Author: Super User

Background: Conscientious Virginia judge James Michael Shull, who smoked out a woman who sought to extend a restraining order based on false charges of domestic violence, was just removed from the bench by this Virginia Supreme Court ruling. Not only was Shull railroaded, but he has been the target of widely-disseminated lazy, misleading reporting by the Associated Press, the New York Post, and others.

To learn more about the case, see my blog posts In Defense of Judge James Michael Shull (Part I), Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V and Part VI, or read my co-authored newspaper column defending Shull here.

The article Crossing the line in the courtroom (11/13/07) from Tricities.com in Kingsport Tennessee is yet another hatchet job on Judge Shull. The article appears below, with my comments in italics interspersed.

Crossing the line in the courtroom

Tricities.com

(11/13/07)

Judges are among the most powerful men and women in our society, but that power is not unlimited.

The power of the office doesn”t convey a right to mistreat, belittle or otherwise disrespect those who appear before the court. All should be equal in the eyes of the law.

Former Judge James Michael Shull broke this cardinal rule. He disrespected and demeaned some who sought his aid and, in doing so, brought disgrace and shame upon his profession and paid a steep price – removal from office by the Virginia State Supreme Court.

Shull “disrespected and demeaned” nobody. Instead, he made a tough call in a difficult situation in order to protect two young children. Shull had to effectively turn the kids over to either a father who was accused of stabbing their mother or a mother who was allegedly a mentally-disturbed, suicidal “cutter.” Putting the children’s safety over courtroom decorum, Shull made what was indisputably the correct call, finding that the mother had cut herself and had falsely accused the father.

Shull, who presided in Juvenile and Domestic Relations courts in Lee, Scott and Wise counties, is just the fourth sitting judge to receive such punishment in Virginia.

Two of the previous judicial defrocking took place a century ago. The third case involved a judge who misappropriated alcohol and firearms that were introduced as evidence in a court proceeding, then consumed the confiscated beer in his chambers.

Sitting judges are almost never removed from office. Behavior must be truly egregious – or even criminal – for such to occur.

Shull”s behavior wasn”t criminal, but it was grossly inappropriate, the state Supreme Court determined in a Nov. 2 ruling. The judge admitted flipping a coin to decide a child custody issue.

What really happened was this–a mother and father had shared physical custody of their children, and could not agree as to who would have them on Christmas Day. Shull urged them to come to an agreement themselves, but they were unable to. Normally at this point (or actually, long before it) the judge would’ve just decided to give the kids to mom for Christmas, but Shull told both parents that he considered both of them to be good, loving parents and that he did not want to have to choose between them.

When they were unable to decide, he decided to toss a coin to make the decision, sending a clear message that the court was not going to favor one parent over the other. I applaud Shull for this, yet, amazingly, this non-event is one of the major charges against him.

Also, according to Shull, the coin toss was not objected to by either of the two parties, both of whom were represented by attorneys. Shull determined who got the 1st week of Xmas vacation the first year, with vacation to be alternated thereafter.

He admitted making an ex parte phone call during an order of protection hearing, which is a violation of judicial rules.

In the case, Tammy G. claimed that her husband had stabbed her and that she went to a local emergency room for treatment. Shull’s violation consisted of–brace yourself–calling the local hospital to confirm that Tammy G. had been admitted.

Once again, Shull is in trouble for examining the facts in the case before him–he made the call as part of his duty to protect the G. children. Shull also says that he informed everyone in the courtroom that he planned to call before he made the call.

In the most glaring example of misconduct, witnesses testified that Shull twice asked a woman “with a clear history of mental instability” to drop her pants in the courtroom to show him a wound on her leg. A court bailiff testified that Shull commented on the woman”s underwear, a lacy black thong, after the hearing. Other witnesses testified the woman”s bare buttocks were exposed.

