The ‘Best Interests of the Child’ Concept – Misused from the Beginning | Glenn Sacks on MND

Saturday, November 28, 2009

By Robert Franklin, Esq.

Even the casual observer of family law and practice can be struck by the astonishing, er, flexibility of the term “best interests of the child.”  For example, in 1995, a New Mexico court approved of the outright theft of a child by an adoption agency and his subsequent placement with an adoptive couple as in the “best interests of the child.”

The boy had lived with the mother and father for all his year and a half of life.  One weekend when the father was out of town working, the mother took the child to the adoption agency, lied about the father’s whereabouts and gave the child up for adoption.  Two days later, the father informed the adoption agency that he had no intention of giving up the child.  But the agency kept the child with the adoptive parents anyway and let the glacial pace of the judicial system do the rest.

A year and a half later, the child was deemed to have “bonded” with the adoptive parents and the father was out of luck.  The “best interests of the child,” you understand, meant that breaking those new bonds was impermissible.  At the same time, the “best interests of the child” did permit breaking the bonds between the father and the child.  That’s what I mean when I say the concept is “flexible.”

The conduct of the mother and the agency violated New Mexico civil law, and the father sued them and won a judgment for monetary damages.  Those damages were never paid as the agency receded behind the impenetrable veil of bankruptcy.

Given the mutability of the ‘best interests’ standard, it’s interesting to know a little of its history.  In 1973, Joseph Goldstein, Anna Freud and Albert Solnit published a book that would have enormous influence on family courts and child protective agencies nationwide, albeit not the one they intended.  They were, respectively, a law professor at Yale, a child psychologist and a researcher at the Child Study Center at Yale.  Their book was entitled “Beyond the Best Interests of the Child.”  It was an effort to guide courts and placement agencies that had to decide issues of family dissolution and child custody about how best to do that.

But by 1979, the same authors were so horrified at the misuse of their book by those very courts and child protective agencies that they wrote another one entitled “Before the Best Interests of the Child.”

With their first book, they meant well; they truly didn’t anticipate the distortions to which judges, social workers and child welfare agencies would subject its message.  In it, they were dealing only with cases in which a family had already broken down and required intervention by the state to protect the children.  The authors limited their discussion to that.  The “best interests of the child” concept was discussed solely as a goal to be obtained after family breakdown.

But the courts and other state agencies had no intention of limiting their use of the book’s concepts in the same way the authors did.  In direct contradiction to the authors’ intentions, states began using the “best interests of the child” concept to achieve family breakdown by state intervention and removal of the children.

That’s what horrified the authors and prompted them to publish “Before the Best Interests of the Child” in 1979.  Here’s what they said:

[W]e believe that a child’s need for continuity of care by autonomous parents requires acknowledging that parents should generally be entitled to raise their children as they think best, free of state interference.  This conviction finds expression in our preference for minimum state intervention and prompts restraint in defining justifications for coercively intruding on family relationships…

So long as a child is a member of a functioning family, his paramount interest lies in the preservation of his family.  Thus our preference for making a child’s interests paramount is not to be construed as a justification in and of itself for intrusion.  (Emphasis in the original.)

I’ll write a bit more on this later, but remember what the authors said: the child’s “paramount interests lies in the preservation of his family.”

It’s a concept that escaped the New Mexico courts back in 1995, even as it continues to escape so many today.

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The ‘Best Interests of the Child’ Concept – Misused from the Beginning | Glenn Sacks on MND.

We don’t ever see Daddy any more – Stories of children from broken homes | The Sun |Features

We don’t ever see Daddy any more

Families torn apart … the stories behind the divorces

MyView

By DEIDRE SANDERS

Sun Agony Aunt

WHEN parents are breaking up, the tragedy is that they are often so caught up in their own anger, hurt and turmoil that they have little attention to spare for their children.

Fighting over the home and maybe furious their partner has found a new love, they lash out, little realising that children can’t help identifying with both parents, wanting to love and be loved by them both equally.

Using kids as pawns in the battle is setting them up for long-term emotional damage.

Even if parents cannot live lovingly together, they owe it to their children to remember they can never have another mum or dad.

Unless contact with one parent is going to be dangerous because of violence, drugs, alcohol or mental health problems, both should make every effort to ensure it’s easy and comfortable for the kids to be with them both regularly, even if it means swallowing your rage while you negotiate contact arrangements.

Because this is such a common problem, I have written a special Kids In The Middle guide for separating parents and children on how to handle the hurdles.

Call 0845 602 2290 or go to http://tiny.cc/FGF9j for a free copy.

THOUSANDS of British kids never see their dad again once their parents break up, a shocking new survey has revealed.

More than one in three youngsters – 38 per cent – go without having their father around after their parents split, and nearly one in ten are so traumatised they consider SUICIDE.

The findings, by a leading law firm, also discovered children are being caught in bitter custody battles, and many later turn to drink and drugs.

Sandra Davis, head of family law firm Mishcon de Reya, which surveyed 4,000 people, said: “This research shows that, despite their best intentions, parents are often using their children as emotional footballs.”

Here NIKKI WATKINS, NICK FRANCIS and JENNA SLOAN speak to four people who have been affected by divorce.

We hear from a mum whose husband left for Australia, a man who tracked down his long-lost dad and two fathers who haven’t seen their kids in years.

 

---

 

Richard

RICHARD separated from his long-term partner in May 1998, after six years.

The 43-year-old, from Carshalton, Surrey, who is on sick leave from his job as a train-driving instructor, has not seen his 15-year-old daughter for more than eight years, despite suffering with leukaemia.

His ex-partner moved 600 miles away, which makes visiting impossible as his leukaemia treatment is carried out in his home town.

Richard says: “We came to an understanding about contact times that worked out initially.

“Then my ex started mucking about with it. I said, ‘we need to sort this out’, as I didn’t want to go down the route of court because it is expensive and pits parent against parent.

“It becomes a battle of parents rather than what is right for the child.

“The advice I got at the time was to avoid the court system.

“I said that it was in our daughter’s best interests to continue seeing me.”

Richard eventually ended up seeking the advice of a solicitor.

He says: “The day before we were due for a directions hearing my ex phoned me and asked me what I wanted. I said the same as before and she said, ‘that is fine’.

But the situation changed when Richard’s ex got engaged and moved to Scotland.

Richard says: “I got a letter from her solicitor saying the contact schedule wouldn’t work.”

He has since been diagnosed with leukaemia and when faced with chemotherapy told doctors not to worry about his fertility, as he was too traumatised to have more children.

He wrote to his ex and daughter to explain about his illness, but says he got no response.

Richard says: “I don’t get anything back – I haven’t in eight years. I just want an acknowledgement to say my daughter is aware of what has happened and sends her love. It’s an awful situation.

“I know they get to the address because everything is recorded delivery, the birthday presents and Easter eggs.

“I had to have counselling about losing my daughter. It has affected me in a big, big way.

“Children have a right to know both parents.”

 

---

 

Melanie Crow

MELANIE divorced her husband of 13 years after he left her and their two sons without warning.

When Melanie, 33, came home one day to find hubby Trevor leaving, she thought for a moment that he was going to the shops – before realising he meant he was going for good.

Husband left for Australia … Melanie Crow

North News

He left for a new life in Australia, since then having no contact with sons Oliver, then 3, and Joshua, then 8.

Melanie, a photographer from Durham, says: “Trevor left on March 8, 2008. I wasn’t aware of any real problems in our marriage, just the usual bickering. I came home from work and he said he was leaving.

“My oldest boy Joshua, who is now ten, has a lot of issues and has to see a counsellor.

“Because he was there when his dad was packing his things in the car, he blames himself for his dad leaving.

“My other son, Ollie, who’s five, was only three when his dad left so I think he has got off a bit lighter.

“They are both very clingy, though. I con-stantly have to reassure them.

“I’m worried about how it’s going to affect Ollie in the future. I also worry about my boys because there isn’t a male role model in the house.

“Trevor has my numbers and can get in touch with the boys if he wants, he just chooses not to.

“He took me to court this year to try and get access.

“We came to an agreement that he could come and see them over the summer but just one week before he was due, he cancelled.

“After spending thousands of pounds on a court case in this country, despite not having paid any money for the boys, he goes and disappoints them like that.

“If Trevor is the kind of man who can do this to his family then he’s not the sort of person I want around my kids.”

 

---

 

James Taylor

JAMES TAYLOR tracked down his long-lost dad, James Dennis, 52, through the internet after his parents divorced.

James 33, a mortgage adviser from Glasgow. says: “My mum and dad married when they were 17 and 18, which was very young.

“My dad, who was a welder, moved to Reading to find work and initially my mum went with him. But things didn’t work out and my mum came back to Scotland.

“My parents ended up divorcing and lost contact. I think it was a combination of the pressure on them, as they were so young, and the distance between them.

“I was their only child, and I saw my dad once when I was about seven, but that was it. It didn’t really occur to me to ask about him.

“All I’d ever known was my mum, Brenda, who remarried. But when I went to secondary school I began to wonder why I didn’t have a dad like the other kids did.

“When I was 17 my mum passed away due to complications in childbirth. It really made me think about things and start to question who my family was.

“I have four step-daughters with my wife Georgina and we have a boy Joshua, who is seven. I also have two step-granddaughters.

“Having my own children did make me think even more about getting in touch with my dad. My wife was very supportive but I was worried about finding Dad. What if he didn’t like me?

“In 2006 I logged on to the Genes Reunited website and typed in my father’s name. I hadn’t seen him for 23 years. One match came up that turned out to be my aunt, I was delighted when I got an email from her.

“She passed my contact details on to my dad and we arranged to meet.

“Going to meet him for the first time was very emotional. I’d only seen him in his old wedding picture, with long hair in the 1970s, so I didn’t recognise him straight away.

