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.

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.

Florence (filou.fr)

Mexican justice for the crimes of  kidnapping and organized crime she did not commit.  As I was carrying the  grilled chicken Florence had asked me to bring for lunch, heading toward the Centro Feminil de Readaptacion Social de Tepepan (South of Mexico City) where she is incarcerated, I was still struggling with the thought that had started to bug me since Florence had accepted my request to visit her, three days before: I am no journalist, no lawyer, and therefore I could not be of much help to her.

I know I will not sleep much until she is set free, but I also know now she does not need my help that much. The first thing I found out last Sunday is that she has been helping herself amazingly well given what she has gone through. Before meeting her, I had in mind the image of Florence in shock during the AFI (Agencia Federal de Investigacíon, the Mexican FBI) ‘s remake of her arrestation for the Mexican TV, on December 9 2005. The Florence Cassez I see after passing security, as I step into the large room where a crowd of inmates is meeting and eating with its visitors, has nothing to do with that.  She is a rather tall women with an intense and reflective gaze. She graciously introduces me to her two other visitors, among whom David Bertet, who manages the Canadian Committee in Support of Florence. I quickly discover she has guts. Indeed, as I am telling her I did not understand why the Mexican government  (Mexico is a signatory of the 1983 Strasbourg convention on the transfer of sentenced persons) has been dragging its feet to repatriate Florence to France while invoking the incompatibility of the French thirty-year maximum jail sentence with Florence’s, she brushes away this option. Repatriation? No Sir. She did not want that. Doing time in France meant acknowledging she was guilty. She is innocent. Florence wants the Cassez’s case to be cleared in Mexico. She is fully aware that if it were to happen, it would have wide implications for the working of the Mexican justice system, and for the lot of those Mexican whose rights are violated and who, like her, rot in jail thanks to flawed or made-up accusations of kidnapping.

As the discussion unfolds around lunch, I cannot but notice with immense pleasure that it is interrupted many times. Florence is not at all ostracized as I was fearing. On the contrary, she is a popular figure here. Folks want to chat with her. She keeps getting up, keeps leaving the table to shake hands or hug people. David Bertet told me aside that her humility, her acceptance of the rules of the jail, have earned her the respect of the inmates and that of the prison’s authorities. According to Florence, it has not always been like that; President Sarkozy’s intervention with the Senate and the Mexican government was key to the inmates’change of mind about her. As they saw the French President himself pulling up his sleeves for Florence, people started to question the way most of the Mexican media had depicted her, as the secuestradora, the Francesa diabolica. I gladly admit I was off the mark in an earlier criticism of Sarkozy’s intervention on this blog. Yet I think that Florence is perhaps too modest. Her audacious resilience in claiming her innocence must have something to do with people’s empathy for her.

Also, Florence Cassez is beautiful. She is a beautiful woman, but what I mean here, she is beautiful on the inside.  For instance, when I asked her how come she did not know anything about Israel Vallarta (he ex)’s deeds, she first pauses and slowly, simply, refraining from crying, she states she has so often reproached herself for and been haunted by not having seen anything suspicious with Vallarta; It just never was a serious relation for her. At this moment, I feel like a total idiot for having asked this question. When you are unfairly accused of something, you feel there must be something wrong with you, and people too think that there must be something wrong with you that justifies your situation. I have been there, and I have never been sentenced to jail. As upon my return from the visit, I was moving ahead in my reading of Florence’s book –  A La Sombra de Mi Vida- her answer would appear blatantly true.  Florence only lived two months with Vallarta and then, their relation had ended.  After all, Rosemarie Fritzl, the cellar monster’s wife, lived her life next to Joseph Fritzl and she did not no have a clue about what he was doing in his bunker under his house.

