(AND, SELF) (AND TRIES TO KILL FOSTER MOTHER, too)

DYERSBURG, Tenn. – Neighbors in Tennessee are asking why a teenage girl

fatally shot by her father was placed with a foster family just two doors down

after he was accused of abusing her.   

Omitted from this lead sentence — ONE WEEK after . . . . . 

I believe one of the tags on this one might be “AFTER SHE SPEAKS UP” (if it was the daughter, or her mother, or her stepmother)

This puts a CHILL on reporting abuse…

As dads disappear, the American family is becoming significantly weaker and less capable of fulfilling

its fundamental responsibility

of nurturing and socializing children and conveying values to them.

In turn, the risks to the health and well-being of America’s children

are becoming significantly higher. 

Christopher Milburn, 34, killed the 15-year-old and her foster father and

wounded her foster mother before taking his own life Sunday, authorities said.

Sounds like a virtual honor-killing of some sort..

Children growing up without fathers, research shows, are far more likely to live in poverty,

to fail in school, to experience behavioral and emotional problems,

to develop drug and alcohol problems,

to be victims of physical abuse and neglect and, tragically, to commit suicide. 

{{THis being a case in point, I suppose?}}

{{The order of events is reversed.  Victims of physical (and sexual) abuse are often

turning to drugs, alcohol, and other risky behaviors as a result, per a decade-long

(and basically ignored by the fatherhood movement) Kaiser/CDC study (see blogroll to right), completed the

year before THIS quote I am inserting to this recent Tennessee tragedy.}}

Neighbor Frank Hipps said Milburn was good friends with Todd Randolph, the 46-year-old foster father,

and had worked for him in the past. Hipps, who had known both men for about eight years, said he didn’t know

the details of the abuse allegations but questioned why the girl had been placed so close.

Maybe he didn’t know them so well as he thought.

Who paid WHOM to get this daughter switched only 2 doors down, instead of the Dad switched out of the neighborhood?

Dad used to work for the foster father?  Just HOW inbred was this town, exactly?

A mature 46 year old man, foster father, married, and a daughter in the home.    

Let’s do the Father/Daughter math:  34 – 15 is HOW old was he when he got a woman pregnant?

Legally old enough:  19.  Probably just out of high school.  

“That kid shouldn’t have been in that house,” he said.

I agree.  I think she should’ve been with her mother.

“This might have been preventable if she had been placed with foster parents out of the community.”

MIGHT is true, especially if he still knew where she was ….

OR for SURE if the man had been in jail for molesting his daughters, which is where child-molesters belong, at least to start.

Neither police in Dyersburg, in northwestern Tennessee, nor child services agency spokesman Rob Johnson

would elaborate on the abuse allegations other than to say the investigation began last week.

The girl, whose name was not released, had been staying with Todd and Susan Randolph

while the state Department of Children’s Services investigated, Dyersburg Police Capt. Steve Isbell said.

WHo paid WHOM to put her there?  Come’ ON! !!!  Give the girl a fresh start!

Susan Randolph, the girl’s foster mother, was released from a Memphis hospital Monday.

Frank Hipps’ wife, Tammy, said the 15-year-old was Milburn’s daughter by a previous relationship.

He was married and the couple had two younger daughters.

The court probably saw a stable TWO-parent family, it probably had at least HEARD about 

the great crisis of fatherlessness we’ve been plagued with as a nation for the past about 15 years

(This girl was born right around the time this doctrine took nationalized, Congressionally recognized wings..

She must’ve been born around 1994.  See below.  Gee, by then, my In-the-home husband had already

started assaulting me, between babies.  WHat a coincidence that, unbeknownst to me, my government

was aware of the crisis and addressing it. . . . . Oh, excuse me, not the crisis of child molestation or

domestic violence, but of FATHERLESSNESS.

The girl’s mother was living out of state

{{HOW COME SHE LOST CUSTODY?}}

and police were waiting for her to arrive before releasing the girl’s name, Isbell said.

Police found the teenager and Todd Randolph dead at the Randolph home and Milburn about a block away,

dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

One less child molester, allegedly, OR man who didn’t trust the legal system to get the truth out of his innocence.

Guess they must do things different in Family Court in Tennessee; he’d have been FINE if he could just connect

with some PAS-theory court professional and discredit whoever was alleging the abuse.  Unless it was the girl…

Charles Wootton, 71, who lives across the street from the Randolphs, said he heard five pops. He looked out the window

and saw Randolph on the ground near the mailbox.

“My wife opened the door and walked out and seen the blood. That’s when I called 911,” he said.