“But when it finally dawned on me that this was my dad I was thrilled. We have some of the same characteristics – our eyes are similar – and we have similar mannerisms too.

“And I have a half-brother and half-sister that I’d never met, along with aunties, uncles and cousins. I’m so glad I logged on to that website.”

 

---

 

Paul

DAD Paul is a full-time carer for his elderly father.

He split with his wife of 25 years and lost contact with his son, then aged seven, 12 years ago.

Lost contact with son … Paul

Paul, 57, from Hampshire, is still coming to terms with his loss. He says: “My wife decided that she wanted the relationship to finish and we divorced.

“Very quickly it became difficult to have contact with my son.

“You get cursory visits once every two weeks. It was difficult right from the beginning, but I saw him for about a year, every other weekend. That isn’t sufficient for a relationship.”

Paul went to court to try tomaintain the contact but thesituation deteriorated.

He says: “If one parent is trying hard to stop contact, the court doesn’t really do anything to enforce contact with the absent parent.”

That is why Paul finds the new statistics about so many children not seeing their fathers unsurprising.

He says: “I wrote many articles and did some charity work for a time for all of the charity groups who were trying to get the system changed.

“I did it because there are probably about a million kids out there who have not got what you could call a decent family.

“If you include the extended family then the number of people involved is just colossal. The figure of 38 per cent doesn’t surprise me at all. It almost destroys you. You miss everything.

“I don’t even know categorically if my son is alive – simple as that.

“I took it all the way to the highest court and that got me experienced in the legal system.

“So I was advising other people how to keep the cost down and how to do it themselves.

“I have moved on now – it took me several years to get to that stage and it was a very desperate state. I have been divorced 12 years now and I fought for five years in the courts. My life could always be better.

“More than anything I would want my son to know that I care and that I am still caring.”

Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/2733162/Stories-of-children-from-broken-homes.html?OTC-RSS&ATTR=Features#ixzz0XpR5caRE

Stories of children from broken homes | The Sun |Features.

Parental Alienation Syndrome – PasKids.com

PasKids.com Parental Alienation Syndrome.

› Forum Home Parental Alienation Articles Resources

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What is Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS)?

This is the definition of PAS as described by R.A. Gardner who discovered the syndrome and has become an expert in dealing with the issue.

Gardner’s definition of PAS is:

“The parental alienation syndrome (PAS) is a disorder that arises primarily in the context of child-custody disputes. Its primary manifestation is the child’s campaign of denigration against a parent, a campaign that has no justification. It results from the combination of a programming (brainwashing) parent’s indoctrinations and the child’s own contributions to the vilification of the target parent.”

(Excerpted from: Gardner, R.A. (1998). The Parental Alienation Syndrome, Second Edition, Cresskill, NJ: Creative Therapeutics, Inc.)

Basically, this means that through verbal and non verbal thoughts, actions and mannerisms, a child is emotionally abused (brainwashed) into thinking the other parent is the enemy. This ranges from bad mouthing the other parent infront of the children, to withholding visits, to pre-arranging the activities for the children while visiting with the other parent.

Stages of Parental Alienations Syndrome:

Children who are victims of PAS often go through different Stages as they experience the depth of the alienation.

Stage 1 – Mild | Stage 2 – Moderate | Stage 3 – Severe |

Types of Alienators:

With PAS there are three types of Alienators:

Naive Alienator | Active Alienator | Obsessed Alienator |

Parental Alienation Syndrome – PAS.

Parental Alienation Syndrome to be Viewed as a Form of Child Abuse | ParentsElite

Parental Alienation Syndrome to be Viewed as a Form of Child Abuse

Image from abdoukili.wordpress.com

Health experts from ten different nations are making an effort to include Parental Alienation Syndrome in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is published by the American Psychiatric Association.

Parental Alienation Syndrome is a behaviour exhibited by one parent where he threatens or makes his child fear his other parent, often attempting to turn the child against his other parent. This sort of behaviour may lead to the child developing a chronic psychological disorder, affecting his physical and mental state of health. This Syndrome often includes false accusations by one parent of mistreatment, abuse, domestic violence, and neglecting the child, by the other parent.

Since such behaviour can greatly distress the child affecting his state of mind, health care professionals must view this behaviour as a form of child abuse.

Fifty mental health experts are campaigning in an attempt to include this Syndrome in the 2012 edition of the Mental Disorders Manual.

Related posts:

1. Parenting Education Important to Check Child Abuse
2. Aggressive Behaviour in Children Increases if Parents are Negative towards them
3. Four Effective Theories for Parental Training
4. Poor Parenting can lead to Crime
5. Dealing with a Parent-Teacher Meeting
6. Effective Parenting comes with Instincts
7. Impulsivity is a Risk Factor for Drug Abuse?
8. Aggressive Children have Lesser Number of Friends
9. Communication between a Child and a Parent is Extremely Vital
10. A Child’s Interests Should Have Greater Priority in Divorces Cases

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Parental Alienation Syndrome to be Viewed as a Form of Child Abuse | ParentsElite.

The clock ticks, but the hands the hands stay still | The Daily Telegraph

The clock ticks, but the hands the hands stay still

• By Michelle Cazzulino
• From: The Daily Telegraph
• November 24, 2009 12:00AM

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Counting the seconds … Ken Thompson at in his son Andrew’s room at Hunters Hill / Pic: Alan Pryke Source: The Daily Telegraph

THIRTY-one days, 11 hours, 44 minutes and 13 seconds. Eight seconds. Five seconds. Two seconds.

There’s a certain depressing predictability about the countdown to Christmas, which kicks into high gear at this time of year: you know, for example, that some twit will refuse to hang decorations on the basis that it might offend a religious minority and that such a stance will have the sole effect of annoying everybody equally.

The first cards will arrive, smugly written and sent, proving that someone, somewhere, has nothing better to do than punch out 500 soul-destroyingly dull words about how Aunt Mildred was shipped off to a nursing home in May and cousin Werner took up the euphonium in July.

And then there’s that stupid ad on the radio, reminding you at least four times an hour that you need to get your order in now if you want your couch delivered ahead of the festive season.

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• Roberta’s bizarre corpse ritual NEWS.com.au, 17 Mar 2009

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And so, with feverish visions of a sack-wielding Santa getting crushed to death by a couple of sofa-toting deliverymen, you’ll rush to the phone, only to realise that you’re panicking for nothing because you don’t need a couch.

In the midst of it all, it’s easy to forget that there are people who, through sheer miserable circumstance, are divorced from the kind of temporary madness that overtakes the rest of us.

Currently, Ken Thompson can also measure his life by days, hours and seconds, only in his case, there’s absolutely no chance of respite coming along in the form of a credit card bill and a handful of broken new years’ resolutions.

For 19 hellish months, he has been without his only child – a six-year-old named Andrew who was aged just four when his mother Melinda spirited him to an undisclosed overseas location.

Last December, Mr Thompson successfully petitioned the Family Court to lift a ban on identifying Andrew in the media, allowing him to go public with the details of his search for his son.

In another lifetime, he was the state’s deputy fire chief, but three months ago he finally took a leave of absence, acknowledging that every moment spent not looking for Andrew felt like a gross betrayal of his boy.

With no idea as to where to start looking, he has pinned his hopes on a Find Andrew website and the resources of the international online community, which has rallied to support his exhaustive efforts.

In doing so, Mr Thompson has laid bare the raw details of his life.

At times, the strain has been overwhelming.

He has been examined by psychiatrists, submitted to polygraph testing and been admitted to hospital suffering double pneumonia.

Two months ago, his lung capacity was just 15 per cent – doctors warned him that if he didn’t start taking care of himself, the consequences would almost certainly be fatal.

Every milestone brings fresh agony.

Statistically, Mr Thompson was told, children in Andrew’s situation are likely to be returned within 12 weeks of their abduction. On that date last year, he wrote an email to international authorities to thank them for their continued efforts.

He cried as he hit the button to send it.

This morning, as with every other, he will get up and check his phone and his emails, praying that something will have changed overnight, spurred by the memory of his tiny son’s hugs and the hope that one day, Andrew will be returned to him.

In the meantime, as the clock ticks on, he remains prisoner to a timetable he has no control over.

“This Christmas . . . I really don’t know. Honestly, I’m just doing things day-to-day,” he said yesterday.

“I can’t plan ahead because I don’t know how I’ll be feeling from one day to the next. I’m living in limbo. It’s just this ongoing, horrible trauma of not knowing where my child is – and my wife – and it’s with me 24 hours a day.

“It’s a really difficult feeling to describe. It’s just constant uncertainty, incredible stress and anxiety and just not being able to move forward. My whole life is on hold until I find Andrew.”

Anyone with information about the location of Andrew or his mother is asked to contatc the Australian Federal Police on 6126 7777.

Anyone who recognises the mother is asked not to approach her but to contact the AFP on the above number which applies in all states and territories.

The clock ticks, but the hands the hands stay still | The Daily Telegraph.

Fathers 4 Justice to protest at cathedral – Children Without Dads at Christmas

Fathers 4 Justice to protest at cathedral

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A Fathers for Justice group will be demonstrating at Canterbury Cathedral as part of their campaign to change family law.

New Fathers for Justice are urging all dads who will not be able to see their children this Christmas to join them at 10am on Saturday, December 12 to support their campaign.

The group will be dressed in Santa costumes to put pressure on the church to help them “put the father back into Christmas”.

A spokesman for the group said: “New Fathers for Justice will yet again attempt to get our message across to the church which, like this arrogant Labour government, had ignored the plight of fathers since they have been in office.

“We are urging the church to support us in our fight to change family law and plug dads back into families in time for Christmas.

