Posts Tagged ‘parental kidnapping’

A Substantial Background Check and History on Certain Problems, Programs, Persons, Organizations and Policies (Republished from this blog’s Jan. 2018 Front Page)

Yet another AFCC-style wet dream… Someone needs to mop up around here. [‘Conflict Happens'[like in the Seal Beach massacre?]/High-Conflict Institute’, Publ. Nov. 16, 2011]

This Image from Oct. 2011 AFCC Regional Training Conference“ (“Pdf” of full conference brochure from AFCCnet.org website~~>)Working with Violent and High-Conflict Families: A Race with No Winners” in Indianapolis added during May 2018 post update. The phrase “high conflict” (no hyphen, only) used 18 times in the brochure. For a change, the word “alienation” was used only twice…

Yet another AFCC-style wet dream… Someone needs to mop up around here. [‘Conflict Happens'[like in the Seal Beach massacre?]/High-Conflict Institute’, Publ. Nov. 16, 2011] (Case-sensitive shortlink here ends “-UD”)

(Some format & minor amount of content updates (such as the image to the right and some others and post title extension starting at the ‘[” added May 14, 2018: I had occasion to reference this post on Twitter). Almost 24,000 words, but still important basic reading though originally written barely two years into this blog:

HAVE YOU HEARD THE LATEST LANGUAGE BLIP FROM THE ASSOCIATION OF FAMILY & CONCILIATION COURTS CULT?

From the “High Conflict Institute”

“CONFLICT HAPPENS“

No longer are DIVORCEs or FAMILIES “high-conflict” but “People” are. In fact, the issues are not the issues either.

When someone comes up to you with an issue — he or she (<=the usual application) doesn’t really mean what s/he says and is not to be taken at face value (ask the forensic psychologists). The REAL problem with family courts isn’t the family courts, and it isn’t even high-conflict families, or high conflict all by its rocky-mountain-high* self. The REAL problem is high-conflict people. Buy this book [“Splitting”] to know if you’re dealing with one:

AFCC 47th Annual (2010, Denver), Traversing the Trail of Alienation

<=**AFCC 47th Conference, Denver, CO, June 2010 (“Traversing the Trail of Alienation,” a trail with “Mile-High Conflict and Mountains of Emotions”)

[BELOW: Image link from 2011 broken, update provided 2018 from New Harbinger Publications 5/14/2018, of Mr. Eddy who I notice is also law professor at Pepperdine University (Conservative Christian, has a Pat Boone Center for the Family promoting marriage & relationship classes (the kind run through nonprofits that get HHS grants), etc….]. I also added image of the other author, “Walking on Eggshells” Randy Krieger. Notice (it’s small print, but visible) “Splitting” as a book says it offers “the legal and psychological information you need.” Coincidentally, AFCC composed (essentially, if judges are included under “legal”) of lawyers and psychologists/behavioral health practitioners, etc.). ]]

Promo for “Splitting” from New Harbinger Publications

Bill Eddy image from publications page, Click image to enlarge. Note his affiliations.

Randi Krieger, from publications page (for “Splitting” book out 2011)

Splitting

Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder

By authors: Bill Eddy LCSW, JD, Randi Kreger

This book is advertised with others on alienation at the NCRC (more, below), as they are in the same professional circles. In fact, it appears he’s on the payroll here (2018 comments: link was to Canadian Bar Association. Search of “high-conflict” brought up just 3 articles, but not accessible without sign-up, which I didn’t at this point). (or is “Senior Family Mediator”) as well as his own split-off “High conflict institute” (see last sentence at the link I just provided).

Books by William Eddy, LCSW, Esq.

Bill Eddy provides Divorce and Family Law Mediation at NCRC as well as training for family law attorneys and other professionals at the High Conflict Institute. Please visit HCI atwww.highconflictinstitute.com for more information on Mr. Eddy’s trainings. He has written numerous books on the subjects of families and high conflict personalities, listed below.

High Conflict People in Legal Disputes
Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing a Borderline or Narcissist
Understanding & Managing High Conflict Personalities (DVD Set)
Don’t Alienate The Kids! Raising Resilient Children While Avoiding High Conflict Divorce

It’s All Your Fault!

Bill sure was ahead of his AFCC time. While others were simply developing and lobbying for more parenting coordinator rights in Florida, Texas, and wherever — he was writing this book explaining that the Issue is not the Issue, and all the conflict in the family law venue really comes from disordered personalities in the court system.

Protect Yourself from Manipulation, False Accusations, and Abuse

Divorce is difficult under the best of circumstances. When your spouse has borderline personality disorder (BPD), narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), or is manipulative, divorcing can be especially complicated. While people with these tendencies may initially appear convincing and even charming to lawyers and judges, you know better—many of these “persuasive blamers” leverage false accusations, attempt to manipulate others, launch verbal and physical attacks, and do everything they can to get their way.

Splitting is your legal and psychological guide to safely navigating a high-conflict divorce from an unpredictable spouse. Written by Bill Eddy, a family lawyer, therapist, and divorce mediator, and Randi Kreger, coauthor of the BPD classic Stop Walking on Eggshells, this book includes all of the critical information you need to work through the process of divorce in an emotionally balanced, productive way.

I find it odd that he’s working with the author of “Stop walking on Eggshells” which someone gave me about halfway through the divorce fiasco, post-restraining order. They meant well, but like Lundy Bancroft’s “Why Does He DO That” — and regardless of some truths it may have held, neither one (conveniently) mentions the custody racket, financial incentive, fatherhood funding, welfare reform or in short anything which would give me a concise narrative of why the courts don’t take death threats followed by family suicide, or a stalking combined with previous death threats and violence, seriously — and insisted on psychologizing all terms.

People who have lived with this (and I acknowledge it exists) don’t need guides — they need out of the relationship.

Which is precisely what people working with the organization Mr. Eddy helps market through, are not going to let happen. Nope. If we wish to detach from a borderline personality, abuser, or simply an ex (and birth happened in there somewhere), we WILL be forced, most likely, to deal with an AFCC-devotee somewhere along the way — or most of the way along the way.

I have the book “Stop Walking on Eggshells” and it didn’t take to long to recognize it was an updated rebuttal of a 1970s feminist classic, (shown in 2005 version) Women and Madness (by Phyllis Chesler, PhD)

(Link expired: but see 12/31/1972 Review by Adrienne Rich. Reading it again now (2018) with my perspective, both experientially in the American family courts (post-battering interventions, 21st century) and having read so much anti-woman, anti-mother, values-driven (garbage) from the same sources she critiqued originally in this book, I have to basically agree. (I also FYI had this book as a young woman).

It asks:

Why are so many women in therapy, on psychiatric medication, or in mental hospitals? Who decides these women are mad? Why do therapists have the power to deem a woman mentally ill when she asserts herself sexually, economically, or intellectually? Why are women pathologized, but not treated, when they exhibit a normal human response to abuse and stress – including the lifelong stress of second-class citizenship?

Phyllis Chesler confronts questions like these and persuasively argues that double standards of mental health and illness exist and that women are often punitively labeled as a function of gender, race, class, or sexual preference. Based on in-depth interviews with patients and an analysis of women’s roles in myths and history, Women and Madness is an incomparable work.

Originally published in 1972, this classic has sold over two-and-a-half million copies. Passionate and informative, with a new introduction that examines the trauma of psychiatric labeling and envisions a psychology of liberation for the ages, this special twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Women and Madness remains frighteningly up-to-date.

By now there should also be one called “Children and Madness,” for the labeling children get when they report abuse, when they are active and assertive, and when they need to be controlled after any of the above. That’s been documented elsewhere, and comes under

Psychotropic Drug Abuse in Foster Care Costs Government Billions :

Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up

November 16, 2011 at 10:48 am

Posted in 1996 TANF PRWORA (cat. added 11/2011), Domestic Violence vs Family Law, Mandatory Mediation, Parent Education promotion, Parenting Coordination promotion, PhDs in Psychology-Psychiatry etc (& AFCC), Psychology & Law = an AFCC tactical lobbying unit, Where's Mom?

Tagged with AFCC, AFCC Conference Rhetoric, AFCC language mixups, Alienated Definitions: Cal Penal Code v Custody Evaluators define "Domestic Violence", Alienated from Reality - CourtTalk vs StreetFacts, Allana Krause case, Beltway Sniper, Bill Eddy LCSW JD, CA extradites & jails another protective mother- Schmidt -Saavedra case, early Richard Gardner Quotes, Education, HHS-TAGGS grants database, High Conflict Institute, Incorporated Where? The Institute for Relational Harm and Public Pathology Education, Interstate Custody Wars, John - Mildred Muhammad Beltway Sniper Case, John Slowiaczek Omaha AAML, Loretta Frederick BWJP-AFCC alliance, Megan Hunter AZ courts, MPDI, NCRC National Conflict Resolution Center, parental kidnapping, Parenting Coordination, PAS High-Conflict Families and Promoting Treatment in the custody process, Phyllis Chesler Women and Madness, RTI Relationship Training Institute (San Diego), Self-Defense from DV, social commentary, Supervised Visitation, The Baker Act (1970 involuntary psychiatric incarcerations), Where's Mom?-Dad beats 5yr old daughter in head for alphabet mistake (Christopher D. Curry - Akron Ohio), women's rights

Reader Quiz — What Decade Were These Stories? About Fathers..

with 2 comments

My last post (Luzerne County) was at least a triple-header, ending with some emotion over a mother of three who has taken her case to the international level in disgrace at the U.S. treatment of her civil rights.

I am changed as I blog also. Maybe it’s just another bunch of incidents to you, but to me, I learn and expand the context of this system, look at its history, reflect when compared with my immediate reality and acquired readings.

What I learned — yesterday — is this: Restraining orders are not enforceable, and probably never were. IF a police officer wishes to arrest, or needs to, the RO may make his job easier. But if he or she witnessed a violation of it, and does NOT wish to arrest, the protected person has no entitlement to that arrest, no matter whose life is at risk. Now that “Castle Rock v. Gonzales” has gone to the Supreme Court and been turned back, it is being quoted in similar cases to protect the officers (not the women or children). While most of government’s operations are self-justified on providing services and protection to the populace, who they are diligently training to expect this from them (and not from within or their local communities). This is closer to feudalism, serfdom, and monarchy.

U.S., Rome, or the British Empire?

It’s time to expose the truths that in the United States of America, and have moved from being “the colonies” (with the colonized populations that came along, or were removed from their lands during westward expansion) to being colonized (if not virtually cannibalized) by our own elected leaders, many who have some real “bad attitudes” towards those they are supposed to represent and serve. Power tends to congregate with power, and unless it’s kept in check, will simply continue to do so, justifying it with manipulation and manufactured “needs.”

(#1) we are closer to monarchy then ever before, and willingly/passively in more denial of it also, and
(#2) that this emperor has no clothes has been known for a long time; but the tacit “Bread-and-circuses” agreement to pretend we don’t know, is wearing as thin as the “social services” provided by the superstructure. and
(#3) in a country such as the U.S., with this Constitution elected officials are sworn with an oath to uphold, the pretense that in practice we are actually OPERATING as a republic (not democracy) is even more deceptive.

Who has the bread, the weapons, and the supply lines to the decision-makers? Who’s issuing the propaganda? That’s the power base. As of about 1980, 1991 (creation of the Health & Human Services/Administration for Children and Families Dept./Operational Div. in the Executive Branch of Government of which the CEO is our President), the fields of propagation (family design) and the downward to Head Start & Home Visitation (education) up through university (foundations sponsoring studies and institutes, often regarding fatherhood and marriage, and the entire work force) have gone from idolizing motherhood (while tolerating beating mothers) and, in response to mothers getting OUT of some of that (feminism/violence against women movement, battered shelters, etc.) to scapegoating single mothers on welfare (for being on welfare), (see bottom of my post), to simply eliminating the word mother from association with the word “family” or “children.”

This is starting to resemble the planned production of human beings from womb to tomb, with the aide of pharmaceutics, apparently, and mental health professionals to categorize and drug the dissidents, which any mother in her right mind would be when she’s been beaten in the home, or terrorized there (or for attempting to leave it) and has noticed — which is what mothers do — the effect of this on her children. They are educated to subjugation and only to the level of their intended place in a fully managed society.

When I say “womb” to “tomb,” I do mean just that . . . . It’s being studied and categorized, and one major database is at ICPSR below. Fertility, lethality, and population studies in 3 urban centers (Chicago, Boston, San Antonia, TX).

Those “in” and cooperate on the planning and distribution of this will prosper, while the supply lasts, and receive government grants and contracts in abundance, which will then compromise them from informing the subject matter (human beings) what the overall plan is. For example

HQ in Denver: PSI (“policy-studies.com” is the URL, “Performance, Services, Integrity” is the motto)
- Under Child Support Enforcement (one of the 3 major “solutions” area they outsource):
  - Noncustodial Parent Programs (“Through our innovative approach, PSI can help increase your collections and improve results for families. Our NCP program expertise extends across the following areas”)
    - Case management and community resource referrals
    - Enhanced child support services
    - Employment and training assistance
    - Peer support for NCPs
    - Parenting and conflict resolution classes
    - Access and visitation services
    - Mediation services
    - Mental health and substance abuse referrals
    - Legal referrals
HQ in Los Angeles: AFCC (“Association of Family & Conciliation Courts“)
- AFCC brings together members of multiple disciplines in the public, private and nonprofit sectors, from all over the world. As a nonprofit professional association, AFCC is unique because members do not share a common profession. Instead, AFCC members share a strong commitment to education, innovation and collaboration in order to benefit communities, empower families and promote a healthy future for children.
- “History of Innovation and Positive Change”For more than 45 years, AFCC and its members have served as a catalyst for generating major reforms. Dispute resolution processes such as child custody mediation, parenting coordination, and divorce education are just a few of the innovative ideas developed by AFCC members. AFCC developed Models Standards of Practice for Family and Divorce Mediators, Child Custody Evaluators and Parenting Coordinators. Task forces and special projects address the ongoing challenges faced by AFCC members and the families they serve. AFCC actively disseminates innovations and ideas {“Parental Alienation, anyone? Mandatory mediation, anyone? Shared parenting, presumption anyone?”} to its members. The ripple effect can be seen in courts and communities throughout the world. {ONE of those stories I copy at length, below, in blue. The ripple effect was most definitely felt, and you can read about it, below.}

HQ in Denver: what I call “CPR” (Center or Policy Research) [Since 1981, 6 women, only!]

Childcare and Education;
Child Support;
Child Welfare;
Court Services;
Health and Medical Issues;
Incarceration and Reentry;
Mediation and Alternative Dispute Resolution;
Fatherhood and Child Access;
Poverty; and
Violence and Intimate Partner Violence.
(OH, and CPR’ssttreamlined connection Connection with Feds:likely HHS & DOJ depts:
- “To make contracting with CPR easier for federal government clients, CPR is a Management, Organizational and Business Improvement Services (MOBIS) and U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) contract”

In Ann Arbor, MI: “ICPSR” (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, since 1962 ) Member universities/institutions HERE:

Sponsors

ICPSR partners with several federal statistical agencies and foundations to provide access to their data resources.
search on CPR person “Jessica Pearson” – 1 study (listed below, this is link to it)

Study Design:	Data collection involved a collaboration with the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) in the administration and analysis of this survey. Court programs providing divorce mediation and/or custody evaluations in 1993 were targeted. The questionnaire was mailed in late 1993 to 200 institutional members of the AFCC and active providers of family and divorce services in the National Center for State Courts database. A total of 149 public-sector divorce mediation and custody/visitation counseling providers responded with information on their official policies and procedures for identifying domestic violence among the population served, and divorce mediation practices and policies in cases with allegations of spousal violence.
Sample:	Institutional members of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) and active family and divorce service providers from the National Center for State Courts database.

Study Design:

Data collection involved a collaboration with the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) in the administration and analysis of this survey. Court programs providing divorce mediation and/or custody evaluations in 1993 were targeted. The questionnaire was mailed in late 1993 to 200 institutional members of the AFCC and active providers of family and divorce services in the National Center for State Courts database. A total of 149 public-sector divorce mediation and custody/visitation counseling providers responded with information on their official policies and procedures for identifying domestic violence among the population served, and divorce mediation practices and policies in cases with allegations of spousal violence.

Sample:

Institutional members of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) and active family and divorce service providers from the National Center for State Courts database.

search on CPR person “Thoennes” — 5 studies:

20358	Integrated Approaches to Manage Multi-Case Families in the Criminal Justice System in Maricopa County, Arizona, and Deschutes and Jackson Counties, Oregon, 1999-2005 Thoennes, Nancy	2005

3142	Role of Stalking in Domestic Violence Crime Reports Generated by the Colorado Springs Police Department, 1998 Tjaden, Patricia; Thoennes, Nancy	1998

2566	Violence and Threats of Violence Against Women and Men in the United States, 1994-1996 Tjaden, Patricia; Thoennes, Nancy	1996

2561	Divorce Mediation and Domestic Violence in the United States, 1993 Pearson, Jessica	1993

3542	Evaluating a Collaborative Intervention Between Health Care and Criminal Justice in Harris County, Texas, 2001-2002 McFarlane, Judith; Malecha, Ann	2002

Did I mention that Jessica Pearson is also (per some sources) a founding member of the AFCC, if not also CRC?

In fact AFCC, CRC, CPR, PSI, HHS funded studies, and conclusions that MOST of our nation’s real poverty, inner-city, crime & juvenile delinquency problems is simply the ration of sex/conception/marriage, i.e., too few fathers (as opposed to, poor-quality fathers) in the home, and that the solution to this is through seamlessly blending mental health services with child support services, with the legal process — tend to congregate around similar key players.
Don’t believe me? See RandiJames’ “The List“ or Liz Richards pointing this out in 1993 “Fathers Rights and corrupt judicial cronies,” or again, in 2010, to the House Ways & Means Committee (found at House.gov, this committee, June 17, 2010 hearings, on left side), or an indignant “Fathers Battling Injustice” 2001 complaint “Liz Richards Hates Fathers with a Passion, which provides (if you scroll down) a good listing of key players and their interrelationships — including those on the CRC (Children’s Rights Council) 501(c)3 incorporation papers, and tying into others pushing mediation and Gardner’s “PAS” philosophies through the courts. I’ll try to upload that listing….

Around 1998, a disgruntled grandfather — and CPA — started tracking some of the founding documents of this AFCC, and has something to say about the money trail related to Jessica Pearson of CPR, and AFCC, who weems to be (with others) women of some real foresight and planning, and ingenuity in desgining systems — and evading tax accountability. THIS is listed UNDER “Is Justice for sale in L.A.” a.k.a. at “johnnypumphandle.com”

- :Mr. Bryer’s Tort Claim of 1998. You can hear his tone of indignation and upset, and he flat-out calls this Mafia, RICO, money-laundering, etc. The people he is talking about are listed in part, above. I doubt if he ever got justice, or compensation (let alone more discovery), but at least me blew the whistle!. People who want to “reform” the courts ought to at least read the material. OR, they could go back and try to reason more with a professional that may or may not be one of these type of conspirators from long ago. The system remains, I’m pretty well deducing at this point.
Another take on AFCC et al.: He’s not talking psychology or sociology, but money, IRS, EIN#s and incorporations…
- DESCRIPTION: The ACCUSED ( by this complaint) are part of an underground of white collar criminals who are involved in the theft of CITY, COUNTY, STATE, and FEDERAL money. The scheme started before their time as an organization known as the CONFERENCE OF CONCILIATION COURTS. That organization changed its identity and assumed the name ASSOCIATION OF FAMILY CONCILIATION COURTS. Using various identity changes, the organization was listed in the LOS ANGELES SUPERVISORS DIRECTORY in 1993 as JUDGES TRUST FUND ACCOUNTING.The crime ring is an underground Mafia that posed as the COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES – by using the FEDERAL EMPLOYMENT IDENTIFICATION NUMBER 95-6000927. In recent dramatic announcements, the INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE has informed me that the EIN or FEIN number assigned to the latest version of the organization – the – LOS ANGELES SUPERIOR COURT JUDGES ASSOCIATION – is an EIN that was not assigned to the organization. It Is a COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES EIN!
  I previously attempted to get this discovery – in the lawsuit BRYER vs PENTONEY – but 298 judges and commissioners in LOS ANGELES were disqualified on a ruse orchestrated by JUDGE GARY KLAUSNER – a ring leader of the scheme. JUDGE GARY KLAUSNER’S name is on the signature card of BANK OF AMERICA account listed under the name LOS ANGELES SUPERIOR COURT JUDGES ASSOCIATION EIN 95-6000927.
  
  I was forced into the corrupt county – ORANGE COUNTY – where a co-conspirator named JAMES P. GRAY told me he would throw me in jail if I tried to make any more discoveries. FEARING FOR MY LIFE in a county that is FOREIGN to me – I dismissed my case without prejudice and continued to seek discovery away from the strength of ORANGE COUNTYCONCLUSION: My family and myself have been robbed of our money and our rights by a conspiracy that has operated since 1962. In 1962 a JUDGE NAMED ROGER ALTON PFAFF and his cohort – MEYER ELKIN. The association was called the CONFERENCE OF CONCILIATION COURTS. This association routed money through the LOS ANGELES COUNTY CONCILIATION COURT -111 North Hill Street, Los Angeles California, 90012, ROOM 241. In 1969 – the association incorporated and has NEVER PAID taxes. Assuming they used EIN 95-6000927 – then duping the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT was easy. In 1979 the corporation was suspended. There is no record that they surrendered their bank account or the EIN. In California – the organization filed as a CIVIC LEAGUE – Revenue and Tax Code 23701g. A CONCILIATION COURT is NOT A CIVIC LEAGUE. The exemption certificate was mailed to a lawyer named Michael Aaronson at P.O. Box 1055, San Carlos California 94070. The STATE 3500 papers states the organization was to improve marriage counseling. However, conciliation court is a STATUTORILY mandated function of the COURT – not a private corporation for lying and thieving judges and their court staff. The income was alleged to be derived from dues and contributions. In reality, the funds came from laundering legal education money through the COURT CONCILIATION DEPARTMENT through the FINANCE DEPARTMENT.
  
  In an incredible BREACH – a Judge from Detroit Michigan was listed as the Second Vice President His name is Victor J. Baum. The corporation number is 576876. I have no record of what EIN they used.
  
  In 1981 – I presume their bank account was still open and they created a new identity called the Association of Family Conciliation Courts. [CPR, above, dates to 1981 also as a nonprofit] This time – Margaret Little – FAMILY COURT SERVICES for LOS ANGELES, and a Colorado individual named Jessica Pearson orchestrated yet another version of the LOS ANGELES COUNTY COURTHOUSE SCHEME. Pearson borrowed the EIN of the WISCONSIN AFCC and claimed her office was in Colorado as an ILLINOIS corporation. The LOS ANGELES COUNTY COURTHOUSE became PEARSON’S and Dr MARGARET LITTLE’S California – FOREIGN – CORPORATION.
- (WI, Colorado, L.A. and IL if you can keep up with that…)
- I just found a strange, but possibly corroborating 1986 document, the “February 1986 Newsletter of the Alabama Court News, “Newsletter of the Alabama Judicial System” On page 3, it reads, under headline: “Federal Grant funds Sexual Abuse Study:
- “The Research Unit of the …(AFCC) and the American Bar Association have been awarded a grant from the federal dept. of Human Development Services* to study sexual abuse allegations in divorce cases. The goal of the study is to find how court officials [such as…?] are presently handling such matters, identify preferred procedures, and develop educational materials on the subject.” “Court officials [sic] desiring to participate in the study should contact AFCC at the following address:
  - - Ms. Jessica Pearson
    - AFCC/Research Unit, ?720 Emerson St. Denver, CO 80218
    - (303) 837-1555
- [Wow… Preferred procedures for handling sexual abuse allegations in divorce cases, such as — Gardner’s theories? They want to educate judges how to rule?] Also – it says since 1981 — at that address:]
- [*Note: the HUGE “HHS that now dispenses welfare, child support, medicare, head start funds, and sometimes is the largest (as to expenses) Exec Branch Dept — was formed in 1991, as I recall. This is 5 years earlier).