Wootton said neighbors started to gather at the Randolphs’ house and a nurse performed CPR on Todd Randolph, 

who had been shot through the neck.  {{FOR THE CRIME OF . . . . . . . ??}}

Wootton said when he first looked at Susan Randolph, he thought she was dead, too.

“She told me who did it,” Wootton said.

The Randolphs have two young children who were at their grandparents’ house during the shootings, Wootton said.

Wootton had moved to the neighborhood about two weeks ago, and Todd Randolph had mowed his yard several times.

“The people around here are just about the friendliest you’ve ever met,” said Wootton. “I don’t know what happened to that guy.”

MORAL OF THE STORY:  FRIENDLY PEOPLE CAN STILL MOLEST THEIR CHILDREN.  WHO REPORTED?  THE DAUGHTER?

THE NEW WOMAN?  ONE OF HER MANDATED REPORTERS.

Isbell said Milburn had no criminal record in Dyersburg, a city of approximately 18,000 people about 70 miles northeast of Memphis.

Tammy Hipps said Milburn worked as a counselor at the McDowell Center for Children,

which helps at-risk and troubled children.

Well, was he falsely accused or properly accused?  

If properly, then again, let’s note here:  PERPS like places that give them access to CHILDREN, esp. troubled ones.

The shootings came just over two weeks after Jacob Levi Shaffer of Fayetteville, a small Tennessee town

near the Alabama border about.

70 miles west of Chattanooga, was accused of fatally stabbing his estranged wife,

three members of her family and a neighbor boy to death on July 18.

He also is accused of beating an acquaintance to death in nearby Huntsville, Ala.

BEFORE or AFTER she became “inexplicably” “estranged”??

Perhaps stories like these are why the word “RESPONSIBLE” was added to things like, “National Fathers Return Day?”

One Congressional discussion of which I give, below:

FROM THE CONGRESSIONAL RECORD:

Leading off with African Americans and teen pregnancies, he relates:

Mr. LIEBERMAN.

Mr. President, I want to say just a few words on the jarring statistics from that report and column for my colleagues.

Of African American children born in 1996, 70 percent were born to unmarried mothers. At least 80 percent, according to the report,

can expect to spend a significant part of their childhood apart from their fathers. 

We can take some comfort and encouragement from the fact that the teen pregnancy rate has dropped in the last few years. But the numbers cited in Mr. Kelly’s column and in the report are nonetheless profoundly unsettling, especially given what we know about the impact of fatherlessness, and indicate we are in the midst of what Kelly aptly terms a “national calamity.”

It is a calamity. Of course, it is not limited to the African American community. On any given night, 4 out of 10 children in 
this country are sleeping in homes without fathers. 

COMMENTARY:

(THis mental image appears to be far less vivid than the ones of SOME fathers doing horrible things when they DID or DO live

with their children..

Like beating them.  Or having sex with them.  Or beating their mothers.  Or simply refusing to work OR help around the home.  Or,

engaging in multiple sexual relationships with other women while married. Or verbally berating a mother in front of the children.  

SOME Dads are great Dads and SOME Dads are a terror.  Likewise, SOME Moms are great Moms, and SOME Moms are negligent

or bad Moms.  It is also harder for a mother to care properly for her children, or in the best manner, which she is afraid of being assaulted

over a minor issue by the Dad when he comes home.  If he does that day.  Are these senators thinking about these images when they

shudder and are aghast at a home without a Dad).

Many homes were without Dads during the World Wars I, II, Korean War, Viet Nam War, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other places 

men (and women) have been sent because men decided to make war with each other, in the name of peace and democracy and self-protection.

Some homes of law enforcement officers are now without Dads in them because their Dad responded to a domestic violence dispute, and

caught a bullet, generally also taking out the attacking father as well.  

MY Dad’s home, growing up between two of the abovementioned wars was without a Dad in it because, guess what:  His Dad (a fireman),

got tired of beating his German immigrant wife and abandoned her with three children.  He witnessed this growing up.  

He went on to become a successful scientist, raise children he did NOT beat (at least I wasn’t and I never saw my siblings taking this),

studied hard, worked hard, sent ALL children not just to, but also through college also, and left an inheritance.  And provide for, from what

I am told/understand, not only his own mother, but also a younger brother who never quite got it together, possibly related to something that

happened when he WAS with that abusive Dad, or what, I was never told.  That brother also served his country as a soldier, and died before his time,

never having married or had children.

My Dad NEVER put his children (all daughters) in contact with the abusing/beating/abandoning father, ever, in his lifetime.  

I never regretted this, that I can recall.  How can you regret something you never saw, where the only thing you knew about him was,

he beat the grandmother that I DID know (a little bit).  

