Author: Joomlafreaks

February 1st, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
The always excellent Christina Hoff Sommers has called for the Centers for Disease Control to withdraw its recent National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey.  She does so because the survey replaces scientific rigor with political ideology and therefore gravely disserves public discourse about domestic  and sexual violence.  She also notes that the survey argues for massive governmental intervention to solve problems the survey has itself massively inflated.  Read Sommers’ piece here (Washington Post, 1/27/12).

One of the main ways in which fathers are separated from children by family courts is mothers’ claims of abuse, either physical, sexual, emotional, psychological, financial, etc.  As I’ve often noted, many of those claims are objectively false and, whether true or false, succeed in separating fathers from children with barely a nod toward due process of law.  At the first claim by a mother, a restraining order is issued against the father.  There may be no evidence of an offense on his part beyond the mother’s say-so, but he’s out on the street, forbidden from entering his own house or having contact with his child.

Indeed, it’s frequently the case that not even an allegation of violence is necessary for a judge to order that he have no contact with his child.  Of course, eventually, he gets a hearing, but how does he prove that he didn’t yell at her?  How does he prove that she’s not afraid of him when she says he is?

The recent case of Solomon Metalwala in Bellvue, Washington is a perfect example.  Without evidence of violence on his part, and going almost exclusively on the word of his wife who had recently been held in a mental institution and diagnosed as a danger to herself and others, Metalwala was ordered to keep away from his children.  Nine months later, the consequences of that irresponsible order became known – one of his children has been abducted, likely by the mother herself and those working with her.  (That’s the optimistic view; the other is that she killed the child who has yet to be found.)

None of this would be possible were it not for the virulently anti-father discourse in the United States and elsewhere.  I don’t mean to imply that all public comment is anti-father; it’s not.  But there is a deep and wide strain of anti-father messages that permeates our culture.  From Gender Studies curricula to popular culture to statements by public officials to the laws they pass, fathers are held in low regard, denigrated and libelled.

And it is within that strain of anti-male messages that the CDC’s survey can be found.  Put simply, it is one more effort to convince its readers that men are dangerous and it stoops to some pretty offensive and anti-scientific methods to achieve its end.  That’s what’s gotten Sommers’ dander up and rightly so.

The CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey found that, in the United States in 2010, approximately 1.3 million women were raped and an additional 12.6 million women and men were victims of sexual violence. It reported, “More than 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have experienced rape, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.”

In fact, what the study reveals is the devastating impact that careless advocacy research can have on truth. The report proposes an array of ambitious government-sponsored “prevention strategies” and recommends “multi-disciplinary service centers” offering survivors psychological and legal counseling as well as housing and economic assistance. But survivors of sexual violence would be better served by good research and sober estimates — not inflated statistics and sensationalism.

The agency’s figures are wildly at odds with official crime statistics. The FBI found that 84,767 rapes were reported to law enforcement authorities in 2010. The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey, the gold standard in crime research, reports 188,380 rapes and sexual assaults on females and males in 2010. Granted, not all assaults are reported to authorities. But where did the CDC find 13.7 million victims of sexual crimes that the professional criminologists had overlooked?

Some people look at the United States and see a country in which too few men are in prison.  That’s in spite of the fact that, per capita, we imprison far more people than any country in the world.  Now, it’s clear that the crime of rape holds the potential for imprisoning many more men and no women, so rape and sexual assault are natural organizing principles for the greater incarceration of men.

But back in the 80s, some of those people encountered a distressing (for them) phenomenon.  They found that when they asked women if they’d ever been raped, only about 2% of them said they had.  Clearly, 2% wasn’t a large enough figure to get much attention, garner much governmental largess or change many laws that would imprison more men.  What to do?

The answer was to change the definition of rape, and to do that, someone hit on a brilliant tactic.  They found that if they asked women individual questions that suggested rape, but which in fact hugely expanded the definition of the term, they could produce far more impressive figures.  It should come as no surprise that those conducting the CDC study did exactly that.  As Sommers and many others have remarked, getting drunk or high and having sex is a common occurrence and no law calls it rape.  But the researchers do.  Why?  Because they want to be able to report an “epidemic of rape” in our “culture of rape.”

It found them by defining sexual violence in impossibly elastic ways and then letting the surveyors, rather than subjects, determine what counted as an assault. Consider: In a telephone survey with a 30 percent response rate, interviewers did not ask participants whether they had been raped. Instead of such straightforward questions, the CDC researchers described a series of sexual encounters and then they determined whether the responses indicated sexual violation. A sample of 9,086 women was asked, for example, “When you were drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent, how many people ever had vaginal sex with you?” A majority of the 1.3 million women (61.5 percent) the CDC projected as rape victims in 2010 experienced this sort of “alcohol or drug facilitated penetration.”…

Other survey questions were equally ambiguous. Participants were asked if they had ever had sex because someone pressured them by “telling you lies, making promises about the future they knew were untrue?” All affirmative answers were counted as “sexual violence.” Anyone who consented to sex because a suitor wore her or him down by “repeatedly asking” or “showing they were unhappy” was similarly classified as a victim of violence. The CDC effectively set a stage where each step of physical intimacy required a notarized testament of sober consent.

Sommers isn’t having it.  Neither should anyone who cares about intellectual honesty and real ways of reducing domestic and sexual violence.

Faulty studies send scarce resources in the wrong directions; more programs on sexism, stereotypes and social structures, for example, are unlikely to help victims of violence. Defining sexual violence down obscures the gradations in culpability that are essential to effective criminal law, and it holds up a false mirror on our society. The CDC should recall this study.

Amen.

February 1st, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
The following was written by Fathers and Families supporter, Bradley Howe.  I wrote about Brad’s case back last August.  Here’s a link to that post.  Brad’s ex leveled two claims of domestic violence at him in an effort to keep him out of his child’s life.  Both were denied by judges.  On the third effort, she succeeded despite neither claiming nor producing any evidence of violence on his part.  She also interfered with his visitation with his child.  Given that background, what followed should come as no surprise.