In fact the information arm is one of the most important, to quell rebellion before it gets going.

Maybe Rome went down because of lead in the pipes, or maybe some “karma” (or god) just got sick of all the slaughter for entertainment. Ever read about what happened in that Colosseum?

Back to this millennium — and the last decades

of the last one (1980-2010). In re: marriage, abuse, divorce, custody..

And the concept of “protection from abuse” or “restraining orders” as if they were NOT certifiably insane, as to fulfilling their supposed purpose of protecting or restraining.

While the literature tends to focus on, “it’s just a piece of paper and can’t stop a bullet,” the ones we REALLY can’t count on are the arresting officers. It’s an additional component of Russian Roulette that a woman can’t afford. And suing for any sort of damages on the basis of, they had a duty to protect, a procedural due process right to the victim, a substantive due process right to the victim, or in short, any consequences that “absolute judicial immunity” or the 11th amendment wouldn’t make LEGALLY protected (let alone the practical aspects) — they don’t, and probably never did.

Some judges are crooked — I don’t know how many. Some attorneys are also, and get nailed on RICO like the Luzerne judges did, RICO (“Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations“) being a criminal enterprise. There’s a case I may post out of suburban Chicago (older) where the husband (an attorney) did murder for hire, but not until he’d conspired in advance to wire-tap (jealous), someone had been prepared to dispose of the body (i.e., of his wife) and someone had been prepared to obstruct the investigation. (Alan & Dianne G. Masters, West Suburban Chicago, 1982 she disappears~ 1988 RICO charges)

As RICO does require some organizational skills, and Masters had already been engaged in other forms of crime, all the players to add murder-for-hire to this were in place, and he didn’t resist the temptation to engage, showing us to drop our illusions that every person in public office, or in positions of power, influence, and with access to streams of $$ isn’t per se there for service. Some are, some aren’t. And the ones that aren’t would be normally attracted to people in compromised situations (like a troublesome traffic ticket, an illegal enterprise of their own, or divorcing with children from a frighteningly dangerous spouse who’s already committed some crimes against your body, or your child’s). This attorney was acting more like a pimp with a stable, and some affiliate marekting reps in uniform. Maybe he liked the thrill of the danger and risk (one sees definite business skills that migh twork just as well in legal activities) or maybe it was simple greed.

It didn’t save her life, and no one was ever charged for murder, but the three “perps” got caught on racketeering and put away for a good many years, and fined. Oh yeah, and he had a $100,000 life insurance policy on his wife also.

So are some officers. And some are good. – – – – that’s just life. Why, then, (though) when women come for help, were they then (1990s) and now (2000s) doling out protection from abuse orders as if they were reliably enforceable? They aren’t. They’re real good at getting men angry though.

~ ~ ~ ~I can’t put my story up (or too much of it). But it’s been so many years in this system here. My infrastructure is repeatedly broken down, year after year, and access to things like transportation, (sometimes food), internet, health care (uninsured presently) just shouldn’t be.

~ ~ ~ ~If you have not been in a situation similar to the one I’m about to post (the part below is summary of her judicial proceedings after deciding to leave– having gotten a real severe beating (while naked), a threat for another, having had a young daughter molested by a visiting stepson, her husband was no inner city young black male, but a nasty computer analyst who’d (it turned out) abused his first wife, too.

~ ~ ~ ~Sleep deprivation is a factor and technique of weakening someone (I know). Attack on personal private parts (ditto). Rules almost uniformly designed to remove one’s humanity, with severe punishment for falling short (and they’re impossible to fulfil) with no rule for him. . . . .Having to choose which child you can do more to protect, potentially sacrificing something important for the other. Having your strength or skills as a professional work against you post-divorce. Historic revisionism (no remorse or acknowledgement of injury, and of course the father was the real caretaker all those years). Health care professionals treating injuries and not really asking questions. Your kids watching the assaults.

I’ll pick up this story mid-stream. See if you recognize the characters: judge, psychologists, attorneys (#1, 2, and 3), theme of supervised visitation, and her knowledge that if she requested it, he’d go for custody, professionals continually minimizing the situation and playing their own games . . . all too familiar.

I want to say something about “stories.” THEY HELPED ME while I was in the abusive relationship. One of the cruelest things is the isolation and dealing with the man’s anger when he perceives you may be connecting with someone who might validate or connect with you, and to whom you might report. You might get out, but there also may (or may not) be retaliation for doing so. Or you might be put through hell beforehand, so you get out, in public, in trauma, shaking, or in shock. One trick pulled frequently in our home (with kids) was I’d have enough gas in the car to get there (when a car was available) but not enough to get back. Hearing of women who got out HELPED me. If nothing else, to feel less guilty.

I pick up the story mid-stream, and admit that I am exhausted today.

Overall, I found the lawyers and psychologists very self–promoting and egotistical. It seemed as if everyone was having a good time, playing the game of litigation and psychology. All the while, my life was on the line. My children and I did not matter. I also felt like the lawyers and psychologists were running a cash register business at my expense. They were a lot more interested in my money than my welfare. The first two years of my divorce proceedings cost me more than twenty–five thousand dollars.

As incredible as it might sound, the judge who heard my custody case had an outstanding protective order against him by his ex–wife. I also sensed very strongly that the judge did not like me. For these reasons, I told my lawyer I wanted to seek the judge’s recusal. My lawyer dismissed me, saying, “You’ll just get someone worse.”

@ @ @ @ @Z

I probably never would have gotten Daniel back, except that Russ’s live–in girlfriend (with whom he is still living) contacted the children’s psychologist to report that he was abusing Daniel. This was four or five months after Russ had gained custody of Daniel. I think the girlfriend made her revelation partly because I had told her that Russ was planning to seek full custody of Elizabeth, too. Russ was not really taking care of the kids; the girlfriend was. When she learned that he would be going after Elizabeth too, she said, “WHAT???!!!” I think she cared about the children and knew that Russ’s having custody would be harmful and dangerous for them, plus, I doubt she was interested in being the caretaker for both kids.

After learning about Russ’s abuse of Daniel, I immediately went to my lawyer (Lawyer #3), demanding an immediate petition for a change of custody. He said we could not seek a modification of custody because it was too soon. He said, “Let the ink dry on the judge’s custody order.” That was the last straw and I fired him.

I got a new lawyer and a new psychologist. I recorded a telephone conversation with Russ’s girlfriend about the abuse of Daniel. Russ’s girlfriend was subpoenaed, and because of the recording, I knew––and Russ knew––that the abuse of Daniel would come out. Even if Russ intimidated her into changing her testimony, I think he knew that the tape was credible.

Faced with a situation he could not win, Russ folded. He agreed to a modification and I regained custody of Daniel. I grabbed at the chance to get custody back, even though I had to agree that Russ could have unsupervised visitation with the children. I knew Russ would never agree to supervised visitation. I did not want, and could not pay for, another long, drawn–out battle in court. Besides, based on what I had seen, I did not want to risk what a judge might do.

As far as I am concerned, Russ agreed to the change of custody to save face. No one in authority ever held him accountable for his abuse. People in authority, like the judge and the psychologists, always supported him and held a good opinion of him. Russ wanted to maintain his good image at all costs. By giving up custody of Daniel without a fight, he could avoid the public humiliation of being outed as an abuser.

He portrayed the custody change to the children as a sacrifice he was making because he loved them so much. “This is what’s best for you,” he said. Once again, he took no responsibility for doing anything wrong in abusing Daniel. He showed no remorse.

Even after I had custody of both kids, Russ continued to engage in repeated violations of my protective order through phone harassment and stalking. Additionally, his son, Chip, was there unsupervised when the kids visited Russ. Apparently, though, Chip did not abuse either child further.

@ @ @ @

C. Attitudes Need to Change More than the Law

Domestic violence law is certainly far better than it has been in the past. We have seen progress in the legislative, [77] judicial, [78] and executive [79] arenas. Positive legislative reform is on–going, though there is a backlash as well, driven primarily by the Fathers’ Rights movement. [80]

Changes in the law are important. With better law, good people (judges, police, etc.) can do more and bad ones are limited in the harm they can cause. Law can also have an educational effect. A judge or police officer who initially resists laws and policies that are appropriate for domestic violence cases may ultimately come to see their value.

Mary’s story shows, however, that the primary problem is not with the law but with the human beings who interpret and administer it. The legal system betrayed Mary, but not because it lacked the power to act differently. The judges, psychologists, and lawyers could have protected Mary and her children. They could have understood woman battering, or made a point of educating themselves about it. They could have let go of their stereotypes about what batterers and their victims “look like” and how they act. They could have reexamined their values, under which abuse of Mom is irrelevant to Dad’s fitness as a parent. The list continues indefinitely.

Mary’s custody judge easily had the power to find that full custody with Mary was in the children’s “best interest” [81] and that Russ’s visitation had to be supervised. [82] The judge could have warned Russ, not Mary, that he had to be on his best behavior or he would lose even supervised visitation. The judge could have ordered Russ to undergo batterers’ counseling as a precondition for even supervised visitation. [83]

My point is simple: this did not have to happen. Without in any way ignoring or bending the law, Mary, the children––and Russ––could have been dealt with appropriately. Mary and her children, especially Daniel, may pay for the system’s sexism, ignorance, and indifference for a lifetime. And, as Mary says, society pays too when the aftermath of abuse spills out, as it often will, beyond the family.

@ @ @ @

F. Any “Solution” Not Based on Battered Women’s Experiences
Is Doomed to Failure

We cannot know what to do about domestic violence unless we listen to survivors’ stories. In them are the keys to solutions. Battered women and formerly battered women are telling us what works and what does not. People with professional training can help, but only if their actions and recommendations are based on what battered women and formerly battered women say. [116]

Women like Mary tell us that mediation, joint custody, and couples counseling can be terrible for battered women, [117] yet certain professionals continue to advocate for these things in domestic violence cases. [118] Their arguments, however, are from the viewpoint of the mediator or the system, not the battered woman and her children. [119] Women’s safety concerns are either not addressed or minimized. [120]

Proponents of mediation in domestic violence cases express a near–magical belief in mediation and mediators. They believe that the mediator can tell when mediation is not appropriate or when it should be stopped [121] (another example of the helper’s ego surfacing). Sadly, the only expertise that seems to count is the mediator’s. Battered women’s expertise does not seem to matter. [122]

Sometimes, it seems that battered women’s voices are getting more and more lost. The field has become professionalized, [123] semi–respectable, [124] and partially funded. [125] There has been a parallel tendency to turn the focus away from the victims and toward the professionals. [126]

I do not want to be misunderstood here. I have absolutely no nostalgia for the “good old days” when shelters did not exist or led threadbare existences, and when a professor who wanted to teach Domestic Violence would have been laughed off campus. I have been doing domestic violence work far too long for such foolishness. I relish the voice, the power, and even the respectability that our movement has achieved. But people who really care about battered women must remain ever vigilant against those whose solutions come from their own professional experience and not from victims’ lives.

@ @ @

As a mother and wife, I absolutely agree that families need rules. Nothing is sadder than a house where “anything goes” and there are no rules; everyone is unhappy, especially the children. [131] Nor do I think that every rule, even if somewhat imposed by one family member over others, is abusive.

But rules are different in a batterer’s house. They are never negotiated; they are always imposed. [132] And rulemaking is a one–way street: the batterer sets rules for other family members, while he does exactly as he pleases. [133] Russ ordered Mary not to watch comedies on television, just as he announced that he was quitting his job. Mary knew that even suggesting alternatives might result in violence. But Russ could be away for days at a time, and Mary was not to question his actions.

The rules in a batterer’s house are not just for his comfort and enjoyment. They are an integral part of his plan to control and isolate his partner. [134] As Mary said, the rule about no comedies on television meant she could not exercise her sense of humor, an important part of her self–image. Batterer’s rules also control matters such as whether and when she can leave the house, and how she can spend money. [135] Many rules reinforce the victim’s isolation, such as rules about not having any of her friends over or going out with other people after work. [136][137] She might hear something that made her feel good while listening to the radio, or she might hear a description of domestic violence and recognize herself and start planning her escape. Looking out at the world from her kitchen window (or having someone else look in and see what was going on) might decrease her isolation. Even “little” rules, like “don’t play the radio when I’m gone” and “keep the curtain in the kitchen down” are part of an overall pattern of isolation.

In the functional family, rules are negotiated and renegotiated. [138] One partner may give in to the other, but both partners engage in some give and take. The rules may not fulfill everyone’s needs, but they do not destroy family members’ self–esteem either. [139] In functional families, people are basically satisfied with the rules. [140]

Second, the batterer’s list of rules is ridiculously long and ever expanding and changing. [141] While his partner and children are struggling to comply with his existing demands, new and often contradictory rules are added. [142] This again is in marked contrast with the non–abusive “dinner at six” dad. We have all known non–abusive families where one member (usually, but not always, the father) must be catered to, but his demands are limited and stable. Further, the demanding but non–abusive family member is capable of being satisfied. “Just feed him on time and he’s a happy man” is not something an abused wife would say.

Finally, there is the punishment imposed for non–compliance with rules. [143] The non–abusive man does not beat or rape his wife or children if dinner is not on the table at six. He may pout for a while, or whine, he may even occasionally yell. His reaction may be unhealthy, but the other family members do not live in terror of what will happen if the rules are not met.

Identification protocols for battered women should include questions about rulemaking. [144] Something like this would be good: “Every household has rules under which it operates. Tell me about the ones in your house. What are the rules? How are they established? What happens when they’re not met?” With a sympathetic ear and a little prodding, a battered woman may quickly identify a long list of onerous and changing rules, imposed by the abuser and ruthlessly enforced by him. [145] If she is still in the relationship, or just getting out, she may describe the rules matter–of–factly, and may consider them normal. [146] One advantage of asking about the rules is that she may talk about them much more readily and with less shame than about the violence she has experienced. [147]

H. How Physical and Non–Physical Abuse Work Together:
Why Do We See It as Torture When [XxxxxXxxx] Generals Do It,
But Not When It’s the Guy Next Door?

People are still very ignorant about domestic violence and how it works. If you talk to people and read news reports, the emphasis is always on physical violence. [148] Mary encountered this ignorance when the psychologists, judges, and lawyers minimized her danger because the last severe beating occurred a year and a half before Mary left Russ for good.

~ ~ ~ ~

In other settings, we are well aware of how torturers combine physical and mental abuse to get and keep power over their victims. [154] Appendix B is one of my favorite charts, adapted from Ann Jones’s book Next Time, She’ll Be Dead. [155] In the left–hand column are non–physical torture methods that Amnesty International has recognized and cata

logued. [156] Totalitarian regimes often use these techniques against political prisoners. [157] In the right–hand column are battered women’s descriptions of how their batterers used these same techniques to control them. [158] I have added some examples from Mary’s story to what appears in Jones’s book.

Those who work with battered women must understand the interplay of physical and non–physical abuse. When seen in context, a “slap” is not just a “slap”; it is a warning that the victim must comply with the batterer’s demands “or else.” Repeated phone calls to her at work are not just a sign of a little insecurity. They are part of an overall scheme of isolation and control. Busting up the furniture at home, or throwing the cat against the wall are not unfortunate temper tantrums; they say, “you could be next.” [159]

We should recognize domestic violence as the human rights violation it is. [160] We should draw analogies between domestic violence and torture, [161] to kidnappers and hostages. [162]

READER QUIZ: WHAT YEAR WAS THAT STORY ?

(hover cursor above to find the copyright and which attorney related the story).

Hover over THIS and I’ll tell you when this woman married & got her RO.

It could’ve been a decade later, and wouldn’t have read much different. I found this story after, with curiosity, searching on the man who wrote the article below. I hope readers may go back (click on this link, the “READER QUIZ” link) and actually read Mary’s Story, which was an actual case (name changed), and too damn typical. I doubt a person who has experienced abuse would respond the same as one who hasn’t.

NOW, for comic relief, of the monotous drone of fatherlessness being the nation’s crisis (and we have JUST the solution to fix it . . . . ).

Fall of marriage seen linked to decline in domestic murders Drop in homicides called ‘ironic benefit’ of change

The decline of marriage and the breakdown of stable relationships have produced a paradoxical benefit: Domestic murders have declined, with the most dramatic reductions among African- Americans, a University of Missouri criminologist reported yesterday.

“We’re living at a time of dramatic changes in marriage, intimate relationships and family structure,” said Richard Rosenfeld, speaking in Baltimore at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “Those changes have had an ironic benefit in reducing the number of intimate-partner homicides.”

Dr. Rosenfeld’s findings are the flip side of the much-reported increase in young men killing young men, which he said may be attributed in part to similar factors — family instability and lack of supervision by harried single parents

READER QUIZ — WHAT YEAR WAS THIS ARTICLE (ABOVE)?

(author date & cite show when cursor hovers over link)

OK, now that you know when Dr. Rosenfled (a criminologist, not a PSYchologist) found out that the decline in marriage rates among African Americans meant reduced DV homicides among African Americans (although young men were killing each other more, they weren’t apparently killing so many wives or “intimate partners.” )

Let’s say what the head-honcho elected mostly white men were saying about the same year:

I searched the 104th Congress (1995-1996) for the word “fatherless.”

As we know, fatherlessness has been for so long blamed on the nation’s troubles that you can barely walk somewhere in a government agency, or any social service community agency (after you come back from either a Catholic church, where the (celibate?) priests are called “Father” in direct disobedience to Jesus’s command in the gospels, “call no man Father.” Or, an evangelical Protestant, not quite mainline (or, megachurch) where, after the ranks were being drained to women, they are adding testosterone to the doctrine, and teaching men to be more sensitive (in men’s groups, of course).

If you want to go without the straight-up religious variety, there’s always “The Mankind Project” and one can get a seminar of the Robert Bly type. There are fatherhood practitioners everywhere one looks, practically.

All I really wanted was the conversation where a legislator expresses shock and dismay that African American boys and girls are waking up on homes without their fathers. (NOTE: The “Mary” story above happened in the late 1980s, and HER 3 kids were waking up with their father in the home. In fact, her little girl Elizabeth, at age 3, had gotten an early introduction to sex when her stepbrother came there for the summer and molested her, after which her mother had another job of making sure they weren’t left alone together. (That couple were white and suburban, so maybe they didn’t count in this topic).

I got a little more than I expected in this 104th Congressional record:
Beginning
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND WORK OPPORTUNITY RECONCILIATION ACT OF 1996–CONFERENCE REPORT

I met a man who was an administrator of one of the hospitals in my community in the 15th District of Florida, and this gentleman told me that, before he had moved to Florida, he had lived in Oklahoma, and he had taken part in a program where he would go into inner city housing projects and read to young children in those projects. This program started because it has been shown in research studies that, if you read to a child, you can improve their reading score. Actually there are some studies that show that, if you read to a child, you may actually be able to raise their IQ slightly, {{Noble cause. Some Oklahoman going to raise inner city kids’ IQs}} and he told me something that I will never forget.

So this anecdotal evidence of an unnamed Florida Hospital Administrator, about (how many years previous?) that administrator going into the projects (hence, he wasn’t from them) was not 2nd-hand but 3rd-hand hearsay — if the event ever indeed happened. The impassioned delivery is to state how Welfare is Cruel — listen up how this is done:

He was going into those projects and reading to those kids, and those children were, by and large, children of single parents on welfare, and he would ask, many of them 5, 6 and 7-year-old children, `What do you want to be when you grow up?’ And, yes, some of them would say I want to be a fireman or a nurse, but some of them would say:

`I don’t want to work. I want to collect a check.’

Not all of them wanted to be firemen or nurses (separate by gender; I don’t know how many female fire”men” there are these days, but we know there are lots of male nurses… And probably were in 1996, too..)

Mr. Speaker, a program that does that to millions of children is not a program of compassion and caring to children. It is a program that is cruel and mean spirited to children.

Here’s the process — a man in Florida heard a man in Florida talk about his experience trying to improve the iQ of little kids in the projects (did he talk to their Mamas?) in Oklahoma, and concludes that (although even in the story some WANTED a profession, others wanted a check) FEEDING such children was mean-spirited and cruel…

Today a young male being born to a mother, a single mother on welfare in the United States, has a greater likelihood of ending up on drugs or in the penitentiary than graduating from high school.

I showed in “Luzerne County” that you don’t have to be poor or (presumable here) black to be a crook. There’s a difference between being a crook and actually being jailed for it. It should be common knowledge now, and I bet then (1996) that America, being the largest jailor (per capita) has those jails disproportionately filled with black males. Some of them got their assaulting their mother’s attacker, too. He’s taking two statistics (if that) and creating a CASUAL connection rather than a CAUSAL one. Of course, how many poor black males — or females of any social status or color — were there in Congress in 1996 to comment on his reasoning process?

And the young females, (single mothers have both boys and girls, right?) — are THEY ending up on drugs or in jail?

The problem that we have with illegitimacy in our Nation today is a problem that has been created by the program that we are trying to change, and you cannot fix this problem by tinkering around the edges. The illegitimacy rate in this country has gone up from 5 percent to almost 25 percent in the white community. In the black community it has gone from less than 25 percent to, in some areas, as high as 70 percent.

If you look at what correlates best, what correlates in communities with problems like teenage pregnancy, drug use, illiteracy, juvenile crime, the thing that correlates best in those problems in those communities, Mr. Speaker, is the amount of illegitimacy, the amount of fatherlessness in those communities. A program that perpetuates and cultivates things like this is a cruel and mean-spirited program, and that program needs to be changed, and our bill makes a serious attempt at doing that.

We are not talking about tinkering around the edges. We are talking about promoting family unity, discouraging teen-age pregnancy and illegitimacy.

The fact that this program perpetuates it, Mr. Speaker, was driven home to me when I was a medical student working in an inner-city obstetrics clinic, and I had a 15-year-old girl come in to see me who was pregnant, and I had never seen this before, and I was so upset. I was grieved to see this. I looked at her and said her life is ruined, she cannot go to college, and I said to her, `How did this happen, why did this happen,’ and she looked up to me and told me that she did it deliberately because she wanted to get out from under her mother in the project, and she wanted her own place and her own welfare check.

Again, on the outside looking in, and one anecdote.

This program needs to stop. The people have asked for it; we are trying to deliver.

WHICH people? I mean, these are elected representatives, are they really speaking for their constituents?

Mr. Speaker, I encourage the Members of the minority to stop their partisan rhetoric and join with us in reforming welfare and creating a program for the poor and the needy that strengthens family, does not undermine them, that strengthens the bonds of marriage, because it is strong families that make strong communities that makes strong nations, and our Nation cannot survive with a perpetuation of a program like this.

Is it the lack of marriage, or the lack of fathers that counts? Because I tell you one thing that makes lack of fathers — WARS. Another thing that previously, broke up families in a callous manner is called slavery.

