Posts Tagged ‘trauma’
2 from 2002 and the Kitchen Sink: Why Sociologists (are hired) to Rule America
Bifurcating Parenthood (Georgetown), 2-Pronged Fatherhood (Progressive Policythink), Ridiculous Rulings (in Kansas) and Who Rules America (UC sociologist)
Today’s post (extended and updated from yesterdays, which I published in short form) has 4 (FOUR) parts:
1,
2,
3,
4.
As is usual for me, the “juice” that inspired the post is in the middle, [2-3] the Intro, and the kicker [4] at the end, and the Intro [1] sometimes gets so extended, I never actually publish the middle. So we have:
1, Symbolizing Judicial Tyranny (dombrowski)
2, Parental Bifurcation (2002 Georgetown article)
3, The 2nd prong of Fatherhood (2002 Progressive Policy-think)
4. Jobs ain’t Wealth & Who Rules America (since we just saw how).
As is usual for me, the “juice” that inspired the post is in the middle, [2-3] the Intro, and the kicker [4] at the end, and the Intro [1] sometimes gets so extended, I never actually publish the middle.
4 was simply me mentioning the theme of “income v. wealth” that I know by now is critical in the social engine called these courts. It’s basically workforce development, and US/Them paradigm. There are several links and quotes. I could’ve chosen any. But it will hold together, I trust. At the top, I’m going to post a QUOTE from a Professor Dumoff, a sociologist at UC Santa Cruz. It’s from his site “WHO RULES AMERICA?” which is a good question. More below, at the banner.
In my last year of research and reflection (including on my own experience) of who’s doing WHAT in the courts an WHY those dang nonprofits have been useless, basically, I had to get to foundations, who support the nonprofits doing nothing. Then I began to understand the forces that are driving America into materialistic chaos, to sustain a global economy based on permanent debt. I feel this ain’t too bad work, considering what have also been through in the “decade of the courts” in my adult life.
I suggest we read this site THROUGH.
I am burnt out on reporting on outrageous family law cases, also beseeching noncustodial parents I know to take a little more critical look at organizations — not just good/cop bad/cop individuals. I have . . . . . I also have repeatedly encouraged people to take a very illuminating glance at some of the IRS 990s on some of the “helkping” organizations who continue to pay CEOs over $100,000 year to report on the carnage or insults to personhood.
Losers in the family law situation who don’t end up physically and emotionally dysfunctional might definitely end up homeless may definitely end up homeless, male or female. Yet there’s a real reluctance among litigants to not just look at the role of the child support system (federal) as a planned move to socialism for most of us based on policies set by the foundations hiring the nonprofits selecting what will (and will not) get talked about in the arena. They may blog or acknowledge it briefly, then go back to collaborating with the closest nonprofit that makes a big noise.
Battered women who’ve gone into the family law court after leaving the relationship are in a UNIQUE position to understand and speak to the power structure from underneath, analytically and as to attitude.
Once I began looking at organizational structures (it helps to have a model of a virtual “gang” in one’s own family for reference) I never stopped looking. Here’s a diagram for the more visually organized:
This is how such an inane policy as “fatherhood” could actually go through Congress, and get enacted. It’s a form of psychological warfare, basically, to frame the conversation nationally, yet fail to inform have the litigants in court that the conversation is taking place.
ANYHOW, this represents my post for today, and welcome to it. Do your own homework!
Here’s from Part 4, to think about in 1, 2, and 3:
- “The rich” coalesce into a social upper class that has developed institutions by which the children of its members are socialized into an upper-class worldview, and newly wealthy people are assimilated.
- Members of this upper class control corporations, which have been the primary mechanisms for generating and holding wealth in the United States for upwards of 150 years now.
- There exists a network of nonprofit organizations through which members of the upper class and hired corporate leaders not yet in the upper class shape policy debates in the United States.
This I can attest to. See (for a starter) “shady shaky foundations of family law” and some of the organizational geneaology. IN good part, that’s what this blog is for — to show the connections. This tells me also why the “Coalitions Against Domestic Violence” simply “cannot” hear our truths.
- Members of the upper class, with the help of their high-level employees in profit and nonprofit institutions, are able to dominate the federal government in Washington.
- The rich, and corporate leaders, nonetheless claim to be relatively powerless.
- Working people have less power than in many other democratic countries.
1, Symbolizing Judicial Tyranny (dombrowski)
If I don’t post something more “detached” today, I’m going to post the entire docket for Hal Richardson v. Claudine Dombrowski in the “Third Judicial Court of Public Access,” Kansas. Claudine has been in this system for 14 + years, and isn’t broken yet, though it’s making a good effort to do so to her. Her case also illustrates the cognitive dissonance between criminal and family law, and between family law as stated and as practiced. Not to mention what the U.S. is doing to the half of parenthood in the United States who are female. We are still fighting for recognition as human beings and thus covered under civil rights, due process, etc.
Even though I know so much about this case, it’s still possible to be entirely shocked at the behavior of the court and court personnel in it.
As summarized in a blog, August 1, this year
Judge James P. Buchele, who refused to permit adequate testimony at trial, shortening it to benefit his docket, and also ordered Claudine to move back to Topeka to live near Richardson, for the sake of their “co-parenting.” WHAT?! Richardson is a man with multiple criminal convictions for violent behavior (Battery, Attempted Battery, Battery of a Law Enforcement Officer, Obstruction of Legal Process, Possession of Marijuana and violation of Open Container law), a man who has beaten and raped Claudine multiple times before and after her divorce from him, a man who has threatened to kill her and her child.
Worse, Judge Buchele also ordered Claudine not to call the police any more without the permission of her case manager. When Judge James Buchele retired, Judge Richard D. Anderson affirmed Buchele’s previous orders, including the illegal prohibition on Claudine’s being able to call the police.As reported in Manhattan (KS) Free press, July 9 years ago (also see blog):
The divorce proceedings were extended for eighteen months. Throughout the proceedings Claudine’s attorneys filed numerous reports claiming violations of the restraining order and requesting an order to sever contact between Hal, Claudine and daughter Rikki.
The first involved an incident that both parties agreed in court happened, they just could not agree what happened. Claudine said she was hit in the head with a crow bar and Hal said it was a piece of wood. What ever he hit her with it took 24 stitches to close the head wounds.
At a hearing on June 17, 1996 Shawnee County District Court Judge Jan W. Leuenberger signed order giving custody of Rikki to Claudine and authorizing her to move to the Great Bend area so that “Ms. Dombrowski could avoid the history of physical and verbal abuse she had suffered from Mr. Richardson.”
In other words, were she not a mother, she would have the right to flee to protect her unalienable right to LIFE. However, unknown to her, other things had already been cooking in Congress around this time, which are mentioned below. In 1994 a little National Fatherhood Initiative had been formed. In 1995, then-President Clinton had issued his (in)famous Executive Order about Fathers. In 1996, we have Welfare Reform, some of the Congressional Testimony of which I posted recently and which is summarized below on a site calling itself “Progressive Policy.” I call it Regressive, because it results in cases like this. You can track the REgression in individual cases, and how it happened, through adding personnel besides the judge.
Hal was given supervised visitation
Why this Supervision shouldn’t have been done with him inside a jail cell, I just don’t “get.” Rikki must’ve seen her mother’s stitches — what message does that send to a young girl? It’s OK for fathers to beat up mothers, right? A family court judge will sweep up the evidence . Whistleblowers will be punished.
Reading on in the case, he WILL get even for even that restriction. A GAL will help, Scott MacKenzie (if I can keep the narrative straight who did what when….) In time — that’s how these things go — Supervised visitation will be switched to the mother. Then, her fight will be to get that UNsupervised. She will win that “privilege,” but apparently wasn’t docile enough, because she then loses all contact entirely for a while. It’s all in the record. Meanwhile, the various parties are REAL serious about getting the money she owes absolutely everyone for these types of “services.”
In Judge Buchele’s Orders after the trial he made it clear that he wanted more from this couple than what was possible. Here is what he wrote: “Mutual parental involvement with this child has been made worse by Ms. Dombrowski’s unilateral decision to move to Larned, Kansas in May of 1996. The distance between Topeka and Larned makes it virtually impossible for an individual treater to work with the family; for Mr. Richardson to have regular and frequent contact with this child; to establish any reasonable dialogue between the parents toward resolving their conflicts. The move from Topeka to Larned, due to the proximity of the parties, has lessened the physical violence. It has, however, done violence to the relationship of Rikki and her father. If long distance visitation is continued, in the Court’s view, will take its toll not only on Rikki but each of the parties. The Court specifically finds that separation of the child from either parent for long periods of time is harmful for a child of about three years of age.”
And THERE, “in a nutshell,” you have how a family law judge skillfully Re-frames the conversation and Re-Prioritizes it from safety to reconciliation. Better Claudine maybe die the next time than a father’s rights be conditioned upon not abusing them — or her. Sounds “squirrelly” to me. A woman gets temporary reprieve and safety, then this is reversed, and made worse. The decisions become more and more authoritative.
He then went on to require Claudine to move back to the Topeka area.
And then Judge Buchele made a judgment that some Manhattan attorneys say is not legal. Judge Buchele ordered: “Further, respondent (Claudine) is directed to not call law enforcement authorities to investigate the petitioner (Hal) without first consulting with the case manager.”
On December 14, 2000 after returning her daughter to her fathers home Claudine alleges that she was battered and raped by Hal. Under order not to call law enforcement authorities and with bleeding that would not stop, she drove to St. Marys, Kansas to get treatment. Claudine knew that if she had gone to a Topeka Hospital they would have called the police.
In St. Marys hospital officials did contact the Pottawatomie Sheriff and a report was made. She was advised that because the alleged event occurred in Shawnee County she would have to file there.
RIGHT THERE — is a typical “between a rock and a hard place” situation. I have experienced a modified situation, where I was so frightened, I drove, fast, to a police station in another city. They told me to go back to practically the scene of a stalking incident that had terrified me. There, I was treated abominably by officers, who refused to report, though dispatched to do so by the intake person who heard my voice; the incident was also witnessed by others, and signed letters are in the file.
Claudine had a choice of, NOT REPORTING, saving her own skin (to hell with her daughter) and just dealing with it. Supposed the injuries had been different and the bleeding faster, and she didn’t TRY to appease an outright vicious court order, but reported right in Topeka at first, and going straight from having wounds tended to, to jail (or soon thereafter) in contempt. She did what any mother would in a crisis — stop the bleeding, let the mandatory reporters (probably ) report, and go save her daughter.
Claudine said that because of the battery and rape she picked up Rikki the next day and did not return her.
Now, does that “revise” your opinion of what Sherriff’s Departments are in the business of?
The Shawnee County Sheriff’s Department was called and took Rikki back to Topeka. The court gave Hal custody and orders for her to attend Topeka schools.
As it stands now, [2001] Rikki is with her father in Topeka. Claudine gets two one-hour visits per week
Here is a link to that ex parte, JUDGE-initiated order (Neither party initiated it. The judge in this matter totally redefined his own role in the courtroom. This judge ain’t the only one around doing this.). Can you read it? The link is “scribd” and take a while to load. My computer is too slow today to load its 11 pp. Also, I’m curtailing my own commentary because even keystrokes are coming out one at a time, slowly. I can only fill up a short “buffer” zone, about 4 words, and then have to just wait for it to catch up.
Shawnee County District Court– Topeka, Kansas, 200 SE 7th Street 66603 Div 2 – Hon. Richard D. Anderson (785) 233-8200 Ext. 4350
Order without motion from either party WITHOUT Hearing on his OWN—I REPEAT on his own
Took my daughter and gave her to a KNOWN AND convicted Batterer and drug abuser AND CHILD RAPIST
Fast-forward 9 years or so. ..
By way of a 2007 Petition before the “Inter American Commission on HUMAN Rights” On Item 17 Courageous Kids personal stories, please read “Letter to IACHR by siblings” (#3 )here. These are 4 siblings now aged out of the system, detailing what happened when they called the cops, or ran away, what happened to their mother; how one girl was thrown out by her father and forced to live in a car for a while in retaliation. It’s only 3 pages. These are the types of fathers getting custody in this system.
THIS site has links to more details:
People are outraged everywhere. The last time 15 year old Rikki called to cancel her two hour Sunday visit she is allowed each week with her mother, she was crying on the phone and said she couldn’t come. Abuser WOS (waste of skin) Hal Richardson was yelling in the background, and Rikki cried more. Dear Claudine told her daughter it was okay, that everything would be okay. That was it. After that, not even a phone call to cancel, Hal Richardson failed to produce Rikki at the Topeka Police Station as he was ordered to do. Nothing. And the court let him get away with all 67 violations of this court order on August 20th when they went to court.
(the woman who writes this, above, herself lost contact with her own mother, a generation earlier).
(Compare, above, when Claudine “messed up” by going to a hospital, even though she attempted to go to the politically correct one, in 2000. I believe this was when she was punished for bleeding and trying to regain her child, by losing custody of her child then about-5-year-old daughter.)
Contrast this case history and pattern of bad ethics and decision-making with the more detached narratives, below.
2, Parental Bifurcation (2002 Georgetown article)
I decided to post two pieces (first — long / second – short) that talk openly about the social agenda in the family court/ family law arena. That SOCIAL AGENDA is what most offends me about the Family Law Process. Not its equally destructive consequences. What’s most offensive is how the process eradicates precious civil rights, that are encased in the documents foundational to our country. An elitist attitude and practice, that disdains these, needs to be dismantled. Instead, they have become increasingly blatant and oppressive (similar case, CA 2000/StopFamilyViolence.org site reporting).
[Criminal jury exonerates mother, after she was jailed, fleeing to protect her children. Ignoring this family law judge STILL leaves custody with the abusers, and mother has to pay to see her own children. This is how “supervised visitation” — marketed and sold to the public as protecting children from violent FATHERS, is being used to punish protective MOTHERS),]
even after people are dying as a consequence of bad custody calls (2 women and a man dead, Maricopa Co., AZ, 2009/StopFamilyViolence.org site reporting).
I hope the people I network with as well as visitors will download and read these. The first one may explain why so many of us are being treated dismissively and as silly putty to be stretched, bounced, and reformed in amusing or comical distortions that please the manipulators rather than acknowledging that they are of the same substance as us, as human beings, just occupying different seats in the room.
(1) BIFURCATION
in the Legal Regulation of Parenthood
This is 44+ screens long and from GeorgetownLaw; popped up under a search for “The Origin of Family Law.”
I look forward to reading the rest of it. The “bifurcation” around gender. You will see…
There are some misspellings on the website. Font changes are (most likely) mine. I am not indenting for the quote, and will put any comments in bullet form
Parenthood divided: A legal history of the bifurcated law of parental relations
INTRODUCTION
The American law of parent and child is conventionally understood to be extremely deferential to parental prerogatives and highly reluctant to intervene.1 But this picture, endorsed by legal authorities and popular commentators from the nineteenth century to the present day, reflects only one tradition in the law’s regulation of parenthood. Since the last quarter of the nineteenth century, {{1875-1900}}there has also been massive legal intervention into the parental relation. This second legal tradition, moreover, has been guided by norms wholly different from those conventionally associated with family law, often evincing a radical suspicion of parental autonomy and an eager willingness to reshape family relations.
.
A STARK DIVIDE IN THE LEGAL REGUALTION OF PARENTHOOD EMERGES IN LATE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA
The founding of the first Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children marks a pivotal moment in the bifurcation of the law’s treatment of parental relations. The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was established in New York City in 1874 by two elite reformers, Henry Bergh and Elbridge Gerry, who used the occasion of a celebrated case of physical violence against a child to create the first organization designed to combat “child cruelty” in the United States.7 Common law courts of the period staunchly protected the rights that parents in general and fathers in particular exercised over the custody and control of their children.
- SPCC formed by two elite reformers
- “the rights that parents in general and fathers in particular exercised. . . .”
8 But the New York society accorded almost no weight to the prerogatives of the parents it was concerned about, characterizing their connection to their children as little stronger than the ties of happenstance. Gerry explained at an organizational meeting in December 1874, for instance, that the society would “seek out and rescue from the dens and slums of the City the little unfortunates whose lives were rendered miserable by the system of cruelty and abuse which was constantly practiced upon them by the human brutes [their parents] who happened to possess the custody or control of them.”9 Describing the homes of cruel parents as “dens and slums” offered a key clue, of course, to the limits the New York society placed on its jurisdiction. From the start, it focused on families that had not been successful in the wage labor economy, operating on the principle that this economic failure had been caused by some crucial moral or character flaw.10
3, The 2nd prong of Fatherhood (2002 Progressive Policy-think)
(2) COMPLETION
of the Critical Job of Welfare Reform
And — what else — “promoting responsible fatherhood“
AND THIS from Progressive Policy Institute. BOTH of them let us know clearly that family law is a social engineering project. Too bad it says “law” on the outside which has other connotations to the unwary.
PPI | Policy Report | March 19, 2002
Promoting Responsible Fatherhood
Some Promising Strategies
By Megan Burns
One of the key successes of welfare reform has been in the increase of low-income single mothers in the labor force. Due in part to a strong economy and the 1996 welfare reform law, 16 percent more poor moms entered the labor force over the past six years. However, evidence suggests poor men did not fare as well. Because the first round of welfare reform required mothers to work, this next round should issue a similar challenge to fathers in order to help them become current and continue to pay child support.According to the Urban Institute, about two-thirds of the nearly 11 million American fathers who do not live with their children fail to pay child support.1 Therefore it is no surprise that children who grow up fatherless are five times more likely to be poor.2
This reasoning assumes that women who have left an abuser (which are among those numbers) cannot do better financially afterwards, or that women in general cannot do well alone — in short, it assumes a stable working wage. In 2002, I had tripled my working wage, and was doing better. But I had to use a nontraditional model of employment. This was not the model that welfare funnels women onto.
This 2002 report was also six years into welfare reform, and fails to account for cases like Dombrowski/Richardson, above, where (thanks go fathers’ rights movements and encouragements) cases STAY in the family law venue for years, impoverishing the family through ongoing litigation, and removing protection for the protective parents.
Social researchers also note that while women flooded the labor market, poor men did not. For example, during the 1990s, the labor force participation of young black women rose 18 percent, whereas the participation rate among low-income, non-college-educated black men actually fell by almost 10 percent.3
Well, now we have it clearly who welfare policies affecting all populations are aimed at. Supposedly.
In recent months, policymakers have increasingly begun to recognize that bringing fathers into the work-based system created by the 1996 law will be the next critical step in finishing the job of welfare reform. While “responsible fatherhood” programs have sprouted across the country, fatherhood and family formation promise to be central issues in the reauthorization of welfare reform legislation this year.
This type of discussion defines where income comes from — labor. However, that’s not at all where it comes from all the time. People who set policies KNOW this and they are not the chief laborers in question.
4. Jobs ain’t Wealth & Who Rules America (since we just saw how).
MOST people can find out the difference between wealth and income, or understand it (I believe) if someone engages in a discussion of it. The policymakers and the child support enforcement system are here to make sure that discussion never happens in any significant way. Here are a few links:
2003
http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2003/03may/may03interviewswolff.html
May 2003 – VOLUME 24 – NUMBER 5
The Wealth Divide
The Growing Gap in the United States
Between the Rich and the Rest
An Interview with Edward Wolff
Edward Wolff is a professor of economics at New York University. He is the author of Top Heavy: The Increasing Inequality of Wealth in America and What Can Be Done About It, as well as many other books and articles on economic and tax policy. He is managing editor of the Review of Income and Wealth.
In the United States, the richest 1 percent of households owns 38 percent of all wealth. Multinational Monitor: What is wealth?
Edward Wolff: Wealth is the stuff that people own. The main items are your home, other real estate, any small business you own, liquid assets like savings accounts, CDs and money market funds, bonds, other securities, stocks, and the cash surrender value of any life insurance you have. Those are the total assets someone owns. From that, you subtract debts. The main debt is mortgage debt on your home. Other kinds of debt include consumer loans, auto debt and the like. That difference is referred to as net worth, or just wealth.MM: Why is it important to think about wealth, as opposed just to income?
Wolff: Wealth provides another dimension of well-being. Two people who have the same income may not be as well off if one person has more wealth. If one person owns his home, for example, and the other person doesn’t, then he is better off.
2005
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/class_domination.html
Wealth, Income, and Power
by G. William Domhoff
September 2005 (updated July 2010)
This document presents details on the wealth and income distributions in the United States, and explains how we use these two distributions as power indicators.
This sociologist actually quotes Wolff, above.
The Wealth Distribution
In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2007, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one’s home), the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 42.7%. Table 1 and Figure 1 present further details drawn from the careful work of economist Edward N. Wolff at New York University (2010).
http://www.halfsigma.com/2005/05/class_vs_income.html
May 17, 2005
Class vs. income vs. wealth
Wealth is how much money you have, income is how much you earn, and class is how much other people think you have based on how you behave.
People often don’t realize class exists because most people only associate with people of their own class. They don’t comprehend that people from other classes behave and think in ways totally alien to them.
If people are aware of class, it’s only of the class directly below them whom they feel superior to. Yes, class has a lot to do with looking down at people, which is why it’s a topic that’s seldom talked about. It’s not politically correct to admit that you look down at people.
2008
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9611
Confusing Wealth and Income
by Richard W. Rahn
Richard W. Rahn is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and chairman of the Institute for Global Economic Growth.
Added to cato.org on August 27, 2008
This article appeared in the Washington Times on August 27, 2008.
Which of the following families is “richer”? The first family consists of a wife who has recently become a medical doctor, and she makes $160,000 per year. Her husband is a small business entrepreneur who makes $110,000 per year, giving them a total family income of $270,000 per year. However, they are still paying off the loans the wife took out for medical school and the loans the husband took out to start his business, amounting to debts of $300,000. Their total assets are valued at $450,000; hence, their real net worth or wealth (the difference between gross assets and liabilities) is only $150,000.
The second family consists of a trial lawyer who took early retirement and his non-working wife. They have an annual income of $230,000, all of it derived from interest on tax-free municipal bonds they own. However, their net worth is $7 million, consisting of $5 million in bonds, a million-dollar home with no mortgage, and a million dollars in art work, home furnishings, automobiles and personal items
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Women at War.. They fight, bleed, save lives, sometimes lose their own, get raped & assaulted (incl. by their own), have PTSD, and get misdiagnosed. Sound like DV yet?
This is so well written, NYT page A-1 and then 2-page spread with diagrams on pages 20-21, and I felt sensitively also, it almost feels wrong to pick a part to quote. . . . . I’m posting it because, face it, women can be tough, and they {{oops, “we”}} often do jobs outside their job description — alongside men. [[They raise Presidents…]]
They also suffer post-traumatic stress like men (a related issue to ours here, obviously), and obviously they bleed too, and die. And save lives.
G.I. Jane Stealthily Breaks the Combat Barrier
August 16, 2009
New York Times
by Lizette Alvarez
Regarding Iraq:
We literally could not have fought this war without women” said Dr. Nagl, who is now president of the Center for a New American Security, a military research institution in Washington.
Of the two million Americans who have fought in these wars since 23001, more than 200,000 of them, or 11 percent, have been women.
Like men, some women have come home bearing the mental and physical scars of boms and bullets, loss and killing. Women who are veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan wars, appear to suffer rates of post-traumatic stress disorder comparable to those of men, a recent study showed. . . . . . . .
More than anything, it is seeing women under fire that has changed attitudes.
Other things that women at war do is sometimes get pregnant, and sent home. THAT’s changing the face of things. They also get raped, sometimes by their fellow-soldiers. (I personally know of two women vets who experienced this).
This quiet change has not come seamlessly — and it has altered military culture on the battlefield in ways large and small. Women need separate bunks and bathrooms.
They face sexual discrimination and rape, and counselors and rape kits are now common in war zones. Commanders also confront a new reality: that soldiers have sex, and some will be evacuated because they are pregnant.
Nonetheless, as soldiers in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, women have done nearly as much in battle as their male counterparts: patrolled streets with machine guns, served as gunners on vehicles, disposed of explosives, and driven trucks down bomb-ridden roads. They have proved indispensable in their ability to interact with and search Iraqi and Afghan women for weapons, a job men cannot do for cultural reasons. The Marine Corps has created revolving units — “lionesses” — dedicated to just this task.
A small number of women have even conducted raids, engaging the enemy directly in total disregard of existing policies.
AND, second, THIS article,
“Women’s scars of War.”
Female veterans face heightened problems upon return home.
By Jessica Yadegaran, Bay Area News Group…
Well, it won’t load today. But search that title, January 17, 2010.
When Retired Army Staff Sgt. June Moss returned from Iraq, she had to explain to her children why she coudln’t hug them. Anty embrace longer than two seconds made her skin feel like it was on fire. . . . .
Moss, then 32, was misdiagnosed with anxiety and depression. She suffered for years until a doctor finally told her she had post-traumatic stress disorder, a common reaction to military combat. Moss says that had she been a man, the diagnosis might have been swifter.
“They probably thought, “Oh, you’re a woman. You must have depression.”
When imagining a struggling war veteran, it’s likely few people picture a young woman such as Moss, who was eventually diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. But women make up 15 percent of active-duty military members, and the Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that by the end of 2020, women will represent 10 percent of the nation’s veteran population.
And though military and congressional policy says women can’t participate in direct ground combat, women carry guns, and use them. They drive Humvees hit by improvised explosive devices. They interrogate, and witness bloodshed. But for women, there is a major difference. They come home to a society that for the most part doesn’t understand — or accept — that they’re serving in the line of fire.
As a result, the feelings of isolation can be even more overwhelming, especially since a woman is often one of few in her unit, says Natara Garovoy, program director of the Women’s Prevention, Outreach and Education Center for the VA Palo Alto Health Care System.
Fear of assault
Complicating matters, some female soldiers live in fear of being attacked by one of their own. In 2008, the VA reported that one in five women screened for military sexual trauma had been sexually harassed or assaulted by a fellow soldier.
WHERE is the safe place, at this point? We’re talking, daily life… This indeed does start to sound like domestic violence at home, for civilians…
Moss did little alone, whether it was burning confidential papers or taking out the trash. But she still feared for her safety, especially at night. “You already feared for your life,” Moss says, “but the thought of a soldier attacking another soldier?”
The mother of two spent eight months in 2003 as a light-wheel vehicle mechanic with the Third Infantry Division. As she drove through bustling marketplaces, often under aerial or ground fire, she clutched the steering wheel, scanning for suicide bombers. To get through those drives, she prayed.
“I was calling to God really heavily,” Moss says. “I was scared for my life every day, not knowing if I was going to come home to my children and what loss they would have to bear. So I just had to have my wits about me and believe in my training.“
Back at the base, Moss struggled with her identity. She was a soldier, wife to a soldier (her now ex-husband, who was also in the Army), her family’s primary caregiver and a mechanic. Still, she tried to blend in, especially since she was the only woman in her unit. She cut her hair short. She wore boxer shorts and big T-shirts to hide her figure. She tried to be overly tough and stand up for herself, she says, particularly when male soldiers made off-color remarks or unwanted gestures.
“You just have to know when to say, ‘Stop. I don’t appreciate that,’ ” Moss says.
Reconciling identity is among the biggest issues Tia Christopher sees in her work with female veterans. As the women veterans coordinator for Swords to Plowshares’ Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Project, Christopher helps homeless and low-income women obtain medical care, housing and job training upon returning from war.
“So many of my female clients who were in Iraq put up with things, even injuries, because they don’t want to be that girl (who complains),” she says. “They soldier on and silently bear that burden. But you can lose a certain amount of your femininity.”
Friends, visitors — without diminishing what these women are doing, their guts, and their issues, I have to say there are some parallels in quality (if not degree?) with leaving abuse, and then going into a court system which requires the feminine submissive pose “or else” at some level; you just can’t get along….
OR, having PTSD from BOTH the former violence, the risk to one’s kids (specially after custody switch and bait) and THEN being stuck in front of people who don’t understand you really ARE in the line of fire, and characterized, in print, according to a standard that doesn’t take into account one’s need to keep children and self alive.
I certainly can identify with swiftly changing identity. . I reFUSE to let others identify me, as much as possible, and I try not to settle into a routine persona, either, left over from former days.
Add to this, sometimes: Often it’s an entire career or lifestyle change as well. . . . Talk about multi-tasking!! Domestic violence alone can lead to homelessness and death, IN it, or LEAVING it, and is a prime cause of poverty (this has been studied). If not, the years in the family law system will help that along some….
