Author: Joomlafreaks

December 26th, 2011 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
Not long ago I posted a piece on child support collections in Ohio.  The astonishing figure in that state is that 70% of child support obligors are behind on their payments.  As I said at the time, anyone who’s paying attention would figure out that, when that many people are behind, support levels were probably set too high in the first place.  The figure also suggests that the economic debacle of the past three years has dealt a killing blow to many non-custodial parents’ ability to pay.  Add to that the fact that states make it hard for non-custodial parents to get downward modifications of their support orders, and it’s no surprise that the great majority of non-custodial parents can’t pay everything they owe.

Of course those who’ve drunk the “if you haven’t paid, you’re a deadbeat” Kool-Aid prefer to believe that 70% of Ohioans just don’t care about their kids, I suppose.  But those who are both less ready to judge and more interested in the truth know better.

So this article comes as no surprise (Fox10TV, 12/21/11).  It’s from Alabama, and, although the statistics are a bit better there, most non-custodial parents in that state are behind on their payments as well.

Thousands of parents are fighting for child support. Nationally, more than half of people don’t receive the full payments ordered by the court. Mobile is consistent with the national average.

Rose Johnson of the state’s Department of Human Resources seems to know a little bit about why so few custodial parents are receiving what courts say they should.

“The overwhelming problem is you are going to have people who are not paying,” said Johnson…

“What are you going to accomplish if you do jail people who have large child support debt? They really don’t have the ability to pay it. You’re not going to help them, you’re not going to help the child and if anything you’re putting a wedge between them,” said Johnson.

“They really don’t have the ability to pay it.”  I thought I’d never hear a state official speak that simple truth.  We hear almost daily about law enforcement agencies conducting “sweeps” of non-paying parents.  What’s seldom obvious in those reports is how little they collect.  In New Jersey, the average collected is about 1% of what’s owed.  Anyone who’s at all curious would conclude that Johnson is right; it’s not a problem of not wanting to support their kids, but one of inability to do so.

Much of the indebtedness could be reduced if states would adopt procedures to make downward modifications of support levels easier, quicker and cheaper.  Special masters who did nothing but hear child support modifications up or down would be one obvious step.  Removing all fees for filing for modification would be another and published information on the type of evidence needed to prove a case for modification would be a third.

But no state to my knowledge has done any of those things, even in this devastating recession.  The unsurprising result is that indebtedness jumps up and up with each passing year.

While we’re on the subject, it’s worth noting that the U.S. Census Bureau came out with the latest child support figures earlier this month.  The most recent data here are for 2009.

The good news is that the number of custody orders with dads as the custodial parent has rocketed skyward.  In 2007, they were only 16.2% of the total; in 2009 17.8% of parents with custody orders were dads.  At that rate it’ll only be 20 years before we reach equality in child custody.  Break out the champagne.

What’s also true is that, even though they’re ordered to pay more than mothers, fathers do a lot better job of doing so.  Fathers are ordered to pay, on average, $5,997 per year whereas mothers are only ordered to pay $5,601.  Despite being ordered to pay more, fathers pay 62.8% of the ordered amount while mothers pay 54.6%.  And 42% of custodial mothers receive all of what they’re owed, while only 34.1% of fathers do.

I suppose I don’t need to add that the article about the Alabama child support situation mentions none of the above except to say that 41% of custodial parents nationwide receive everything they’re owed.

Like so many other myths, that of the “deadbeat dad” seems a hard one to let go of.

December 27th, 2011 by Glenn Sacks

Black Union Army soldiers like Spottswood Rice helped turn the tide in the Civil War.

The Hero Father. In the face of a family court system that is stacked against him, he fights a long, hard battle to remain a meaningful part of the lives of the children who love and need him.
The press rarely, if ever, talks about the Hero Father.  They’d rather vilify “deadbeat dads,” real or imagined.

But even the best among us could learn much from a Hero Father of a different era—a former slave named Spottswood Rice.

During the Civil War, Rice escaped from his slaveholders and joined a Union Army regiment of former slaves determined to defeat the Confederacy and liberate their people. From a barracks hospital he wrote his children—still held as slaves in the South—a letter in which he lovingly assures them:

“Don’t be uneasy my children I expect to have you. If Diggs [the children’s master] don’t give you up this Government will and I feel confident that I will get you.”

He adds:

“Your Miss Kaitty [Diggs, the children’s master] said that I tried to steal you But I’ll let her know that God never intended for man to steal his own flesh and blood…And I want her to remember if she meets me with ten thousand soldiers she [will] meet her enemy…”

In other words, “Daddy’s coming to get you–and he’s bringing the Union Army with him!”

Spottswood Rice also wrote to his children’s slavemaster, letting her know exactly where things stood:

“Mary is my child and she is a God given right of my own…I want you to remember this one thing…we are now making up about one thousand black troops to come up through…to the slaveholding rebels we don’t expect to leave them there, root nor branch…I offered once to pay you forty dollars for my own child but I am glad now that you did not accept it…you call my children your property not so with me my children is my own and I expect to get them and when I get ready to come after Mary I will have a power and authority to bring her away.”