Who created ghettoes? Who created the two-tier school system, good for some lousy for others (a factor to this date). Who directed one populace into “jobs” and the others (elite ones) into how to run businesses and understand investments, political connections, foundations, and skills that would go along with that goal?

So if you want to know how much we (we WHO???) have invested in the old welfare program over the past 30 years, it is roughly the equivalent of the value of all buildings, all plants and equipment, and all of the tools of all the workers in the United States of America. No society in history has ever invested more money trying to help needy people than the United States of America has invested.

Yet, what has been the result of all of those good intentions? What has been the result of that investment? The result of that investment, 30 years later, is that we have as many poor people today as we had 30 years ago. They are poorer today, they are more dependent on the Government today, and by any definition of quality of life, fulfillment, or happiness, people are worse off today than they were when we started the current welfare system.

When we started the War on Poverty {{and another war in Southeast Asia to follow up on the Korean war I guess}} in the mid-1960s, two-parent families were the norm in poor families in America. Today, two-parent families are the exception. Since 1965, the illegitimacy rate has tripled.

I know that we have colleagues on the other side of the aisle who are going to lament the passage of this new welfare reform bill. But I do not see how anybody with a straight face, or a clear conscience, can defend the status quo in welfare. Our current welfare program has failed. It has driven fathers out of the household. It has made mothers dependent. It has taken away people’s dignity. It has bred child abuse and neglect, and filled the streets of our cities with crime. And we are here today to change it.

Grammar: Is this guy going to “own” the welfare program, or objectify it? First it was guilt trip, “we have created” and net thing it’s got an independent life, like a disease, perpetuating itself of its own accord, where it can be separated from the rhetorical bosom of the speaker, and be viewed running around tearing up the place. As an “it” it can now have stones thrown at IT first. And after the vivid picture of 5, 6 , 7 year olds wanting to collect a welfare check (“millions of them”) (Seriously, that’s the subliminal message — guilt trip first, it’s ours” and then relieve the guilt by blaming the same thing “we” created, and QUICK, call to action.….) Some action is needed to take away

Let me outline what our program does. I think if each of us looks back to a period when our ancestors first came to America, or back to a time when those who have gone before us found themselves poor, we are going to find that there are two things that get individuals and nations out of poverty. Those two things are work and family. I think it is instructive to note that those are the two things that we have never applied to the current welfare program of the United States of America.

This man seems totally unconscious of the fact that SOME ancestors came to America in the bottom of a slave ship; that a lot of wealth, including likely some of the wealth that helped put people in Congress, came from came from businesses that included plantation labor, sweat shops, and some very, very hard work. When he says “us” as to doling out benefits, he also seems to have forgotten that those taxes came from employees’ wages, courtesy a few reforms dating back to 1939. He seems to have forgotten everything about “Jim Crow” and era of attempting to turn back the clock on some serious industriousness by freed slaves.

The bill before us asks people to work. It says that able-bodied men and women will be required to work in order to receive benefits. It sets a time limit so that people cannot make welfare a way of life. It seeks to change the incentives within the welfare system. And I believe the time has come to change those incentives within the welfare system.

I admit I’m maybe sensitive to this because I know HOW HARD I worked over the years, and none harder than while in a battering relationship that could’ve been a variety of the one above (but a decade later). This relationship, within marriage shouldn’t be happening any more in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, or 2000s, but it is.

Family Court Systems Purposefully Mask Abuse and Abusers

(SEPARATE TOPIC, above)) just saving the link).

Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up

August 15, 2010 at 3:26 pm

A recovered, stolen child, now grown, talks about the experience…

with one comment

THIS post is a comment reply from a man who is speaking up about his childhood abduction and recovery.

I think the story speaks for itself, in his voice. Any emphases are mine, as well as paragraphing. I tried to comment less than usual, but still did some..

I would like to first thank you for the review of my book, Throwing Stones.

{{I don’t actually have your book, will get it when I am able… I reviewed the website in response to your earliest comment on this blog. I also hope to write one.}}

I wish to address a couple questions you raised in your review and also respond to the above comment, since the writer has asked me, the author, to answer: First, you emailed me a comment about the spelling of my last name. I could find no place on there where the spelling was not “Ken Connelly”. If you have found a place where ‘Connelly’ is not spelled that way, please point it out and I will have it remedied.

Second, as to how I was recovered, well that was an interesting and very frightening experience- My father had managed to remarry at the end of our abduction.

{{He was going to need some help with the children, obviously. In our situation, he first found the new woman and then snatched. At this point, I’m still not clear (being the Mom) of who was MORE provoking that snatch — the new woman, or the father. This involving a 2nd adult caretaker figure to punish the first is cruel..}}

My siblings and I were ordered not to tell anyone, especially his new wife and children our true past as abducted children. My father had a way about him that you did not cross. You have to remember, this person feeds you, clothes you, and gives you shelter. I often use the example that if you take a puppy and give it food, then while feeding it you hit it, the dog will grow up believing that pain is love.

This can be seen in women who grow up with a violent father and then seek a relationship with an abuser. They may not go consciously looking for that personality type, but they end up with it.

{{If I may inject the feminine perspective here — there is a grammar to this. It takes two to tango, and men also know where to find submissive women, or women without strong family support who might counter future control & abuse. The statement above doesn’t acknowledg it goes two ways. … Religious settings are great places to find submissive women taught not to protest violence against themselves..}}

My father was pulled over on a traffic stop with his wife. The officer took him in once his alias popped up on the NCIC. I was for the first time going to a public school in Smithville, Texas. Upon leaving for the day, I seen my sister crawling out the back of the bus and running away.

Unknown to me, my mother and grandfather were walking about the school after they were flown from California upon hearing we had been located. Of all the buses, mine managed to leave the school without being stopped.

Within a few hours my dad was let go from the Bastrop County jail on a technicality. No court had ever held up the recent law, forcing out of state agencies to enforce kidnapping of one’s child as a felony/crime.

{{Reframing this crime as a non-crime happens, I say, through the family courts. I would almost rather not know this law existed, than know it exists to protect, but isn’t enforced, or even taken seriously, too often…}}

After dad got out of jail he then attempted to remove us to Australia (a plan he attempted a year earlier). A sting was setup to have him come into court and believe he could win full custody once there. After coming into court, he was taken down to the floor and arrested by law enforcement.

At the same time we we were taken out the back and then flown from Austin, Texas to California. My father was later extradited to California where he pleaded guilty to Child Stealing. This became the first time in United States History an interstate felony/recovery was successfully prosecuted. Oddly enough, only 70 miles away, Glen Schulz was arrested for kidnapping his children from out of state but was let go and later granted full custody. My father’s arrest and conviction set a new precedence [precedent] in the apprehension of child stealing.

Three, as for abuse. I often had to endure hours of my father screaming and calling my mother everything from a witch to a lesbian on a daily basis. I began to sleep walk, have severe night terrors, developed turrets syndrome and tics that effect me to this day (although I mask them very well). I also have never been able to trust.

My sister was raped by a stranger and although we disagree that she was taken to the hospital, she has had to deal with that her whole life.

( I say disagree because she believes she was taken to the hospital that night, I know she was taken earlier in the month over another issue requiring stitches. As any law enforcement officer, medical professional or mental health professional knows, when you bring in a 14 year old girl to the ER who claims she has been raped, the police do a background on them and the parent who brings them in to the hospital, of which I verified with the local agency that we lived under in Texas.

Had a there been a police check, the false ID that later got him arrested would have popped up on her or him after the rape.)

When I was found I was covered in chiggers (body parasite) and scabies. Just months before we were recovered, we were living in Burcher State Park, Texas and then in a house where we had an out house and when the water did run, it was reddish in color because of the rust. We also had to boil the bath water on the stove so that all of us could use the water to bathe. Again, everyone used the same bath water. I also had to get saved, learn to speak in tongues and when ever I was bad, I was reminded that I could grow up and become the anti-christ.

{{Indicating that the abducting father was religious, or his new wife. And that IS emotional abuse of a child. Not to mention ignorance about that concept, “anti-christ.” Severe emotional cruetly. Good grief!!}}

Four, yes psychology is a new science but there are basic truths that are universal. Although I attend to school (working on a degree that can be used in parental child abduction), I have been certified in Colorado, New Mexico and federally to work with juveniles that have been incarcerated. I have seen the effects of abuse, neglect and abandonment and I see a lot of similarities with parental child abduction. As to the writer of the above. Yes, without a doubt ( and I have experienced BOTH), parental child abduction is worse! To put it another way, when a stranger abducts a child, the child always knows that mommy and daddy are waiting for them when they come home. granted, it may be and will be a long haul to heal, but the trust in their parents is intact.

So my question is, when a parent steals their child, tells them the other parent is dead, hates them, evil, abandoned them and so on, who does the child trust?

If mommy or daddy lied and kidnapped you, who do you trust? The entire structure of what trust and family is is forever broken.

As for seeing abuse, conflicts and hate, well upon return I found that my mother had been being assaulted by her new husband. See, professionals have found that many parents after their children have been taken tend to seek punishment for having their children ripped from them. My mother’s then husband hated that she was always sad and grief ridden over having her children stolen.

{{I’ve worked different ways to handle this, but it has affected who I can become involved with, or not. I know I’m not ready for involvement til some of these issues are closed. It’s too much of a burden for any new spouse…}}

Over the next two years I watched him beat her, knock her unconscious and steal her purse while driving down the alley way of our home pulling my mom and me, as my mom would not let go of the purse- which held our only money, he held out the window. Or the times he beat me down and mom had to jump on his back and break his black Ovation guitar over him to get him off me while I called the police. Finally on my 13th birthday I was forced to not go to school but get a job and pay rent to live in his home. My mother was finally beat unconscious in 1985 when her husband beat her so bad that he broke the toilet bowl with her face and left a blood trail on the hallway wall, all because I split his beer.

{{“because” — that’s not the real reason, but that supposed “excuse” is common. NOTE: 1985 is before the VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) was passed, I suspect there were fewer options for her at the time, to get ou.}}

Yes, I have seen both and I can tell you that the effects from the abduction were like wakes & ripples that have effects to this very day. I never doubted my mom’s love or felt abused while with mom and her husband, and have talked to many other children who felt that they were able to overcome those abusive home environments. Now I am in no way down playing the abuse that went on upon return. in fact, I believe that both are relevant and need to be addressed. However, the abduction was worse. I started researching and building up all my documentation for book II, Wakes &Ripples, which covers this subject from the age of 11 to 17. I have had to pull together many interviews, police and school records. I have had to verify addresses and places of employment.

This research is still underway as I have tried to avoid the pop culture idea of sensationalizing my story but trying to keep it pure and accurate as possible. I believe that by providing a case study, we can find ways to prevent, educate and inform others on how to stop this terrible crime. I can not tell you if life would have been different had I not been kidnapped.

What I can tell you is that once you throw that rock in to the waters of childhood there is no going back, we must live with the change in the water’s course and the ripples that follow.

To sum it up; kidnapping one’s child, and kidnapping is all it is, is the worst thing you can do to your child. If you are in a bad relationship there are outlets you can use to get help. Children are not our property in the sense of chattel. We have to think about what they need first and I have yet to have fond a parent who kidnapped their child who did not have some vindictive motive behind it.

This is why children are often used as weapons in court during a divorce. Domestic violence is horrific! The years I lived with it, I was always frightened but, they did not have the impact as the years abducted. It was not because of the domestic violence years that ended my relationship with all my family. It was the abduction years. The actions my father made that tore a part our family in ways that I cannot begin to explain in this comment box. I hope I have answered your questions.

Kindest Regards, Ken Connelly http://www.ken-connelly.com ken@ken-connelly.com

Speaking of Psychology, another topic, here’s a link to a long discussion of Trauma and the nature of evil. My printout is 34 pages long, and I enclose it because it deals with vocabulary changes, over the centuries (and across some faiths/cultures) to talk about the same thing. It dates to 1996, and is by Sandra Bloom, for an organizational conference. The website Sanctuaryweb.com, I think it makes sense.

Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up

April 19, 2010 at 3:51 pm

Posted in History of Family Court

Tagged with custody, Intimate partner violence, parental kidnapping, social commentary

“Here Come da Judge!”

with 14 comments

Some times, hard times, a little humor helps me. I seem to notice things that maybe others don’t (oft-burnt, twice as observant?)…

This is from Womenslaw.org about Custody, and a good question, plus a sidelong plug for (what else) supervised visitation. . . . And no absolute commitment either way on this topic:

Can a parent who committed violence get “custody” or “visitation”?

Maybe. It is possible that a parent who has committed violence will get custody or visitation if the court determines that it is in the “best interest of the child” to do so. Generally, judges beleve it is in the child’s best interest to have frequent contact with both parents.*1

{{so, the “court” kind of being the “judge” who signs the order, we get back to what judges generally believe… For more of that, see the AFCC conference as to what’s being promoted among many of them…}}

Conservatorship / Custody:

If a person is filing for sole or joint managing conservatorship, the court will consider whether the person has been abusive toward his/her spouse, the parent of the child and any person under 18 years old within the 2 years before filing for conservatorship or during the proceeding. A judge may deny joint managing conservatorship if s/he finds that there is a history or pattern of child neglect or physical or sexual abuse of a parent, spouse or child.*2

{{then, again, they also may not. Sounds like a toss-up to me…}}

The judge may not {{OR, may…}} appoint joint managing conservators if reliable evidence is presented of a history or pattern of past or present child neglect, or physical or sexual abuse by one parent directed against the other parent, a spouse, or a child. *3

Likewise, the court [[as opposed to “the judge?”] will consider {{but will it act on?}} any incident of family violence in deciding whether to deny, restrict, or limit the possession of a child by a parent who is appointed as a possessory conservator.*4

Possession and Access / Visitation:

If a parent has been violent within the last two years before filing or during the court proceedings, a judge may {{or may not, we have no committed policy here, right?}} deny that parent possession of or access to the child unless:

the judge decides that allowing the parent access is not a danger to the child and is in the best interest of the child; and
the judge approves a possession order that will protect the child and any other victim from the abusive parent. The order may require:

supervised access; {{Here’s the Business Model…}}
exchange of the child in a protective setting (see note below);
that the parent not drink alcohol and not use any drugs within 12 hours before or during the time the child is with him/her; or {{See my comments on Oconto, Wisconsin, where the father was caught DUI with the daughter in the car, but still it was the MOTHER who was jailed for failing to force the daughter back into that situation.}}
that the parent attend a batterer’s prevention program or any program the judge finds appropriate. *5

Tell the judge if you have gotten a protective order within the last 2 years against the parent seeking possession of and access to your child. The judge will consider this when determining whether there is a history of family violence.*6

{{Note: Some women get SMART after the first several violent incidents, and survive more than 2 years in a relationship before someone shows them how to get out. In this case, asking what happened in the last 2 years may not indicate that the father/husband/partner has reformed or settled down, or repented, but simply that the mother/wife/partner simply got cagier and smarter in how to avoid them. As many abusers also are control freaks, as toa ccess to transportation and ways to escape their abuse, this may involve shutting down emotionally, and teaching the kids to also, i.e., “walking on eggshells.” how many judges take the time to tell the difference?}}

Note: If the abuser is granted possession and access to your child, ask the court or a local domestic violence program for information about visitation centers or visitation exchange facilities in your county if you think that is a good option for you.

GOT THIS? The judge MAY respect the danger of domestic violence, or the judge MAY instead choose to drop-kick the problem to some cronies in the supervised visitation field.

{{Which of course they will prime you to. . . .. . I asked for this, and was of course, not told that there is federal funding for this, but not available so readily for MOMS… Not being incarcerated, an abuser, or behind on my child support (as the custodial mother), there was no outreach program to help me. And as I wasn’t preventing access, that wasn’t an issue. Thanks, dudes for rewarding me for compliance and good-faith allowing regular access to my growing (and healing) children by totally removing them from me, failing to enforce child support — at all, practically — and allowing him after custody switch to totally cut off contact, failing to report felony child-stealing (meaning, no Victims of Crime compensation), and no help after this event trashed my jobs. Thanks. Merry Christmas to all, and let’ em eat cake…}}

It is assumed by the court that it is not in the best interest of a child for a parent to have unsupervised visitation with the child if there is credible evidence of a history or pattern of past or present child neglect or physical or sexual abuse by that parent directed against the other parent, a spouse, or a child. *7

*1 Tex. Fam. Code § 153.131
*2 Tex. Fam. Code § 153.004(a)
*3 Tex. Fam. Code §153.004(b)
*4 Tex. Fam. Code § 153.004(c)
*5 Tex. Fam. Code § 153.004(d)
*6 Tex. Fam. Code § 153.004
*7 Tex. Fam. Code § 153.004(e)

======================

(Since I’ve already dated, if not geographically marked (as to California) myself, I’ll go one step further and admit, this “well, it depends. . . .. ” approach to whether an abuser (or “a parent who has committed violence”) can get custody of a child approach reminded me (see highlit words, above) on the old comedy routine:

“Here Comes Da Judge!”

A little more judicial humor, even more dated (i.e., not my own…):

“THE INSCRUTABLE WORKINGS OF PROVIDENCE“

My last blog{{whoever this is...}}, on the rather bland exchanges between lawyers and justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, gave me a craving for red meat. So I pulled out my copy of Winston Churchill's marvelous little book, Great Contemporaries, and I turned to the essay on F.E. Smith, a lawyer who later became the first Earl of Birkenhead. Smith was famous for his stilletto wit, which once drew a pompous rebuke from a presiding judge: "Mr. Smith, have you ever heard a saying by Bacon -- the great Bacon -- that youth and discretion are ill-wedded companions?"

"Yes I have," came the instant repartee. "And have you ever heard a saying of Bacon -- the great Bacon -- that a much-talking judge is like an ill-tuned cymbal?"

Taken aback, the judge resorted to scolding, "You are extremely offensive, young man,"

"As a matter of fact," said Smith, "we both are; but I am trying to be, and you can't help it."

The judge, who apparently had never heard of citing a lawyer for contempt, came back for another drubbing: ""What do you suppose I am on the bench for, Mr. Smith?"

"It is not for me, your honor, to attempt to fathom the inscrutable workings of Providence."

That kind of exchange is something we we will never hear in oral arguments before the Supreme Court. Americans are much too dignified for any such thing.

Posted on January 9, 2006 10:40 PM | Permalink
OR:

If I want to quote a Supreme Court justice who was genuinely funny, I usually turn to Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935).Among my favorite Holmes stories is the one concerning how he was supposed to lecture at a college, and discovered that he had arrived at an insane asylum by mistake. The justice was philosophical. “Oh well,” he said to the guard, “I don’t suppose that there is a great deal of difference.”

For once, the legal eagle was topped. “With great respect, Mr. Justice,” the guard replied, “there is. Before they let you out of this place, you have to show some improvement.”

Posted on January 2, 2006 7:53 PM | Permalink

More, “HERE COME DA JUDGE” info:

Here comes the Judge!

Here comes the judge!

The court's in session!

The Funky Judge! Updated 8.28.02

That’s right. 1968 was the year of the funky craze (see last issue’s Soul With An African Twist). It may not have showed up on the Chinese astrological calendar, but ’68 was definitely the year of the Judge. Dewey ‘Pigmeat’ Markham trod the boards of the ‘Chitlin’ circuit for decades as well as appearing in many of the ‘sepia’ films aimed at forcibly segregated black audiences. In 1968 a routine of his about an angry, obstreperous judge broke into the mainstream of America’s pop consciousness. Pigmeat, a big guy with a loud, extremely gravelly voice would enter with a chant of: ‘Here come da judge, here come da judge! The court’s in session, the court’s in session!’ and then would launch into a hysterical tirade. In early 1968 Pigmeat and his rap found their way onto Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-in, and rapidly became a favorite, eventually becoming a regular on the show. It wasn’t long before ‘Judge’ records started to appear on the scene. Ironically, the first hit (chronologically) was not by Markham but Motown mainstay Shorty Long. Long, who had hit before with the original versions of ‘Devil With the Blue Dress On’ and ‘Function at the Junction’, made it (in June of ’68) to #4 on the R&B charts and #8 on the pop charts with his very funky ‘Here Comes The Judge’. In Long’s record, the Judge is sentencing the defendant to various amounts of time for the boogaloo, the four corners and the Afro-twist. The judge on the record even sounds like Pigmeat. Markham charted with his own version a few weeks later, on Chess (Chess2049). His tune ( a different song entirely) starts out with a long proto-rap speech, with exclamations from the gallery. The tune breaks into a deep, rough funk. In fact, despite the fact that he was an old fella, Pigmeat laid down the funkiest records in the entire ‘Judge’ genre (though it’s fair to mention that he had the mighty talents of the Chess house band backing him up).

I’m not really “playing around” so much as it might appear. Did you do your homework last few posts, and look up the L.A. County Judges Slush fund (at least acc. to Marv Bryer et al.), how it started out of the county court house, not paying taxes for years (til basically forced to), morphed into CCC then somehow AFCC, and now we have these tremendous professionals, and social scientists figuring out our problems for us…..?

ETHICS, TRANSFORMATIONS, and Dr. JUDITH REISMAN, Kinsey, etc….

http://www.drjudithreisman.com/archives/CaliforniaCripplesWomen.pdf

I cannot find the exact article where Dr. Reisman was talking about the importance of ETHICS in public servants, and referring to a certain (old) law that was being undermined. She is a controversial figure for sure, but I responded to her personal story, which you might also, and how her own world got rocked when it was discovered a relative had been molested. …. I’d also like to note: articles are published onto “WND” (World Net Daily) which I do NOT espouse overall….

http://www.drjudithreisman.com/about_dr_reisman.html#journey

Summary:

Dr. Judith Reisman is sought worldwide to speak, lecture, testify, and counsel individuals, organizations, professionals and governments in Media Forensics, the scientific analysis of images, pictures, cartoons, illustrations, pornography and text in sexual harassment of women and children in the workplace, schools, and homes. Her Media Forensic expertise has been successful in child custody cases, examining “pseudo-child” and “virtual-child” pornography, as well as in judicial and legislative decisions about a) fraudulent sex science, sex education and b) the way in which media images restructure human brain, mind, memory, and conduct by hijacking rationality. The special emphasis of her Media Forensic research has been and continues to be the scientific documentation of the difference between public and private space human erotic displays, and the subversion of informed consent via exposure to supranormal visual stimuli.

Dr. Reisman is a consultant and former president of The Institute for Media Education and is the scientific adviser for the California Protective Parents Association. She was Principal Investigator and author of the U.S. Department of Justice, Juvenile Justice study, Images of Children, Crime and Violence in Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler (1989), Kinsey, Sex and Fraud (Reisman, et al., 1990) and Soft Porn Plays Hardball (1991), Partner Solicitation Language as a Reflection of Male Sexual Orientation (w/Johnson, 1995), and Kinsey, Crimes & Consequences (1998, 2000) and is a news commentator for WorldNetDaily.com. She has been a consultant to four U.S. Department of Justice administrations, The U.S. Department of Education, as well as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Reisman is listed in numerous Who’s Who biographies such as: Who’s Who in Science & Engineering, International Who’s Who in Sexology, International Who’s Who in Education, Who’s Who of American Women and The World’s Who’s Who of Women. Her scholarly findings have had international legislative and scientific import in the United States, Israel, South Africa, Canada and Australia, while The German Medical Tribune and the British medical journal, The Lancet demanded that the Kinsey Institute be investigated, saying:

The Kinsey reports (one in 1948 on males and the companion five years later) claimed that sexual activity began much earlier in life…. and displayed less horror of age differences and same-sex relationships than anyone at the time imagined. It was as if, to follow Mr. Porter again, “Anything goes”. In Kinsey, Sex and Fraud, Dr. Judith A. Reisman and her colleagues demolish the foundations of the two reports … Kinsey et al … questioned an unrepresentative proportion of prison inmates and sex offenders in a survey of “normal” sexual behavior. Presumably some at least of those offenders were also the sources of information on stimulation to orgasm in young children that can only have come from pedophiles–or so it must be hoped. Kinsey…. has left his former co-workers some explaining to do. The Lancet, (Vol. 337: March 2, 1991, p. 547).

