, was not restricted or berated for anything regarding my gender. The place I met this man was not illiberal — it ordained women, we preached in teams, and sometimes lived together.
During this marriage, I began to doubt that I was indeed in America. I had never heard of any experience like this, or known anyone who had experienced a situation like this violence, and abuse. Speaking of it to the variety of people I did, indeed, come in front of year after year, few of them had words to describe this thing that was happening to me. To this day, my “liberal” relatives will not use the word “domestic violence” or “abuse” in front of me, practically, and appear to be furious that I have actually spoken in these terms and insisted that this is indeed what happened. The denial has taken it beyond the legal terms — there has been, within my family — a literal denial that any of the laws to protect people from domestic violence exist, apply, or have anything to do with our case, or my many difficulties. Experientially, it needs a name. Now, gradually, through blogging, networking, reading, talking — and I have not been through ANYthing like the women below here — I have come to understand that this is a serious moral / emotional / social crisis our country is in. There are powerful political factors that HAVE to say the words “domestic violence” with their mouths, because the cat is out of the bag, and the horse is out of the barn. BUT, they are diluting, reframing, derailing the conversation and attempting, in many and disturbing ways, to turn back the clock on this matter of women saying NO! You can NOT do this! and saying it through the courts.
Every woman has to determine how she is going to respond to this shunning, when women in our world survive, and are emotionally supported primarily through their connections with others. that is the value that is respected (often) with American women. We are in our communities, we have children OR, we have careers, or juggle both. For women of my age (middle, OK?) to have both lost children AND career, and contact with their family, but not be a radical feminist, is indeed interesting. We can come into the church perhaps as ministers, acolytes (so to speak), or servants supporting its infrastructure. I, for one, no longer care to support the infrastructure of anything so dysfunctional. I consider myself to be courageous and independent (in certain ways), but there comes a burnout level. I have PTSD, and when exposed to more “women, get thee behind me, Satan” talk in certain denominations (many of them), I simply have to speak up, then leave. I will not hang out there. At least I have a few options.
To survive abuse, sometimes, one has to become two people: a public one and a private one. This includes sometimes with one’s spouse. At some level, my soul was not going to show itself any more, for another verbal beating for mere existence. Instead, I took the verbal tirades for being, supposedly, apathetic, wimpy, not caring and passive. Well, being anything else got me physically assaulted, or some other form of escalation, sometimes involving property destruction, or attack on pets. Children were in the home. I just couldn’t keep that up, and guess what: No one was backing me up. No one was confronting this man, really. At the end of the day, I had to come home to sleep. He began accumulating guns, and large knives. I don’t use these, or know how to, and it wasn’t too long (although more than a year) after this that I realized — we had to separate. I cannot tell you the level of shame and embarrassment I had, with or without children, having to hide my mail, ask strangers for rides, or a few $$ to put in the ggas tank (if I had a car). One night, I got stranded late at night in a downtown urban area after my night job. I took a ride with what might have been a drug dealer to get to a gas station. My ex came and got me, but with the news that someone had run over the cat that day, my favorite one (I always found this suspicious timing). The concern for my personal safety was at zero level. I kept journals. My journals were targeted, and I had to remove them from the home for safekeeping. He went after, and befriended the people keeping them, I got them back.
NOW: Now, I cannot live that dual personality way, and will not. When I go into a church and am expected to adopt a certain demeanor — I won’t. It’s like violence to the soul. I am one person: I will tell someone (in my family) if I am upset with them, and why.
The Court System:
The Family Court system in this country has become a charade. It rewards short-term performance in front of evaluators, mediators, judges, and other people. No one really looks behind the scenes — there is no interest, time or resources to fully check facts. For the most part. This system rewards the batterer “snake” personality: Charming, manipulative, dissembling. Or, alternately, wounded and looking helpless. I have seen a (female) judge leap to aid my ex, to the extent of testifying for him, as if he could not speak. I have watched him interrupt an attorney and derail the direct question, and get away with this. When I go to court, I am primarily PTSD, although I try pretty hard. All such a person needs to do is get through the next appearance with some person in authority, get their way, and afterwards, do whatever they want.
There are too many similarities between the hypocrisies and coverups of fundamentalist religion, and what I see in these courts. It is going to take women, feminist women, to address it. The other factor is, in this court, children are involved. We are not always 100% on board with the radical feminist regimes. I cannot tell you how many women in my situation, leaving batterers, losing their kids to stand by helplessly as their kids are showing symptoms of abuse, including child sexual abuse, are themselves religious. Many of them, their husbands or partners specifically targeted them in these circles — because the environment is male-domination-friendly.
When I say in my posts, that churches are NOT havens for women leaving violence, or necessarily shelters for them, I am absolutely in earnest. i hope, in my way, to be able to speak to this and do something about the shameful failure to support — or even SPEAK about — the laws against violence towards women, and children — in these venues. They are in their own ether, with their own agenda, and their own intents. I do not believe this is the genuine religion of, in my case, the man Jesus Christ as I read about him in scripture. I read nothing about his abusive or dismissive treatment of women; in fact it is the opposite. I think what we have now is a charade of that. For the most part. I don’t think most people have the guts to do what he did, but some do.
(WOW — where did THAT come from? Well, I’ll post. I may erase some of it another day…..)
Amina Said (L), 18, and her sister Sarah, 17, were shot dead by their father Yaser at their home in Irving, Texas, in January 2008. Said was upset by his daughters’ “Western ways” and was assisted in the killing by his wife, the girls’ mother. The victims of honor killings are largely teenage daughters or young women. Unlike ordinary domestic violence, honor killings often involve multiple family members as perpetrators.
Let’s Get Honest comments:
In “ordinary domestic violence” family members could be either hostages, victims, OR enablers. The truth is, it takes enablers for a PATTERN of domestic violence to thrive and grow. There is denial, there is incompetence, there is scapegoating, there is helpless ignorance in what to do. Many people in my culture have very strong emotions, but in certain classes and circles, this is not “socially acceptable.” So they suppress them behind circuitous speech, evasive answers, or simply no answers. When I got, out, I had some strong emotions (anger) as I began to stop hating myself (which was safer) and be angry. My anger was noticed – his violence, and the danger this represented — was not. I only recently simply decided to forgive, and do this entirely detached from any reason to, other than a decision, and a desire to be free from anger, and reactionary mode, which is typically either anger, or depression, when the insults, aggressions, etc. continue. That’s how I am choosing to handle it at this point.
I am posting quite a bit here about Islamic violence towards women. However, I am doing so with an understanding that forms of Protestantism (mainstream and nonmainstream) Christianity can still kill, destroy, and maim — physically and emotionally. I am here to warn out country not to ignore this hate talk from governmental circles towards women. In the lingo of domestic violence, denying it is a form of it (a.k.a. crazymaking). Below, is a passage from “Infidel” about “baari.” If I am able, I will find the passage from a Focus on the Family publication that sounds uncomfortably similar. And I will say, the “shunning” and patronizing (social, psychological) takes a different form, but still exists, when a Christian woman throws out an abusive husband and then shows up in church unapologetic.