Abolitionist leader Fredrick Douglass, also a former slave, criticized those abolitionists who shied away from hard struggle:

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning…

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them…If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice…”

Unfortunately, there are those in our movement who fall into the same thinking of those whom Douglass criticizes. Let us be clear–the fight for fairness in family law is a fight against entrenched, well-financed interests who will not be moved unless they are pushed. And the only way to effectively push them is the Fathers and Families way–by building a strong, well-funded national organization that can wage a determined struggle for our children and the loving bonds we share with them.

Fathers and Families fights for the modern Hero Father, the modern Spottswood Rice. Please give in honor of Hero Father Spottswood Rice or the Hero Father in your life. Please write in whose honor your gift is on the memo line of your check or, when giving electronically, please use the “Honor” screen after you submit your gift.

We’ve accomplished much, but there is far more left to do–please give.

For the love of our children,

Ned Holstein, MD, MS
Founder and Chairman of the Board

Glenn Sacks, MA
Executive Director

P.S. Time is short–there are only a few days left for you to put your check in the mail or give electronically. Please give today!

PO Box 270760
Boston, Massachusetts 02127-0760
617-542-9300
www.fathersandfamilies.org
info@fathersandfamilies.org

December 28th, 2011 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
Henry da Massa celebrated Christmas (and three months at home) with his daughter Pearl this past Sunday.  Here’s the latest article (The Sudbury Star, 12/27/11).

I’ve written a couple of pieces about da Massa.  Here’s one of them.  He’s the British dad who’s ex-wife first accused him of child abuse and, when the courts investigated and found her allegations to be meritless, fled with the girl who was then four. 

But before Helen Gavaghan ran, she carefully planned the abduction.  She apparently got large cash advances from on her credit card and of course left the issuer high and dry when she disappeared.  She then had a friend tell da Massa that she and Pearl were going to India for a two-week holiday.  That left him assuming all was well long enough for her to make her getaway. 

Gavaghan went to Mexico where she apparently changed her and Pearl’s names for the first time.  She would change them three more times over the years.  The two then walked across the U.S.-Mexico border into Texas where they once again disappeared.  They were once sited in Toronto which became the cite of the international hunt that eventually resulted in her apprehension.  She was jailed and Pearl was returned to the custody of her father in England.  Gavaghan was extradited to England where she awaits trial, presumably on the child abduction charge and, I assume, charges of defrauding a credit card company.

When Gavaghan was discovered in Canada, she had been assisted by the Catholic Worker organization there.  The Catholic Worker establishes “houses of hospitality” in Mexico and the U.S. to assist undocumented aliens.  The houses provide shelter, food, clothing and an opportunity to find work and a place to live mostly to people from Mexico and Central America.  My guess is that Gavaghan went from city to city from Texas to Canada, staying temporarily at the Catholic Worker houses of hospitality.  The reason I think so is that she was found in such a house in Canada and it would be a perfect way to travel across this country virtually free of charge and completely anonymous.  It would be an ideal way to “disappear,” which is what she and Pearl did.

Of course Gavaghan told the same story to the Catholic Worker volunteers that she told to the British courts – that Henry da Massa was a darkly satanic figure who abused his little daughter.  The difference of course is that the courts investigated and determined Gavaghan’s claims were fabricated; the Catholic Worker folks didn’t ask questions and swallowed her claims whole.

Now it appears that still more of her claims were bogus.  For example, when she was arrested, Gavaghan claimed that Pearl had been well cared for.  Now, how well can you care for a child when you’re constantly on the run, looking over your shoulder, staying in free shelters and changing your and the child’s names every few months?  The answer is, “not very.”

But Gavaghan also claimed that she’d home-schooled the girl and given her proper medical and dental care.  Along with every other word out of Helen Gavaghan’s mouth, those too seem to be false.

“She’s got some catching up to do with her education and we are both back to where a father-daughter relationship should be.

“It didn’t take very long to accomplish, even after three years of hardcore alienation she’s been subjected to,” Da Massa said.

“She’s incredibly smart, but the notion that she was being home-schooled was a fabrication and excuse, really. She hadn’t seen a doctor.

“She’s now seen a doctor, the dentist, a social worker.

Yes, and then there’s that “hardcore alienation” da Massa mentioned.  Helen Gavaghan did that as well, trying to convince Pearl, like everyone else, that her father was an evil, abusive man.

Funny, she’s been with him for three months, and seems to be doing fine.  No evidence of abuse, no dark satanic rituals, just a father and his daughter getting to know one another again after three years, almost half her life.

Amazingly, da Massa clearly sees his daughter’s continuing need for her mother.  He also understands that, however fractured, however weird and dsyfunctional, he, Pearl and Helen are still a family.

“We need to function as a normal-ish, fragmented family.”