Tim Tate, UNESCO and Amnesty International Award-winning Producer-Director of “Kinsey’s Paedophiles,” Yorkshire Television, Great Britain, 1998: “In the course of producing my documentary-Kinsey’s Paedophiles–it became clear that every substantive allegation Reisman made was not only true but thoroughly sourced with documentary evidence–despite the Kinsey Institute’s reluctance to open its files.”

HER STORY:

By Judith A. Reisman, Ph.D.

I have been asked to introduce myself so that you know something of my life and how I came to discover Kinsey’s child molestation protocol, his false data, his molding of modern sex education and of western sexual culture and conduct, as well as how I came be involved in international governmental hearings on science fraud, child sexual abuse, pornography, drugs and the other critical issues of our time. I will try to touch on the points in my life which may be of most use to readers of this Kinsey expose.

I was born, Judith Ann Gelernter, in 1935 in Newark, New Jersey. Mine was a large and thriving second-generation Jewish-American family, Russian on my maternal side, German on my parental side. Both sets of grandparents had fled persecution in Europe, and upon landing at Ellis Island in New York, they thankfully embraced their adopted country, immediately took up menial labor, and raised large families of achievers.

My father Matthew was born in Massachusetts and my mother Ada in New Jersey. They eventually owned “Matthew’s Sea Food,” which they developed into a prosperous fish business in Irvington, New Jersey. The Gelernter’s held family meetings every few months at Aunt Laura’s large home in South Orange, New Jersey. More than forty adults and dozens of children sat down to dinners tastefully arranged and served, table manners always impeccable. After dinner, without the modern invention of television, political debates raged between my parents and the family. My parents were the radicals of the family. They believed the widely publicized propaganda of a perfect new world order under socialism or communism. None of our mainstream newspapers had ever revealed the multiple millions of Russians murdered by “Uncle Joe” Stalin. Still, all was mended when cousin Ruth sat down at the piano to accompany my father and three aunts, Laura, Shirley and Mary, as they sang old Yiddish and American folk songs in four-part harmony. I was mesmerized.

For me, they were musical giants, singing, swaying, smiling and beckoning. My dad, looked, I thought, movie-star handsome alongside my favorite Aunt Mary, a beautiful red-haired, green-eyed soprano who had rejected an offer from the Metropolitan Opera in order to marry and raise a family.

. . .

I lived at a wonderful time. My mother welcomed me home every day and my father supported anything I did. I was safe among neighbors, uncles or cousins due to the delightfully repressive influence of the time. I married, and the hedge of protection about my life was not breached until 1966 when my 10-year-old daughter was molested by a 13-year-old adored and trusted family friend. She told him to stop, but he persisted. He knew she would like it, he said, he knew from his father’s magazines, Playboy, the only “acceptable” pornography of the time. The boy left the country a few weeks later, after it came to light that my daughter was but one of several neighborhood children he had raped, including his own little brother. My heart was broken for all the families involved.

This appalling event in our lives, I would learn later, was a pattern with juvenile sex offenders, as they are known in law enforcement circles.

I might never have known anything about her violation, except that my daughter slipped into a deep depression. Only after I promised not to call the police would she talk about what happened. After assuring her this was not her fault, I called my dependable, staid aunt who listened sympathetically and declared, “Well Judy, she may have been looking for this herself. Children are sexual from birth.” Stunned, I replied that my child was not seeking sex, and called my Berkeley school chum, Carole, who counseled, “Well Judy, she may have been looking for this herself. You know children are sexual from birth.” I wondered at this same locution from two such different people so separated geographically. I recognized an ideological “party line.” I did not know it then, but as a young mother, I had entered the world according to Kinsey. I would hear and read that “children are sexual from birth” often again. But finaly I would uncover the hidden circumstances surrounding its source.

What will your judge believe? Suppose it was your daughter? As a mother — like the Berkeley (female) officer who finally noticed something was “off” regarding Phillip Garrido’s twoa ccomplices, will “da judge?” be receptive to your story, your kid’s story, or your partner’s story? Will all of them be considered “stories” and then business farmed out to a mediator, because the story now, is, equal parenting, pretty much no matter what….. And we MUST resolve our (irreconciliable?) differences in Conciliation, excuse me, Family Court, because it’s emotionally damaging to have irreconciliable differences with real damages.

I really believe the only way out is to find out who is paying these pipers. My research, to date, shows that it’s NOT just the litigating parents, but the entire taxable workforce. And the organization spouting all this stuff began by dodging taxes itself, allegedly. Go figure!

(THESE few from NAFCJ.net, home page — links may or may not be current, but are searchable):

“Protective Mom Accused of Witchhunt”, 11/23/1999, By Cheryl Romo, LA Daily Journal — Karen Anderson, one of the retaliated protective mothers mentioned in the Insight story, has since obtained hard evidence (cancelled checks) that federal money from fatherhood programs was used without her knowledge to pay-off all court officials in her case. Anderson along with Connie Valentine are heading up NAFCJ’s reform action in California.

A Financial Fiasco Is in the Making, By Kelly Patricia O’Meara, Insight Magazine, Los Angeles Superior Court Judges Association, 2002, still slushing funds
and not paying taxes…

Insight Magazine “Is Justice for Sale in LA?”, By Kelly Patricia O’Meara – Marv Bryer fights against corruption in Los Angeles County Court – the original AFCC court judges’ association, and promoters of Dr. Richard Gardner’s discredited pedophile theory, “PAS” Parental Alienation Syndrome.

Insight Magazine “New Scandals in LA Courts”, By Kelly Patricia O’Meara — Continuation with more of Marv Bryer’s evidence details on an alleged slush fund for the L.A. Superior Court Judges Association (AFCC judges) and the possible extortion of civil litigants by some officers of the court.”

Retaliation Against Professionals Who Report Child Abuse, By Katherine Hine, J.D., Exposé The Failure of Family Courts to Protect Children from Abuse in Custody Disputes, A Resource Book for Lawmakers, Judges, Attorneys and Mental Health Professionals.

I’m still looking at the googled “Marv Bryer” myself: here’s a sample of printouts:

Videos: Interview with Marvin Bryer – Naples, Fl | Naples Daily News

Marvin Bryer talks about getting to see Obama – Video taken in or around Naples, Florida.
http://www.naplesnews.com/videos/detail/interview-marvin–bryer/ – Cached – Similar

Have you Ever Heard of Marvin Bryer

3 posts – 3 authors – Last post: Dec 28, 2008

Have you Ever Heard of Marvin Bryer. … It starts at about Minute 50 about Marvin Bryer. The below document indicates some of the stuff …
forum.prisonplanet.com › … › General Discussion – Cached – Similar

IRS Non-Profit Organization

Dec 21, 1998 … A letter has been sent by Marvin Bryer to the IRS alerting them of this scam; the attendant mis-use of government facilities; …
http://www.johnnypumphandle.com/cc/irscpa.htm – Cached – Similar

Bryer Tort Claim of 9/10/98

May 8, 1999 … Enter Marvin Bryer, a retired computer analyst in La Crescenta, Calif. . . . . Bryer became ensnared with the family-court system after his …
http://www.johnnypumphandle.com/cc/bryr0910.htm – Cached – Similar

You know what? Maybe the love of money IS the root of all evil. Not using it, not having it, but loving it more than, say, children. Or oaths of office, etc.

Exposing & Prosecuting

Judicial Corruption thru

Common Law Discovery

by Marvin Bryer [1997]

http://famguardian.org/PublishedAuthors/Media/Antishyster/V07N4-ExposingProsecJudicialCorrThruCommLawDisc.pdf

DISCLAIMER: Note, this seems to be a survivalist, gun-toting, all-American (you get the picture), I’d say for sure conservative site. I am just curious to read the Marv Bryer article, and don’t know if this represents his philosophy either. Sort through it, though.

THE THING IS:

If you are going to the fruit stand in a store, are you going to sort and pick through apples for the good ones? Or pick a pre-bagged, inspected, certified organic (etc.) one, whose packaging you trust? Or, alternately, skip apples for today.

They say one bad apple spoils the whole bunch. When you get divorced and can’t figure it out OUTside court, you must go INSIDE, and in this case, you can’t forum-shop or judge shop. Remember, if there is conflict within a family, the parents just lost jurisdiction, acc. to that old law (see last few posts). Your kids and your life are no longer your own.

Therefore it’s IMPERATIVE that ALL financial incentives to defraud the public be removed for ALL judges. This ain’t going to be a walk in the park, and I wish that the Moms and Dads both (the honest ones) would quit yakking about social science studies and do their math homework.

Hope you appreciate this sacrifice of my own internet time just made to day. Have a nice day… and Let’s Get HONEST! And make sure our public officials do also!

Thanks.

The SF-Oakland Bay Bridge and Family Court systems.

(SF/Oakland) Bay Bridge closure could stretch beyond weekend

Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, October 31, 2009

(The next 2 paragraphs below appeared in article after the 3rd & 4th– see link for original order).

The bridge has been closed since Tuesday evening when a 5,000-pound steel beam and two steel tie-rods that were holding together a cracked structural support failed and rained down on the upper deck, damaging three vehicles but causing no serious injuries.

Engineers failed to take into account how vibrations from wind and 280,000 cars a day would affect a patch fix to the bridge’s cantilever section made over the Labor Day weekend.

Crews on the Bay Bridge struggled Friday to craft a fix that would prevent vibrations from wind and traffic from causing pieces of a structural repair to come crashing down.

. . .Crews on the Bay Bridge struggled Friday to craft a fix that would prevent vibrations from wind and traffic from causing pieces of a structural repair to come crashing down.

CONTRAST this urgency with the “business as usual” treatment of another system so engineered that serious injuried, and too often literal deaths, occur. Because these are more widespread, perhaps they still don’t warrant serious attention. Read on:\

States must reform a system

that too often rewards custody to the abusive parent.**

by Kathleen Russell, San Rafael, California, published 10-14-09 in the Christian Science Monitor.

[story of one individual highlights the issue]…I’m numbering sentences for comments below. I also just alternate colors for easier reading. CSM policy discourages reposting whole article, reading it all is a summary of –part of — the problems with family law. system.

In a system with so much at stake — for the litigants, and their children — for those associated with the litigants and their children in work, school, play, at home, or as relatives — and with the short, short time span in which impressionable youngsters grow up — can even ONE false assumption be made in the process of fixing it?

In the Bay Bridge — a HUGE project — they forgot about the wind vibrations plus the vibrations from the traffic load would affect a “patch fix.” Seems to me that vibrations when it comes to a bridge is basic engineering vocabulary.

The FIRST sentence of this article reads:

“When a parent harms his or her own child, family courts are supposed to step in and safeguard the victim.”

Ohh?? I thought that stepping in was the province of Child Protective Services and law enforcement, since harming a child (as also a spouse, or other human being) IS a criminal act. The concept that the family law venue is set up to handle criminal actions is a misconception. To clarify, see www.justicewomen.org or anywhere that talks about the difference between civil and criminal venues, and family court vs. criminal prosecutions of domestic violence.

Harming a child is domestic violence, and little to no training in this is required even to become a certified family law practitioner. I believe I still have a link off to the side.

Association of Family & Conciliation Courts (AFCC) — see my blog — states clearly in their history page that one of their key founders was OPPOSED to the use of the “old” criminal language, and preferred newer, better terms to describe things like — child molestation or domestic violence, or things that show up as criminal acts. I blogged on it — search here, you’ll see.

However, the CPS, the law enforcement and the family law venue most certainly DO bounce back and forth off each other, at least in this area, and listen to each other in crucial decisions, I found out (alas).

This is a repeated refrain in the family law venue, so much so as to be characteristic. It is just about a DEFINING quality of these courts — and no, they do NOT exist to protect children. I believe that family law is where batterers go to hide, and was designed in part to receive them and allow them continued access. That this also just happens to be big business, and a perpetual motion (as in, legal motions) machine, is unlikely to be an afterthough, methinks…

None of the authorities she approached would effectively intervene to protect her daughter [1]. So in 2000, Ms. Rogers eventually felt that she had no choice but to flee with her child to protect her [2].

More than three years later, this protective mother was caught and jailed for five months, while her daughter was immediately handed over to her alleged abusers [3]. Rogers faced criminal charges for violating a court order by fleeing with her child [4]. After considering the evidence in her case, a jury of her peers completely exonerated her of all wrongdoing [5].

The very same evidence that exonerated her in the criminal court had been called “frivolous” by the family court judge and disregarded [6]. Despite her acquittal, Rogers was never granted custody of her daughter, who lives with her alleged abusers to this day [7]. She is now forced to pay a fee to visit with her daughter a few times a month in a supervised visitation facility [8].

=========

[1], [2] — women are trained to generally go the authorized route first. This mother did. When it failed, her motherhood instincts kicked in (see how THOSE can help in reading about which cops — male, or female — caught, and which overlooked (male or female) Phil Garrido and the two kids he’d fathered by (kidnapped * 18-years imprisoned) Jaycee Dugard this past year. Again, I blogged this. A policewoman noticed something amiss in two kids; her alertness started the process saving them and their mother.

[3] Protective mother caught and jailed. . . . Why don’t readers just google that phrase and see what comes up. See also Stopfamilyviolence.org. Women have fled to other countries — sometimes getting asylum! — to protect their children from assault & battery or molestation. The brave U.S. is not negligent to try and go fetch them back. Google, if it’s still on-line, Sheila Riggs. Or another, Joyce Murphy. Or Holly Collins.

[4]. Some states have an actual EXEMPTION for protective parents fleeing when it comes to felony child-stealing. The catch is, it’s enforced in reverse! This woman, being a Californian, should’ve been protected by California Penal Code 278, but obviously wasn’t. Who didn’t protect her — law enforcement? A judge?

[5] It seems (on a fast read] that this mother THEN got into a criminal charge, and as such, actually got in front of a jury. Because she might be jailed, this was proper. Unlike the family law, where mandatory mediation, and hearsay rules the day, an actual jury “considered the evidence in her case.” That’s why the exonerated her. It appears she was innocent and shouldn’t have been jailed. NEVERTHELESS, she still DID spend 5 months in jail. How do you think THAT affected her relationship with her daughter?

If being jailed wasn’t bad enough for an innocent mother, while she was in jail, I’m sure that knowing her daughter was now in the total custody — without her intervention, or ability to help mitigate this any more — of the alleged abusers — was worse punishment. While California jails are overcrowded, hear tell women’s are less so. They can be TOUGH.

[6]. Statement “6” above, as is, might as well be the motto of the family law venue. If you understand this, you understand enough. Due process doesn’t count. Being innocent — or guilty — matters not.

[7] I have a question: WHY didn’t custody automatically go back to her? If she fled to protect, and the evidence said there was something to protect AGAINST (if she was exonerated, it must have, right?) then WHY is that child still living with the abuser? Because the illegal and wrongfully punishing process of a protective mother destroyed her ability to have a child? Or because the family courts simply couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge a ruling coming from outside its own venue?

[8] Supervised Visitation fees. I TOLD you this was a business model. Someday, perhaps more people will start actually believing this.

Look:

Protective parents not only lose custody of the children they are trying to protect, but they lose their life savings, too. Many cannot even afford a lawyer to represent their interests, but are saddled with hefty supervised visitation fees and often threatened with a loss of custody if they object to paying the bevy of court-appointed experts that the judge assigns to their case.

Hmm. . . . threatening to take your kid, and have him/her [further] hurt, seriously, if you can’t pay the court-appointed experts. And this is NOT extortion, and NOT the Mafia?? No, they are all in here to help poor people settle their squabbles, and to protect –NOT traffick in — children.

Fees quickly add up to tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Many such parents go bankrupt, making court appeals impossible. The family law “machine” operates as Big Business, and a sophisticated cottage industry has sprung up that appears to be preying on desperate parents and children who are trying to escape family violence.

The author recommends, and then talks about a “major overhaul” of the family law system. Sister, I don’t think this is about to happen, the problems are foundational, and built into it. It is designed to extract cash from parents, (one side will generally be rich enough, or if not, government grants will do instead, for court-appointed attorneys, mediators, and so forth, let alone the dang judges!) and hand it over to those in “the court.” (Think royalty). If you’re in, you’re in, if you’re out, you’re out.

Thus weakened, one parent will certainly have to fork over a child. a few drops more will of course be extracted, if some are left, because what protective parent does NOT want to see a child, even if under strained and artificial conditions — a lesson also for the next generation — and wouldn’t scrape together the funds to do so? Notice — supervised visitation SUPPOSEDLY exists to protect a child from a violent parent, or one incapable of self-restraint enough to be UNsupervised. It is typically used to punish a parent after a switch, rather than for its intended purpose. At least, so I am coming to believe.

Bay Bridge with thousands of daily commuters, commuters at risk (not yet dead), the fix is made. Why? Probably someone remembers the Loma Prieta earthquake, which DID cause deaths when this bridge collapsed. Probably because it affects BUSINESS more than families. I don’t know — you tell me!

Family Law Venue, with probably by now thousands of genuine casualties, including abductions, family wipeouts, jailed Moms, or Dads, and fractured relationships, lost work time (for the litigants — not the court folk) and a drain on the social services of the United States of America — and, resistance to changing BUSINESS as usual is high.

This is a quick post, and I hope within the framework of CSM quotation guidelines. Have a nice day!

**A Note to Bloggers

The Christian Science Monitor appreciates the growing Blogging community, and wants to be part of the conversation. Monitor stories have “permanent” URLs, and our stories back to 1981 are freely available without needing to pay or log in. Therefore, we ask that bloggers link to articles on http://www.csmonitor.com, rather than reproducing them on your blog. You may reproduce a paragraph or two of an article as an introduction to the link to that article. No further permission from us is required.

Analyze This: Wichita Woes — What happened after 911? (1st time, 2nd time).

with 2 comments

I rest my case on “certifiably insane protection orders”. . . .

This article is a quiz (answers below). Do this:

A. Put events in order.

B. What piece of the puzzle doesn’t “fit” and which pieces are missing?

C. Keeping this within Kansas, bring this case history to Senator Oletha Faust-Goudeau, recently found sponsoring (yet another) Fatherhood act of some sort in Kansas and ask for commentary. Request permission to record, and share on youtube with the rest of us, why a man like this needed to be within cutting/shooting range of his 21 month old daughter. (Because if he didn’t get this, someone was going to pay, bad?). And how the (decade-plus) of prior fatherhood initiatives may or may not have contributed to this young man’s sense that after punching XXX officers and threatening to slit the throat of his wife, for calling for help, society still owed him something…

D. Rewrite the headline, more appropriately reflecting the crucial issues in the case.

And then Alternately

E-1. Pray to the tooth fairy that this isn’t you or anyone you know and/or recite after me:

E-2. “it spiraled out of control. We had no idea. It spiraled out of control. The real social crisis of our time is fatherlessness, not lawlessness. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Nevertheless, the Feds + faith-based + local agencies will fix this situation. We WILL eradicate violence against women and murder by men if we JUST try harder, train more professionals, and dump some dollars in that direction. We WILL, right??”

The children are our future. Now, Where’s that Valium?

Suspect in deputy’s shooting had violent past

. . . (and they married WHY???)

Comments (0)

BY TIM POTTER

The Wichita Eagle

The 27-year-old man accused this week of ambushing a Sedgwick County sheriff’s deputy had a history of violence against his ex-wife — and against officers.

{{For why the word “had” is used, see 2nd article, below}}

In 2005, Richard Lyons’ ex-wife, Jenifer, accused him of holding a hunting knife to her throat and threatening to kill her after she called 911, an affidavit filed in Sedgwick County District Court said.

Lyons pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and served several months in the county jail followed by about 16 months in a state prison.

He was released on parole on March 2, 2007. His sentence and parole supervision ended on April 11, 2008, records show.

In March 2005, four Wichita police officers responded to a report of a disturbance with a knife at his ex-wife’s home in the 900 block of South Waverly, in southeast Wichita.

Lyons had arrived and “demanded she give him their infant daughter,” the affidavit said.

She reported that they argued and that after she called 911, Lyons held a 4- to 6-inch knife blade to her throat and threatened her. The knife reportedly came from a sheath attached to his pants.

“Jenifer said she hung up the phone because she was in fear for her life and believed Richard would carry out his threat,” said the document, used to bring the felony aggravated assault charge against Lyons.

On the 911 call, a male voice could be heard saying, “I will cut you,” the affidavit said.

When he went to get a diaper bag in another part of the house, his ex-wife grabbed her two children and fled, the affidavit said.

At the home, officers found signs of a disturbance, and when they tried to arrest Lyons, he punched two officers, the document said.

Although prosecutors also initially charged him with two counts of misdemeanor battery against an officer, those two charges were dismissed after he agreed to plead guilty to the more serious charge of aggravated assault, records show.

His ex-wife obtained a protection-from-abuse order against Lyons.

In April 2005, about a month after the incident involving his ex-wife, court records show Lyons was living at the house where he is accused of shooting Deputy Brian Etheridge this week — first with a rifle and then with the deputy’s own gun.

Etheridge was responding to a 911 call from the South Rock Road residence, reporting a theft — a report authorities now think was concocted.

In Lyons’ 2005 divorce case, court records say he was working for Colortime in El Dorado at the time. The court at one point required him to pay $234 a month in child support.

At another point in 2005, Lyons temporarily lost visitation with his 1 1/2-year-old daughter because of the incident involving his ex-wife.

On Tuesday, a man who said he was Lyons’ father declined to comment.

Lyons’ ex-wife could not be reached.

In September 2003, about two years before the knife incident, Lyons was convicted of misdemeanor battery against an officer.

In the years before that, he had been convicted of felony criminal threat and misdemeanor domestic battery and criminal damage to property, records show.

As a juvenile, he had misdemeanor convictions dating to 1995, when he was 12, for criminal damage to property.

Wichita school district records show that Lyons withdrew from Metro Boulevard Alternative High School in July 2002.

Contributing: Hurst Laviana of The Eagle Reach Tim Potter at 316-268-6684 or tpotter@wichitaeagle.com.

QUIZ ANSWERS (mine) BELOW: (I interspersed A & B as dialogue)

Events, apparent order (quite different from article, which jumps around considerably)

1995 Juvenile Richard Lyons, age 12, has misdemeanor convictions for criminal damage to property, ergo he was born about 1983.
July 2002, Lyons withdraws from alternative high school (age, about 19)
Between age of majority (2001?) and 2003, he has convictions for felony criminal threat AND misdemeanor domestic battery, meaning, probably against a WIFE or GIRLFRIEND. This is called “domestic violence,” folks. SEE 1994 VAWA Act.
??? somewhere in there he gets married to Jenifer Lyons.
Sept. 2003, misdemeanor Battery against an officer.
Somewhere in 2003 Jenifer gives birth to his child. (Note: Physical assaults sometimes begin with pregnancy. Mine did).
Somewhere between then and 2005, they get divorced. (Given the assaults, probably understandable. What’s not quite understandable is why they got married, unless the pregnancy PLUS her lack of other options to survive (i.e., HER family of origin support), PLUS no doubt some of this federal pushing of marriage on everyone…?? Who knows. Maybe they wanted to. Maybe HER household (how old was she?) was a place she needed to get out of.
By 2005, he has a child support order in place and is actually, it appears working. Apparently they’ve entered the family court system somehow, I’d guess. The man is all of 22 years old, so this is a good thing and possibly a change for him?
THIS IS TAKING LONGER THAN I PLANNED.
OBVIOUSLY they had “visitation” (unsupervised, obviously). Note: He assaults women AND officers, felony-style, and threatenes (someone — seee above). He destroys property and punches policemen. NEVERTHELESS, an infant needs her Daddy. Daddies can be nurturers too. If we try hard enough, perhaps all of us (through funds, and social support and of course parenting classes) can transform this young man into a real nurturer before he kills someone for telling he can’t combine nurturing infants with wife assault.