“We see this as a great necessity as we are now potentially only six months away from the general election. We hope that the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will help us with the plight of dads in Britain this Christmas.”

The group has urged dads to come along with banners and wearing Father Christmas outfits.

Campaigners from father’s rights groups have made a name for themselves using direct action campaigning methods to fight for better rights for fathers who want to see their children.

High profile demonstrations include a campaigner dressed as Batman staging a five-hour protest on a Buckingham Palace ledge and a father dressed as Spiderman protesting on the London Eye for 18 hours, causing it to close.

http://www.yourcanterbury.co.uk/kent-news/Fathers-4-Justice-to-protest-at-cathedral-newsinkent30341.aspx

Separation, Divorce and Parental Alienation Syndrome | Psychology Today

November 23, 2009, Relationships

Splitting up shouldn’t mean splitting the kids.

The term “splitting” refers to a familiar tactic often used by children to manipulate their parents — if Mommy says, “No.”, then go ask Daddy.

For parent couples in the throes of separation or divorce, the adult version of splitting — largely characterized by one parent vilifying the other in order to manipulate the children into choosing sides and, ultimately, alienating the other parent from them — can be much more insidious.

The children may, at first, be only pawns — tools for gaining some sense of leverage or perceived control — but, in due course, they can become nothing more than weapons of vengeance, unwitting victims of ego and arrogance.

We are not alone in our relationship, nor is our partner. Establishing any relationship is an act of social co-creation in which all parties must be both responsible to, and accountable for, their actions, inactions and the consequences held therein. To that point, a relationship – any relationship — demands cultivation; it doesn’t just happen.xxxx

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Should a relationship break, it is vital that both parties step back, take a moment to examine their personal role in that break, and hold onto that self-revelation. When the break is something not mutually agreed upon, the “wronged partner” – a term used quite loosely here – in denial and ignorance of their own responsibility, will often attempt to exercise some means for regaining a perceived semblance of control.

When benign, these means can appear as gestures of reconciliation, promises of change, pleas to seek counseling and all manner of self-effacing behavior. In instances more menacing, money is hidden; credit cards cancelled; documents disappear; cell phones are checked; computers scoured and private detectives hired, even when there is nothing to detect. A pattern of latent abuse [1, 2] emerges, escalating from a point somewhat removed from normal, to one that veers dangerously close to pathological.

These efforts to regain control are often fruitless; mostly because they are generally an illusion in the first place. Their abject futility, however, can foster a further, even more ominous, escalation – the co-opting of social connections. Friends, family, co-workers – anyone who will listen to the spinning of fantastical yarns that describe the evils of the other is approached, for good, ill or indifference.

Couched within this drama of social distortion, the saddest moment of all can come when an otherwise reasonable adult utters to a child fateful words that might go something like, “I don’t want a divorce. This is all your mother’s idea. She’s just a selfish bitch.” In that moment, in an ego-driven and one way war of wills, the child becomes so much collateral damage.

The mechanism of parental alienation is fueled by a gross failure of emotional intelligence, and further compelled by the anger and resentment of ego. It is roundly destructive to everyone involved; disrupting or destroying familial connections, rending the fabric of the post-marital relationship and effectively compromising any chance at successful co-parenting.

Indeed, the most oppressive aspect of parental alienation is that it creates a false issue — or set of false issues — for children whom it is very likely do not have the social or emotional intelligence to discriminate between fact and fancy. The inaccuracies and misinformation proffered by one parent in service of discrediting the other shakes the very foundations of a child’s model of the world, leaving them stranded outside the bounds of the very structure and consistency upon which they thrive.

Children caught up in this system of abuse [1, 2] are subject to a campaign of unjustified and unjustifiable denigration focused on one parent and perpetrated by the other. In mild cases, there is some programming fostered on the part of the alienating parent, but, all in all, relationships remain intact.

In moderate cases of parental alienation , the level of programming escalates, introducing two artifacts – firstly, the relationship with the targeted parent is more disrupted, created anxiety for the kids and, second, the children become co-opted into the alienating parent’s system of unjustified accusation and begin to believe it, causing a whole separate set of psychosocial issues for them.

In severe cases, the programming has taken hold and the child/children come to develop an irrational and unfounded hatred of the targeted parent, often disrupting the parent/child bond to the point of breaking.

While this all sounds like a horribly Machiavellian system of social pathology – and, at its worst, it is — some space needs to be held for the unintentional or naïve alienation fostered by simple resentment and frustration. Snarky remarks about financial matters, living arrangements or general behavior not personally directed at the other parent constitute a sort of indirect and somewhat unintentional alienation that a child may or may not take to heart.

A more active, and destructive, form of this is compassed by critical comments that remind a child about past disappointments or situations that had negative outcomes. It might also include more personal attacks on character, or descriptions of alleged (and typically false) activities that would reflect on character.

In severe cases, attempts at alienation are obsessive and irrational. The alienating parent literally subjugates the child, enmeshing them in their own irrational belief system and making it virtually impossible for them to think for themselves. The child is interjected into the social reality of the targeted parent as the mouthpiece of hatred for the alienating parent and, objectified in this way, becomes nothing more – and nothing less – than a weapon of social and emotional destruction.

The take away here is fairly straightforward — if we can’t figure out how to be married, fine, but, with children involved, we need to figure out how to be divorced; and certainly not at the expense of the children’s state of mind simply for our own small, petty and vindictive satisfactions.

So, play nice — and if you see this happening or catch yourself doing it, either speak up, or knock it off. In the end, it serves no one and the only ones who suffer are the kids.

References

Gardner, R.A. (1998). The Parental Alienation Syndrome, Second Edition, Cresskill, NJ: Creative Therapeutics, Inc.

© 2009 Michael J. Formica , All Rights Reserved

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Separation, Divorce and Parental Alienation Syndrome | Psychology Today.

Parental Alienation, DSM-V and ICD-11

Edited by William Bernet

About the Book

Parental alienation is a serious mental condition that affects thousands of children, adolescents, and their families. The essential feature of parental alienation is that a child – usually one whose parents are engaged in a hostile divorce – allies himself or herself strongly with one parent (the preferred parent) and rejects a relationship with the other parent (the alienated parent) without legitimate justification. Parental alienation is not simply a minor aberration in the life of a family, but a serious mental condition. Because of the false belief that the alienated parent is a dangerous person, the child loses one of the most important relationships in his or her life. When the symptoms of parental alienation are recognized, this condition is preventable and treatable in many instances. Parental alienation has been an issue in legal cases in the U.S. since at least the 1820s and it has been discussed in the mental health literature since the 1940s. This book explains why the time has come for the concept of parental alienation to be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-V) and the International Classification of Diseases, Eleventh Edition (ICD-11).

This book was published as a special issue of the American Journal of Family Therapy.

List Price: $125.00

Add to Cart

• ISBN: 978-0-415-57485-3
• Binding: Hardback
• Published by: Routledge
• Publication Date: 04/01/2010
• Pages: 128

Recommend this title to a librarian using our Librarian Recommendation Form.

via Parental Alienation, DSM-V and ICD-11.

Austrailian Women Set Up WebSite to Promote More False Allegations in Family Court

After carefully going through this website, I saw this was not about fairness in family court and protecting children’s right to have both parents in their lives.  Australian mums are not into co-parenting.

They believe they own their children and will stop at nothing to steal children.

This website is almost as disgusting as StopFamilyViolence.Org, another waste of tax dollars.

Nope, this is a full out effort to show women, how to lie cheat and steal children through allegations of domestic violence.  They even went so far as to bring out women in bandages and bruises.

The point of this website is to make it appear that the only reason for divorce is because of domestic violence.  We all know this is more of the same nonsense that goes on here in the U.S.

What a load of crock.  Australian mummies.  Guess which one is Annabelle?  She is the one that looks like a pig!

 

22 June 2009 – Canberra – Bandage Parade Protest at Parliament House makes an impact

Concerned parents and professionals gathered in Canberra on Monday June 22, 2009, to protest current family laws.

Sprawling across the lawns of Parliament House, wrapped in bloodied bandages, arm slings seated in wheelchairs, some pushing injured dolls in strollers, the shock-value message was loud and clear – children are suffering at the hands of abusive parents, due to the Family Law Act…more

Family Court Youtube Campaign

Childrens Stories	Australian Journalists	National Professionals	Parents Stories – VIC	Parents Stories – SA
Parents Stories – NSW	Parents Stories – WA	Parents Stories – QLD	Childrens Drawings

Safer Family Law | Home.

Men’s Rights – Feminism should be about equality for males, too. – Reason Magazine

Men’s Rights

Feminism should be about equality for males, too.

Cathy Young | November 23, 2009

Earlier this month DoubleX, Slate’s short-lived female-oriented publication (launched six months ago and about to be folded back into the parent site as a women’s section), ran an article ringing the alarm about the dire threat posed by the power of the men’s rights movement. But the article, written by New York-based freelance writer Kathryn Joyce and titled “Men’s Rights’ Groups Have Become Frighteningly Effective,” says more about the state of feminism—and journalistic bias—than it does about men’s groups.

Joyce’s indictment is directed at a loose network of activists seeking to raise awareness and change policy on such issues as false accusations of domestic violence, the plight of divorced fathers denied access to children, and domestic abuse of men. In her view, groups such as RADAR (Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting) and individuals like columnist and radio talk show host Glenn Sacks are merely “respectable” and “savvy” faces for what is actually an anti-female backlash from “angry white men.”