His are the words of a father who “gets it.”  Henry da Massa has a feel for what his daughter needs and seems determined to give it to her despite all the wrongs Helen Gavaghan has done to everyone her careering life’s path has touched.  Sadly, given all those malicious wrongs, Helen Gavaghan should never have more than closely supervised visitation with her daughter.  Her willingness to impose her own distortions of Henry da Massa on Pearl should forever make greater freedom of contact with the girl out of the question.  She’s flouted court orders before; there’s no reason to doubt she’d do it again.

And of course, she should spend a good many years behind bars.  We’ll see.

December 29th, 2011 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
Much of the Arizona press is crying for more and more children to be taken from their parents by CPS.  Commentary in the Arizona Republic consistently runs in that direction.  It rightly cites the many horrifying cases in which CPS caseworkers knew about a child in danger but still failed to do the basic job of shielding the child from harm.  Over the years, many of those children died as a result.

It’s hard not to jump to conclusions in the face of those tragic and unnecessary deaths.  But the conclusion those commentators jump to is the wrong one.  They call for ever-greater intrusion into parental decision-making by CPS. 
As a practical matter, that means taking more children from parents and placing them in foster care at least temporarily.

Those who advocate that approach are well motivated; they want to protect children.  But is foster care the way to do that?  In this post I reprised a bit of social science that strongly suggests that children placed in foster care do far worse than other children.  More importantly, studies that compare outcomes of children in foster care with those in moderately abusive or neglectful parental homes find the foster kids still fare worse.  That’s not an argument for never placing children in foster care, but it is a strong argument for great caution in doing so.

I would urge the good folks in Arizona to read this article that appears to be the first in a series (The Gazette, 12/28/11).  Put simply, it seems that, almost a decade ago, Iowa went down the road currently being recommended by the Arizona Republic writers.  Predictably, the results have not been good.

How Iowa got where it is looks eerily reminiscent what’s going on now in Arizona.

When little Shelby Duis was found dead at her Spirit Lake home — with massive head injuries, fractured ribs and two broken hands — it sent a shock through the entire state.

Neighbors and day-care workers had warned child protective workers for nearly a year before the 2-year-old’s January 2000 death that the girl was being abused.

Then, later that same year, an Oskaloosa man came forward to say that he’d told officials for months his 23-month-old son was being mistreated by his estranged wife and her boyfriend before the boy was hospitalized with critical brain and spinal injuries.

Iowans demanded to know why the Iowa Department of Human Services didn’t protect these vulnerable children — why child protective workers had allowed them to remain in such dangerous environments.

Sound familiar?  It’s exactly the refrain now being sung by the Arizona press and law enforcement officials.  Well, Iowans got what they wanted – sharply ramped-up intervention by DHS into family life and parental decision-making.

Then-Gov. Tom Vilsack ordered DHS to adopt a “remove-first” policy — to remove a child from a home even before they’d determined whether reports of abuse were true.

“The watch phrase will be — when there is a doubt, work to take the child out,” he announced.

That philosophy persists today.

So what happened when DHS was given more power and the explicit encouragement from the governor to “take first and ask questions later?”  Unsurprisingly, many families that were broken up by DHS weren’t abusive at all.

But most of Iowa’s removal cases don’t involve physical or sexual abuse; rather, they’re largely “denial of critical care” — a catchall category that can include everything from bad housekeeping to poor supervision.

Into the bargain, the new powers given to DHS have resulted in a legal situation that looks problematical at best and possibly unconstitutional.  Remember, the U.S. Supreme Court has strongly suggested that states have no power to intervene in parental decision-making absent a showing that the parent is unfit.  Such a showing could only be accomplished using due process of law.  But is that what happens in Iowa?

Cedar Rapids-based therapist Virgil Gooding, a member of the African American Family Preservation and Resource Committee who has worked with DHS for decades, says the agency’s “culture of caution” unfairly places the burden of proof on parents — with often tragic results.

Placing the burden of proof on parents to prove they should keep their children is the exact opposite of what the Supreme Court suggested constitutional law requires.

But Governor Vilsack’s “remove first” policy has unquestionably “succeeded” in one way.

Even as other states have implemented reforms that have dramatically, and safely, reduced the numbers of children placed in foster care while supporting parents’ efforts to provide better home environments, Iowa continues to remove children from their families at an alarming rate.

When you adjust for poverty, only three states remove children from parental custody at rates higher than Iowa, according to Richard Wexler, Executive Director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.

“There are so many ways out there to do better,” he said. “But Iowa hasn’t even tried.”

Wexler’s research shows that Iowa removes children at more than twice the national average when poverty rates are factored in — four times the rate of neighboring Illinois, where reforms have improved child safety while keeping more families intact.

So with all those children being removed from parents, you’d think that Iowa’s child abuse and neglect rates would have dropped dramatically.  After all, isn’t that the whole idea behind “remove first?”  Some parents abuse children; child welfare workers don’t always intervene in time, therefore the way to protect children is to take more of them from parents – and earlier – than before.  That’s what Vilsack ordered and it’s what many in Arizona are clamoring for now.