However, while Sen. Lieberman was making this speech, about a decade ago, I was for the first time in a full decade of substantial

domestic violence in MY daughters’ lives, with them at an overnight, stay-away camp, a music camp, which we had managed to get 

to no thinks from the father who never left.  For two weeks, I was not going to be abused at night and was around people who actually

treated me respectfully, and I worked along side them in my profession.  We had had a real push getting up there, and were punished 

soundly for having left, but during that week and seeing the response to us getting free from abuse for only (and not entirely; there was

a dour-faced, rules-of-camp breaking midweek visit, where $20 was casually tossed at me so I might have enough gas to get back home)

I MADE UP MY MIND that this domestic violence restraining order was GOING to be filed, and I’m “out of here.”  

How ironic that i didn’t know what was being prated and pronounced in Washington, D.C. at this time.

Here’s the rest of this little 8 minute speech, in case you WOULD like the names of some of the prominent thinkers behind this

June 1999 presentation to the President of the United States, and get a glimpse inside the working of great, Constitution-respecting, minds

when left unsupervised in the Capital of our beloved country:

We can take some comfort and encouragement from the fact that the teen pregnancy rate has dropped

in the last few years. But the numbers cited in Mr. Kelly’s column and in the report are nonetheless

profoundly unsettling, especially given what we know about the impact of fatherlessness,

{{Gee, that must have been a grass-roots appeal from the teen mothers for help, or their mothers, or 

theirs sisters.  WHERE did this knowledge about the impact of fatherless come from, given the

establishment in 1994 of:  (A) The Violence Against Women Act (help some women leave, rather than

stay, in abusive, dangerous relationships) and (B) Also in 1994, the National Fatherhood Initiative.
(Should I compare months of incorporation as  nonprofit with the passage of the law?)}} 

and indicate we are

in the midst of what Kelly aptly terms a “national calamity.” It is a calamity. Of course, it is not limited to

the African American community. On any given night, 4 out of 10 children in this country are sleeping in homes without fathers.

(CONTINUED QUOTE, in different format..):

At the end of this column, Michael Kelly asks: How could this happen 

in a Nation like ours? And he wonders if anyone is paying attention. 

 

Well, the fact is that people are beginning to pay attention, although 

it tends to be more people at the grassroots level who are actively 

seeking solutions neighborhood by neighborhood.

{{Evidence being…..  WHO?? Time frame?  Organizations?  Written declarations by any of these?}}

The best known of these groups  {{in fact the ONLY one named here..}}

 

 

is called the National Fatherhood Initiative.

{{Possibly because of its funding? and prominence of who’s in it?}}

I think it has  made tremendous progress in recent years {{CONTEXT 1994-1999}}

in raising awareness of  father absence and its impact on our society and in mobilizing a 

national effort to promote responsible fatherhood. 

 

Per the HHS TAGGS search on its name:

And for column width, same search (common field:  Award# / CFDA Code) 

I’d DONE data entry before, and typing.  Do you know what the odds of someone even on no sleep, and having a sugar buzz, making THAT many

mistakes in 4 entries (fatherhood, responsible, and public, plus “Christopher” spelled wrong.  Same grant, 3rd year, “Christhopher Brown” entered a

samesex marriage, apparently and changed last name “Brown” to his partner’s name “Beard”? 

This database exists so the public can search on it.  Hmmm……  I wonder if they know to search for misspelled names…. and key terms.

AND SINCE 2000– seen below:

Funding for the “Father Organization” in this “national effort”

However the funding for the wild oats it sowed, under this # 93.086:

(I JUST LEARNED) I believe that this code only arose (emerged naturally of course) in about 2006.  However, as of 2009,

it is still not a searchable agency code on the USASPENDING.gov.  Either in listing “all” programs, or under the agency it belongs under

Hmmm — $2 million less in California for our shelters?  (yes, yes, I realize this is federal, not state, spending).

2000-2009 NFI Funding:  (See bar chart):  Well, I guessed this may not be responsible “Spelling” on whoever entered the data,

but . . . . 

When we simply search only the word

“fatherhood” under “recipient” for FY2000-2009,

we get an entirely different picture (also diff’t database):

Top 5 Known Congressional Districts where Recipients are Located 

Yes this is definitely an “up from the people” grassroots movement,

and not a DC.-down

initiative, surely.  They are just responding to (a certain sector) of their constitutents, and from Washington, acting on it.  I know straight out of

getting out of my house safe, the FIRST thing on my mind was telling Washington, I needed (well, another) father in the home, since now 

I was a “female-headed” household and my children, while this Domestic Violence Restraining order was in effect, were sleeping in a fatherless

home and in danger of (NOT) learning the rights values.  They were learning that that stuff they witnessed growing up was illegal.  And how to

leave a dangerous relationship and start to recover.  