And expecting to be treated with respect. Or worse, looking for an opportunity to actually speak or teach the Bible (this was why I got thrown out of the last place, and I was entirely too submissive in that as well). I finally came to the conclusion that it was safer outside those buildings.
Another alarming trend, vigilante-style behavior — AND TALK — around the issues of the family courts. Continuing on the topic of Honor Killings, which was “skirted” nicely in the Cairo speech, above….
The United Nations Population Fund estimates that 5,000 women are killed each year for dishonoring their families. This may be an underestimate. Aamir Latif, a correspondent for the Islamist website Islam Online who writes frequently on the issue, reported that in 2007 in the Punjab province of Pakistan alone, there were 1,261 honor murders. The Aurat Foundation, a Pakistani nongovernmental organization focusing on women’s empowerment, found that the rate of honor killings was on track to be in the hundreds in 2008.
There are very few studies of honor killing, however, as the motivation for such killings is cleansing alleged dishonor and the families do not wish to bring further attention to their shame, so do not cooperate with researchers. Often, they deny honor crimes completely and say the victim simply went missing or committed suicide. Nevertheless, honor crimes are increasingly visible in the media. Police, politicians, and feminist activists in Europe and in some Muslim countries are beginning to treat them as a serious social problem…
(SO WHY ISN”T OUR PRESIDENT?)
PLEASE ALSO, READ THESE TWO BOOKS. OK, THREE. I DID. I COULDN’T PUT THEM DOWN, IN FACT. AND I FELT I WAS READING ABOUT MY OWN FAMILY. I LIVE IN THE WEST. I LIVE IN THE USA. I DIDN’T EXPERIENCE, PHYSICALLY, AT ALL THE SAME AS THESE WOMEN. WHY DID IT FEEL FAMILIAR?
I FEEL AS THOUGH OUR FAMILY HAS BECOME LIKE A POLYGAMOUS CULT, AND WE ARE A SMALL, NUCLEAR, PROFESSIONALLY INVOLVED FAMILY, ABOUT 3RD GENERATION IN THE COUNTRY. NO ONE HAS BEEN JAILED. WHY DID THE BEHAVIOR SOUND SO FAMILIAR, AND WHAT’S GOING ON? I BELIEVE THAT IT IS THE EMOTIONAL, SPIRITUAL CONTENT OF THE BEHAVIOR WHICH IS THE SAME, FROM CULTURE TO CULTURE, EXPRESSED DIFFERENTLY. HATE IS STILL HATE.
This book, and woman, are so well-known, I don’t think there is too much to be added. However, if not, READ.
WIKIPEDIA: (evidently not fully current)
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (
pronunciation (help·info); Somali: Ayaan Xirsi Cali; born Ayaan Hirsi Magan 13 November 1969 in Somalia)[1]is a Dutch feminist, writer, and politician. She is the estranged daughter of the Somali scholar, politician, and revolutionary opposition leader Hirsi Magan Isse. She is a prominent critic of Islam, and her screenplay for Theo Van Gogh‘s movieSubmission led to death threats. Since van Gogh’s assassination by a Muslim extremist in 2004, she has lived in seclusion under the protection of Dutch authorities.
When she was eight, her family left Somalia for Saudi Arabia, then Ethiopia, and eventually settled in Kenya. She sought and obtained political asylum in the Netherlands in 1992, under circumstances that later became the center of a political controversy. In 2003 she was elected a member of the House of Representatives (the lower house of the Dutch parliament), representing the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). A political crisis surrounding the potential stripping of her Dutch citizenship led to her resignation from the parliament, and led indirectly to the fall of the second Balkenende cabinet.
She is currently a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, working from an unknown location in the Netherlands.[2][3] In 2005, she was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.[4] She has also received several awards for her work, including Norway’s Human Rights Service’s Bellwether of the Year Award, the Danish Freedom Prize, the Swedish Democracy Prize, and the Moral Courage Award for commitment to conflict resolution, ethics, and world citizenship.[5]
HERE IS A LINK TO A 2007 Interview (NY Mag Review of Books). “The Infidel Speaks,” by Boris Kachka, Feb. 4, 2007
SHE SAYS SOME EXTRAORDINARILY RELEVANT THINGS.
I THINK IT EXTRAORDINARLY REMARKABLE THAT MY PRESIDENT DIDN’T MENTION MUCH ABOUT THE TREATMENT OF WOMEN, OR ANY OF THESE EXTRAORDINARY ONES, WHEN VISITING A MUSLIM COUNTRY. NOTE (AS TO “CAIRO SPEECH”), NONIE DARWISH, BELOW, FLED EGYPT FOR THE USA, AND CONVERTED TO CHRISTIANITY. HER YOUTUBE AND A PARTIAL INTERVIEW IS BELOW (SO LABELED: THIS IS THE SOMALIAN SWEDISH AMERICAN WOMAN HERE:
To her admirers, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a maverick, bravely defying the Netherlands’ political correctness to address Europe’s growing cultural rifts. To detractors, she’s a charismatic bomb-thrower with as little regard for her adopted nation’s safety as for her own. Both sides would have to admit that the former Somali-Dutch politician is a master of self-reinvention. After a rough childhood (circumcision, daily beatings) in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Saudi Arabia, she escaped to Holland from a forced marriage, eventually joined the Dutch Parliament as a Muslim criticizing her own culture, and made a provocative film with Theo van Gogh that got him killed and sent her into hiding.
This is why I think that, just perhaps, President Obama might have been a little remiss to simply not address this issue in a Muslim nation. Nonie Darwish’s father was killed in jihad, and she left Egypt for the US. Now here is an American leader back in Egypt, speaking on this topic, and nothing substantial?
When a rival threatened to revoke her citizenship, the resulting furor toppled the governing coalition. But Ali just moved on, resigning and moving to Washington, D.C., where she now works for the American Enterprise Institute. It’s all retold in her eloquent new memoir, Infidel. Stopping by Soho House recently, she spoke with New York about life and politics in her latest adopted land.
You’ve been here for six months. How do you like the U.S.?
That is the question they all ask! I love it. The most comforting thing is the anonymity. I’m not allowed to talk about security—to tell you who in this room is security and who is not—but the pressure cooker of Holland is over. I am now just one individual in the melting pot.
You’re at a conservative think tank—perhaps an odd place for a harsh critic of religion in political life.
I consider myself nonpartisan, but I’m a liberal—not in the American sense, because Americans seem to refer to communists as liberals. What we see in Europe, because of the welfare state, is government pretending to provide all sorts of services they shouldn’t be providing.
Let’s Get Honest comment: My point EXACTLY, in many of these posts!
But what do you make of Christian conservatives in your ranks?
No one in the American Enterprise imposes their beliefs. We clash, and I think that’s what the West is all about.
But you’re with them on the whole “clash of civilizations” thing?