But does it work?  Are Iowa’s children safer now than before?  Were all those studies showing the dangers of foster care just wrong?

And, as the Urban Institute asked in its 2006 study, “What About the Dads?”  Many, many children taken from a single parent are taken from Mom.  But child welfare agencies nationwide skip Dad as the obvious placement alternative and go straight to foster care.  Is that what Iowa DHS did?  My guess is “yes,” and the article suggests I’m right.

As I said, the article is the first in series, so we’ll see.  With any luck, Arizonans will too.

December 30th, 2011 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
One of the strangest custody cases I’ve ever encountered took yet another weird twist yesterday.  Kristen Ruggiero died in her New Hampshire prison cell.  Read about it here (Union Leader, 12/28/11).  She died just hours after the state’s Supreme Court upheld her convictions on 12 counts of perjury and related felonies.  Ruggiero had been sentenced to 7 – 14 years in prison.  She was also facing 21 more criminal charges stemming from allegations of lying in her first criminal case.  The cause of her death is not yet known.

My heart goes out to her daughter Meghan, who’s only nine, and who has now lost her mother.  To be sure, Kristen wasn’t much of a mother and she wouldn’t have been able to do much for her daughter from a prison cell, but to a nine-year-old, a mother’s death is a terrible blow, whoever the mother is and however her death occurs.

Kristen Ruggiero was the ex-wife of Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer, Jeffrey Ruggiero.  During their divorce and custody battle over their daughter Meghan, Kristen accused Jeffrey of sending her threatening text messages.  Jeff was arrested and charged.  Kristen requested and received from the family court a restraining order that, among other things, prohibited Jeff from possessing a firearm.  That meant he would have had to resign from the Coast Guard.

Kristen then presented Jeff with a choice – continue fighting for custody of Meghan and lose your military career, or relinquish your rights to your daughter and keep your career.  Jeff, believing that, after his divorce, Kristen would allow him little or no time with Meghan anyway, opted to keep his job.  He signed the documents her attorney had drawn up terminating his parental rights.

Then, police figured out that Kristen had been lying all along.  She’d sent the threatening messages to herself.  She was charged with a variety of felonies including perjury and obstruction of justice for which she was found guilty and incarcerated.  That’s the verdict that was just upheld by the New Hampshire Supreme Court.  One of Kristen’s partners in crime, Brendan Bisbee, was also convicted of perjury just last week.

But in the middle of that whirl of legal events, Kristen did a strange thing – she filed suit to adopt Meghan, her own biological daughter.  What’s even stranger is that a court approved her request.  Now, I know what you’re thinking.  How can a parent adopt her own child?  She already has full parental rights, so how is that legally possible?  And, in order to adopt a child, don’t the parents’ rights need to be terminated first?  So how did Kristen terminate her own rights and then adopt the same child?

Well, all of those are good questions to which I don’t have the answer.  Suffice it to say that she did adopt Meghan despite being her biological mother, none of whose rights had yet been terminated when she did it.  As a sidelight to the entire fiasco, I’d say the judge in that case needs to be thoroughly investigated.

But, with Jeff’s rights terminated and Kristen in jail and later in prison, the issue arose of who would care for Meghan who is now nine.  Kristen appointed her parents to be the girl’s guardians.  As her mother, whether adoptive or biological, she had the right to do that.

But now Kristen is dead and no longer has the power to decide who should care for Meghan.  Moreover, Meghan’s grandmother, Elizabeth McDonald, faces several felony charges stemming from her assisting Kristen in her campaign of lies against Jeffrey.

All of that adds up to this (as far as I can tell):  Jeffrey should get custody of his daughter.  Yes, he relinquished his parental rights, but that was brought about by fraud and duress and should in no way be allowed to remain in effect.  Up until the day Kristen died, Jeffrey has been fighting her adoption of their daughter.  That case is not yet finally resolved.

The only people with any claim at all to custody of Meghan are her grandparents, one of whom faces multiple felony charges.  Her grandfather is well into his sixties and is probably not able to care for a nine-year-old girl on his own.

Then there’s Jeffrey who’s her biological father and who’s never stopped trying to get her back despite being thwarted by a court system that shows every sign of being rigged against him.  As far as I can see, the only thing standing in the way of Jeffrey’s regaining custody is his relinquishment of his rights.  Due to its having been obtained by fraud that has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, you’d think that would be easy enough to nullify.

The bottom line?  Jeffrey Ruggiero should have full custody of his daughter.  But the New Hampshire family courts have to date behaved in such a bizarre fashion in this case, I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

The next few months should continue to fascinate in a case that’s still one of the strangest I’ve ever seen.

January 1st, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
May 2012 bring you and your loved ones ever closer.  May the year advance the cause of fathers’ and mothers’ equality, and preserve and strengthen the bonds between children and their parents.

January 2nd, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
Few would argue that child welfare agencies nationwide are without flaws.  Not a day goes by that there isn’t an article and usually several articles detailing yet another failure of such an agency.  Most of the stories involve failure to protect children who are at risk of neglect or injury, but some read more like 1984. 