These facts are very much contested–there are three witnesses who say that the woman offered to lower her pants to show the wound. Also, it is unclear that Shull was in a position to decide with finality that the woman, Tammy G., had “mental problems.” More importantly, even if he was, what did the Court expect Shull to do? Shull had three options:

1) Decide that since the woman is mentally ill, he’s not going to subject her to a full effort to find out whether or not her husband really did stab her, but instead just give the husband the children. In other words, don’t ascertain the truth, but instead turn the kids over to a man who she claims tried to kill her.

2) Decide that since the woman is mentally ill, he won’t put her through a full effort to ascertain the truth, but instead give her possession of the kids. In other words, give the kids to a mentally ill woman.

3) Ignore her apparent “mental problems,” and make a real effort to ascertain the truth in the case in order to protect the children. Shull did that, and it cost him his job.

In his defense, Shull contended that he was trying to determine whether the woman had been stabbed by her husband, as she claimed, or had caused the injuries herself. This isn”t a compelling argument.

Certainly, the judge could have asked for photographs of the injury or a doctor”s report. Instead, he chose to humiliate a vulnerable woman who was seeking the court”s protection.

A woman who is trying to destroy a father’s life and take his kids away by making a false accusation is “a vulnerable woman who was seeking the court”s protection”?!

Also, there was no time for photographs or doctor”s reports–Shull had to adjudicate the case to protect the children then, or risk turning them over to someone who might harm them.

In testimony at his suspension hearing

The recent audit of Missouri child support points directly to the Herbert Chalmers tragedy last year. The audit found that in child support cases “the amount owed was incorrect in 27 percent of the cases” and “record-keeping was so far off that parents were shown as owing $309,409 to $454,647 more than they actually owed.” Moreover, these errors have led to unfair punishments of innocent fathers. To learn more about the audit, click here.

In April 2006, Herbert Chalmers of St. Louis, Missouri killed himself and three others, including two members of the family whose business was garnisheeing his wages. Chalmers” withholding had been doubled and he was left with only $400 a month from his paychecks. He claimed he was the victim of a child support enforcement error but it was only after the killings that an investigation was conducted. The result? According to state officials, Chalmers had been correct–due to a clerical error, he was being garnisheed five times what he actually owed.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch interviewed a man whose family members were killed in the spree, who told them “If it was a mistake, it cost the lives of my family.”

According to the article:

“Did the state make some kind of mistake in calculating Herbert L. Chalmers’ child support, possibly sparking a rampage that killed four women–including his children’s mother and two members of the family whose business garnisheed his wages?

“Chalmers made it clear he felt there had been an error, railing about it for months before Tuesday’s bloody spree. He complained about it to some survivors of the tragedy before using his last shot on himself…

Background: In my recent post The Fatherhood Movement & Underdog Social Movements in History (Part I: The ‘Battle of Deputies Run’) I explained:

“Being committed to a movement which has not yet come into its prime–the fatherhood movement–I’m sometimes interested in the stories of the unlikely successes of other social movements.“

One of the biggest underdog movements in history to succeed, though we don’t talk about it much, is the industrial labor movement. Most of the big industrial unions were formed during the 1930s, under conditions which, in retrospect, seem mind-boggling. Amid massive unemployment and widespread poverty, facing off unscrupulous, lawless bosses and their violent hired thugs as well as hostile and sometimes violent police, working men utilized strikes, sit-downs and other methods to build strong, vibrant labor unions. “

I think one could fairly say that, given what these men achieved, it is impossible to ever claim that any reasonable movement cannot succeed.”

In my previous post I cited the famous Minneapolis Teamsters strike in 1934, wherein striking workers and their supporters squared off against police and company-hired thugs in what’s known as the “Battle of Deputies Run.” Another example, more modern and more genteel, is the rise of the Major League Baseball Players’ Association from 1966 to 1981.

Today’s astronomical baseball salaries have made many forget that for 100 years baseball players were treated terribly. Owners had all of the power in the relationship, in part because of the reserve clause, which mandated that a player could only play for one team unless they traded or released him. With almost no negotiating power, players were vastly underpaid in relation to the value they brought to the industry. Prior to the union era, many retired players lived in poverty or scraped by on menial jobs.