Even though my visitation with my daughter allows every other Friday weekend and 4 hours each Tuesday, I am the only thing in my daughter’s life that is constant and unchanging. In fact I am the rock in her life; the immovable force that she can always count on; unwavering and unchanging since 2009. At least so I thought, until mid 2011 when her Mother started denying my then three year old daughter’s visitations with her father, and for the first time in my daughter’s life I’m sure she felt her little hands being pried loose from that immovable object.

At the outset and during these times I would tell my daughter that I will always love her and that I will always be there for her, and even though at times it may seem to the contrary, the fact is nobody can ever take that away from her. At the outset and during these times I reminded her that my favorite color is green, and because of that every time she sees the color green, she will know that I love her and that I am thinking about her. She replies “Daddy, green is everywhere! The grass is green!”, and I said that means I love you, “and the trees are green!”, and I replied that means I love you, “and the car is green!”, and I laughed that means I love you too. On and on she went, giggling and laughing and pointing out green things everywhere, upon which I replied “I love you…, I love you…, I love you…”.

Through the Fourth of July no visitation, through Labor Day weekend, through Halloween, through Veterans Day, and on through Thanksgiving holidays still no visitation. Always after each denial of visitation she seemed more distant and sad. When I did manage to see her I would point to something green and bring that to her attention. She would always smile and reply “that means you love me and are thinking about me.” I tell her that the color green is everywhere just like my love and thoughts of her. 

On through the Christmas holidays no visitation, on through her December birthday no visitation, on through New Years no visitation. Attempts to visit her at daycare just to say hi evaporate as she is no longer there. Attempts to give her a Christmas gift are mailed back to my home destroyed. Attempts to reach her on the telephone go unanswered and messages are ignored. Attempts at fatherly love are ripped from my heart and disappear into the black hole of what used to be consistent and regular loving contact.

It is January 2012 and my daughter is now four years old. The Christmas holidays including her birthday of 2011 were especially tough on her as she was denied all contact with her father. Her emotional hands that cling to that immovable object are sore and tired. I’m starting to wonder myself how long can she hold on. I know she doesn’t want to let go, yet as anyone clinging to a rope to keep from falling, I see her losing her grip.

This weekend, the end of January 2012 is my next Friday visitation weekend. My daughter has yet to have her Christmas with Daddy. Our Christmas tree is now old and sagging, yet the decorations and lights magically transform its age. Her presents both from family and Santa are in the same place as they were on Christmas day. Her stocking hangs by the tree with little treats and reminders of Christmas magic yet to come.

 On this Tuesday I sat down to talk with her about this upcoming Friday weekend. I explain that I love her, and will be there for our time together and to celebrate Christmas. I also tell her that if for some reason we don’t see each other this Friday, it will not be because I didn’t try. My little girl hangs her head disappointedly and says “ok Daddy”, as I expect by now she probably realizes our weekend may not happen yet again.

Not wanting to see her suffer, I extend my spiritual hand to her; “Sweetie, remember the color green?” She looks up, nods her head and smiles. “yes Daddy, it means you love me and you are thinking about me”. She says “green is everywhere; the grass is green, the trees are green, and the sun is green”. I thought about this for a second “But Sweetie, the sun is typically yellow, when is the sun ever green?” She looked at me with her big bright blue eyes and says “Daddy, the sun is green on Tuesdays and Fridays…” 

This year I learned more about Christmas than the previous 48 combined. I learned that Christmas is not about Santa, reindeer, trees, lights, presents, money, credit, sales, food, drink, or even a specific day. Christmas is about LOVE. Christmas time is a time to remind us to LOVE each other throughout the rest of the year. Give a gift of love fully, unconditionally, and from the heart, and undoubtedly you will receive the same limitless love in return. It’s amazing how a four year old child can teach a stubborn old man like me lessons of life. This was the best Christmas gift I could have ever received and undoubtedly one of real true lasting value.

Peace on earth and goodwill towards mankind. What a beautiful gift for all our posterity. Yet that gift, that LOVE must be planted into the minds of our children to be nurtured and grown until one day we can all live together as a healthy functional loving society. How can we succeed as a society if we continue to fail as a family? I know firsthand fatherless families are not the way, and likewise neither are motherless ones. It takes both parents equally to raise children, even and especially in the face of a divorce. To think otherwise is to condemn society to certain failure.

Brad has emailed me that he’s moved for a change of custody.  So far his ex is avoiding the summons.

February 2nd, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.

Judge Michael Nash, presiding judge of Los Angeles County’s Juvenile Courts, has ordered that proceedings in child dependency cases be opened to the press.  Read about it here (Los Angeles Times, 2/1/12).  Up to now, all dependency hearings have been closed to any form of public scrutiny unless a special request was made by a member of the press.  According to the linked-to article, those requests were rarely granted.

Nash’s order extends only to dependency cases.  Those are cases involving child abuse or neglect, foster care and adoption.  Cases involving allegations of criminal conduct on the part of a juvenile are not subject to the order.

The order reverses the burden of proof required to open a case in juvenile court.  Until now, the burden of proof was on the news organization seeking to attend the hearings and report on the case.  Nash’s order presumes the case will be open to the news media and places the burden of proof on the person seeking to close it.

Astonishingly enough, the order extends only to members of the news media.  Those members of the public not employed by a news organization are still barred from juvenile court dependency hearings.  So everyday people will have to rely on the good offices of a the press to find out what they need to know about particular cases.  If the press isn’t interested, the public won’t get to know what’s going on behind the doors of juvenile court that are still closed to it.

Judge Michael Nash said he wanted to open the proceedings because secrecy had allowed problems to fester outside of the public’s view. Without access to the courts, news organizations have been forced to rely on incomplete case records released months or years after decisions were made.