In those, caseworkers commit the most outrageous acts of bureaucratic overreaching for the sake of taking children from perfectly fit parents. 
  A Canadian boy is snatched by Oregon authorities for trespassing in an office park and bicycling without a helmet.  It takes two years for his perfectly fit parents to get him back.  A Detroit mother sees the police appear at her door with an ineffective warrant obtained without a hint of due process and take her daughter.  What was Mom’s crime?  She refused to give the girl psychotropic medication that mental health professionals also refused to give her once she was out of her mother’s care.

I could go on indefinitely.

Knowledgeable critics of CPS say that many of the children they take into foster care would be better served if their parents were offered training in the specific areas in which they’re deficient.  For example, parents short on money and skills, when confronted with a physically or mentally impaired child, may need nothing more than training by a professional in how to address the child’s needs.  Too often, case workers seem to see such situations as black or white – either take the child into care or leave it with the parents who don’t have the skills to adequately care for the child.

But how to fix CPS is first and foremost a matter of finding out what caseworkers do or don’t do in individual cases.  And that turns out to be a problem, at least in California.  Confidentiality statutes are often used by CPS to refuse to disclose what happened in cases of child abuse, neglect or death.

This article details some of the problems the Sacramento Bee had in finding out basic information about cases of injury to children (Sacramento Bee, 12/26/11).  That’s despite the fact that, in cases resulting in a child’s death, the information is a matter of public record according to state law.  Put another way, the law requires CPS to disclose their records, but they often refuse. 

We’ve seen the disgraceful case of Los Angeles County that, to this day, has refused to provide information required by law to be disclosed to a state auditor, empowered by the state legislature to obtain the information.  Apparently, Los Angeles isn’t the only county to balk at complying with the law when it comes to CPS records.

Los Angeles County has refused to comply with requests made under the law by the California State Auditor and the Los Angeles Times. The newspaper recently sued the county over the issue, while the auditor was forced to leave the county out of a recent report on CPS agencies.

Two years ago, the National Youth Law Center asked 12 counties to provide basic records required under the law. Several counties replied promptly, but others required repeated requests and Riverside County refused to comply at all, the center said.

In other cases, CPS has produced records, but incomplete ones, making it impossible for educated professionals to evaluate caseworkers’ conduct.  Two such cases are those of Giovanni and Yeinira Melchor, both of whom died due to the neglect of their parents.  Four other children were belatedly taken from the parents who were deported to Mexico following Yeinira’s death.  Read about it here (Sacramento Bee, 12/26/11).

Although the Bee has managed to obtain some of the records in the case, it’s still impossible to ascertain why a caseworker returned Yeinira to her parents after her brother Giovanni had drowned at age one due to his mother’s neglect.  Ample documentation revealed parents who were illiterate in Spanish, couldn’t speak English, were very poor and utterly incapable of caring for Yeinira who had several physical impairments requiring special training and attention.

So why was she returned to her parent’s care?  It’s anyone’s guess because the county CPS has refused to turn over all the records in the case.

County officials say they cannot discuss the case or the records because of confidentiality laws.

But without documentation, evaluating the agency’s actions is difficult, said Ed Howard, senior counsel at the Children’s Advocacy Institute in San Diego, who reviewed Yeinira’s file at the request of The Bee.

“If we take them at face value – that there is no documentation for reuniting this child with a very troubled family – then this is a fiasco,” Howard said. “You can’t do this job without documenting your reasons for making such a decision.”

Specifically, CPS records for Yeinira do not show whether the agency conducted an assessment about the risk of returning her to the home – using what’s called the Structured Decision Making tool – in violation of its own policies.

“In all of its reports, the (CPS) Oversight Committee has recommended comprehensive and consistent use of the tool,” said Gina Roberson, co-chair of the committee. “It means social workers are using the best practices in trying to prevent child abuse.”

The CPS Oversight Committee, echoing the complaints of experts and child welfare advocates, has repeatedly found the agency’s social workers have made questionable decisions and serious errors in high-risk cases such as the Melchor’s. That assessment was repeated in other reports this year, including one by the California State Auditor.

In California as in Arizona and doubtless elsewhere, CPS, sometimes in violation of state law, hides behind a veil of secrecy, refusing to disclose what it did or failed to do in individual cases.  Until that veil of secrecy is removed, child welfare agencies will remain unanswerable to the public who pays their salaries.  They will remain unanswerable to state legislatures, the police, everyone.

The great irony of course is that confidentiality laws were often enacted to protect children from unwanted and often hurtful publicity.  We see this in various ways in the United States and all parts of the English-speaking world.  Time and again, in child welfare cases, but also in divorce cases, adoption cases and others, confidentiality creates a secret room in which children are abused by the very authorities who are supposed to protect them.

No amount of transparency will save all children from harm, nor will it make child welfare agencies into models of bureaucratic perfection.  But without transparency, those seeking to improve a situation that no one argues is acceptable will remain hamstrung.  It is past time for CPS decisions to see the light of day.