When I was in Holland, the idea was, all cultures are equal and all are to be preserved. My idea was, no, all humans are equal but not all cultures are equal. In the culture of my parents, we never seemed to be able to succeed in such basic issues as getting food, interacting and living in peace with each other, or adapting to our environment, and the West, they’ve succeeded in all those. I’d been taught Western culture’s only bad. Maybe that’s good for your self-esteem, but it wasn’t taking us anywhere.
This woman comes from WHERE? And she understands the Declaration of Independence (principles) better than we do? It’s not the CULTURE, it’s the HUMANS:
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
THAT IS THE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENTS. NOT DISHING OUT HAPPINESS AND HEALTH, BUT SECURING THOSE RIGHTS!
That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
LOCALLY SPEAKING, SOME WOMEN NEED TO DISBAND THEIR FAMILY UNIT, TO SECURE THEIR SAFETY. WHO THE HELL IS THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES TO UNDERMINE THAT DECISION BY GOVERNMENTAL DECREE, AS HAS BEEN DONE IN THE FATHERHOOD RESOLUTIONS, GRANTS, INITIATIVES, AND TASK FORCES ?? ???
THE MAIN QUESTION IN THESE MATTERS IS WHETHER OR NOT WOMEN ARE INCLUDED IN THE INCLUSIVE NOUN “MEN” NOW, WOMEN HAD TO FIGHT FOR THIS, BUT IN 1920, AFTER SLAVES, WE MANAGED TO GET THE RIGHT TO VOTE. THIS WOMAN CAME FROM A RELIGION, THE NAME OF WHICH MEANT, “SUBMIT.” THE NAME OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT, PER DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FROM GREAT BRITAIN, ABOVE, IS IN ESSENCE, PERMIT.
NOW AS TO FAITH-BASED INITIATIVES, I’D LIKE TO CITE THE PRIMARY CHRISTIAN VERSE USED TO JUSTIFY WIFE-BEATING:
You’ve dismissed accusations that you’re lashing out because of childhood traumas. So why write a memoir graphically detailing the abuse you and your siblings suffered?
It became important to say, “Okay, you guys keep accusing me of using my past. Let me tell you my story, and my story shows that I do not blame the death of my sister on Islam. I do not blame female genital mutilation on Islam.” My whole awakening was triggered by the eleventh of September, and it did not affect only me, it affected a lot of people.
Do you regret certain things you said about Muhammad—like that he was a pervert and a tyrant?
I don’t regret that. I’m still convinced that for Muslims to integrate fully into modern society, we cannot avoid discussing the prophet. We didn’t only deal with communism militarily, but we said it is a bad idea. The works of Karl Marx were discussed.
Maybe academia would have been a better—and less dangerous—venue.
Politics is not a good thing for me. But I wanted to bring out the issue of Muslim treatment of women in Holland, and I could only accomplish that in Parliament. If I had been a professor, it would just have disappeared in a cabinet.
“the Territory that is now Somalia was divided between the British and the Italians, who occupied the country as colonizers, splitting it in two. In 1960 the colonizers left, leaving behind a brand-new, independent state. A unified Somalia was born.”
“If in the process of baari you feel grief, humiliation, and everlasting exploitation you hide it. If you long for love and comfort you pray in silence to Allah to make your husband more bearable
AND:
“They call me infidel”. Ex-Muslim Christian Nonie Speaks out
This was of interest to me because the author had experienced a regime change within her home country, and then come to America and experienced a change of religion. So she spoke of the qualitative differences.
(11/20/2006)
Egyptian-born Nonie Darwish is “too controversial” to speak at Brown University, where her invitation to speak was just taken back. The title of her new book about says it all Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror . Good luck with that one. Here, where we’ve been attacked by jihadists, we don’t like to hear about the enemy we face.
(THIS IS AN INTERVIEW. EXCERPTS, HERE:)
LOPEZ: Are the majority of Muslim women oppressed? What can be done for them?
DARWISH: The majority of Muslim women are oppressed and that is due to Islamic sharia law which severely discriminates against women. Even the most educated and powerful Muslim women are faced with a legal system that is very discriminatory against women. Muslim women start the marital relationship from a weaker position. The Muslim marriage contract itself is unfair to women because Muslim men can add three more wives if he wishes. That changes the dynamic of husband/wife relationship even if a Muslim man does not exercise this right. Polygamy has a devastating impact on families. There are chronic social ills and tragedies stemming from this single right.
The court system is designed to oppress women, without a doubt.
{{Commentary: I read her book. She talks about how polygamy (one man, many women) pollutes relationships not just between the man and the woman, but also between women: backbiting, whispering, intrigue. I remembered my own case, which has many women involved in protecting a single man, vigorously defending his behavior, which was criminal, as though it were honorable, and I were the criminal for speaking up. I could not put this book down, asking WHY? does this sound like my family? I think these are spiritual issues, and that while the West does NOT endorse polygamy, within the court systems, at least, many of these dynamics are at play — first wives, second wives, etc. They are used against each other, undermining ALL women. }}
LOPEZ: How prevalent is “honor killing”?
DARWISH: According to Islamic law sex outside marriage is prohibited and the penalty for that is often death. The woman is always to blame because she is regarded as the source of the seduction. Muslim men’s honor is dependent on their women’s sexual purity. It does not matter how honorable the character of the Muslim man; but if his female relatives commit any sexual taboos, Muslim society will dishonor him. Arab culture is based on pride and shame** and a Muslim man cannot survive with this kind of shame unless he kills the source of that shame which is the female relative who have had sex outside of marriage. It is not known how common this crime of honor killing happens since it is often goes unreported and the police often looks the other way, but I believe it is common in certain parts of the Muslim world if the girl is discovered to be no longer a virgin or pregnant. That is why most girls in the Middle East remain virgins till marriage and there are very few births out of wedlock in the Middle East.
{{**I am concerned about the culture of “manhood” in the west being based on the same things. It is not a good basis. I also believe that, despite the level of indoctrination being nothing of the like, this same BASIS of education in the U.S. exists — and that is not a good basis for human behavior. Rather, how much better, to respect accomplishment in a variety of life situations. But school is NOT a variety of life situations, it is ONE of life’s many situations. To teach people to be puffed up, or feel inferior, based on their grade performances (although it is good to study and learn, and be able to have those skills), is simply wrong. How much better to be, rather engaged in the process of learning, and let that be the intrinsic reward. We will have better people.
I believe (opening up a bit here) that what happeend to me in music was, I was allowed to be more expressive, and less analytical, also less about, producing a grade. I didn’t value grades — already had them. They did nothing for me socially and weren’t hard enough to earn. They di dnot increase my sense of self-worth at all, as an adolescent. I learned to be ashamed about things that had no basis in shame, including my (good) grades, and so forth. The act of going to and from a classroom is not exactly a major accomplishment in life. The ability to help others learn to do something, or to engage as a human being; to build something, to design something, to perform something. But to fill in the correct multiple choice answers on a test sheet according to data you were fed in a textbook? That’s nothing; it’s for the convenience of the school comparing you to everyone else. . . . .. I remember failing on purpose, just to see what it felt like. I still graduated at the top of my (public high school class). The skills needed in college were entirely different. Thank God, there were pianos and there was singing, which led to different types of social interactions.