Nash is certainly right to open the courts to scrutiny by the press.  I’ve commented before that secrecy on the part of courts, child welfare agencies or any other agency of government is an open invitation to corruption, incompetence and law-breaking.  How many times do we need to learn that lesson?  And wherever children are the subject of a governmental function, they provide a ready excuse to hide the doings of the agency behind the veil of “protecting the child.”  Generally speaking, that’s bunk.  Governmental officials aren’t protecting the children, they’re protecting themselves and the few times we get a peek inside proves the fact.

After all, isn’t that why Los Angeles County has refused to turn over records of children’s deaths to the state-appointed auditor who’s specifically tasked with figuring out what went wrong behind the closed doors of the county child welfare agency?  Count on it; when that information comes to light, as it eventually will, we’ll see plenty of malfeasance on the part of child welfare employees.

So Nash’s order is a step in the right direction.  It’ll surely make child welfare workers more careful in what they do and how they do it, and that’s not a bad thing.  But his requirement that we the people must rely on the press for our information is troubling to say the least.  Why can’t anyone attend court hearings?  Why can’t anyone look in the court’s records?  Why are the people of Los Angeles County treated like, well, children who can’t behave responsibly with the information in those hidden files?  And if the people aren’t responsible, why does Nash tell us that reporters are?

To be generous with Nash, I’ll guess he fashioned the best order he could under the circumstances.  Even so, he’s getting push-back from a variety of quarters.

Nash, the longest-serving Juvenile Court judge in the state, has long been an advocate for transparency in the courts. He released a draft of his order in November. The proposal sharply divided the child welfare community and brought denunciations from some county supervisors, social worker union leaders and others…

County lawyers did not officially oppose Nash’s order, but Supervisors Don Knabe and Michael D. Antonovich wrote letters of opposition, saying the order would invade the privacy of abused children. The union representing social workers also opposed the move, saying it was contrary to the law and that access should be granted only on a case-specific basis.

So for now I’ll chalk up to political necessity Nash’s cutting the public out of court  ”transparency.”  Better to get something than nothing which may well have been the case if he’d issued a blanket order.

Still, there should be a rule – that the people get to know what their government is up to.  There can be exceptions to the rule, but those who would blind us to the actions of officials we pay to act on our behalf must bear the heaviest of burdens to convince us that we’re better off not knowing.

February 2nd, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
Canadian model Gabriel Aubry has pushed back an effort by Halle Berry to keep him out of their daughter’s life.  Read the latest here (Radar Online, 2/1/12).

As the whole world and several outlying planets know by now, Aubry and Berry have been fighting over custody of their daughter Nahla and everything related to it. 
To date, the pair have had joint custody of the girl, but, given the ongoing disagreements, it came as no surprise that Berry moved to decrease, or eliminate altogether, Aubry’s parenting.

Sure enough, Berry asked a Los Angeles family court to issue a restraining order against Aubry that would have effectively deprived Nahla of contact with her father.  The reason (or perhaps “excuse” would be a better word)?  Berry claimed that Aubry yelled at the little girl’s nanny and pushed her out of his house with Nahla in her arms.  Aubry stoutly denied doing any such thing.

It seems that, while Nahla was living with Aubry, she took sick, so he kept her out of school for two days.  When the nanny went to the school to pick her up, Nahla wasn’t there; she was at home with her dad.  So the nanny went to his house where the alleged fracas allegedly took place.

There seems to be not even an allegation that Aubry hurt anyone and indeed, he says the event never even happened.  But that didn’t stop Berry from trying to bootstrap the nanny’s allegations into sole custody of Nahla.  What also shouldn’t surprise anyone is that the nanny is now suing Aubry. 

I think that’s called ‘synergy.’  The nanny makes a false claim out of which she can get money from Aubry; at the same time, Berry can use the same claim to try to take his child.  Hand in glove.

All of that is pretty much a standard, off-the-shelf claim of DV used to separate a child from its father.  But in a marked departure from the business as usual of family courts, it seems to have failed.  Social workers with the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services investigated the matter and agreed with Aubry.  Here’s what they said in their report to the court.

“Social workers recommended that absolutely no changes be made in the current custody agreement, which the judge gives tremendous weight and consideration to,” a source close to the situation tells RadarOnline.com. “Halle and Gabriel essentially have joint custody of Nahla. DCFS found absolutely no basis to the claims that Gabriel physically assaulted the nanny, or has ever physically abused Nahla.

“There was nothing found to substantiate the nanny’s claims, and social workers felt that a restraining order that Halle was seeking wasn’t necessary, and would actually harm Nahla by keeping her from her father.”

The judge has yet to rule on the recommendations but is expected to concur with them and order no change in custody and no restraining order.  Neither are the police expected to file charges against Aubry.  Doubtless the nanny’s civil suit against Nahla’s father will remain in place.

Needless to say, most guys don’t make out as well as Aubry did.  I suspect that has something to do with his financial ability to hire good attorneys and private investigators.  The social workers at DCFS are less likely to run roughshod over a man like Aubry in a high-profile case than they are a less-well-known, less-well-heeled father.  Those everyday guys are still routinely abused by the family law system as countless recent articles have shown.

So on one hand, it’s good to see justice prevail and a little girl not be denied contact with her father based on false allegations.  But on the other hand, let’s not pretend that Gabriel Aubry’s case has much to do with those of the run-of-the-mill dads who daily battle the misandry of the family court system all for that most humble of desires – to play a part in the upbringing of their children.

February 3rd, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
An 11-year-old boy, diagnosed with dwarfism due to neglect in his mother’s care, has nevertheless been kept there in spite of repeated requests by his father to change custody and the recommendations of experts.  Read about it here (Tulsa World, 2/3/12).

L.J. is 11 years old, but has only grown to the size of a typical seven-year-old.  That of course could be due to any number of factors, but all those have been ruled out exept one – psychosocial dwarfism.  Here’s what psychosocial dwarfism is:

Psychosocial dwarfism, or PSD, is a disorder of “growth failure and/or delayed puberty … observed in association with emotional deprivation, a pathologic psychosocial environment, or both. A disturbed relationship between child and caregiver is usually noted,” according to a 2010 medical journal article by Dr. Andrew Sirotnak, director of the University of Colorado’s Kempe Child Protection Team.