January 4th, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
If Jennifer Hemmingsen doesn’t let up, Fathers and Families may be forced to give her an award for the best journalism in the area of fathers’ rights.  Here’s the blog I did on her first piece.  And here’s her second piece (The Gazette, 12/31/11).

Again, the story comes from Iowa.  Victor Rogers had a girlfriend named Molly.  She became pregnant with his child, but the two split up and Molly got together with another man.  In February of 2009, five weeks before she was due to deliver Rogers’ daughter, Molly’s new
boyfriend beat her up so badly that doctors decided to induce labor.  That man’s violence against her got the state’s Department of Human Services involved.

Rogers learned about his new daughter and rushed to the hospital only to be told by the DHS caseworker that she’d placed the child in foster care.  The little girl was his and  he’d never done anything to hurt her or her mother.  In fact, there was nothing to suggest that Rogers was anything but a fit father.  But, as is so often the case, that wasn’t good enough for an agency whose job is to protect children and unite them with their parents, assuming the parents are capable of caring for them.  

Contrary to Supreme Court case law, Iowa DHS forced Rogers to prove that he was a fit parent.  DHS didn’t make it easy or quick, but, over the astonishing period of two years, he succeeded.  He started off with only brief periods of visitation with his daughter that were strictly supervised.  Gradually he worked up to unsupervised weekends

Even though Rodgers had no history of child abuse or neglect, DHS would make him jump through more than two years’ worth of hoops to prove he was good enough to keep her…

Over the next few months, DHS records show, Rodgers worked his way up from supervised to unsupervised visits, meeting every personal and parenting goal the agency laid out for him. In October 2009, he even had his girlfriend, Molly, who had an extensive history with DHS, move out of his apartment because his caseworker told him to.

Rodgers agreed to take his daughter, Karee, to a safe place and call police, if Molly or Karee’s mother showed up at his apartment. By December 2009, he was consistently having weekend-long visits with his child. Social workers would drop in unannounced twice a day just to monitor his care. Things were going fine.

By Jan. 13, 2010, DHS gave him full-time custody of Karee on a trial basis — the last step toward reunification.

But if you think things were that simple for this perfectly fine, upstanding father, think again.

That month, when Molly showed up at Rodgers’ place, he took Karee to his cousin’s house, in accordance with the safety plan.

Yet when police arrived, Molly told them she lived there, and it was Rodgers who was forced to leave. When he returned later that night, Molly stabbed him in the shoulder. The next day, a DHS worker showed up at Rodgers’ home with police, demanding Karee.

Rodgers refused to hand over the child without a court order. Instead, police stunned him with a Taser and took Karee. DHS moved him back to fully supervised visits.

Rogers still had done nothing wrong.  Over the course of a year, he’d proven to everyone’s satisfaction that he was a capable and loving parent, but when his girlfriend behaved badly toward him, he’s the one whose access to his child was cut back to next to nothing.  Her wrong, his punishment (and his daughter’s of course).

Then of course there’s the fact that, in requesting that DHS produce a court order allowing its caseworker to take Karee, Rogers was completely within his rights.  But when you’re a fit father, your rights can be a frail reed indeed.

But that wasn’t the end;  Rogers wasn’t about to give up.

Still, caseworkers were positive about his progress, noting that Rodgers had maintained stable housing, employment and school throughout the case. He had everything needed to care for Karee and was showing good parenting skills.

“Victor has been able to do what DHS wanted done and progress to getting Karee home,” a February 2010 note reads. “Victor is very conscientious in moving forward in his life for himself and Karee.

But when caseworkers once again found Molly at Rogers’ apartment, they moved to terminate his rights.  That was true despite the fact that he’d done not a single thing to indicate his unfitness as a father.  On the contrary, DHS reports on him were glowing; not a word in their file on him criticized Victor Rogers.

Rodgers continued to visit his daughter, under supervision. The worker’s notes are poignant: “Victor was very appropriate.” … “Victor was calm and relaxed during the visit, but did seem to be sad when this worker took Karee to his vehicle and drove off.” … “Karee never wanted her dad to let go of her.” … “Karee was very content sleeping in her dad’s arms for the majority of the visit.”

At Rodgers’ termination hearing that August, the social worker testified she didn’t believe Rodgers ever would harm his child. She was just worried he wouldn’t be able to keep her safe.

On Nov. 16, 2010, Rodgers’ parental rights were terminated. He appealed. He lost.

Karee would later be adopted by an unrelated family.

So there you have it; a perfectly fit father who all agree would never harm his child and who was a nurturing, protective, responsible parent to her.  And yet, because DHS didn’t like his girlfriend who occasionally appeared in his life, his child was taken from him and adopted by strangers. 

As I so often remark, that child didn’t need to be adopted; forcing adoption on Karee means that another child somewhere with no loving parent, who desperately needs adoption, lost out.  The parents who adopted Karee, could have adopted that child, but didn’t.  They already had Victor Rogers’ daughter.