Now in March 2005, things start getting, well, interesting:

“In 2005, Richard Lyons’ ex-wife, Jenifer, accused him of holding a hunting knife to her throat and threatening to kill her after she called 911, an affidavit filed in Sedgwick County District Court said“
HEre’s the account, I rearranged some sentences. Apparently by now there are 2 children (both his? Maybe not?)

Lyons had arrived (EXCHANGE OF THE KIDS RIGHT? Here’s a CLASSIC CASE involving DV, and no help with the exchange. Yes, I’d imagine this was in family law system already, totally oblivious (per se!) to the potential danger of the situation, despite lethality assessments and DV literature dating back to at least 1985 (Barbara J. HART), 1989 (Family Visitation Centers started in Duluth Minnesota), 1994 (Violence Against Women Act) and all kinds of other literature. THis hadn’t reaached the “heartland” yet, I guess. ) and “demanded she give him their infant daughter,” the affidavit said. ((OMISSION – was there a custody/visitation in order or not? if so, was it clear and specific, as many states require (but don’t practice) cases involving DV be, to avoid incidents like this? If it WAS clear and specific, was his demand in compliance with or NOT in compliance with that order? As they say, and we see, this isn’t typically a guy that plays by the rules, not even the rules for graduating from high school, or refraining from damaing others’ propery. We’ll, he’s about graduate from punching officers to putting a knife to his wife’s throat. I wonder if this was the first time….)

She reported that they argued {{POSSIBLY OVER WHETHER OR NOT IT WAS HIS TIME TO SEE HIS DAUGHTER?}} and that after she called 911, {{POSSIBLY THE ARGUMENT CONTAINED SOME THREAT OR PHYSICAL ELEMENTS?}} Lyons held a 4- to 6-inch knife blade to her throat and threatened her. The knife reportedly came from a sheath attached to his pants. {{May I speculate that perhaps Mrs. Lyons was aware that Mr. Lyons sometimes carried knives, and this may have contributed to her decision to call 911, even if the argument was only “verbal” in nature?}}

On the 911 call, a male voice could be heard saying, “I will cut you,” the affidavit said. (I’m going to assume this is “evidence” and it was his, not a responding officer’s. I will further assume that this was a criminal prosecution, because someone actually got ahold of that 911 call. GIVEN the history, was this a creditable threat? It appears to the reader that her report was accurate in this part. Contrary to the “false allegations” stigma associated with women reporting violence (or threats of it), ” because they want to get custody,” this report seems to have some merit.

“Jenifer said she hung up the phone because she was in fear for her life and believed Richard would carry out his threat,” said the document, used to bring the felony aggravated assault charge against Lyons. {AS FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS SHOW, YES HE WAS CAPABLE OF AND WILLING TO COMMIT MURDER WHEN HE FELT WRONGED OR WAS ANGRY OR ?? SO HERE, SHE DROPS THE “911” METHOD OF SELF PRESERVATION AND, if I may add, protecting her children, WITH HER KIDS OPTS FOR THE “FLEE” METHOD. Amazingly, a charge was actually filed. For why, possibly, read on.

When he went to get a diaper bag in another part of the house, his ex-wife grabbed her two children and fled, the affidavit said. {{I have done this flee while he’s in the other part of the house routine, often enough}}

HERE COME THE RESPONDING OFFICERS: In March 2005, four Wichita police officers responded to a report of a disturbance with a knife at his ex-wife’s home in the 900 block of South Waverly, in southeast Wichita. {{Officers KNOW domestic violence wih a weapon can be lethal. They didn’t send one custody evaluator, one parenting educator, one mediator, and one guardian ad litem, they sent FOUR officers, and I BET they were armed… Yet women are left to face this, sometimes weekly, without adequate protection.}}

At the home, officers found signs of a disturbance, and when they tried to arrest Lyons, he punched two officers, the document said.

Not one but 2 officers. Tell them to thank Wade Horn, George Bush (Jr.), former President Clinton, present President Obama, (well, adjust for the year), and others for those punches to the face. Father-engagement. Healthy Families. . .. You’re in it. . . . . . . Were these male and female officers, I wonder, and which ones got punched. But in an incident, it could easily be any of them.

Moving on in our sequencing:

5. Prosecutors initially charged him with two counts of misdemeanor battery against an officer.

6. he agreed to plead guilty to the more serious charge of aggravated assault. (good move, as they saw evidence, and he was already heard on tape threatening to cut her.)

7. The lesser charges (above) were dismissed. Is this called a “plea-bargain?

8. His ex-wife obtained a protection-from-abuse order against Lyons. (((WHEN?? see last post on police reporting of incidents). Now? Or had she earlier? Criminal, or civil?)

NOW — figure out this timeline if you can:

9. Lyons pleaded guilty to aggravated assault (See 6, above. WHEN? WHAT MONTH 2005?) and

10. served several months in the county jail followed by about 16 months in a state prison.

March 2007 is 24 months from March 2005 (date of assault). Ergo “about 16 months” plus “several months” possibly does NOT add up to 24. How many people do this kind of mental math when reading leading bleeding headlines?

March 2005 (arguing, resulting in 911 call, threatening to slit wife’s throat in retaliation for calling 911, with 2 kids, one of them a toddler girl, in the home, Mom + 2 flee for safety, 4 police come, 2 of whom are punched) – March 2007 is most definitely 24.

The question is, what is “several” months? Is it 8, or 9 (8 + 16 = 24, right?) WHEN did he plea-bargain? After punching officers and threatening to kill wife was he then RELEASED in this foul mood? If he threatened to slit her throat and assaulted people who tried to help in March 2005, what kind of response might we expect after being sentenced, if he was released on bail?

11. He was released on parole on March 2, 2007.

12. His sentence and parole supervision ended on April 11, 2008, records show.

What this section of reporting does is to reassure that his crime (of — see above) was indeed punished properly. Or was it?

13. In April 2005, about a month after the incident involving his ex-wife, court records show Lyons was living at the house where he is accused of shooting Deputy Brian Etheridge this week — first with a rifle and then with the deputy’s own gun.

Omittting the obvious — after arrest (i’m going to hazard a guess that the 2 punched officers or their colleagues eventually handcufffed the guy) he was free on bail or own recognizance until arraignment and incarceration

YES, you read it right, finally. Threaten to slit her throat, punch TWO responding officers, and get out scot free, for a few months. This is an interesting sentence (I don’t operate under press deadlines, but still . . . . . the sentence bridges four years of time: 2005 & 2009!) Well, not quite scot free. He was punished with not seeing his daughter, “temporarily.” Wonder what time frame THAT word spans.

14. At another point in 2005, {{Can we get a hint which month?}} Lyons temporarily lost visitation with his 1 1/2-year-old daughter because of the incident involving his ex-wife.

When I filed for a DV restraining order with kickout, and we had the guns, knives and assaults thing, but not on officers — we got ALMOST 7 days with no visitation, as I recall. Perhaps at the most 14, as he had to find a place to live.

Now here is about the slain officer:

Sheriff was Ambushed

A black band around the badge of Sheriff Bob Hinshaw. The badges are in honor of deputy Brian Etheridge, who was shot and killed in the line of duty on Monday.

WICHITA – Richard Lyons set the trap shortly before noon on Monday by calling 911 to report a theft at his house.

He then hid in the shadows of a tree and brush in the backyard of a house in the 3600 block of South Rock Road with a high-powered rifle, authorities said Tuesday. He waited for a law enforcement officer to show up.

That happened to be Sedgwick County sheriff’s Deputy Brian Etheridge.

“It does appear to have been an ambush situation,” Sheriff Bob Hinshaw said Tuesday of the shooting death of Etheridge, 26, the first Sedgwick County deputy to die in the line of duty in 12 years.

Lyons, 27, was shot to death a few hours later in a field not far from the house in an exchange of gunfire with law enforcement officers.

“It’s scary,” Hinshaw said. “It could have been any law enforcement officer… this was just a call to 911 to get any officer to respond.”

Investigators spent Monday night and Tuesday collecting shell casings and other evidence, Hinshaw said, piecing together a chain of events from what was left behind.

Based on that evidence, Hinshaw offered this account:

Lyons called 911 at 11:42 a.m. Etheridge was dispatched to the address just east of McConnell Air Force Base and radioed his arrival at 11:51 a.m.

When no one answered his knock on the front door, he asked dispatchers for contact information for the caller. He then walked around to the backyard of the house and saw no one.

Lyons was hiding in the shadows on the bright, sunny day, and opened fire with a .30-30 rifle — a weapon commonly used by deer hunters — when Etheridge turned his back as he was either approaching the back door or returning to the front of the house, Hinshaw said.

The bullet hit Etheridge in the back, penetrating his body armor and knocking him down. Lyons approached the fallen deputy and tried to fire his rifle again, but it malfunctioned.

He took Etheridge’s gun and shot him in the leg before disappearing.

Etheridge radioed for help, and scores of law enforcement officers from throughout the metropolitan area converged on the scene.

The wounded deputy was alert and communicating with the first officers on the scene, Hinshaw said, but their priority at that time was his medical care — not gathering information about the suspect.

Escorted by patrol cars, an ambulance raced Etheridge to Wesley Medical Center, where he underwent surgery.

Authorities established a one-mile perimeter around the house and urged residents inside that area to leave if possible.

Wichita Police Chief Norman Williams said authorities had information indicating Lyons was likely inside the house, so that address remained the focus of their attention even as law enforcement officers combed outlying areas within the perimeter.

Tear gas was deployed twice into the house in attempt to flush the suspect out, Williams said, and SWAT team members were preparing to blast open the front door at about 5:15 p.m. when authorities were notified that the suspect had been spotted hiding near a tree row in a nearby field.

Agents from the Kansas Highway Patrol and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were patrolling a field in a Humvee when one of the officers spotted Lyons’ leg as he lay on the ground.

They stopped the Humvee, and Lyons stood up and fired at the vehicle with the deputy’s handgun. He then began running, firing several more shots as the ATF agents and KHP officers ran after him.

The law enforcement officers returned fire, striking Lyons “multiple times,” Hinshaw said.

Lyons was taken to Wesley Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m.

Investigators hope to talk to neighbors and relatives of Lyons, Hinshaw said, but he doesn’t expect every question raised by the shooting to be answered.

“We may never know what the motive is,” he said.

Results of the investigation, including the use of force, will be presented to the District Attorney’s Office for review.

Flags at Wichita City Hall and other city buildings have been lowered to half staff in honor of Etheridge. They will remain at half staff through Friday, the day of Etheridge’s funeral.

“We’re just really shocked and saddened by what has happened,” Mayor Carl Brewer said. “It has affected all of our law enforcement agencies.”

Brewer said the city is providing counselors for police officers who were involved in the shoot-out and others who may be shaken by the violence.

“Every time they make a stop or enter a house, they don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “This demonstrated just how much risk there is.”

Reach Stan Finger at 316-268-6437 or sfinger@wichitaeagle.com.

FIRST 911 — from a woman — consequence, she’s threatened and has to flee for her life, BUT her ex-husband IS jailed — for about 2 years, or less.

SECOND 911 — from the formerly jailed young man (27 yrs old is young) — his ambush. SOMEONE was going to pay. Was Etheridge (the officer killed) a responding officer in the former arrest, or just anyone in uniform would do? Was he upset at what had happened in prison?

Was this suicide by cop? Sounds like possibly, to me.

WOULD IT HAVE PLAYED OUT DIFFERENTLY IF THE COUPLE HAD STAYED TOGETHER, OR WOULD SHE BE A STATISTIC, NOT THE OFFICER?

ANYONE WANT TO DO A PSYCHOLOGICAL WORK-UP ON THIS ONE (PLACE BESIDE THE WORK-UPS ON PHILLIP GARRIDO, AND HIS WIFE?) WAS IT UNEMPLOYMENT MADE HIM DO IT? WAS IT THE CHILD SUPPORRT ORDER? WAS IT ACTUALLY TAKING CONSEQUENCES FOR CRIMINAL ACTIVITY? WAS IT HIS LACK OF A FATHER IN THE YOUTHFUL HOME (FATHER CONTACTED DECLINED TO COMMENT). DID HE NOT HAVE A PLACE IN SOCIETY, WAS THAT IT? WAS HE ON MEDS? was he FORMERLY ON MEDS AND NOW OFF MEDS?

WOULD’IT HAVE BEEN BETTER TO, AT ABOUT $20K/PRISONER/YEAR (??) KEEP HIM IN LONGER, OR INDEFINITELY?

DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I SAID EARLIER ABOUT “COLLATERAL DAMAGES” OF DV (OR SIMILAR PHRASE) IN YESTERDAY’S POST?

I do have one comment, here: Something sounds narcissistic in the mix. This person was supposedly a hell-raiser from an early age, but didn’t get help. Possib ly being a father was a shot at sanity, but I think that the child support order was probably NOT a good idea for such a person. It would’ve been better for all to let her do welfare. She’d probably get off it quicker without the threats to her life than with them.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE RESOURCES IN KANSAS:

http://www.ksag.org/page/domestic-violence (Attorney General Site):

Domestic Violence

The new Domestic Violence Unit within the Kansas Attorney General’s Office seeks to keep our families safe, stop domestic abuse and end the cycle of violence that threatens our communities.

Online Resources:

Kansas Elements and Standards of Batterer Intervention Programs in Kansas (NEW)
Cycle of Violence (printable flier): Learn to recognize the phases and symptoms of domestic violence.
Warning signs of an abusive relationship
Common characteristics of battered persons and abusers

(Be sure to catch this “get inside their head” speculation (many didn’t apply to my case, i know): date:

Source: The Battered Woman by Lenore Walker, Harper & Roe, 1979. (I’m comforted to know that the Attorney General has the latest psychological profile of batterers and their victims — only 30 years old…..)

Believes all the myths about battering relationships {{NO one questioned me, and I hadn’t heard these…}}
A traditionalist about the home, strongly believes in family unity and the prescribed sex role stereotype {{The alternative being, punishment….}} {{BY THE WAY, this now describes the Health and Human Services Dept., in general, on this matter….}}
Accepts responsibility for the batterer’s actions {{SAYS WHO?}}

Resources for Law Enforcement

Application Materials (updated for FY2010)

Child Exchange and Visitation Center Program – (CEVC)

This program provides supervised child exchange or supervised child visitation to children and families at risk because of circumstances relating to neglect; substance abuse; emotional, physical, or sexual abuse; domestic or family violence; etc. The state portion of funding can be used to fund the local match required for receipt of federal child exchange and visitation center grants.

Mighta been helpful for Jenifer Lyons . . . . .

The Essential Elements and Standards of

Batterer Intervention Programs in Kansas

The Essential Elements and Standards of Batterer Intervention Programs were developed over

seven years through the hard work of many professionals who are dedicated to ending

domestic violence in Kansas. The Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence

convened the initial work group and wishes to thank the following organizations for their work

during this process:

Developed and/or Reviewed by representatives from the following:

Alternatives to Battering, Topeka

Correctional Counseling of Kansas, Wichita {{MAYBE Mr. Lyons got this and didn’t take kindly to it?”}}{{Or, the problem was, he DIDN’t get it?}}

Family Crisis Center, Great Bend

Governor’s Domestic Violence Fatality Review Board

Halley Counseling, P.A., Girard

Johnson County Office of Court Services

The Family Peace Initiative, Girard

Kansas District Judges’ Association

Kansas Attorney General Carla Stovall

Kansas Attorney General Steve Six

Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence

Kansas County and District Attorney Association

Kansas Department of Corrections

The Mental Health Consortium

Office of Judicial Administration

Sexual Assault/Domestic Violence Center, Hutchinson

Wyandotte Mental Health Center

Family Crisis Center, GreatIn 2007, The Governor’s Domestic Violence Fatality Review Board (GDVFRB), chaired by

former Attorney General Robert Stephen appointed a subcommittee to review and update the

Essential Elements and Standards of Batterer Intervention Programs. The GDVFRB adopted

these as best practice standards in providing batterer intervention programming in Kansas, and

recommended that the Office of Attorney General implement a training and certification program

for providers of batterers intervention programs.

Attorney General Steve Six readily accepted the recommendation to train and certify batterer

intervention providers in Kansas using the Essential Elements and Standards of Batterer

Intervention Programs in Kansas.

For More information about this initiative, contact the

Director of Victim Services in the office of

Kansas Attorney General

Steve N. Six

120 S.W. 10th Avenue

Topeka KS 66612-1597

785/368-8445

“FATHERHOOD IN KANSAS (google, results 124,000)

ACCESS VISITATION IN KANSAS:

Child Custody, Support and Visitation Rights – Kansas Bar …

Visitation, often called “access” is the right of the parent who does not …. Child support and visitation are considered by statute in Kansas to be two …
http://www.ksbar.org/public/public…/child_custody.shtml – Cached – Similar –

Crisis Resource Center of SE Kansas –

Child Exchange and Visitation Center. 669 South 69 Hwy. … Wichita Childrens Home Child Access. 810 North Holyoke …
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cse/…/access_visitation…/ks.html – Cached – Similar –

Kansas Governor Mark Parkinson website … Funding Source, The Federal State Access &Visitation grant program is a formula grant program to states and …
http://www.governor.ks.gov/grants/grants_savppp.htm – Cached – Similar –

Overland Park Visitation Attorney | Leawood KS Parenting Plans …

Visitation & Parenting Plans. Kansas Visitation Lawyer … custody or non- residential custody, your children have the right of access to both parents. …
http://www.cavlaw.com/PracticeAreas/Visitation-Parenting-Plans.asp – Similar –

You will have access, at our Download Site, to the legal forms you need to modify custody-visitation in Kansas.

These forms are the most current versions …
http://www.custodycenter.com/MODIFYCUSTODY-KS/index.html

Paternity Fathers Rights Attorney Kansas | Johnson County …

Following an emotional breakup, many moms allow or deny visitation by whim, {{OR WHEN HE THREATENS TO SLIT ONE’s THROAT< CASE IN POINT}}

leaving the dads without regular access to their children. …
http://www.kslegalhelp.com/Divorce-and-Family…/Paternity.shtml – Cached – Similar –

YES, THERE WAS A DIRE LACK OF SERVICES FOR MR. LYONS…

Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up

September 30, 2009 at 3:02 pm

Today’s post is a new blog page: “Lessons from Antioch” (California)

Look: Domestic Violence matters. Ask Phil Garrido’s first wife. Ask Lindolfo Thibes’ daughter.

with one comment

Good Grief, when are we going to take ANY violation of ANY criminal law VERY seriously?

Sorry to drop people in the post mid-stream, but this has been a very disturbing case to handle, given that my own kids were “kidnapped”in the context oif all these key elements, practically, except prior prison term and rape conviction (or as far as I know, rape). But, most of the rest.

Including the system’s failure to put a lid on it.

(Stolen, not kidnapped, technically. Only the fact that they were not actually removed from the state meant it was not kidnapping and prevented, supposedly, FBI from involvement. They were missing to me, for sure, at this time. I have too many and very significant questions (not all evident from this post) as to WHY certain perpetrators are getting out of prison when and in what means they do. Also as to WHY certain crimes are still not taken seriously enough by: arresting officers, prosecutors, and sentencing judges alike.

I know as well as anyone and so do many, many women and children, how one could be abused “in broad daylight” and no intervention in sight. I don’t think grown women get “used” to this, but children are an entirely different situation.

Everyone assumes someone else is handling it. Not enough people are willing to notice, act on, AND follow through and press police, etc. to follow through on, what they have reported. When I was assaulted at home, sometimes neighbors called police to the home, who didn’t press charges, report, or for the most part hand out anything regarding domestic violence. Up to and including several years after the violence against women act had passed, too. The reporting didn’t stop much, and generally happened after an incident was already over with. It didn’t deter a follow-up.

I not only kept showing up for work (though often traumatized) I once even showed up in the dentist’s office with my teeth knocked loose. I don’t remember almost any questions being asked, of any significance, in how this happened. How often did they get women with front teeth knocked loose in there? Especially nonathletic looking ones that didn’t look like the lifestyle included rollerblading or contact football, etc..

When my kids were stolen, law enforcement was involved in ENABLING this, as was the family law system, as were “mediators” and of course my relatives were part of the support system making it happen, and reason for it. It was part of the “cult-like” mentality. While these people work, I presume, in public, what they do in private is as “off the grid” as any Garrido.

This kidnapping/sex abuse/rescue case is prominent enough, I’ll not summarize it here, any search will produce an article RICH with links, fascination, background, and excuses. It’s a public purging of the conscience and an attempt to lay blame somewhere, so we can all get on with life and believe that this is NOT business as usual in quality or quantity.

It takes a Village to raise a child? It takes several villagers to expect law enforcement to handle what they know is going on.

The same method that works for not reporting domestic violence against women, and stalking, kidnapping, jealous obsessions, and inordinate need to DOMINATE — if only one woman, still, that woman — plus failure to maintain one’s own livelihood, participate productively in society (not productively in the black market or “off the grid”).

Garrido – – WHY WAS HE ON PAROLE?

From rag NYDAILYNEWS (I had to put blinders on to read the article, which was pretty raw itself):

August 30, 2009:

Look at this account of his first kidnapping/rape victim that generated the 1977 sentence, of which he only served 11 years.

Conrad was on routine patrol in the early morning hours of Nov. 23, 1976, when he spotted a car with California tags outside a Reno storage facility.

The cop soon noticed a light flickering under the shed’s rollup door, prompting him to bang on it. A disheveled Garrido, shirtless and wearing jeans, opened the door almost immediately.

“I asked him what he was doing in there,” Conrad recalled.

Before Garrido could answer, a female voice cried out from inside the warehouse, and a woman emerged from behind a curtain completely nude. She said she had been kidnapped and raped.

“He didn’t seem nervous or anything,” Conrad said. “He just said they were boyfriend and girlfriend, and they were just having consensual sex.”

(How consensual depends on the point of view….)

Conrad told the woman, later identified as Katherine Callaway, to get dressed. His backup arrived soon after and informed him that the license plate had been traced to a car involved in a kidnapping that afternoon.

Callaway was abducted, handcuffed and assaulted after picking up Garrido as a hitchhiker.

Conrad slapped cuffs on him.

t’s that “ONLY 11 YEARS” part that concerns me, as I wonder about the NJ Toms River, let out murder/suicide situation, plus the similar one, same area, the previous year. What’s UP with that?

LISTEN:

Even then, Conrad didn’t know that Garrido was high on acid and that the storage unit was equipped with various sex aids, pornography, stage lights and wine.

Garrido later told a detective he needed to dominate women to satisfy his sexual urges.