Of course, family court was there waiting for them to go UNlearn those values, fast, and that the 14th Amendment is just a theory.

Top 10 Recipients

93647 word “fatherhood”

 Was that misspelling intentional?  I mean, it WOULD complicate a search by Award Title

Searching, CFDA 93647 (Not the CFDA actually assigned the word “fatherhood” in its description) & word “fatherhood” (“keyword in award title”):

Exact same search, different fields, so you can see grantee, principal investigators….

i.e.,

“It did this ALL on its own altruistic self, and I’m just reporting on it here.”

The President (is this the same one that signed that 1995 proclamation? about fatherhood?)

SEARCH ON ALL grants, with only the word “fatherhood” in the grant (not grantee) title, produced

358 records, of which here are the 1995-1999 ones:

Notice the variety of recipients, including Universities (this will be useful for later “evidence-based data” resulting from grants to study the topic.

Notice that the TYPE of grants appears to be either “new” or “noncompeting.”  Hmmm.

AND NOW Sen Lieberman is reporting on this grassroots movement.

 

Along with a group of allies, the National Fatherhood Initiative has 

been establishing educational programs in hundreds of cities and 

towns across America.

It has pulled together bipartisan task forces in 

the Senate, the House, and among the Nation’s Governors and 

mayors.

 

 

YES< there’s ONE thing that a bipartisan majority male Congress and the Nation’s (also primarily male,

if I’m not mistaken??) can unite on, and that the problem with the nation

relates to a lack of male (father) influence on young children throughout the land.

Presumably, these children that are spending, probably, the majority of their waking hours

in school, are not connecting with any decent father figures or adult males and learning from them

good values.

I wonder what the male/female ratio of teachers is in the nation’s elementary and high schools….

 

It has worked with us to explore public policies that 

encourage and support the efforts of fathers to become more involved 

in the lives of their children. 

Last Monday, the National Fatherhood Initiative held its annual 

(FIFTH?) national fatherhood summit here in Washington. At that summit, Gen. 

Colin Powell, and an impressive and wide-ranging group of experts 

and advocates, talked in depth about the father absence crisis in our 

cities and towns and brainstormed about what we can do to turn this 

troubling situation around. 

 

 

And Last June, 2009 President OBAMA, had a “town hall on fatherhood”

which was visited by a major representative in the Violence Against Women movement

(see last post).  15 years later, these articles are still leading, suicides (NOT by the troubled

teens, bu tby at times the fathers who troubled them….) are still happening.  Well, the

doctrine’s NOT about to change, it must because THAT murderous, suicide-committing father

HIMSELF had no father model in his life.

 

 

 

There are limits to what we in Government can do to meet this 

challenge and advance the cause of responsible fatherhood because, 

 

 

Because — Because — Because, “regretfully” I supposed according to this point of view,

the FOUNDING Fathers put LIMITS to government into the U.S. Constitution,** and a few

MORE also made their way into the Bill of Rights as Amendments.

(**To appreciate the link — or be tempted to read it, hover cursor over it)

I can’t WAIT til the “Equal Rights” Amendment makes it in, if it ever will.

Of course I would settle for an enforced and respected 14th Amendment:

 

after all, it is hard to change people’s attitudes and behaviors and 

values through legislation.

 

Possibly because the purpose of legislation is to express THEIR attitudes, by laws they voted on,

or their elected representatives did.  Possibly because the purpose of government is to PROTECT

the inalienable rights of citizens….

 

But that doesn’t mean we are powerless, 

 

 

Yes, time has shown that the federal grants systems, and initiatives, and private deliberations IS a 

way to get around the danged legislation that has made “us” (Who all agree about this fatherhood crisis)

so “powerless.”

 

nor does it mean we can afford not to try to lessen the impact of a 

problem that is literally eating away at our country. 

 

How do you know it’s a PROBLEM and not a SYMPTOM of another problem?

 

In recent times, we have had a great commonality of concern 

expressed in the ideological breadth of the fatherhood promotion 

effort both here in the Senate and our task force, but underscored by 

statements that the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary 

of Health and Human Services have made on this subject in recent 

years. Indeed, I think President Clinton most succinctly expressed the 

importance of this problem when he said: {{in 1995….?}}}

 

The single biggest social problem in our society may be the growing 

absence of fathers from their children’s homes because it contributes 

to so many other social problems. 

 

Again, in your opinion, supported by government-funded research with the premise already supposed.

