Domestic Violence Doesn’t Just Harm Women, but K Street Doesn’t Want to Know About It

Since 1994 when Congress passed it, the “Violence Against Women Act” has been the weapon against domestic violence.  The act was to be reauthorized in 2012 to include gays, undocumented immigrants, American Indians and students.  Republicans in the Senate joined Democrats to approve the reauthorization, Republicans in the House did not.  Then the Republicans took a beating in the 2012 Presidential elections, and the reauthorization of the bill is back on the floor of the senate in February, with Republicans now more accommodating to compromises, as they hope to lure women and latinos back  (or finally) into their ranks.

One may think that at least, this  hard-learned lesson in political realism is for the greater good – the end of domestic violence. Wrong: the tackling of this problem has been nothing but petty, parochial politics (PPP) and PPP it remains.

Why? We now know  that domestic violence is not only the deed of men against women, but also that of women against men and children: physical violence along with a less apparent but as pernicious a form of violence, parental alienation, which is given a free ride in family courts, which are women-biased courts. The very fact that domestic violence is defined as domestic violence against women gives women leeway to overuse of the accusation of domestic violence, to get the divorce they want and expel their ex from the life of their children.

Want to solve domestic violence? Change course and instead of adding categories of victims, throw universality into the law already. Just pass a Domestic Violence Act, that will aim at protecting women, gays, immigrants, American Indians and… men, too.

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Were There WMD in Holly Collins’ Case?

H. Collins and children

Do you know who is Holly Collins? Well, me neither, until recently. Holly Collins took her children with her to Holland because her ex-husband was given custody of the kids by Minnesota family courts, while they were allegedly abused. Collins became an international fugitive for fourteen years. I could not help but feel immediate sympathy for her.

A documentary ,”No Way Out but One,” was made about the Collins’ Case.  In a Huffington Post article, Nancy Doyle Palmer interviewed the director of this documentary, Garland Waller. That’s what spoiled my sympathy for Collin.  What is there in this interview? In a nutshell, that kind of non-sense: The justice system grants custody cases to abusers -fathers- like banks mortgages to people before the 2008 financial crisis. Why? Judges believe in the parental alienation syndrome against the whole profession of psychologists. It just takes fathers to accuse “ex” of being an alienating parent, and that’s it: custody wrapped. Hello, have you been to court lately?  Waller does not flesh out the reforms -as she does not give any data backing up her points- but there are not difficult to surmise: “lock’em all (divorced fathers) up.”

Ms Waller appears to be one of these crusaders of the consensus. She pretends 1/ that the consensus (courts favor women) is not the consensus 2/ her alleged consensus (courts favor men) is supposed to put women’s rights under imminent threat. Fortunately, the crusader is on the watch;  she will call for the reforms that will correct this sad state of affairs. Since there are plenty of folks that support the true consensus, they will applaud the crusader, who has set herself up for an easy victory.  If anything, courts are indeed likely to be even more biased for women, whether Holly Collin’s children were abused or not.

I then googled Holly Collins. I found this Glenn Sacks’ article about the case: unlike Palmer’s, there are plenty of facts showing little robustness in Collin’s accusation against her former husband.

I am not done researching the case. Yet, I am in no rush to see “No Way Out but One.” I don’t know yet if Holly Collin abducted her children for the right reasons. I know however that family justice in the US need not reforms grounded in cheap bashing of male abusers.

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Albert Einstein Was One of Us

“There are no big coincidences or small coincidences, there are just coincidences” says Rava to Elaine Benes in an episode of Seinfeld. True.  I just mailed today a letter to my oldest girl (a letter from the French Consulate sent to my address) wondering if it would ever be given to her, if she was not the one picking up the mail. And forget about any acknowledgement of reception. Coming back home, I saw a friend had sent me a link to a 2008 Daily Mail article about Einstein being an early fathers’ rights campaigner.

That’s quite interesting, indeed.  One learns that in a 1914 letter to his soon-to-be ex-wife, Mileva Maric,  Albert Einstein was reproaching her not to pass on his greetings to his children, Lieserl, Hans Albert and Eduard. If she had, he would have received an acknowledgement from them.  In other words, Einstein had to deal with the alienation of his children by his ex-wife, well before the concept of parental alienation was even coined.

I confess, there are days when it’s almost a consolation to know that what I am going through is not reserved to regular Joes like me. Folks like Einstein have experienced it too. Lucky Einstein however had only to handle Mileva Maric, not a New-York- State-type family court.