And yet, consider: Almost the entirety of the family law system is just that: characterization of the parties, and their kids, and the interrelationships– particularly psychological. That’s what it’s about. NOT “saving lives,” but Designing Families. (And, lining some pocketbooks, I still assert, of those who do the labeling, and decide who’s naughty & who’s nice… for a price…)
The tactics used on women in abuse, and in POW situations have been compared, and have similarities. And similar effects too. You do not come out the same. Stronger, with time, let’s hope, but NOT the same.
And it’s not a paying job, either, leaving abuse….
See also “Legal Abuse Syndrome” (Karen Huffer) who has studied this impact of the family law system on our psyches. . . . And self-appointedfool.org.
Also see: http://www.womenofthemilitary.com/ (I haven’t yet, but:
Kate Hoit, a female soldier, comes home from Iraq, discovers that America has a distorted view of women in the military, and makes a documentary to tell the truth of what it’s really like to be a woman in today’s military.
Well, I think those are two good articles (& one documentary, I’m sure), and well worth a read
The NYT, I hear, is going to start charging for access to the on-line site, so better sooner than later.
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Circular Reasoning – 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (with your kids)
A Quick Post (not mine, except intro & comments)
summarizing the situation fairly well:
On reading this post, pretty accurate, I thought of “50 ways to leave your lover,” by (if you don’t know this, you probably were born after the VAWA act passed the first time) Simon & Garfunkel.
Which I’d like to rededicate to women attempting to do so, once they realize what “love” is and is not. Switch the gender, the song applies; and act on it sooner, rather than later. I guess — pray, carry Mace, and suggest you also enroll in law school ASAP, you’ll need it…
she said it’s really not my habit to intrude
furtermore i hope my meaning won’t be lost or misconstrued
but i’ll repeat my self, at the risk of being crude
there must be 50 ways to leave your loverchorus:
just slip out the back, Jack
make a new plan, Stan
don’t need to be coy, Roy
just get yourself free
hop on the bus, Gus
don’t need to discuss much
just drop off the key, Lee
and get yourself free.she said it grieves me so to see you in such pain
i wish there was something i could do to make you smile again
i said, i appreciate that,
and would you please explain about the 50 ways.she said, why don’t we both just sleep on it tonight
and i believe that in the morning you’ll begin to see the light
and then she kissed me and i realized she probably was right
there must be 50 ways to leave your lover
50 ways to leave your lover…chorus
If children are involved, realize that Big Brother has a different plan for them, and you, as well. See below:
[[my comments in brackets, otherwise it’s quote. Quote ends at the line of ]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]’s..]]
Note: Cross posted from Battered Mothers Rights – A Human Rights Issue.
Randi James is a brilliant writer- her site is replete with information from the top to bottom -thx you Randi James! http://www.randijames.com/
Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The System Sends Mixed Messages to Abuse Victims
Do you stay, or do you leave?
If you haven’t been a victim of abuse, or a victim of the legal system, you may not be able to understand why this is even posed as a question.
Of course you should leave!
I mean, who deserves to get beat up and/or sexually assaulted in their own home…regularly…or even occasionally. Even as careful as you could try to be to make sure everything is perfect, so as not to anger your abuser, SOMETHING always sets him off…sooner or later. He is a time bomb. You are his target.
What does it mean to be a target?
When you are a target, all of your abuser’s anger is directed toward you, specifically. Typically, he doesn’t pull the same shit towards those who he considers his equals, or more powerful than he. This is about power. He needs you like capitalism needs slaves. He uses you so that he can feel better about his shortcomings. He doesn’t know how to feel good without you.
But he is a good father. He doesn’t beat the kids.
You’re right. Good fathers don’t beat their kids…But nor do they beat up on women to whom they are temporarily, or permanently committed. Getting beat in front of your children doesn’t exactly send the kids a good message. In fact, they are put in limbo because your kids will either
A) Side with your abuser because he is more powerful and gets what he wants, or
B) Side with you in attempt to protect you…But let me break that down a little more
1) In protecting you, your children become targets, and the moment will come when they take blows for you
2) In choosing to side with you or not, your children will mimic the behaviors they have seen and normalize them.
Is this what you want?
I hope not because if some outsider reports what is going on in your household, CPS will come knocking and your kids may be gone before you ever get a chance to ask questions. You will be charged with neglect, endangering your children, or failure to protect.
Why?
Because everyone on the outside thinks you should have just left. You are themother. If you didn’t leave, you must be an accessory to the abuse.
What mother allows her children to get abused?
And what mother lets her children watch as she gets abused?
You must be a bad mother. You don’t deserve to have children. If you’re lucky, maybe your relatives will do you a favor and step in and raise your children for you. If not, foster care will do a great job…because it is indeed a job when they are getting paid.
Maybe you have a chance though, if you would just leave.
That seems like the best idea. Leave.
Wait!
Are you going to tell your abuser in advance, or are you going to sneak out in the middle of the night?
Remember, he needs you…is he going to agree to all of this?
Who the fuck do you think you are leaving him, and taking his children?
He owns you. He’s paying the bills. He’s the reason you can stay home and take care of his children.
[[Comment: Not all the time. Wasn’t true in my case… Many times they are financially dependent on you as well…]]
If you go, you have reason to be fearful. Get a lawyer and a restraining order. But, back up a little. The lawyer says, if you take out a restraining order, in the near future, the judge in family court could use it against you. He (the judge and your abuser) may say this was part of your vindictive scheme to get the kids and the money and the house and the car. Restraining orders don’t prevent you from being harmed though anyway, because you still have to rely on law enforcement to act.
Get the restraining order anyway.
You’ll have record of what you tried to do, in case the news opts to report it upon your “tragic” death. But you can’t put the kids on the restraining order…Silly woman! You know fathers have rights!
In fact they have so many rights that if your abuser happens to get locked up, Responsible Fatherhood money will ensure that he has the means to transition back into his caretaking, father-role (don’t roll your eyes, we know you were doing the caretaking, but you’re not important and this is politics).
Go ahead and report the entire history of abuse.
You do have pictures, right? You mean to tell me in all these years that you have been getting assaulted, you weren’t taking pictures of your injuries and saving them in a secret location?
Did you at least tell the doctor? Is there anything in your medical record?
Where are your vaginal tears, bruises, scars?
In talking to police without evidence (or with it), your case will seem suspicious. It will be your word, against your abuser’s. Your local DA will be hesitant to take the case…well, hesitant is an overstatement because he may not even acknowledge you. DA’s only take cases they can win. DA’s aren’t interested in intrafamilial abuse reports in the midst of divorce…
[[No matter what the local DA’s office website declares, it’s often true.]]
You have bad timing. You should have reported this before you were trying to separate. Oh, whoops, I forgot, they would have charged you, too!
Maybe you can work things out peacefully without involving the court.
[[Yeah, that’s the general philosophy behind sending such cases, involving kids, to mediation… Just “work it out.”]]
When was the last time you worked things out “peacefully” with an abuser?
In good conscience, you allow your abuser to continue to have a relationship with the children he didn’t abuse, well, directly abuse (or at least you think so). I don’t know if you are really doing him a favor, or rather doing as the court would order you to do so, because you do know that the court will order you to do it, right (askMs. Leichtenberg and also ask the Paul family…family, because Monica Paul happens to be deceased)? Father’s rights.
I know, I know. Yes, you have been abused, but now, yes, yes, you will be court ordered to continue to have a relationship with your abuser because kids deserve both parents. If you try to resist, they will call in the child custody evaluators and Guardians ad Litem and they will say things you would never imagine…because you ARE crazy, aren’t you?
What mother would keep a father away from his children?
[[I didn’t, because doing so would’ve been to violate a standing custody order, ordering visitation. Consequence? I lost contact with my kids. To this date! He continued to violate without impunity thereafter.]]
You know your abuser best.
[[Yeah, right. Everyone knows that only the ‘experts’ know what they’re talking about when it comes to abuse. ‘Experts” prefer to talk with each other in their language, out of the earshot of the traumatized folk. It’s cleaner and less personally disturbing/challenging. People suffering PTSD often skip around in chronology, speak or write associatively, and can ge derailed on particularly frightening topics. It takes a lot to overcome that. . . . . . . So, in one sense, this is understandable, because after long enough living with “lethality assessments” and threats, after actual physical assualts and the very high stakes of child custody, plus retaliation for reporting, some women can sound more garbled than they really are. In reality to even stay alive, or emotionally somewhat intact, through significant abuse, esp. years of it, takes keeping track of more things that the average middle manager can, I’d be, in a rapidly changing economy. We have literal lives at stake, let alone livelihoods. Let alone the normal multi-tasking that often goes with being a mother, let alone a working mother with small kids who are growing up watching your abuse. We also are highly motivated to stay alive, knowing that if we don’t who is likely to get custody of our offspring — either the abuser, or someone who enabled it, such as a close, nonreporting, non-intervening relative. Or CPS, for which money changes hands…]]
You know that when he makes threats, he can carry them through. You know if you don’t meet his demands, you and your children will suffer. But if you try to protect yourself and the children, you risk losing custody to your abuser. And why would you want to put your kids in that situation? They don’t want to live with him and if they do live with him, you already know how their lives will turn out. They will be like lost souls.
Sacrifice yourself…like Jesus Christ. Maybe you were put on earth to suffer for the sins of others.
You were supposed to be omniscient–to know that this man you chose would end up being an abuser.
You were supposed to be omnipresent–to know that this man would abuse your children while you were away at work, or school, or while he was away with the kids.
You were supposed to be omnipotent–to protect yourself and your children and to be able to hide and simultaneously remain visible, and to be able to leave your abuser, but let him remain in your life.
How do you want to die?
[[Seems to me I blogged on this long ago — title about unacceptable choices for women.]]
What do you want the news to say about you when you are murdered?
That you were nice? No, they won’t say that! The neighbors and other members of the community will say how nice your abuser was. He was a family man. He played with the kids in the yard.
Everyone will be so shocked and sad that this happened. No one knew that you and your children were getting your asses kicked on a regular.
Your family may’ve thought you were crazy, or a bad mom, so they may’ve distanced themselves from you a long time ago. In fact, they may have ADORED your abuser.
Your children’s friends will not come forward. They are children–either they won’t tell anyway, or their parents won’t let them.
You know who else might know? The teachers. But teachers are so busy disciplining and teaching to the test…and besides, it’s too late for them to come forward now.
You see what you get for pretending and ignoring and trying to keep the family together? No credit.
Maybe the media will pull your court record and note that you tried to get a restraining order, but you didn’t show up. More than likely, they will relay gossip about how you were having an affair and how you were always provoking your abuser. Because violence is mutual. Girls hit, too.
Didn’t you know in advance that he was easily provoked? You should have checked his criminal record, or asked his ex.
Maybe your children will die, too. But everyone will talk about how tragic it was andhow innocent they are. They, not you, because you had to have done something to make a nice guy want to kill you.
Or maybe you wanted to be killed, because who stays with an abuser anyway?
See Also: Carl Brizzi: Prosecuting Battered Women
Minnesota Supreme Court Allows Judge Timothy Blakely to Profit from His Fraudulent Earnings
In Texas and Florida–Court Ordered Exortion
Pennsylvania, Corruption, and Children, Just Like Florida
How Judges Set Up A System to Rig Cases for Fathers
Technorati Tags: Rock,Hard,Place,System,Messages,Abuse,Victims,Randi,James,haven,victim,abuser,equals,needs,capitalism,father,kids,children,message,fact,limbo,Side,moment,outsider,reports,failure,accessory,Maybe,Leave,Wait,Remember,lawyer,money,orders,news,death,woman,rights,Responsible,transition,role,politics,history,pictures,location,doctor,Where,tears,word,overstatement,cases,midst,conscience,relationship,Leichtenberg,Paul,Monica,custody,Litem,threats,demands,situation,Sacrifice,Jesus,Christ,earth,life,yard,friends,affair,violence,Girls,Didn,Also,Carl,Brizzi,Women,Indiana,Bench,Paradox,Recusal,Minnesota,Supreme,Court,Judge,Timothy,Profit,Fraudulent,Earnings,Texas,Florida,Exortion,Pennsylvania,Corruption,Just,Judges,fathers,injuries,Guardians,souls,members,teachers,doesn,aren,parents
Note: Cross posted from Battered Mothers Rights – A Human Rights Issue.
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http://www.nbc-2.com/Global/story.asp?S=10697462
Joseph and Melissa Shook had been separated and a final mediation hearing for their divorce was scheduled for the 26th – two days after her disappearance.
Meanwhile, her van was located at the Alva residence, allegedly abandoned with the keys in the ashtray.
The case was then turned over to detectives with the Lee County Sheriff’s Office Major Crimes Unit.
Air, K-9 and ground searches were coordinated with family and friends in attempts to locate Melissa over the following . . .[fill in the details… they tend to blur, one family after another…]
On July 29, Shook’s body was found in a shallow grave, just four blocks from the Fitch Avenue residence.
Her hands were tied behind her back with approximately 10 feet of rope and her mouth was covered in duct tape.
AND, obviously:
Wednesday, a local hardware store employee was contacted and verified the sale of a red handled shovel and approximately ten feet of rope.
Thursday, an employee positively identified Joseph Shook as the person who purchased the items.
Around 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, 32-year-old Joseph Shook was located at local restaurant and taken into custody.
He has been charged with second degree murder.
Thursday evening Amy Davies, spokeswoman for Melissa Shook’s family said, “The family is relieved an arrest has been made, that justice has been served, and the family now has some closure.”
Davies said now the family’s main concentration is providing care for Shook’s three children.
Her parents knew something was funky about those text messages declaring she was going to break up with a boyfriend. Her coworker heard her ask who wanted some lunch brought back, after dropping off child(ren) to the father….
On Wednesday, Melissa Shook’s mother took the stand to talk about texts message she received, supposedly from her daughter, the day she disappeared.
One said she and her boyfriend, Justin Castagner, were through.
Smith thought that was odd since she’d spoken to Melissa just a few hours earlier and there was no mention of any problems.
Castagner testified Tuesday that the couple had made plans for that night and she left him a note in his lunchbox that said, “I love you.”
Melissa’s father, Gary Esckilsen, also testified Melissa was happy with Castagner.
Melissa’s parents said she had a strong relationship with Castagner and texts saying she was going somewhere to get herself help didn’t make sense. They knew something was wrong.
A co-worker of Melissa Shook testified as well, saying he got a call from her when she was on her way to drop the baby off at Joe Shook’s home.
He said she asked if anyone in the office wanted her to bring back lunch – and never heard from her again.
Just to reiterate my point: Mediation, frequent exchanges ordered. Was there prior domestic violence? WHY did she leave? Was the risk known? Should ALL women separating — not just ones experiencing abuse as the reason for separation — be afraid?
Or, should they learn to be cautious, period, and should the family law venue stop advising them to “just get along” for the sake of the kids, without regard to this possibility…
Was money a factor? Who knows…:
……..
Police say emotional distress led man to kill estranged wife
Mother’s death, impending divorce, lack of medication are factors in Lakemore killing
By Phil Trexler
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Saturday, Jan 10, 2009
LAKEMORE: His mother had died unexpectedly, he avoided the pills that helped combat his depression, and just this week, his wife left him.
Daniel Tice’s emotions boiled over Thursday afternoon when his wife, Brandi, came to pick up their three children, a day after announcing her intention to divorce.
Brandi Tice, 28, would never leave the Lakemore house. She died of a single gunshot wound to the head — a rifle shot that police say was fired by her estranged husband.
About seven hours later, after keeping SWAT officers at bay with his 4-year-old son by his side, Daniel Tice was shot by police, struck by a 9 mm bullet that miraculously bounced off his forehead, sparing his life.
Tice, 32, was to undergo surgery Friday for a fractured skull. He is expected to recover and be charged with murder.
Daniel Tice admitted in conversations to family, friends and police that he killed his wife of eight years, shooting her once in the head with a .22-caliber rifle, police said.
He blamed infidelity and divorce.
”[Brandi Tice] told me before she
was wanting to leave him and I said be careful because of his mom dying, [Daniel] was bomb,” family friend Janice Wood told police in a taped call. ”I was afraid something would happen.’
Wood, a close friend of Tice’s late mother Diana, told police that Daniel Tice called her after the shooting. Around the same time, police were surrounding his home.
”He said he killed his wife,” Wood said. ”He thought everybody was against him or hated him . . . he said, ‘I’m not coming out [of the house]. They’re going to have to kill me.’ ”
Daniel Tice made a series of phone calls that afternoon, including one to a sister who came to the Tices’ ranch-style home on Martha Avenue shortly after 3 p.m., saw Brandi Tice’s body on the living room floor and fled outside.
Tice’s brother-in-law struggled for the rifle outside the home, but the towering Daniel Tice won out, and retreated back inside.
At one point, Tice stood guard by a window with his rifle in one hand and his son, Noah, in the other, police said.
Shortly afterward, Tice’s daughters, Faith, 8, and Grace, 7, exited their school bus and were met by police, who rushed the girls away before they could go inside their home.
Stressful standoff
For the next seven-plus hours, police took over Martha Avenue, trying to coax Tice into surrendering and hoping to avoid more bloodshed. Lakemore Mayor Michael Kolomichuk gave the order to use deadly force on Daniel Tice, if necessary.
A small army of SWAT officers, talking by phone to Tice, crept closer over several hours — from the street, to the front door, to the living room and eventually to the basement stairs, where Tice paced below with his son.
The silence was sometimes unnerving to police, who feared little Noah was dead. As the night dragged, they hadn’t heard from the child and Tice was talking to police in past tense about how much he loved his son.
”We were worried that he had done something to Noah because he wouldn’t let us talk to the child,” Police Chief Kenneth Ray said.
Police eventually disconnected a land line into the Tice home and with the help of prosecutors, they cut off Tice’s cell phone. Negotiators then moved inside the house to bring Tice a cell phone.
By then, Tice had moved to the cover of the basement, at times hiding under the staircase. Metro SWAT members tossed a miniature camera to the basement, which gave them insights into Tice’s location.
Around 10:40 p.m., SWAT snipers from the top of the steps could see Tice and his rifle leaning against a wall out of reach. They fired two nonlethal bean bags, hoping to knock him to the floor. The bean bags didn’t faze Tice, who then made a move for his rifle, police said.
A sniper tried to fire his AR-15 assault rifle, but the trigger jammed. A second SWAT sniper twice fired his MP5 assault rifle. One shot missed; another struck Tice’s forehead, penetrating to the bone and bouncing off.
Suspect interviewed
Police interviewed Daniel Tice at Akron City Hospital shortly after he was shot.
”He confessed, that’s all he did,” Chief Ray said. ”He didn’t give a reason. He just said he did it.”
Noah was reunited with his sisters. The children are staying with Brandi Tice’s mother, Sandra Fox, 53, in Green.
”She was a good mother, she loved her kids so much,” said Brandi Tice’s uncle, Randy Renard.
The Tices spent Christmas with Renard and other family members at Sandra Fox’s home. The get-together came four days after Daniel Tice’s mother died.
Daniel Tice, who family said suffers from bipolar disorder, said little on Christmas Day. Family and police said Tice stopped taking his medication, which contributed to his erratic behavior.
”They brought the kids over for Christmas and I already heard what he was going through with his mother,” Renard said. ”He come over and he didn’t talk for four hours. He just sat in the chair with a stare.”
On Wednesday, Brandi Tice told her husband she wanted a divorce and was taking the children, Renard said. Police said the couple had a history of domestic squabbles, some of which ended with Daniel Tice’s arrest.
Daniel Tice also told friends that his wife was carrying on an affair with one of his relatives. The couple married in 2000.
On Thursday afternoon, Brandi Tice arrived at the Martha Avenue home, planning to take her daughters with her as they exited their school bus.
Brandi Tice worked the past four years with Community Caregivers, a Hartville home health care provider. She visited three or four patients every day, helping them with health needs.
Terry Smith, the company’s director, said Brandi Tice grew close with her patients, whom she would visit for more than two hours a day, passing the time sharing stories and proudly showing pictures of her children.
She hoped one day to be a nurse to better provide for her family, he said. The company has set up a fund at all Huntington bank branches to help the Tice children.
”Brandi was somebody who had been through some bumps in the road, some hard knocks,” Smith said. ”Yet she was someone who gave so much even though she had so little herself.”
Phil Trexler can be reached at 330-996-3717 or ptrexler@thebeaconjournal.com.
LAKEMORE: His mother had died unexpectedly, he avoided the pills that helped combat his depression, and just this week, his wife left him.
Daniel Tice’s emotions boiled over Thursday afternoon when his wife, Brandi, came to pick up their three children, a day after announcing her intention to divorce.
Brandi Tice, 28, would never leave the Lakemore house. She died of a single gunshot wound to the head ? a rifle shot that police say was fired by her estranged husband.
About seven (Akron Beacon Journal (OH), 1079 words.)
June 2009 — Autenreith – Pennsylvania:
Police rescued a 9-year-old boy who had been kidnapped by his father as a fatal gun battle broke out between the man and state troopers.
After arguing with his estranged wife during a custody exchange, Daniel Autenrieth kidnapped his son at gunpoint, then led police on a 40-mile high-speed chase that ended with a crash and an exchange of gunfire, state police commissioner Col. Frank Pawlowski said. Autenrieth and a state trooper were killed.
“I can’t begin to describe the hurt and sorrow being experienced by the Pennsylvania state police,” Pawlowski told a somber news conference at the Swiftwater barracks, the trooper’s home base. “What happened yesterday is nothing short of an American tragedy.”
September, 2009 (Labor Day) Minnesota:
Minn. officer reportedly killed with own gun (see video)
Holidays — family times for some — can be trouble hotspots for others.
Veteran North St. Paul police officer Richard Crittenden apparently was shot dead with his own gun during a violent struggle with a man who lunged at his estranged wife and the slain officer with a burning towel or rag.
“He died saving someone else,” said a law enforcement source of Crittenden. The source, familiar with the ongoing investigation, offered the first detailed description of Monday morning’s chaotic scene.
Crittenden reportedly pushed the woman out of harm’s way but in the process left himself vulnerable for the man to ambush him, grab his handgun and shoot him, the source said.
A Maplewood police officer was slightly wounded but shot the suspect dead during an exchange of gunfire moments later inside the North St. Paul apartment in the 2200 block of Skillman Avenue.
The scenario, based on preliminary witness accounts from the injured female officer and the estranged wife, remains to be confirmed and is the subject of an investigation by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
But the setting pieced together so far by investigative sources shed light on the likely circumstances that led to the first shooting death of a police officer in the line of duty in North St. Paul’s 122-year history.
Investigators on Tuesday released little official information about the details surrounding the Labor Day shootings — including the names of the injured officer and slain suspect, who was identified by his estranged wife as Devon Dockery.
But reams of court papers released Tuesday on Dockery’s numerous run-ins with the law show a violent and troubled man.
“Devon is a ticking time bomb ready to explode,” his estranged wife, Stacey Terry, wrote in filing for one of four orders of protection against him.
What would she know? Is she an “expert”?? However, she got those protection orders. . . . . .
October 23, 2009 Atlanta, Georgia, Strube-Allen:
(Isn’t this DV awareness month?)
Child of woman killed at Target in custody battle
Mother-in Law charged!
In April, a toddler sat in the backseat as someone shot and killed his mother, Heather Allen Strube. She had just gotten him from her estranged husband, his father, and hadn’t buckled her child into his car seat yet.
Moments after Steven Strube left the Target parking lot on Scene Highway, his estranged wife was approached by a person wearing a black wig that looked like a mop. As Heather tried to get into her SUV, the disguised person shot her. Investigators found Carson holding his mother’s cellphone. His mom turned 25 years old just six days before her death on April 26.
Carson, who turned 2-years-old last month, has been in the care of Heather’s parents — Buddy and Mary Allen.
Little Carson Luke Strube is now thriving in the care of his maternal grandparents. But his other grandmother, Joanna Renea Hayes, was charged this week with killing his mother, her daughter-in-law.
Hayes in jail facing charges of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. Carson’s father, Steven Strube, is also in jail, following a probation violation from a 2008 conviction (for what??)
Hayes is now behind bars following her murder indictment on Wednesday. Police believe she is the one who donned a disguise and killed her daughter-in-law.
Sometimes it turns into a virtual tribal warfare, with in-laws and relatives involved….
November 30, 2009 (this one, barely cold…), New Jersey:
Police Search For Motive In Fatal N.J. Shooting
Paterson Father Allegedly Shot Estranged Wife, 2 Children
PATERSON, N.J. (CBS) ―Police are still trying to figure out what triggered Edelmiro Gonzalez to go on a shooting spree, killing his seven-year-old son, and injuring his wife and other son. They are recovering at St. Joseph’s hospital.
- Related Stories
- 2 Dead, 2 Wounded When NJ Dad Shoots His Family
(11/29/2009)Police were looking for a motive Sunday in a triple shooting that left one boy dead, and his mother and brother fighting for their lives.
Detectives in Paterson said Edelmiro Gonzalez opened fire Saturday morning on his estranged wife and two young children.
“I don’t know how anybody could do something like that,” said resident Angie Rolon.Investigators said 31-year old Johanna Gonzalez, who had been separated from her husband since September and had a restraining order against him, was in the process of dropping off their two sons at her mother’s apartment on Broadway. That’s when the 54-year-old father allegedly walked up to their vehicle, armed with two handguns.
“Her estranged husband came up to the vehicle, shot several times into the vehicle, at which time her two sons, Adrian and Eldryn exited the vehicle,” said Det Lt. Ray Humphrey.
Police said
Gonzalez actually then chased down his 7-year old son and shot him in the neck near the rear of the apartment building.The boy was pronounced dead at the scene.However, the ordeal didn’t end there. Police said Gonzalez went back to the street and chased down his estranged wife. That’s when off-duty Paterson Detective Lt. Washington Griffen, a 19-year veteran who was at a nearby McDonald’s drive-through with his son saw what was happening and intervened.“He hollered out to the suspect, advised him he was a police officer, and to drop the weapon. There was an exchange of gunfire, and the suspect was shot twice,” Humphrey said.
Edelmiro Gonzalez died later at an area hospital. His elder son Edryn and the child’s mother Johanna remained in critical condition.
ReportingGunman kills estranged wife at Tualatin lab, injures two, kills self
By Bill Oram, The Oregonian
November 10, 2009, 8:49PM
TUALATIN — By late afternoon Tuesday, a lone state trooper guarded the front of a drug-testing clinic where a man with a rifle opened fire, killing his estranged wife and injuring two of her co-workers.
The gunman fired multiple shots inside Legacy MetroLab-Tualatin shortly before noon, said Tualatin Police Chief Kent Barker.The shooter was found dead at the scene, apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Barker said.
The dead woman was identified as Teresa Beiser, 36, of Gladstone.
A week ago, she filed for divorce from her husband of 15 years, Robert Beiser, 39, who worked as a car appraiser for Property Damage Appraisers in Lake Oswego and as an independent contractor for The Oregonian.
They had two children, a 14-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son.
Hans Reiser Admits to Murdering Nina Reiser, Pleads to Reduced Murder Sentence
Full story: Associated Content
Hans Reiser was sentenced to 15-years-to-life Friday in an Oakland, California, courtroom for the murder of Nina Reiser. Many believe that the sentence was too lenient, that prosecutors should have given Reiser more time on his sentence. Besides, Hans Reiser was convicted in April — andconvicted without the body of Nine Reiser. But Hans Reiser, a brilliant Linux guru, had held onto one piece of information about Nine Reiser throughout his trial, a trial throughout which he maintained his innocence. Hans Reiser knew where Nina Reiser was buried.According to Wired, Hans Reiser led authorities to Nine Reiser’s body Monday in exchange for his prison sentence being reduced from a 25-years-to-life charge to 15-years-to-life charge. Prosecutors offered him the deal with the added stipulation that he waived his right to appeal the conviction. He had buried his wife just a short way from the house where he lived with his mother.
According to his confession, which was part of the plea deal, Hans Reiser killed his wife, Nina, on the afternoon of September 3, 2006. She had dropped off the couple’s two children for the Labor Day weekend. The two were going through a bitter divorce.
FYI: All I googled was “estranged wife exchange of children”
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Did you enable any of these events? I bet you’d say, Heck NO!
But, wait again (US residents) — do you pay taxes? Well then, perhaps you did….
The Trap Door They Don’t Tell Divorcing Mothers, or separating-from-abuse partners about — almost ANYwhere…
Forcing the Connection through “Access Visitation Funding” and social policy closing the exit door.
Taxpayer funds enabling these events, sometimes, through federal grants to encourage contact with noncustodial “parents” (Dads).