As proof of this underlying misogyny, Joyce asserts that men who commit “acts of violence perceived to be in opposition to a feminist status quo” are routinely lionized in the men’s movement. This claim is purportedly backed up with a reference that, in fact, does not in any way support it: an article in Foreign Policy about the decline of male dominance around the globe. Joyce’s one specific example is that the diary of George Sodini, a Pittsburgh man who opened fire on women in a gym in retaliation for feeling rejected by women, was reposted online by the blogger “Angry Harry” as a wake-up call to the Western world that “it cannot continue to treat men so appallingly and get away with it.” But does this have anything to do with more mainstream men’s rights groups? The original version of the article claimed that Sacks, who called “Harry” an “idiot” in his interview with Joyce, nonetheless “cautiously defends” the blogger; DoubleX later ran a correction on this point.

Sacks himself admits to Joyce that the men’s movement has a “not-insubstantial lunatic fringe.” Yet in her eyes, even the mainstream men’s groups are promoting a dangerous agenda, above all infiltrating mainstream opinion with the view that reports of domestic violence are exaggerated and that a lot of spousal abuse is female-perpetrated. The latter claim, Joyce asserts, comes from “a small group of social scientists” led by “sociologist Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire, who has written extensively on female violence.” (In fact, Straus, founder of the renowned Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire, is a pre-eminent scholar on family violence in general and was the first to conduct national surveys on the prevalence of wife-beating.)

Joyce repeats common critiques of Straus’ research: For instance, he equates “a woman pushing a man in self-defense to a man pushing a woman down the stairs” or “a single act of female violence with years of male abuse.” Yet these charges have been long refuted: Straus’ studies measure the frequency of violence and specifically inquire about which partner initiated the physical violence. Furthermore, Joyce fails to mention that virtually all social scientists studying domestic violence, including self-identified feminists such as University of Pittsburgh psychologist Irene Frieze, find high rates of mutual aggression.

Reviews of hundreds of existing studies, such as one conducted by University of Central Lancashire psychologist John Archer in a 2000 article in Psychological Bulletin, have found that at least in Western countries, women are as likely to initiate partner violence as men. While the consequences to women are more severe—they are twice as likely to report injuries and about three times more likely to fear an abusive spouse—these findings also show that men hardly escape unscathed. Joyce claims that “Straus’ research is starting to move public opinion,” but in fact, some of the strongest recent challenges to the conventional feminist view of domestic violence—as almost invariably involving female victims and male batterers—come from female scholars like New York University psychologist Linda Mills.

Contrary to Joyce’s claims, these challenges, so far, have made very limited inroads into public opinion. One of her examples of the scary power of men’s rights groups is that “a Los Angeles conference this July dedicated to discussing male victims of domestic violence, ‘From Ideology to Inclusion 2009: New Directions in Domestic Violence Research and Intervention,’ received positive mainstream press for its ‘inclusive’ efforts.'” In fact, the conference—which featured leading researchers on domestic violence from several countries, half of them women, and focused on much more than just male victims—received virtually no mainstream press coverage. One of the very few exceptions was a column I wrote for The Boston Globe, also reprinted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Whatever minor successes men’s groups may have achieved, the reality is that public policy on domestic violence in the U.S. is heavily dominated by feminist advocacy groups. For the most part, these groups embrace a rigid orthodoxy that treats domestic violence as male terrorism against women, rooted in patriarchal power and intended to enforce it. They also have a record of making grotesquely exaggerated, thoroughly debunked claims about an epidemic of violence against women—for instance, that battering causes more hospital visits by women every year than car accidents, muggings, and cancer combined.

These advocacy groups practically designed the Violence Against Women Act of 1994, and they dominate the state coalitions against domestic violence to which local domestic violence programs must belong in order to qualify for federal funds. As a result of the advocates’ influence, federal assistance is denied to programs that offer joint counseling to couples in which there is domestic violence, and court-mandated treatment for violent men downplays drug and alcohol abuse (since it’s all about the patriarchy).

Against the backdrop of this enforced party line, Joyce is alarmed by the smallest signs that men’s rights groups may be gaining even a modest voice in framing domestic violence policy. She points out that in a few states, men’s rights activists have succeeded in “criminalizing false claims of domestic violence in custody cases” (this is apparently meant to be a bad thing) and “winning rulings that women-only shelters are discriminatory” (in fact, the California Court of Appeals ruled last year that state-funded domestic violence programs that refuse to provide service to abused men violate constitutional guarantees of equal protection, but also emphasized that the services need not be identical and coed shelters are not required).

To bolster her case, Joyce consistently quotes advocates—or scholars explicitly allied with the advocacy movement, such as Edward Gondolf of the Mid-Atlantic Addiction Research and Training Institute—to discredit the claims of the men’s movement. She also repeats uncorroborated allegations that many leaders of the movement are themselves abusers, but offers only one specific example: eccentric British activist Jason Hatch, who once scaled Buckingham Palace in a Batman costume to protest injustices against fathers, and who was taken to court for allegedly threatening one of his ex-wives during a custody dispute.

The article is laced with the presumption that, with regard to both general data and individual cases, any charge of domestic violence made by a woman against a man must be true.

One case Joyce uses to illustrate her thesis is that of Genia Shockome, who claimed to have been severely battered by her ex-husband Tim and lost custody of her two children after being accused of intentionally alienating them from their father. Yet Joyce never mentions that Shockome’s claims of violent abuse were unsupported by any evidence, that she herself did not mention any abuse in her initial divorce complaint, or that three custody evaluators—including a feminist psychologist who had worked with the Battered Women’s Justice Center at Pace University—sided with the father.

More than a quarter-century ago, British feminist philosopher Janet Radcliffe Richards wrote, “No feminist whose concern for women stems from a concern for justice in general can ever legitimately allow her only interest to be the advantage of women.” Joyce’s article is a stark example of feminism as exclusive concern with women and their perceived advantage, rather than justice or truth.

Cathy Young is a contributing editor at Reason magazine and a columnist for RealClearPolitics.com. She is the author of Ceasefire: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality. This article originally appeared at Forbes.

Men’s Rights – Reason Magazine.

Parental Due Process Act

November 21, 4:36 PMSan Diego Courts ExaminerGregory Smart

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CA State Senate
State of CA

There is currently an effort in the State of California to have the model legislation (below) passed in an effort to ensure Parental Due Process in the Juvenile Dependency Courts.

The model legislation was written by a team of attorneys at Pacific Justice Institute http://www.pacificjustice.org/ in Sacramento California.

Anyone wishing to get involved and/or support this legislation please contact Greg Smart at cpsvictim@gmail.com

Model State Legislation

Parental Due Process Act

Model State Legislation

A BILL
To protect the fundamental due process rights of a parent in proceedings to terminate parental rights.

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This shall be cited as the “Parental Due Process Act.”

SECTION 2. FINDINGS AND PURPOSES.
(a) FINDINGS- the legislature finds that–
(1) Parental rights are so fundamental to the human condition so as to be deemed inalienable. Termination of parental rights equals or exceeds the detriment of criminal sanctions.
(2) The “liberty interest of parents in the care, custody, and control of their children is perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests” recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court. Troxel v. Granville, 527 U.S. 1069 (1999). Moreover, the companionship, care, custody, and management of a parent over his or her child is an interest far more precious than any property right. May v. Anderson, 345 U.S. 528, 533, (1952). As such, the parent-child relationship is an important interest that undeniably warrants deference and, absent a powerful countervailing interest, protection. Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645 (1972).
(3) State and local family services, child protective agencies, and courts have not recognized the rights of parents as inalienable, and, as a result, have failed to provide fundamental due process rights in the investigation and legal proceedings to determine abuse, neglect, and the termination of parental rights.
(b) PURPOSE- The purpose of this Act is to provide core fundamental due process rights to parents whose parental rights are subject to termination.

SECTION 3. DEFINITIONS.
As used in this Act:
(1) “Hearing” means any judicial or administrative hearing;
(2) “law enforcement officer” means an employee, the duties of whose position are primarily the prevention, investigation, apprehension, or detention of individuals suspected or convicted of offenses against the criminal laws, including an employee engaged in this activity who is transferred to a supervisory or administrative position, or serving as a probation or pretrial services officer;
(3) “agency” means any state or local government;
(4) “Duress” consists of:
a. Unlawful confinement of the person of the party, or of the husband or wife of such party, or of an ancestor, descendant, or adopted child of such party, husband, or wife;
b. Unlawful detention of the property of any such person; or,
c. Confinement of such person, lawful in form, but fraudulently
obtained, or fraudulently made unjustly harassing or oppressive.
(5) “Actual fraud” consists of any of the following acts, committed by a party, or with his connivance, with intent to deceive another party thereto, or to induce him to enter into an agreement or to rely upon it to his detriment:
a. The suggestion, as a fact, of that which is not true by one
who does not believe it to be true;
b. The positive assertion, in a manner not warranted by the
information of the person making it, of that which is not true,
though he believes it to be true;
c. The suppression of that which is true, by one having knowledge
or belief of the fact;
d. A promise made without any intention of performing it; or,
e. Any other act fitted to deceive.
(4) “Undue influence” consists of:
a. In the use, by one in whom a confidence is reposed by another,
or who holds a real or apparent authority over him, of such
confidence or authority for the purpose of obtaining an unfair
advantage over him;
b. In taking an unfair advantage of another’s weakness of mind; or,
c. In taking a grossly oppressive and unfair advantage of another’s necessities or distress.
(5) “Malice” means conduct that is intended by the person to cause injury or despicable conduct that is carried out with a willful and conscious disregard of the rights or safety of others;
(6) “Emergency” means exigent circumstances in which immediate action is required to prevent the imminent physical injury or death of a child.
SECTION 4. HEARINGS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
(a) Upon the request of a parent, guardian or custodian, the right to have proceedings open to the public shall be guaranteed in the following circumstances:
(1) any hearing for the purpose of terminating parental rights;
(2) any hearing for the purpose of determining if a child is or has been deprived.
(b) Notwithstanding subsection (a), a judge may, upon consideration of written motion and papers filed in opposition, exclude the public if it is determined, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the safety of the child would be in jeopardy by a public hearing.
If the public is excluded from the hearing, the following people may attend the
closed hearing unless the judge finds it is not in the best interests of the child:
(i) the child’s relatives;
(ii) the child’s foster parents, if the child resides in foster care; and,
(iii) any person requested by the parent.