Hat tip: Diego Olivé

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Support Groups for Non-Custodial Fathers in New York State?

A few days ago, Charles, a reader of this blog, posted a comment where he asked me if I

(Clipartof.com)

knew of any support group for fathers in New York.

I don’t know any and I think it is a super idea. We need to be helped in dealing with issues of parental alienation and ruthless  family court justice. If you know of any support group for fathers in New York, please let this blog know.

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Custody Laws Are Changing in the UK. When in the US?

Photo: Fathers- 4- Justice

That’s happening in the UK;  The government is to attempt to change the law so that both parents – mothers and fathers- will have the right to see their children. Family Courts will have the responsibility to give to fathers time with their children. This is not joint custody, but a step in the right direction.

Matt O’ Connor, the President of Fathers 4 Justice (UK) , is not happy about it. From what I understand of the debate in the UK, the law is not going to prevent women to invoke child abuse to deny fathers access to their children.  Point taken.  Yet, from New York State  (and most of the States), where family courts have one motto – bleed the turnip  (the non-custodial father who does not see his children)-, a law like this would be significant progress.

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The Brearley School Pretends Everything Is Cool

Each year in March, I receive a grade report, at least of one of my girls. Both are now in

Hasta el viento tiene miedo (Carlos Enrique Taboada)

Brearley Upper School, but for some reason, I have never received two grade reports of this School, one for each of my daughter, the same year. I don’t ask why.

This year, in March 2012, along with my oldest one’s grades, was a generic letter signed Evelyn Sigal, Head of the Upper School, with the words:”If you have not already had the chance to discuss with your daughter her performance on her exams, I urge you to use this report as a catalyst for doing so.” 

The Brearley School must either have a special sense of humor I don’t get or a very short memory. In 2009, the Brearley School barred me from attending parents-teachers conference, although I had a Family Court order granting me the right to the contrary. And as I was blogging about it,  I received a cease or desist threat from the Brearley School councel. It was about refraining from comments -supposedly inflammatory-  about the Brearley School on my blog.

I learned then the Brearley School had read my blog.  Hence the Brearley School must have figured out I am incommunicado with my daughters, for almost seven years now. The Brearley School wants me “to use this report as a catalyst to discuss with my daughter on her exams?” I wished the Brearley School had not been another catalyst of my eviction from the lives of my girls. I could perhaps talk about their exams with them now.

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The French, Parenting and the Lack Thereof

The word parenting makes me cringe. It must be because ex wanted to inflict parenting

L'argent de poche (Truffaut)

classes on me when she put me on trial for child abuse; or perhaps because I had too many visits with my girls supervised by Comprehensive Family Slaughtering, which was in the business of putting me back on the right parenting track.

Since I have not seen my girls for so many years, parenting is a painful topic to me and I tend to avoid parenting articles in the press. This one – Why French Parents Are Superior (Pamela Druckerman) caught my attention. I told myself that there was perhaps something there to learn about “Frenchness” in parenting that the folks from Manhattan Family Court missed.

First, don’t let the title of the article freak you out. Druckerman wrote for the Wall Street Journal and this is a politically correct article in the Murdoch world, meaning solidly anti-French; Not the New York Post’s way (“a good French is a dead one”), but the Wall Street Journal’s way. Druckerman feels she has to tell the reader she is not sure to be willing to live in France (one wonders why such a thought would even occur to her);  She surely does not want her kids to grow like “sniffy Parisians.” Oof! One never knows.

Besides well-known facts – French parents have a life as adults while Americans parents don’t- there are interesting points in Druckerman’s article, like her discussion of disciplining a child in the American and French parenting traditions. There is one thing missing in her piece though (I can’t help being a sniffy Parisian, even if I have been living much longer in New York than in Paris): the word “parenting” does not exist in French. It just ain’t. The French raise their children (“élèvent leurs enfants”). So what? Perhaps parenting in France is more geared towards kids and not so much towards being a “good parent,” meaning giving the kids what parents did not have and think they should have: a good neighborhood, a good school, a good career…

I wonder how France and the US fare on the parental alienation’s front.