Meanwhile, nationwide HHS-funded “Access/Visitation” funding encourages more, and more frequent, contact between children and noncustodial parent (if male), and advertises this through child support services (“OCSE”):
GEORGIA:
These services are offered at no cost to OCSS clients and include the following:
- Coordination of visitations or parenting time
- Mediation between the parents (non-legal, non-binding)
- Written parenting plans
- Group parenting education
- Counseling on access issues
Funding for all of these projects comes from grants from the Administration for Children and Families
What is access and visitation?Mississippi’s Access and Visitation Program (MAV-P) is designed for noncustodial parents to have access to visit their children as specified in a court order or divorce decree.
[[HUH? The court order or decree ALREADY specifies this, so why do we need this program?]]
Assistance with voluntary agreements for visitation schedules is provided to parents who do not have a court order.
NOTE: Participation without a court order is strictly voluntary. Both parents must agree to be involved.
What are the goals for MAV-P?The ultimate goal is to afford services that improve the quality of life for separated families by providing noncustodial parents opportunities to participate in their children’s growth and development.
[[If it didn’t have a noble-sounding goal like this, it might not have passed Congress or anywhere else. Who wants to vote for, after-all, exchange-related gunshots, stabbings, and officers/bystanders-down headlines? But if you read details of many of these articles above, it’s in there.
“Improve the quality of life.” How does this resemble “Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness” eh? Come here. We have federal grants to improve the quality of your life. TRUST US…]]
Other goals include:
- Encouraging family agreements through mediation;
- Providing parent education plans to enhance parenting skills;
- Furnishing a safe, neutral facility for visitation, as needed; i.e., [pushing Supervised Visitation]
- Promoting compliance to the noncustodial parent’s court ordered support obligations; [[Translation: reducing support obligations in hope to bribe the other parent to better comply. This is called “helping.” ]]
- Aiding custodial parents in honoring court ordered visitations; and
Women are regularly jailed when they fail to comply with court ORDERS. Recently, a 14 yr old young man in Michigan was jailed himself, briefly, for refusing to comply. So what is this a sort of persuasive pleading session, or brainwashing? The legal process provides for a contempt process. When custodial parents are women, this is often enforced, regardless of consequences. When they are men, a different standard seems to apply.
- Working with fatherhood mentors and coaches through a Fragile Families Initiative Program.
Now WHY doesn’t that surprise me?
What are the benefits of the program? The program benefits include:
- BOTH parents being involved in the development stages of the child’s life.
- BOTH parents providing emotional, medical, psychological and financial support.
- BOTH parents sharing in the child’s character and core values development.
- BOTH parents agreeing on scheduling and time-sharing.
Potential side-effects, where an overentitled abuser, a man off (or on) medication for depression, or someone not in control of his emotions is involved — death. That’s a potential “benefit” in certain contexts. But let’s not talk about that in THIS setting, OK?
Who is eligible to participate in MAV-P?Individuals interested in participating in MAV-P are not required to have a child support case or affiliation with the Mississippi Department of Human Services. Paternity must be established for all cases. Participants seeking assistance with supervised visitation must have a verified court order or divorce decree. Finally, the custodial and noncustodial parents must agree on scheduled mediation, parent education, unsupervised or supervised visitations, as needed.
(EVER tried to “agree” with an overentitled abuser? See Randi’s article, above….)
What services are provided in MAV-P?
- MEDIATION includes MAV-P staff working with both parents to develop a peaceful resolution to visitation disputes. This process is a face-to-face interview and/or telephone sessions.
- SUPERVISED VISITATION is scheduled for parents with legally established visitation directed by a court order or divorce decree.
- EDUCATION is offered through parenting classes which address the basic needs of the child, money and stress management, child abuse, co-parenting and the concerns of the parents for their child(ren)’s well-being.
Take time for THIS link: a “wiki-leak” an “mit” site. I’m OUT of time for today….
fathers who do not pay their child support are more likely to have frequent contact with
their children (many on a daily basis) than fathers who pay their child support.
fathers’ rights groups would argue that spending time with one’s children (especially on
a daily basis) should be counted in terms of reducing that father’s financial obligation.
More generally, advocates of increasing parental responsibility would argue that it
is now time for the federal government to focus more attention on the “non-financial”
benefits associated with preserving the connection between noncustodial parents and their
children. Many policymakers and analysts maintain that a distinction must be made
between men who are “dead broke” and those who are “deadbeats.” They argue that the
federal government should help dead broke noncustodial fathers meet both their financial and emotional obligations to their children and vigorously enforce CSE laws against deadbeat parents.
+/- $1/million/state/year for Access/Visitation grants (ongoing) can’t be all wrong, despite headlines, and despite reality of the consequences of frequent exchanges, more time, with resistant disgruntled fathers..
I may take up that document in a later post; it illustrates the system involved in these issues.
Randi, good writing, thank you –I find it pretty darn close to the reality.
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Got “Profound and long-term civic despair?” Check out JusticeWomen.org
In interest of getting out a FAST (and largely spell-checked) post today, here is an OLD two pages from JUSTICEWOMEN.org.
Feel free to photocopy and distribute this information as long as you keep the credit and text intact.
Copyright © Marie De Santis,
Women’s Justice Center,
www.justicewomen.com
rdjustice@monitor.net
(My commentary in italics)
Please analyze. In fact if I have a single piece of advice (today), it’s to take time and read the ENTIRE website here. No, not all cases are recent, but I assure you, little has changed in the interim. Truth is truth, denial is denial, and attempts to make women reporting assaults on their persons, or their children, be minimized, ignored, discredited, and in short shunted off to never-never land, have not changed. What has changed is who is running the show.
This is a page copied entirely from one of the best sites I found for women attempting to leave domestic violence. Funny, none of the agencies I was sent to told me half this much information, specifically the differences between civil & criminal systems.
I can say with authority, from this vantage point (2009), and that’s from a good deal of research, phone calls, collaboration with actual mothers who lost custody of their children, or retained it, but are trying to share it with an uncooperative (and nonchild support paying) ex, and/or others who are already homeless from the “custody switch & bait” activity (currently, I know two) and yet more who are simply impoverished, and trying to be activist, supportive, still eat.
As we are approaching, for some, “Domestic Violence Awareness Month” my fellow-bloggers are wondering how make the public aware of how little the “professionals” seem to be “aware” of what’s going on in the trenches. The credibility gap is getting wider and wider as the slick logos and posh conferences — that we are not asked to, can’t afford to attend, and at which our input is not really welcome.
Have you ever wondered how it is that all the funds devoted to Ending Violence Against Women (or, more typically these days, “Family” violence) and hotshot resolutions just don’t seem to change the headlines? It doesn’t even change the rate of femicide.
Last night, sleepless, I woke up to a County Cable TV promotional, only to see another slick self-congratulation collaboration with:
- Child Support Head Honcho (for the county)
- Domestic Violence speaker
- Child Psychiatrist speaker
- Fatherhood/Domestic violence advocate.
What a nice conference. As I attempted today to call the Food Stamps place and tell them my need ain’t the FOOD, it’s the phone & bus so I can get a job so I can get off the damn system your damn system failures forced me back on (when I’d already gotten myself AND household OFF), I also called one of the (above) entities above and gave them a piece of my mind about the CHUTZPAH of congratulating themselves when women are still being dumped out on the streets and (add graphic verbs . . . . . . ). . . . . As the same old, same old claim that the cause of our woes was “fatherlessness” (add soulful videos of African American young men being taught to change diapers and saying how badly they needed a male role model) was “single motherhood,” I wondered where were the pictures (and voices) of the soulful African American and five other colors of young AND mature women coming out of hospital emergency rooms, and standing in soup kitchen lines, or reasoning with law enforcement that it wasn’t just a “dispute” but a genuine threat. Where were those voices?
How long do we have to sit back and watch this good-ol’ boys (and it practically is becoming that, BOYS’) club act? Should I send in coupons for a yoga or stretching class so they can pat themselves on the back better?
How do I communicate to all the published, conferenced, professionals, who’ve been “in the field” 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, that having written something isn’t the same as having LIVED something. I’m very tempted to go get a Ph.D. so someone will actually take me seriously, although this was certainly otherwise not on the life plan. I could’ve by now, for all the skills it took to deal with the family law system which is critical in minimizing child abuse and woman abuse, stalking, and other criminal behavior. Yes, maybe that’s what I’ll do. 4 years for a J.D., about 3-4? more for a masters & Ph.D., and then I will participate, old and cragged, and tell some of these folks what I think about the expertise. Obama wants mothers to go back to school. I’m a mother. . . . Yes, maybe that will work. If it’s Piled Higher and Deeper, then it MUST be true.
ANYHOW, for today — and to get a jump on this month where Domestic Violence Awareness and Halloween share a double-billing, I would just like to “ADVOCATE” that everyone who is actually concerned (as opposed to, wants to be SEEN as concerned) thoroughly — and I do mean THOROUGHLY — review this very modest site from just North of SF Bay Area, California. There are principles to learn for mothers, advocates, and others.
Just a side-note: In order to keep a fighting, spirited, fiery woman in an abusive situation, it generally requires more than just physical force. Crucial to it is cutting off communication with the outside (meaning, we can’t always count on internet or phone access), and/or punishing for utilizing these. ALSO critical is controlling cash flow / economic abuse. ANY solution which doesn’t address this, or which exhorts women to sell their souls (or fork over their own kids), join programs, proclaim themseslves somehow “less than” because of the violence, or otherwise demean their ability to think, reason, and make informed choices — but does NOT address the role of the child support agency in all this – – – – is going to be fundamentally dishonest. This is the “chink” by which the scales can be balanced to make Dads come out higher than they otherwise would, by proclaiming (ad nauseam) they are under-represented in programs, initiatives, courts, and everywhere else. Sure, dudes. I don’t read, so I’ll buy that line of reasoning. It’s not necessary to consider the facts, it’s more important to balance the scales, adjusting the facts to do so.
ANY solution that doesn’t address economics isn’t legitimate. The things NOT talked about are the MOST important, generally. For example, when I know a speaker has been receiving federal grants, around $500,000 or $1,000,000 per year, repeatedly, for “discretionary” activities, yet I myself couldn’t get pro bono legal help, an advocate to sit in, or a cent of the Victims of Crime funding to replace lost income (and 100% of income was lost by this unreported crime), then I sometimes get a little jaundiced. Plus, I miss my kids.
To simplify, the quotes below are from the site above. I hope this complies with copyright requests from the site.
CONSIDER: (quote):
The dangers of this deterioration in police response are obvious. What is more difficult to convey is the profound and long term civic despair that results in individuals and throughout the community when people’s life’s emergencies are scoffed at by authorities. We need to start now to establish an independent check on police exercise of their authority in Santa Rosa.
ALSO, please consider (same website):
How To Start an Independent Advocacy Center to End Violence Against Women, …and Why
Part 1 ~ Why it’s so urgent to reinvent independent advocacy and activism to end violence against women:
1. Because there is a need to break out of the restrictive funding that has frozen the violence against women movement in place.
Over the last 15 years, the U.S. violence against women movement has become increasingly embedded in the very institutions we most need to change. The feminist rape and domestic violence centers of yesterday have become morphed into the quasi governmental service agencies of today. The influx of federal funding with its many strings attached, combined with big budget hungry programs, are trends that are crippling our capacity to advocate effectively for victims’ rights and to get at the root causes of the violence. There’s no question that the current system of rape and domestic violence centers is accomplishing a huge task of providing some much needed services to literally millions of women. But the often restrictive requirements of big funders, especially government funders, combined with the compromising liaisons many centers have entered into with powerful patriarchal systems, in particular the justice system, have frozen the movement in place, institutionalized it, and stripped it from its roots in a feminist movement for social change.
When advocates and the agencies they work for are contractually bound to these government systems, as most are today, it becomes nearly impossible to apply the pressures needed to make those systems change. Sometimes abruptly and sometimes imperceptibly over time, advocates and programs that aggressively fight for women’s rights have been weeded out, defunded, terminated, retaliated against, disciplined, or are no longer brought on board in the first place. Not the least of the consequences is that victims of violence against women turn to these centers believing they will have an advocate who is fully free to fight for her rights, completely unaware they are relying on someone whose paycheck is tied to the system’s approval and control, someone likely to be fearful of stepping on toes.
The social cost of being stuck in the cycle of domestic violence is felt in a widening ripple — sideways, through employers, associates, relatives, bystanders, social services systems (i.e. welfare), and repeat trips to government-funded courts, mediators, guardians ad litem, etc. Did I mention police, crime-scene clean-up (don’t think that’s NOT a factor), hospitals, and on and on. . . It is ALSO felt vertically as the next generation of abused/abusees has to deal with the trauma. Some will overcome, and some will dull it with drugs and other forms of abuse, not always evident to others (eating disorders comes to mind. See acestudy.org). I was initially elated to be OUT of the violent household (actually, my husband was evicted through the civil process with kickout) and rebuilding/repairing, but still those children were seeing their Daddy. Things were BETTER. For the first time in my married life, I was able to actually really determine how to spend the money I earned, which jobs to work (or not) and could come and go, for the most part, without finding the furniture totally rearranged when I came back, or similar effects. At least inside.
Then that restraining order expired, too soon, and since then the trend has been downwards, as the tempers go upwards, until the “bait and switch” custody switch totally derailing the concept of actually HAVING long-term plans, and a possibility for the next 3 decades (which I hope to survive til). To have one’s kids “deleted” from one’s life on an overnight is unbelievable. I didn’t do that. . . . In retrospect, I regret that I had actually gone to the already “compromised” agencies above — except that there was no other way out, that I could see. STILL, it is better. It IS better than being assaulted in the home in front of children. The begging is there, but I can sleep and wake up when i choose to. I can play music or not, read or not. It is still better. But what about my kids?
BACK TO “JUSTICEWOMEN.ORG” contents:
This took place in SANTA ROSA. First paste is an account of reality vs. police-reported reality. IN light of recent (ANTIOCH) events, I hope readers will consider the quotes vs. the facts, as reported by this nonprofit.
TWO pages follow — one shows the truth (as per this nonprofit, who worked with a woman) versus the police version of it. I have experienced dishonesty on police report — and yes, it DOES gender “profound civic despair” to see this. I am sure there are honest police officers and law enforcement when it comes to domestic violence reporting. One, while we were still in the home, I thought was perhaps an angel, and while my ex argued (for 1/2 hour) in the home with this officer, I was grateful to have one adult male sticking up for me, for once. No charges were pressed at any time. . . . . . . . Then, afterwards, and after restraining order was off, it was a law enforcement “free-for-all.” It was a shock of cold water, as if entering the family law venue wasn’t another one, witnessing the “mediation” process totally upend my household each and every time we went through it. Callous. Unbelievable.
This shows how much work goes into keeping the facts on the record, as opposed to just “going with the flow” of what law enforcement say. It’s not inaccuracy I’m talking about, it’s deliberate twisting, omission, mischaracterization, and an occasional lie. This hurts twice — once, the woman didn’t get the help. Second — the abuser (if it’s the male/female situation) realizes he has a “carte blanche” to do it again, later. And will.
http://justicewomen.org/letter_srpdaccountability.html
1. Letters to Authorities (facts vs. report)
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Violence Against Women and Police Accountability at SRPD |
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Date: January 1, 2,001 Re: Violence Against Women and Police Accountability
On August 24th, 2,000, we wrote to then Mayor Janet Condron and the Santa Rosa City Council outlining seven victim case complaints against Santa Rosa Police for their mishandling of rape and domestic violence. These case complaints originated between May and August, 2,000. In that letter we provided an array of leads to witnesses and physical evidence supporting those complaints. We also described the police defensiveness and cover-ups we had experienced over the last year and a half as we attempted to bring a steady flow of such victim complaints to the attention of SRPD officials. Because of our strong dissatisfaction with police response to our previous case complaints, our August 24th letter urgently requested that Santa Rosa City Council provide for independent review of the seven more recent case complaints. In the four months since our August 24th letter and request for independent review:
We strongly believe that the SRPD problems with handling of violence against women as well as the problem of exodus of female officers (10 since July 1996) cannot be resolved until there is willingness to look squarely at the problem. The report presented by police on the case complaints illustrates as well as anything why it is foolhardy for the community to rely on self-investigation by police for any assessment of the problems. And why it is cruel and unjust to shunt victims’ complaints back into the hands of the same police that denied them justice in the first place.
The following is a critique of just one case example from the police report.. {{Let’sGetHonest Commentary: Readers, alert. A comparison of report versus assertions of fact shows several “techniques” of changing the contents to say something quite far from the truth. Public should make note. Hearsay is hearsay. A uniform on a reporter doesn’t make a reportp more or less true, but it’s commonly assumed to. That’s the alert. Know this!}} We choose the section of their report dealing with case #2 because it is the shortest and can most quickly be responded to in full. But the police biases, cover-up, and deceptions illustrated in this example permeate the police report throughout. {{I do not live in this area. But the words “bias, cover-up, deception” applied in our case. It is disheartening. One cannot have JUSTICE without a modicum of TRUTH. TRUTH COUNTS! To me, an intentional lie is an intentional aggression — it is a challenge: My reality will supersede yours! It’s a power-play if both know the lie. While we are used to this from the abuseer, it’s not appropriate for those in charge of helping!}}
The SRPD report of their investigation into the detective’s handling of Case #2 reads in its entirety: “The detective assigned to the case attempted to contact the victim by telephone on the date that it was assigned (one day after the initial report). There was no answer. The detective contacted the victim approximately one week later. At that time, the victim declined to participate in an interview at the Redwood Children’s Center. She did agree to speak with the detective on the telephone and a brief interview took place. The victim told the detective that she was no longer seeing the suspect and that she did not know where the suspect lived. Further investigation ultimately led to the detective identifying the suspect, interviewing him and obtaining an arrest warrant. The suspect was arrested and on September 26, 2,000, plead guilty to several counts of unlawful sexual intercourse.”
Anyone reading this report would be assured that nothing was amiss in the detective’s handling of the case. If anything, the report engenders a certain sympathy for the detective who had to deal with a victim who was apparently less than cooperative and who didn’t know much. Yet the reality is, as you’ll quickly see, that the Santa Rosa Police detective was dumping a serious case of child molestation, a case that had ample, easy to obtain evidence, and a victim who was completely cooperative. And the detective continued dumping the case even after we complained to police superiors and after we had written the August open letter to the City Council. Look again at this report section by section: “The detective contacted the victim approximately one week later. At that time, the victim declined to participate in an interview at the Redwood Children’s Center.”
“The victim told the detective she was no longer seeing the suspect…”
The statement also implies that the child was in control of what this man was doing to her. “…and that she (the victim) did not know where the suspect lived.”
The detective simply got in a car, picked up the girl and her mother at their home, and said to the girl, `show me where the man lives’. It is true that the girl didn’t know the number address and the street name, just like most kids can’t give a number address and street name of even their best friends. But the girl ALWAYS knew where the man lived and the detective could have found out from the girl where the man lived at any time, the same way every detective knows how to get an address from a child when they want it. The truth is the detective was dumping the case, and the public needs to know that this is what it looks like when detectives dump cases. {{GOT THAT? “The truth is the detective was dumping the case, and the public needs to know that this is what it looks like when detectives dump cases.” This is why I’m posting this, today}} The detective buries the case under these little slights of hand. The detective’s supervisor sees that the detective has come up with a `workable defense’ for not moving on the case, and work on the case is stopped. “Further investigation ultimately led to the detective identifying the suspect, interviewing him and obtaining an arrest warrant. “
To get things moving again we had to take the additional step of going to a deputy DA who cares about these cases and ask him to add his weight to the effort. “The suspect was arrested…”
The suspect was arrested on September 9th. An impartial investigator would never have left out this fact, nor would they have left out that this was a solid five months after the mother, the girl, and their doctor made the initial report to Santa Rosa Police Department in early April, 2,000. The report also neglects to mention that the evidence needed for the case could have been gathered in a matter of days. “…and on September 26, 2,000, plead guilty to several counts of unlawful sexual intercourse.” The man was charged with 24 felony counts of child sexual abuse; 12 felony counts of PC 288 (child molestation) and 12 felony counts of 261.5 (unlawful sexual intercourse). The statement also neglects to mention that the man pled to and was convicted of 6 felony counts of 261.5 waiving even his right to a preliminary hearing. An impartial investigator would never have referred to this information as “several counts...” Most of the facts we’ve presented here can be verified by a check of documents on the public record.
The public needs to know a couple of other things that were left out of the police report. The mother of the girl is a Spanish-speaking single mother of three children who worked two jobs to sustain herself and her children. The detective is Spanish-speaking too. Knowing this, the public can begin to understand that the case wasn’t being dumped because of any technical difficulty with language, though that would be no excuse either. Most likely the case was being dumped, like so many other cases we see, simply because officials figured the victim and her family wouldn’t be able to find any effective way to complain. Once knowing the range of dynamics in an array of these cases being dumped by police, the public can then begin to ask critical questions about what kinds of system controls are necessary to protect all people’s rights to police services. But first we must have honest, independent, and impartial descriptions of the problem.
Probably the most poignant thing left out of the report on this case is the tormenting consequences to the family resulting from police denial of help. In early April, when the mother never received the follow-up phone call from police that was promised by the responding officer, she had no idea where to turn. She went to the school principle for help for her daughter, and found no help there. She then began to call another police jurisdiction. Because the officers who answered the phone at the second jurisdiction didn’t speak Spanish, the mother had to put her 10 year old son on the phone to try to explain the complex problem about the girl to police. The mother made five such calls to Windsor Police. Windsor Police never came to the mother’s residence, nor to her assistance, though it’s difficult to know exactly what information the boy communicated to police. Nonetheless, it wasn’t until over two months after the initial report that the mother found her way to a social worker who then referred the mother to us. In the meantime, however, the mother’s landlord, who regularly obtained public records of police calls originated from his housing complex, noted the five calls made to police from the mother’s address. Those five calls made by the mother to Windsor Police became the sole basis for the landlord writing a “notice of cause” against the mother, the first step in the eviction process.
This is the kind of snowballing of critical life problems that overtake victims when police deny services. It is something we see on a daily basis, because police denial of protection and justice is so common, especially in the minority communities we serve The regular denial of protection, combined with police’s incurable cover-ups of complaints is a deadly mix for the women and children of Santa Rosa. We again urge you to provide an effective mechanism of independent review of police where the people can take their complaints. Sincerely, Marie De Santis |
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911 + 1 + a bit about boxes from a woman who spent years in one.
My situation continues to unfold at its own rate.
unrelated to anything appropriate for honoring 911. I have been thinking about the times I called 911 and didn’t get help, or of the times the police RACED to the scene of an incident and did everything right, but still were unable to save. Or when they (as so many did on this 9/11/01) were there and gave their lives to help as many as possible escape the two huge boxes called the World Trade Towers.
As this blog is on family court matters, I still think the theme of boxes is appropriate, and particularly in regards situations of a child-stealing, kidnapping, or such. To be stuck in a relationship is one thing, to lose one’s kids is totally another.
The first article tells some more aspects of the Dugard case, but the second one, so well written I thought, is in the voice of Colleen who was kidnapped, stored in a box, renamed, tortured (etc.) She is alive, she escaped, has had help and healing and looks, today, beautiful from what I can see. (this photo is not most current — see end of post). Thank God. (Luke 4).
Colleen (NOT Jaycee or her daughters), shortly post-escape. Her escape was not from a 911 call, but when one of her captors opened a mental bar, revealed that one of the threats against her leaving was in fact a lie. She then got on a bus and went home. An amazing story.
FIRST story is about recent rescue, SECOND story (far, far below….) is about what this woman, Colleen, has to say to Jaycee Dugard, about recovery, and to the rest of us, about the types of prisons that keep kidnapped women in place. I believe much of this information is transferable to other situations.
Fasten your seat belts, this one has some unexpected twists and turns. . . . and little stylistic consistency (readers have been warned already) as I quoted within quotes, and pasted from WOrd perfect, dragged article information from the web, and added my commentary and tried to piece at least the more recent case together from the Web.
Police: Kidnap suspect fathered victim’s kids
Demian Bulwa, Jaxon Van Derbeken, Henry K. Lee,Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writers
Friday, August 28, 2009
(08-27) 19:56 PDT ANTIOCH —
Phillip Craig Garrido was already known as an oddball who said he could channel the voice of God through a makeshift box, but on Thursday, the eccentricity took on an aura of horror.
Eighteen years ago, authorities said, he kidnapped 11–year–old Jaycee Lee Dugard on her way to catch a school bus in South Lake Tahoe. Ever since then, they said, he kept her prisoner in a squalid backyard compound near Antioch, raping her and fathering two daughters by her – the elder of whom is now 15.
Those girls also were housed in sheds and other outbuildings in the backyard, which had been walled off so it couldn‘t easily be seen by neighbors or other outsiders, authorities said.
One of the sheds where Dugard and the girls were living could only be opened from the outside, Kollar said, and rudimentary toilets and electrical hookups were set up nearby.
“None of the children have ever been to school; they‘ve never been to a doctor,” the undersheriff said at a press conference in Placerville. “They were kept in complete isolation in this compound.”
Neighbors‘ suspicions
Neighbors in the unincorporated, semi–rural area outside Antioch where the Garridos live say they always thought he was bizarre, and even suspected something fishy was going on with the girls he called his daughters – but they thought authorities were keeping tabs on it all.
So much for THAT line of thinking. Compartmentalization, delegation of authorities to the authorities so the rest of us don’t have to really get to know our neighbors, watch out for them, hold them to a standard so much, and can focus on our own business. Protection and monitoring is not our job, it’s someone else’s.
Phillip Garrido is a registered sex offender, and authorities inspected his house several times over the years but never discovered the backyard compound.
The neighbors and other acquaintances said Garrido conducted religious revivals in a tent, claimed to hear the voices of angels and God, and said he had developed a device through which he could control sound with his mind. He propounded this all in a business he called “God‘s Desire.“
Apparently he himself wasn’t confined to a box.
In a telephone interview from jail with Sacramento TV station KCRA, Garrido said, “In the end, this is going to be a powerful, heartwarming story.”
Again, HOW heartwarming depends on whether one’s perspective is from outside, or inside the box. And whose voice we are hearing.
One article says that the first phone call a prisoner normally makes is for the attorney, but this man called the TV station instead.
Suspect did time
Officials said Garrido served time in Nevada on kidnapping and rape convictions in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s and was paroled after one stint in 1988 and another in June 1999. It was not immediately clear where Dugard may have been while Garrido was in custody.
One of the rapes he was caught at, that sent him to prison, took place in a storage unit. This man seems to be an expert at boxes, and putting women in them.
It appears that after Garrido was “BOXED” up for this, he was sprung though, after marrying Nancy Garrido while incarcerated. Nancy was appropriate — she had a religious background (Jehovah’s Witness) and an uncle in the box as well, apparently. Kidnappers and rapers need love, too, right?
Neighbors of the Garridos on Walnut Avenue – and even some of his own family – considered Phillip Garrido strange as he proselytized to them about his messages from God and kept the females at his house from contact with outsiders.
The House Box.
Erika Pratt, 25, who stayed next door two years ago, said she was continuously “freaked out” by Garrido‘s behavior and that when she popped her head over the fence she saw his secret compound. There were tents, sheds and pit bulls, she said, and water hoses leading from her house next door.
‘They never talked‘
“He had little girls and women living in that backyard, and they all looked kind of the same,” Pratt said. “They never talked, and they kept to themselves.”
Pratt said people came and went from the property, but the core group consisted of two girls about 4 years old, one girl about 11, another girl about 15 and a young woman about 25. They were all blond, she said.
Pratt said she had called Contra Costa County sheriff‘s deputies to investigate, but that officers “told me they couldn‘t go inside because they didn‘t have a warrant. So they just told him they‘d keep an eye on him.”
So like a well-trained citizen — or, like a woman who didn’t want to offend a freaky neighbor with pit bulls — she dropped it there. Leave it to the county sheriffs.
My message to any future 23-years old, especially women, who see things like this going on with their neighbors — it’s OK to seek information; please care enough to follow up beyond the Sheriff’s Office and/or WITH the Sheriff’s Office if you see anything like this, or which sets of an internal alarm. Keep seeking until some answer is found.
I would LOVE to see any records or hear any tapes of those calls. Let’s all start keeping recording devices handy and, if calling the police, inform them that we, too, are recording our calls.
You can’t just go barging in on someone’s boxes without a warrant.
Police said Thursday that the only people living in the yard when the Garridos were arrested were Dugard and her daughters.
Has anyone on-line followed up on who those about-4 year old girls were, and what year it was that Ms. Pratt saw them? Mr. Bulwa, Vanderbeken, Lee, or Fagan, who wrote this article? Who is this Erika Pratt, she seems observant where others weren’t?