As it turns out, Rogers had two strikes against him from the outset, instead of just one.  Being male and a parent was the first strike.  As we know, state child welfare agencies try to avoid involving fathers in their children’s lives when possible.  But Rogers is an African-American man, and that makes him doubly suspicious to Iowa DHS.

A recent third-party analysis of Linn County DHS, conducted by the non-profit Center for the Study of Social Policy, cited a concerning, widespread confusion between child safety and the potential risk of future harm among Cedar Rapids child welfare workers. The confusion was further compounded by “stigma, labeling and negative inferences drawn based on a family’s history.”

The analysis noted a “culture of caution” that leads to excessive intervention, coercion and monitoring of families, particularly black families. It found “the child protection system and its partners intervened with some African-American families in extensive ways with no clear reason or rationale.”

 As Rodgers, now 48, tells it: “They were just suspicious of me from the beginning.”

He speaks for countless fathers of all races, creeds, colors, religions, ethnicities and classes.

January 4th, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
The number of stay-at-home dads is still a fraction of that of stay-at-home moms, but attitudes about fathers are changing for the better.  The Census Bureau reports that there are about 176,000 SAHDs in the United States versus over 5 million SAHMs.  In fact, the numbers for both are certainly higher.  That’s because the Census Bureau defines “stay-at-home parent” as one who’s done no paid work in the past 12 months and had parenting as his/her major activity during the same time.  That means if a parent works one day in the year and earns money for doing so, he/she is not a stay-at-home parent. 

But the number of stay-at-home dads has gone pretty consistently up for the last 10 years.  In 2000 there were about 93,000 and almost twice that number today.  Still, compared to the number of stay-at-home mothers, 176,000 dads isn’t much.  The overwhelming tendency of Americans is for the man to be the chief breadwinner and for the woman to “supplement” his earnings and to most of the childcare.

But the future may be different.  The radical shift in the ratio of women to men in higher education is one reason.  With about 58% of college degrees going to women, they’ll have the opportunity to be the higher earner in the couple once they marry.  That would mean the possibility of a marked shift in roles at least among the college-educated.  Typically, it’s the lower earner who ends up staying with the kids, for what should be obvious reasons.

Of course it’s also typical that Mom stays home with the kids.  So what’s going to happen when Mom earns more Dad does?  Study after study shows that, even among the best educated – those with law degrees, MBAs and PhDs in science, technology, engineering and math fields – women still take significant periods of time off work once children come along.

Will that change in the near future?  A study by the Families and Work Institute found significant shifts in the attitudes of college-age young adults regarding the “work/life balance.”  That would seem to be a harbinger of change in who earns and who cares for children, but I’m not so sure.  The attitudes of young adults without children may well change when faced with the reality of earning and childcare.  The reality of large percentages of mothers foregoing childcare in favor of the rat race is one I’ll believe when I see it.

Still, societal pressures for change continue to mount.  More and more, fathers are being seen in a positive light that simply didn’t exist 10 years ago.  Courts are now grappling with issues of parenting time that were foregone conclusions just a short time ago.  Many state statutes now seek to remove discretion from family court judges in favor of specified considerations regarding the fitness of each parent.  They tend to level the playing field for dads.  Popular culture is no longer the swamp of anti-father propaganda it was in the 80s and 90s.

In that vein, comes this modest piece that’s essentially a paean to stay-at-home dads (USAToday, 12/29/11).  It’s not long on data; in fact it’s just a feel-good piece about fathers, their benefits to children, children’s benefits to them and how the whole SAHD thing can work if couples will just let it But some couples simply have found that having dad at home with the children works for other reasons.

David and Amanda Dornfeld of Columbus decided before they were married that when they had children, David would stay at home when Amanda went back to work as a family practice physician.

“We are fortunate that we can do this,” Amanda said.

David has been the primary caregiver for the couple’s three children since the birth of their oldest, 6-year-old Luke. His days also include caring for Noah, 3, and Violet, 15 months.

“I love it a lot, but it’s exhausting,” said David, a certified public accountant. He squeezes in some work hours during the busy tax season.

David, 36, takes care of most of the typical household tasks, including grocery shopping, menu planning and cooking. Amanda does the laundry.

Amanda, 34, said she admires her husband’s parenting skills, from coordinating daily schedules and playing with the kids to remaining calm when sibling squabbles erupt.

“I always say his job is harder than mine. And he’s really, really good at it,” said Amanda, who works at Sandcrest Family Medicine.

It continues in the same tone through several couples, each with a stay-at-home dad, his supportive wife and their kids.  As I say, there’s not a lot of depth, but in a way that’s my point.  The article is an example of the type of “You go Dad!” piece that’s become commonplace in the past few years.