I believe that what I noticed about this book was when she spoke about the intense hatred, rivalry and bitter suspicious, ongoing, between women in particular. I have been dealing with this for the many years since I left my ex-husband, after the difficulties while dealing personally with him in the home. It really is wearing to the soul, and saddening. I am still seeking and believing for some of these family issues to resolve, but I feel sad when I see that, for the sake of eradicating my world view and values, my children were, literally, uprooted from contact with me, as if I might contaminate them somehow, with self-confidence, and the courage to be different. The courage to expect a woman to have equal legal rights to a man, in America, our country. So far, “NO DEAL”!!}}}}
LOPEZ: What’s it like to be a journalist in Egypt? Worse than life under the Patriot Act?
DARWISH: I was a journalist in Egypt in the early seventies when I worked at the Middle East News Agency in Cairo, Egypt. I was an editor, translator, and censor. As a censor I decided what was to be allowed for publication and what was not allowed. Egyptian media outlets at the time were controlled more or less by the government. Journalists were not really journalists in the Western sense of looking to expose government corruption and internal problems; they were more concerned in blaming the outside world. Military information was totally off limits in reporting. I once said to a fellow journalist that I met a Jew in one of my trips and that that was the first time I met a Jew. The colleague warned me that Arab journalists who communicate with Jews in foreign countries come back to Egypt in a box. Very few Arab journalists were even aware of the true role of media in a society. As to Western life under the Patriot Act, I think it the opposite Arab government controlled Media. In the West it has often become Media controlled government where freedom of the Press (having too much of a good thing) often comes before other important things in Western society, such as for example national security. Sometimes Western media has no tolerance for any restrictions and that can help America’s enemies.
LOPEZ: What made you leave Egypt?
DARWISH: I always regarded America as the land of hope, equality, and opportunity and that was my motivation. I also wanted to leave the Middle East with its problems, its jihad, its pride, anger, and anti-Semitism and above all the constant state of war with Israel.
I CAUTION, the United States of America, I CAUTION them to monitor the “us/them” mentality in every area of life. I CAUTIOn them to keep a lit on this vigilante return to Fatherhood, and the farming out of any conscience, guidance, and education of their young to anyone such as those in those in the Executive Branch of Government, who are presently engaged in establishing, on one hand a national religion (through a variety of means) and on the other hand, a totalitarian system in which choice is the heresy. Opting out of government involvement in the basic processes of life is a heresy.
There are aspects in which the fatherhood movement — as practiced, reminds me of the KKK. It is the same type of hate speech.
I am going to talk about another, very uncomfortable genocide I have read in some detail about (it just came up, and I continued reading, OK? It’s what I DO!) Rwanda. This is of interest to me because some churches protected, and some betrayed. Here is a personal, amazing story I ran across. Again, it is told by a woman:
“LEFT TO TELL“
In 1994, Rwandan native Ilibagiza was 22 years old and home from college to spend Easter with her devout Catholic family when the death of Rwanda’s Hutu president sparked a three-month slaughter of nearly one million ethnic Tutsis. She survived by hiding in a Hutu pastor’s tiny bathroom with seven other starving women for 91 cramped, terrifying days. This searing firsthand account of Ilibagiza’s experience cuts two ways: her description of the evil that was perpetrated, including the brutal murders of her family members, is soul-numbingly devastating, yet the story of her unquenchable faith and connection to God throughout the ordeal uplifts and inspires. This book is a precious addition to the literature that tries to make sense of humankind’s seemingly bottomless depravity and counterbalancing hope in an all-powerful, loving God.”
-Publisher’s Weekly, Starred Review, March 2006
We all ask ourselves what we would do if faced with the kind of terror and loss that Immaculée Ilibagiza faced during the genocide in her country. Would we allow fear and desperation to fill us with hatred or despair? And should we survive, would our spirit be poisoned, or would we be able to rise from the ashes still encouraged to fulfill our purpose in life, still able to give and receive love? In the tradition of Viktor Frankl and Anne Frank, Immaculée is living proof that human beings can not only withstand evil, but can also find courage in crisis, and faith in the most hopeless of situations. She gives us the strength to find wisdom and grace during our own challenging times.”
-Elizabeth Lesser, co-founder of the Omega Institute, and author of Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow
“Left to Tell is for anyone who is weary of the predictable “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” trance most of the world suffers from. Immaculée Ilibagiza breaks that spell by bravely quelling the storm within, and contacting a force so powerful that it allows her to calm the storm “without,” and more important, to forgive the “unforgivable.” Her story is an inspiration to anyone who is at odds with a brother, a nation, or themselves.”
-Judith Garten, teacher and counselor of The 50/50Work© and a child of the WWII Holocaust
(As far as I got on this post July 2, 2009
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Who is the “loco” in “In Loco Parentis” courts, again, this time?
I saw the article. I want to say… loudly …
WHO CARES ANYMORE??
Father, two boys found dead (video)
Who is the “loco” in “In Loco Parentis” courts, again, this time?
March 30, 2009 (WLS) — McLean County authorities say Michael Connolly and his two young sons have been found dead in rural Putnam County.
“Nine-year-old Duncan and 7-year-old Jack were the focus of an Amber Alert issued earlier this month.”
My commentary. 9 yr old and 7 yr old Jack did NOTHING in this case but submit to court-ordered visitation with their already violent father (see restraining order), after which someone killed them and stuffed them in their father’s car. They are (er, WERE), minors. Putting them as the subject of a sentence in this reporting just sounds dishonest. The Subject is grammatically responsible for the action of the verb. In this case, the dramatic “verb” is “were found.” See “The Grammar of Male Violence” (and reporting on it).
Yes, they “were.” They were #1 born. #2 into violent family #3 became the subject of a restraining order, I bet, along with their mother, who they probably witnessed being assaulted by their Dad, or the effects of it. Bad boys. They WERE, obviously, the sons of a woman who complied with court orders, because their Dad got them for that weekend. Bad boys. Next, they WERE kidnapped (in most states this is a felony crime). Then they WERE found, dead.
I’ve taught lots of children of this age range, and by and large, I would not call most of the little boys passive. Typically, they are quite active. Sometimes, I hear, enough so to require Ritalin, etc.
OK, Suppose we don’t know WHO killed them yet. Let’s Get Honest about REPORTING, folks. Maybe after that, something might happen to address the dishonesty of “family court” or “restraining orders” in combination with Visitation, PERIOD.
I am so sick of hearing stories like this. Should I just never read the news again, and hope it’s not my kids?