Jerry Angelo and Mekela Smith are L.J.’s parents.  They divorced in 2004 when the boy was three and his sister was two. 

The two shared custody until 2005, when Angelo had to move across the state line for a new job. He said his ex-wife had primary custody then at the home she shared in Grove with her new husband and his children.

Angelo said he stayed involved with his children’s school and extracurricular activities, and that the children spent time at his home during weekends, holidays and the summer.

But then their younger daughter, Haley, alleged abuse in her mother’s home, so Angelo sought custody.  He was stymied every step of the way by factors of which he had no knowledge at the time.  Eventually, he stopped trying to change custody, but then Haley made a second allegation of abuse, and the whole process started again, this time with several added features.

Most importantly, two separate medical specialists had diagnosed L.J. with psychosocial dwarfism and strongly recommended that he be placed in his father’s care. 

Records obtained by the Tulsa World show that two specialists in pediatric endocrinology ruled out causes of L.J.’s growth delay other than psychosocial dwarfism.

A report by Dr. Richard Sandler of Springdale, Ark., notes that L.J. was at the low end of growth charts at age 2. Since age 8, he was “way below” the third percentile “and appears to be deviating further away from the normal curve,” Sandler said in the report, written July 11, 2011.

“The possibility of psycho-social dwarfism is raised. … Rapid ‘catch-up’ growth in the father’s house would lend credence to this idea,” Sandler’s report states.

A second report by Dr. David Jelley of Tulsa, written July 14, 2011, states that he found no physical reasons for the boy’s abnormal growth pattern.

“The only way to confirm suspicions of psychosocial dwarfism is to place L.J. in a different living situation for at least six months and monitor his growth,” Jelley said in the report.

So not only did the doctors conclude that L.J. would likely benefit from being in his father’s care, but they also confirmed that doing so would serve a diagnostic purpose as well.  Into the bargain, a psychologist who examined L.J. concurred.

A third expert, psychologist Deborah Holmes, submitted a report recommending that Haley and L.J. “be primarily placed, at least temporarily, in the Angelo home.”

She noted that two pediatricians had supported a diagnosis of psychosocial dwarfism.

“L.J. does demonstrate the psychological factors related to this diagnosis,” states her report, obtained by the World.

But to judge Barry Denney, two reports of abuse by the daughter and three expert opinions saying L.J. suffers from psychosocial dwarfism weren’t enough to pry the children loose from their mother’s “care.”  As we now know, that’s at least in part due to conflicts of interest not only on Denney’s part but on that of the court-appointed guardian for the children, Christianna Lincoln Wright.

On January 23rd, some eight years after the divorce and custody proceedings began, Judge Denney finally recused himself due to unspecified conflicts of interest in the case.  The new judge, Alicia Littlefield, removed Wright from the case four days later due to her conflicts of interest.  Among other things, Wright had recommended Smith for a job with a state agency.

Wright’s conflict of interest apparently had a bearing on her discharge of her job as the children’s guardian.  Despite Haley’s complaints of abuse, the recommendations of the two pediatric endocrinologists and the psychologist, Wright decided the children were in no danger at their mother’s home.

In her final report before being removed from the case last month, Wright recommended that Smith retain sole custody of the children. Wright said she was suspicious of the diagnosis of psychosocial dwarfism and concerned about “the effect it is having on L.J.”

“I have no concerns that Haley and L.J. are being physically or emotionally abused in the homes of either of their parents,” her report states.

Denney abetted Wright’s conduct by simply refusing to rule on Angelo’s repeated motions to change custody. 

Despite the reports, Denney granted several motions for continuances in the case and made no ruling on Angelo’s motion to modify custody.

It’s astonishing to note the selective use of the concept of the “best interests of the child” in custody cases.  My guess is that it would make a fairly good law review article or master’s thesis.  My further guess is that it would offer a good education in the many ways fathers are removed from their children’s lives.  Often as not, the term seems little but a stalking horse for deprivation of children’s and fathers’ rights.

Jerry Angelo’s eight-year battle for the health and well-being of his son and daughter is a good example.  Where is the claim that keeping them in their mother’s care is in their best interests?  Where could it possibly be when all the medical and mental health experts have said that it’s not in their best interests to be there?  So the phrase, like the children, is neglected.  The judge refused to rule, so he didn’t need to make a finding of what’s in the children’s best interests.

It may be that Angelo, L.J. and Haley are on their way to a just ,and above all healthy, resolution to this case.  Judge Littlefield shows every sign of knowing what’s been going on and what needs to be done.  That will mean transferring custody to Angelo, and it can’t come a minute too soon.

In the meantime, this case will serve as a reminder of the many astonishing barriers family courts erect between children and their fathers.

February 5th, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
The United Kingdom’s coalition government has announced that it intends to change British family law to promote children’s ongoing relationships with both parents post-divorce.  Read about it here (Huffington Post, 2/2/12).

The Tory/Liberal Democratic government of David Cameron and Nicholas Clegg came into office almost two years ago on the wings of promises to reform family law to improve children’s access to their fathers.  Accordingly, the government appointed a commission to look into the matter. 
Heading the commission was David Norgrove who had no experience with family law either as an attorney, judge or litigant. 

For months, attorneys who seemed to be in the know published articles about the outlines they perceived of what would the commission’s report would likely recommend.  Those included at first the possibility of a presumption of shared parenting that was later replaced by a guarantee that children would have the right to a full ongoing relationship with both parents. 

All that looked promising right up to the day the Norgrove report was issued.  Contrary to expectations, the report recommended no substantive change to family law on the issue of a child’s rights to its father post-divorce.  Put simply, Norgrove and the others on the panel examined Britain’s family situation and pronounced it just fine, thank you.