None of this changes the many obstacles in the way of the vast majority of fathers.  Despite some new legislation, family courts haven’t much changed their bad old habits of ordering custody.  Bogus claims of domestic violence still stand between countless fathers and children.  Feminist organizatoins that should know better still invariably oppose the slightest improvement in father-child relationships.  Child support practices continue to abuse parents, particularly fathers.  Adoption law and paternity fraud law are open invitations to mothers to separate fathers from their children.

But, as we begin a new year, we can see the glacier moving.  Changing laws, practices and public perceptions about fathers, mothers and their rightful relationships to work and children is one of the most difficult and daunting tasks imaginable.  Those roles have been established for a long time and they don’t change easily.  Still, things are changing, and for the better for fathers and children.

January 5th, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
The Brits are “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.”  Read about it here (Cornwall Community News, 12/26/11).

The New Fathers for Justice organization staged one pre-Christmas action and threatened another.  They only had to threaten the second because its target, the Church of England, gladly did what was necessary to avoid men in Batman outfits climbing the towers of Canterbury Cathedral unfurling banners calling for fathers’ rights.

Meanwhile the Archbishop of Canterbury waxed lyrical about the value the Church placed on fatherhood – after protestors threatened to protest at Canterbury Cathedral.

Lambeth Palace, the established Church’s head office, put out a statement on behalf of Dr Rowan Williams which reads:

“The Archbishops thoughts and prayers are with all those who cannot be with their families at this time.

“The image of fatherhood is at the heart of Christianity as can be seen in the loving and dependable God of the New Testament.

“The Church recognises the significance of the fathers role in the life of a child.

“Christian communities around the country are working to support families in need, whether providing practical help, like parent toddler groups or courses in parenting skills, or simply as a human network helping to share responsibilities and encourage all human relationships to flourish.”

Well, that’s pretty bland.  But if the Archbishop cares enough about the demonstrations by the fathers’ group to put out a statement, maybe he’ll put some weight behind those words.  Maybe he’ll encourage parishoners to keep fathers and children together post-divorce.  After all, every level of the church hierarchy has counselled members of his congregation on divorce.  Why not make it church practice for part of that counselling to be keeping all parent-child relationships intact to the greatest extent possible.  I’m no expert on the matter, but I can’t see how that would conflict with any other church teaching.  It certainly shouldn’t.

While they were at it, New Fathers for Justice paid an overnight visit to the Cornwall home of Justice Minister Ken Clarke.  There they painted slogans on his garage door like “Fatherless Christmas,” and left abandoned children’s toys on his lawn.  Clarke, through a spokeswoman, was not amused.

A spokesman for the politician called the words ‘Fatherless Christmas’ “distasteful”.

She said: “‘There were some distasteful slogans painted on the garage doors of Mr Clarke’s home early on Christmas Day.

“Distasteful.”  Well, we certainly want to behave with all possible decorum when confronted by a public official who plainly gives not a tinker’s ‘damn’ about fathers and their relationships with their children.  Let’s see; do I raise my pinkie whilst sipping tea with the Minister or not?  I’m an American, so how would I know?

Clarke is a Tory, and they’re the ones who, prior to the elections 20 months ago seemed to promise an overhaul of the family justice system in the UK.  Months into the review process, there was considerable evidence that the Norgrove Commission intended to make, as the centerpiece of its recommendations, either a presumption of shared parenting or the need for each child to have a significant relationship with both parents post-divorce.

But, when the Norgrove report was finalized and made public it looked to most like a step backward.  Far from offering dads a presumption of equal parenting, it even backed off the watered-down recommendation of a significant relationship between father and child.  In short, if the much ballyhooed Norgrove report accomplishes any change to British family law, it won’t be to the benefit of fathers or their children who’d like to continue seeing them after Mum and Dad split up.

Family rights groups nationwide are furious that after years of promising reform, the coalition Government conducted a ‘whitewash’ review of reviled ‘family law’.

Clarke’s Ministry is directly responsible…

West Country New Fathers for Justice spokesman Richard Adams responded: ‘Ken Clarke may well find the slogans of our group ‘distasteful’.

“We find the denial of equal rights to fathers, and the denial to children of their right to a family life, to be yet more distasteful, and worth protesting against.

“Why does he keep lying that fathers have equal rights everyone in the real world knows it’s patently untrue?

“He seems to live in some world of his own and we hope this Christmas protest will wake him up a bit.”

Mr Adams went on: “After years of fishing for our votes saying they would reverse the brutal policies of the so-called ‘family’ court, the Tories have done nothing.

“Norgrove’s review was a ludicrous sham, dictated by the people responsible for child abuse and persecution the new Government promised to stamp out.

“We’d like nothing more than to be simply with our families, and happy in the knowledge our children would grow up with equal rights, this Christmas.

“But until anything is done – this is the only way anyone takes any notice of our message.”

Well, with that last, I must disagree.  Here’s some advice for our brothers and sisters across the pond.  Pick an MP who looks vulnerable and who’s failed to do the right thing about family law.  Focus all your energy on that person and vote him/her out of office.  It matters not a whit who wins, if you toss one bum out, the others will take notice.  Power.  It’s the only thing they understand.