My kids were stolen on an overnight visitation too. I warned the police too, and not just once. I warned everyone that was involved. That includes police, friends, family members (4 of whom I later learned were endorsing and approving this; there WERE no legal grounds to switch custody suddenly, so the hired thug (my ex) just did it (with help from woman#2) and not in a vacuum. My written documentation of concern about this goes back two years before it happened. My daughter diaried, one year in advance, and left it out plainly, in my own journal, that she’d feel more comfortable if she knew a code language. Stupid me, I focused more on the preventing the event than the developing of such a code language). I placed her in front of counselor experienced in DV, for a safe confidante (as the entire family was already split along the fault line of “but he’s a nice guy?” analogy, primarily). (Nice guys don’t assault pregnant wives, folks. Not repeatedly. The action means you lost the appellation “nice” or should).
FOLKS, IN LOCO PARENTIS IS NUTS! The key to knowing is CARING. More about the life of the children, physical lives, physical safety, than the “rights” of the perpetrator. That is what someone committing violence against an intimate should be called, until the behavior, attitude is changed and reparations made. This almost never happens, so let the name STICK, and stop trying to ice over the cracks in the family cake; it shows through.
I would like to remind the general public of something. We have a serious problem in the Family Courts of the United States. KNOWING is driven by CARING. Pronouncing one cares is not an indicator. LISTENING is.
I have so experienced this I do not know myself anymore, some days. I know that my (absent, FYI), daughters do not know me any more, and the very little I’ve seen them, they are changed, absent the buffering I provided to the shut-down of their lives. There are so many verbal/mental/land mines they (and I, now als0) must avoid that, someone, one is really tempted to adjust personality to accommodate.
I will yell, jump, do circus tricks, if it will make a difference. Speaking in a reasonable tone, complying with all court orders, and telling the truth as a mother’s instinct reported, did not save: Connolly, Castillo, Freeman (Australia), or many many others.
The courts are punishing Moms for caring. THIS is partly now. Damn! !!!
The three-week-old search ended in tragedy about 100 miles south of Chicago.
[As I point out elsewhere on my blog, generic non-person, irrelevant detail nouns take on a life of their own, distracting from the central matter. A judge, somewhere, probably listened to a mediator or custody evaluator, SOMEwhere, follow their prescriptions, per policies set in place in the late 1980s / early 1990s and funded to this day, to enforce the theology that a child without a father is a fish without water.
It is up to the larger public NOT in these courts –either as litigants or married to one, or employed by them, or having a profession sustained by them (now WHAT % of the populace does this leave unaffected?) to make itself actually not only larger (which it is), but VOCAL, and INVOLVED, and LEARNED in the vocabulary principals and players. AND then do something appropriate. At some point, the “at least that’s not My neighborhood, family, kids, wife, police officer, lawsuit, judicial district, etc. ” the “it’s not my business” theology needs to be confronted. Please help, I say. Stop picking up the broken souls floating downstream in “social programs” and stop the breaking which is starting FAR, far closer to the top than imaginable.
Michael Connolly, 40, failed to return the boys to their mother – his ex-wife – on Sunday, March 8.
Initially, investigators thought Connolly might be in the Chicago area where his relatives live in southwest suburban Oak Lawn. But now, authorities say they found bodies matching the descriptions of the two missing Leroy, Illinois, brothers and cancelled the Amber Alert.
Authorities say the children’s bodies were found Sunday inside a car registered to Michael Connolly. Police happened upon the 1991 Dodge Dynasty after receiving a call about a suspicious vehicle in a secluded area. At around 6 p.m. Sunday, investigators examined the vehicle and found two deceased boys in the back seat area. The body of a man matching Michael Connolly’s description was found about 60 feet west of the car. Autopsies have been scheduled.
The sheriff has not said if there were any obvious signs of trauma or if a weapon was recovered.
On the day that the boys disappeared, there was a restraining order in place against Michael Connolly because authorities say he continued to harass his ex-wife. The two had divorced in 2007 after 13 years of marriage.
Let’s talk about this. The restraining order folk is ONE foot of a large, virtual, giant marching across the land. The “but kids need their Dads” (symbolized primarily by family courts) is the other large, stomping foot. Clunk, Clunk Clunk across the land, and in circles, gradually clearing the territory of live, untraumatized people. Stomp, Stomp, Stomp down the decades. These feet are connected at the Head. The Head believes itself to know what’s best for the people below (who are relatively speaking, ants). The legs above the feet are unequal, moreover one foot faces forward, and the other backward. This is why it is so HARD to get free from abuse. The restraining order purports to confront, protect, and separate. The family court purports to, and presumes this is advisable and possible, reunite, supervise, reform, and modify a relationship that JUST SPLIT.
It’s mowing down families. As we speak, this appears to be another one (details unclear yet)(2 adult males & 2 handguns inside, I DNK if this was DV related or not. DK it was not the kids’ fault…..):
6 Killed In California Home Shooting
At Least 3 Of Victims Children In Murder-Suicide In Silicon Valley
SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 30, 2009
Santa Clara police officer stand watch outside the crime scene where six people, including at least three children, were killed and one was critically injured late Sunday night in an apparent murder-suicide at a townhome development in Santa Clara, Calif., on Monday, March 30, 2009. (AP Photo/Tony Avelar)
Passive tense. The spin, obviously is on the guns, and the body count, not the criminal behavior:
“Investigators are looking into whether Stewart may have targeted the facility because his estranged wife worked there, police said Monday. [Why doesn’t this surprise me?]
McKenzie said investigators are looking at whether what he called domestic issues may have been the motive for Stewart to open fire on his defenseless victims. Investigators said multiple weapons were recovered at the scene. [HEY! I have and had “domestic issues.” I never yet took up a gun to solve them. It ain’t the “domestic issues”].McKenzie said the woman – whom he did not name – worked at the nursing home. He said he believed that the couple was recently separated but that he did not have any other details. He was not sure if the woman was at the nursing home at the time of the shootings. “
Incidentally, re: Heroic Nurse, yes, the nurse WAS heroic. Not mentioned in THIS title is that a gunman was going after his ex-wife, and she happened to work in a nursing home. It “bled” so it “led,” but a choice was made to discuss the hero rather than the “villain” in this one.
Maybe we should just outlaw divorce (which appears to be dangerous). Knowing this, many women would probably just not marry, or even attempt to fully intimately bond with a partner, or for that matter, their kids. We ARE headed that way, right?
- “Sue Griffin … said she was an ex-wife of Stewart’s who hadn’t spoken with him since their 2001 divorce, told reporters that in the past Stewart had exhibited “violent tendencies” from time to time.
- “He’d get mad because of things that didn’t go his way. He never really hurt me, but he would get mad and blow up,” she said.
- Griffin, who divorced Stewart after 15 years of marriage, said he had been trying to reach her during the past week through family members.
- She said Stewart claimed to have cancer and needed to go away. But he gave no hint of the violence he had planned for this quiet Carolina town. “
BACK to the FATHER ON WEEKEND VISITATION WITH TWO SONS….