That began to change in 1966 when Marvin Miller, formerly one of the leaders of the Steelworkers’ union, became the head of the Players’ Association. The union faced a hostile press, hostile, idiotic baseball fans, and some of the wealthiest people in the country, the club owners. In 1972 the owners tried to roll back the already meager pension the baseball players received, and it led to the first strike in baseball history. The owners sought to provoke the strike in order to break the nascent union, and Miller himself thought there was little the players would be able to do about it, at least in the short term.

The excerpt below is from Marvin Miller’s fascinating autobiography A Whole Different Ball Game. In it, Miller informs the 48 player representatives (two per team) of the owners’ position on the pension issue and recommends that they not strike.

Excerpted from “A Whole Different Ball Game”:

“The meeting [in Dallas] got underway. After reviewing all that had happened during the negotiations, I recommended that we delay striking. Hands shot up all over the room. The players were more committed to accepting the owner”s challenge to strike than I had realized; in fact, they were positively militant. Soon I found myself playing the role of devil”s advocate, trying to be as realistic (even pessimistic) as possible. I explained the hardships involved. I pointed out that we had no strike fund, no field offices, and no public relations staff; the press would likely be hostile; and on and on. To no avail. Player after player stood up to convince me that they were united, that they were hell-bent on taking the fight to the owners–even though it was impossible to know how long the strike would last.

“Roughly four hours into the meeting, one of the player reps, impatient with the continuing discussion, started to chant: ‘Strike! Strike! Strike!’ It was picked up by the others and repeated over and over.

“At this time of year, we always read of those parents who take their first child to college. They carefully put the sheets on their kids” dormitory beds and neatly arrange their clothes — a momentary nostalgic return to the childhood years that have fled. The new collegians are desperate for them to leave. They depart. They look over their shoulders at their beloved children, overflowing with emotion. They arrive home, open the door — and the house is silent. The doors do not slam. The phone does not ring.

“No backpacks are plopped down on the floor. The cereal has not been devoured. And they feel empty. They gaze at the photographs of their boy when he was three.

“And they know that what was, is no more, and can never be.

“How much worse when this happens before its proper time, when the children are young, when it happens to a loving parent who has done no wrong, when it happens simply by order of an ignorant judge, influenced by degrading media portrayals of men, and empowered by blind laws. This we never read about.

“And here is the ultimate wound: it is done, they say, because it is in your child”s best interest– to be torn away from you!”

Ned Holstein gave a great speech at a September Fathers & Families meeting–it is excerpted above and below. To read it in full, click here. More from Ned:

“About five years ago, the Boston Globe ran a headline story claiming that the leading cause of death of pregnant women was murder at the hands of their male partners. The story was occasioned by a Massachusetts Department of Public Health special report, accompanied by a press release. As a doctor, I was dubious about this claim, so I looked up the DPH report. It did not surprise me to find that medical causes of death far outnumbered any other cause, and that motor vehicles and drugs came next, with domestic violence making a modest contribution. The Massachusetts DPH never distanced itself from the Globe story, despite its own research report that contradicted the Globe.

“Two years ago, PBS ran a so-called documentary called “Breaking the Silence.’ Its central claim was that two-thirds of fathers who seek the custody of their children, even shared custody, are secret batterers. There is no research basis for this claim whatsoever. I know, because I asked the authors of this travesty for their sources, and then I studied the papers they cited, and I found that this slander was a complete fabrication.

“About the same time, I learned that Australia Airlines and New Zealand Airlines will not seat unaccompanied children next to men. Instead, they will ask the men to switch seats. This is profiling, and it occurs in the absence of any data whatsoever showing that men have ever molested children on an airplane.

“Recently, the state of Virginia erected billboards showing a picture of a grown man holding the hand of a child. It instructed citizens to report men holding the hands of children to the child abuse agency, since, apparently, if you hold hands with a child, you are likely to be a sexual pervert.

