Author: Super User

The article below details how three heroic fathers sacrificed their lives to save their children over the summer. The fathers are Yves Pilotte, Scott Davis, and Benjie Correos (pictured right with his family, including nine-year-old son Miles). From Canada’s Globe and Mail article “Three fathers who answered the call”:

“Yves Pilotte…a 44-year-old firefighter from the eastern Quebec village of Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes went swimming with his two teenage children at Cavendish Beach in Prince Edward Island National Park.

“A riptide warning had been broadcast on the radio but RCMP investigators surmised the Pilotte family likely had not heard it at their campground in the park.

“When Mr. Pilotte’s 15-year-old son began having trouble in the water, his father went immediately to his aid. The boy made it safely back to the beach but Mr. Pilotte lacked the strength to fight the current and was swept away.

“Riptides are powerful, constricted currents flowing outward from the shore. Swimmers are advised to swim parallel to the shore to get out of the current’s path rather than attempting to struggle against it.

“Mr. Pilotte, a vibrant man actively engaged in his community, was pulled ashore a short time later and died in hospital.

“It is one of the unspeakable horror stories of family life – the parent who dies trying to save a child, the parent who dies in front of his children. It has happened three times in Canada this month.

“Their deaths lead to questions about how children cope with the trauma of seeing a parent die, of knowing that a parent died so they could live.

“They also raise questions about what makes a parent instantly risk her or his life to save a child.

“Perry Adler, professor of family medicine at McGill University, suggested that parents rehearse the sacrificial act many times in their minds as they raise their children – fantasize about it – and so are ready to do it when the time comes.

“It could be biological, he said. ‘We do everything we can to survive. We try to do everything for our species to survive.’

“Benjie Correos, 45, of Whitehorse, and Scott Davis, 38, from the village of Arnstein near North Bay, Ont., drowned on the same day, Aug. 16.

“Mr. Correos, an artist and carpenter, was on an outing with his family on the Millennium Trail that runs alongside the Yukon River.

“According to police reports, he was fishing when his seven-year-old son Myles, playing nearby, slipped and fell into the river’s swollen, fast-moving water.

“Both Mr. Correos and his wife Josephine went in after him. Ms. Correos could not get by large rocks but her husband was able to grab on to Myles and hold his head up.

“However, he could not get free of the undertow. Two other men jumped into the river and were able to pull Myles to safety but Mr. Correos disappeared.

Sigh–no comment needed…

Her word rules, and he goes to jail
Some women swindle with domestic violence law
By Garland M. Baker
Special to A.M. Costa Rica

Women are kicking their mates out of the house in record numbers in Costa Rica. Some of them are enjoying it and using the law designed to protect women against domestic violence to swindle expats [American expatriates]. Many expats come to Costa Rica in search of a relationship and end up shooting themselves in the foot by making bad choices.

Police in Heredia say women are abusing Law 8589 Article 7. The article states, “In order to protect the victims, they will be able to request, from the start of the complaint, the protective measures contemplated in the law against domestic violence, as well as the necessary precautionary measures foreseen in the penal code of procedure.’

Yes, an expat male — or any male in Costa Rica for that matter — can be tossed out of his own home by his wife or girlfriend by merely having a complaint filed against him by the woman if she says he was being abusive. Abusive, as it stands today, can mean anything, including just raising one’s voice.

Two weeks ago a woman put her expat boyfriend in jail all night when he raised his voice to her adult son — he is over 18 years of age — for popping bubble pack and painting satanic symbols on the wall. The son, who has tested positive for drugs in the past, became vocally abusive, so the expat called 911. When the police arrived, the girlfriend and her son asked the police to take the expat to jail. Officers did so without question. The woman also said that he struggled with the son and bumped into her.

The man who was jailed is the legal owner of the home.

The girlfriend took a coat to the expat that night because it was very cold in Heredia. Either she had a guilty conscience or she was looking for information. While at the jail, she spoke with the police, and they gave her pointers on what she should file with the judge the next morning in court.

In the morning, the police escorted the tired man from his jail cell to the court. He was lucky, he had a cell phone, and the police let him use it in the patrol car. He called an attorney who met him at court.

The judge told the man that the police would take him to his own house where he could pack two suitcases of essentials but that he had to vacate his home immediately.

A police officer escorted the expat and his attorney into the house. While the retired man gathered his belongings, the police officer told the attorney that throwing men — mostly foreign men — out of their homes in Heredia was their daily routine. He said they use to chase robbers and other bad people, but now they were bored because mostly they just deal with domestic violence cases. The police officer further said: “Women in Costa Rica are taking advantage of this new law. They throw out their boyfriend and then steal their things and leave.’

Other women do not leave. They start court cases against expats for damages or palimony to wear them down to get a payoff. The lucky ones get off with the women taking a few TV sets and the home computers. At least in these cases the expat can move back into his house.

When the girlfriend does not leave the home, expats have a serious problem.

I’ve just learned via Dean Tong that Dave Bruer of the Fathers Resource Center was killed Sunday in a motorcycle accident. Dave was a committed advocate who helped many, many fathers with their custody and family law problems.