. Time’s Person of the Week on 7/26/02? Of Wikipedia fame, an African-American 7 year old who, kidnapped from Philadelphia — in an attempt to extort money from her grandmother, on the belief that she’d received life insurance from the shooting of an uncle:
No, that Erica is now only 14 years old.
The story: Erica was held for one long night and day in the basement of an empty house, her hands and feet bound with duct tape. She chewed through the tape, kicked open a basement door and made her way to a window where she screamed until someone heard her and came to her rescue. The little girl was plucky, but also lucky. The motive for the kidnapping was not sexual but financial; her abductors asked for a $150,000 ransom, perhaps believing a false neighborhood rumor that Erica’s family had received that sum as a life insurance payment after her uncle was shot and killed last month. Police Thursday arrested James Burns and Edward Johnson in connection with the kidnapping.
EXTORTION OF ELDERS IS ANOTHER ‘CLUE’ AND WAS A PREDECESSOR IN THE GARRIDO CASE AS WELL.
THIS ADVICE STILL APPLIES, and is why I also suggest Mace & Self-defense classes, not Restraining Order Suggestions after Domestic Violence, which externalizes the source of safety and in practice, really consists of “hope-mongering,” at some level…
For parents wondering if it’s safe to let their kids even leave the living room without supervision, the most reassuring part of Erica’s story is that, faced with a situation in which many adults would panic, she kept her head and saved herself. In the end, maybe the best defense you can give your kids is not a blind fear of strangers but rather instilling self-assurance and presence of mind. “I have 21 years in the Police Department,” said Philadelphia Police Inspector William Colarulo, “and I have never seen this kind of heroic act of bravery committed by a 7-year-old.” Neither have we.
re: “911” —
This other Erika Pratt was taken from Southwestern Phillie, and it’s a moot point whether, had she had a cell phone, 911 would’ve stopped the event. Once you’re gone, most kidnappers are smart enough to cut off telephone and other contacts from the outside, so when being taken hostage in ANY manner, the key is to respond like this inner-city African American young girl, whose uncle had already died (or so rumor had it) in the streets, to fight Hard, til free, and RIGHT AWAY. She hadn’t been indoctrinated into passivity yet, I guess. Do we REALLY want to breed out “rebel” from society? ??
This Erika is the ex-girlfriend of Garrido neighbor Damon Robinson, per this article:
The house is in a ramshackle neighborhood of modest single-family homes in an unincorporated area of Antioch hit by the foreclosure crisis and job losses.
Garrido’s next door neighbor Damon Robinson was interviewed several times by the AP, Los Angeles Times and other media. During those conversations, he revealed his ex-girlfriend, Erika Pratt, had called police in 2006 to report Garrido had children living in tents in his backyard.
While Robinson was being interviewed by the AP and others, three members of a British media group walked onto his property without his permission.
When Robinson asked what they were doing, a British reporter told Robinson his deadline was coming quickly and offered him $2,000 if he would quit talking to everyone else and provide them an exclusive showing of his backyard.
The reporter flashed $100 as an apparent sign of good faith. Robinson, who acknowledged that another British outlet had also paid him, agreed. Robinson, who is unemployed, did not disclose what outlets paid him and it was not clear from the interaction.
Robinson led the crew deep into his backyard, where a hole in his fence provided a glimpse of the shambled compound next door.
Robinson said he would use the money for his two children and might also give some to Dugard’s daughters.
If this story, also from neighbor Mike Rogers, holds water, perhaps Erika Pratt was right to get her behind OUT of there. Perhaps (?) this also may relate to why CC Sherriffs were not so aggressive in follow-up? Or if Ms. Pratt was, like at least two of the Erika Pratt’s I saw on-line, African-American, this may be why her reports didn’t hold weight? Or was it her gender?
(ROGERS) The Antioch builder told theDaily Mail that Garrido made crystal meth using household utensils and frequently invited “perverts” to his home to regale in drugs, sex and drinking. Rogers went so far as to call the Garrido home a brothel.
He said he discussed the matter with his brother, Dean, who also lives in the neighborhood. Rogers said they agreed not to contact police explaining, “People don’t even waive to each other or say hello here. You just pay no attention to what is going on with other people. That way, you don’t get shot.”
He now agonizes (in public) over that decision and worries that Garrido may have been pimping out Jaycee and her young daughters to strangers. “I hope to God not,” said Dean Rogers.
(**Mr. Dean Rogers is also re-filing this information (at least acc. to report) in HIS brain as to agonizing, whereas earlier, acc. to the Rogers brother Mike, not getting shot for ratting to the police was the priority, and hence pimping out someone NOT a kidnap victim or one’s own daughters, alternatively, MIGHT be OK….)
‘A blank stare‘
Haydee Perry, 35, who lives next door, said that when Phillip Garrido helped her jump–start her car a month ago, he had a young girl clinging to him in a manner that struck her as strange.
“She stayed close to him at all times,” Perry said. “It wasn‘t normal behavior. She had a blank stare on her face. ***Now it seems like a cry out for help.”
i.e., according to Ms. Perry (age 35 now) the fact was first filed in a box in her mind (face it, we all have these, or we couldn’t function in life. WE would have to become not just ill-literate, but basically a wordless society. One of the first things “Adam” is credited with doing in the Bible is naming all the animals. Then here comes a woman, and he named her, too, “Eve.” The process of calling women names has continued to this day; it’s part of how one masters any situation, is by naming it.
A fascinating book on humans vs. animals, and how they interpret situations, is called “Animals in Translation.” Humans specialize in interpreting situations, animals that are other animal’s food are more prone to notice more detail and interpret less. The author, who is/was autistic, tries to describe her differences between these two extremes from the perspective of autism.
This book helped me become more aware of how people who had not undergone a battering relationships of many years, or post-traumatic-stress-“disorder” (actually a pretty normal response to life-threatening situations, it’s only “disorder” once the life-threatening aspects are out of the picture and there has been time to heal and deal….) just didn’t notice fluctuations in patterns of behavior, or things that others might. What they notice, and then wish action to be taken on (OR, wish to themselves take action on) then becomes a point of conflict with self-appointed experts on the situation, sometimes with lethal consequences. So understanding this becomes vitally important when a person leaving the abuse is forced to continually interact and negotiate with former abusers, or people who colluded with or enabled it.
The public MUST balance its desire to deny that abuse — or women in boxes, or kidnappers who start another generation of captives and get away with this in suburban California — or their neighbor/friend/business supplier, or someone in their religious organization — might be in another context, an insane sadist and unbelievable criminal, with women helping in the process, or participating. No matter how many “out there” headlines are read, I’d say that generally speaking, public behavior as a whole is not going to change radically. Why? It would — and face it, it really would — disrupt the economy severely, if citizens took policing or child protection into their own hands. Women have been thrown in jail for doing this when the abuser was related to the children; they overstepped their authority when it came to sticking up for their kids’ right not to be traumatized, and their own, through that. THAT is one of the most closely-sealed boxes in the family court arena, although certain groups are starting to pry some of it open in some counties, with some (although how much is yet unclear) result.
How I myself got out of a battering relationship involved calling it what it was, also. Without the vocabulary, including legal vocabulary, I believe, I’d still be in there, or in a box several feet under. Naming and filing is a VITAL human activity; and it’s important to put what we observe OUTSIDE us in a proper place in the thinking INSIDE.
This is important as a community also. What Ms. Perry >then< saw as “strange” and filed it away, she >now< has refiled under as a “cry for help.”
In another scenario, and the one which led to the girls and Jaycee being freed, Officer Allison Jacobs, another woman, recounted that one of Jaycee’s daughters blue eyes seemed to be trying to burn a hole in her. (See my post on police initution~mother’s instinct, or that article for quote). Both women in two situations noticed the girls’ eyes.. . . . GUYS — do men do this?
This whole process, in the press, may be also seen as an attempt to help the public also “file” this whole incident in its communal (?) databank for future reference (as well as a surefire way to increase readership/ratings).
I think that book and topic deserves another post, and will leave it for now.
(QUOTING NEWS ARTICLE, CONT’D.) A Web site containing statements from Garrido and others called “Voices Revealed” talks about a turnaround that allowed him “to open doors that will honor the creator and his eternal purpose for mankind.”
A PANDORA’s BOX, Oh No!
In which Let’s Get Honest laments that she has herein just opened the PANDORA’S BOX of what GARRIDO WAS SAYING BEFORE ARREST, WHERE HE GOT THOSE IDEAS FROM, and SOME OF HIS BUSINESS ASSOCIATES. On the other hand, I’m a mother who lost my daughters — to the courts, and their father — on an overnight visitation. Many things already make no sense to those who think that police police, judges judge, and laws are, well, upheld, who wonders why public indignation just takes a hike when a husband & wife are involved, even YEARS AFTER THEY SEPARATED!
LET’S GET HONEST COMMENTARY: There are times (added to post 09-13-09) I truly wish I weren’t as curious as I am. I just “HAD” to go and open another “Pandora’s Box,” in other words, I wanted to know what the heck “Voices Revealed” was.
I know that PART of my curiosity stems from simply wanting to find out WHY in this culture it took so many years for my local communities to “wake up” (if they ever did) to the fact that a husband was assaulting his wife in the home, and only ONE of them, a family violence law center, actually took action to legally put a stop to it. I was functioning as well as most people could as a mother, worker, and amazingly, teacher & musician and quite a bit more of professional involvements, without the tools MANY people can take for granted, for example, any possibility that I would have legitimate control over how the income earned was used, or my own access to bank, transportation, credit, and free association with people in my profession, without either sabotage or punishment for doing so. . . . . . . . So afterwards, what seemed REAL simple to me – — the fact we needed a LITTLE help didn’t mean that we needed to be placed in the back seat of life, permanently, and moreover told where the car was going. WHen one is on the bottom, the clear place to go is UP. FAST!
The other part is probably innate. I don’t remember NOT being curious, or something of a girl, young woman, or older woman, who just wanted to know WHY, and noticed things. When I say “innate,” I am not the first individual in the family line to either be subject to or witness, or both, beatings of a Mom in the home, and who knows whether this habit came from that environment or not? And, at a certain point, who cares? The question is, what to do with it.
Anyhow, here is that “Voices Revealed” website, and one part of it that happens to make some SENSE (and has a “not affiliated” comment at the end, please note) goes as follows (quote is shown by the font & typestyle change).
I wouldn’t quote it if there weren’t a few important lessons to learn from it (I know I did), including pay attention, if you’re going to be gullible enough to actually read newspapers about headline stories (which, obviously, I am) to be curious enough to want to know what they were talking about. I guess one UPside of being involved in this system and periodic, sometimes long-term unemployment, along with the desire to STOp the periodic, and sometimes long-term unemployment that comes with domestic violence by exploring ways to stop it, most of which don’t work, is finding out how a lot of systems DO work. ANYHOW, Voices Revealed, quoting another “private educational group” in Washington, pastes on its site:
CULTURAL TRANCE
Is a condition that exists when large bodies of people have accepted something as truth.
In the days of Columbus everyone knew the earth was “flat.” Today everyone knows it is not possible to produce voices for others to hear as experience clearly marked it as not possible.
The reason I have taken the time to qualify my findings through the legal system is obvious.
When you hear of my findings you will be experiencing a “flat world concept”
Because everything we know is based on our past personal and educational experiences in life thus we have all been conditioned in a variety of ways that can build “blind spots.” It is a sensory locking out of the environment that builds a Scotoma to the truth about the world and ourselves because of our preconceived ideas.
This causes us to:
SEE what we EXPECT to SEE
HEAR what we EXPECT to HEAR
THINK what we EXPECT to THINK
The result is we often develop scotomas to the “TRUTH.”
This awareness is also about to be apply to an age old book
That will be reading in a powerfully unique way
It will allow us to hear what we
Have never heard before.
(Isaiah 6:9)
9He said, “Go and tell this people: `Be ever hearing, but never understanding;
be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’ N.I.V.
The preceding information in its basic form** is from a private educational corporation
(THE PACIFIC INSTITUTE, INC. Seattle, Washington)
And is not affiliated with this project in any capacity
Re; “in its basic form”** I looked. While I didn’t find this section (yet), I did see, below, The Pacific Institute’s fields of enterprise, and the phrase about the human mind as software which needs periodic “upgrading,”:
However, the basic knowledge of how the mind works is constant from individual to individual, continent to continent. “The hardware is pretty much the same; what we are dealing with is the human software – and that, my friends, can and should be upgraded on a regular basis.” says Tice.
If my mind is software, well, I’m constantly in a learning curve. What frightens me as much, if not more than, the middle-aged, white-boy Phillip Garridos of this world, with their religiously compliant women in tow, trying to prove that the mind can channel external voices of this world through boxes in public, and kidnapping, imprisoning, repeatedly raping (possibly also pimping) and fathering little girls in private — and believe me, this DOES frighten me, I have daughters, and their father that parentally abducted them is a middle-aged, religious white-boy also — is ANY aged ANY color people in positions of responsibility believing that human minds should be (note passive tense) “upgraded” in time.
Whenever you see passive tense in a sentence (“Minds . . . . should be upgraded”) and there is no “by whom” or adverbial “HOW” in the same sentence, be afraid. Be very afraid. Especially when it appears on the mission page of any company which does business with jails, educational institutions, and other agencies.
Upgraded By WHOM? There was a Dr. Who mightmare TV program about this very upgrade process. It’s the stuff of science fiction.
1709 Harbor Ave SW
Seattle, WA 98126-2073(Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, WA Metro Area)
(The Tall man on the left needs no introduction. The two on the right are the co-founders of this Pacific Institute, Inc., which Phillip Garrido’s site quotes, and which in many ways resembles at least two organizations RUNNING (and I do mean that) the court system nationwide, if not internationally. I am going to blog on these now for sure. One is Public Strategies, Inc. and another (similar) is “MCDRC” (I will look up proper initials in a bit here); their BUSINESS, and it is a very prosperous one, is outsourcing, evaluating, and reporting back on the many “demonstration” projects across a spectrum of government policy initiatives and arms, i.e., courts, child support, child abuse, law enforcement, jails (yes, jails), and helping low-income people (makes one wonder how some of us GOT to be low-income people, or why some communities and ethnicities, overall, tend to stay that way, with some escaping the cycle, and others not). These are where socialization takes place by one part of society upon the other parts of society not lucky (or in some senses, immoral?) enough to be engaged in these professions, until eventually society viewed from the perspective of, say, outside itself, might start to look from a few feet above (or below) like THIS:
THE PACIFIC INSTITUTE (AND NOW MY POST IS GETTING TOO LONG..)
Global Vision
From the beginning, The Pacific Institute’s co-founders, Lou and Diane Tice, have held to the vision that the education they assembled would be beneficial to people all over the world. Yes, cultural differences do exist. However, the basic knowledge of how the mind works is constant from individual to individual, continent to continent. “The hardware is pretty much the same; what we are dealing with is the human software – and that, my friends, can and should be upgraded on a regular basis.” says Tice. {{SEE MY COMMENT ABOVE}}
1980 marked the beginning of a rapid expansion of The Pacific Institute beyond North America.
Like the “fatherhood” movement, it wasn’t marketed or promoted, it just naturally “expanded.”
Today, the Institute’s varied curricula have been translated and adapted to serve organizations in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America and the South Pacific, as well as North America. It is an honor for The Pacific Institute to be able to serve {{to serve WHOM, exactly??}}
as an agent for positive transformation in the world.
{{Transforming, or upgrading the human mind’s software? Transformation can be good, or bad. It’s not always good! Who defines which way “positive” is, anyhow?}}
Our Mission
As we continue to expand our reach around the world, {{IS this Marketing, or Colonialism? I’m a little uncertain which..}} our mission {{which as yet remains undentified…}} continues as a standard of excellence:
{{It continues “AS” a standard? Spoken like a true educator, in other words, in vague, noble-sounding, garbled -grammar, proclamation style. . . Thanks for explaining HOW (although not in much detail, here) your mission serves its unidentified master (servant/master, right?), but what I’m really concerned about is what IS your “mission,” kindly The Pacific Institute, sir/ma’am?}}{{If your mission is being adopted, or at least interpreted “in its basic form,” by rapist kidnappers, I definitely want to know what it is.}}
“We affirm the right of all individuals to achieve their God-given potential. The application of our education (BY WHOM?? TO WHOM??) empowers people to recognize their ability to choose growth, personal freedom and personal excellence.
As opposed to, say, Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness, which in the US at least, are (supposedly) considered unalienable rights, and the fact that ALL men are endowed with these rights is considered “self-evident,” along with several other “self-evident truths.” . . . . Suppose all individuals are not interested in “growth, personal freedom and personal excellence” but simply want to stay Alive, Free, and go for “happiness” instead? Do they get to NOT choose to change the Color of their Parachute? ???
(i.e., compare, Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”)
We commit ourselves to providing this education, all over the world, through all means that are just and appropriate.”
Indeed, this institute, which began with a high school football coach and art teacher (Note: sports and arts are typically areas cut when budgets are tight) who just wanted to help — everybody, of course. Now, it preaches to the world, capturing also the imagination of men like Phillip Garrido. But its clients most definitely include government entitites, acc. to the website, under “social solutions.” {{I shudder!}}
Government entities, from federal agencies to local municipalities; law enforcement agencies and correctional institutions; and the full spectrum of social service agencies all benefit from the wide range of The Pacific Institute’s services.
With so many differing, and sometimes competing, agencies working from different angles – yet committed to helping those at the margins of society – it helps to be speaking the same language.
i.e., The language of the educators, of Mr. & Mrs. Tice and people who think that their purpose in life truly IS, teaching the rest of the world to think, and have forgotten “all the world’s a stage” and a good deal of great literature, and instead see all the world as one Big, Fat, Market Niche. LOOK, for “all the world’s a stage” there is the medium of the BLOG. When it comes to captive audiences, literally in many cases, I protest!
Law enforcement agencies successfully implementCommand, Control & Choice™ into their officer training academies, Thought Patterns for High Performance™ for staff and non-badged personnel, as well as Investment in Excellence®
New for 2008 is Discovering the Power in Me™, a program focused on the suddenly disabled – those individuals, their families and caregivers, whose lives have been affected by sudden, permanent injury. The Institute’s effective thinking skills education is targeted to move these individuals from recovery and rehabilitation to contribution and achievement.
I have studied several languages, and also “speak” the language of music, which is a language. I am not in favor of Esperanto or any other form of one-world government, and I think that George Orwell and Aldous Huxley made some good points in their works of fiction, which I wish were more fiction than, as it turns out, prophesy. A good deal of some versions of “prophecy” is simply observation of the obvious, and then speaking it aloud. I like hanging out with people that are not “just like me.” If I wanted someone “just like me,” what would we talk about? Where would the growth come from? What would life be about?
I do not think THIS is a good idea. The metaphor of the Tower of Babel is appropriate here.
Does this language include the “old” language of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and a sense of modesty about the capacities within human nature that need restraint when it comes to “ruling” one’s fellow man? I don’t think so. Rather, we would all soon be playing God, or at least working for or the client of a business that is.
SCOTOMA (from “Cultural Trance” excerpt, above), unraveled:
The word “scotoma” (new to me, too, eh?):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotoma
A scotoma (Greek for darkness; plural: “scotomas” or “scotomata“) is an area or island of loss or impairment of visual acuity surrounded by a field of normal or relatively well-preserved vision.
Every normal mammalian eye has a scotoma in its field of vision, usually termed its blind spot. This is a location with nophotoreceptors, where the retinal ganglion cell axons that comprise the optic nerve exit the retina. This location is called the optic disc. When both eyes are open, visual signals that are absent in the blind spot of one eye are provided from the opposite visual cortex for the other eye, even when the other eye is closed. The absence of visual imagery from the blindspot does not intrude intoconsciousness with one eye closed, because the corresponding visual field locations of the optic discs in the two eyes differ.The term scotoma is also used metaphorically in psychology to refer to an individual’s inability to perceive personality traits in themselves that are obvious to others.
Translation, that he has special and remarkable powers….
(per:
My Blogs |
Team Members |
| Charging the angels with error. | |
|---|---|
| The Truth Will Set You Free | |
| Voices Revealed | |
| Exposed | |
| Voices Revealed
|
JEREMIAH 9:24 “But let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” 2 CORINTHIANS12:1 I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. 2I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know–God knows. 3And I know that this man–whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows– 4was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell. 5I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses.
young females boxed in there, by fear, locks, trauma, rapes and lies, if the alleged charges are an indicator.
It may be that between the activity there, and if the “meth” and drunken parties neighbors allege took place, the MEN in the situation may have indeed had some “out of body” experiences, while (well, I won’t be crude here, but a turn of phrase comes to mind). And yes, Garrido DID have a weakness, apparently — for dominating young girls and having sex with them. See his compulsion to explain “the origins of schizophrenia” to the world, starting in Berkeley, below…(and on one of the blogs above). I wonder if the 330,000 visitors since 2007 relates (let’s hope) to the recent press in 2009…..And we’ll probably never know what “errors” he was going to charge the angels with.
April 4, 2006 12:20 PM PDT
MIT group develops ‘mind-reading’ device
By Candace Lombardi
Staff Writer, CNET NewsEl Kaliouby is developing the ESP device for her postdoctoral project as part of the Affective Computing research group at the MIT Media Lab under Rosalind Picard. Alea Teeters, also a member of the group and the ESP project, demonstrated the device.
The project stems from El Kaliouby’s doctoral work at the University of Cambridge, in which she developed the computational model on which the device is based. Like humans, the system determines emotional states by analyzing hierarchical combinations of subtle facial movements and gestures, such as eyebrow raising, lip pursing and head nodding.
The ESP consists of an OQO handheld, a tiny wearable video camera, an earphone and a small vibrating device that can be worn on a belt. The camera can be attached to a baseball hat, or worn around the neck on a stand akin to a harmonica holder. . . .
The ESP camera can be worn facing outward by the speaker, or as a self-cam by the listener. As conversation ensues, the device “mind-reads” for the wearer. When the listener, whom the camera is focused on, begins to exhibit signs of boredom, the speaker is signaled so that she can readjust her behavior to bring the listener back into the conversation.
The device is especially useful to those with Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC). people with ASC often lack the ability to evaluate others’ emotions on their own. The result is that high-functioning autistics, who might otherwise fair reasonably well in the world on their own, are hampered by a tendency toward misunderstanding and boring others.
Yes, “Boring others” (case in point!) is a social detriment, unless one is in government, or has taken hostages in some form or another, in which case it’s a moot point. Literally, “captive audiences” HAVE to take orders, including, to listen. Blog readers, on the other hand, can bore easily and simply click out of this triple-sized post….
The ESP device can prompt autistic people, who are prone to monologues or repetitive behavior, to ask questions, or give the listener a chance to participate in conversation. The hope is that with long-term use of the device as a self-teaching tool, ASC patients will eventually learn how to read for themselves the emotional responses in others.
According to Picard, the Affective Computing group has received human subject approval . . .
The ESP is exciting in that the technology has multiple possibilities in terms of use. (YES IT DOES. (shudder). Imagine it in the hands of a kidnapper, helping him detect the emotional state of his victim should she, say, be planning to escape! Then it seems to me, such people would already be adept at reading such things)
When one starts mixing MIT with religion, it gets a little hairy. . . . .
While I don’ t think that the concept of a “cultural trance” is anything too radical a concept, for example, to people in PR, marketing, or who has survived The Holocaust, or lived through a genocide, snake charmers, street preachers, drug users, self-improvement gurus, or for that matter, those who pay high prices to attend a concert (rock, opera, whatever). We all need some help to get through this life. In fact, this is also where the expressive arts begin, I believe, as far back as cave paintings on a wall in France. The expressive and performing arts are often associated with spirituality and/or religion, and serve a similar purpose.
The site also indicates that he gave a demonstration in Pittsburg last month with a homemade box to prove “the creator has given me the ability to speak in the tongue of angels in order to provide a wake–up call that will in time include the salvation of the entire world.”
Mary Thomas, accountant at J&M auto dismantlers in Pittsburg, near where Garrido set up his revival tent, said he “was always very professional and spoke the word of God whenever he talked.”
Reader alert: The use of the phrase “the word of God” indicates a belief in it. How many of you caught this? At the top of the article, it says neighbors (of whom Erika Pratt appears to be a sample) “proselytized to them about his messages from God.” The word “proselytized” indicates a non-belief in (whatever is being preached).
Note, the background of Nancy Garrido is Jehovah’s Witnesses, who go door to door and in public proselytizing, as part of their faith and (as I understand it), righteousness. Proselytizing is not illegal. Certain other activities, like boxing up women and repeatedly raping them, is. Not all people who proselytize rape and imprison women. Not all people who rape and imprison proselytize. What’s Joe Public and Jane I Dont Know Which Way is Up to think? . . . . .
I can’t answer that last statement for anyone else, but my point is simply to pay attention to language, and when things this horrible are at stake, and are reported afterwards, pay attention to who’s speaking. The woman who called him very professional may have been part of a similar religious belief system, so to her, Garrido was one of people of this mindset.
That said, incidentally, I”m of the “word of God” mindset, but I do not take it to criminal lengths and I tend to keep my internal radar in the ON position in general, and seek variety of input when in this arena. I don’t think I could ever join a “church” again.
Garrido had a printing business, making business cards for J&M and others in the area. Tiffany Tran, who runs Furniture Gallery in Brentwood, said she had seen and done business with “Phil the printer” for six years, as recently as last week.
We live in an interesting age, you can do business with people you basically don’t know very well. OR DID SHE?
Added 09-13-09 at 10a.m. “Oh dear.” (See below, where I actually looked up Garrido’s site, and posted from it. Ms. Tran, per this site, apparently signed a declaration about Mr. Garrido (better comprehended, if comprehension of such stuff is actually possible, by clicking on this link):
02/24/08, Tiffany Tran, born on 7-26-73, contacted in person at her place of business named Furniture Gallery, located at 50 Snad Creek Rd., Brentwood, CA 94513, phone #(925) 516-3554. Note- When I previously attempted two separate personal contacts there I spoke with her sister Stephanie Tran, showed herthe Declaration in question, and she said that she was present when her sister signed it. She also added that she too witnessed Mr. Garrido’s demonstration and had the same to say about it as her sister did in her Declaration.
Respectfully submitted,
Ralph A. Hernandez.This document is to affirm that I Phillip Garrido have clearly demonstrated the ability to control sound with my mind and have developed a device for others to witness this phenomena. by using a sound generator to provide the sound, and a headphone amplification system, ( a device to focuc your hearing so as to increase the sensitivity of what one is listening to) I have produced a set of voices by effectively controlling the sound to pronounce words through my own mental powers
FROM THE SITE “VOICESREVEALED.BLOGSPOT.COM”
Also from this site: Ms. Tran’s affidavit as to Mr. Garrido’s demonstration.
Affidavit
Dated 5/1/08Included in this package are six Declarations as Affirmations confirming several private demonstrations have taken place that allowed others to witness my freedom to speak in a tongue unknown to the medical field, scientific world and the public in general. The signatures that are located in the middle and at the bottom of each page are to confirm the statements of the entire document. Please note: many other people in the Greater Bay Area are also witnesses to this freedom generating a continued list of growth that in time will clearly become public knowledge.
In order to allow others the freedom to know and accept this ability does exist so they too may confirm it upon request a confidential investigation has been contracted with the following firm;
Aardvark Investigations & Consulting
Ralph A. Hernandez
(Retired career Peace Officer, 33+ years of Investigations experience)
Ralph A. Hernandez in not affiliated with this project in any other capacity
‘A little different‘
She recalled Garrido as being “a little different” and said he constantly talked about religion and showed her a device through which he claimed he could control sound with his mind.
Which appeared to have an odd set of boxes with in itself — one for rape, kidnapping, false imprisonment (felony crimes, which he obviously knew, having been in jail for them before), another for telling people about God; no apparent contradiction there. Detachment. Commiting crimes in one arena didn’t cause trouble, evidently, to the other. They were boxed up. Many people in the field of domestic violence talk about “crimes of passion” and recommend “anger management. My experience with (abuse) wasn’t that it was always a rage out of control thing. Far from this, many times it appeared to be calculated, to keep (me) within my mental/emotional/psychological “box” of behaviors and places and things that were either permitted or, off-limits, i.e., outside MY particular box. To keep one on edge, the limits often shifted, meaning, one was frequently on guard when engaging in something that MIGHT provoke, MIGHT be “off-limits” or so forth. This man not only controlled women, but also sound, including the voice of God.
In other words, detachment CAN be dangerous.