SECTION 5. TRIAL BY JURY.
Upon the request of a parent, guardian or custodian, the right to a trial by jury shall be guaranteed in the following circumstances:
(1) any hearing to terminate parental rights;
(2) any hearing to determine if a child is or has been deprived.

SECTION 6. RELIGIOUS/CULTURAL/MORAL/ETHNIC VALUES AND BELIEFS OF PARENTS

In placing the legal custody or guardianship of a child with an individual or a private agency, a court shall take into consideration the religious, cultural, moral and ethnic values of the child or of his/her parents, if such values are known or ascertainable by the exercise of reasonable care.

SECTION 7. ELECTRONIC OR DIGITAL RECORDING OF INTERVIEWS

Except in the case of an emergency, any law enforcement officer, agent or employee for a state’s health and welfare department or child protective services, or mental health professional, who interviews a child for the purposes of investigation, shall electronically and/or digitally cause to be made an audio and visual recording of all questioning of, and interviews with, children. All recordings made pursuant to subsection (a) shall be made available to the parent, guardian or custodian of a child not later than ten days prior to any hearing to terminate parental rights or to determine if a child is or has been deprived.

SECTION 8. EVIDENCE IN FACT-FINDING HEARINGS

(a) Only evidence that is competent, material and relevant may be admitted in a
fact-finding hearing.
(b) Any determination at the conclusion of a fact-finding hearing that
a respondent did an act or acts must be based on proof beyond a
reasonable doubt. For this purpose, an uncorroborated confession made
out of court by a respondent is not sufficient.

SECTION 9. RIGHT TO A SPEEDY TRIAL
(a) In that removal of a child from a home for even brief periods is an extreme hardship on families, upon the request of a parent, guardian or custodian, the right to a speedy trial shall be guaranteed in the following circumstances:
(1) any hearing to terminate parental rights;
(2) any hearing to determine if a child is or has been deprived.
(b) A hearing, as described in subsection a, shall be conducted within thirty days of any type of removal of a child. In the event that the thirtieth day falls on a legal holiday or other day when the court is not in session, the hearing shall be conducted prior to the thirtieth day. In no event shall a hearing be conducted beyond the thirtieth day after the removal of a child if the right to a speedy trial has been exercised.
SECTION 10. WAIVER OF RIGHTS
The rights of a parent or guardian as described in this Act cannot be waived, neither can parental rights be terminated, if said waiver is due to:
(1) mistake;
(2) fraud;
(3) undue influence; or
(4) duress.

SECTION 11. IMMUNITY

(a) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the civil immunity of juvenile court social workers, agents or employees of a health and welfare department or child protective services or law enforcement official authorized to initiate or conduct investigations or proceedings shall not extend to any of the following:
(1) Perjury;
(2) Fabrication of evidence;
(3) Failure to disclose known exculpatory evidence;
(4) Obtaining testimony by duress, fraud, or undue influence.

(b) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, any prosecutor, investigator, agent or employee of a state’s health and welfare department or child protective services who induces a parent to waive any of his or her rights under this Act by
(1) fraud;
(2) undue influence; or
(3) duress shall be subject to civil liability.

SECTION 12. DAMAGES
In the case of a determination by a court or jury of any violation of a parent’s rights under this Act, damages shall be presumed.
SECTION 13. ATTORNEYS FEES

Subsections (b) and (c) of section 722 of the Revised Statutes (42 U.S.C. 1988 (b) and (c)) (concerning the award of attorney’s and expert fees) shall apply to cases brought or defended under this Act.

SECTION 14. SEVERABILITY

If any provision of this Act or of an amendment made by this Act, or any application of such provision to any person or circumstance, is held to be unconstitutional, the remainder of this Act, the amendments made by this Act, and the application of the provision to any other person or circumstance shall not be affected.

New CA Legislation – Parental Due Process Act.

Dad tales of desperate and defeated, or deadbeat

LESLIE CANNOLD

November 22, 2009 – 8:42AM

In recent weeks, I seem to have become a bloke magnet. Two weeks ago at the State Library cafe and one night last week at my usual watering hole, I’ve had men in my ear. Sweet men, sad men, vulnerable men – some recently divorced, others single for years – crooning variations on the same tragic tale. A tale about children they love but no longer see.

Once, I would have called them deadbeat dads. My own parents split when I was young but my father maintained scrupulous contact with my brother and me, and was dismissive of men who didn’t. And I knew the facts: that about 30 per cent of Aussie kids rarely or ever see the father who doesn’t live with them; and that before 1989, when the law gave men a choice about chipping in financially to support their children, only about one-third did.

But as I listened to the stories of these grieving men, the moral issue was no longer clear. There is no shortage of grievances, legitimate and otherwise, when a couple splits. But when fathers want to share care of their children but are granted access only on weekends – leaving the Child Support Agency as the only institution affirming the role of men in their children’s lives post-divorce – something seems amiss.

‘‘I was more than a wallet to those children,’’ the man in the cafe told me. ‘‘I parented them.’’ Later, a diary he had kept of his daughter’s first words and subsequent language development would arrive in the mail: proof of his commitment and grief.

The bloke at the bar, let’s call him Barry, was less certain of what he had to offer to his daughter who is three, no four, no three. He hadn’t seen her in years. ‘‘I don’t even have a place to live at the moment,’’ he confessed. ‘‘Had all my ID stolen a few months ago and been couch-surfing for the past three weeks.’’ I heard the rest of his sentence as if he’d spoken it aloud. ‘‘I wouldn’t be good for her, anyway.’’
‘‘She told me to bugger off,’’ he continued, speaking of his former partner, a girl he’d got pregnant, then agreed to support. He sipped his beer primly before cracking a wooden smile. ‘‘So I did.’’

But here’s the real question. Does the fact that many men feel sad when made to feel surplus to requirements in their own children’s life – disenfranchised by the legal system or their former spouse – mean they’ve been wronged?  Not necessarily. The terrible truth is that when relationships break down, what is in the best interests of children may not be what’s best for men.

Research by Australian researcher  Jennifer McIntosh finds that shared care is not the best arrangement for very young children and only works well for older kids where parents are emotionally mature and get along well. Men incapable of resolving the substance abuse, anger management or emotional issues that can contribute to relationship breakdown in the first place may not be the best influence on children, including their own.

And according to the Australian Institute of Family Studies, there is ‘‘compelling evidence’’ that it is parental conflict and the negative economic consequences of divorce, not fatherlessness per se, that is costly for children of divorce. Deadbeat dads, or desperate, defeated and driven-away ones? You decide.

Do you have a moral issue you need resolve? Send it to Leslie@Cannold.com. All correspondence will be kept strictly confidential.

Dad tales of desperate and defeated, or deadbeat.

Woman Soldier longs for return of her son – Parental Alienation by Father

Soldier longs for return of her son Mom: In war, law must guard custody BY KEYONNA SUMMERS • FLORIDA TODAY • November 22, 2009 evious Page Fourteen-year-old John Collier Jr. wishes that his mother, Army Lt. Col. Vanessa Benson, would give up this battle.Benson returned in May from a 41/2-month deployment to Afghanistan. While away, she left her 2-year-old with her sister in Panama City and John with his father, her ex-husband, in Rockledge. When Benson got back, John didn’t want to return to his mother in Kentucky, and his father is not making him. It’s a war of words that’s working its way through the courts, and Benson hopes the case will make it to Congress to better protect custodial parents serving in the military. “They’re trying to use my deployment against me to change custody,” said Benson, a Satellite Beach native who has had primary custody of John since she and his father were divorced in 2000 in Colorado. A Brevard County judge twice has ordered the boy to return to her, to no avail. Benson is due in court again next month for a hearing on John Collier Sr.’s motion for temporary custody. “I’ve spent over $12,000 in legal fees fighting this case down in Florida,” she said. “I’m supposed to have my child back, yet all the judge’s orders have gone unheeded and have gone unenforced by (the judge). How much more money do I have to spend to get an order (the father is) not going to abide by?” Now remarried to another Army lieutenant colonel, Benson, 39, said she raised John as a single parent for years and allowed her ex- husband liberal visitation. In December 2008, Benson and her current husband deployed together with the 159th Combat Aviation Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, out of Fort Campbell, Ky. Benson said her family care plan outlined a temporary arrangement in which John would return to her on June 2, after he completed eighth grade in Florida. However, court records said the boy refused, prompting Benson to touch off a multistate fight for his return. ‘Sick of moving’ Collier and his attorney, Vencil Moore of Cocoa, said the petition for temporary custody has nothing to do with Benson’s deployment and that it centers on her attempt to uproot the boy from Florida against his wishes. They said they filed the motion based on what the boy wants. (2 of 3) In an interview with FLORIDA TODAY, John said he has wanted to live with his father since fifth grade, when he also stayed with him part of the time while his mother was deployed to Korea. He said he didn’t want to move with his mother to Kentucky four years ago.John said he wants to complete high school in Florida, where he has a prepaid college plan and might attend school with people he knows. “I’m just sick of moving all the time,” the teenager said. “I don’t want to go to high school for like two or three years and have to move somewhere else. “I just want my mom to let me live down here because I’m sick of all this court stuff going on. I want to be able to visit my mom’s house on Christmas, Thanksgiving and all my breaks, but with all this court stuff going on, I won’t be able to see her and my little brother for Thanksgiving and Christmas. “It really hurts because I only get to talk to my mom on the phone.” ‘What he wanted’ Collier, 42, and court records said the boy has threatened to run away and has refused to go with Benson’s parents, who were supposed to take him to the airport in August. Collier said he filed a motion for child support after he claimed that Benson spent 10 days in Florida with her younger son following her return from Afghanistan but did not come to see John. Collier said he tried to comply with the court order but is now filing for temporary custody because he wants what’s best for his son. “I’m doing it because I love my kid. It’s what he wanted,” he said. “He’s a normal high school kid, and he’s getting put through the ringer by all this that’s going on. He’s the only one losing in the end.” ‘Outrageous’ battle Benson conceded that John wants to stay with his father but said she also wants what’s best for her child and his future. She said she thinks her ex-husband has influenced him with gifts. It’s “outrageous,” she said, that she has to make a third trip to Florida to prove that she should have custody of her son when she already has two documents ordering his return. (3 of 3) “The fact that my ex-husband’s allowed him to think that he’s able to make the choice even though the court says he has to return — his dad’s allowed him to think he’s above the law and can do whatever he wants to do,” Benson said.”After having served in combat — where we were in direct fire, and it was very stressful — why should I have to come back to a court system that’s making me prove why I should get my child back when Florida law clearly states when the service member returns, the child should be returned to the service member?” Demanding change Benson is calling for federal legislation that would supply state courts with guidelines on custody rights regarding military parents. She is frustrated that judges from Florida and Kentucky decided via a closed teleconference that Florida should have jurisdiction, even though she and her son lived in Kentucky for four years. “A lot of my soldiers are single parents, and it makes them concerned that the laws aren’t there to protect service members when they go off to war. We aren’t able to focus on war when we know we might lose the children that we’ve raised,” she said. “I just want my family back the way it was a year ago before I left for combat, and I’m going to ensure I do what I can to help other soldiers who follow in my footsteps and experience what I’ve experienced.” Contact Summers at 242-3642 or ksummers@floridatoday.com.