Unsurprisingly, that was met with a firestorm of anger and disbelief from many quarters that was sufficient to put the Norgrove Report in its final resting place – the dustbin of history.

But the simple fact of the Norgrove Report must count as a salient feature of the political landscape of family law in the U.K.  Consider this article from November 2009, less than two years before the Report was issued (Telegraph, 11/16/09).  Results of a 4,000-person poll had just been released showing that fully a third of all children of divorce eventually had no contact at all with their fathers.  Fatherlessness was rightly connected with a wide array of delinquent behavior by teenagers and young adults.  And the family law system that promoted that very dsyfunctional situation was said to be “failing” and “a mess.”

Given the widespread view that family courts were ill-serving British society, the great expectations of the Norgrove Commission were understandable.  Change was needed; people expected it, and rightly so.

That Norgrove met this clarion call for reform with a recommendation for none says a lot about the feckless nature of the man and his committee.  But it says more about the politics of family law in the U.K.  It says there are forces that oppose change and they have a way of winning the day, even as they did in the committee rooms occupied by Norgrove and his fearless band of do-nothings.

As it turns out though, the forces favoring reform aren’t being put off so easily either.  The government announced early last week that, in spite of Norgrove, it would seek to change the law to stem the tide of father loss following divorce or separation.

New rules will be “much clearer that it is vital for children to have an ongoing relationship with both parents”, the Department for Education said.

Divorced and separated fathers will get stronger rights to see their children, in a recognition of equal parenting.

As The Telegraph reported here, that means first a ministerial working group that will recommend legal changes within two months (Telegraph, 2/4/12).  One assumes that in turn the same anti-father forces will be brought to bear on the working group that were on the hapless Norgrove.  So we’ll see what the outcome is.

But ministers intend to rewrite the law in an attempt to ensure that fathers get improved access to their offspring after a marriage breaks down. A ministerial working group will be announced on Monday to decide how the Children’s Act 1989 needs to be amended.

It’s good to see the issue of children’s rights to their fathers fully in the public eye.  The British family law system is a disgrace.  Some 90% of primary custody there is granted to mothers who are then free to do pretty much anything to deny fathers access.  The unsurprising result is the scandalous figure of 33% of children of divorce having no contact with their fathers.

As a bit of serendipity, the ink was barely dry on the Norgrove Report when British youth engaged in two days of drunken riots that terrorized their fellow citizens and destroyed large swaths of retail property.  How many of those young people had grown up without a father, is unknown, but the behavior fairly shouted “fatherlessness” to all with ears to hear.

Whatever the final wording of the working group’s recommendations, whatever final bill is passed and signed into law, not much will change in the way family courts decide custody cases.  Don’t look for many more British children to get much more time with their fathers.  It’ll be more of the same for one very good reason – British courts have a strong anti-father bias that’s not about to be undone by plaintive words urging them to keep fathers and children together.

Face it, there’s nothing in British law now that requires mothers to get custody 90% of the time, but they do.  There’s nothing that urges courts to ignore fathers’ complaints of thwarted access but they do too.  Indeed, my guess is that there’s not a judge in the whole system who would admit to an anti-father animus.  But unless British dads are among the worst people in the world, there’s no other way to read the situation; only such a bias can explain the 90% figure that holds year after year through all the changes in British society and culture.

Here in the U.S. we have proof positive of just how resistant to change family courts are when it comes to deciding custody.  In the late 90s, the State of Oregon decided to reduce the percentage of sole maternal custody cases, so it changed the law to effect just that.  But five years later, it had had no effect.  Why?  Because mothers and judges were using the domestic violence exception to the custody law to deprive fathers of a meaningful relationship with their children.

Of course there’s no proof that many of the allegations of DV were true.  In fact, many mediators, custody evaluators and the like claim that up to 70% of the claims were outright fabrications to gain a leg up in the custody battle.  And even when the allegations might have been technically true, the great majority of DV is entirely non-injurious and certainly not of a nature to justify exclusion of a man from his child’s life.  But DV allegations proved remarkably effective at doing just that and do so to this day.

So anyone who believes that British judges, who are if anything, less father-friendly than their U.S. counterparts, will do a sudden about-face due to whatever new law the Cameron/Clegg government comes up with, is, I predict, in for a rude surprise.

The battle for children’s rights to their fathers goes on.  The countless people who know that a child needs both parents will not be bought off by half measures that have little real effect.  Astonishingly, it’s one of the hardest battles ever waged, but the tide of history is with us, even if the latest fracas in the U.K. is just a tiny wave.

February 6th, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
A committee of the Michigan House of Representatives has approved a bill that would advance the rights of fathers ever so slightly.  Here’s an article about the bill (Livingston Daily, 2/2/12).

If enacted into law, the bill would give a man who’s married to a woman the right to challenge the paternity of a child born to her up until the child reaches the age of 18.  If DNA testing shows that the woman’s husband is not the father of the child, presumably, he would be absolved of child support responsibility if the pair divorced.

In short, the law gives some power to men who either are now married or were married and are presumed to be the child’s father.  They can demand proof of biological paternity at any time prior to the child’s 18th birthday and, if they’re shown not to be the biological father, be relieved of child support obligations.

That’s fine as far as it goes, which is not nearly far enough.  What the statute doesn’t do is give an unmarried man the same rights.  So, for example, if Joe has a sexual relationship with Jane who’s married to Jim, Joe’s ability to claim paternity of any child born to Jane is so limited as to be almost non-existent.

Specifically, as we so often see, his rights are in her hands.  In Joe’s case, under the bill’s terms, he has one year after the child’s birth to assert his paternity.  So all she has to do is keep the child secret from him for that length of time and his parental rights are dead.  Worse, even if he does try to act within the year, he’s still subject to he whims.