The newspaper article about this tragedy is below.

Motorcyclist killed in crash ID’d as advocate for fathers
North County Times, 9/24/07

VISTA — A man killed Sunday morning in a motorcycle crash on Highway 78 was identified by the county medical examiner’s office today as the founder of the Fathers Resource Center, an Encinitas-based parenting organization.

David Cavan Bruer, 55, of Encinitas, was pronounced dead at the scene near Emerald Drive, an investigator for the office said.

Authorities said Bruer had been speeding when he tried to pass through a narrow gap in traffic and was clipped by a truck. He is survived by his son, John-David Bruer, the medical examiner’s office reported.

Bruer began working as an advocate for fathers nearly 20 years ago. He brought the Fathers Resource Center — which formed to help fathers with issues such as paternity to domestic abuse, to custody and visitation — to Encinitas in 1997.

The Kentucky Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in a case involving hero father Ren Hinshaw, a “duped dad” fighting to retain custody of the 8-year-old boy he’s raised since birth. Hinshaw didn’t find out that he wasn’t the boy’s biological father until his divorce, when his ex-wife went to court to cut him out of the boy’s life, claiming Hinshaw had no legal right to keep seeing what he thought was his kid. According to a Louisville Courier-Journal article earlier this year:

“‘He is my son, and I am his dad,’ Hinshaw said in an e-mail to the newspaper.

“The child’s mother says Hinshaw should have no right to custody…

“Hinshaw was in the delivery room when the boy he thought was his son was born in 1999.

“He cut the umbilical cord and later changed the boy’s diapers, taught him to talk and volunteered at his school, according to court records.

“Hinshaw, a technology consultant at the University of Louisville’s Kornhauser Health Sciences Library, described the boy in court records as the most important thing in his life.

“But when the child’s mother, Jacqueline, divorced Hinshaw in 2003, she disclosed he wasn’t the biological father and asked Jefferson Family Court to deny him custody.

“Judge Virginia Whittinghill ordered a counselor to meet with the child. She concluded he had bonded with Hinshaw and that it would be ‘very devastating to him if he was not in his life.’ She described Hinshaw as the boy’s ‘psychological father.’

“Whittinghill not only granted Hinshaw’s motion for joint custody, she also made his home the boy’s primary residence and ordered his ex-wife to pay him $25,000 in attorney’s fees.

“The Court of Appeals last September affirmed the decision, saying the case wasn’t about paternity but ‘the custody rights between a husband and wife as they relate to a child born and raised within the confines of the marriage.’

“Hinshaw’s ex-wife, who has since remarried, is now asking the state Supreme Court to hear the case. She and her lawyer, Peter Ostermiller, declined comment, but in court papers they say that DNA should rule, even if the decision is not in the child’s best interests.

“They also contend that Hinshaw had no standing to seek custody, just as the state Supreme Court held last year when it denied such rights to a lesbian partner who was not a child’s legal parent.

“After two years as the boy’s primary parent, Hinshaw said in court papers that his bond with the child has grown even stronger and that it would ‘take a chunk’ out of his heart if the child was taken away.

“‘This is a bond that no person should put asunder,’ he said.”

The case is now being considered by the Kentucky Supreme Court, along with the James Rhoades case. To learn more, click here.

We rarely hear publicly about cases like Hinshaw’s, but I see them often.

As many of you know, Mary Winkler recently appeared on Oprah. To watch the show in its entirety, click here.

Oprah was annoyingly sympathetic to Winkler, and seemed to buy her abused wife shtick. My opinion of her claims is as follows:

1) Winkler provided no substantive evidence for her claims–no medical reports, no police reports, no 911 calls, nothing.

2) The defense did put a few people on the stand who testified as to various indirect indications that Winkler might have been abused. A couple of these were of some value. For example, a doctor said Winkler visited her one time with what he described as a “minor injury” to her face, which Winkler said at the time came when a kids’ softball hit her. She now claims this was an example of Matthew’s abuse of her. The doctor said the injury was consistent with either one.

Also, Winkler’s father testified as to seeing injuries on Mary previously, which Mary denied were related to abuse. Of course, even if these were true examples of abuse–and it’s far from clear that they are–it doesn’t mean that Matthew was the aggressor. Research shows that a large percentage of domestic violence is mutual abuse–Mary’s alleged injuries could’ve been the end result of her attacks on Matthew. We’ll never know whether Matthew was abusive or not, but we do know that one member of that household was violent–Mary Winkler. Anybody capable of shooting a sleeping man in the back and allowing him to bleed to death is certainly capable of initiating domestic violence in the home.

3) Some of the other witnesses were meaningless, including one neighbor who said that Matthew threatened to shoot his dog because it kept coming to Matthew’s house and barking at night and waking him up. I guess my wife and I are abusers, too–at our previous house our neighbors’ dog would bark outside our window at 3 AM, and after several complaints we banged on my neighbor’s door and screamed at him, and, if we didn’t threaten to shoot the damn thing, we should’ve.