“I said, ‘What the hell are you resorting to this for?'” retired Reno Detective Dan DeMaranville, 74, recalled to The News. “He said that’s the only way he gets sexual gratification. … The guy should have been castrated while he was in prison.”

COMPARE:

The 56-year-old psycho kept Dugard and the two daughters he fathered with her captive in a secret compound behind his home in Antioch, Calif.

Local cops acknowledged they missed an opportunity to save Dugard in 2006 when a neighbor reported the man known as “Creepy Phil” had sexual addictions and kept little girls in his backyard.

The deputy dispatched to Garrido’s home left without even setting foot in the registered sex offender’s yard.

The mystery of Dugard’s disappearance ended when a University of California, Berkeley, cop became suspicious of Garrido and contacted his parole officer. Garrido later confessed to kidnapping the sweet-faced blond, cops said.

CAN WE CONNECT THIS WITH other FORMS OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN, PLEASE??

Jaycee Lee Dugard kidnapper Phillip Garrido’s first wife Christine Murphy says he’s a ‘monster

(NY Daily News, next day)…

The Monster’s first wife says he once “tried to gouge” her eyes out with a safety pin.

Phillip Garrido, who is accused of kidnapping Jaycee Lee Dugard and raping her repeatedly during 18 years of captivity, went into a jealous rage when he saw another man flirting with his wife.

“He took a safety pin and went after my eyes,” Christine Murphy told Inside Edition. “He left a scar on my face.”

(Why not go after the man?)

Murphy, who said she and Garrido were high school sweethearts in northern California, said he “smacked” her around during their brief marriage and that she became his first kidnapping victim when she tried to flee him.

“I was always looking for a way to find out how to get away,” said Murphy, who worked at a Reno casino to pay the bills while Garrido tried to launch a musical career. “He’d always told me he’d find me wherever.“

Murphy said that when she was finally able to escape, Garrido “found me.”

“He pulled up, turned around and forced me back into the car,” she said, in part one of the Inside Edition interview that airs Monday night.

Calling Garrido a “good manipulator” and a “monster,” Murphy said she was relieved when Garrido was sentenced to 50 years in prison in 1976 for kidnapping and raping another woman.

Murphy, who remarried and is now a mother a four, said she had no idea Garrido had been released early and reacted with disgust after he was arrested for turning Dugard into a sex slave and fathering her two daughters.

“It makes me sick to my stomach,” she said. “He’s pretty much capable of anything.”

Cops Searched the Home but Didn’t See Compound

Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, August 28, 2009

Garrido’s luck held in July of last year, when a multiagency task force in Contra Costa County searched his home as part of a sexual offender compliance check, officials said. He had a string of offenses dating back to 1971 and was a registered sex offender on parole in California.

I WONDER HOW MANY AGENCIES IT TAKES NOT TO CHECK OUT A MAN REPORTED FOR HAVING LITTLE GIRLS IN THE BACK YARD (??)

Police, however, had been told about the backyard lair before, according to a former neighbor.

Erika Pratt said that two years ago, she called police after seeing what looked like a living compound with tents and sheds.

No warrant

Sheriff’s deputies came to ask questions, Pratt said, but they told her that because they didn’t have a warrant, they couldn’t search the house.

“I always wished someone could do something about it,” Pratt said. “It was like he was charging people to live there.”

Sheriff’s spokesman Jimmy Lee confirmed that his agency had dealt with Garrido before, but he was not able to provide details.

“We need to investigate it further to determine what that contact was,” Lee said.

OTHER SUSPICIOUS BEHAVIOR:

Criminal probe

At the time of the sex offender task force’s check last year, Garrido was the subject of a criminal probe that began in 2008 and had nothing to do with sex crimes.

Aguinaga said Garrido was suspected of bilking an elderly neighbor out of his life savings. A complaint was lodged on the man’s behalf when he moved to Friendship Residential Care in Antioch, Aguinaga said.

The elder care home relayed allegations that from late 2007 to March 2008, Garrido swindled Dilbert “Jack” Medieros, now 79, of nearly $18,000. In the end, prosecutors cited insufficient evidence in declining to file charges in April.

Garrido told police that Medieros had given him money to help start a church. He also told investigators that he had known Medieros for years and took him places such as the zoo.

Which others were complicit in her torment?

Details of Jaycee’s torment have been beamed around the world. Yet according to his neighbour, the full, awful truth about what really took place here might be worse than imagined – far worse.

For with FBI agents now digging-up Creepy Phil’s backyard and exploring his neighbour’s property, Mr Rogers shudders at the memory of the sounds he heard when it was ‘party time’ next door.

Mr Rogers says ‘perverts’ in the area were regularly invited over by Garrido for sex, beer and drug parties and that the Garrido home was, in effect, being used as a brothel.

{{Mr. Rogers also, naturally, tells why he didn’t report this and was not involved.}}

As details of this dark and troubling story slowly come to light, the question that America is asking itself above all others is: how on Earth was Garrido able to carry out his despicable crimes in the heart of suburban California, without anyone noticing – and for 18 years?

{{Despicable crimes happen in respectable neighborhoods all the time. What TYPE may vary with neighborhood. Or maybe not so much — ask any victim of domestic violence how it went and how SHE got out. All it takes is enough people to figure out someone else will report it, and enough enablers. }}

Worse still, could others have known what was taking place there – and even been complicit in Jaycee’s torment?

Certainly, Walnut Avenue is a grubby, primitive and predominantly white area. Many of the homes are little more than wooden shacks with children playing in the dirt outside.

Drug and alcohol addiction are widespread; back yards are littered with cars and fridges. Astonishingly, the area is home to 144 rapists and paedophiles.

‘People here live off the grid,’ says one local police source. ‘That means they use drugs, don’t pay taxes and never pay their bills. They live as they want to – and pay no attention to anyone else. And everyone who lives here is very happy with that arrangement.’

The surrounding streets offer another insight into Garrido’s twisted mindset as he held two generations hostage for his own sexual gratification. As darkness fell on Saturday, people scurried from dusty yard to yard, buying and selling crystal meth.

Highly addictive and responsible for making users’ teeth fall out in a syndrome known as ‘meth mouth’, crystal meth, also known as crank, is an amphetamine which has swept the U.S. Experts say users experience unstoppable sexual urges.

Locals say Garrido, who had previously been addicted to LSD, was a ‘tweaker’ – the slang word for crystal meth addicts, whose habit leads to characteristic spasms of twitching – and that he was also reputed to ‘cook’ the raw materials for crystal meth in an old van in his garden. This ‘laboratory’ reportedly exploded last month. Again, neighbours did not call police.

One man:

Smacking girlfriend around, trying to gouge her eye out (possessive jealousy), stalking/kidnapping, kidnapping and raping again, being let out (being let OUT?), kidnapping and raping again, and again. In the context, drug use, and did I mention financial elder abuse?

Is this enough cause to take violence against women SERIOUSLY? Or is it really OK to dominate a woman by whatever means necessary. Look at what goes with it. Look what kind of characters need to do this.

I said I was having a hard time with this post, and I am. Because while Philip was not biologically related to the girl he kidnapped, THIS one was:

Man who assaulted daughter, fathered her children is sentenced

Lindolfo Thibes, formerly of Los Angeles, gets 109 years to life for physically and sexually abusing his daughter for two decades. The case came to light when he stabbed her in Las Vegas.

By Jack Leonard

April 18, 2009

The emergency call came in as a domestic violence assault: A man had stabbed his girlfriend in the parking lot of a Las Vegas hospital.

But as detectives began to investigate, they unearthed a dark family secret. The suspect was not the victim’s boyfriend but her father, who had been sexually assaulting her for nearly two decades and had fathered her three children.

The assaults, the victim told authorities, started when she was 6 years old and living in Los Angeles. She said her father, a martial arts instructor, threatened to kill her if she told anyone and kept her a prisoner at home, monitoring her movements using surveillance cameras and delivering fierce beatings during paranoid rages.

On Friday, the daughter, now 29, sat silently in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom as a judge sentenced Lindolfo Thibes to prison for 109 years to life in what police describe as the most heinous case of child abuse they had encountered.

As her father was led away in handcuffs, the woman wept quietly and embraced her younger brother, who she said was also a victim of beatings by their father.

> > > > >

At that rate: 109 years — judging by Garrido’s case, he should be out in 22.

The victim told investigators that the abuse began in the mid-1980s when she and her father were alone in the house. Her mother worked nights and eventually moved out of the home to be a home healthcare provider. (The mother could not be reached for comment.)

Children need their fathers. ALL children need their fathers. No matter who the father. LEt me get this again: ALL children need their fathers the major crisis of our times is fatherlessness. Children who don’t live with their father are more likely to grow up and have awful problems and engage in crime. The federal government should make sure that more fathers get MORE access to their children.

Keep saying that, so you feel better, maybe you’ll really be able to believe this sooner or later, and incidents like this are ALL fabrications. CHILDREN need their fathers. Not necessarily their mothers (judging by the courts), but certainly their FATHERS. MOTHERS are optional, FATHERS are not. (keep trying, I know you can get it right). This applies even when their fathers have a need to dominate women by assaulting them, whether for sex, religion, or just because it’s fun. Children need their fathers

Her father, the woman told authorities, plied her with alcohol and marijuana from the age of 8. {{Concurrent with the incest}} She said she was pulled out of school in sixth grade and estimated that she was sexually assaulted about 10 times a week, according to law enforcement records.

In an interview with The Times, the woman said her father rigged the family’s West Adams home with surveillance cameras inside and out. Under her bed, she said, were motion detectors that set off an alarm when she got up.

As a teenager, she was forbidden to leave the house alone. Her father often grew paranoid and accused her of trying to escape or of secretly meeting boys. Enraged, he would beat her and her brother on their feet with a baseball bat, she said.

She feared deportation if she reported the abuse, she said, but was also terrified of the consequences if authorities did not believe her.

He said he “would kill me if he ever got his hands on me if I ever told,” she said. “He used to tell me he was going to cut my head off.”

At 17, she gave birth to her first child. For years, she said, her oldest daughter was her only friend. The moments they shared playing with the girl’s toys or watching television offered small but important comforts during her life with her father. There were also times, she said, when she and her father played video games or watched movies together.

“I would use little happy thoughts to keep me going,” she said.

Her father, she said, grew fearful that her brother had told police about abuse at the home and fled to Las Vegas in 2003, taking her and her children. They lived in a motel, where, she said, Thibes told others that she was his girlfriend.

In April 2005, he stabbed her twice in the chest with a 10-inch kitchen knife, police records show. In interviews with police, he described her at various times as his wife, girlfriend or daughter.

The woman said she told hospital workers about the abuse once her father had been arrested and she knew her children were safe in custody.

SHE COULDN’T SAFELY REPORT UNTIL SHE KNEW HER FATHER WAS IN JAIL

THESE POLICE ACTUALLY ARRESTING FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SAVED THIS WOMAN AND HER CHILDREN FROM FURTHER SEXUAL ASSAULTS, BEATINGS, AND A LIFE OF FEAR, A NIGHTMARE.

Again, among these elements listed above were: Kidnapping, (more than once) rape, domestic violence, need to dominate women for sexual fulfilment, elder abuse (financial), stalking, jealousy, and use of drugs with sex, living off the grid, and possibly pimping out young women to the neighborhood. When they weren’t also working for him (Jaycee Dugard also helped with his printing business, it came out).

Oh yes, and in the case of Garrido, being inexplicably let out of jail early (anyone heard why yet?), and inexplicably not caught by multiagency task forces whose responsibility was to monitor.

Musta been because they were in an “unincorporated area” of Antioch.

What about when one parent is in a family court litigation? OH, well, that’s an ENTIRELY different matter, and the: Kidnapping, history of violence, obsessive jealousy, living off the grid, stalking, and financial elder abuse no longer apply. Let us convene some more experts to see which is the better parent, and how they can do 50/50 parenting, and ask a few psychological experts to evaluate how dangerous that one doing the: kidnapping, stalking, living largely off the grid, and in general refusing to obey the law, really is. Does that REALLY impact the children growing up?

Based on too many cases I know, including (case in point) mine, supposedly not.

Now you know why I’m having a hard time with this one.

Let’s compare who let Garrido out (what system, which people) with the ones in Toms River, NJ 2009 (and same county, 2008) that resulted in murder/suicide shortly after release, with another one that’s an accident about to happen I read about in Connecticut recently: Fiance comes at his wife with a ball bat in disguise, they marry, and she finds out later. When the facts are out, he is still released on $50,000 bail.

Oh yeah, and he was a town alderman — I suppose that was irrelevant.

Police: Connecticut town official was masked man who attacked fiancee days before wedding

ANSONIA, Conn. (AP) — A public official wearing a mask attacked his fiancee inside their Connecticut home four days before their wedding, throwing a blanket over her, hitting her with a baseball bat and running out the back door, police said.

Keith Maynard, an Ansonia town alderman who has since resigned, was arraigned Thursday afternoon in Superior Court and released on $50,000 bail. He declined to comment to reporters as he left the hearing.

What the hell kind of bail is that?

Maynard has been charged with second-degree assault, first-degree unlawful restraint and first-degree reckless endangerment.

Police say the woman, now Maynard’s wife, came home July 1 to find a masked man inside the house. She was treated for minor abrasions after the attack.

“I love my husband more than anything and to know that five days later was my wedding and he could do that and go through with the wedding. I was very surprised,” Ida Maynard told reporters outside the courthouse.

The judge ordered Maynard to stay away from the house so Ida Maynard can live there. He was also ordered to turn over any firearms, though his lawyer, John Kelly, said he did not believe Maynard had any.

Was he just getting off on the ball bat attack, or was there some other motive involved? Was this foreplay? Preliminary to finding out how much abuse she was going to put with during marriage? Is any protective order in place? It’s kind of a half-baked article, there, eh?

Courtesy Ansonia PD

He works for Department of Transportation. Well, he’s on “paid administrative leave” at this time.

(Article has considerable more detail & link to arrest warrant, too: they’d dated 6 years, another woman possibly involved at time of attack, his wife had a son. )

Blume said nothing in Maynard’s personality indicated he was capable of any kind of violence.

Can we yet face it, most of us are not THAT good judges of personality? And psychological profile doesn’t of itself determine whether or not there’s been violence.

“Even if we argued, he never raised his voice. Here’s a guy who is just a nice, quiet individual who just did his job,” Blume said. “I don’t know what to say. I’m speechless, and I’m never speechless.”

Myth: quiet people don’t engage in violence. Work face is similar to at home face.

I’ve known him,” Della Volpe said. “He was a good public servant. But I certainly don’t condone domestic violence. . .Obviously this is a sad day for our community.”

Maynard was a supervisor for the state Department of Transportation. He has been on the Board of Alderman for 10 years, and had been nominated by the Democratic Town Committee to run for another term.

Board of Alderman President Stephen Blume said Maynard was an “excellent Alderman” who took all of his responsibilities seriously.

“I’m shocked by the news. I feel sorry for the woman who had to go through this,” Blume said.

Maynard resigned from the Board of Alderman Wednesday night. The board is expected to accept the resignation at its next meeting.

Police Chief Kevin Hale said he was also saddened by the news, but said it was an example of how the police department doggedly investigates domestic violence matters.

Yes they certainly do. They investigated, and someone else released the obviously disturbed and dangerous fellow, and thanks to being on PAID administrative leave (something many women don’t get ~ ~ in fact, never met anyone that got anything from a “Victims of Crime” fund ever as to DV ~ ~ when I was being battered, or had crimes committed against me that caused work loss-es) What’s more, the bail has released this man, and his attorney doesn’t think he has weapons (not including baseball bats?).

Why don’t they give Ida Maynard a baseball bat and some mace?

Sorry, folks, I probably shouldn’t write about incidents a little too close to home. No, I am NOT reassured about my kids at this point, and one is in college presently, too. I’m a little worried about their current value system, seeing as the court has put them in the custody of an identified batterer (same County/City) despite repeated police involvement repeated infractions of custody order, stalking, failure to respect child support orders (the most obvious), some really odd explanations for why, counter-accusations that I was a flight risk when I had no means to get away and had significant professional involvement right here, and other kind of delusional reports.

Oh yes — and when they’d just been in essence kidnapped!

WHY do people kidnap? To protect? Or to guard against reporting? Or when the kidnapping is to avoid a child support arrears, when it was set fairly low (if below welfare levels is any indicator), or to “dominate a woman” which is already on the record. Every single indicator of some severe personality problems is already on the record, and the local enforcment, won’t?

Is it just because they’re too busy investigating more serious cases, like they did with Jaycee Dugard the first (several) times problems were reported, above? Or is there another reason?

What’s happening to all these kids getting custody switches in the family law venue?

If I get a parking ticket (and I confess I have), I haven’t noticed prosecution lacking in the matter. What about these serious crimes to society?

Why does family law not take these same behaviors when an actual parent is involved, seriously? Does shared DNA mean they aren’t crimes? Did it for Phil Garrido — after all, the 11 year old and 15 year old, WERE biologically his children. He was their father…

A batterer, stalker, kidnapper, or man obsessed with a former, OVER WITH relationship, or a man not willing to live on the grid, who then again intentionally crossing the criminal line again after being confronted ONCE is a danger signal.

The reports are already out on abduction risk factors in high-conflict custody, and they are all being stoutly ignored, too.

Now, the landscape is changed. We are into lawlessness in the relationship, and one parent is supposed to just “deal with it” and pretend that her instincts are “off” and the courts are “on” the mark. Maybe a few more parenting classes will assuage that gut instinct and make it go away; that’s the typical family law response, when there’s money in the family.

When there’s not, then the idea is to prolong the litigation, but bring in government-paid professionals instead.

There’s money in the mix somewhere, for sure and there was, I bet, in Jaycee’s years of torture, too, perpetrator and enablers alike.

It takes that village, and we’ve got one for sure, nationwide, we do.

Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up

September 1, 2009 at 5:06 pm

Posted in After She Speaks Up - Reporting Child Sexual Abuse, After She Speaks Up - Reporting Domestic Violence and/or Suicide Threats, Designer Families, Domestic Violence vs Family Law

Tagged with again., and worse, domestic violence, How sex offenders get away with it, incest, Inexplicable Early Releases, Jaycee Dugard, Keith Maynard, parental kidnapping, Phil Garrido, Rapist Kidnapper released to Kidnap and Rapes, retaliation for reporting

Mixed Sentiments — from a different battlefield — on the Passing of Senator Ted Kennedy, who valiantly fought: Brain Cancer, for Not Leaving Children Behind, and for Caring for the nation’s Health.

with 2 comments

AUGUST 26, 2009

I rarely sleep, and as the TV flashed with news of this lion of a personality, and carrier of the family name, it coincided unfortunately with the third year since I lost my daughters to felony child-stealing, in retaliation for reporting, in seeking asylum from domestic violence.

I struggle with respecting this event, with discomfort about our nations hyper-respect of public figures. Senator Ted apparently was a womanizer as well as struggled with alcohol, and eventually married a woman 22 years his junior; do his many public accomplishments compensate, is this just the way of “famous men” that change society?

He lost two brothers to assassination, assassinations that affected our country.

I am currently reviewing the work of a young woman, local, that lost a sister and a brother to murder, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and probably also wrong color. She too is near the end of her dynasty — both parents gone. Her mother took the loss of two children hard, and also was fighting cancer. Her older sister was seen talking to some people in a van. She was found later, hog-tied, stabbed many times, raped many times, and thrown out like trash in a dumpster. Her SISTER. Her brother was stabbed in the heart for confronting someone trailing other women. Why do I run across people like this? I don’t know, except I don’t live in a castle or gated community, and I find people’s stories interesting. I have been cut out of my own daughters’ stories by a top-heavy, supposedly well-intentioned system that knew that two bright girls were not going to escape its radar or grasp, and that mother must therefore disappear.

Unlike me, she figured out FAST that a system was not going to protect her own two sons, and found a trusted friend to become guardian, so at least she can see them. Like others, for a fee. Like me, she wants some version of the truth to survive for her children.

We are allowed to give birth, but too often, not to also speak.

How famous is Senator Ted, then, and how much more important his story, and his contributions? Should I mourn him more than others? And yet it’s clear he worked hard, campaigned hard, pushed initiatives through, and changed our society. How can I handle this today, when I shouldn’t be blogging but doing something more self-preserving. Do I share the national regret and awe?

Quite honestly, no, but I mean no harm in saying so.

How long can I afford to pause and commemorate?

Probably shouldn’t have today, but i did.

it is easy and common to pick heroes and praise them, and transfer parts of our identity to heroes who gave their lives in service, and forget the non-heroes, some of whom I commemorate below.

I am not sure where Senator Ted falls in this mix. I think the metaphor of this book has come to the rescue. It seems both to symbolize the federalism and the poverty, and the reporting of it that go together in the topic “FAMOUS.”

“Let us Now Praise Famous Men“

The book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men grew out of an assignment the two men accepted in 1936 to produce a magazine article on the conditions among white sharecropper families in the U.S. South. It was the time of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt‘s “New Deal“ programs designed to help the poorest segments of the society. Agee and Evans spent eight weeks that summer researching their assignment, mainly among three white sharecropping families mired in desperate poverty. They returned with Evans’ portfolio of stark images—of families with gaunt faces, adults and children huddled in bare shacks before dusty yards in the Depression-era nowhere of the deep south—and Agee’s detailed notes.

As he remarks in the book’s preface, the original assignment was to produce a “photographic and verbal record of the daily living and environment of an average white family of tenant farmers.” However, as the Literary Encyclopedia points out, “Agee ultimately conceived of the project as a work of several volumes to be entitled Three Tenant Families,though only the first volume, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, was ever written.” Agee considered that the larger work, though based in journalism, would be “an independent inquiry into certain normal predicaments of human divinity.“

The resulting single book is a critically praised opus that leapt over the traditional forms and limitations of journalism of the time. By combining factual reportage with passages of literary complexity and poetic beauty, Agee presented a complete picture, an accurate, minutely detailed report of what he had seen coupled with insight into his feelings about the experience and the difficulties of capturing it for a broad audience. In doing so, he created an enduring portrait of a nearly invisible segment of the American population.

My father had a love, and some ear, for poetry, and always claimed he could hear the rhythm of the Lord’s Prayer (or possibly it was the 23rd psalm) in Agee’s “Knoxville, Summer of 1915.” Ever the critic (and unable to carry a tune himself) he tried to talk me out of both music, and Christianity (unsuccessful in both cases), and we had something of a truce. I do not have, emotionally or socially, a family at this point; I have made my own in life, and as to the one with whom I share DNA, it’s the two daughters only (now gone) and the deceased Dad, and my memories of him will have to do. . . .

So perhaps the Agee reference, the federalism, and my wish to point out, that deep poverty and distress still exist, sometimes still caused by either the basic human lusts, or the governmental god-like posturing, will make up for my mixed sense of duty in perhaps failure to “note” with enough awe, the passing of another member of the Kennedy dynasty, regardless of on how wide a screen and with how broad a stroke for how long, he painted his visions of what the United States should be. For one, as a woman, a mother, and a Christian, I do not share his multiple visions on how to help the poor and educate America. I do not think this is the original American vision, a totalitarian welfare state, an inverted pyramid building the 21st century equivalent of pyramids of social structure. I think this “nation/religion” is the way of Egypt, milennia ago. No, I do not. But still, Let us Now Praise Famous Men.

One of the follies of humanity is poor choice of who to praise and with whom to associate — famous preempts worthy.