The next step? The decision of the Mexican Supreme Court that Florence’s lawyer has appealed to. It should come in the first half of 2012. I used to think that the best thing for the Mexican democracy was a Lopes Obrador’s victory in 2006. There was one, but it was stolen from him. Florence’s story made me think that out of the three pillars of a democracy, the judiciary – a sound and independent one- is the most important. Clearing Florence Cassez from the accusations that were brought against her would put an end to a six-year violation of her basic human rights. But also, it would prompt the beginning of the end of “la ley de Herodes” (“o te chingas o te jodes”) that has marked the Mexican political life since the Mexican revolution.

A few links and addresses to learn more about Florence Cassez:

comite_florence_cassez_montreal@live.com
twitter :  Florence_Casse1
twitter (esp) : MXporFCassez

www.mexicoporflorencecassez.wordpress.com (Mx)

www.liberezflorencecassez.com (Fr)

As an interrupted dad, what I notice is the happy uninterrupted Mexican ones. Those that their kids bug and tease in restaurants or waiting rooms of  airports.

Happy new year Camille and Chloé. And I hope 2012 will be a good year for fathers’ rights.

As one of them funnily says, people have very low expectations about them as fathers. They are covered with tattoos and piercing. “They have obviously inhaled” and put anything there is to put on their nose and veins. They dress strange and you don’t expect them to be part of a parent-teacher conference in a school on the Upper-East Side.

Yet as fathers, they have it all. First, unlike the rest of us, they had difficult families. Perhaps that’s why they are happily married. And lucky them, they struggle to see their kids and succeed to see them. You almost regret not to be a punk-rocker dad when you get out of the theatre.

A f… ing must see.

Guantánamo

2009. But later is better than never. William Glaberson’s article from yesterday, Friday November 18, describes the making of  people’s family justice in New York City. Readers can learn what divorced fathers have come to know as they tasted family courts. It is Guantánamo right here in the city.

I guess many people don’t know the most important piece of news one learns from this article: Family courts in New York City are not supposed to be the secretive places they are. On the contrary, they have been ordered to be opened to the public since 1997. Yet it looks that for fourteen years now, the media has not been welcome there. Glaberson mentions arrogant cops denying reporters entry to court rooms, judges asking reporters to show their credentials to court clerks, who ask them to get the approval of the state’s chief administrative judge. As a result, accountability is nil. The little world of family court does as it pleases and prospers. Trials last what they last – mine lasted more than six years, law guardians sleep on the children’s  interests which they are to represent; unsupervised social-agency workers that supervise the visitations with your children have the leeway to bully you while you are trying to keep your relationship with your kids from deleting.

The media should not stop halfway in this most welcome attempt to lift the veil on the nauseating secrets of family justice in New York State. There is a lot of investigating to do about the work of  support magistrates, these gracious people who behind close doors decide about child support payments that too often put non-custodial parents in the red and sometimes in jail. And please, pay a visit to the nasty fellows of the Support Collection Unit on 151 West Broadway, in the City.

When is the reform of family justice be on the agenda of New York State Attorney General, Eric T. Schneiderman?

Thémis

One of the many problems of the American justice system is that it is unnecessarily clamorous. Take perp walks for instance. DSK had his. Perp walks are there for the media to share in with the crowd the shame of those who are indicted, like in the Middle Ages the populace could scream at and insult those who were sentence to death on their way to the scaffold. These practices add absolutely nothing to justice.  The American justice system is unnecessarily clamorous because, among others, some law-enforcement officers and magistrates are elected. This creates a serious conflict of interests between the superior interests of justice and theirs. These elected officials have an incentive to call in the clamor of the regular folks on easy victims to justify their job and advance their careers.

I just found out about one of these new knights of law-enforcement: Sheriff Dart in Cook County, Illinois. Dart is posting pictures of deadbeat dads on his website and encourage all noble delators to rat on the monsters. One can bet that Dart’s P.R. operation at the expense of deadbeat dads rests on an efficient cooperation with the family court of Cook County;  After all, that’s only in family courts that turnips bleed. Let us suggest one bolder move to Dart for his anti-fathers law-enforcement practices: Have family court provide him with the list of unemployed divorced fathers and arrest them preventively. These folks are about to default on their child support payments anyway!