Soldier longs for return of her son | floridatoday.com | FLORIDA TODAY.

Report: 20% of Divorced Parents Want to Make Other Parent’s Contact with Child ‘as Unpleasant as Possible’ | Glenn Sacks on MND

Thursday, November 19, 2009

By Robert Franklin, Esq.

When parents are at loggerheads, there should be much more done to sustain the interests of the father and child. When a mother turns her child against the father, when a mother refuses to comply with a court order on contact, nothing is done because it is felt sanctions against her would not be in the interests of the child. But is the situation as it stands in that child’s interests? We pay only lip service to the rights of a child to have contact with a father and we need to do better.

This article is another one to address the findings of the Mishcon de Reya report on the impacts of divorce in the United Kingdom (The Times, 11/17/09).  I discussed another article in the Telegraph in a previous piece, but this one adds information and some suggestions.

For example, the report found that more than one-third of children lose all contact with their fathers after divorce.  It goes on to report just why that is.

But what makes keeping in touch so difficult?

One answer could be suggested by a finding of the Mishcon de Reya report — one in five divorcing spouses admitted to having the primary objective of making the experience as unpleasant as possible for his or her former partner.

Parenthetically, I wonder what all those people who deny the existence of parental alienation of children have to say about that.  When 20% cite that very thing as their “primary objective” post-divorce, it’s hard to figure how they can pretend parental alienation is a figment of some evil FRA’s imagination.  My guess is that we’ll never know since they’ll probably give that datum a pass.

And given that it’s fathers, not mothers whom children are losing, and it’s mothers, not fathers who get primary custody in 85% – 90% of cases, it’s not hard to figure out who’s doing most of the alienating.

But the article goes on to site some fairly commonsense things divorcing fathers and mothers can do to make things better.  Unfortunately, many of those seem to assume some sort of residual goodwill between the exes.  And if that existed, the problems children have stemming from divorce would probably be much fewer and less severe.

I suspect that there is a large percentage of parents who truly do their best to get along after they split and who mostly succeed.  I also suspect that there is some percentage who will remain out to get the other regardless of everything.  And I finally suspect that there are a lot of parents for whom counselling and mediation would be a great help.  It’s not that they’ll feel much better about the other spouse, but they can learn to focus on the child’s wellbeing and understand that, while he/she may want nothing to do with the other spouse, the child doesn’t feel the same way.

Stephen Baskerville’s Taken Into Custody Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood, Marriage, and the Family by Stephen Baskerville, Ph.D. examines one of the greatest and most destructive civil rights abuses in America today–our family law system. Baskerville has authored many articles on fatherhood and family issues and is a frequent media commentator. To learn more or to purchase Taken Into Custody, click here.

Stumble It!

Report: 20% of Divorced Parents Want to Make Other Parent’s Contact with Child ‘as Unpleasant as Possible’ | Glenn Sacks on MND.

Michael Robinson is now Fathers & Families’ full-time legislative representative in Sacramento

A Major Announcement from Fathers & Families

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

By Glenn Sacks, MA for Fathers & Families

In a move that will change the course of the family court reform movement, Fathers & Families has just hired two experienced, accomplished legislative representatives. Soon we will be launching campaigns in support of our family court reform legislation—to get involved, please click here.

California

Readers of www.GlennSacks.com are familiar with Michael Robinson’s work in Sacramento on family court reform legislation, and Robinson and I have often worked together. In 2004 and again in 2006, we helped scuttle two bills (SB 730 and SB 1482) that would have led to unrestricted post-divorce move-aways. This was an important victory for California’s children of divorce, and one that surprised many Sacramento insiders, including Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters.

Robinson and I also worked together to pass family law legislation to help military parents (SB 1082) and on shared parenting and domestic violence reform bills. In 2007 and again this year, Robinson helped build a professional coalition to scuttle AB 612, a bill that would have banned target parents of Parental Alienation from raising PA as an issue in their cases.

Robinson has also been instrumental in passing legislation on paternity fraud (AB 252 and SB 1333), noncustodial parents’ access to school records (AB 164), Collaborative Law (AB 402, AB 189, AB 3051), and protection for disabled veterans with child support obligations (SB 285). He helped create the COAP program, which allows mothers and fathers who are unfairly saddled with inflated, unpayable child support arrearages to settle them for modest cash payments.

Michael Robinson is now Fathers & Families‘ full-time legislative representative in Sacramento, and we will be introducing several family court reform bills into the California legislature in February. Starting soon, Fathers & Families activists will be meeting with legislators throughout the state. We want your participation–to get involved, please click here.

Massachusetts

Enzo Pastore, our new deputy director, has worked on health care reform legislation in Washington DC, Albany, NY, and Boston, MA for 15 years. Pastore designed and promoted model prescription drug legislation that was introduced in 27 states in 2001. He led a successful legislative campaign in New York in 2007 to fund special housing for senior citizens and the disabled. In 2005, he helped defeat a federal Bush initiative that would have drastically cut Medicaid funding and services.

In January, we will launch our campaign to pass HB 1400, the Massachusetts Shared Parenting bill, and Pastore will be spearheading our campaign.

Through Fathers & Families’ efforts, over one-quarter of the Massachusetts Legislature has expressed clear, public support for our Shared Parenting Bill, many of them signing on as co-sponsors. We gathered thousands of signatures to place shared parenting on the 2004 Massachusetts ballot and led a successful campaign for its passage, winning 86% of the vote. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick told the Legislature that if they pass Fathers & Families’ Shared Parenting, he will sign it, and F & F recently met with Governor Patrick.

We need volunteers to meet with legislators, do media work, and help build our campaign–to volunteer, please click here.

Federal Legislation, plus Legislation in Texas & Many Other States

Robinson has worked with legislators and staffers in many other states on military parent legislation, and many states have passed bills modeled in part on SB 1082, the military parents bill we passed in California in 2005. These include: Florida, North Carolina, Arizona, Ohio, Michigan, Oklahoma, Utah, Mississippi, Alaska, Missouri, and others.

Robinson worked with Texas Senator Jane Nelson to pass SB 279, a bill to protect military parents’ custody rights which was signed by Texas Governor Rick Perry earlier this year.

Robinson worked with Mark Sullivan, Committee Chair of the Family Law Section of the American Bar Association’s Military Committee, on the National Defense Reauthorization Act (HR 2647), which was signed by President Obama last month. The bill mandates that the Secretary of Defense produce a report on child custody litigation involving members of the Armed Forces, as well as international intrafamilial abductions of servicemembers’ children.

The Secretary of Defense will submit its report to the Armed Services Committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives by the end of March. Robinson says:

“Fathers & Families can play a major role in the implementation of this legislation. We need to make sure that the impact isn’t watered down, that it’s powerful, not sugar-coated.”

This problem affects both fathers and mothers who serve. If you are a military mother or father whose custody rights have been adversely affected due to your service, we want to make sure your story is included in the Secretary of Defense’s report. To submit your story for inclusion, please fill out our form here.

Prominent Biotechnology Executive Mark Benedyk, PhD Joins Our Board of Directors

Dr. Benedyk is the head of The Pfizer Incubator, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pfizer, Inc., the world’s largest research-based pharmaceutical company. The Pfizer Incubator was initiated by Pfizer to support life science start-ups and to explore novel approaches to discovering new medicines.

Dr. Benedyk has over 15 years experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, where he has been involved in business development, product management, and corporate fundraising. His business strategy and fundraising skills will be invaluable for Fathers & Families, and we welcome him as our newest national board member.

What You Can Do

Experienced legislative experts like Robinson and Pastore cost money, as does the organizational work we do surrounding their efforts–please make a tax-deductible gift to support our important work by clicking here.

One very affordable way to help build Fathers & Families is to make a monthly gift–to do so, click here and enter an amount under “monthly contribution.”