“And, about a month ago, Steve Patterson of Fathers & Family alerted me to the fact that an esteemed organization, the Massachusetts Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children – or MSPCC – was running an ad on television intended to inspire the public to support the fight against child abuse. Its style was that of a trailer for a horror movie. Filmed in creepy black and white, the camera angle was that of a child hiding under her bed, and then in a spooky garage, and then in a frightening basement. Every ten seconds or so, the screen dissolved to black, and titles appeared in stark white: “where would you hide . . . . if you were ten years old . . . . and your father was coming home . . . . and he was angry. . . . . very angry . . . and he was looking for you . . . . like he did last night . . . . and the night before. . . and the night before that…’ I”m sure the average viewer now mistakenly believes that fathers commit most child abuse, whereas the opposite is true.

“…we live in a society in which respected institutions…are content to stereotype fathers as vicious villains, stereotypes that are unfounded lies.

“And when we are not vicious, we are foolish, egotistical, narcissistic idiots. Just watch prime time television, and you will see a parade of male buffoons far more offensive than the ditzy females served up in the fifties. At least Lucy was a lovable ditz, not a repugnant narcissist. This is well documented on Fathersandhusbands.org and by a study several years ago by the National Fatherhood Initiative.

“Does this slander matter, or is it harmless fun? Yes, it matters. We need to remember that family court judges are ordinary human beings. They watch the same shows and read the same newspapers that everyone else does. Few of them are intellects, and they were never trained in child development, or how to understand research data, or how to identify a good study vs a bad one. That doesn”t seem to stop them from considering themselves experts on these topics, taking their “wisdom’ from the corrupted images of men perpetrated in the media.

“So it should not surprise us that the treatment we receive in family court as fathers and men reflects the ugly stereotypes we are seeing from respected authorities such as PBS or the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. It is little wonder that we are treated as selfish, dangerous, indifferent to our children, cheaters, workaholics, or philanderers, since that is how we are widely portrayed. Most crucially, we are treated as a stereotyped class of underlings, not as individual human beings to be judged on our merits. Why is it surprising, then, that so many loving, caring and wise parents, especially fathers, are deprived of their children?”

Incredibly, Vinny Testaverde is still playing quarterback in the NFL at age 44. Recently he said:

“I”ve learned a lot over the years, and certainly my experience has helped me to continue doing what I”m doing. I wouldn”t say I”m a smart person, but I know football. There”s two things I think I”m good at. It”s playing football and being a good father.’

Hat tip to Doug Slain and his blog Men on the Defensive.

Background: Ex-cons and “deadbeat dads’ are two of society”s least favorite groups. As a result, it”s hard to formulate and implement reasonable policies and laws concerning the two. A new Department of Justice study on reducing prisoner recidivism focuses on an important but little-mentioned problem ex-offenders face–the crushing child support debts which accrued while they were behind bars. Upon release, child support enforcement agencies attempt to collect huge arrearages–sometimes $20,000 or more–out of dead broke, unskilled, and uneducated ex-offenders. To learn more, see my recent co-authored column, New Justice Department Report”s Recommendations Could Reduce Prisoner Recidivism (Chicago Sun-Times, 10/26/07).

Recently the West Virginia Supreme Court showed that someone in authority somewhere has some brain cells firing when it comes to child support. Usually an ex-offender owes his child support to the state to repay the cost of welfare for the child’s mother. In this case, it appears that the money is owed to the mother.

Inmates could get break on child support
by Justin D. Anderson
Charleston Daily Mail
November 13, 2007

Family court judges no longer will be able to refuse to adjust child support owed by parents who lose their jobs because they go to jail, following a recent state Supreme Court decision.

Prior to the decision, an inmate would serve out his or her sentence only to emerge from jail owing big money in back child support because the payments were based on prior income.

“It happens and it’s horrible,” said Jennifer Ransbottom, a lawyer in the case. “You’re already at a disadvantage when you get out of jail. The job market isn’t great for somebody with a felony on their record.”