Throughout the book, Agee and Evans use pseudonyms to obscure the identity of the three tenant farmer families. This convention is retained in the follow-up book And Their Children After Them.

lthough Agee’s and Evans’ work was never published as the intended magazine article, their work has endured in the form in which it finally emerged, a lengthy, highly original book. Agee’s text is part ethnography, part cultural anthropological study, and part novelistic, poetic narrative set in the shacks and fields of Alabama. Evans’ black-and-white photographs, starkly real but also matching the grand poetry of the text, are included as a portfolio, without comment, in the book.

Although at its heart a story of the three families, the Gudgers, Woods, and Ricketts (pseudonyms for the Burroughs, Tengles and Fields) the book is also a meditation on reporting and intrusion, on observing and interfering with subjects, sufficient to occupy any student of anthropology, journalism, or, for that matter, revolution.

THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF SENATOR EDWARD M. KENNEDY 1962-2009

August 26, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Senator Kennedy has authored more than 2,500 bills throughout his career in the United States Senate. Of those bills, several hundred have become Public Law. Attached is a sample of some of those laws, which have made a significant difference in the quality of life for the American people. Download the PDF document of his accomplishments here.

Reflections:

Who old enough does not remember? the assassinations, the plane crash, and now we have newsbroadcasts, and a nation commemorating the legacy of this Senator from Massachusetts. It is healing to commemorate, with respect, men who have changed the face of the nation. Last night, I watched on TV, Charlie Rose seeking to know this man through former friends and writers, and also speaking with the Senator also. As I saw the shock of white hair, the broad, broad charismatic smile, and listened to Senator Kennedy promote Education and Health Care, his two major federal programs and passions, I had a hard time. I heard the Senator talk about how America cannot be left behind in globalization and MUST give EVERY child the capacity to succeed in a global economy.

I thought, where are the memorials for the people who were not born into Kennedy family, but still died?

Viet Nam Memorial

By thee have I run through a troop and leapt over a wall

Psalm 18:

1 I will love thee, O LORD, my strength.

2 The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.

3 I will call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies.

4 The sorrows of death compassed me, and the floods of ungodly men made me afraid.

5 The sorrows of hell compassed me about: the snares of death prevented me.

6 In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears.

. . . .

With the merciful thou wilt shew thyself merciful; with an upright man thou wilt shew thyself upright;

26 With the pure thou wilt shew thyself pure; and with the froward thou wilt shew thyself froward.

27 For thou wilt save the afflicted people; but wilt bring down high looks.

28 For thou wilt light my candle: the LORD my God will enlighten my darkness.

29 For by thee I have run through a troop; and by my God have I leaped over a wall.

30 As for God, his way is perfect: the word of the LORD is tried: he is a buckler to all those that trust in him.

31 For who is God save the LORD? or who is a rock save our God?

32 It is God that girdeth me with strength, and maketh my way perfect.

33 He maketh my feet like hinds’ feet, and setteth me upon my high places.

34 He teacheth my hands to war, so that a bow of steel is broken by mine arms.

35 Thou hast also given me the shield of thy salvation: and thy right hand hath holden me up, and thy gentleness hath made me great.

36 Thou hast enlarged my steps under me, that my feet did not slip

WHO MOURNS THESE?

Deborah Ross (51) and Ersie Charles Everette (58)

2009 Tried to break up, Shot to death at work, in a Tollbooth, and her male friend in a parking lot, ambushed

Cross said the shootings appeared to stem from a domestic dispute as Burris and Deborah Ross, 51, a California Department of Transportation toll booth collector, had recently broken up.

“He clearly had no regard for human life, so we wanted to apprehend him as soon as possible,” Cross said. “We had authorities all throughout Northern California trying to find this guy.”

Burris apparently opened fire with a shotgun shortly before 6 p.m. Tuesday, killing Ross and Ersie Charles Everette, 58, of San Leandro, Calif., who was sitting in his truck in the toll plaza parking lot.

Ross and Burris had shared a house in Richmond, and neighbors said the two had been having financial problems. Richmond Police were called to the house on Saturday, police spokeswoman Sgt. Bisa French said Wednesday. It is unknown what the nature of the call was as no report was taken, French said.

Although their relationship had just ended, Burris was aware of Everette, who drove Ross to work Tuesday, Cross said.

“Somehow, he knew the guy was there at her job, there’s a connection between the two victims, but what that relationship is, we don’t know at this time,” Cross said.

Everette, known as “Chuck” by those who knew him, was a longtime, well-respected bus driver for Golden Gate Transit who had received numerous accolades, spokeswoman Mary Currie said Wednesday.

“He was a likable guy, a good guy,” Currie said. “Passengers liked him. His co-workers liked him.”

Tuesday’s shootings occurred at the bridge over the northern portion of San Francisco Bay that connects well-to-do Marin County with Richmond and other East Bay suburbs. Witnesses said a man used the butt of a shotgun to shatter the window of the No. 3 toll booth, then fired at least three times inside, stunning rush-hour commuters in the westbound lanes before fleeing in the van owned by Western Eagle Shuttle of San Rafael, Calif.

Officers found Ross’ body inside the booth, while Everette was discovered slumped over in a white pickup truck in a nearby parking lot.

> > >

2009/2008 Torres, Catalina (44) & Eustacio (41), Sgt. Paul Starzyk

Brother, Sister, both domestic violence workers, both murdered by an “ex”

According to the San Francisco chronicle, on the evening of July 19th, Eustacio Torres was shot by his ex-girlfriend at a converted garage that Torres was renovating. Torres and his girlfriend, Bernadette Agustin, met about five years ago when Torres was renovating her house. They became partners in that business for a few years. The market started to tumble downhill, and their buildings went into foreclosure causing them to lose money. This caused tension between the couple. After some time, their relationship started to become difficult for both of them. Torres realized that Agustin was dangerous; however he never got a restraining order against her. On the evening on July 19th Agustin went to meet Torres at the garage. Prior to this incident she bought a pistol. She brought shot him with it.

About a year ago Eustacio Torres’ sister, Catalina Torres, a volunteer for a battered women’s group, was shot and killed inside of her Martinez apartment while trying to protect one of her customers in a beauty salon.

Her customer’s husband, Felix Sandoval, entered the beauty salon raged at his wife who had a restraining order against him. Catalina and her customer jetted out of the beauty salon. Sandoval couldn’t find his wife so he followed Torres to her apartment and shot her in the head, simply because she was affiliated with the incident. He then shot at the door and hit Sgt. Paul Starzyk. He still busted in and shot and killed Sandoval.

Since these two murders are a year apart and both victims come from the same family, the Torres family is suffering deeply from these two tragedies.

It is sad, yet ironic how both tragedies happened in the way that they did. They were related and both incidents happened a year apart. Considering the fact that Eustacio, Catalina’s brother had to help bury her, it is sad that he got killed also. They both worked together in a domestic violence group together. Now the Torres family has lost two of their family members to similar incidents.

MARTINEZ — Last September, Catalina Torres’ family struggled to find answers about why she died at the hands of an estranged in-law who also killed a Martinez police sergeant.

> > >

Less than a year later, they find themselves again trying to find clarity after the slaying late last month of her brother, Eustacio Torres, by an estranged girlfriend in San Diego.

According to San Diego police, the bodies of Eustacio Torres, 41, and Bernadette Agustin, 52, were discovered by his nephew — Catalina Torres’ son — in the early-morning hours of July 20 at his home on in the Paradise Hills area. Investigators believe that Agustin shot Eustacio Torres and herself.

Eustacio Torres’ death follows the slaying of his sister Sept. 6, 2008, by Felix Sandoval. Sandoval burst into a Martinez beauty salon looking for his wife. She was not there, and he confronted her cousin, Catalina Torres, at a nearby apartment. While she shielded one of the home’s residents, Sandoval shot and killed her.

Sandoval then shot at police approaching the apartment, mortally wounding Sgt. Paul Starzyk. But Starzyk’s final act was to kill Sandoval, saving the others in the apartment.

Sandoval was in the midst of a divorce from his wife, who had filed a restraining order against him, and Catalina Torres had been supporting her separation from him. In San Diego, Eustacio Torres was severing ties with Agustin. Although the Torres family has experienced two devastating losses, Noe Torres, youngest of the six siblings, said they do not feel like victims.

A memorial fund has been established in Eustacio Torres’ name. Donations can be made at any Wells Fargo Bank branch to the account number 2629533015.

Since these two murders are a year apart and both victims come from the same family, the Torres family is suffering deeply from these two tragedies.
It is sad, yet ironic how both tragedies happened in the way that they did. They were related and both incidents happened a year apart. Considering the fact that Eustacio, Catalina’s brother had to help bury her, it is sad that he got killed also. They both worked together in a domestic violence group together. Now the Torres family has lost two of their family members to similar incidents.

2008 account “Details emerge in Martinez triple shooting:

Catalina Torres survived domestic abuse and became a strong advocate for a nonprofit group that helps victims of domestic violence.

“She was a battered woman who became an advocate,” said Maria Preciado, Torres’ close friend. “She took negative experiences and turned them into positive things.”

In a tragic turn of events, the 44-year-old STAND Against Domestic Violence volunteer lost her life Saturday, an innocent bystander in a deadly domestic disturbance involving her cousin’s estranged husband.

Officers were called to the salon about 11:35 a.m. Saturday on reports of a domestic disturbance. Sandoval broke the salon’s front window with his hand and entered holding a gun, police said. According to witnesses, he was looking for his estranged wife, salon owner Margarita Sandoval.

Martinez police Chief Tom Simonetti said Felix Sandoval, who was waving the gun around, never fired a shot in the salon, but confronted his teenage daughter in the parking lot behind the salon and told her he was going to kill his wife and his other children. Sandoval ran to an upstairs apartment on the opposite side of the parking lot where Torres, an unidentified woman and three of Sandoval’s children were, the chief said.

Elnora Caldwell, 46

She asked for protection

SEPTEMBER 2008, This beautiful woman Tried to Leave, Died, Stabbed, on side of the road

Contra Costa sheriff building death penalty argument in wife stabbing

Investigators said Monday that they are trying to build a death penalty case against an Oakland man who allegedly stabbed his estranged wife near the Caldecott Tunnel and pushed her out of his pickup in front of stunned motorists. Robert Woods, a 47-year-old former maintenance worker for the city of Oakland, was arrested on suspicion of murdering Elnora Caldwell, 46. Caldwellobtained a restraining order against Woods earlier this year, saying she was afraid of him. She was stabbed to death Saturday night and pushed from the pickup on a stretch of Fish Ranch Road that passes over the east end of the Caldecott Tunnel. ..Caldwell’s family members believe she was kidnapped Saturday from her Oakland home, perhaps by someone other than Woods.

Police and witnesses said Woods went to Caldwell’s Oakland apartment and washed up, then turned himself in to an Oakland police officer in the area. More than a dozen motorists stopped to help Caldwell. Some gave her chest compressions and others jotted down the license plate number of the GMC pickup. Alameda County Superior Court records show that Caldwell applied for a domestic violence restraining order against Woods on April 29, and that the order was to be active until 2013.

Caldwell wrote in her application for the restraining order that Woods had shoved her after showing up unannounced at the Nordstrom department store in San Francisco where she worked and accusing her of infidelity. In 2007, she wrote, Woods pulled her hair during an argument in his truck, forcing her to flee and take a taxi home.

In a third incident, Caldwell said, her husband broke a glass sliding door at her apartment.

“It has to stop,” Caldwell wrote of alleged verbal and physical abuse.

Court records show that Woods was fired from his job as a maintenance worker for the city of Oakland last year for allegedly doing drugs and threatening to kill co-workers.

? ? ?

Domestic Violence Murder/Suicides – Here’s a summary:

In the U.S., estimates from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) are that more than three women a day are killed by their intimate partners. Women are killed by intimate partners more often than by another acquaintance of stranger.Most of these murders involved were preceded by physical and psychological abuse.

Outside the domestic realm, males are killed much more often than females; they are killed most often in fights with other men.

According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, 1,055 women and 287 men were murdered by their intimate partners in 2005. These figures are striking, because in the past, in the 1970s and earlier, the numbers of men and women so victimized were about even. In other words, there has been a significant decline in the numbers of men killed by their partners but not for women.

The number of men who were murdered by intimates dropped by 75% between 1976 and 2005 (BJS). The number of black females murdered in this time has declined but the number of white females murdered has dropped only by 6%. Statistics Canada (1998, 2005), similarly, reveals a sharp decline in the numbers of male domestic homicide victims but not of female victims of homicide.

The reason that women are resorting less to murder of their partners is most likely because many of these women were battered women who felt trapped in a dangerous situation. Today, the presence of violence prevention programming and the availability of shelters are paving the way to other options. The fact that domestic violence services apparently are saving the lives of more men than women is a positive, though unintended consequence of the women’s shelter movement (see van Wormer and Bartollas, 2007).

Nina Reiser (31), mother of 2. No asylum in America

2006, Russian-born Oby/Gyn tries to divorce Hans Reiser (WIKIPEDIA) but disappears on exchange of children

Hans Reiser Admits to Murdering Nina Reiser, Pleads to Reduced …

In 1998, while working in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Hans Reiser reportedly selected from a mail-order bride catalogue,^[9] and subsequently married, Nina Sharanova (Нина Шаранова), a Russian-born and trained obstetrician and gynecologist^[10] who was studying to become an American licensed OB/GYN. Reiser himself stated that he met Nina when he went to a date set up by a Russian dating service; Nina had come along to translate for his date. . . .

In May, Nina Reiser alleged in court filings that her husband had failed to pay 50 percent medical expenses and childcare expenses as ordered by a judge and was in arrears for more than $12,000. ^[13]

Recovery of Nina’s body and sentencing

According to officials, prosecutors agreed to a deal whereby Reiser would reveal the location of his wife’s body in exchange for pleading guilty to second-degree murder. The deal was made with the agreement of Nina’s family, but was subject to final approval by Judge Goodman.^[45]^[46] On Monday, July 7, 2008, Reiser led police to Nina’s body buried in the Oakland hills. Reiser’s attorney, William DuBois, who was handcuffed to Reiser and accompanied by a heavy police guard to the site, said that the remains were found buried on the side of a hill between Redwood Regional Park and the Huckleberry Botanic Regional Preserve, less than half a mile (< 800 m) from the home on Exeter Drive where Reiser lived with his mother, and where Nina Reiser was last seen alive on 3 September 20

Anastasia Melnitchenko, 22, unmarried, No asylum in America

2005 Tried to break up, stalked; a clearly preventable homicide — her body found in car trunk

Body-in-trunk suspect got lots of counseling

‘Doing satisfactorily’ after 6 months of weekly sessions

He was fulfilling that obligation Oct. 19, two days before Melnitchenko disappeared, when he attended a weekly session of a program in Richmond run by Priority Male Center for Positive Peaceful Living

Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

The El Sobrante man charged with murdering a woman he had repeatedly terrorized attended a two-hour counseling session for domestic violence offenders just days before the slaying, authorities said Tuesday.

McAlpin was on probation stemming from eight felony convictions in two separate cases for stalking, threatening and attacking Melnitchenko on several occasions from 2001 to 2004. Part of his sentence in the most recent case was that he attend a yearlong domestic violence prevention program.

THE BEST WAY TO “PREVENT” VIOLENCE IS TO SEND A CLEAR MESSAGE TO GIVE NO QUARTER TO PERPERTRATORS. MCALPIN WAS A COCKY OVERENTITLED YOUNG MAN WITH NO RESPECT FOR THE WOMAN, OR THE LAW — AND FROM THE STORY, IT’S CLEAR WHY HE HAD NO REASON TO RESPECT THE LAW, TOO. I DNR BUT I SUSPECT HE WAS WHITE. I DON’T THINK THIS POOR WOMAN EVER EVEN LIVED WITH HIM. THEY DATED BRIEFLY. SHE DIED. THE STORY OF HER DEATH INTERSECTS WITH THE STORY OF A JUDGE WITH A MISSION; I MAY TELL IT ANOTHER TIME. THIS EVENT INTERSECTS WITH MY ATTEMPTS TO GET HELP IN 2005, THE SAME YEAR. I REMEMBER TRYING TO TELL MY FAMILY THAT THIS STALKING, THESE INDICATORS, SPELLED TROUBLE! MY PROBLEM WAS WHO I TOLD, WHO I SOUGHT HELP FROM, AS WAS ANASTASIA’S.

Taking matters into their own hand; two brothers kill widow & her relatives:

**Winta Mehari, 28; her brother Yonas Mehari, 17;**

and their mother, 50-year-old Regbe Bahrengasi

Widow and HER relatives killed in revenge, seeking money, by deceased husband’s relatives. 2 year old involved.

2006 – No Asylum for Eritrean Family from revenge, greed,

extortion? in the Golden State

Planned to exterminate family during Thanksgiving Dinner?

ALAMEDA — A dispute over money was the cause of the shooting deaths of three members of an Eritrean family in Oakland on Thanksgiving Day, a relative of the victims alleged Tuesday after the suspects in the case were arraigned on charges that could bring them the death penalty.

Asmeron Gebreselassie, 43, the suspected gunman, and 39-year-old Tewodros Gebreselassie were each charged Tuesday with three counts of murder; one count of attempted murder for the non-fatal shooting of Yehtram Mehari, the brother of Winta and Yonas; one count of kidnapping for allegedly taking Winta Mehari’s 2-year-old son from the scene; and two counts of false imprisonment involving two other family members, Angersom Mehari and Merhawi Mehari.

They also were charged with two special circumstances murder allegations that could earn them the death penalty: multiple murder and murder during the course of a kidnapping.

The victims and the defendants were all members of Oakland’s sizable Eritrean community. About 50 members of that community, many dressed in traditional Eritrean clothing, packed Tuesday’s court hearing.

Oakland police say they think the motive for the shooting at the Keller Plaza apartment complex at 5301 Telegraph Ave. in Oakland about 3 p.m. on Thanksgiving was that the Gebreselassie brothers wanted revenge for the death of their brother, Abraham Tewolde, 42, on March 1.

Police said Abraham Tewolde’s cause of death was undetermined and his brothers were suspicious of Winta Mehari, his widow.

Keflezighi said Tewolde died of natural causes but Tewolde’s family members asked Mehari’s family members to give them money.

I REMEMBER THIS ONE. I WAS DRIVING TO EAT DINNER, TAKEN CHARITABLY IN, NOT WITH MY DAUGHTERS, BECAUSE THEY’D ALREADY BEEN TAKEN, COMPLICIT WITH MY OWN FAMILY AND AROUND MONEY ISSUES ALSO. I RAN INTO POLICE CARS & TV CAMERAS BLOCKING THE WAY.

Was this misogyny? Was this something like an honor killing? What WAS this? A young man, apparently a good one, was killed, victim to two men seeking revenge on his mother. His crime? Being a brother, apparently!

Meanwhile, students and teachers at Berkeley High School were mourning the death of Yonas Mehari. The boys varsity soccer team, which he played on, wore black armbands in his honor and dedicated its season to him Monday night.

All the victims and suspects were immigrants from Eritrea, and the killings have shocked the East Bay’s tightly-knit community from that small East African nation. Many people packed the courtroom today, and others without seats waited in the hallway.

Hundreds of mourners have been visiting the apartment complex, home to a large number of Eritreans and Ethiopians, to pay their respects. Many have also brought food for the family and donated money for transporting the three bodies to Eritrea for burial, for medical bills for others injured in the attack and for care of Winta’s Mehari’s son.

Police said the brothers, who also live in the apartment complex, were angry at Winta Mehari over the unexplained death of their brother, Abraham Tewolde, 42, who was her husband. A mechanic who ran a small auto shop on Broadway, Tewolde collapsed and died March 1. An autopsy was unable to determine the cause of his death, coroner’s officials said.

Police said the Gebreselassie brothers suspected Winta Mehari had some role in her husband’s death. Tewodros Gebreselassie, an engineer, attended the party at the Mehari’s third-floor apartment on Thanksgiving, and police said he admitted to helping his brother plan the attack.

Witnesses told police that Tewodros Gebreselassie was talking on his cell phone and said, “Yeah, they’re all here,” according to court records. Minutes later he opened the apartment door for Asmeron Gebreselassie, who then opened fire on the Mehari family. When the shooting started, Tewodros Gebreselassie grabbed his 2-year-old nephew, Winta Mehari’s son, and carried him back to the second-floor apartment where the Gebreselassie lived, witnesses said.

Asmeron Gebreselassie also shot his brother-in-law Yehtram Mehari in the foot, witnesses told police. Another brother, Angersom Mehari, jumped out a window and suffered a broken back. A third brother, Merhawi Mehari, hid in the closet and avoided injury.

Police found the boy unharmed after the two brothers surrendered to a SWAT team following a brief standoff at their apartment. The guns he allegedly used were later found, police said.

At Berkeley High School, students, teachers and counselors spent Monday and today remembering the 17-year-old Yonas Mehari, who played soccer, ran cross country and helped tutor other students.

“I’ve known him for four years, and I really saw him as a leader, an independent thinker and just a really sweet kid to be around,” said Kristin Glenchur, athletic director at Berkeley High. “He was always around volunteering for something” such as working the scoreboards during football games or the concession stands, she said.

His slain mother was active in the Eritrean Orthodox Church in Oakland and was popular among her immigrant community, estimated by the Eritrean consulate in Oakland at to be about 3,000 people.

Donations to the Mehari Family Fund can be deposited at any Bank of America branch under account number 0560942210.

SUMMARY:

Sometimes there is no refuge from family violence — members take the law into their own hands; oftentimes greed is a factor, as in many cases above. McAlpin appears to have just been a man with a mission intersecting with a system with a different mission. She got cross in the cross-fire of attempts to reform a man after: kidnapping, stalking, assault, and threats to kill.

How IMPORTANT is it that the United States set the standard that misogyny is “anathema” it’s unacceptable?

I fear that Senator Ted, Presidents Bush, Clinton, and now Obama, have failed to do this. Moreover, women’s groups also, subject to the same human emotions, claw and fight each other sometimes to the top, seeking scarce prestige, or abundant federal funds. This is also a spinoff of misogyny. We who watch such things don’t see such huge, huge divides among the men’s groups. We have now an older Republican white President, a young and charming (and philandering) white President, and an even younger and MORE charming African-American President, all united in fixing the crises of fatherlessness, and making sure that mothers don’t actually get to (safely) fulfil their motherhood unless a man is present, and it’s CLEAR we do not have have equal protection or rights under law, despite the claims to the contrary. If so, where are all the dead men on the side of the road simply for leaving? Where are the women blowing away a few family generations to take the law into their own hands? They just aren’t there!

I should be more respectful, and I will take another day to be so, of the passing of a major political figure this week, Senator Ted Kennedy.

I wish I did not have a troubling memory of his womanizing, of the two programs he promoted the mOST (education/health) which have negatively affected my family the MOST. I wish that the date of his passing did not coincide with the date my kids were stolen, yet remain within (at last sighting) driving distance, but inaccessible to me, because I simply took a stand against misogyny and violence.

I took a stand for telling the truth in court, and not mincing words. Perhaps I am very disrespectful.

I wish I were not thinking of how he endorsed our current President, for whom I too voted, not being fully aware of his stance on the ubiquitous and impoverishing, endangering to women “fatherhood” movement. It is never enough, never enough — always another initiative, another grant, through churches, through family members when they are themselves swept up and confronted by their failure to confront, and through family law system, and through an unbelievably condescending virtual caste system by the elite making it near impossible for less fortunate to escape the economic abuse that would enable them to escape threats of injury, death, having children abducted, either by the ex or through the courts or (case in point) both, and through violence to our civil rights within this nation.