 (A) THE MOTHER AND THE PUTATIVE FATHER MUTUALLY AND OPENLY  
  ACKNOWLEDGE A BIOLOGICAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE PUTATIVE FATHER AND THE CHILD BY DOING ALL OF THE FOLLOWING: 
   (i) FILING WITH THE COURT AN AFFIDAVIT STATING THAT THE  
  PUTATIVE FATHER IS THE BIOLOGICAL FATHER OF THE CHILD. 
   (ii) FILING WITH THE COURT THE RESULTS OF BLOOD OR TISSUE  
  TYPING OR DNA IDENTIFICATION PROFILING THAT ESTABLISH THAT THE  
  PROBABILITY OF PATERNITY BY THE PUTATIVE FATHER IS 99% OR HIGHER. 
   (iii) NOTIFYING EACH INDIVIDUAL DESCRIBED IN SUBSECTION (1)(D)  
  THAT THE AFFIDAVIT AND RESULTS HAVE BEEN FILED.

 (B) ALL OF THE FOLLOWING APPLY: 
   (i) THE MOTHER WAS SEPARATED FROM HER HUSBAND UNDER AN ORDER OR  
  JUDGMENT ENTERED IN AN ACTION FOR SEPARATE MAINTENANCE BROUGHT  
  UNDER SECTION 7 OF 1846 RS 84, MCL 552.7, OR NOT MARRIED AT OR  
  AROUND THE TIME OF CONCEPTION. 
   (ii) THE PUTATIVE FATHER FILES WITH THE COURT AN AFFIDAVIT  
  STATING THAT HE IS THE BIOLOGICAL FATHER OF THE CHILD AND THAT HE  
  CONSENTS TO DNA IDENTIFICATION PROFILING. 
   (iii) THE PUTATIVE FATHER NOTIFIES EACH INDIVIDUAL DESCRIBED IN  
  SUBSECTION (1)(D) THAT HE HAS FILED THE AFFIDAVIT. 
  (C) ALL OF THE FOLLOWING APPLY

 (i) THE MOTHER ACKNOWLEDGES IN WRITING A BIOLOGICAL  
  RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE PUTATIVE FATHER AND THE CHILD. 
   (ii) THE PUTATIVE FATHER DEMONSTRATES TO THE COURT THAT HE HAS  
  HAD PARENTING TIME WITH THE CHILD BY AGREEMENT WITH THE MOTHER. 
   (iii) THE PUTATIVE FATHER FILES WITH THE COURT AN AFFIDAVIT  
  STATING THAT HE IS THE BIOLOGICAL FATHER OF THE CHILD AND THAT HE  
  CONSENTS TO DNA IDENTIFICATION PROFILING. 
   (iv) THE PUTATIVE FATHER NOTIFIES EACH INDIVIDUAL DESCRIBED IN  
  SUBSECTION (1)(D) THAT HE HAS FILED THE AFFIDAVIT

So even if this bill passes, it’ll only benefit husbands who suspect a child, of whom they’re presumed to be the father, isn’t actually theirs.

The bill arises out of one of the more outrageous cases to come along in a while.  Here’s my original piece on it. 

Daniel Quinn had a lengthy relationship with Candace Beckwith.  They had a little girl they named Maileigh.  Daniel was thrilled with the little girl and, with Candace, raised her as his own.  But there was a problem; Beckwith was married to an Ohio drug dealer named Adam Beckwith.  Eventually, she took Maileigh to live in Ohio with Adam who somehow used her in his drug-dealing operation.  He went to prison and Candace lost her parental rights, but Quinn, despite being the responsible biological dad, had no rights to claim his child.

So that’s the problem that House Bill 4076 is meant to solve.  And, had it been in effect at the time, Daniel Quinn and his daughter would have benefited from it.  That’s because, as luck would have it, Candace and Adam weren’t living together when Maileigh was born.

But the bill is so narrowly crafted that, even then, all Candace would have had to have done was move back in with Adam before the child was born and, once again, Quinn would have been out of luck.

The bottom line is that, if this bill passes, it’ll improve Michigan law, but it’ll leave it far short of where it needs to be – protecting the rights of fathers to their children and ensuring that those fathers can assert those rights.

February 6th, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
A Massachusetts Court of Appeals has ruled that a non-biological lesbian parent has equal parental rights with her partner, the child’s biological mother.  It did so specifically because the pair were married at the time the child was born.  Read about it here (Boston Herald, 2/3/12).  Read the court’s opinion here.

Angelica Ramirez and Gabriella Della Corte decided to have a child and Della Corte conceived via artificial insemination by an anonymous sperm donor.  Two months later, they got married and the child was born into their married family. 
An undisclosed amount of time later, they divorced and agreed on all aspects of child custody, support etc.  Under their agreement, Della Corte, the biological mother, got primary custody, Ramirez got visitation and agreed to pay child support.

Della Corte eventually moved the court to alter Ramirez’s rights claiming that, because she had no biological relationship to the child, she should have no parental rights.  Both the trial court and the appelate court disagreed. 

The reason Ramirez’s rights couldn’t be abrogated is that the two were married at the time the child was born.  Therefore, according to the court, Ramirez bore the same relationship to the child that any husband would, whether the biological father or not.  Massachusetts state law, like that of every other state, confers parental rights on spouses who are married at the time a child is born to the wife.

So, when a husband and wife conceive, not through intercourse, but through artificial insemination by an unrelated sperm donor, the husband has no biological relationship to the child, but, according to Massachusetts statute, he is considered the child’s father.  In the case of divorce, he can assert his parental rights.

That statute specifically refers to the “husband’s” parental rights, but the court ruled that Ramirez occupied the same position as a husband for the purposes of construing the law.

All that is straightforward, gender-neutral and fine as far as it goes.  But of course it leaves open the very real possibility that a different result would be reached if the pair were unmarried.  In an era in which some 42% of children are born out of wedlock, it is high time legislatures and courts equalized the rights of single parents with those of married ones.