Joint custody with a batterer is unsafe and impossible. It hurts the kids. They will sooner or later HAVE to pick a side. It also hurts the communities surrounding these two people. They’re SPLIT, dammit! Make a fair judgment based on whatever brought them into court to start with, based on any criminal behaviors. Apart from criminal behaviors, leave them alone.
Stop hiring more experts to create more names to reframe existing, graphically uncomfortable to describe behavior that, done by a stranger, would be cause for arrest. STOP the thought crime, the behavior crimes, the NOT being dependent on social services crime (among which is homeschooling, or being a successful single parent, I found out), and the other such like.
I think the 10 commandments are JUST fine, including not only the one the Catholics tend to omit (#2), the one the Protestants and the Catholics, generally speaking violate weekly (#4, as I recall, it’s the sabbath), and the one the state habitually violates (Honor your mother and father), along with the don’t commit adultery, perjury (“bear false witness”) and #s 1 & 10 which, if one does NOT violate, it’s hard to live a reasonable life in this republic. The first relates to not having other Gods before this one (which is generally looked on askance around these parts) and “thou shalt not covet,” which is related. Accordingly, we have to consume, be consumers, and raise our children to be good little materialistic consumers, because of the economy. This is more likelyo what (I feel) the womb to tomb concept of “public education” (etc.) is about. How complex is that, really?
The Chicago-area family of the two missing brothers had pleaded with the boys’ father to bring them home.
(Well — see below– the father had already made it clear his intent was to punish his ex-wife. FYI, pleading with some in on the position to extort you (i.e.,hostages taken) doesn’t generally work. Trust me.)
“We love the boys so much. We want them back. We want everybody back. We want our family back together,” said Joyce Connolly, Michael Connolly’s aunt.
The boys’ mother, Amy Leichtenberg, said she warned a judge her ex-husband might take off with the children.
“I told him he was a flight risk. My attorney told him he was a flight risk. Nobody believed me,” said Leichtenberg.
[That was the Amber alert, coming from someone who was paying attention.]
Police had said there was reason to be worried about the boys.
“We are concerned because we’ve had some incidents in the past with Mr. Connolly that indicate he is not a stable individual and that he makes verbal threats towards himself, the children and his ex-wife,” Chief Gordon Beck, LeRoy Police Department, said during the search.
ALL of this behavior is self-explanatory in a “Conduit System” frozen in its rigidity. Major players in the situation KNEW that this man was a risk for kid-snatching. The fact a domestic violence restraining order was actually necessary (presumed in that it was granted), is itself a danger sign. I feel that not to jump, shout, make a stink and in short react in a Non-Numb manner is necessary at times to counter then Numb-Dumb responses of the “that’s just waht you said” mentality, driven by “children need their fathers, we are a fatherless nation, Dads Count too, and so forth” grants system driving the mentality of the court system which is driving families into the ground, sometimes more than literally, as in this case. I happen to listen to and know women who have lost their children to batterers, and we repeat this experience so often — kids being abused, children being stolen by the father on an overnight, sometimes out of state, or in my case, in-state (meaning Amber Alert didn’t even squeak, police wouldn’t act, and judge, thereafter, refused to give a factual and legal basis for (her) decision.))
If I’m run-on, it’s intentional, maybe to counter the Shut-Up system that continues to function in it’s blunderbuss manner to smack at families, emotionally, after someone has filed a “restraining order,” and generally after plenty of previous smacking around, intimately-speaking (“IPV”). I am about to blow the calm and light-hearted demeanor of this blog with the severity of what’s up. I have spent decades (two, so far) with this issue, and attempted to live my life around it, leave with my heart in my mouth, raise our daughters and work around it. In the process, and I’m not at all the only one, I have been after abuse exposed to the worst of the worst of the system, it seems, in the highest reaches of its authority, and sometimes within my own family.
“He has always told me,
cause I took the kids from him,
that I would suffer just like he did,” said Leichtenberg (Mother).
Well, he was a man of his word.
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Irreconciliable differences?
Decades after mediation became the model in divorce, and was pushed worldwide (starting in Calif., especially in the 1980s), it still has a sour taste…
Hey — Can we talk about consequences of this doctrine, yet??? This is the U.K., only last fall (Sept. 2008). I was googling another incident, and:
Kate Hilpern, in “The Guardian” asks:
Ending it all
This week’s killing of two little girls by their father, who then killed himself, is the latest in a shocking tally of so-called ‘family wipe-outs’. What drives men, often described as devoted to their children, to carry out such crimes? And can we stop them? Kate Hilpern reports
Every six to eight weeks (and lately, more frequently) a man or a woman – usually a man – kills their partner or their children and then themselves. Most of these cases are never reported. David Wilson, professor of criminology at Birmingham City University, explains that, somewhere along the line, our perception of murder has become warped and “murder-suicides” don’t quite fit prevailing news values. “Most people have a view of murder – which is very much constructed by the media – as stranger-perpetrated and requiring police to try to catch those perpetrators. In fact, the clear-up [rate] for murder [is currently around] 88% and that’s because you don’t have to be a Cracker to work out who’s done it. When it comes to children, the most likely person to kill them is their parent, just as when it comes to adults, the most likely person is their partner.”
No, this wasn’t in my world view growing up, either. . . Yours??? Theirs??
This article intelligently addresses several of the primary issues, such as what these were NOT (temporary insanity). It WAS predictable, and probably avoidable. It WAS about power and revenge. Frequently, the woman was ignored. Precursors besides clear threats, and a history of battering the woman, include often depression, and recent or long-term unemployment or unemployment. And/or stalking. Clear refusal to obey orders. I personally KNOW these things (all of them), and it scares the bejeebers out of me.
What has frightened me, if possible, much, much more, is that with each return to a family court judge, there is no alarm, fright, concern, or apparent belief of the warning signs. Instead, there is this kind of “stupor,” as in, where’s the blood? When was the last time you were taken to the emergency room. Was there an actual threat to kill?
No, not this time. The point was made clear years ago, and has continued to be made clear through enforcement of minor requests as orders (or else), or taking my daughters when I attempted to set a line in the sand — or collect child support arrears.
To be taken with an ex-spouse in front of a court that refuses to believe (or review the file), and have a mutual knowing that this is not going to be taken seriously — and then to go and read the laws that say, it IS to be taken seriously — that is a very, very, frightening experience, my friends. It interferes with daily life often enough. How low can one lie? Is it possible to lie below the radar of such intense stubborn refusal to comply (with court orders), such flagrant challenging of them rubber stamped publically — but not for women.
“In other cases of murder suicide – which, despite the recent spate, have remained constant in terms of numbers for several decades – there is a very clear history of domestic violence. In other cases of murder suicide – which, despite the recent spate, have remained constant in terms of numbers for several decades – there is a very clear history of domestic violence. “
“Julia Pemberton’s ex-husband repeatedly warned her that he would kill her. It wasn’t that she didn’t take notice, as she told friends, family and police. Family court judges were aware of the terror. Her final 16-minute 999 call made headlines in 2004 when it was read out at the inquest into her and her 17-year-old son William’s murders, committed by her husband, who also killed himself.”