The concept of mental control is not THAT radical, I’ve seen a recent article from MIT on this, but you’ll have to look it up yourself..
“Some people have a story behind their smile, some don‘t – he did,” Tran said. “He was happy–go–lucky, but you knew there was a story behind it.”
Ms. Tran, if you are there, are you aware that your business card is pasted on this site as having given an affidavit as to Mr. Garrido’s special powers, and endorsed by Aardvark Private Investigations, above?
http://voicesrevealed.blogspot.com/2008/04/report-jan-20-2008.html
Attorney, University, & Law Enforcement Copy
This presentation contains six signed & notarized Declarations verifying there is new evidence concerning Schizophrenia that will affect the courts, the medical field and our institutions of higher learning worldwide.IN AUGUST OF 2008 AT U. C. BERKELEY’S FREE SPEECH PARK I PUBLICLY DISCLOSED NEW INFORMATION CONCERNING THE FOLLOWING DOCUMENTS AND PROVIDED A LIVE DEMONSTRATION.
THE LECTURE WAS DESIGNED TO RAISE THE AWARENESS OF THE GENERAL PUBLIC IN ORDER TO PREPARE A PLATFORM CAPABLE OF DISTRIBUTING A KNOWLEDGEABLE AWARENESS THAT WILL IN TIME PROVIDE A FOUNDATION POWERFUL ENOUGH TO UNDERMINE THE IGNORANCE THAT PREVAILS CONCERNING VOICES AND BEGIN SAVING LIVES
This indeed sounds like a kind of garbled version of something The Pacific Institute, Inc., whose own mission statement sounds as garbled and not too much less grandiose; Mr. Garrido’s just a little more upfront that he (or his truth) is the salvation of the world, forget about Jesus, although borrowing heavily from scriptures is of course helpful in the matter.
(I went to elementary school when they still diagrammed sentences, in earnest. Then I went through a violent marriage and now half my post sentences are incomplete, and the post has no style sheet either. But still . . . . . I pay attention to word “anomalies.” ).
The words “Voices Revealed” plus his attempts to prove sound can come out of nowhere reads like an attempt to show that what were thought by us “flat-earth, culturally entranced, unbelievers” to be craziness (schizophrenia) might just actually be possible. I think that MAYBE this was what he was obsessed with proving. Somewhere, he mentions a woman who threw 3 children into the SF Bay in this context of saving lives. I’m thinking, MAYBE, he was getting to the conclusion that actual voices (cf. “the box”) got her to do it. As opposed to, say, “the devil made me do it.” And the Secretary of State actually signed the articles of Incorporation for his organization.
What we deserve an answer for: Why was this dude released? and, why did they “drop” the comment that there were people in the back yard, when a sex offender was the person accused of this? They had no problem (once this all came to light) searching the Molino’s home in a different city, and confiscating some items:
Cheyvonne Molino, 35, who runs the JM Enterprises yard with her husband, Jim Molino, told the Contra Costa Times that 15 officers entered their Pleasant Hill home around 11 a.m. and searched through their personal belongings, seizing a Macintosh desktop computer as well as DVDs and VHS tapes.
“They just came in and violated our privacy,” Molino told the newspaper. “I don’t understand why we’re now the bad guys. I mean, they never asked to see if maybe we can help them instead of coming in on me and my tenants. What about my rights?”
Under the Fourth Amendment, law enforcement agencies are not required to obtain a search warrant when conducting a search of a person on probation.
>>SO, then this statement (above) to Erika Pratt was false?
Pratt said she had called Contra Costa County sheriff‘s deputies to investigate,
but that officers “told me they couldn‘t go insidebecause they didn‘t have a warrant.
So they just told him they‘d keep an eye on him.”
I mean, Garrido WAS on “probation” right? So they could’ve searched without a warrant, and I’m SURE they knew it.
Molino said that her husband Jim — who turned 60 on Wednesday — is on court probation, but that it is unrelated to the Garrido case. She told the Contra Costa Times they are “vicitms by association.”
Lee said the Molinos are not suspects.
The Molinos did printing business with Garrido, who sometimes visited their wrecking yard with the two daughters police say he fathered with Dugard.
MORAL: Always run criminal background checks on businesses you do business with. Then again, apparently JM auto wouldn’t have passed that, either.
Mr. Garrido wants to tell the world something about the origins of Schizophrenia. If there is truth to the charges against him, he would definitely qualify in that category. He is also quoted as being unable to get sexual satisfaction without dominating a woman (told to the arresting officer in about 1976), and I also note, an interview with, I believe a father or brother spoke of motorcycle accident with head injury (i.e., brain trauma) and experimentation with drugs in his (Phillip’s) youth, and that “transforming” him as well. Head injury can indeed do this.
So can going through a governmental institution serviced by groups concerned with upgrading the human software as part of a worldwide positive transformation of, well, everyone. Perhaps some of the gentlemen below could take a lookat some of the neighbors interviewed, or what’s up with Garrido & Garrido, Inc.. Again, “schizo-phrenia” refers to “split-thinking.”
I talk in this blog about “split personality court orders,” and they are this. One cannot take them always both seriously. The court says, a restraining order is just a piece of paper, make your own safey plan; then (or simultaneously) another arm of the courts says, but the children need frequent contact with their batterer parent no matter what, and parents shouldn’t have “high conflict” about this, or whatever takes place.
It also tells the custodial mothers, and clearly/repeatedly so, that visitation is not tied to child support, and no parent (especially mother) can literally withhold visitation because of unpaid child support. Then, through groups like Pacific Institute, above, here, and others I post about, and which are receiving federal grants to promote healthy marriages and responsible fatherhood, and through child support offices working with incarcerated fathers, etc., they bargain to reduce child support by getting a custody order modified. Who’s enriched? The organizations doing this, not the kids. . . . . That’s itself “schizo” (or, simply dishonest) so no wonder people after eyars in this system, or possibly in jails also, they come out totally wired and fired up to get even and prove a point, even if it means stuff like THIS, or worse. (Yes, when people are killed, that IS worse, although this is surely scraping the bottom of the barrel here).
I DIDN’T withhold visitation. MY KIDS WERE STOLEN, WHEN HE WAS THOUSANDS IN ARREARS! Then the child support arrears was retro-actively wiped out (leaving me childless AND penniless, and them without a source of child support from either parent — from him, because he owes me, and from me, because the back was broken economically in the process of custody switch). Another thing I can definitely say is, from afar, it appears that at least ONE is confused, quite understandably so, and this comes out as anger — towards the absent parent. When sense is lacking, because, being deprived of accurate information on the situation, it seems anger will do. What a waste of time, and talent.
So, Language is a key, and an indicator. I am a “bear” {which causes the forbidden “conflict” at times} about language when interacting, as I’m forced to, with people who cooperated in removing the restraining order (temporary respite) situation from me, and it really does matter, folks!
Perhaps later Jaycee may recover and tell us some of the truths of her experience, if she chooses to, and ONLY if she chooses to.
Chronicle staff writers Matthew Yi and Matthew B. Stannard contributed to this report. E-mail the writers at dbulwa@sfchronicle.com, jvanderbeken@sfchronicle.com, hlee@sfchronicle.com and kfagan@sfchronicle.com
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/27/BA4N19EJ35.DTL#ixzz0QwwPOIS1
POSTED 9-12-09 (hence “911+1” ),
and really this was the original main point.
I simply had included the article on the Dugard case as part 1 of 2.
This woman explains how the mental limits can be just as strong and confining as the physical. Once a person is conditioned (first, usually by trauma, drama, threat, shock, as in kidnapping), then they can be made to believe that limits exist which are unreal. This is then easier for the kidnapper.
Colleen got out the moment someone told her that the ominpresent “Company” didn’t exist. Once she realized that fear was gone, she got on a bus and went home. however, while she believed it was still there, she was even able to visit home, and go back to horror.
I hope that this article will be read with appreciation and understanding by those who have NOT been abused, threatened, falsely imprisoned, or anything like it. Try to understand how things work. It may help you to help others, including to forgive captives for not getting free sooner, and help them when they do. It might also help you to listen to your instinct and find out HOW to act, the next time something looks “off” in a situation. Observation plus instinct. We live in a world when we’re taught to let others be our instinct and give us permission to listen or not listen, judge or not judge. These cases should help us overcome that where necessary. At the bottom are some photos of this woman, who is beautiful and poised now, and able to help others who have been through the situation.
September 2, 2009 6:30 AM
Exclusive: Woman Imprisoned in Coffin for 7 Years Has Special Message for Jaycee Dugard
Posted by Paul LaRosa
NEW YORK (CBS) Whenever I hear about a story like Jaycee Lee Dugard’s – kidnapped at age 11 and held captive for 18 years, bearing two children with her kidnapper – I inevitably think of Colleen Stan because if anyone knows what Jaycee went through and is about to go through, it’s Colleen.
Photos: The Search For Jaycee
Photos: Jaycee Lee Dugard Found Alive
Photos: Inside Jaycee’s Terror Tent
Colleen is not as well-known as Elizabeth Smart or Patty Hearst but, if anything, her story is even more incredible. Everyone wants to know why someone like Jaycee or Elizabeth or Patty, all of whom had some apparent freedom, did not flee their kidnappers. Well, Colleen can tell them why. Her story is horrible but instructive.
I met Colleen in 2003 when Elizabeth Smart was found alive, and I’ve never been able to stop thinking about her. Colleen was held by a husband and wife for seven years as a slave for sex and just about anything else the couple desired but here’s the kicker – for much of that time, she lived in a coffin-sized box underneath the couple’s bed!!
A book was written about Colleen by a prosecutor in the case and its title fittingly is “Perfect Victim.”
When I met Colleen, she seemed well-adjusted. She came to the interview with her daughter, a young woman, and then calmly but articulately spun out her incredible tale.
Colleen was a 20-year-old hitchhiker in 1977 when she was picked up by a young couple with a child in the back seat of their car. What could be safer, she thought? But the husband, Cameron Hooker, was a sexual sadist who took Colleen to the family’s isolated trailer and raped her. The abuse got worse and worse.
“He liked to whip me with whips,” she told CBS News. “He had electro-shocked me. He had burned me. He had done many things.”
Colleen explained that Hooker had warned her that, if she said a word about what was going on, his “men” would storm into the house and kill her parents and her and anyone inside the instant she opened her mouth.
“Because of the threats that people would come right in the house and people would be hurt,” she told Van Sant.
“And you believed him?”
“Yes, I did.”
Hooker’s control over Colleen was that complete. She went back to the box, and it was only because of Hooker’s wife that she was eventually rescued. Hooker’s wife went to the authorities at the behest of her minister. Hooker was eventually tried and sentenced to life in prison. His wife was never prosecuted under the theory that she too was abused and scared to death of her husband.
Sounds like that might have been understandable.
Photos: The Search For Jaycee
Photos: Jaycee Lee Dugard Found Alive
Photos: Inside Jaycee’s Terror Tent
Colleen recovered after years of therapy. She is now an office manager in Northern California. I caught up with her Monday and asked her about Jaycee Dugard. Colleen said she’d been trying with no luck to get in touch with Jaycee’s mother, and had met her mother on a talk show some years ago.
Colleen was of course concerned about Jaycee’s state of mind. “I read that she felt guilty but she should not feel that way,” Collen said. “You can’t be with someone 18 years and not have an attachment. I hope I get the opportunity to talk to her and tell her she did nothing wrong. She did everything right. She’s alive.
“I want to work with these women (Jaycee, her mother and her daughters) and help them readjust,” Colleen said. “It is not easy. After being away from the world for 7 1/2 years and all of a sudden you’re thrown back in the world and it’s hard, very overwhelming. My heart just goes out to these women who come out of these situations. It’s hard to adjust to your family situation.”
Hooker renamed Colleen “K” and constructed a coffin-sized box with holes in it and instructed her to climb in. He then shoved the box under the couple’s bed every night and kept her as his slave for the next 7 years.
Colleen felt she had no control of anything. She said he told her, “I’m in control and Colleen no longer exists. You are now K. You are my slave.”
Hooker wrote up a contract for Colleen that “basically said that he owned me body and soul.”
At one point, Hooker handed Colleen a gun. “I didn’t know if it was loaded or not and he told me ‘this is to see if you’ll do what I say,’ and he told me to put the gun in my mouth and pull the trigger, and I did,” she said.
Everything about this story is shocking and you might think that Colleen would do anything in her power to escape, and that is where her story intersects with Jaycee’s because people who are totally under someone else’s control – even given the opportunity to escape – do not. The brainwashing is complete. We as free individuals cannot understand it because we’ve never been in their situation.
Some 3 1/2 years into Colleen’s captivity – living in a box, being raped repeatedly – her abductor Cameron Hooker took her home for a visit with her family and left them with her overnight. She never said a word about what was going on with Hooker, and in fact went back with him the next day to live in the box again for another 3 ½ years.
CBS News Correspondent Peter Van Sant was incredulous: “Why then didn’t you tell them ‘I’ve been kidnapped, tortured?’ Why didn’t you pick up the phone and call the police and say, ‘Get here immediately. I need your help, I need your protection?’”
{{I have been many years outside the battering relationship I was in formerly. I still get, from people that did nothing to intervene, and probably to make themselves feel better, and more innocent for not helping, blaming for not leaving earlier. It is minimized, and I am supposedly “over it” even when many aspects of the abuse, in this case (no one ever went to prison in my case, unfortunately, I say) were continuing. I try to understand their point of view, but the converse is not always true. Victim-blaming is actually a self-solacing activity.
I used to try to become “normal” again and to a degree this is desirable. But there is no “past” to go back to before which one has undergone certain things. The brain also begins to work somewhat differently at times, which is biologically normal; for example, if PTSD comes up, that can be difficult, and is disheartening, but there are things I am going to notice, and possibly respond to, that people who have not been mugged (by an intimate), stalked, or repeatedly traumatized, etc., might not. When we are then discussing a similar situation, for example, something may be characterized as “over-reacting” but for that person, it isn’t. . . . There are some pros and cons to aspects of how one is changed by certain experiences. At times, I have learned to “translate” or try and understand why people may not “understand.” Would it be ideally normal to go totally back to normal for Colleen and Jaycee, if that were possible?
Maybe not — for one, while “normal” both of them were kidnapped. I imagine they are a little more cautious, as are their friends and relatives, than before. }}
What most shocked Colleen when she came out of captivity was something you might not expect. She was surprised at how ungrateful everyone was. “I was shocked,” she said. “People had nice jobs and houses and had plenty but they seemed so unhappy. They wanted more. I was coming out of a situation where I had nothing, and being exposed to these people who had so much and were unappreciative of it and complaining, I thought ‘My God why don’t they see how blessed they are?’
“It was overwhelming at first that people don’t take advantage of what they have. All I came home with were the clothes on my back. I had nothing. I was blessed with family and friends.
She received therapy from Doctor Christopher Hatcher from San Francisco, who has since died. Colleen considers him her savior. “He helped me to understand that I didn’t do anything wrong. I did everything right. People will ask you why you didn’t do this or that and they don’t know. They were not in that situation.
“I had a lot of support from my family but they didn’t know what to tell me so Dr. Hatcher helped me understand that people in this situation switch to survival mode. You have to do what you have to do and say to get through this situation and you shut down your emotions. I had to learn how to turn those emotions back on.
{{That’s beautifully said, and it’s true, too. As we run through life and notice people whose emotions ARE shut down, it might be something to also keep in mind. Perhaps there’s a reason they are. Anecdotal: Initially (and also at other times), when I would protest a form of abuse, there would be a punishment, to dominate, retaliate and establish that protesting abuse was UNacceptable. There were other times (this is talking DV in a marital situation) when I purposely stayed calm, flat-faced, did not react, or express what I think. My “me” went into hiding, for safety. Then I was criticized for being emotionless. When I say “Criticized” that means, namecalling, etc., some of it pretty nasty. I guess he needed someone reactive in there to get a feeling of power from the abuse.
There is a term for this (I think more re: childhood abuse) called “DID” — Dissociating, and literature around it. It’s a survival thing. I did not go through anything close to what this woman did — but she survived, and looks wonderful now and is able to speak out to someone else and help (see photos, below).
One book (person’s story) I read (reading other’s stories at one point — this is AFTER leaving the in-house abuse situation — seemed to gave me hope), she describes and attack and said, “immediately my mind split in two.” I remember this from one of the first most severe ones. The attack was happening, and part of my brain was compareing the two: “THIS — husband — THIS — husband” and trying to connect the two concepts. They didn’t connect. (I’d already hauled back in for trying to to out the front door and wrestled to the ground, pregnant, was being sat on and slapped across the face. It all happened very fast. I remember so much of it, even from many years ago).
}}
“I would like Jaycee to understand that (her recovery) will not happen overnight. She’ll carry around guilt, shame, anger and it will take years. I never got angry until long after (Cameron Hooker) was arrested. I did not feel safe until he was convicted because I was still afraid he would get off.
“It’s perfectly normal to go through these emotions.”
I asked her the question everyone always wants to know: why didn’t you escape when you had the chance?
“People don’t understand all the threats made against me, my family. There’s a lot more to it than just walking away. When you’re sexually abused, these things solidify the fact that if you don’t do what I say, I can take your life. I thought, ‘What if he catches me when I try to escape?’ It wasn’t like I never thought about these things. I did but I never felt safe to act out on them until his wife came to me and said, ‘We have to get out of here.’”
Colleen is 52 years old now, and on August 9th, she celebrated the 25th anniversary of the day she was set free, enjoying a cake and celebration with her recovery group. The cake, she said, was as sweet as life is now.
==========
One of the worst things people can do to someone coming out of trauma is judge them harshly for not getting over it fast enough. If it’s dramatic and awful enough, news headlines, mercy seems to come. But there is so much in just daily life, “routine” assault, battery, and long-term domestic violence. I still have family members scolding me for being “stuck in the past” (this happens to be actually a dodge attempting to derail a different conversation). Generally speaking, if you haven’t been through it, you’re just not in a position to judge.
Another thing not to do is go with the sympathy plus patronizing, i.e, making decisions for the person on the basis that because of her EXPERIENCE of domination and abuse, she just needs someone else to “take control” and dominate how she recovers, leaves, gets out, proiritizes WHAT area of life is most important, etc. What happened to me was that after years of negligence, it seems (at least) that the same people who weren’t competent to name and act on “danger” when it slapped THEM in the face metaphorically (as it did me, literally), and it wasn’t just hands, there were indeed weapons, which was also known – – the experts moved on in because I happened to be in a weakened state initially. Then I began to assert some boundaries and found this recovery resented. Kind of like a codependent need to know the person that was needy and in abuse. The, “She has a backbone and is utilizing it” wasn’t in the vocabulary. This saddens me, to have to fight a similar fight, again, and with different people.
The “experts” who aren’t can be every bit as abusive as the captors. It is necessary for others involved to “think outside the box” also.
I rejoice that these women got out.
=========
Photo: Colleen Stan today.
Colleen Stan at age 29, shortly after she was released.
Photo: Colleen Stan’s 20th birthday. She was abducted soon after.
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Finding a Firm Place to Stand, Prying Loose Violence and Abuse
http://www.sddvc.com/pdf/2008finalwithsignatures.pdf
This is out of San Diego: Law Enforcement Protocol:
“The California State Legislature has declared that:
(1) “[S]pousal abusers present a clear and present danger to the mental and
physical well-being of the citizens of the State of California.” (California
Penal Code section 273.8.)
(2) “A substantial body of research demonstrates a strong connection between
Domestic Violence and Child Abuse.” (California Penal Code section
13732(a)).
“The decision to prosecute a batterer lies within the discretion of the District Attorney
and the City Attorney. Victims do not “press charges”, “drop charges” or
“prosecute” their batterers.
Ay, there’s the rub. So, they go get civil or family court restraining orders, which are less respected. Or, they go to their family, friends, faith institution, etc. Then they find out what their: family, friends, faith institution, etc., are about. And the years go by, the kids grow up. . . . . .
Ay, there’s the rub.** So, they go get civil or family court restraining orders, which are less respected. Or, they go to their family, friends, faith institution, etc. Then they find out what their: family, friends, faith institution, etc., are about. And the years go by, the kids grow up. . . . . .
**”To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub”Origin From the celebrated ‘to be, or not to be‘ speech in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, 1603:
HAMLET:
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
3. How it feels (reflect, describe, (OK, complain)):
2. Paradigms, Tools to Pry Loose, Places to stand and the Lever of Language
2A. Dude, it’s about the money. That’s the paradigm to understand in understanding the family law system. This means child support and federal grants have to be examined as well, as well as job referrals, and private conflicts of interest among professionals on the same case.
2B. Anything that is obviously, over time, a moot point, then this is not the reigning paradigm, even if you wish it were or thought it should be. Another one is actually primary. is the goal to change the system or win your case
(and which first? Because one timeframe is shorter than the other. This is where many organizations, with a cash flow, employees, business offices, and a little momentum, have a different world view than mothers, who have fast-growing children and fast-changing situations personally.)
2C. GENGHIS KHAN: Who was he? Who was his army? How did they conquer so much territory?
“The Devil’s Horsemen.”
The conquering Mongols were most feared by their victims as “the devil’s horsemen” who carried everything before them and left nothing behind.” (Genghis Khan & the Mongol Conquests, 1190-1400 [page 8]) The “invincible” Mongolian Army faced little opposition, physical, nor mental, until they began campaigning in areas outside of the steppe regions.
. . .
The first problem that the Mongols and their current leader Genghis Khan overcame, was the complex planning needed in order for them to defeat their more organized, and better equipped foes. “New military technologies therefore had to be learned and relearned
. . .
At Xiangyang in 1272 Khubilai Khan was forced to send to his kinsmen in the west for counterweight trebuchets, the latest thing in siege catapults, to breach its walls.” (Genghis Khan & the Mongol Conquests, 1190-1400 [page 9]) The need for a more strategic way of fighting allowed the Mongols to evolve. Without that evolution, the Mongols would never have been able to stand up to their well-trained, well-organized enemies. This extraordinary skill to adapt, and thus survive, helped the Mongols not only in the physical aspects of warfare, but the psychological. Becoming an enemy that has the ability to adapt and thrive in any situation and on any terrain earned the Mongols the title of “the Devil’s horsemen”.
The Mongols
by antonio2godoy</a>” href=”http://socyberty.com/author/antonio2godoy/” mce_href=”http://socyberty.com/author/antonio2godoy/”>antonio2godoy in History, March 29, 2009
This is an a little description of what the Mongols were like under Genghis Khan’s rule.
(I put it in very fine print, because it’s not central to this post, just related:)
The Mongols were amazing herders and horse back riders. Within time they dominated China and Eastern Europe. Who would have envisioned that these nomads, herders that relied on animal and natural resources for survival, would reign over a great deal of territory belonging to the Chinese and Eastern Europeans?! But with the leadership of Genghis Khan, the Mongols conquered all who opposed them and ruled with an iron fist earning a reputation for extreme cruelty. Then, after a hundred years the Mongol empire disappeared. After reading this you’ll learn how the Mongols put effective leadership first and then effectively manage it with discipline.
. . . Genghis Khan changed his name from Temujin after numerous victories. Temujin was born in 1162 and was part of the Kiyad tribe close to the Burhan Khaldun Mountains. He had three younger brothers and his father, Yesugei, was the tribe leader. Yesugei arranged Khan’s marriage to Borte at a young age. Yesugei was poisoned at a dinner of a neighboring tribe. Although Temujin was next in line, he still had to prove that he was the strongest to before he can lead over the tribe. At the young age of 13 he killed his brother while hunting. Age 17 Temujin married Borte and united two tribes. Borte was then kidnapped by an enemy tribe. Legend says that Timujin sent an army of 40,000 to rescue his wife which may have led him to his destiny. After Temujin conquered and united numerous tribes, as well Mongolia his name was well known throughout the land as Genghis Khan, Ruler of the world.
{{establish dominance. A “name” is very important to leadership}}
Many historians consider Khan ahead of his time because his army was well structured, trained and equipped. He organized his 80,000 soldiers into divisions of 10,000, with 1000 in each regiment, 100 in each company and 10 in a squad. In 1206 all of Mongolia was conquered. {{HE WAS 44 years old}}
Khan made all of his soldiers from different tribes pledge loyalty to him. He won his victories with his skilled horse warriors and archers. He required his soldiers to wear light leather and metal tunics with protective silk undergarments. Khan also made sure his soldiers had enough equipment like 2 bows, a quiver of 60 arrows, scimitar, and attached 5 horses. His soldiers also carried useful tools such as meat pots, needle and thread and objects to sharpen arrows.
Khan controlled his people by a code of law he created called the Yasa. These laws were extremely cruel and harsh. The death penalty was a sentence for many offenses including stealing, cheating on your spouse, {{interesting, eh?}} resigning from combat in the middle of a battle, not paying taxes three times and even peeing in public water routes.
Genghis never taxed the outside land he conquered. He let defeated kingdoms live as they liked, which gave people the choice of religion, and to live with their custom laws and celebrations.
((Therefore not provoking their rebellion.))
Another place to stand to move the world.
When I finally Decided to Leave / Moot Points.
The engraving is from
Mechanic’s Magazine
(cover of bound Volume II,
Knight & Lacey, London, 1824)
Courtesy of the
Annenberg Rare Book &
Manuscript Library
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, USA
| Wall painting in theStanzino delle Matematiche in theGalleria degli Uffizi(Florence, Italy). Painted by Giulio Parigi (1571-1635) in the y |
“Give me somewhere to stand and I will move the earth.”
Greek Mathematical Works, by Ivor Thomas, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1941, vol. II, p. 35
First, analyze the situation accurately. Accurately, the chances of a court order being respected in my situation, or someone doing something about this (even if officially asked to in a motion) are nil. Most times, while I went about this, a guerrilla attack (and clearly purposed as such) came from another “gang” member offended by the principle that my motions should disrupt their equilibrium, the equilibrium of the self-anointed, self-evaluated, self-selected, with zero accountability. Point 1. The lever must be long enough and not break under the weight. The longer the lever, the less weight need be applied.
Where to stand? I say, look at the finances. Do not approach a crook and talk about ethics! Do not talk about someone drunk with power and talk about the immorality of using their power! Talk in terms they understand, not your own paradigm! How do you think we got into this place to start with?
WOMEN NEED A PLACE TO STAND IN THIS LIFE. WE NEED TO MAKE AND DEFINE THIS PLACE IN FAIR NEGOTIATION WITH MEN. WHEN CHILDREN ARE INVOLVED, THIS FAIR-NESS IS EVEN MORE CRUCIAL.
YOUNG WOMEN NEED TO BE TOLD SOME HARD TRUTHS — THERE ARE MEN THAT WILL GO FOR YOU TO PRODUCE A BABY (THIS CAN ALSO BE TRUE OF THE YOUNG MEN). PARTICULARLY IF YOU ARE YOUNG AND FERTILE, AND HE’S ON A REBOUND. OR IF YOU ARE OLDER AND AFFLUENT, IN THIS CASE, YOUR HOME IS NEEDED FOR A NEW HOME FOR HIS KIDS FROM THE FIRST WOMAN. OR, ALTERNATELY, YOUR CHILDREN FROM A FORMER MARRIAGE MIGHT DO, TOO.
i feel this is just as applicable to professional women in their late mid to late 30s/early 40s as others. Until our society starts VALUING women as people and as women (including mothers!), the whole climate isn’t healthy enough all round, and people need to know in the river of life where the rapids and sharp rocks lie. This differs by culture and community, and it AIN’T up to Washington D.C. and a bunch of economists and human behavioralists drawing research from shelters, prisons, and head start outfits, to set the standards! (OR, churches, dammit! The average church these days, I’ll speak for Protestant, is basically a cult. In every sense of the word. Marketing spirituality and social connection and good feelings, for a price, allegiance. . . . And money, and services).
So now we get too MOOT POINT. This post is just about a moot point today: I’ll revisit it in a while.
Idiom: Moot Point
Category: Law
View examples in Google: Moot point
Wiktionary:
- (US) An issue regarded as potentially debatable, but no longer practically applicable. Although the idea may still be worth debating and exploring academically, and such discussion may be useful for addressing similar issues in the future, the idea has been rendered irrelevant for the present issue.
- Until we rebuild downtown, whether we build more parking spaces is a moot
Moot point (http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/moot-point.html)
Meaning
An irrelevant argument.
Origin
Some may disagree with the above meaning and argue that it means ‘a point open to debate‘, rather than ‘a point not worth debating‘. That former meaning was certainly the correct one when the term was first coined, but that’s going back a while.