4) One of the few times on Oprah where Oprah did voice skepticism was when Mary described the morning of the crime. Winkler told Oprah she was angry at her husband and “just wanted to talk to him,” and then she “heard a boom.’ A more complete description of the incident would have been that she wanted to talk to him, waited until he fell asleep, retrieved the shotgun, pumped it, aimed it at his back, pulled the trigger, and then “heard a boom.’

5) Ironically, the truth-teller on the show was feminist Court TV commentator Lisa Bloom, Gloria Allred”s daughter. Bloom said, “At Court TV a collective gasp went up at this verdict. We all thought it was a first degree murder case….Didn’t she make the decision to allow him to fall asleep? Didn’t she make the decision to go into that closet and get that gun? Didn’t she make the decision to aim it at Matthew and pull the trigger?”

Bloom also asserted that “there wasn’t much corroboration [of the abuse] at the trial.”

6) Perhaps the most absurd aspect of both the trial and Oprah was the way Mary highlighted the white platform shoes which she claimed Matthew “made her’ wear, and which she said were deeply humiliating to her. During the trial, Mary held up the shoe and bowed her head down in mock pain and shame. Oprah bought it, telling her audience that on her show “everybody gasped when they saw the shoe.’ Bloom explained to Oprah that in any “big city” people would have “laughed at’ Mary”s claims that the shoes were part of the “abuse’ she suffered.

Conservative nationally-syndicated radio talk show host Mike Gallagher got it right about Mary Winkler in a recent broadcast. He panned her recent performance on Oprah and criticized the legal system’s slap on the wrist for Winkler. To listen to Gallagher’s broadcast, click here.

To learn more about the Winkler case, see my co-authored column No child custody for husband-killer Mary Winkler (World Net Daily, 9/14/07).

Gallagher doesn’t discuss gender issues very often, but when he does he’s often right on. During the Elian Gonzalez saga in 2000, Gallagher was one of the few conservatives in the country who said plainly and clearly that Elian belonged with his father, Juan Gonzalez. During the Clara Harris trial, Mike hosted a debate between myself and one of Clara’s defenders, and, unlike many, Gallagher saw through Clara’s “betrayed wife” shtick.

“When Tiger became the first black man ever to win the Masters [in 1997] he cried like a little boy in the arms of his father, who was there against doctor’s orders after almost dying in heart surgery.”

Tiger Woods’ father Earl died last year at age 74. Eugene Robinson wrote in the Washington Post:

“Earl Woods did much more than raise a supremely talented golfer. In an age when it’s rare to read a sentence with the words ‘African American’ and ‘father’ that doesn’t also include ‘absent’ or some other pejorative, Earl and Tiger Woods were the world’s most visible, and inspiring, counterexample. ‘He was the person I looked up to more than anyone,’ Tiger Woods said following his father’s death, and even the world’s biggest cynic had to know he meant every word.

“To me, the two defining aspects of Tiger Woods’s career have been his supernatural ability to make a golf ball do impossible things and his relationship with his father. Two moments stand out: The Sunday afternoon in 1997 when Tiger became the first black man ever to win the Masters and cried like a little boy in the arms of his father, who was there against doctor’s orders after almost dying in heart surgery. And the Sunday afternoon in 2005 when Tiger won his fourth Masters and cried again, because Earl Woods, for the first time, had been too sick to come to the course and root him on.”

Below are some recent articles and items of interest from Fathers & Families‘ latest News Digest.

Torn by distance, he wonders how far to take custody fight (Boston Globe, 9/24/07)

Rell Cancels Plan To Charge Custodial Parents For Child Support (Associated Press, 9/24/07)

When Ties to a Parent Are Cut by the Other (New York Times, 9/23/07)

Marriage declining in Oregon, especially suburbs, rural counties (Associated Press, 9/23/07)

Men are smartest and dumbest, say scientists (London Times, 9/23/07)

Stephen Baskerville’s Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family will be released soon–click here to learn more.

Video: Domestic Abuse No Longer A Problem, Say Bruised Female Researchers (The Onion, 9/21/07) (Satire)

Inside the Charlie & Denise Custody Battle (OK! Magazine, 9/21/07)

N.D. group studies state custody laws (Fargo Forum, 9/20/07)

Public committee to abolish automatic maternal custody of children under 6 (Haaretz, 9/20/07)

“Ah, yes, divorce … from the Latin word meaning ‘to rip out a man’s genitals through his wallet.”–Robin Williams

Robin Williams had one divorce, but I don’t know to what degree it shaped his thinking on the issue. It’s interesting though, that a couple of the characters Williams has played in movies are divorced men who were very hurt by the experience.

He plays Tom Dobbs, a comedian-turned-presidential candidate, in Man of the Year, and Dobbs speaks of his divorce in hurt tones, as if he had been greatly criticized or vilified by his ex.

Of greater significance is Williams’ role in Mrs. Doubtfire, where, cut out of his beloved children’s lives by his ex-wife after their divorce, he poses as an elderly Scottish woman to get a job as a nanny for his own children. Wikipedia’ s write-up of the plot can be found here.

Thanks to Michael Robinson of the California Alliance for Families and Children for the quote.