An important way in which single men are discriminated against in family court is the requirement that they demonstrate their dedication to parenting by giving money to the mother and being active, hands-on dads.  The problem with that, as I’ve said many times, is that it places fathers’ rights in mothers’ hands.  As we’ve seen in several adoption cases, all a mother has to do is put some distance between herself and the father, convince him that she’s not pregnant or if she is, it’s another man’s child, etc.  Do that and she effectively voids his parental rights.

That of course is much harder and in many states impossible, when Mom and Dad are married.  So, to equalize mothers’ and fathers’ rights, one thing that needs to be done is to abandon the marital presumption of paternity on the part of the husband.  A biological father should have rights based solely on his biology, irrespective of whether the mother agreed to married him.

That of course doesn’t help same-sex couples, one of whom at least can’t be the father or mother of the child.  But while a biological relationship should confer rights automatically, the lack of one shouldn’t block them.  Therefore, a non-biological parent, whether married or not, should be vested in parental rights as long as he/she has displayed a willingness to parent the child.  Most importantly, that willingness can’t have been thwarted by the other parent.  That is, no person should lose parental rights or gain parental obligations by the actions of another person.  Parental rights of non-biogical parents must be that parent’s to gain or lose by his/her own actions.  The person must have an opportunity to play the parental role.  If he/she does so, then parental rights must follow; if not then they’ve been lost, not by due to the prevention by the other parent, but by his/her own failure to step up to the plate.

I’m glad Ramirez’s parental rights were upheld by the courts.  It was the right outcome.  But in a society in which so many children are born to unmarried parents, making a father’s parental rights depend on his being married is an open invitation to greater separation of fathers from children.

February 8th, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
A new study is the latest in a long line to find that putting young children in daycare can be harmful to their emotional well-being.  Read about it here (New Zealand Herald, 2/8/12).

The report Who Cares? Mothers, Daycare and Child Wellbeing in New Zealand – commissioned by Family First New Zealand and prepared by British psychologist Aric Sigman – looks at the potential impacts of separating a child from their parent in the first few years of life.

The 30-page report, which drew on previously published research from around the world, said attending daycare, and the subsequent separation from parents, was a significant source of stress for many children.

Specifically, children in daycare have elevated levels of the hormone cortisol which indicates the level of stress an individual is undergoing.  Sigman’s study is a meta-analysis of many other studies around the world.  It falls into line with his previous work suggesting that sending children to daycare at an early age could have a harmful impact on early development and later health.

[The study] said 70 to 80 per cent of children in centre-based daycare had increasing levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which could be harmful to the child’s immune system.

Predictably, Sigman’s work has met with protest from those who see it as an attack on women.

Carolyn Savage, president of the Federation of Business and Professional Women, said the report focussed on the harms to children but ignored the educational and social benefits of early childhood education.

It also unfairly singled out women because daycare was a decision both parents had to make.

“I think that’s one of the worst things about it … I think it’s a little bit sexist, because it hasn’t actually noted what fathers could be bringing to the table.”

Women were already judged for deciding to send their children to daycare, Ms Savage said.

“This report says you shouldn’t be sending your children to daycare and this is the impact you’re going to have. But there’s already a number of women out there that suffer guilt for doing so.”

In truth, Sigman’s work is about daycare and its effects on children.  If the researcher has ever said, or indicated in any way, that mothers’ sending children to daycare is detrimental but fathers’ doing so is not, I’ve never seen it.  And of course he’s said no such thing.

Meanwhile Savage seems to suggest that it’s wrong for Sigman to tell the truth that many studies worldwide agree on because it might make women uncomfortable with their choices.  Plainly, that’s bunk.  Mothers and fathers alike need to have accurate, unbiased information about how best to raise their children.  If they do, they can make the best decisions possible under their circumstances; if they don’t, they can’t.  Whatever guilt they may feel about their decisions is for them to deal with as adults.  To suggest, as Savage does, that Sigman and others should keep their mouths shut so that mothers can raise their children in ignorance disgracefully denigrates women and potentially harms children.

As is true with so much social science about the welfare of children, the studies showing the harmful effects of daycare on children aren’t likely to be well-received.  That’s because there’s a certain orthodoxy already in place that the science on daycare contradicts.  As Bob McCroskie of Families First New Zealand noted,

He thought the report would be received “like a lead balloon” because it went against the ideology that has been underpinning the push to get children into daycare.

“[In the past] it’s all been about getting mothers back to work and the benefits of daycare in terms of outcomes, but there’s been no corresponding weight given to some of the research that’s coming through on the effects of long periods of childcare,” he said.

“The industry talks about outcomes and school readiness but it doesn’t talk anything about what the kids actually go through while they’re at childcare.”

Sigman’s study draws on that of about 100 other researchers worldwide.

The fact is that some parents can’t do without daycare.  Their schedules don’t permit them to shift off parenting from one to the other and they have no alternatives like grandparents on whom to rely for care.  That’s unavoidable in some families. 

But what the study really targets – whether it says so or not – is single parenting, whether it’s arrived at by unmarried childbearing or divorce.  The incidence of both has skyrocketed over the past 40 years or so and we were originally told about both that the kids would be fine.  Well, four decades into the experiment, we know to a certainty that the kids aren’t fine at all.  They’re stressed and suffering a host of ills that come directly from the loss of the two-biological-parent family.  Unmarried childbearing and divorce may suit the desires of adults, but they harm children.

And for the most part, daycare is an enabler of both.  It’s a necessity as long as adults can’t manage to behave responsibly toward their children.  By the same token, if adults were to take children’s welfare seriously enough to only have children if they’re married and not get divorced except in the case of greatest need, then much daycare would shrivel on the vine.

Of course adults probably aren’t going to change their behavior any time soon.  Until they do, we should thank researchers like Aric Sigman for at least giving us the facts about the consequences of our bad decisions.

February 8th, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
We haven’t heard a lot from the “responsible fatherhood” movement in a while, but here’s the latest (Daily Standard, 1/12/12). 