 

AS WE CAN SEE BY THE ABOVE NEWS ARTICLE.  THE REAL PROBLEM WITH THE SITUATION, AND 

WHAT CAUSED THE MAN TO KILL 2 (NOT INCLUDING HIMSELF, AND THE FOSTER MOTHER HE TRIED TO KILL)

was HIS INDIGNANT FEELINGS ABOUT, WELL THE FATHER-ABSENCE IN HIS ADOLESCENT DAUGHTER’S LIFE.

IT WAS, REALLY, LOVE IN ACTION.

(FOR REFERENCE:  This was the Monica Lewinsky president, right?

Well, I guess we can overlook that because he has just flown to North Korea,

with a shock of white hair and looking dignified (and leaner) to attempt to retrieve

two FEMALE journalists sentenced to 12 years of hard labor.  I hope he succeeds.

However, his signing of that 1995 Memo sentenced women here locally to some unbelievable

long-term trauma, because of its chilling effect on the 14th Amendment (and others)

and the placement of daughters and sons in the household of men who abused (or are

abusing) either them, OR previously their mothers) (case in point).

So there are some things we can and should be trying to do. I am 

pleased to note our colleagues, Senators BAYH, DOMENICI, and 

others have been working to develop a legislative proposal, which I 

think contains some very constructive and creative approaches

 

 

 

Yup, parTICULARLY creative with the laws, due process, and the titling of the

various grants involved.  Let alone the use of them, or the monitoring of their use

if any indeed actually takes place.

 

 

in which the Federal Government would support financially, with 

resources, some of these very promising grassroots father-promotion 

efforts,

 

WOULD support?  WOULD support?

Check HHS’s CFDA# 93.086, “promoting responsible fatherhood and healthy marriage” for yourself on THIS site:

http://usaspending.gov (under “SPENDING” “GRANTS”)

 

and also encourage and enact the removal of some of the 

legal and policy barriers that deter men from an active presence in their children’s lives. 

 

 

A “LEGAL BARRIER” MUST REFER TO A LAW, RIGHT?  

 

 

Another thing I think we can do to help is to use the platform we 

have on the Senate floor–this people’s forum –to elevate this 

problem on the national agenda. That is why Senator GREGG and I 

have come to the floor today. I am particularly grateful for the 

cosponsorship of the Senator from New Hampshire, because he is the 

chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Children and Families.

 

YES, I AM SURE WE ARE REALLY, REALLY CONCERNED ABOUT CHILDREN AND FAMILIES

MORE THAN CHARACTER, OR LEGAL RIGHTS OF MEN AND WOMEN BOTH….

 

We are joined by a very broad and bipartisan group of cosponsors which 

includes Senators BAYH, 

 

BROWNBACK, MACK, DODD, DOMENICI, JEFFORDS, ALLARD, 

COCHRAN, LANDRIEU, BUNNING, ROBB, DORGAN, DASCHLE, and 

AKAKA. I thank them all for joining in the introduction of this special 

resolution this morning, which is to honor Father’s Day coming this 

Sunday, 

 

but also to raise our discussion of the problem of absent fathers in 

our hopes for the promotion of responsible fatherhood. 

 

Senator GREGG indicated this resolution would declare this Sunday’s 

holiday as National Fathers Return Day and call on dads around the 

country to use this day, particularly if they are absent, to reconnect 

and rededicate themselves to their children’s lives, to understand and 

have the self-confidence to appreciate how powerful a contribution 

they can make to the well-being of the children that they have helped 

to create, and to start by spending this Fathers’ Day returning for 

part of 

the day to their children and expressing to their children the love they 

have for them and their willingness to support them. [Page: S7164] 

 

 

 

 

The statement we hope to make this morning in this resolution 

obviously will not change the hearts and minds of distant or 

disengaged fathers, but those of us who are sponsoring the resolution 

hope it will help to spur a larger national conversation about the 

importance of fatherhood and help remind those absent fathers of 

their responsibilities, yes, but also of the opportunity they have to 

change the life of their child, about the importance of their 

fatherhood, and also help remind these absent 

fathers of the value of their involvement.

 

We ask our colleagues to join us in supporting this resolution, and 

adopting it perhaps today but certainly before this week is out to 

make as strong a statement as possible and to move us one step 

closer to the day when every American child has the opportunity to 

have a truly happy Father’s Day because he or she will be spending it 

with their father. 

I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.

Just for a reminder:

 – Slavery Abolished. Ratified 12/6/1865. History

1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,

shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

 – Citizenship Rights. Ratified 7/9/1868. Note History   

1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States

and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens

of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;

nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

 

WELL, wordcount 5216, enough for today.