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I note that the address URL for this article read “/children.mentalhealth”
Here’s a wonderful excerpt from the AFCC website talking about how the “old” terminology of criminal law was just so inappropriate, outmoded, as it were, for family law. After all, it’s a “family,” right?
(This is from the AFCC link to the right, the history page):
“The 1980s: The Mediation Explosion”
“The Children’s Bureau of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare awarded AFCC a research grant to study the effects of mediation on custody and visitation disputes in courts in Connecticut, Los Angeles and Minneapolis.
Interest in court-connected reconciliation counseling was diminishing, and joint custody, mediation, domestic violence and stepfamilies were becoming central issues. The legislation boom had begun, and it was moving in a strong wave from California across the United States. Mandatory mediation and joint custody were hot topics.AFCC’s Mediation Committee hosted three national symposia on mediation standards between 1982 and 1984. Representatives of more than thirty organizations participated in developing the first set of Model Standards of Practice for Family and Divorce Mediation. By the late 1980s, mediation of custody and visitation disputes was mandatory in jurisdictions in more than 33 states.”
I have experienced mediation 3 times. It was a farce each time. It also was a violation of due process, and immediately upended the family dynamics — and households. I am utterly opposed to its use in DV, and the family courts are utterly adamant about it up here. WHY, one wonders. Streamlines the process, no messy “reviewing” of the court record, or the history of DV that perhaps led to the breakup to start with.
Perhaps there should be an automatic safety rule, as Dads feel so disempowered, and need to act quickly to restore the balance — a cooling off period of at least 3 months, perhaps. Perhaps. I don’t know, but mediation will not work when the power balance includes physical violence and intimidation. Depending on how one defines “works.” A 32 year old man, here (above) was sure he’d win. When he didn’t, he found another way to “win.” We need another paradigm.
Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History 
Toms River NJ femicide/suicide post-mortem concludes strangled DYFS worker should’ve hooked up with “agencies such as ourselves”
with 8 comments
She “did everything right,” filed a protective order and “reported every violation,” and even moved out of a home she owned, but still her death was her fault, because she (being a state employee) didn’t hook up with “agencies such as ourselves” to develop a safety plan. it wasn’t the county prosecutor’s fault because, well, sometimes domestic violence just “spirals out of control.” It wasn’t her coworkers’ faults (I don’t say that it was), because they (self-report) they were concerned and talking about intervention. it wasn’t any police officer’s fault, because bail should’ve been set higher. It wasn’t, as far as I can tell, anyone’s fault, is the general conclusion.
It is a self-defense mechanism, and entirely human, to ask “why” when something this horrific happens. It challenges a lot of theories (myths?) about the field of “domestic violence” and shakes up one’s confidence in authorities that were supposedly handling these problems so the rest of us could get about our lives.
Clearly it is in the interest of the stability of the social fabric (at least for those not IN such relationships currently, for whom stability basically doesn’t really exist outside the self-created kind) that said authorities should be interviewed, published, do press conferences and give an explanation. Then the public can accept their explanation, or ease all but the most persistent of interests, and go about their business, while the police, prosecutors, judges, and others continue to go about THEIR business of issuing protective orders that don’t protect, and releasing people with clear criminal intent and identified disrect for the law, on their own “recognizance.”
Case in point, this suicidal/murdering father was known to be a check-bouncer and significantly behind on child support. When he came up with $1,500 bail, why were no questions asked about why he could raise a bit less than that for his past-due support? He had 3 sons.
Why would not, of all places, the coworkers at DFYS where she worked, not see that this man was seeing $$ in a relationship, even though she herself may have thought this meant “love.” (or companionship).
Here’s the article, then my commentary/questions — below it. This is the 3rd article I’ve posted on the Zindell/Frisco situation in Toms River, NJ.
August 17, 2009
Toms River murder-suicide highlights domestic violence cycle
{{That’s ONE spin. I personally — from afar — think it actually highlights system failure, and inexcusable system failure, too. What about ‘evidence-based practice in this field, in NJ?}}
I would like to share my dialogue on reading the post-mortems of this account:
First of all, any sense that in Ocean County, the word isn’t out about this type of crime, should be made clear:
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE CASES REPORTED BY NEW JERSEY STAR LEDGER RESULTING IN MURDER-SUICIDE FROM 1998-2008
(The Blood & Tears of Domestic Violence: A Survivor’s Revelation)(note: she has a Victim Safety plan as well, read a few paragraphs: http://www.DonnaSavage.com)
NOW REGARDING TOMS RIVER 2009:
Sources of commentary (per this article):
{{note” The initial violations did not involve acts of tremendous violence” . notice attitude. This is what i ran across in my own case, when I attempted to tell police, in an incident that I took violations of court orders seriously. I also took threats to abduct seriously. Too bad they chose not to. I have explained to a policeman in a situation that because of the background of DV (and this was a situation that frightened me and had me trapped at home in a cul de sac situation without a vehicle to escape with) I am taking this seriously. It was “blown off.” This “blowing it off” response by a single policeman in my area was taken, apparently, as a declaration of “open season” for that season, and since, culminating — let’s hope — in felony child-stealing one and a half years later, as my reports of concern about that ALSO were “blown off”, shouted down, etc.
SO, . . ..
My question, to this response:
1. Who is Prosecutor Marlene Lynch Ford, and what does her (press conference statement) exonerating any type of legal/judicial/ or law enforcement miscarriage mean by “it just spiraled out of control” refer to specifically? Because it seems to me that a man was put into a mental hospital, when incarceration (without bail) would’ve been more appropriate, given the “lethality indicators” in his case. That’s my opinion.
2. How could a prosecutor be unaware of the prior lethality indicators in this case — was it lack of training? Was she so young and just unaware that economic abuse is an indicator, and that the love of money might be a motivator? My take on the situation was that someone in the police/legal community WANTED this woman dead, because otherwise, they would’ve taken appropriate measures to make sure she was not killed. How did her stalker know where she lived, since she’d left her own home (per this article), etc.
Has Prosecutor Lynch Ford had a family?
COMMENT FROM: Catholic Charities Providence House Domestic Violence Services Associate Director, Mary Pettrow:
From what I can see, Mary Pettrow is very experienced and understands the dangers of domestic violence, AND the word was out in Ocean County, among the powers that be. I searched, and found 11 categories of help through this Providence House listed in Ocean County alone! through Catholic Charities. They appear to be a press go-to resource after another DV murder. This one, in 2006 in which, of course, the neighbors and police had no idea. . ..
Neighbors, police had no indication of domestic problems
September 22, 2006
The Asbury Park Press consulted with Mary Pettrow of Providence House for an article on the murder of a Lacey Township woman. Pettrow told the Press that domestic violence is often a progressive pattern and that “warning signs are not always apparent to outside people.”