West Virginia has lagged in setting a uniform standard in this subject for family court judges to follow, said Ransbottom, who represents prisoner Christopher Adkins.

Adkins is a Cabell County man who pleaded guilty last year to having sex with a 16-year-old girl with mental difficulties who was living with him and this then wife.
He was sentenced to 2-10 years in prison.

By the time he pleaded guilty, Adkins and his ex-wife, Angela Clay, had been divorced for nearly two years. Child support had been set at $392.67 per month for Adkins to help with the couple’s two children.

Adkins lost his job as a truck driver because of the guilty plea. He twice petitioned Cabell Family Court Judge Patricia Keller to readjust or eliminate his child support obligation because his financial situation had changed.

Adkins asked that Keller either set the payment at the minimum allowed by law — $50 per month — or calculate the payments as if he were earning minimum wage, not the $9.12 an hour he made as a truck driver. Adkins said his mother would have been able to pay $50 per month to keep him current.

Keller refused to readjust the payment.

“It is his fault that he cannot work,” Keller wrote in her order. “When he committed the crime, it was the same as voluntarily quitting his job and therefore he cannot reduce his child support.”

Adkins appealed to the state Supreme Court, which last week reversed Keller’s decision in part and sent the case back to her court.

“In sum, we find that incarceration does not relieve a parent of the obligation to pay child support,” wrote Justice Joseph Albright for the court. “Nonetheless, the amount of child support a parent who is incarcerated may be ordered to pay must be calculated on the actual income and assets available to the person during confinement.”

Adkins is currently in arrears on his child support, Ransbottom said. According to his petition for review, the state Bureau for Child Support Enforcement has already taken steps to revoke his driver’s license.

Clay’s lawyers with West Virginia Legal Aid, Hoyt Glazer and Mark Toor, characterized Adkins’ argument as realizing a benefit for criminal conduct.

“If a parent — incarcerated or otherwise — fails to pay a child support obligation, the needs of the child do not change and the burden of supporting the child does not evaporate,” Clay’s lawyers argued in court documents.

The way family courts have considered this issue varies statewide.

Some will not waver from ordering child support calculated using a criminal’s pre-incarceration wages. Others calculate the support by assuming the prisoner makes minimum wage. And some set a minimum $50 per month payment. Some eliminate the obligation altogether for incarcerated parents.

Read the full article here.

This Subway ad repeats the common television theme of dad as child. When husband and wife have two children, it’s often portrayed as if the mom is the only adult and she has three children. Sometimes dad will be as childish as his children. Other times, particularly if the child is a girl, the dad will be more childish than his children, and his children will lecture him or correct his behavior.

In the picture here you see mom in the standard modern TV “my husband is such an idiot” grimace.

To watch the commercial, click here or see below.

Thanks to Christian, a reader, for sending it to me.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa1tBoSWXoI]

Given the gruesome description of normal family life in this new Onion piece, I wonder if this reporter has been talking to my son. Or me when I was 15.

What I never realized then is just how lucky I was to be “trapped” in a “boring” stable, two-parent family.

Local Boy Trapped In Family
The Onion
November 9, 2007

HARRISONBURG, VA–Rescue workers and concerned neighbors gathered Saturday outside the Conklin residence on Waterson Avenue where authorities say local child David Conklin remains trapped in a dangerously lame family, a harrowing ordeal now entering its 13th tense year.

When police arrived on the scene Saturday morning, David–who recently entered junior high and is clearly not a baby anymore–was found pinned under two inflexible parents who rendered him completely immobile. Officers are working around the clock to free the boy and give him a second chance at a social life.

“At this time we’re doing everything we can to make [David] as comfortable as possible,” said Lt. William Barnes of the Harrisonburg Fire Department, who coordinated efforts to provide the 12-year-old with a warm North Face jacket to replace the retarded hand- me-down parka that once belonged to his older brother, Stephen. “But realistically, this situation could go on for at least another six years. That is, God forbid, if he doesn’t die of boredom first.”