The Family Court Reform Movement will not progress unless we engage in the political process on a professional level, as our opponents do.

Fathers & Families has the largest membership base, the highest media profile, the most funding, and now the best legislative advocates of any family court reform organization. The time to take this movement to a higher level is now, and it takes money to do it–please give generously by clicking here.

To volunteer to help, please click here.

Together with you in the love of our children,

Glenn Sacks, MA
Executive Director, Fathers & Families

Ned Holstein, M.D., M.S.
Founder, Chairman of the Board, Fathers & Families

A Major Announcement from Fathers & Families | Glenn Sacks on MND.

Crystel Strelioff’s family; History of PAS

November 18, 12:56 PMLA Family Courts ExaminerLaura Lynn

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PAS, Parental Alienation Syndrome knows no gender boundaries. You may not like the term PAS, but there is a behavior exhibited by some parents that cause the children to tell lies, and maybe even begin to believe those lies, about another parent.

There was some discussion about Crystel Strelioff, serving time for abducting her children. One of the children, now an adult, spoke at the Elkins Family Task Force Hearing in Los Angeles recently. He implied that his father had sexually abused him for 15 years while the court stood by.

I am certain tragedies like that do happen, but I am equally certain that in this particular case, there was no abuse by the father. The father had no contact with the son since 2004 and very little contact before that.

But, here is deposition testimony from court appointed evaluator Joanne Feigin in regards to Crystel’s brother Tim. The children’s names have been changed and their parent’s identity slightly veiled. Otherwise, this testimony is verbatim. There was no cross examination in regards to these statements.

Lawyer: At that time you interviewed the child again, this is since the last — since report number one, at that interview the child told you that his dad [Tim] told him to say to you “I want 100 percent with my dad and no time with mom”; is that correct?

Joanne Feigin: Yes.

Lawyer: As a matter of fact, you state in your report on page 24 that the child clearly — you use the word “clearly” — indicated that his father had told him very explicitly — and you use the word “explicitly” –to talk to [Ms. Feigin] about his preference and what to say about it. Is that correct?

Joanne Feigin: Correct.

Later…about an anti-drug video made by Tim with the mother acting as the drug addict, a video given to Joanne Feigin by either Tim or Crystel’s mother Helen, given without the soundtrack and only an explanation they thought the mother was using drugs…

Lawyer: Now, also in report one, I’m just going to just hit on this because you testified to it, that Tim alleged that the mother was using cocaine; correct?

Joanne Feigin: Correct.

Lawyer: He showed you a video which involved the mother?

Joanne Feigin: Correct.

Lawyer: And I think you even stated in the report that the father was disingenuous and deceptive; is that correct?

Joanne Feigin: Correct.

Lawyer: And that’s relating to the video?

Joanne Feigin: Yes.

Lawyer: And how he labeled it?

Joanne Feigin: Yes.

If Crystel’s family was showing this deceptive tape to the court appointed evaluator, who else did they show it to? The children?

And why, after this testimony, did the LASC commissioner transfer custody of the children from the mother to the father? Whether you call it PAS or just “lies told about one parent by the other parent”, isn’t this behavior that does not foster a relationship between both parents?

Crystel Strelioff’s family; History of PAS.

Worst Case of Parental Alienation Ever, Investigator States – Arrest Warrant for PA in Texas Case

Ireland mom faces U.S. extradition over child snatching

By

APRIL DREW,

Irish Voice Reporter

Published Wednesday, November 18, 2009, 1:10 PM

Updated Wednesday, November 18, 2009, 1:29 PM

Read more: Ireland, Kay Erickson, Extradition, Trials, Michael Peterson, Child Custody, Tralee, Family Law, Law, Texas

Tedra Erickson

A Texas woman who fled to Ireland with her two children in 2005 is to attend an extradition hearing in Dublin on Wednesday, December 3.

Tedra Erickson and her mother, Kay Erickson, took her two children, Emma and Kaitlyn, to Ireland in early 2005 after a nasty custody battle with their father, Michael Peterson. According to news reports, they didn’t have any connection with Ireland.

A custody battle in March 2005 awarded joint custody to both parents. However, Erickson and the children’s father wanted full custody.

In April of that year, Peterson, who separated from Erickson after four years of marriage, went to a scheduled meeting with his children at the police station but they never showed up. That was the last he saw of them until a private investigator located them in 2006 in Tralee, County Kerry.

According to news reports, Erickson, with the aid of her mother, crossed the border with the children at Canada and traveled by cargo ship to Britain, and came to Ireland via Holyhead, settling in Tralee.

A felony warrant was issued for Tedra on April 13, 2005 and for her mother on September 2006.

After a year of trying to locate his children alone Peterson hired private investigator Philip Cline.

In September 2006, the investigator located the mother, grandmother and children in Tralee. The children were attending school and Tedra had a full time job as a chiropodist.

Peterson went to Ireland to meet his children shortly after their discovery. According to interviews Peterson gave to the media after the meeting, the children didn’t want to have anything to do with him.

A court hearing took place in Ireland under the rules of the Hague Child Abduction Convention, set up to establish contact between children and their parents when families separate.

The judge decided to allow the children to settle in Ireland. However, a grand jury in Collin County, Texas, in 2008 indicted Erickson and her mother on interference with child custody, a state-jail felony. He called for both women to be extradited back to the U.S.
Cline told a local newspaper in Texas that out of 16 years as a child rescue investigator, this is one of the most aggressive cases of parental alienation he has seen.

“I bring kids back from all over the world,” Cline said. “In this case, these children are going to need extreme psycho-therapy. I believe the children will come back to their father, but it won’t be kisses and roses. It will be a long, hard road for the entire family.”

Tedra has been working in Ireland as a chiropodist for the past number of years. The mother of two was working in a chiropodist clinic in Tralee before moving to Limerick.

IrishCentral’s sister publication the Irish Voice spoke to an employee of the clinic on Tuesday. The employee said that she was recently fired from the clinic for telling lies, practicing under a false license and other serious issues.

According to the employee, Tedra is now illegally practicing chiropody around Limerick City. She was unavailable for comment.

In related news, Peterson’s new wife, Celeste, is charged with assaulting Tedra with a deadly weapon seven years ago.

According to news reports, Celeste stabbed Erickson with a knife in front of her two daughters. The case is to be heard in January. It has been ongoing for six years, partly because Erickson was not in the U.S. to give evidence.

If Justice Michael Peart at the High Court in Dublin rules to allow the extradition in December, Tedra and her mother could be returned to the U.S. to be tried for interference with a child custody case and parental abduction.

Peterson, who has two other children, has spent time behind bars with a record of harassment, theft, drunk driving and burglary.

Curtis Howard, Collin County assistant district attorney, said his side of the paperwork to complete the extradition process is complete and he is waiting on the Department of Justice and the State Department to do final approval. He said he is unsure what the status is in Ireland.

Ireland mom faces U.S. extradition over child snatching | Irish News | IrishCentral.

The Fear of Loss and the Need for Approval: How Abusive Women Control Men | MND: Your Daily Dose of Counter-Theory

Sunday, November 15, 2009

By Dr. Tara J. Palmatier

Why is it so difficult for men who are being controlled by narcissistic, borderline, histrionic and other abusive women to end the relationship? What keeps them tethered to these abusive personalities sometimes even after the relationship has ended?

There are two basic hooks this kind of woman uses to keep men on a readily yank-able chain: the fear of loss and the need for approval. These are the two most powerful control devices in their arsenal. The worst part is that, in many cases, men unwittingly play right into their hands.

The Fear of Loss

The fear of loss is an especially powerful mechanism. It could be the fear of losing the relationship, fear of losing your children, your reputation or your money and other assets. Inducing fear, guilt, shame and a sense of obligation are how abusive women control you. If you’re afraid of loss and your wife/girlfriend/ex knows it, you’re basically at her mercy.

Abusive women will:

• Threaten you with abandonment. “If you don’t ’shape up,’ I’m leaving.”
• Threaten to alienate your children from you or deny you access to them. “If you don’t do as I say, I’m going to tell your son what a bastard you are” or “If you leave you’ll never see your kids again.”
• Threaten to destroy your career. “I’m going to tell everyone at your office what a sick pervert you are.”
• Threaten to take all your money. “You owe me. I’m entitled.”

Many of these women will implicitly or explicitly communicate that you’ll never meet anyone else like them. Let’s hope not. The resulting fear is that no other women will want you or find you attractive, which is nonsense. The reality is that emotionally abusive women are a dime a dozen. There’s nothing special about them—except for their highly dysfunctional and toxic characterological traits. You need to change your mindset. Perhaps by “losing” the relationship, you will, ultimately, “win.”

There are far better woman in the world who will treat you with kindness, respect, generosity and mutual consideration. You’re not lucky this woman “puts up with you;” she’s lucky that you put up with her. Being alone is better than being in an abusive relationship. If being on your own is too difficult at first; get a dog or a goldfish.

As for losing your assets, your children and your reputation, these are very real losses. However, if you’re persistent, you can regain and rebuild anything you lose. It won’t be exactly the same, but the longer you stay with this woman, the more you’ll lose—financially and emotionally. It’s confounding. Men are punished by the courts (i.e., spousal support) for staying in the marriage longer in an effort to work things out. You think you’re doing the right thing by hanging in there, but you’re actually giving your wife more power to hurt you when you finally divorce. Therefore, it’s better to get out sooner than later when you notice how lopsided, hurtful and inequitable your relationship is.

Kids are a tough one. You may well lose time with and access to your child(ren). On the other hand, consider what you’re modeling by staying in an abusive relationship. It’s better for a child to have one healthy and strong parent than two dysfunctional ones.