They said Sen. Kennedy worked like a dog, and i believe it. Some of us do, too, on a single issue that doesn’t often go away. I never tried to raise his offspring, and I do not appreciate his or any other administration , or their programs, just because they have the platform, prating on about how to raise mine, married or single, through a burdensome system that doesn’t even impart decent values, let alone decent academics. And in 20 years of THIS battle, I’ve never had a hand laid on any of mine, anything that was mine, or on ME, from someone who openly said he or she hated me or wanted to hurt me.

It was always from the “helpers” and those “concerned.” Sure. . . .

But in re:

Kennedy’s Battle With Cancer Lost

U.S. has lost a great statesman, obviously. But before this, long before this, we have lost something else. We have lost self-respect as individuals, and transferred it to our leaders, HOPING in them. This is misplaced hope too often, and it’s unwise.

Jeremiah was a prophet who watched and spoke out against the deterioration of his nation: For this, he got left in a pit without water, and would’ve starved there, were he not later rescued. Later, Jesus Christ, also preaching “repent” got crucified.

Jeremiah 17

.

5 Thus saith the LORD: Cursed is the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD.

6 For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, a salt land and not inhabited.

7 Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is.

8 For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out his roots by the river, and shall not fear when heat cometh, but his leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.

9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is desperately sick: who can know it?

10 I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.

11 As the partridge that gathereth young which she hath not brought forth, so is he that getteth riches, and not by right; in the midst of his days they shall leave him, and at his end he shall be a fool.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

For the past 20 years, I have sought refuge in my home, from my home, from my family’s close resonance to the tune my ex-husband played. I have a logical mind, and mind seeks logic to piece a life together, even if the logic is to accept chaos. But I HAVE found a logic to the, what I will call, narcissistic, self-referential habit of federal domination of the markets — well MOST markets. Education, family design, health care, welfare, child-bearing practically, and reform.

The U.S. is succeeding at incarceration — we are the world’s LARGEST jailor — and failing at education. The reason we are failing at education is because we have trusted our leaders to design a system. Instead, they designed an ECONOMY to support themselves, and placed our children at its mercy. This was a transformational system of values sold as good, but not in practice good. It is possible to succeed very well in this educational system and be an utter failure as a person. It is also possible to fail in this system and be a business success. Or to fail all round.

I am 50-plus. At this age, I had to pick WHAT to dedicate what’s left of my life to; and it was a hard choice between Family Law system and Educational System. Both systems hurt my kids and my family, and are creating the tiered society, while claiming to provide the opposite. I have a relative with her own children run through a private school system that took offence that i too — in a different way — opted out of the local public schools. In truth, I believe that if our daughters succeeded without wealth at what she’d sacrificed to become wealthy and with wealth BUY, it would somehow show up her life plan. Our respective nieces might be competing for similar college slots – – I don’t know.

But I have watched close up, and then system-wide, forced failure and social exclusion for simply doing something about it. So have many fellow-blogger mothers (see right column).

Look at this graphic:

(it’s an old one) from “America, What Went Wrong“? An book that documents the destruction of the middle class.

An INDEPENDENT middle class, with time to think, and understanding basic business principles, will hold its government accountable. A DEPENDENT (upon professional jobs, many of them government-sanctioned or supplied), which my generation came from (but not my parents) will indeed do the dirty work and bidding of the top group, keeping the heirarchy in place.

From 1990 to 2009, I have been overexposed to impoverishment, and how it’s manufactured. I watched my husband do this, in order to keep himself on top, he was willing that the ship should go down. Nothing more mattered, and all discussions were moot (or off) that didn’t first establish this dominance. Neither I nor our children were actually to show up as people, or with needs, but as performers.

Now, according to the myths taught in public school (and elsewhere) about HOW government works (which dealing with in-home abuse didn’t really leave time for an official study of), it should be possible to leave the situation. No one should care HOW I leave it, so long as it’s done legally and without harm to our children. However once we showed up as a household, without a resident male, in waltzed the “experts,” ignoring the facts, the danger, the track record, and proudly proclaiming situations that didn’t exist as though they did.

Having some exposure to the Bible and its language, this was easy to detect as playing “god.” And naturally, I protested.

And so, the divide and conquer of the middle class, overeducated fools (lots of academia, insufficient truly hard times), scrabbling to assert their intellectual dominance and right to explain away that violence happened in their family, and they, too, failed to report.

In the long run, I chalk it up to basic human emotions of (1) pride (2) fear (3) greed (4) prejudice (THIs kind, “misogyny.”) Where logic fails, dominance by gender — or age (it keeps flipping around, the varieties of messages I get), only a few years — or marital status, or SOMETHING to preserve the us/them, Object/subject relationship which is not a human relationship. Because surely they didn’t misdiagnose a situation, the judges were wrong, I was wrong, the statistics were wrong, everyone else was wrong, and this intact family unit (sort of) was “right.” Or else. . . . . Social shunning was tried, and I didn’t repent, to the antes were upped, and my kids were stolen, and all contact cut off.

Perhaps it is because of working so hard on these issues, I have been watching politics from afar.

Perhaps it is because of these issues, I have a different “take” on the passing of a Senator that was compared last night to Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. The words “dynasty” may apply, but these are NOT words coherent with the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Here’s a woman talking sense:

In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world– through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.

At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts…. New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters — to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don’t succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets.

This is the theme of the National Fatherhood Initiative, there is a “crisis in fatherlessness.” I have watched these manufactured crises on a personal level and also a national level and have begun to get an understanding of some of the causes and sources, ONE of which is most definitely the educational system. Divide and conquer, and assume control of assets and assessments. That’s elementary. One very empowering activity, to young people, is the arts, and self-sufficiency. No problem. Delete the arts, if possible, and free time, and uninterrupted quantities of time for reflection, and also do not study (honestly) either history or the economic system, in particular not the history of any system one is currently in. Again, I saw this in my marriage, how the most basic amenities were threatening to my “intimate partner.” THE most threatening one apparently was access to a steady cash flow. If I got this by working, the reserves must be eliminated by his working less, or making the process of getting to/from work more burdensome and timesconsuming. Rooms got trashed or re-arranged while I was out, at class or working or with the kids. There was no stability. Once you get the pattern, it’s only a matter of breaking it. My writing (I was also journaling the abuse) threatened this person. I exported the journals. He exported his behind and friendship to the people into whose care I’d put them. I went and got them back. . . . . But it was too late. They had to be turned, I guess (?).

Here’s another one which speaks to it about “lockdown” of the fortress continents. Care must be taken to incorporate cheap labor:

Fortress continents

The US and Europe are both creating multi-tiered regional strongholds

There is so much in life to be considered, but in considering memorials, again, I keep coming back to scripture:

“Pray for kings and all that are in authority, that we may live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.” (I Tim. 2:1).

“It is not good to have respect of persons.” (James).

You know what, with all due respect, it’s not. LIFE is about what you respect, and who you honor: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind and strength, and thy neighbor as thyself.”

There is not to be a tiered respect of people according to how MUCH of this world they’ve changed. We, ALL of us in the U.S., are to respect ourselves, and the founding principles of this country, which then allow us to respect at LEAST our neighbors.

“Love worketh no ill towards his neighbor.”

Sometimes it’s simply in what one does NOT do, that love.

So, below are my unforgiveable (??) thoughts, in respect that a Senator has died, on seeing the extensive television recognition of this man, and hearing about what he had been doing while I was across the country, trying to stay afloat and keep the pilot light lit in my own life, spiritually and physically.

And I have to go about what’s left of this day, seeking funds sufficient for today and build something to tomorrow.

I saw a charming, Robert-Redford smile, and I thought about Chappaquiddick,

about this man’s marriage to a woman 22 years his junior, a 38 year old divorced attorney single mother, and wondered things that were less respectful than appropriate. I thought about the CFDA pie chart I know, where his two most passionate areas: Education and Health — were THE largest and most impoverishing segments of the budget; and the effect of this incredible top-heavy Federal language transformation into a welfare state directing lives of the lowly.

It did not help when I learned that this person was a prime author of the “No Child Left Behind” act and a real pusher of Head Start. Trust the elite to prescribe for the poor every time. It is also quite unfortunate that his death this week commemorates about 3 years fo the “death” of my relationship with my own daughters, and primarily because I REFUSED to accept that poverty resulting from violence should result in becoming a surrogate womb for childless narcissistic relatives convinced that, having not experienced what my daughters and I did, or accepted court rulings already made, that they, TOO, “knew what was best” for three females leaving family violence. When I refused, I was punished by these people, and part of the punishment was declaring what I provided for our daughters, either was irrelevant and did not exist, and what they wished instead, was somehow superior.

The punishment included the gradual deletion of the arts, the dumbing down of my children, the deletion of jobs in my profession (in the arts) because of the need to fight family!, and eventually the criminal removal of children (minors) from my household in order to, ostensibly, “rescue” them somehow, by totally removing all contact with a law abiding, working, intelligent, informed and independent mother. I have had cause and many years to reflect on the benefits and fallbacks of my own, and my ex-spouses public educations amid dysfuncitonal families, mine in a different way from his, and the values that differ.

This gives a totally different perspective on “No Child Left Behind,” when one realizes that the children of those promoting this policies (if such exist) do not always attend public schools, and if they did, they are not in lower-income neighborhoods. To me, the mark of acceptability is, if it’s good enough for YOUR child, then I’ll listen.

I’ll finish with this well-written summary:

MichaelMoore.com Commemoration

August 26th, 2009 2:25 am
Ted Kennedy Dies of Brain Cancer at Age 77

‘Liberal Lion’ of the Senate Led Storied Political Family After Deaths of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy

ABC News

Aug. 26, 2009 — Sen. Ted Kennedy died shortly before midnight Tuesday at his home in Hyannis Port, Mass., at age 77.

The man known as the “liberal lion of the Senate” had fought a more than year-long battle with brain cancer, and according to his son had lived longer with the disease than his doctors expected him to.

“We’ve lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism, and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever,” the Kennedy family said in a statement. “He loved this country and devoted his life to serving it.”

Sen. Edward Moore Kennedy, the youngest Kennedy brother who was left to head the family’s political dynasty after his brothers President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated.

Kennedy championed health care reform, working wages and equal rights in his storied career. In August, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the nation’s highest civilian honor — by President Obama. His daughter, Kara Kennedy, accepted the award on his behalf.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, known as Ted or Teddy, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in May 2008 and underwent a successful brain surgery soon after that. But his health continued to deteriorate, and Kennedy suffered a seizure while attending the luncheon following President Barack Obama’s inauguration.

For Kennedy, the ascension of Obama was an important step toward realizing his goal of health care reform.

At the Democratic National Convention in August 2008, the Massachusetts Democrat promised, “I pledge to you that I will be there next January on the floor of the United States Senate when we begin the great test.”

Sen. Kennedy made good on that pledge, but ultimately lost his battle with cancer.

Kennedy was first elected to the Senate in 1962, at the age of 30, and his tenure there would span four decades.

A hardworking, well-liked politician who became the standard-bearer of his brothers’ liberal causes, his career was clouded by allegations of personal immorality and accusations that his family’s clout helped him avoid the consequences of an accident that left a young woman dead.

But for the younger members of the Kennedy clan, from his own three children to those of his brothers JFK and RFK, Ted Kennedy — once seen as the youngest and least talented in a family of glamorous overachievers — was both a surrogate father and the center of the family.

And certainly it was Ted Kennedy who bore many of the tragedies of the family — the violent deaths of four of his siblings, his son’s battle with cancer, and the death of his nephew John F. Kennedy Jr. in a plane crash.

Kennedy, Youngest Kennedy Brother, Led Political Dynasty in Wake of Tragedy

Edward Moore Kennedy was born in Brookline, Mass., on Feb. 22, 1932, the ninth and youngest child of Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy.

His father, a third-generation Irish-American who became a multimillionaire businessman and served for a time as a U.S. ambassador to Britain, had risen high and was determined that his sons would rise higher still.

Overshadowed by his elder siblings, Teddy, as he was known to family and friends, grew up mostly in the New York City suburb of Bronxville, N.Y., and attended private boarding schools. He was expelled from Harvard during his freshman year after he asked a friend to take an exam for him.

After a two-year stint in the Army, Kennedy returned to earn degrees at Harvard and then the University of Virginia law school. He married Virginia Joan Bennett, known by her middle name, in 1958. The couple would have three children, Kara, Teddy Jr. and Patrick.

By the time he reached adulthood, tragedy had already claimed some of his siblings: eldest brother Joe Jr. was killed in World War II, sister Kathleen died in a plane crash, and another sister, Rosemary, who was mildly retarded, had to be institutionalized following a botched lobotomy.

But then the family hit its pinnacle in 1960, when John F. Kennedy became president.

His brother’s ascension created a political opportunity, and Joe Kennedy decided he should take over JFK’s Senate seat. Ted Kennedy was only 28 at the time — two years short of the required age — so a family friend was found to hold the temporary appointment.

In 1962, Ted Kennedy — backed by his family money and the enthusiasm his name generated among Massachusetts’ Catholics, was elected to the Senate.

The Only One Left

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. His brother Robert became the focus of the family’s — and much of the country’s — dreams.

Following the tragedy in Dallas, Robert and Ted Kennedy became closer than they had ever been as children.

“When I was working for Robert Kennedy, there was hardly a day in which the two of them didn’t physically get together, I would say at least three or four times,” said Frank Mankiewicz, who served as an aide to Robert Kennedy. “I mean, if, if Sen. Robert Kennedy wasn’t in his office, and nobody knew where he was, chances are he was seeing Ted about something.”

Five years later, while pursuing the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968 against Lyndon Johnson, Sen. Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed. That left Ted as the only surviving Kennedy son.

“He seriously contemplated getting out of politics after Robert’s death,” said Kennedy biographer Adam Clymer. “He thought, you know, it might just be too much. He might be too obviously the next target and all of that. But he decided to stick it out and as he said on more than one occasion, pick up a fallen standard.”

Kennedy was seen by many as his brothers’ heir, and perhaps he could have won the White House had he stepped into the presidential race then. But he didn’t. And the very next year there occurred a tragedy that would forever block Ted Kennedy’s presidential ambitions.

In July 1969, following a party on Martha’s Vineyard, Kennedy drove off a bridge on the tiny Massachusetts island of Chappaquiddick. The car plunged into the water. Kennedy escaped, but his passenger did not.

Kennedy later said he dived into the water repeatedly in a vain attempt to save Mary Jo Kopechne, one of the “boiler room girls” who had worked on Bobby Kennedy’s campaign. But Kopechne, 28, drowned, still trapped in the car.

Questions arose about how Kennedy had known Kopechne — he denied any “private relationship,” and Kopechne’s parents also insisted there was no relationship — and why he failed to report the accident for about nine hours.

Kennedy pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of leaving the scene of an accident. He received a two-month suspended sentence and lost his driver’s license for a year, but the political price was higher.

Kennedy was re-elected to the Senate in 1970, but the accident at Chappaquiddick effectively squashed his presidential hopes.

He ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in 1979 against incumbent President Jimmy Carter.

Once when his daughter Kara, then 19, was passing out campaign leaflets, a man took one and said to her, “You know your father killed a young woman about your age, don’t you?”

Kennedy Curse: Political Power, Personal Tragedy

Sen. Ted Kennedy was not done confronting personal tragedy.

In 1973, 12-year-old Teddy Jr. was diagnosed with bone cancer, and he had to have a leg amputated. Kennedy’s marriage to Joan deteriorated. Some blamed her drinking, others cited his alleged womanizing. The couple divorced in 1981.

In contrast, Kennedy’s career in the Senate continued to flourish.

He supported teachers’ unions, women’s and abortion rights, and health care reform. He sponsored the Family and Medical Leave Act. And he was seen as a stalwart of the Democratic Party, delivering several rousing speeches at conventions.

Former Boston Glober reporter Tom Oliphant, who covered Kennedy’s career in Washington, observed, “It’s not all back slapping and, and personal relationships. I think one of the things that sets Kennedy’s politics apart is his, what I call his dirty little secret. He works like a dog.”

Political analyst Mark Shields said Kennedy’s “concerns were national concerns, but his forum for achieving his ends and changing policy, became the Senate. And he mastered it like nobody else I’ve ever seen.”

But another family incident exposed Kennedy’s vulnerabilities and held him up to public censure.

A nephew, William Kennedy Smith, was accused of raping a woman at the family’s estate in Palm Beach, Fla. The case generated lurid headlines around the world. Kennedy was at the estate at the time of the alleged attack and had been at the bar where Smith met his accuser.

Eyebrows were raised even further when a young woman who had been with Kennedy’s son Patrick that night revealed that she had seen the senator roaming around the house at night, wearing an oxford shirt but no trousers.

Smith was acquitted following a highly sensational trial, but the incident definitely left a dent in Kennedy’s armor. His alleged heavy drinking and womanizing were widely lampooned, and in October 1991 he thought it prudent to be low-key in his opposition to Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, who had been accused of sexually harassing a former subordinate.

Kennedy’s life, both professional and personal, took a turn for the better in 1992.

He married Victoria Reggie, a divorced attorney with two children from a previous marriage, Curran and Caroline. That year Kennedy also supported Bill Clinton, an open admirer of the Kennedy clan.

“Well, sometime during our courtship, I realized that I didn’t want to live the rest of my life without Vicky,” Kennedy said about his wife of nearly 30 years. “And since we have been together, it’s made my life a lot more fulfilling. I think more serene, kind of emotional stability.”

Elected in 1992, President Bill Clinton appointed Kennedy’s sister, Jean Kennedy Smith, ambassador to Ireland. And in 1994, Kennedy had the satisfaction of seeing his son Patrick elected to the House of Representatives from Rhode Island.

But tragedy returned that year.

In May 1994, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis died of cancer. Kennedy had remained close to his sister-in-law, who once quit her job at a publisher’s after it came out with an unflattering biography of Ted.

Kennedy’s Battle With Cancer Lost

Kennedy had served as a surrogate father for many of his nephews and nieces, but he may have been closest to Jackie’s children, Caroline and John F. Kennedy Jr.

He was horrified when in July 1999, five years after Jackie’s death, John Jr. and his bride of two years, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, along with her sister Lauren Bessette, were killed when the small plane John was piloting crashed off the Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard.

Sen. Kennedy led the family during the harrowing wait for information as Coast Guard crews searched for the missing plane.

When the bodies were retrieved from the ocean, Kennedy and his two sons went to identify the remains. The senator’s eulogy for his nephew who “had every gift but length of years” and “the wife who became his perfect soul mate” touched grief-stricken Americans.

It was an all-too-familiar sight for those who remember Ted Kennedy mourning the deaths of his brothers John and Robert, and helping the family bear up after the deaths of Robert’s sons David and Michael.

For decades, it was Ted Kennedy who carried the burden and led the way as the patriarch of a family seen as America’s answer to royalty.

With all due respect, we do not need any more royalty in this country. We need to set our sites on something invisible, something written, but something of principle, that unites us. Our leaders need to stick to that, and out of respect to OURSELVES ,we should demand that.

Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up

August 27, 2009 at 1:49 pm

	Let's Get Honest\|She… on Historic Day Today, and Week,…
	Let's Get Honest\|She… on ‘Table Talk’ Helps…
	Let's Get Honest\|She… on So, You Want Us To Speak Out A…
	davidhendren on ‘Table Talk’ Helps…
	NSPC — ‘… on ‘High-Conflict’ Co…

Posts Tagged ‘parental kidnapping’

(1) About my most recent post (@Jan. 2018), a recent and

ongoing theme:

SHARE THIS POST on...

Like this:

HAVE YOU HEARD THE LATEST LANGUAGE BLIP FROM THE ASSOCIATION OF FAMILY & CONCILIATION COURTS CULT?

“CONFLICT HAPPENS“

Books by William Eddy, LCSW, Esq.

Protect Yourself from Manipulation, False Accusations, and Abuse

SHARE THIS POST on...

Like this:

U.S., Rome, or the British Empire?

Back to this millennium — and the last decades

of the last one (1980-2010). In re: marriage, abuse, divorce, custody..

C. Attitudes Need to Change More than the Law

F. Any “Solution” Not Based on Battered Women’s Experiences Is Doomed to Failure

H. How Physical and Non–Physical Abuse Work Together: Why Do We See It as Torture When [XxxxxXxxx] Generals Do It, But Not When It’s the Guy Next Door?

READER QUIZ: WHAT YEAR WAS THAT STORY ?

SHARE THIS POST on...

Like this:

SHARE THIS POST on...

Like this:

Some times, hard times, a little humor helps me. I seem to notice things that maybe others don’t (oft-burnt, twice as observant?)…

Can a parent who committed violence get “custody” or “visitation”?

Possession and Access / Visitation:

“Here Comes Da Judge!”

“THE INSCRUTABLE WORKINGS OF PROVIDENCE“

More, “HERE COME DA JUDGE” info:

Here comes the Judge!

Here comes the judge!

The court's in session!

The Funky Judge! Updated 8.28.02

ETHICS, TRANSFORMATIONS, and Dr. JUDITH REISMAN, Kinsey, etc….

SHARE THIS POST on...

Like this:

(SF/Oakland) Bay Bridge closure could stretch beyond weekend

SHARE THIS POST on...

Like this:

I rest my case on “certifiably insane protection orders”. . . .

This article is a quiz (answers below). Do this:

The children are our future. Now, Where’s that Valium?

QUIZ ANSWERS (mine) BELOW: (I interspersed A & B as dialogue)

NOW — figure out this timeline if you can:

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE RESOURCES IN KANSAS:

Domestic Violence

“FATHERHOOD IN KANSAS (google, results 124,000)

ACCESS VISITATION IN KANSAS:

SHARE THIS POST on...

Like this:

Our Mission

SHARE THIS POST on...

Like this:

(NY Daily News, next day)…

No warrant

Criminal probe

Police: Connecticut town official was masked man who attacked fiancee days before wedding

SHARE THIS POST on...

Like this:

AUGUST 26, 2009

We are allowed to give birth, but too often, not to also speak.

“Let us Now Praise Famous Men“

August 26, 2009

WHO MOURNS THESE?

Deborah Ross (51) and Ersie Charles Everette (58)

2009/2008 Torres, Catalina (44) & Eustacio (41), Sgt. Paul Starzyk

2008 account “Details emerge in Martinez triple shooting:

Elnora Caldwell, 46

She asked for protection

Recovery of Nina’s body and sentencing

Anastasia Melnitchenko, 22, unmarried, No asylum in America

Body-in-trunk suspect got lots of counseling

‘Doing satisfactorily’ after 6 months of weekly sessions

Taking matters into their own hand; two brothers kill widow & her relatives:

Winta Mehari, 28; her brother Yonas Mehari, 17;

and their mother, 50-year-old Regbe Bahrengasi

Kennedy’s Battle With Cancer Lost

Jeremiah 17

I saw a charming, Robert-Redford smile, and I thought about Chappaquiddick,

MichaelMoore.com Commemoration

Kennedy, Youngest Kennedy Brother, Led Political Dynasty in Wake of Tragedy

F. Any “Solution” Not Based on Battered Women’s Experiences
Is Doomed to Failure

H. How Physical and Non–Physical Abuse Work Together:
Why Do We See It as Torture When [XxxxxXxxx] Generals Do It,
But Not When It’s the Guy Next Door?

**Winta Mehari, 28; her brother Yonas Mehari, 17;**