Authorities are still unsure how the seventh grader became trapped in such a boring family, though David’s 15-year-old sister, Laura, put forth several theories, including speculation that David was an accident or, alternatively, was adopted from gypsies.

With rescue efforts continuing throughout the afternoon, early hopes that David would escape through a small hole of free time between dinner and lights-out were quickly dashed when he became entangled in a family game night and was nearly crushed by the tedium of playing hand after tortuous hand of UNO.

“We’re trying to get a Nintendo Wii in there to relieve some of the pressure,” Barnes said. “David is in a very tight spot. Even if we get him the game console, the restrictions he’s currently under may prevent him from using it.”

“Our biggest fear right now is the possibility that David is being smothered,” Barnes continued.

A second chance for relief came at 8:35 p.m., when David’s dogged efforts to free himself forced his parents to budge slightly and consider allowing their son to watch television at friend Philip Kirchart’s house. However, David’s potential escape route was almost instantly blocked by a massive pile of homework.

“This is a huge setback in freeing David,” said Barnes, who expressed frustration with the deteriorating situation. “If he doesn’t get that diorama for Mrs. Engles’ class off his back before nightfall, I’m afraid we’ll just have to wait until morning.”

Despite all attempts by his rescuers, David’s situation has grown increasingly grim. At 4:16 p.m., the boy nearly died of embarrassment after his mother asked him if there were any cute girls in his class, and again less than two hours later at dinner, when she openly discussed his need for new underwear.

Additionally, medical experts said that David’s preexisting condition, known as smartmouth, could be severely exacerbated by the dumb, unfair family environment he has been subjected to.

“This becomes an even more serious situation for someone like David,” said Louis Vianna, a paramedic on the scene. “A diagnosed wiseacre in a stifling environment like that could suffer a full-scale grounding at any moment, which would cut David off from vital weekend plans.”

Read the rest of the article here.

I recently partnered with Dr. Ned Holstein, president of Fathers and Families, in a campaign designed to draw attention to a serious problem in our child welfare system. When a father’s former wife or partner has been found to have abused her children and has had them taken by child protective services, decent, loving fathers are often denied custody of their own children. Incredibly, children are often put into foster care rather than being returned to their fathers, even though there has not been any finding that the fathers are unfit.

Our campaign called attention to the case of Rafael Izquierdo, a fit, loving father who is battling the Florida Department of Children & Families so he can raise his little daughter, most likely in Cuba. In this “Elian Gonzalez II” case, Izquierdo has been found by a Florida court to be a fit and committed father, but he is still being denied his parental rights.

One reason DCF has acted as it has is that Florida Governor Charlie Crist, like many Florida politicians, seeks the loyalty, votes, and campaign donations of the large, powerful Cuban-American community. Crist (correctly) sees defeating Izquierdo as a way to win Cuban-American votes. In Florida, sticking it to Cuba’s government is a crowd-pleaser, similar to the way politicians win popularity by beating up on “deadbeat dads.”

We asked Florida DCF to contact us and open a dialogue on how we can address this important issue.

Thousands of you have answered our call to action, and our campaign has been covered or cited in hundreds of newspapers, including by the Associated Press, syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post Writers Group, Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, the Miami Herald, the Orlando Sentinel, and many others. DCF, to their credit, contacted us and met with Dr. Holstein in Miami recently.

Our sources indicate that DCF is under pressure from the Governor’s office to continue this case, despite a lack of enthusiasm from many in DCF itself. The case is currently on appeal, and may be held up for quite a while, which will delay the reunion of Izquierdo and his daughter. Fortunately, in the meantime, she spends five days per week with him. Moreover, we do believe we have begun a meaningful dialogue with DCF on the issue of fathers and the child welfare system.

We are not asking for more protest calls, letters and faxes at this time, but will instead pursue our dialogue with DCF. We will keep supporters posted as to events in the Izquierdo case and with DCF, and we may again call upon you to protest in the future. Thanks to all of you who supported our campaign.

To learn more about our campaign, click here.