In this post, I refer to the second usage
Laurence Humphrey, the president of Magdalen College, Oxford, wrote Nobles or of Nobilitye, a manual of behaviour for the English nobility, in 1563. In that he wrote:
“That they be not forced to sue the lawe, wrapped with so infinite crickes and moot poyntes.”
In medieval England, moots, or meets, were assemblies or councils where points of government were debated. The country was split into juridicial areas called hundreds and administered via assemblies known as hundredmotes. The form of government has long since vanished but the term hundred is still in use as the name of the procedural device which gives consent to MPs’ resignation. British MPs aren’t allowed to resign and, when members wish to leave Parliament they may do so by applying for the notional position of Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds. In such assemblies points which were put up for discussion were said to be mooted.
The change in meaning has come about following the introduction of ‘moot courts’, which are sessions where law students train for their profession by arguing hypothetical cases, i.e. ‘moot points’. The lack of any substantive outcome from these theoretical cases has led to the ‘unimportant/not worth discussing’ meaning of ‘moot point’, which is what many people accept today.
Here is one WHOPPER of a “moot point.” I used to think that bringing this one up would make a difference. I was so glad to see this written here. But, it’s a moot point — in practice no one actually believes this. If they did, too many programs would have to shut down.
Let’s go over this again:
http://www.sddvc.com/pdf/2008finalwithsignatures.pdf
This is out of San Diego: Law Enforcement Protocol:
“The California State Legislature has declared that:
(1) “[S]pousal abusers present a clear and present danger to the mental and
physical well-being of the citizens of the State of California.” (California
Penal Code section 273.8.)
(2) “A substantial body of research demonstrates a strong connection between
Domestic Violence and Child Abuse.” (California Penal Code section
13732(a)). ”
Now, same document:
“The decision to prosecute a batterer lies within the discretion of the District Attorney
and the City Attorney. Victims do not “press charges”, “drop charges” or
“prosecute” their batterers.
So, those offices bear looking at. When they don’t prosecute for any of those (or child-stealing, case in point).
Ay, there’s the rub.** So, they go get civil or family court restraining orders, which are less respected. Or, they go to their family, friends, faith institution, etc. Then they find out what their: family, friends, faith institution, etc., are about. And the years go by, the kids grow up. . . . . .
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The ACES study — Bridging apparent Skipped Synapses in Family Court thinking….
Happy Labor Day post. I give you one study I refer to often on this blog, that dates back to 1998, and one (more) inane/insane custody discussion from Australia, case dating 1999-2003, and topic, joint legal custody and visitation with a young girl and the father who crushed her baby brother’s skull with his bare hands, baby being 3 weeks old and in his father’s arms at the time. The court is less concerned with that behavior than the mother’s “phobia” (odd label, eh?) about that behavior. Nothing much new for Family Law Arena — this is its speciality, in fact, stigmatizing parents that actually seek to protect their kids from trauma, abuse, and possible (in that case) death.
ACES (below): Bridging the Gap between Childhood Trauma and . . . . .Negative consequences later in life.
Or should I call this bridging the gap between theory and reality? Which results in the ever-widening “Chasm,” the Court public Credibility Gap.
So, how does one talk with mad engineer at the helm of a runaway train with one’s kids on it? How get one’s kids safely OFF the train? because in this venue, it doesn’t seem possible. If they spend the duration of their childhood on this train, perhaps this will become their new “normal” and then another generation of trainsters and railway-hoppers will grow up, have kids, and provide new cargo for this Trip to Nowhere (except the trips to the bank for the railroad and its employees). Like the formerly renowned rail system in the U.S., it took a lot of subsidy to keep the thing operational.
There are basically two types of conversations going through the courts:
1. IN open court — in open, and
2. Behind closed doors — in private.
The heart of the matter is in the 2nd arena. Best interests of the child is static, sound-fluff and media-bytes. It’s not reality, and I don’t any longer believe that any one who makes a living in this arena seriously, seriously believes in this paradigm — or if they do, their eyes are simply closed, because the cat is out of the bag.
I believe the language the speak, as any good employee or business person truly does, is that of who is paying their bills. One reason I know this is that I actually experienced leaving an abusive marriage, and how vital a part finances was in getting free. I also watched systematic economic abuse (mismangement, comandeering of access to basic funds/cash flow/steady jobs that would make this possible, and so forth), which restricted and delayed the exit.
Which would you be more accountable to as a secretary whose family’s food and rent (lifestyle) depends on your pleasing that employer? Up to your own personal level of moral/social tolerance (and ability to choose), a disgruntled customer in the waiting room or on the phone? Or your employer? . . . . Well, what about judges and other professionals, some of whose salary (US$) is well over $100,000 and lifestyles and associates to match? Along with judgeships go political influence and possibly later activity — it’s a career path. It took a lot of convincing in California (and publicity) for these judges to give up (statewide) their almost $20 million in SUPPLEMENTAL pay, but not until one of their own, an attorney in Los Angeles, was firmly intimidated and jailed for reporting financial corruption (Richard Fine case), which was his actual job to do in this city, as I understood it. He was put in punitive solitary conffinement, moreover, and I heard, disbarred, for actually bucking this system.
However, these articles ARE about “best interests of the child” and whose head is where in being unable to figure that out in a given case involving infanticide! Or other horrors to any growing child, or the parent of any such child.
I am going to start grading the Family Law systems in my country, and in any country that imitates policies that I give an “F” in my country:
1998 THIS study is also old, and underestimated. Probably because of its common sense, like the 1989 and 1992 ones I quoted earlier, from NOMAS, talking about why the HECK have we got to continue exposing each new generation of children to more and more parents who batter, and then posing STUPID questions like, why is the next generation ending up in jail, or beating THEIR women, or taking the assaults, either.
WHY is business as usual, THAT’s why. A case came to light today where an Australian court (dealing with similar issues down under) is ordering psychiatric evaluation for the mother of a two-year old because the two-year-old’s father, quickly knocking up another woman, had just crushed to death the newborn (3 weeks old) infant with his bare hands, in response to the baby’s crying. The man is in jail, and the court is trying to tell the mother that she needs to have her head examined for wanting to make sure this doesn’t happen to the one that came out of HER womb. No, I am not kidding!
FAMILY LAW – Children – parenting orders – contact in prison – father incarcerated for killing child of another relationship – specific phobic anxiety of the primary carer and compromised capacity to care for the child – no significant contact ordered.
At what point do we get to have the COURT’s “head” – and values — examined? ???
O & C [2005] FMCAfam 200 (29 April 2005)
Last Updated: 6 June 2005
FEDERAL MAGISTRATES COURT OF AUSTRALIA
REASONS FOR JUDGMENTIntroduction – the proceedings
1. This matter comes before me as the final hearing of the competing applications of the various parties concerning B M C born 9 March 1999. Final parenting orders were made in relation to B on 20 February 2002 whereby B lived with the mother and the father had regular contact. However, on 11 March 2003, the father killed his newborn child of another relationship, Z, and the father is now incarcerated until approximately February 2006.
Yes you read that right. Infanticide: 3 years. 3 hots and a cot. Wonder if he’ll get out on parole early, like Garrido did, in time for a repeat performance. Sounds like it didn’t affect his entitlement much, being incarcerated for baby-killing; he still wants to assert his shared parenting responsibilities and rights. Where’s KING SOLOMON (of the Bible) when you need him? Where’s the anti-abortion pro-lifers when you need them? This mother, of child “B” is a pro-lifer. She doesn’t want HER kid to suffer the same fate. For expressing and acting on this protective, motherly sentiment, she may be sentenced to a lifetime — or at least for the duration of B’s childhood — of having her “head examined” over this “phobia.”
“Phobia” being, I guess, being afraid of something the Court isn’t afraid of, probably because it’s not the Court’s offspring involved or at risk.
2. The proceedings were initiated by the mother filing an application on 1 July 2003 in which she sought that previous parenting orders made by this court on 20 February 2002 be suspended and that she have sole responsibility for making decisions about the long term and day to day care, welfare and development of B. Effectively, she sought that there be no contact between B and the father.
3. On 21 November 2003 a Form 3 response was filed and served on behalf of the father {{BEING AS HE WAS INCARCERATED??}}. Relevantly, the father sought joint responsibility for long term decisions affecting B and contact in prison
RELEVANT: What the jailed Dad wants.
IRRELEVANT: what the killed 3-week old baby wanted before his Daddy crushed his skull together: probably either some cuddling, a diaper change, some milk, or to be held differently. Or his Mama.
IRRELEVANT: What the mother wants, safety for HER kid, and her concerns taken seriously.
YES, this WAS 2006, “DOWN UNDER,” and a term well-earned from what I can see of this decision, at least.
As to his paternal grandparents: Well, their son was an adult at the time, but still, they raised this guy. PERHAPS this should be considered “relevant” in allowing unsupervised contact of child “B” with them. (Not mentioned are her parents. . . . or mother of the deceased newborn. )
===============================
I give you one more reason (not including Phillip Garrido, Jaycee Dugard, and any woman who opts to marry a convicted kidnapper and raper) to take domestic violence seriously: The children:
What is the ACE Study?
The ACE Study is an ongoing collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention and Kaiser Permanente. Led by Co-principal Investigators Robert F. Anda, MD,
MS, and Vincent J. Felitti, MD, the ACE Study is perhaps the largest scientific research study
of its kind, analyzing the relationship between multiple categories of childhood trauma
(ACEs), and health and behavioral outcomes later in life.What’s an ACE?
Growing up experiencing any of the following conditions in the household prior to age 18:
- Recurrent physical abuse
- Recurrent emotional abuse
- Contact sexual abuse
- An alcohol and/or drug abuser in the
household
- An incarcerated household member
- Someone who is chronically depressed,
mentally ill, institutionalized, or suicidal
- Mother is treated violently
- One or no parents
- Emotional or physical neglect
Origins and Essence of the Study (2003)
ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES AND STRESS: PAYING THE PIPER (2004?)
The findings of the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, an ongoing collaboration between Co-Principal
Investigators Vincent J. Felitti, MD, of Kaiser Permanente, and Robert F. Anda, MD, MS, of the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.
Because the two links above are in multi-column format, I can’t copy and paste. I exhort you to take a look at some of this.
Please note that “one or no parents” was NOT on the top of the list, as it is on current “fatherhood.gov” policy, or HHS/ACF grants prioritization in the Designer Family mode it appears to be stuck in.
Women, including women like me, whose children have been exposed to from 1 to all of the factors above, are after removing their children FROM such factors, having the courts force them back in through shared parenting considerations. IN this case the theoretical ideal is held over the head, and clubbing protective parents, of the practical reality that Batterers do NOT make Good parents until they thoroughly address the battering behavior, and what drives it. Moreover, men have graduated with flying colors from programs allegedly adjusting their attitudes, and gone right out to murder that bitch who forced them to sit through it (McAlpin is one case that comes to mind, Bay Area, 2005. Within just a few days, her body was discovered in a trunk).
Again, the issue becomes who gets to rig the test and give the grades? I give any policy that lacks common sense — protect the kids! — and ignores the golden rule and “F.”
Golden Rule in Family Law: Do unto OTHERS as you would have them do unto YOU (i.e., if it were YOUR kid, whose father just killed a newborn, would you as a judge order the woman who was alarmed at said murder to have her head examined, and the child ordered into contact with the parents of the killer, OR would you yourself be alarmed, and rule accordingly?)
If it’s not good enough for YOUR kid, it’s not good enough for HER kid. That’s the golden rule in the courtroom, I say.
This of course presumes that a judge cares about his or her own kids, which may be a presumption indeed; some judges have been convicted of collecting child pornography and making some of it (Thompson, NJ), another of sexual harassment of female employees (Fed. District judge in Texas).
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Today’s post is a new blog page: “Lessons from Antioch” (California)
The pages are full of the Dugards and the Garridos; people what answers, and collectively, it appears there’s a need to process the trauma, and put names to the “Who, What When, How and Why?” this happened.
(As these posts get a little more personal, understand it’s not just for the blogger’s sake but for the bloggers’ hope that another perspective on these things might get heard.)
It triggers trauma, or perhaps it’s thoughtfulness, or perhaps it’s a desire to mention what other mothers have gone through that is different, but of some similar qualities: sudden loss of access to and contact with their sons or daughters, and lack of closure, or time to recover or heal from prior abuse(s). One can get so acclimatized to abuse, or to repeated violations of personal integrity, that this sort of “alternate reality” becomes “normal.” What’ I’m concerned about in this matter is future generations, and what “normal” has become for American women, both growing up and grown-up mothers.
My own father (deceased) I deduce was told, like many, to “man up,” shut up and step up to the plate when his (wife-beating) father abandoned the household. Retaliation for even CRYING about the violence, let alone reporting it, was simply part of his youth. After being locked in a closet for crying initially (so the family lore goes) he went on, and worked hard, educated himself hard, provided well, such that his own children (ALL of them) also got college educated. I’d say did all right (that’s one adult child’s perspective only; there ARE others), but as the youngest of these, and alone in the house as his marriage disintegrated, I certainly noticed and questioned that, despite the success, he also drank hard too (bottling something else up?), married several times, and, unfortunately, never discussed or addressed any of his own family shortcomings, nor did any of our own adult family actually handle these well, other than by transmitting what I could call UNhealthy family values: Zero dialogue on THE most important issues of life, a lifelong habit. Scapegoating. Tolerance of domestic violence towards, now, more than one member, and clan-like excommunication for anyone who dares to report any of the worst family secrets (and I shudder to think of the ones that haven’t yet come to surface).
My father died suddenly and under circumstances that were not explained to me. I learned more about him after his death from the Internet than from anyone I was related to. He has been described alternately as a genius, and modest (a side of him we didn’t know!), and creative. His mother was devout, and he rejected the concept and existence of God, another family value I myself later rejected, and paid dearly for over the years. I like to think that, had he realized one of his daughters would go on to marry and be exposed to what his own mother was, I like to think he’d be turning over in his grave, but fact is, I don’t know. I do know there was a certain sexism, not uncommon for the day and time. And I do thank him for not following the utterly insane policy that the HHS is nowadays, deciding and enforcing that children need contact with wife-beating fathers, for the good of, I guess, the country (???) and their little lives.
I consider refusal to address violence endorsing it. They consider it “dwelling on the past,” even when the ostensible past was as recent as last week or last month. They got that one down, and in order that my children should not know the truth about this family, have endorsed further criminal behavior towards them, and me, and this state, again in the name of “Family.”
It appears that the family law venue is also in the business of telling people to shut up about both their own family secrets (retaliation on custodial parents for reporting abuse in the form of switching the kid to the accused parent!) as well as ITS own secrets, which (as family secrets tend to) includes the financial business deal driving the steamship that’s steamrolling over (well, I could go on and on with that analogy, it’s an apt one) – — that’s steamrolling over the years that SOME families might have otherwise had in peace to recover from the initial trauma, and rebuild a few lives. Big Brother had a supposedly Better Idea for the country, you know, and so we are to sacrifice the duration of our children’s — well, til they are legally adults — and stay in the system until all the proper tolls have been paid, and “Therapeutic Jurisprudence” has run its course, replacing the former language of right, wrong, crime & punishment, and deterrents for doing it again.
Which deterrents Phillip Garrido had, but in the words of one of his several kidnapped for the purpose of raping women, (the 1976 woman that got him the 50 year jail sentence, that he served a few years of), it just made him a smarter and wiser criminal.
However it’s not the men’s doing this so much as the institutions they create doing this, which frightens me the most, for at least my own children’s futures. Put against this, is their spirit and, I hope, smarts.
And the VOLUNTARY donation of the national resources and sort of “conscience” to the federal government. Kind of like the cycle of rain, rivers flow to the ocean, evaporation, clouds, rain, etc. The concept is that justice and a better society will somehow rain down on us.
I’m not holding my breath.
However, sometimes this happens when the parents may even know where they are; this happens in the “family court venue.”
Recent articles talk about how the girls are recovering from trauma, and that’s partly where I started in this new page. I note a difference of perspective from the experts quoted and what i know about the trauma thing from experience.
I end up talking about the importance of the declaration of independence, and personal defense of boundaries. And how it MIGHT help if the public were a little less self-delusional, compartmentalized, and dissociative when it comes to US vs THEM and the role of government in kissing all our “ow-ies,” settling our squabbles, raising our young, monitoring our marriages, determining our public visions, and protecting our boundaries.
NO, let’s get back to the foundational principles. And add women and girls in the mix as citizens, not as items to be devoured or dominated.
If overall, we ALL had less tolerance for unreasonable dominance, I think a lot of partnerships and society would be healthier. You can force compliance, but you can’t force love, and when force gets into the family business, then we are REALLY in trouble. And we are.
I don’t think the culprit is god or godlessness. I don’t think the culprit is men OR women. I think the loss is of a sense of selves as individuals (socially) and a loss of language — transformational ideology throughout the internet, and our institutions.
As imperfect, or OK< sexist racist classist (etc.) as those colonists were in the latter 1700s, the three “charters of freedom” still shed light and common sense:
- Declaration of Independence
- Constitution
- Bill of Rights.
If we don’t like the middle one, we should change the oath Presidents take on assuming office. Barring that, we should hold them and every one else in any form of government to the same standard of these 3. “Consent of the governed” still counts.
So I recommend we start thinking in those terms again, starting with putting some of the terms back into our heads and coming out of our mouths. Expect a fight, in that matter, though!
That’s all for now. If you want straighter talk and fewer words, get it from the street:
http://www.thestreetspirit.org/
3. If God is, whence come evil things? If He is not, whence come good?
BOETHIUS (Roman philosopher 480?-524 A.D.) The Consolation of Philosophy, translated by W.V. Cooper, 19814. I still believe that standing up for the truth of God is the greatest thing in the world. This is the end of life. The end of life is not to be happy. The end of life is not to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. The end of life is to do the will of God, come what may.
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., (U.S. clergyman and human rights activist, 1929-1968), “The Most Durable Power,” sermon, Montgomery, Alabama, 6 November 1956(LIFE LIBERTy and PURSUIT of HAPP(y)NESS, and in that order. Physical, mental, or spiritual Welfare =/= happiness, but the first can sustain life. Moral proclamations by government about how to live, how free to be, and what happiness consists of is not the government’s province, it’s ours).
On poverty, who are you going to believe? A Harvard Ph.D. or a poor person?
This stereotype is that poor people can lift themselves out of poverty because, it assumes, they are responsible for their own poverty. Linda Burnham explained in her opening, the myth in America is that “everyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” This myth allows the public to discard “a whole layer of society” who can’t pull themselves up.
Linda spoke of the American economy as both an engine of incredible wealth and an engine of poverty. This engine “creates and recreates poverty everyday in the US and all over the world.” During the war, discussions of poverty have been swept off the table. It is important to connect the war against the poor to the war abroad. Burnham mentioned that Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest weapons manufacturer, has just been awarded a contract to run the welfare system in Florida. The company, who makes huge profits off of war, will now be making huge profits off of managing Florida’s poor.** In order for a country to subjugate and dominate another population, it has to first dominate its population at home. All you have to do is look at the streets of your city to see that this is being done on an everyday basis.
**This is why I don’t think much about the conversations on solving domestic violence. IF it were solved, there’d be less cash flow all round, less poverty, and poverty IS an industry!
Or Ask the Beat Within
Violence And Material Madness
by Speedy, posted May 18, 2009I think violence comes from people who has a bad life style. They don’t get the good things in life and so they get angry, so they look to robbing and stealing. That’s what gets them in here. So then, when they get in here, their whole life is starting to mess up. And when that happens, they’re in the system. Then they get even more madder because they’re missing out on a lot, so they get to more stealing.Some people grow up with anger, and some are taught to be mad and act bad. Like some parents say, when somebody hits you, you supposed to hit them back. But sometimes that’s not the right thing to do, so than they get in trouble for what they parents taught them. But when they get home, he or her mom says, “That a’right.” So than they keep getting’ in trouble.
But some violent stuff mostly come from material madness, so they try to steal and stealing ain’t the right thing. You should just get a job, have some money in yo’ pocket and that’s go be you. And if that material thing is really expensive, so that’s when you save up and get that thing for yourself, so than that’s when you see you don’t have to look to stealing. When you don’t have to steal and you see that you don’t have to do that no more.
OR: (This issue had several letters to President Obama….)
A Letter To The President-
by TAE, posted May 18, 2009Dear Mr. Obama,I think you should make certain things that keep young black men busy for the weekends, so we could stop killing ourselves. I also think that you should start building new colleges for people who cannot afford that type of money, so they could be something in life to take care of their family, and get the majority of the tax money every year.
I think there should be less education about African-American people and more about other cultures so people wouldn’t have to feel down all the time by hearing the word “Nigger” a lot.
People who’s getting abused in their family should be taken care of in a shelter that provides a little bit of discipline, so they could grow up and succeed in life, and keep innocent people out of the pen.
OR:
Dear President
by Richard, posted May 19, 2009How are you Mr. President? I am writing from Santa Clara juvenile hall. My name is Richard. I am facing a life sentence for kidnapping, attempted murder, carjacking, and 2nd degree robbery. I am 17 years old.I would like to congratulate you for becoming the 44th President of the United States of America. You inspire me to do many things. It gives me hope to become something I thought I couldn’t be in life no matter what it is. I believe in you, that you are going to make things right in this world. I know when I go to prison I can try my hardest to get my education and other things. I didn’t think I could at first, but with you as President, I have faith.
I know I am in here and might not get out soon, but I know you will be there for those on the outside of these walls. I know you will make a change. I hope the best for you, Mr. President. Thank you for reading this, and I apologize for taking your time.
Our Mission
The Beat Within’s mission is to provide incarcerated youth with consistent opportunity to share their ideas and life experiences in a safe space that encourages literacy, self-expression, some critical thinking skills, and healthy, supportive relationships with adults and their community. Outside of the juvenile justice system, The Beat Within partners with community organizations and individuals to bring resources to youth both inside and outside of detention. We are committed to being an effective bridge between youth who are locked up and the community that aims to support their progress towards a healthy, non-violent, and productive life.
Regarding recovery from violence (WHICH the Antioch/Dugard articles from today dealt with),
from http://www.Lundy Bancroft.com:
- Addressing the healing needs of children: There is a wide consensus that children’s recovery from exposure to domestic violence (and from divorce) depends largely on the quality of their relationship with the non-battering parent and with their siblings.20
Of course this statement runs entirely contrary to the bulk of the “fatherhood” premises and the entire family court venue basically doesn’t validate or practice.
- Therefore, in addition to safety consideration, court determinations should take into account whether the batterer is likely, based on his past and current behavior, to continue to undermine the mother’s authority, interfere with mother-child relationships, or cause tensions between siblings.
This becomes kind of irrelevant when the court itself does the same things. My experience is that the past was considered to be a totally blank slate, and therefore any fallout was attributed to whoever it “fell” on. Extended family influence (which I tried to bring up, and was significant) was ignored. It was an unbelievably stereotyped reaction. Possibly the reason I’m writing so much is from the impact of the years of being told POST-separation not to talk about this, or any other subsequent criminal behavior(s). Oh well . . .
- Because children need a sense of safety in order to heal,21 juvenile and family court decisions may not want to include leaving the children in the unsupervised care of a man whose violent tendencies they have witnessed, even if they feel a strong bond of affection for him.
So when it typically does, often right after the filing of a civil restraining order, or when divorce is started almost immediately after someone files a protective order, resulting in the “joint custody” “Shared parenting” mindset, then we have a serious values conflict, as I did, in the past, now almost ten years. A move was made (locally) to extend the initial restraining order time to 5 years from 3. I know I would’ve made it had this happened. Certain agencies, and entities, made sure this was defeated. Now that I have time (called unemployment!), I did find out who they were in that case.
If you want straight talk on some poverty, justice, and crime policy issues, again, (although I try, there’s the verbiage issue!), try: Street Spirit, Poor Magazine, the Beat Within (although that’s getting slicker and slicker since I first saw it),
Thanks. Happy Labor Day (USA). Unemployment rate _ _ _ _ _???
Labor (or rest) well, we have one more day off in America. I gave up the concept of seeing a daughter at this time in favor of not fighting that fight until I have some income. The lack of closure is a constant source of stress. Closing has to be done right to be safe. Go figure. This is one reason I think if women leaving abuse could get a bit of space and time, they could run some great businesses. It appears that Jaycee/Alyssa both helped her captorS S S S Ss s s s s run a business (not including any horrors she endured IF the brothel rumor was true) and educated her also-imprisoned daughters, the product of her rapes, but nonetheless her DAUGHTERS, the best she could. I wish her well and the family that’s now reunited with her.
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“Wife Abuse and Custody and Visitation by the Abuser” –A Man Speaks from the Past (1989).
This voice from the past (1989 to 2009 = 20 years!) —
is pretty well drowned out by “the Duluth Model,” and the millions of $$ of grants, funds, and now even new professions springing up, all to help avoid what I’d call THIS common sense. I guess I will have to show. This will deal with the issue of Supervised Visitation: The question nowadays is how to make it safe, etc. The question of why ANY visitation with such violence, scarcely gets raised again.
Wife Abuse and Child Custody and Visitation by the Abuser
by Kendall Segel-Evans
originally published:
ENDING MEN’S VIOLENCE NEWSLETTER, Fall, 1989
I recently read the National Organization for Changing Men’s statement on child custody, and the position taken that, in general, sole custody by the previously most involved parent is preferable to joint custody. I would like to elaborate on this position for families where there has been violence between parents (i.e. woman-abuse). The following includes the main points of a deposition I was asked to provide to a lawyer for the mother in a child custody case. I do not believe this is the last or best word on the subject, {{now THAT’s a rare humility in the field!}} but I hope that it will s(t)imulate useful dialogue** about the effects on children of wife-abuse and the treatment of wife-abusers. I also wish to further discussion on the issue of how we are going to truly end men’s violence. *** Clearly, I believe that the treatment of wife-abusers should not only be held accountable to the partner victim/survivors, but also to the children, and to the next generation.
**{{WAS THAT A FREUDIAN SLIP IN THE ORIGINAL?? “simulate” for “stimulate”??}} . . .
***
I’ve noticed that the professionals are more likely to have the “social transformation” goal, while typically women leaving abuse, and specifically MOTHERS leaving abuse, have a more short-term goal, namely LEAVING abuse and providing safety and good things, including good values, safety, education and role models — for their CHILDREN. This is a significant difference, and with different goals come different means to reach that goal. Moreover, as women leaving abuse, we have a ZERO tolerance for situations that might lead to, well, death. Women have been killed around visitation centers, which is a dirty little secret. Another one is that some supervisors are themselves abusive, or “on the take” and so forth. Again, the professionals have spoken to this issue — but not changed it. (For more info see nafcj.net). Are all? No. But why even risk it?
WHY place both children and the nonabusive parent at any sort of risk whatsoever, for any reason? For one, good grief, what about PTSD? A child has witnessed abuse or been abused. Therefore, expose them to the abuser. REGULARLY, and in a performance situation. A mother has been abused or her child. Therefore, force her — and/or her children — to see their father, regularly and in front of others who will “judge.” AND they do (see “Karen Oehme”). The model lacks integrity, to my mind. No matter, it has government backing, and LOTS of it.
SO this post is a “blast from the past.” I’ve read the literature a LOT, I assure you; you don’t hear this person’s name a lot. Too much common sense. And yet he is in the marriage field, and attaches a Bibliography like anyone else:
Kendall Segel-Evans, M.A. Marriage, Family and Child Counselor 4/15/1989
He recommends not taking chances. Such types of recommendations are not the stuff publication, conferences, and promotions are made out of. No new building needs be built for this recommendation. It’s just too dang sensible.
Reminds me of Jack Straton’s similar work, a while back, here below:
1992
|
What About the Kids? Custody and Visitation Decisions in Families with a History of Violence National Training Project of the Duluth Domestic Abuse Project – Thursday, October 8, 1992, Duluth, Minnesota |
from the Journal of the Task Group on Child Custody Issues* of the National Organization for Men Against Sexism Volume 5, Number 1, Spring1993 (Fourth Edition, 2001) c/o University Studies, Portland State University, Portland, OR, 97207-0751 503-725-5844, 503-725-5977 (FAX) , straton@pdx.edu |
What is Fair for Children of Abusive Men?
by Jack C. Straton, Ph.D.