The responsible fatherhood movement gets it half right.  It recognizes and urgently promotes the involvement of fathers in the lives of their children.  It takes a backseat to none in educating the public about the deep psychic injuries suffered by the children of absent fathers.  For that – the half it gets right – it is to be applauded.

But it’s the other half that’s problematical.  The concept of “responsible fatherhood” includes the notion that, if fathers just weren’t so gosh-darned irresponsible, children would have fathers in their lives and all those deep and lasting “father wounds” would disappear.  The problem, according to the movement, is that fathers, prefer to abandon their responsibilities to their kids.  It follows that convincing fathers to remain connected to them will solve everything.

Well, it’s a big world and there are doubtless fathers who don’t care about their children and who abandon them at the first opportunity.  Of course there are mothers who do the same.  Indeed, many states have “Baby Moses” laws that specifically allow mothers to do exactly that.   But neither the responsible fatherhood movement nor anyone else acknowledges that part of the problem.

But when it comes to fathers, the prefered narrative that male parents simply aren’t responsible enough to care about remaining with their children is pure bunk.  Do those fathers exist?  Doubtless some do.  But the true villains of the drama are less the fathers than they are family courts, family laws and gatekeeping mothers.

If the responsible fatherhood movement wants examples of absent fathers, I can give them plenty.  How about Scott Ritchie?  He’s an “absent” father.  Here and here are the pieces I’ve done on him.

Ritchie is the Michigan man who, with the agreement of his wife, was the stay-at-home father of their son Kyle.  Their agreement was that she would do the earning and he would stay home with their son until the boy reached the age of six and started to school.  Then, with the boy out of the house several hours each day, Scott could resume gainful employment.

But that plan went awry when his wife took a job in Omaha and filed for divorce just when Kyle started school.  Scott hadn’t had a job in several years and we were stuck in the depths of the current recession in one of the hardest-hit states – Michigan.  So, with no job, no prospects and no child support from his soon-to-be ex-wife, Scott was relying on their savings account to tide him and Kyle over.  But his wife scotched that notion by cleaning out every penny of the $73,000 they’d saved, leaving him and Kyle destitute.

Given all that, you’d think it impossible for Scott to lose custody in the divorce action, but that’s exactly what happened.  Yes, he’d been the stay-at-home dad; no, there was no claim of abuse; yes Kyle was a happy, healthy little boy; and yes, he had extended family in the Michigan area in which he’d lived all his young life.  But Scott’s ex got custody anyway.

That meant hauling the child out of his familiar environment with his loving grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.  It meant taking him from his school and neighborhood friends.  It meant putting him in the care of a mother who works long hours and who’d never before been a hands-on parent. 

Now Scott Ritchie gets to try to exercise his “visitation” rights when his son is a 12-hour drive away.  And, as I write, the judge is set to approve his ex’s move to Seattle, effectively taking Scott’s son out of his life altogether.

Absent father?  You bet.  Loving, caring, capable, responsible father?  You bet.

But how did that happen?  It happened because the family court simply couldn’t wrap its brain around the concept of a stay-at-home dad.  And if a stay-at-home dad can’t get custody, what dad can?  The answer is “not many.”  In fact, the few dads who do get custody of their children are often those with ex-wives who are so dysfunctional that even a family court judge can’t ignore it.

From Sanford Braver’s studies of divorced dads to the Fragile Families and Child Well-being study ongoing at Princeton, science paints a portrait of fathers that’s entirely at odds with the one preferred by the “responsible fatherhood” movement.  That portrait shows a man who’s passionately dedicated to his child, but who’s in danger of losing contact due to a variety of factors.

One factor is popular culture and the news media that routinely portray men as uninterested in fatherhood and their children and incompetent to give care to them.  Those same sources depict women as natural caregivers, uniquely fulfilled by – and qualified for – the task of parenthood.  Is it any surprise men hesitate to “step up” and take responsibility for children?

Those ubiquitous cultural messages help shape the interpersonal behavior of men and women when they become parents.  The mother is strongly motivated (“This is my job and I must be good at it.”) to take over parenting and the father is strongly motivated (“I don’t know what I’m doing”) to let her.  So at every opportunity, Mom steps in and elbows Dad aside.  That’s called maternal gatekeeping and much social science informs us of the practice.

That interpersonal dynamic is reinforced if the couple divorces.  Judges have learned the cultural lessons about fathers and mothers as well as the next person, and so, when it comes to deciding custody, guess who’s favored.  Scott Ritchie can tell you.

Dad’s visitation, even if Mom allows it, is generally so minimal as to qualify as absenteeism.  As one study in the U.K. showed, a full one-third of children of divorce eventually have no contact whatsoever with their fathers.  That’s because courts refuse to enforce the meager two-days-every-two-weeks visitation the court ordered.

Add to all that the fact that, when parents are unmarried, social science shows that fathers and mothers alike treat mother and child as a “package deal.”  Wherever she goes, the child goes and Dad will have to work hard to keep up.  Again, we can consult Scott Ritchie about the details of that arrangement.

In that scenario, each ensuing boyfriend of Mom pushes Dad further and further out of his child’s life.

That’s a very brief sketch of how our system of pop cultural messages, preconceived notions about fathers and mothers and the abject failure of family courts to recognize the value of fathers to children, work hand in glove to create those “absent fathers” the responsible fatherhood movement talks so much about.

It does so in some very compelling ways.

“The father wound is so deep and so all-pervasive in so many parts of the world that it’s healing could well be the most radical social reform conceivable.” My friend, Father Richard Rohr, wrote that.

“Not only here in the West, but across the globe, disengaged fathers are leaving a mark that will forever reshape the future of our planet. You show me a person that is angry, violent, depressed, selfish, sexually immoral, hyper-driven, or one of several other personality types, and I’ll show you a father wound.

 

“Nothing is more important to a young man, or a young woman, than a father’s love, respect and acceptance. And nothing is more damaging than when the question ‘Am I good enough?’ is asked of the father by the child, and the answer is silence.”