CRIMINAL DEFENSE TO DV CHARGES IN OCEAN COUNTY — A FACTOR IN THE CASE??
In my attempt to look up who that was in Lacey township in 2006, I came across this Criminal Defense firm, stating that while Northern NJ has plenty of lawyers, who’s a person accused of something to turn to in Southern (incl. Ocean County) Jersey?
(NOTE: the list of incidents above, dating back to 2000 was also found in my attempt to find out more about the 2006 this same Providence House associate director/director, had been consulted about 3 years earlier.)
And here’s their assertions of how aggressively they will defend against “domestic abuse” (notice: not “domestic violence”) in this Southern NJ shore area. While it is actually domestic VIOLENCE (even in the title to this section), notice how in the text it becomes “abuse” which somehow doesn’t sound so, well, you know, ‘violent.” NOTE: this isn’t accidental. NOTE: Well-known (and well-funded) DV group out of Minnesota has a well-known “Domestic ABUSE Intervention Program”, as is a different, “Domestic Abuse Project” out of Minneapolis with a well-known author in the field (Edleson, if I”m not mistaken — which I might be). Whether this is simply in those cases because a vowell makes a better acronym than the letter “V,” or because of ain intention to downgrade the severity of the issue in the public’s minds (i.e., in their language describing it), I cannot say, in that case at least. But I am on alert for the terminology-switch, for sure. This a criminal defense attorney firm (and domestic VIOLENCE is a crime — either felony, or misdemeanor) (and it sometimes escalates up to death(s)), so when that entity chooses to downgrade the term, I notice.
{{NOTE: isn’t that an interesting assembly of charges that seem to come hand in hand with “domestic violence” charges? Yet in the venue of family court, they are still convening studies (and taking federal grant money, LOTS of it) to “explicate” the context of this behavior in custody determinations, even though laws exist in many states saying that batterers don’t make good parents. That’s probably WHY more research is “needed” to (reframe) the discussion.
This criminal defense firm also mentions — right up front — things that many women are not told, fleeing DV into the arms of the local justice center, or agency. They are told to file restraining orders, and make custody arrangements, and not told what is going to happen in the family law venue (which exists primarily in part to weaken consideration of crimes as crimes, I say), nor will they be reminded THIS:
The stage at which a woman with children is likely to be remembering these above privileges (and thank God for them) is likely to be after a custody-switch in the family law venue which violated this due process. However, the person opposing the charges is not so likely to be unaware of these rights.
I know this is quite a bit astray from the Toms River case, except my question is, after a murder in 2006, same thing, same Providence House director quoting the same truths about the domestic violence cycle, how come someone died THEN? (And who?) and what policy changed, if any, after that?
Per zoominfo: Indicator the Probation Dept. might have been aware:
The Probation Association of New Jersey, Local 106 – [Cached Version]
http://www.catholiccharitiestrenton.org/news_arch.php?PHPSESSID=a3e29bff11ce388b63df4f67a63387fd
Several articles here refer to Providence House, including that Prosecutor Lynch-Ford might have known about it, as well as police chiefs, mayors, Ocean County Freeholders, and others. So “what gives” that Ms. Zindell didn’t get to their doors yet, or feel she needed to?
There is also a significant article on this same web page about a parallel (??) treatment program for men, dating to 2008, Feb.
I remember a certain close to Valentine’s Day long ago, a severe and escalating incident involving guns (and a close call) was defused. The next day, or soon after, I attempted to discuss this in the religious, joint-counseling we had been recommended to (and did) attend. BIG . . .. BIG . . .. mistake. They didn’t want me to bring this up, so I shut up. I was asked (in a show of grandiose, after the incident, and public, pretense – – absent any repentance or apology or acknowledgement for how this incident had affected me, including from those counseling — to go attended a couples Sweetheart dinner and dance at the same church. I was still in shock, and went, and entering into the ladies’ room, recognizing someone I knew whose husband knew of the incident, I collapsed. The ladies room of this church was apparently a safer place (to me, emotionally), than the pastor’s office in the exact same hallway. After speaking my piece to a woman, I wiped up off my face, straightened up, and went out to the event. I have a photo from it; and look frozen. I don’t see that its import registered — at all — with anyone employed by the church.
So, here is an article around Valentine’s Day written from the perspective of a man counseling men who have been court-ordered into treatment for Violence against, presumably, their intimate partners From the same organization and page as the Providence House one:
From Violence to Compassion
February 14, 2008
{{read on: sounds like the men coming through the program helped talk them into abandoning said plan, including accepting women as equals….}}
{{LET’s GET HONEST, anecdotal commentary: When I brought this up to individuals in my own case, the exact truth, and have continued bringing it, up, I found no such audience or understanding. This is in fact the general attitude I have noticed in the family law venue, and (generally speaking) in other venues in which “experts” tell those who have actually “experienced” violence and near-death or other trauma (ongoing, often enough), how to view their own experiences — namely, to minimize them. This is in effect telling people NOT to trust their gut and NOT to trust their own assessments of things that they actually have gone through assessing and taking legal action on. As such, it’s condescending, and yes, we do (whether male or female) pick up on the condescension AND the power tactics. One reason we understand this is that domestic violence IS a power tactic. The violence part is about power, punishment, and refusal to take orders, particularly from a woman (inferior in the relationship. Again, and unfortunately, too many “faith institutions” echo the same dynamics, including Catholics, Catholic Charities and other large institutions of various sorts.}}
Which brings me to the point of Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood recipients in NJ. I thought, SURELY, the reason Ms. Zindell had to die was New Jersey somehow had missed the boat on udnerstanding that DV can be lethal, and they were also short of teaching “healthy marriages.” But here is someone out of Trenton, who is a devotee (apparently) of Dr. Sosny, who teaches, for a fee of course a Boot camp for Smart Marriage attendees.
(Where government programs meet market niches; we’re in it.)
Searching on David J Thomas (above’s) program area, Family Growth Services, it would appear that although there’s a high overlap with the department Ms. Zindell worked in, somehow a connection was made. Perhaps, because she wasn’t yet a “family”? Here:
Community and Population Served by the Organization
The Children and Family Service Division serves more than 500 abused and neglected children annually and attempts to also bring their families under the wing of its services. Its programs operate in Mercer, Burlington, Monmouth, and Ocean counties. Division programs are made possible by an extensive network of more than 700 employees and 400 volunteers. Many clients are referred to Catholic Charities from the corrections system or from the state Division of Youth and Family Services. ..Family Growth helps abusive families change violent patterns of interaction so that children can remain safely in their own home and rebuild their basic trust.
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Well, that’s it for this (now long) post, for now!
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Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up
August 17, 2009 at 8:24 PM
Posted in "Til Death Do Us Part" (literally), After She Speaks Up - Reporting Domestic Violence and/or Suicide Threats, Fatal Assumptions, Lethality Indicators - in News
Tagged with domestic violence, Intimate partner violence, murder-suicides, retaliation for reporting, social commentary, U.S. Govt $$ hard @ work..