{Let’s GetHonest speaking….}} Reviewing this document years, and years after baptism by a dissolution/custody suit cold-shock immersion in to the language and lore of Family Court, resulting in a return to Food Stamps, but no return of my missing children!, but I HAVE (there’s always a silver lining) perhaps returned closer to placing my hope in things eternal more than things local! (I’m talking Jesus Christ for those who don’t catch the reference), I have a different opinion, not on its CONTENTS but on its CONTEXT, as follows, re::
I want to express my deep gratitude to Ellen Pence, Madeline Dupre, Jim Soderberg and the others from the Duluth Domestic Abuse Intervention Project for giving me this opportunity to speak with you. The State of Minnesota should be proud that, quite literally, the world looks to this program for guidance on understanding and ending domestic violence. I also want to acknowledge how much I continually learn from Barbara Hart, of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
I will first critically examine the criterion at the base of all custody laws today “What is in the best interests of the children?” I will the talk about children’s choice in these matters. Then I will examine the actual effects of wife-battering on children, and develop an alternative paradigm for custody based on those effects. From this I will examine the question, “Is it ever appropriate to ever give a batterer custody of a child?” (emphasis mine…)
{{PLEASE PARDON THIS INTERJECTION! This article indeed does that, and convincingly.
LINK: DAIP Grants rec’d 2000-2009 (scroll down to bar chart)
(hint: over $4.5 million)
LINK: Grants rec’d by DAIp Parent organization, “Minnesota Program Development, Inc.“
(hint: Over $25 million, and NOT including some of its sub-groups, which apparently get their own grants, too).
(the bottom half of logo proclaims” home of the duluth Model, Social Change to End violence Against Women”)
)
The Duluth Family Visitation Center opened in 1989. Our mission is to provide a safe place where children can build and maintain positive relationships with their parents. The Visitation Center offers support for victims of domestic violence and their children as well as supervised visitation, monitored visitation, and monitored exchange services to families affected by domestic violence.
(See the nice picture??)->_>_>_>_>
The Center provides a variety of children’s books, games and videotapes as well as beverages and snacks for children and parents to help provide a comfortable and nurturing environment where parents can work on building and strengthening their relationship with their child which so often is damaged by violence in the home.
The Center also collaborates with many other community agencies and accepts referrals from the courts and social services. {{NOw you understand the BUSINESS model…}} Currently we serve approximately 120 families and conduct over 4000 visits and exchanges per year at minimal cost to families.
And I do mean BUSINESS model:
.
The database simplifies the logistical work of coordinating a Visitation Center and reduces the time to prepare quarterly reports for funders.
Purchase the visitation center database ($350.00) by visiting our online catalog
Beyond the pure financial collateral, there is also the professional collateral (prestige) and of course feeding much, much much more personal data into databases for further” research and demonstration” projects on how to — end violence against women.
I question why so few have questioned this model. Probably because of the powers behind it, and because those who have been affected by it are often destitute and experiencing PTSD. BY THE WAY — I HAD HEARD OF THIS AND ASKED FOR IT IN MY CASE, AND WAS FLATLY DENIED because there was no “money” for it. In other words, I, the mother, could not pay for it (already on the record) and he the father (being so far arrears in child support) obviously could not. however, when the father asked for — by refusing to acknowledge the court had ordered something different — ZERO contact, it took less than a few months to give this to him, and only one year (as opposed to the years previous I had sought actively seeking help, as single mother, and while personally having to negotiate my own safety, on a near-weekly basis) to retroactively attribute custody and modify the arrears owed ME as the caretaker of our daughters, and which didn’t come to them while living here — down to insignificant and unenforceable payments. Yet our state receives grants to facilitate access by the noncustodial parent. When I became one, I could not access them, either. go figure.
JACK didn’t recommend this model, although he was apparently asked to speak here. BUT – – His voice, too, has been ignored — MOST chiefly by the Duluth “Domestic Abuse Intervention Project” itself, apparently. This paradigm, I simply didn‘t find it once in operation — ever — anywhere — experientially. Our society simply does not accept this yet. And, FYI, there is a LOT of money in this venue bent on “transformational language” and “therapeutic jurisprudence.” Doing this is considered in many circles “good,” and not surprisingly, because many of our school systems share the same premise, they are “values transformation centers” and succeeding well at this, apparently.
Nor have I found someone who accepts this No-Visitation where there’s been Violence paradigm. (And I talk to Dads, not just Moms, and I research, a LOT, on–line. I have been in circles which don‘t believe women should speak, literally, and I have lived in which men did not confront violence towards “one of their own” by even TELLING the man to stop it! Let alone, intervening themselves in any manner to stop it. Ever since I finally took it upon myself to get someone from outside these circles to indeed stop it, I have been exposed, through the family law venue (and others) to a virtual nonstop “litany” of “just get over it” as if either the lethality risk, the economic abuse, the stalkings, and the implicit threat to escalate were somehow “over” in my case. My experience, lots of it, showed the precise opposite. Any attempt at independence was countered. this got tiring for such a person, and others were found and incited to participate in communal denial, a sort of catharctic self–cleansing ritual, I suppose.
AGAIN, I myself didn’t share this paradigm initially. However, this was because I had been enduring years of this type of threat/intimidation/etc. behavior and attempting — myself — to ‘reason” with this man, after it became clear — and from the OUTSET — that saying “no” or “Stop!” was likely to result in physical assault, or worse, and my friends, there IS a “worse.” Now, I have some perspective: 10 years living with a batterer, 10 years of attempting to separate from one. My perspective has changed, after i watched the reactions of society to my assertion of my right to say NO! and ENOUGH! I gave ENOUGH! in the “let’s negotiate” process, and shouldn’t have ever entered into it or been encouraged to. These were the PRIME working years of an intelligent, responsible, and law-abiding woman and mother. Now, I would like some change to happen. i would like the truth of the situation OUT, and I am taking it (obviously) to the blogosphere, and my local Congressperson, AND up the chain, as are others. The truth of the situation is that this paradigm that Jack and Kendall discuss, was not taken seriously by their colleagues then, nor was it ever likely to be. Like him, I have immense respect for Barbara J. Hart (can anyone say “lethality risk assessment”?) But — today or tomorrow, probably — I am about to post the $$ figures of some of these “helping” groups and ask — where’s the help? Moreover, show us the books! I will show the grants, at least from the sources I have. But what I want to see is expenditures, processes, and evaluation tools. I want to see DOCUMENTED fewer homicides, suicides, infanticides, child-kidnappings, and wasted years in the family law system. And if these are not being documented, then what was all the hub-bub about?
IN this “paradigm” all “fallout” from abuse either didn‘t exist (that‘s the “fantasy world” Straton refers to, I suppose) or was exclusively my responsibility to fix, as the mother. However, when I then sought to address this in my own manner, I was again given marching orders, a drumbeat of 3-word myths, and told to get in line. I didn‘t. Consequently, two adolescent girls were removed from my custody and replaced in the care of the man they grew up witnessing threaten, impoverish, assault, abuse animals, deprive of access to transportation and ffinances that a “normal” family would not do, even when I worked at times, and be subjected to repeated lectures on how to behave – – sometimes even on a stool!.
Therefore, as seemingly re–assuring, or validating as these talks may be, that I refer to today, they are most definitely the “minority opinion” in this field. They show me I am not alone in my perspective at what‘s sensible and what‘s not, but these premises were never moved into practice.
There‘s reasons they were not, and THAT should be the topic of a “responsible citizen” male or female, parent or not, in this country. WHY they were not is a public issue, not a “domestic dispute.” The topic of this issues is not just “where are my children?” but “where are my taxes going? as well as “what kind of leaders is this next generation, if we get that far, going to consist of? children accustomed to trauma, abuse, and participating in the cycle themselves?
I suspect the answer, at this point, MIGHT be “YES” but I am not yet resigned to the fatalistic, fundamentalist “I‘m not of this world” passivity when it comes to social justice. I must speak up!
STRATON, Ph.D., Ct’d…..
In the process, I am going to talk today about the effects of male power and control over children, not about parental power and control. I know that it is popular these days to de-gender family conflict, to talk about “spouse abuse” and “family violence” rather than “wife beating” and “rape.” I know that we want a society in which men nurture children to the same extent that women do.
I know that fathers and mothers should both be capable parents. But if you ask “What about the kids?” I want to give you a serious answer. I cannot seriously entertain the myth that our society really is gender neutral, so to consider “What about the kids?” while pretending such neutrality is to engage in denial and cognitive dissonance. I cannot hope to arrive at an answer that will positively affect reality if my underlying assumptions are based on fantasy.
I would like to say more about the history of these movements (which I am still learning), but readers deserve a break:
Have a nice weekend. Again, I’d rather see a sermon than hear one any day.
While this essay is music (the voice of logic, of common sense truth) to my ears, but it’s not a tune many people like these days. Because it actually addresses the impact of role-modeling and personal responsibility upon the next generation.
There are only two places to really put the responsibility: Either on the INDIVIDUAL (which is actually empowering, it acknowledges choice), or on the “THERAPIST” or “SOCIETY AS COLLECTIVE THERAPIST.” Either/or, my friends.
Benefits of putting the responsibility on the INDIVIDUAL. :: If we are indeed EQUAl and ENDOWED with certain UNALIENABLE RIGHTS, then we are also ENDOWED with certain UNALIENABLE RESPONSIBILITIES as to how we exercise them. This leaves a LOT more government time and resources and study, etc., upon maintenance of DUE PROCESS.
It also removes the excuse for killing people, for assault, for rape, for destruction. There IS no excuse. The question comes of up of what about “war”? My answer is, how is what we are seeing now take place towards women attempting to leave abuse, with children, too, not a real war — not a “virtual” war. When there are casualties, that comprises a REAL war.
Moreover, most wars are about ideas to start with. Sometimes they are about basic human lusts couched in more palatable ideas.
SO, check the dogma it’s vitally important, and it’s vitally important also that “foreigners” — people to whom actually facing abuse, having a life on the line, having lost a child, having had to comfort an abused or traumatized child while in trauma onesself — are not to be setting policy. Moreover, those who set policy are not to do so from a particular chip they have on their shoulder, that every one should carry the burden of relieving. And this happens (You can see my chip on the shoulder” here, obviously, but I’m not recommending the undermining of due process in the courts, and re-defining criminal activity as non-criminal. THAT’s Cognitive Dissonance for sure!
(Well, I’d better back out this post fast. Feedback appreciated! My exit takes place Here: XX.
Anything below was added earlier)
This was written Pre-VAWA and Pre-National Fatherhood Inititative, which one theme of this blog has been showing what these cost, and how they attempt to cancel each other out.
Yesterday, I saw a significant DV initiative that was also receiving thousands under “promoting Responsible fatherhood” as well. Same source, different themes entirely. The fatherhood movement has positioned itself as FIRMLY anti-VAWA and in its writings, and in people responding to its writings, says to clearly. Many of them also position themselves as religious, which is true in the WORST (not best) sense of the word, as I understand it. They identify a common enemy, which is feminism, and feminISTS. The prelude to identifying an enemy is attacking it, and this means people. Typically (not always) “feminists” are, my friends, women, and this is who is often getting severely attacked for separating.
The VAWA movement, it has different characteristics, but I do not believe it started out of man-hating. It started out of hating to see beaten up women, and recognizing this has a true social cost.
Both these movements have “morphed” and are now in the higher stratospheres (translation: best-funded organizations) collaborating. In these collaborations they share many things — primarily the design and structure of FAILING TO INCLUDE THOSE MOST DRASTICALLY AFFECTED IN THE COLLABORATIVE PROCESS, and “SALVATION AS A MARKET NICHE.” (in essence). What else is (not) new in the world!
Perhaps THIS ESSAY, THEN (below) can be a reference point from how far off base is society (specifically, government and nonprofits addressing: Violence Against Women, Responsible Fatherhood, and Healthy Marriages — and failing abysmally in terms of the human toll — on all counts, across the nation. (And, world). Perhaps (though I doubt it) some common sense will “redeem” us from all that debt, with so little dent in the problems the debt is incurred to address….Policies get MORE and more pervasive, self-replicating and intrusive, and still we have things like an 11 year old abducted from a bus stop, held captive in a back yard by a (incidentally, MARRIED couple) – – for 18 years — and being used as a personal sex slave and baby-making machine. In a nice suburb, eh? So much for suburbia and “family-oriented” safe communities.
Officer Ally Jacobs sat in on a meeting with Mr Garrido and his daughters after he requested permission to distribute leaflets on the Berkeley campus of the University of California.
But her suspicions were aroused by the strange behaviour of the two girls – and led to the eventual release of their mother, Jaycee Lee Dugard, after nearly two decades of captivity.
She said Mr Garrido arrived with the girls, aged 11 and 15, who stared at their father “like God” during the meeting. “They had this weird look in their eyes, like brainwashed zombies,” she said.
She spoke out as police said that Mr Garrido’s home has been searched for evidence of a link to the unsolved murders of several prostitutes in the early 1990s, and as Garrido, 58, and his wife, Nancy, 54, denied charges of kidnapping, rape and false imprisonment in connection with Miss Dugard’s disappearance at their first court appearance.
When Officer Jacobs asked the younger girl about a bruise near her eye, the 11-year-old said it was an inoperable birth defect.
(I NOTE: THIS WAS A FEMALE POLICE OFFICER, AND HER JOB ENTAILS NOTICING THINGS THAT DEAL WITH LIFE AND DEATH, POTENTIALLY. HER JOB ENTAILS NOTICING “ANOMALIES.” THERE WAS FACT-CHECKING IN THIS CASE, AND THE FACTS CHECKED RESULTED IN FREEDOM AND DELIVERANCE, THOUGH AFTER 18 YEARS, FOR 3 WOMEN, JAYCEE’S MOTHER, JAYCEE’S STEPFATHER, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, FOR HER — AND HER CHILDREN.
A NICE, MARRIED COUPLE . . . . HAD MR. GARRIDO HAD THE SAME CRIMINAL BACKGROUND, AND ACTUALLY BEEN JAYCEE’S FATHER, IN MY EXPERIENCE, HIS KIDNAPPING WOULD HAVE BEEN OVERLOOKED, AND HIS EX-WIFE SEEKING TO SEE HER DAUGHTER BEEN TOLD (as I was) TO JUST GET ALONG WITH IT, OR GIVE IT UP, NO CONTACT WITH YOUR DAUGHTER BECAUSE YOU JUST CAN’T GET ALONG WITH THIS PARENT. CASE IN POINT: WE WERE GIVEN A COURT ORDER THAT EXPOSED US TO CONTINUAL ACCESS AND ABUSE BY A MAN THAT MY DAUGHTERS HAD WITNESSED ASSAULT THEIR MOTHER. EVENTUALLY, A DRASTIC (and criminal) EVENT HAPPENED on an overnight.
TODAYS’ POSTED ARTICLE, 20 YEARS OLD, QUESTIONS THE POLICY ~ ~ REALLY, THE DOGMA ~ ~ THAT WOULD EVER, EVEN ONCE! ~ ~ALLOW SUCH THINGS TO TAKE PLACE. U.S.A. . . . . .
OR – – – OR – – – – THINGS LIKE THIS ONE, A MISSING FOSTER CHILD TURNED INTO A HOMICIDE VISITATION. AGAIN, HAPPENED IN A VERY YUPPIE NEIGHBORHOOD, ALSO NEAR BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA.
HASSANI CAMPBELL (see my recent post on ‘AMBER ALERTS’ for more photos)
Foster Parents Arrested Over Missing Boy
AP
OAKLAND, Calif. (Aug. 28) – The foster parents who held vigils pleading for the safe return of a missing 5-year-old boy with cerebral palsy have been arrested on suspicion of murder, Oakland police said Friday.
Louis Ross and Jennifer Campbell, who is the boy’s aunt, were being questioned by investigators in the case of Hasanni Campbell, who disappeared on Aug. 10 after Ross said he briefly left the boy outside his car in the parking lot of an upscale Oakland neighborhood shoe store where Campbell works.
REGARDING “THERAPY” FOR BATTERERS:
I think Lundy Bancroft says it well — there are certain indicators that one is wasting one’s time. I’ve read them, and you can too, HERE: I am not quoting Mr. Bancroft because he’s an expert, but because i already experienced what he gave voice to. I had no idea who the author was in picking up the book.
While I am thankful for Mr. Bancroft’s insight and observations (and have featured it elsewhere on this blog), I think that the failure to look OUTSIDE the family court system and INTO the funding behind it, which consists of a powerful government grants system, underwritten in some cases by conflicting actual laws (I refer to “supervised visitation” vs. “Access visitation” premises, which are BOTH funded — in a huge way — and which DIRECTLY oppose each other in fundamental premises, creating chaos — not just “disorder” — but literal “CHAOS” in the courts. Why? Because what’s fought over is power, control, and money. I do not, therefore, agree that training to eradicate deeply held prejudices or myths — when applied to JUDICIAL professionals (court-related) any more than when applied to batterers — is a critical solution. I believe that we should pull the plug on the profit system, which it clearly (my research shows) is. That said, in about 2003, had his not book been there (and this above book) for a point of reference WRITTEN BY A MAN for me emotionally, as I exited another life-changing and mind-numbing session with a mediator, I might be a different woman today.
Women, and mothers, do indeed have instincts. I believe these are God-given, and they are protection-related. Moreover, as a DV survivor, and beyond that, professionally a teacher and musician, it has been my job to pay attention to group dynamics in relationship to a standard! The accuracy of my instincts, and speaking up about them, has been ignored in the courtroom. This told me something about family courts, when I accurately predicted a child-snatch, and was shouted down in advance AND afterwards about the same matter.
Two Female Officers (above) accurately noticed, reported — and because they were cops, apparently, and because this was NOT a family law venue, they were not a litigating parent — they were HEARD and lives were saved.
In the Jaycee Dugard case (above), I heard on TV that a woman (neighbor) HAD called 911, saying this man was psychotic, she was very disturbed. Was her call not heard because she was female? I watched Sheriff Rupf apologize on TV that their county law enforcement had “missed it” in this case.
Our current administration has a lot of TALK, but very little RESPECT for mothers in general. Our pro-active protective and active involvement in our children’s lives is viewed with suspicion after separating from their father in particular after marriage. . . . The fact is, I believe, our involvement is a perceived threat to a child-care-based, employee-driven, dependent-family-substrate economy. (which is not today’s topic).
These instincts are not in operation all the time, and along with Phyllis Chesler (Dr.), I acknowledge fully “Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman” exists, and is horrific. And some men (I have known them) notice more than some women. This is also called “CARING.” Such men are also sometimes castigated as “feminine” by fellow-men, and deal with this in whatever manner they choose to.
However, I take a look at who are some of the most vehement women I personally have had to deal with (not including certain judges, whose behavior cannot be logically accounted for somewhere other than financial reward, which I WILL be finding one of these days, and I am not the only person who has had this happen, same judges), I can see where either their childhood was severely messed up, OR, they never got to have children themselves. Some key component of the logic system (the part that doesn’t acknowledge court orders!) is out of commission, and when confronted on this, reacts in a retaliatory manner as if the threat were personal, when the statement was, I want court orders respected! I have already demonstrated the ability to respect court orders I don’t agree with, for years, but the double standard has been devastating to our family.
The other category which comes into play is “second wife” syndrome. While there are I’m sure (and I’d love to be one, some day!) healthy second wife scenarios, all too often a batterer will go specifically SEEK a woman in order to extract the children from the first wife, when he couldn’t otherwise. That 2nd woman lends a seeming credibility, and yet, sometimes these women can be more vicious than the men they married to start with. An abusive man is not going to pick a second woman who is likely to confront him on his abuse!!
WELL, this post is now over-worked, but I wanted to include the Jaycee and Hassani case above, to make a few points. It also has helped me get past another few hours in a day in which, I have no visual contact with either daughter, as one of them is entering college and the other one is, at this point, alienated, a thing I never inflicted upon her father while they lived here. They have HAD to make some sense of their existing world. Their existing world included a sudden, and COMPLETE elimination from their mother’s input and involvement, without a chance to say goodbye. They were involved in keeping secrets (and induced to) before the event, for over a year, on pretenses of the adults around them. The facts surrounding this event are still not out, and I happen to believe that my absent daughters are not yet aware of what was said on paper about them. I know that they are not exposed to the penalties my family has exacted upon me (subsequent) for continuing to speak up.
This is a HOW -TO for the intergenerational transmission of trauma and abuse. IF the goal is to do this, I am looking at the HOW of it. All that REALLY needs to be sacrificed, in the bottom line analysis, to stop it, is a LOT of pride in high places, and what I call dogma and others call social science, policy, or probability-driven practices (it’s called “evidence” but the actual “evidences” considered are often summaries of “probability.”)
AS TO THE 1989 ARTICLE (BELOW):
I’m not in agreement with his theme that men can be taught not to abuse. I think men mostly respond to what they’re taught in this society — authority, and taking control. Women are taught to negotiate and submit, overall (I didn’t realize HOW much til confronting others after leaving my own violent marriage, and then, in shock, realizing it was expected I should take orders. I said no, and took this to the institutions available (first, the courts) to set boundaries and standards. Then I was in for even a ruder awakening to the state of affairs.
So just consider the fall-out, the social fall out from these things, the canaries in the coal mine. it’s also a good part of the present NATIONAL economic distress and contributing to it, do not kid yourself! Asking Big Brother to coach, teach, punish, reward, analyze, and rationalize the common ethical issues of life — BIG, mistake. This is called farming out thinking to others. In the process, we are paying people to also form our own ethics, when these were formed and stated long ago in the US Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights, PLUS the fact that these stemmed from a refusal to become the colony of a distant king.
Figure it out — the distance these days may not be so geographic as in worlds apart in perspectives. The colonization part still seems to apply. Children are the MOST attractive and fertile field for TOO many people, and they are hurt in this unnatural process, a constant interruption to their lives. I saw this happen to my own, there was a point in time (a certain season, when others saw the personal gain in our divorce and and custody issue) that –because of a badly written visitation schedule — I watched my daughter who, prior to this, had been able to adjust to separation with regular visitation, and retain their personal integrity — they became performers. It was clear that they were collateral in the fight, and I believe knew this too. They talked about it, too. It was unfair to them, and to me as their mother.
SOURCE —
http://members.shaw.ca/pdg/wife_abuse_child_custody_visitation.html
Note: “Last updated Nov. 2008”
(More of my comments below, for once!)
Stop Violence Against Women
A project by The Advocates for Human RightsCopyright 2003 Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights.
Permission is granted to use this material for non-commercial purposes. Please use proper attribution.
(THESE documents do not appear to have stopped violence against women. I used to read and read from this International Source, but no matter — the people most directly involved with our lives chose NOT to read, or accept, some of these writings. So what good have they done, other than to increase the frustration level, the awareness of the discrepancy between reasonable, and unreasonable? Sometimes, I wonder.
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(Best read in the original HTML, but here:
Wife Abuse and Child Custody and Visitation by the Abuser,
Kendall Segel-Evans, 1989.
Wife Abuse and Child Custody and Visitation by the Abuser
by Kendall Segel-Evans
originally published:
ENDING MEN’S VIOLENCE NEWSLETTER, Fall, 1989
{{Let’s Get Honest has decided to interrupt the article more than to put :}}
MAIN POINTs?:____________________ after each paragraph, in hopes that a thoughtful reader will think about what was just said.
Again, one of the greatest motivations for THINKING about various policies, doctrines, and dogmas, is if something valuable is at stake in the mix. Plus, if one has developed the habit of THINKING with this in mind, throughout — as if not just “someone’s” life or livelihood, but as if “your own” life, or your child’s, were at stake in the matter. THAT is responsible government hood (along with respecting civil rights and due process). COLLECTIVELY, what we all have at stake is to acknowledge that what we may think is “common” sense is nothing of the sort, and that the view gets foggier the less time one spends at street level — and I mean on a regular basis. Dwelling in courtrooms only is NOT “street level” in the sense of, what happens after the court order is written?)
I recently read the National Organization for Changing Men’s statement on child custody, and the position taken that, in general, sole custody by the previously most involved parent is preferable to joint custody. I would like to elaborate on this position for families where there has been violence between parents (i.e. woman-abuse). The following includes the main points of a deposition I was asked to provide to a lawyer for the mother in a child custody case. I do not believe this is the last or best word on the subject, but I hope that it will simulate useful dialogue about the effects on children of wife-abuse and the treatment of wife-abusers. I also wish to further discussion on the issue of how we are going to truly end men’s violence. Clearly, I believe that the treatment of wife-abusers should not only be held accountable to the partner victim/survivors, but also to the children, and to the next generation.
MAIN POINTs?:____________________
I would like to mention that I will speak of husbands and fathers abusing wives and mothers, because that is the most common situation by far, not because the reverse never happens. It also seems to be true that when there is wife to husband violence it is usually in self-defense and usually does not have the same dynamics or effects as wife abuse. I will use the words violence and abuse somewhat interchangeably, because, in my opinion, domestic violence is not just about physical violence. Domestic violence is a pattern of physical, sexual, economic, social and emotional violence, coercion, manipulation and mistreatment or abuse. Physical violence and the threat of such violence is only the part of the pattern that is most visible and makes the other parts of the pattern difficult to defend against. Once violence is used, its threat is never forgotten. Even when the violence is stopped by threat of legal action or by physical separation, the coercion, manipulation and abusiveness continue (Walker and Edwall, 1987).
MAIN POINTs?:____________________
Accompanying this pattern of behaviors are common styles of coping or personality characteristics – such as the tendency to blame others for ones problems and impulsiveness – that most batterers share. Almost every man I have worked with has a tendency to see his partner (or his children) as responsible for his pain when he is upset. This leads to seeing his partner (or his children) as an enemy who must be defeated before he can feel better. This is destructive to emotional health even when it does not lead to overt violence.
MAIN POINTs?:____________________
In my opinion, it would be better, in most cases, for the children of homes where there has been domestic violence not to be in the custody of the abusive parent at all. In many cases it is even advisable that visitation be limited to controlled situations, such as under a therapist’s supervision during a therapy session, unless the batterer has been in batterer’s treatment and demonstrated that he has changed significantly in specific ways. “Merely” observing ones father abuse ones mother is in itself damaging to children. My clinical experience is consistent with the research literature which shows that children who witness their father beat their mother exhibit significantly greater psychological and psychosomatic problems than children from homes without violence (Roy, 1988). Witnessing abuse is more damaging in many ways than actually being abused, and having both happen is very damaging (Goodman and Rosenberg, 1987). Studies show that a high percentage (as high as 55%) of fathers who abuse their wives also abuse their children (Walker and Edwall, 1987). In my experience, if one includes emotional abuses such as being hypercritical, yelling and being cruelly sarcastic, the percentage is much higher. The damage that children suffer is highly variable, with symptoms ranging from aggressive acting out to extreme shyness and withdrawal, or from total school failure to compulsive school performance. The best way to summarize all the symptoms despite their variety is to say that they resemble what children who suffer other trauma exhibit, and could be seen as a version of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (Walker and Edwall, 1987).
MAIN POINTs?:____________________
Equally serious is the long term effect of domestic violence – intergenerational transmission. Children who observe their mothers being beaten are much more likely to be violent to a partner themselves as adults. In one study, men who observed violence towards their mother were three times more likely to be abusive than men who had not observed such violence (Strauss et al., 1980). The more serious the abuse observed, the more likely the men were to repeat it. Being abused also makes children likely to grow up to be violent, and having both happen increases the probability even more.
MAIN POINTs?:____________________
How children learn to repeat the abuse they observe and experience includes many factors. One of the more important is modeling. When they grow up, children act like their parents did, consciously or not, willingly or not. Several of the boys I have worked with have been terribly conflicted about being like their father, of whom they were afraid and ashamed. But they clearly carried parts of their father’s behavior patterns and attitudes with them. Other boys from violent homes idealized their father, and they were more likely than the others to beat their wives when they grew up (Caesar, 1988). Several of the men I have worked with in group have lamented that they told themselves that they would not beat their wives the way their mother was beaten when they were children. But when they became adults, they found themselves doing the same things their father did.
MAIN POINTs?:____________________
One reason for this is that even if the physical abuse stops, if the children still have contact with the batterer, they are influenced by his coping styles and personality problems. As Lenore Walker observes (Walker and Edwall, 1987, p. 138), “There is also reason for concern about children’s cognitive and emotional development when raised by a batterer who has a paranoid-like pattern of projecting his own inadequacy and lack of impulse-control onto others.” Dr. Pagelow agrees, “It may become desirable to avoid prolonged contact between violent fathers and their sons until the men assume control over their own behavior and the examples of ‘manhood’ they are showing to the boys who love them, (Pagelow, 1984, p. 256). If the abusive man has not sought out domestic violence specific treatment for his problem, there is no reason to believe that the underlying pattern of personality and attitudes that supported the abuse in the past have changed. There is every reason to believe it will impact his children.