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Parental Alienation:The Nurturing of Hate

You don’t know what parental alienation and parental alienation syndrom are? Take a look at what follows:

On December 19, on Camille’s birthday, I sent my girls two watches – one for Camille, one for Chloé- and a card. On Tuesday January 24, I received – in the very envelope I had used- the two watches – unwrapped- and my card with the following line on the lower right corner:

We want nothing from you except the return of our privacy, starting with the removal of your disgusting website.

What’s the intention of these words?  To hurt, to rubb hate to my face. Touché.

This line is not signed. Camille? Chloé? Mom?  A “we” wrote to me. At this stage, the alienating parent has won. The brainwashing has been completed. Mom does not need anymore to tell her victims their father is to be hated, for mom’s hate  has been appropriated by the victims. At this stage, why would mom feel she is doing anything wrong, if she has ever?  Two seemingly rational girls reflect back her own hate. The privacy my girls say they want back?  Although they live in New York City, it is as if they were living in a bunker to me. I have no contact with them except through mom’s email, through mom’s phone, under mom’s control. But mom wants the removal of “my website,” which is the only thing that keeps her from evicting me in peace from the universe of the girls. The victims take side with the executioner, that’s the beauty of parental alienation.  The request to remove my blog is a starting point without any end. In fact, I am deep fried in eternal hate: Mom’s.

Girls, I love you no matter what.

But this blog will go on. For a long time now, it ‘s not just been about you. It has been about preserving the privacy of other children like you with their dads; And to try to keep the irresponsible amateurs of Manhattan Family Court -the Sturms, the Octobres, the Spitzers, the Berrils – to give a free pass to parental alienation.

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Israel Gets Rid of “the Best Interest of the Child Stuff”

Israel News Agency

The new year starts very well for fathers rights in Israel.  On January 19, Justice Minister Yakoov Neeman announced that article 25 of the Israel Capacity and Guardianship Law -the Tender Years Presumption Law- was gone. The law was automatically granting sole custody to the mother if the children were under 6, allowing mothers to alienate the kids at will and getting rid of the father from their life. The new Israeli law will now order joint custody even in cases of divorces involving young children.

The Israelis did not go half way on the path to reforms.  More scrutiny will be applied to the examination of charges of abuses brought against men and it seems that child support laws will be made fairer to fathers.

The process that led to these sweeping changes is also quite interesting. Fathers rights organizations had the brillant idea to involve the United Nations. The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights urged the Israeli government to amend its laws so that were discriminating against fathers seeking partial or full custody. That  is an example for fathers rights organizations to follow in the US, where the media and the politicians are totally deaf to the rights of divorced fathers to see and live with their children.

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Parental Alienation and Lost Diligence in Manhattan Family Court

I live  at a 40 minute-subway ride from my girls and I have not seen them for almost six years. That ‘s why, I guess, I pay special attention to teenagers when I see them, in public means of transportation for instance.  There are strange creatures busy with smart phones. Every time I see them, I think that my girls don’t have one. Or rather that’s what ex answered my lawyer when I asked for their personal cell numbers. Phone communication with my girls has to go through mum’s landline phone number. Therefore mum has total control over it and there is just no free communication.

How ironical! As I was deep into my phony trial for child abuse a few years ago, the girls were still little. Yet  the  law guardian appointed by the court was giving credence to the idea that my girls were  able to make independent decisions like adults. They said  they were not  comfortable seeing dad at his home, that’s all there was to it. At some point though, when mum’s interference in supervised visitations became fully documented, the judge decided to make a step. I was ranting that I wanted my unsupervised visitations back. I got one shot at it.

May 26, 2007. I have gotten rid of sloppy Spitzer and Comprehensive Family Services. “Family Matters” director is supposed to pick up the girls at their place and bring them to “Le Monde” on Broadway and 112 street. On Friday evening, you cannot go more public and safe. The place was indeed packed. The supervisor was to leave us alone an hour.

I had waited fourty five minutes at Le Monde when I finally received a call from Family matters. Same old story: she has tried to convince the girls to come to see me, at no avail. Why? No reason. Mum must have trumpeted her encouragement to the girls. One full year after that last try, no question asked to mum by the law guardian came the verdict: therapeutic visitations. The Court believes that the girls have to have a relationship with their dad, bla, bla, bla…but after having left mum derailed my relationship wit the girls and alienate them from me, the Court has no choice but to repeat the recipes that have consistently failed. Manhattan Family Court does not apologize for miscarriage of justice.

Girls, in case you were wondering, I am on Facebook.

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