Exactly what are you afraid of losing? The abuse? The emotional withdrawal and rejection? Being made to feel less than? If this were anyone other than your wife/girlfriend/ex, would you want to even know this person? Have you challenged these fears with your intellect or are you being led by your “gut?”

When you fear loss, you need to stop “listening to your gut” and use your mind to reality test your fears. Abusive women are master manipulators who employ emotional reasoning that has very little to do with the facts of a situation. The emotionally based attacks also serve to confuse you and cloud your judgment. Therefore, when you’re afraid, stop listening to your gut and start reasoning with your brain.

Don’t just succumb to your fears; CHALLENGE THEM with your intellect, not the emotional reasoning that only reinforces them. More often than not, your fears are just distorted, self-limiting beliefs sown by your wife/gf/ex. By giving into your fear, you’re voluntarily walking into a cage and handing her the key. The truth is you have the power to release yourself. You will love again. You will find happiness. But you will only do so without this woman.

The Need for Approval

Another highly effective device abusive women use to control you is denying approval and acceptance. It’s natural to want to be liked and admired—especially by the person you love. Being criticized, demeaned, rejected and told repeatedly, “not good enough,” “you don’t measure up,” or that you’ve “failed again” is demoralizing. It also spurs you on to try even harder to please her and herein lies the problem: These women are never satisfied. Nothing you do will ever be good enough. She will never bestow upon you the kind of love and acceptance you seek.

You’re perpetuating a sick dynamic by seeking approval from someone who’ll never give it to you. Why? Because these women experience giving approval to others as a psychological and visceral loss. To tell you, “nice job” or “I appreciate you” somehow makes her feel less than and, as you well know, these women won’t tolerate that for a second.

Why does your wife’s/girlfriend’s/ex’s approval mean so much to you? Do you actually respect her and the way she conducts herself? A woman like this is an abusive, entitled and incredibly self-serving bully, so why do you care what she thinks?  Seeking approval from someone who takes pleasure in cutting you down is a recipe for disappointment and pain.

The Way Out

Don’t let her solicited and unsolicited opinions get to you anymore. Recognize them for what they are: Abusive control tactics. Your overall goal is emotional detachment, which means you’re not invested in the outcome of this relationship. Once you’re no longer afraid of “losing” or care about receiving her approval, you’ll see the balance of power in the relationship shift.

She will be less able to “get to you,” which is a good thing. You’ll begin to care less, which is psychologically freeing. You’ll become more immune to the traps she sets and she won’t be able to figure out what the hell is happening. As you step out of this dysfunctional emotional dynamic, she’ll escalate her nasty behaviors as she frantically tries to maintain control and bully you back into place. She’ll be uncharacteristically speechless when her tried and true control devices no longer work.

Just remember, the more you commit to taking care of yourself, the more embittered she’ll grow. She’ll accuse you of being “selfish,” “inconsiderate” and “uncaring.” This is a good sign—for you. Abusive women view any attempt you make at self-care and growth as a grave betrayal. How dare you do something positive for yourself? How dare you not let her make you feel bad?

The more you put your needs first, the stronger and healthier you’ll become and your attraction to this supremely unhealthy woman should diminish. Abusive women remain in control by keeping you disoriented, hurting and in a psychologically weakened state. This is why she becomes alarmed when she sees you taking care of yourself.

Even if you don’t initially believe it, the freedom from abuse you’ll gain by ending this relationship will eventually outweigh any material losses you incur. You need to realize that you don’t have an actual relationship with this woman; it’s an autocracy in which she’s the petty tyrant and you live to serve. Furthermore, a woman like this isn’t capable of true intimacy and empathy, which are prerequisites for a healthy relationship. Your happiness lies in the future with someone else; not her.

Sadly, you may well see your children less or suffer through watching your ex turn them into her human shields, protectors and weapons to hurt you. However, by staying in an abusive relationship you’re exposing your children to a very unhealthy model of adult relationships. Nevertheless, this is a heartbreaking choice for many fathers. It may cost you money and potentially damage your relationship with your children, but what’s the cost of happiness, sanity and freedom from abuse?

by Dr Tara J. Palmatier, PsyD

Originally posted on July 27, 2009 at A Shrink for Men.

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The Fear of Loss and the Need for Approval: How Abusive Women Control Men | MND: Your Daily Dose of Counter-Theory.

Ninth Circuit Gives Big Victory to Non-Custodial Father | Glenn Sacks on MND

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

By Robert Franklin, Esq.

A case decided November 10, 2009 by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals could have an enormous impact on fathers’ rights to their children.  (Note: The case is not yet published, so I can’t provide a link to it.)  It holds that even a divorced father with no right of physical custody must be given the opportunity to have custody of his child before a child protective agency can place it in foster care.  Failure to do so by a county child protective agency can subject the county to a suit for damages by the father under the federal civil law governing deprivation of constitutional rights.

To put it bluntly, this is a huge win for non-custodial parents.

The opinion in Burke, et al vs. County of Alameda California, et al now governs everyone within the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit which encompasses California, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, Idaho, Arizona, Nevada, Montana and the territories of Guam and the Northern Marianna Islands.  Unless overturned by the United States Supreme Court, Burke is binding precedent throughout the Ninth Circuit.

The Ninth is the largest federal circuit and one of the most influential on the others.  Of course the opinion in Burke doesn’t govern cases in other circuits, but, given that it was a case of first impression (i.e. a similar case had never been decided before by that circuit) there, it may well be looked to by other circuits in deciding similar cases.  It may also be looked to by the Supreme Court should a similar case reach that level.

David and Melissa Burke lived together and apparently were married.  Melissa’s 14-year-old daughter “B.F.” lived with them.  She was the natural daughter of Melissa and Clifton Farina who had divorced some years before.  David was her stepfather and Clifton was a non-custodial dad.  Frustratingly enough, the opinion doesn’t tell us whether Clifton had an order of visitation, but it seems that he did not because the opinion says that he had no right of physical custody.  Nevertheless, he saw his daughter fairly often even though B.F. testified that his new wife didn’t like her and being around her was uncomfortable for the girl.  Melissa had sole physical custody of B.F.

When B.F. complained to an Alameda County Sheriff’s officer that David hit her repeatedly and often fondled her breasts, the officer, without a warrant, removed her from the Burke home and placed her with the county child protective services agency.  CPS in turn placed her in some form of protective care.

David, Melissa and Clifton Farina sued Alameda County and the sheriff’s deputy under federal statute 42 U.S.C. 1983 which allows civil suits against municipal and state entities which “under color of law” deprive someone of their constitutional rights.  The trial court granted the county’s motion for summary judgment, holding that neither the Burkes nor Farina had any claim against the county on which they could prevail at trial.  The Ninth Circuit agreed that the Burkes had no claim and that the sheriff’s deputy was immune from suit.

But the circuit court reversed the trial court as to Clifton Farina.  It said that, even though he had no right of physical custody, Alameda County could not lawfully ignore Clifton as a possible custodian of B.F.  Failure by the county to “explore the possibility of putting B.F. in his care” violated his constitutional right to a familial relationship and association with his daughter.  His case was returned to the trial court so a jury could hear and decide his claim for damages against the county.

On this blog, both Glenn and I have written about the outrageous preference on the part of CPS agencies for foster care over father care.  Those agencies routinely bypass fathers altogther and place children in foster care.  I reported on an Urban Institute study that showed that, even though CPS agencies know who the father is in some 88% of cases that come before them, attempts to contact him are made in barely over half those cases.  Glenn has written about a girl to whom Orange County, California lied repeatedly over many years, solely to keep her from her father and in foster care.

In short, after this case, CPS agencies can no longer do that without getting sued.  The Burke opinion is not clear on exactly what a county must do to comply with it.  But as I see it, they’ll have to make diligent efforts to locate the father and assess whether his care would be superior to that of a foster home.  If it would be, he would get custody.  In short, when taking a child from its custodial parent due to abuse or neglect, a state within the Ninth Circuit’s jurisdiction may no longer simply ignore the non-custodial parent.

Thanks to Ned for the heads-up.

Lisa Scott’s RealFamilyLaw.com
Shared Parenting Advocate/Family Law Attorney Lisa Scott’s RealFamilyLaw.com exposes the truth about what is happening in our family law system. Lisa, the all-time leader in appearances on His Side with Glenn Sacks, says that she was “tired of having her stuff rejected by elitist bar publications and politically-correct newspapers” and decided to start her own website. RealFamilyLaw.com

Ninth Circuit Gives Big Victory to Non-Custodial Father | Glenn Sacks on MND.

Pig Pen Members Continue Online Libel – Craig Hensberger Father Libeled Continues

A clear case of Libel from one of the members of the “pig pen”

” Lorraine Tipton is a concerned and caring mother who has tried for the past three years to obey a court order even though it meant forcing her daughter to go and stay with her sexually, and otherwise, abusive father. Michaela (now 11 yrs old) says that she is absolutely terrified of going to her father%u2019s, that she is not safe with him, and now insists that she simply can and will not go. Lorraine has spoken with her daughter, but can no longer find it within herself to force her daughter to willingly accept further abuse. “

From the below link:

http://familycourtcrisis.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/ptarget-pa-hrefhttpwwwthepetitionsitecom217petitionforlorrainetiptonandmichaelahttpwwwthepetitionsitecom217petitionforlorrainetiptonandmichaelaa-p5000-psponsored-pa-hrefhttpwwwthepetitionsitecomfeedba/

For those who doubt that Parental Alienation Syndrome is a pattern of denigration of one parent by another, in order to alienate a child from the other parent, nothing could be more proof than libelous attacks that members of the “pig pen” cult of followers that attack fathers only, and labels all mother and children as “battered” and the fathers as “abusive”.

Are these “protective parents” ?? No one buys their “victim” status anymore. Judges know that parents who deny children the right to see the other parent are the real “abusers.”