MAIN POINTs?:____________________
Additionally, in a society where the majority of wife-beatings do not lead to police reports, much less to filings or convictions, it is easy for children to perceive that abusiveness has no negative consequences. (One study, by Dobash and Dobash, found that 98% of violent incidents between spouses were not reported to the police [reported in Pagelow, 1984, p. 437]). Some children, seeing who has the power and guessing what could happen to them if they opposed the power, will side with the abuser in custody situations. Often, children will deny that the abuse ever happened. Unfortunately, the children who side with the abuser, or deny the abuse, are the most likely to be abusive themselves as adults. It is very important that family court not support this by treating a wife-beating father as if he were just as likely to be a good parent as the woman he beat. As Gelles and Strauss point out in their book Intimate Violence (1988), people are violent in part because they believe they can get away with it. Public consequences are important for preventing the intergenerational transmission of violence. Boys, particularly, need to to see that their father’s abusiveness leads to negative, not positive results.
MAIN POINTs?:____________________
Lastly, I would like to point out that joint legal custody is likely to be damaging to children when there has been spousal violence. My experience with my clients is definitely consistent with the research results reported by Judith Wallerstein to the American Orthopsychiatric Association Convention in 1988. The data clearly show that joint custody is significantly inferior to sole custody with one parent when there is parental conflict after the divorce, in terms of the children’s emotional adjustment as well as the mother’s safety. Most batterers continue their abusiveness after the marriage, into the divorced parent relationship, in the form of control, manipulation and harassment over support payments, visitation times, and parenting styles. The children are always aware of these tensions and battles, and sometimes blame the mother for not just giving in and keeping the peace – or for being too submissive. The batterer often puts the children right in the middle, taking advantage of his belief that she will give in to avoid hurting the children. The damage to the children in this kind of situation is worse because it is ongoing, and never is allowed to be resolved or have time to heal.
MAIN POINTs?:____________________
Because I work with batterers, I am sympathetic to the distress they feel at being separated from their children for long periods of time. However, the men who truly cared about their children for the children’s sake, and not for what the children do for their father’s ego, have been willing to do the therapeutic work necessary to change. They have been willing to accept full responsibility for their violent behavior, and however reluctantly, have accepted whatever restrictions on child visitation existed for safety reasons. They have been willing to be in therapy to deal with “their problem.” They have also recognized that they were abused as children themselves, or witnessed their mother being abused, or both, and are willing to support interrupting the intergenerational transmission of violence.
MAIN POINTs?:____________________
Kendall Segel-Evans, M.A. Marriage, Family and Child Counselor 4/15/1989
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Caesar, P. Lynn., “Exposure to Violence in the Families of Origin
Among Wife Abusers and Maritally Violent Men.” Violence and Victims , Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring, 1988.
Davis, Liane V., and Carlson, Bonnie E., “Observation of Spouse Abuse
– What Happens to the Children?” Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Vol. 2, No. 3, September 1987, pp. 278-291, Sage Publications, 1987.
Dutton, Donald., The Domestic Assault of Women, Allyn and Bacon, 1988.
Gelles, Richard J. and Strauss, Murray A., Intimate Violence, Simon and Schuster, 1988.
Goodman, Gail S., and Rosenberg, Mindy, S., “The Child Witness to Family Violence:
Clinical and Legal Considerations. Ch. 7, pp. 47ff. in: Sonkin, Daniel. Ph.d., Domestic Violence on Trial, Springer, 1987.
Pagelow, Mildred Daley, Family Violence, Praeger Publications, 1984.
Roy, Maria., Children in the Crossfire, Health Communications, Inc. 1988.
Roy, Maria., The Abusive Partner, Van Nostrand, 1982.
Sonkin, Daniel. Phd., Domestic Violence on Trial, Springer, 1987.
Strauss, Murray A., et. al., Behind Closed Doors, Anchor Books, 1980.
Walker, Lenore E.A., and Edwall, Glenace E.
“Domestic Violence and Determination of Visitation and Custody in Divorce.”
Ch. 8, pp. 127ff. Sonkin, Daniel. Phd. Domestic Violence on Trial, Springer, 1987.
Wallerstein, Judith., Report to the American Orthopsychiatric Association Convention, 1988.
Some of the above professionals listed here, from what I understand, have either changed their tune, or found more profit in conferences funded by the shared-custody, father’s-rights, premises that women are equally as violent and dangerous as men in marriage. Or, that what is said above, here, about role modeling and responsibility to the NEXT generation, doesn’t apply. I have seen them (I think even Dutton was seen in my last post, at such a conference.). Nevertheless, read what he wrote!
And I can show you, in approximately $millions$$ (as I have been at times in news headlines) the cost of these premises, in particular to the next generation. But what kind of generation IS it that can’t see right/versus wrong, principles of values as defined by what is and is NOT criminal behavior, when they see an age gap. How does gender pre-empt behavior, or youth pre-empt age? Why must women be held to a higher standard of accountability as parents then men, and men be paid — by the U.S. Government through the states through the courts, prisons, child support systems, mediation, supervised visitation, parenting education classes — and AFTER many times a K-12 (or almost 12th in some cases) educational system that itself is a major public expenditure. . . . Moreover, WHY should programs supposedly aimed at low-income people (as if such people had fewer human rights, common sense, or were less entitled to due process and informed consent about what’s happening! than others) are being utilized by sometimes some very well to do individuals in the divorce arena. For example, google the Alanna Krause case. This does not make “sense” to me.
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Speaking personally, the exchanges where were the problems occurred in our case. I asked (for YEARS) for help with this, and got none. Then finally on an overnight, I stopped seeing my daughters again.
I think that had COMMON SENSE PREVAILED long ago, our own family would be much more prosperous, and I doubt life with me would’ve been so stressful for the girls, after all, each weekend was likely to become a scene, or not come a scene. I could scarcely relax much around that. Add into the mix child support issues, and we have a decade of devastation, at least from my point of view.
And WHY? To support some new theories and professions? How about the professions Moms were in beforehand? (Many of us were, FYI).
To support: marriage and family therapists, mediators, custody evaluators, trauma specialists?
When a society either refuses to deal with — OR cannot agree on the source and causes of the ongoing sources of trauma, SOMEONE will have to pay the cost of a traumatized populations, just as any war-torn country, or AIDS-ravaged country, there is collateral damages to go with the death, shock, poverty and collapse of infrastructure. In the United States, this plays out entirely differently, of course, because we still have a significant infrastructure, or at least many of the population believe we do, and those not so badly hurt by it as others wish to, apparently, maintain the myths that it’s sustaining something valid.
And yes, I repeat, those are myths.
Where is the real moral, let alone economic, validity in paying multiple professionals to deal with one recalcitrant, overentitled, or person unwilling to seek help with his REAL problems, rather than to alleviate the symptoms of his REAL problems, such as being separated from his children. I had to face this in marriage, and now with family of origin, and again in the family law system? I find a fundamental flaw, and the truth of the matter, the difference is in worldview of (1) humanity and (2) whether or not law applies to all, or only to some. I.e., the “double-standard” mentality.
And that typically falls on the gender divide. Other times, it falls on the Economic Divide. While it’s common for rich to blame poor for being poor in a matter that an abuser blames his victim, there is wiggle room in both viewpoints, and the institutions we live in and deal with ARE not formed, historically, by poor people. They aren’t. Rather, they tend to impoverish. The familyy law system is GOING to do this. It is going to move wealth around, and afterwards, SOMEONE is going to be impoverished under this theme that it’s not an adversarial system, its’ “really” all about the children.
For child-molesters, this may be true. For those who see $$ when they see custody to one parent or the other, in a sense it might be.
But it’s NOT about the children’s welfare, not like this.
If the individual is unwilling to separate his behavior from himself as a person, after being offered multiple opportunities to do so, and go through equivalent shock of personal changes, as did his victim(s) and bystanders affected, then THAT is the issue.
MOREOVER, if the family system surrounding this individual is ALSO unwilling or unable to confront own criminal behavior, life-threatening and life-changing behavior, in one of its own, what’s that family FOR? that is precisely the family that should be dismantled, yet a system says, no it shouldn’t. (Theoretically, although I know plenty of mothers who can’t see their children under this theory. When the pedal hits the metal, that’s how it plays out, too often).
Voices from the even further past, still valid today:
Too bad we’re more religious than actually a truly God-conscious society — because of the simplicity and beauty with which truths are stated:
- “Even a child is known by his doings, whether they be good or whether they be bad.”
- “Ye shall know them by their fruits.”
As to who to socialize with, who to take on as business partner or close friends:
- “Evil communications (this just means “associations”) corrupt good manner (ethos).”
- The book of “Proverbs” (31 in all) was directed to young people, and talks about not associating with an angry man or a furious man “lest you learn his ways.” Family law says, if it’s supervised, it’s OK, and a child must, because it’s his father. Today’s essay talks about that…. Proverbs talks about not meddling with them that are given to sudden change. That’s common sense! Sudden change could be backstabbing, betrayal, turning on you. That habit, done ONCE, is cause to separate if not confronted, admitted, and changed. FAST. We have a RIGHT to be once burnt, twice shy. . . . . . Yet this family law system attracts such characters, accepting hearsay as evidence when it’s not, suppressing evidence when it’s found too often; it keeps the litigation going, and exposing parents and children to a series of sudden shocks, disrupting their entire lives and livelihoods, sometimes everything. We should not have to do this. And Proverbs ALSO talks about not associating with fools: “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be ashamed.”
- When our children are forced to break these simplicities, for a different ideology, this is in effect using parents, particularly mothers, to produce children for the state. That’s not what we went through nine months for, or labor! No woman goes through this in order to raise a fool, a criminal, or have her kid hurt and taught values that will lead that child to sometimes a lifetime of it. Or to have no coherent set of values but personal survival!
(Note on quoting Bible verses here: I quote them as what’s in my thinking, others may (if they wish) look some of them up on-line at “http://bible.cc” (KJV) or elsewhere. My quotes may not be verbatim.)
What mother would WANT a son or daughter to join a gang of criminals? Yet they do, or sometimes they die for NOT being in a gang. It’s not only the risks, but the values systems.
What about a government gang? What about a system that robs parents of years of productive work based on a theme that someone is somehow to be deciphered psychologically, apart from his or her behaviors? What about a system that would bring ongoing conflict onto growing children — and do so for financial and personal profit — based on the belief that freedom of association does NOT belong to (typically) their mother?
It’s nice to have a lot of professions spring up on how to stop violence against women, I suppose, BUT how about the professions Moms were in beforehand? (Many of us were, FYI). The professionals I most needed in the early 2000 would’ve been a criminal (not family) defense attorney. Then again, where was the funding going to come from?
Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History 
“Strong Field Project” caters to DV industry’s networks, enabled by ?? “Three Cities that Rule the World”
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This post to be read alongside a page added to the other blog, which explains the “Strong Field Project” reference.
*What does doing THAT have to do with ending domestic violence, pray tell?
That article was posted at http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=106799.0 by user May 21, 2009.
We think in terms of within our state (or perhaps as far as the federal level) when seeking justice from the bottom up. However, the top down doesn’t think that way at all — and from what I can see these days, it doesn’t think in terms of the US Constitution either. Consider nonprofit associations that help run our justice system, including particularly the one I blog on….
International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution > Home
http://www.cpradr.org/ The CPR Institute is an independent, nonprofit think tank that promotes innovation in commercial dispute prevention and resolution. By harnessing the collective …
this nonprofit (founded 1979) is also listed on the New York State
. . .
The “Strong Field Project” is just another sapling off the DV as industry Tree, and not the main point here (see first link, above). My point is, were it not for centralized wealth — and alongside that wealth, centralized decision-making (taxation without representation) these things would not exist. And so long as our medium of exchange is “fiat money” owned by private bankers, who lend to the U.S. Treasury at interest dumped upon the entire US Population, while talks about “stimulating the economy” “balancing the budget” etc. continue to roil the electorate — they rule that world, and it’s true — they do.
Maybe Jesus was right, in the wilderness -it takes one to know one and maybe whoever wrote the gospels of Matthew and Luke, describing his temptation, were absolutely correct (Mark, probably earlier than either, skims over the time in the wilderness). As it goes in Matthew 4 (KJV), three temptations, which I’ll summarize as: Do Magic Tricks (Stones into bread) to satisfy his empty stomach; Suicide (jump off the temple to test God’s safety net), and finally, Sellout (bow down, and be receive the kingdoms (plural) of the world, with their glory).
Luke 4 has it in a different order (suicide last, after getting Jesus’ worship fails), and adds detail on how the devil got the power over the entire world:
“Power and Glory are mine,” boasts the devil. “I have the kingdoms of this world.” Well, were kingdoms around when this was written? “And I say who gets them, and who does not get them; I am the boss.”
It seems to hold true today, doesn’t it? Only different terminology is used. For example, the word “GRANT.” A grant is a gift, but with the gift goes a little piece of the recipient’s independence in the form of strings attached — does it serve a particular agenda set by the grantOR? Absolutely! This is basically the buying and selling of kingdoms, power, and etc. Whatever happens within them, that’s the umbrella over them.
Characterizing this as coming from “the devil” (invisible spiritual influence), i.e. bad — well, is this type of influence bad, and is it often exercised in hidden (invisible) ways? I’d say, yes…..
Looking at these “kingdoms of the world” (as opposed to looking at, for example, “Nature” and things that grow, against the zoology, biology, anatomy, astromony,etc. that show more and more amazing details) I have to agree, that the greater the power, the greater the damage. And that the lifeblood/energy is being sucked out of the some sectors of the world, along with money, and being centralized into who says who lives and dies; and who says who gets to keep their earnings and who doesn’t, however paltry they may be – and for what social good? For doing good?
No, not really — only good within limits of “I get to control what’s done with the world,” the song of the tax-exempt foundation run (or funded) by some great philanthropists, whose names are usally put on it too (good for PR), and in accompaniment with the corporations (businesses) that helped make that wealth. The tax-exempt foundation, by being tax-exempt, serves as a drainage ditch to reduce the taxes that would otherwise be paid on the FOR-profit.
Why else do we think so many of them are running around all over (look at the civic works, PBS shows, “Models for Change” programs calculating how to mobilize swift transformation of chosen areas of reform, such as “Juvenile Justice” or other areas. Go review MDRC again (I’ve blogged it) for an example of how inbred US Gov’t and Corporate wealth/tax-exempt foundations really are. Even AFCC is getting some help these days.
RATHER THAN WORK TO ELIMINATE THE VERY TAXATION SYSTEM WHICH PRODUCE THIS LEVEL OF WEALTH TO START WITH (ALONG WITH THE WISDOM TO KNOW HOW TO UTILIZE THAT LEVERAGE), INSTEAD, THE OWNERS OF THIS WEALTH FLY AROUND AND COLLABORATE ON A BETTER JUSTICE SYSTEM THAN THEIR LOWER COUNTERPARTS – WHO HAPPEN TO BE IN POSITIONS LIKE GOVERNORS, OF STATES, JUDGESHIPS, ATTORNEY GENERALS, ETC. — THE TRULY ALTRUISTIC BENEFICIAL COLLABORATION WOULD BE TO UNDO THIS INCOME TAX, SWITCH OFF THE “FIAT CURRENCY” AND DEFANG THE FEDERAL RESERVE. BUT HOW LIKELY IS THAT TO HAPPEN?
We’ve been hooked on it for 100 years next year (1913 – 2013) think about it. What an addiction.
The greatest goods would be protecting unalienable rights is LIFE, and LIBERTY and PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS, and having enough self-respect and self-restraint to allow others to do the same — how many golden yachts does one really need? You can’t take it with you, even if you have a golden voice (like Whitney Houston, recently: global success, gone age 48, leaving one motherless child. Well, young adult. A wealthy one for sure, but one absent her mother).
So, here’s the Biblical worldview, at least in the book of Revelation. Followers are encouraged to keep it in mind that this kingdom is temporal and is going to be judged (by fire) — so choose your allegiances well. Without my interpreting whether that’s smart or not to endorse, here’s the description of that buying and selling of kingdoms, Revelations 18. As before, spiritual agents (angels, this time) are involved and judgment is swift, expressing indignation and vindication:
The kingdom that rules the world is characterized as “Babylon,” which was a kingdom, earlier. And, naturally, as a woman:
That is indeed what the traffic is in. It pretty much describes most areas of commerce, including transport of goods:
So many enterprises were hooked into the sales that took place in “the city;” but (she) was hell on the apostles and prophets, who were typically exiled, or killed in various gruesome ways, etc. ….there message wasn’t good for business. (Quite a contrast from some of today’s “apostles and prophets” –see recent post on the bankruptcy of the Crystal Cathedral (Garden Grove, CA) and its founding family’s squabbles with the board, i.e., Robert Schuller et al. I blogged it over at thefamilycourtmoneymachine.blogspot.com
It takes a caste of slaves to produce certain levels of wealth, and even the best of major constructions (The Hoover Dam, the Brooklyn Bridge, Grand Central Station in NY) have been associated with human deaths of workers. What about the pyramids? What about the former practice of burying concubines and wives with the death of a ruler?
The lines have to be drawn and crowds have to be kept within their kind, and within their places. “The great men of the earth” are actually merchants, and there’s no question — is there? — that with slavery and slavehood comes untimely death, too often. So, look around — where are the deaths happening, where is the blood flowing, and then track the trail of money. Religion WILL be associated, and it’s not too hard to locate –except perhaps at the very top levels.
Whoever gave what to whom, and how (Adam, Eve, Israel in the Promised Land, whoever ….) there is no question that there is desire still circulating to rule the world, and that there are layers of collaborators — and the closer to the grants, and wealth (to fly, conference, buy and sell real estate under nonprofit umbrella, even “front groups” to launder the money at times) — the closer to the power, and the deafer the ears become to the cries of those they took the power to (allegedly) help, save, or whatever.
Anyone who’s lived with a certain level of abuse (and knew, by contrast, freedom) knows about this. Many times, supposedly there is some purpose to all the tyranny — but there never is. It’s just enforced because they can get away with doing this, and get off on it. Anything else is pretty much a lie.
WELL, let’s get down to the main show here:
I have been talking, briefly, about the analogy of “The Matrix’ (picked up from someone else who wrote about this) as an artificially created reality which, once you become aware of it, you have to either deal with (mentally, emotionally, psychologically) and determine where to stand regarding it — or take another sedative and go back to sleep.
The Internet is a great, addicting perhaps, but effective way to spread that net; it fishes and sets out bait both. But, it’s here, and must be dealt with, as a whole lotta money is traveling along that net (being tracked as it goes), and this technology, this tool — like many technological advances — is often used for warfare, to kill. The question is just, who.
To be read alongside a page added to the other blog:
More references for the curious, here (I haven’t reviewed, just put up one or two):http://www.bible.ca/b-canon-disputed-books.htm and (better narration here) http://freethought.mbdojo.com/canon.html
Wolverine/Michigan-ian:
Those who fight back — confronting illegal home invasions fraudulently ordered (NOT even legitimately court-ordered) for purposes of kidnapping, for purpose of institutionalizing, for the purpose of then administering dangerous drugs to minor children — can, and will, be treated as felons and stripped of their kids, and months/years of their lives in the fight. That’s the Michigan reference, above. Testimony (at the rally) of those on Risperdal:
Posted on 04/08/2011 by Diane Bukowski
Charges have been dropped, she has her daughter back, but they are considering re-instating. This story deserves follow-up: Voice of Detroit did good investigative reporting. The same CPS worker that did this in 2011 was, in 2010, facing a civil lawsuit for pulling a similar stunt to a related (married) couple, only five (5) children were nabbed and put into three different foster homes for 4o months; the amount of deceit involved is simply stunning. (Brent family, look it up at “justice4maryanne” site).
The community rallied, and it seems the family was targeted from a number of angles: single mother, intelligent and insisting on choice (not “the program”), she homeschooled, she was also African-American and in (I remember seeing, can’t find link) the community was poor. How dare this community not fork over their kids to the Title IV-driven systems for Rx profits?
While people like these have to fight — with whatever they got — to keep their kids, another one DID fall between the cracks, in N. California (I also have a page on this — to right), and at least one post; an alert UC Berkeley campus security guard (mother) was alert, and followed up, leading to the YOUNG mother below’s release, along with the two kids. After 18 years in captivity!
Jaycee Dugard Files Lawsuit Against U.S. Government
Rebecca Bailey, PhD – Psy 18732
ANYHOW . . . The Three Cities and Fiat Currency . . . .
The Moneylenders Take Over England
In the 19th century, the Rothchild banking family’s Nathan Rothchild said it well:
{{2012 is an election year. Americans (USA) would do well to keep this in mind also.}}
Centuries early, moneylender power was absent. But after the 1666 Coinage Act, money-issuing authority, once the sole right of kings, was transferred into private hands. “Bankers now had the power to cause inflations and depressions at will by issuing or withholding their gold coins.”
King William III (1672 – 1702), a Dutch aristocrat, financed his war against France by borrowing 1.2 million pounds in gold in a secret transaction with moneylenders, the arrangement being a permanent loan on which debt would be serviced and its principle [“principal”] never repaid. It came with other strings as well:
— lenders got a charter to establish the Bank of England (in 1694) with monopoly power to issue banknotes as national paper currency;
— it created them out of nothing, with only a fraction of them as reserves;
— loans to the government were to be backed by government IOUs to serve as reserves for creating additional loans to private borrowers; and
— lenders could consolidate the national debt on their government loan to secure payment through people-extracted taxes.
{{sound familiar yet?}}
It was a prescription for huge profits and “substantial political leverage. The Bank’s charter gave the force of law to the ‘fractional reserve’ banking scheme that put control of the country’s money” in private hands. It let the Bank of England create money out of nothing and charge interest for loans to the government and others – the same practice central banks now employ.
{{{“TALLIES”}}
For the next century, banknotes and tallies circulated interchangeably even though they weren’t a compatible means of exchange. Banker money expanded when “credit expanded and contracted when loans were canceled or ‘called,’ producing cycles of ‘tight’ money and depression alternating with ‘easy’ money and inflation.” In contrast, tallies were permanent, stable, fixed money, making banknotes look bad so they had to go.
For another reason as well – because of King William’s disputed throne and fear if he were deposed, moneylenders again might be banned. They used their influence to legalize banknotes as the money of the realm called “funded” debt with tallies referred to as “unfunded,” what historians see as the beginning of a “Financial Revolution.” In the end, “tallies met the same fate as witches – death by fire.”
{{ACTUALLY– SOUNDS LIKE THE REVERSE WAS TRUE. TALLIES WERE FUNDED, AND THE BANKNOTES, WERE NOT}}
They were money of the people competing with moneylending bankers. After 1834 monetary reform, “tally sticks went up in flames in a huge bonfire started in a House of Lords stove.” Ironically, it got out of control and burned down Westminster Palace and both Houses of Parliament, symbolically ending “an equitable era of trade (by transferring power) from the government to the” central bank.
{{simple explanation:on the terms, and this burning: terms “tally” “stocks” “broker” (Stockade) and “Exchequer”, Charles Dickens quoted}}
(MY INSERT — more on TALLY STICKS:
Original Wooden Tally Sticks (2)
[England, Westminster, c. 1250-1275]
hickory wood, the larger end cut diagonally, edges roughly squared off leaving traces of bark, each inscribed along one side with the name of the payer and the upper and lower edges cut with notches (“v”-shaped for pounds, broad grooves for shillings, sharp cuts for pence), each piece then split with a knife by cutting diagonally across the thicker end of the reverse side and pulling away a length which would be retained separately by the payer as proof of payment, written in thirteenth-century charter hands. c. 175-200 mm. long (each).
Rare survival of a medieval form of financial record-keeping, the tally stick provides the origin of many words used in modern money markets: stock, foil, stockholder, bank stock, and check. The vast majority were destroyed in the nineteenth century in the fire of the Palace of Westminster and the Houses of Parliament.
INTERESTING:
Tallies provide the earliest form of bookkeeping. They were used in England by the Royal Exchequer from about the twelfth century onward. Since the notches for the sums were cut right through both pieces and since no stick splits in an even manner, the method was virtually foolproof against forgery. They were used by the sheriff to collect taxes and to remit them to the king. They were also used by private individuals and institutions, to register debts, record fines, collect rents, enter payments for services rendered, and so forth. By the thirteenth century, the financial market for tallies was sufficiently sophisticated that they could be bought, sold, or discounted.
“Tallies were … a sophisticated and practical record of numbers. They were more convenient to keep and store than parchments, less complex to make, and no easier to forge…. Of the millions of medieval tallies made, only a few hundred survive.” (Clanchy, p. 96; see also p. 95, n. 28, pl. VIII). In 1724, treasury officials commanded that tallies no longer be used, but it was not until 1834, with the reform acts and the abolition of the office of the Receipt of the Exchequer, that a huge bonfire of the then-obsolete medieval tally sticks was held. Started in a stove stuffed full of sticks in the House of Lords, the fire quickly got out of control, spreading to the paneling, and burning down both the Palace of Westminster and the Houses of Parliament.
In 1911, Sir Hilary Jenkinson knew of only three Exchequer tally sticks in private hands (pp. 292-3, 330, and 350).
The evolution of money technologies originates with the tally stick. From tally stick comes the modern word “stock,” meaning a financial certificate and deriving from the use of the Middle English for the stick. The piece retained by the bank was called the “foil.” The holder of the stock was said to be the “stockholder” and owned “bank stock.” A written certificate presented for remittance and checked against its security later became a “check.”
According to legend, Wall Street was founded in its present location because of the presence there of an enormous chestnut tree, said to be plentiful enough to supply enough tally sticks for the emerging American stock market.
LITERATURE
Clanchy, M. T. From Memory to Written Record, England 1066-1307, Cambridge, Mass., 1979.
Jenkinson, Hilary C. “Exchequer Tallies,” Archaeologia, second series, 12 (1911), pp. 292 ff.
ONLINE RESOURCES
Tallies and Technologies, by Dave Birch, Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce
http://www.arraydev.com/commerce/JIBC/9811-11.htm
The Origins of Mathematics
http://www.math.tamu.edu~don.allen/history/origins/origins.html
[[The other source cited is the link, above to definitions]]
forum.prisonplanet. . . cont’d….
Henceforth {{1834ff?}}, private bankers kept government in debt, never demanding the return of principle [“principal”], and profiting by extracting interest, a very lucrative system always paying off “like a slot machine” rigged to benefit its operators. It became the basis for modern central banking, lending its “own notes (printed paper money), which the government swaps for bonds (its promises to pay) and circulates as a national currency.”
{{BONDS — hold that thought}}
Government debt is never repaid. It’s continually rolled over and serviced, today with no gold in reserve to back it. Though gone, tallies left their mark. The word “stock” comes from the tally stick. Much of the original Bank of England stock was bought with these sticks. In addition, stock issuance began during the Middle Ages as a way to finance businesses when no interest-bearing loans were allowed.
This is not “archaic” information and irrelevant — it’s VERY current. I am still digesting — but it makes sense. Here’s a Brit (I gather) relating the Monarchy’s relationship to the Corporation of London (which holds the crown — the one you’ve seen on TV perhaps, loaned out for state occasions) and correlating to a May, 2011 meeting with the British Prime Minister Cameron with Eurozone personnel, re: ESM (Hey, it’s new term to me….). I just saw Cameron sitting next to President Obama watching a basketball game, on TV….
He is thinking in terms of the Corporation that holds the (moulah) versus the “State” which is subject to it. It’s a BIG deal!
That meeting, the ESM and the Crown – why Cameron said NO
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Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up
March 14, 2012 at 5:03 pm
Posted in Bush Influence & Appointees (Cat added 11/2011), Business Enterprise, Organizations, Foundations, Associations NGO Hybrids, Parenting Coordination promotion, PhDs in Psychology-Psychiatry etc (& AFCC), Vocabulary Lessons, warfare: strategic
Tagged with "Bush 2002 Exec Order -New Freedom Commission", "Strong Field Project", 3 Cities That Rule the World, Brave Young Adults, Child Molestation, CPRADR, CPS Child-stealing, DV, DV industry, England, Evolving Canon of Bible, fatherhood, fighting back, Godboldo case, Handwriting On the Wall from Bible-Read it Now, Humantrafficking, incest, Intimate partner violence, JAYC, Jaycee Dugard, London, mediation, men's rights, Motherhood, obelisk, Parenting Coordination, Pharma, Phil Garrido, Rebecca Bailey PhD, retaliation for reporting, social commentary, Social Issues from Religious Viewpoints, State vs Corporation, Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, Supervised Visitation, the Secular Web, Thomas J Stipanovich, TMAP/PennMAP, Transitioning Families, trauma, Vatican, VOD, WDC, Who Owns America?