The question that I cannot help but ask myself: were fathers, divorced and not, gone fishing when Dart was elected in Cook County?

Manhattan Family Court

I can’t help thinking last night  of a comment from a reader, Jay, on my last posting. Jay mentioned that in Canada, fathers have started occupy family courts years ago. Perhaps, fathers are less passive in Canada and this is why family laws are not as intensely biased against fathers than in the US, at least than in New York State.

In any case, Zuccoti Park is a only a few blocks from the infamous building of Manhattan Family court, on 60 Lafayette Street.  I visit it in my dreams. On the eight and ninth floors, the court rooms: that’s where fathers are striped from their rights to see their kids. Going down on the fourth floor, the little rooms without natural light,where the support magistrates lend an complacent ear to the mothers’ child support claims and expenses of all kinds.

I really would not mind to see the working of this inhuman bureaucracy disrupted for a while. Fathers for Justice USA, Fathers and families anything in mind? If yes, count me in.

Times Square, October 15 2011.

wandering in Zuccoti Park last week, I saw a children “area”  where a lady was painting children’s faces. She was taking care of them while their parents were patiently debating ideas with whoever. Zuccoti Park is a forum where people take the time to talk about anything.  And they keep talking even when a Ron Paul’s supporter on a bike honks to get their attention.

I could not help but think that the fathers’ movement ought to be there. After all, divorced fathers all over the country are in this whole thanks to the new democratic party  that was shaped in the 90′s. When economic times were good and a budget surplus within reach, President Clinton endeavored to end welfare as we knew it. A republican President could not have done better. What this meant was always more stringent conditions to be eligible for welfare benefits and insanely coercive child support laws for divorced fathers. For them, unemployment is not an option, for it implies not meeting child support obligations and ending up in jail. I wish Thomas Ball would have lived to see Occupy Wall Street.

John Whitmire, Texas State Senator

against men and fathers- and more credence and weight given to accusation than to defense. You have to prove your innocence, when prosecution should be bearing the burden of the proof.  In the case of capital punishment- the icing on the rotten cake- there is the combination of racial prejudice and prejudice against the poor. If you are flushed, you might save yourself; Otherwise, too bad.

Thursday September 23 of this year, Troy Davis was executed in Georgia. His execution was opposed by an international movement led by Amnesty International. One would have thought that might have spurred proposals to mend the capital punishment system.  Indeed it did, in the most unexpected area: John Withmire,  a Houston democrat and chairman of the Senate criminal Justice Committee, put an end all by himself to the last meal in Texas.

According to Manny Fernandez from the New York Times, this is the profligacy of Lawrence Russel Brewer’s last meal that set Withmire’s creative legislative mind in motion. Brewer was executed by lethal injection in the Huntsville Unit on Wednesday, September 22, one day before Travis. One would think that the chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee in Houston had better things to do than micromanaging last meals. In any case, we don’t know for sure if it is the ethnic ingredients of Brewer ‘s last meal – jalapeños, fajitas- or worries for the State of Texas’ budget that troubled Whitmire. But even at the pace Texas executes inmates on death row, I bet last meals are not the most crucial budgetary issue of the state.

John Whitmire’s score to the Political courage test organized by Project Vote Smart is 0, because he refused to tell where he stands on issues addressed in 2010 Political Courage Test. No wonder;  To me, Whitmire belongs to the most despicable type of politicians: Those who seek exposure while beating on the weakest and the defenseless. Who in these glorious days we are leaving in will oppose scaremongers like Whitmire? For God sake, until the day medieval capital punishment is abolished in the U.S., let’s those to be executed enjoy a last meal…and a last cigarette. Their  fellows on death row won’t mind second-hand smoking.