Author: Joomlafreaks

November 27th, 2011 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
As the search for two-year-old Sky Metalwala continues, more information is coming out about the mental state of his mother, Julia Biryukova.  Here’s one article (King 5, 11/21/11).  And here’s another (Examiner, 11/22/11).

Sky has been missing since November 6th.  At this point, police have no leads in the case, but are still attempting to find the boy.  His father, Solomon Metalwala is trying to recruit as many people as possible to the task of locating the child.  But so far, there is no evidence of where he is or whether he is alive.

No one has been charged with a crime and the police are still treating the case as one of a missing person.

But the story Julia Biryukova told police is plainly false.  She claimed she was driving to the hospital with Sky and his older sister Maile, 4, when her car ran out of gas.  She walked to a Chevron station about a mile away.  But she bought no gas and, when the police arrived at the scene, they found no evidence that the car had been broken into.  When they tested the car, it started without difficulty.  Police found no mechanical problems with the automobile.

So where is Sky Metalwala, and is he well?  It is all but impossible that he was kidnapped by persons unknown.  How did they get into a locked car and abduct a child while leaving no evidence of having done so?

Clearly, there is one person who knows what became of Sky – his mother, Julia Biryukova.  That’s because she had gotten a restraining order against Solomon Metalwala prohibiting him from having any contact with his children.  She got that order in March of this year, so Metalwala had no contact with them from then until Sky’s disappearance on November 6th.

If he had no contact with the children and Sky wasn’t kidnapped from the car, realistically, there’s only one suspect – Julia Biryukova.  That conclusion is strongly reinforced by the behavior of Sky’s two parents since November 6th.  Metalwala has bent heaven and earth trying to locate his son.  He’s cooperated with the police, including taking and passing a lie-detector test.  By contrast, Biryukova has refused to take a polygraph test and seems to have done nothing to attempt to find her son.

It’s that second fact that strongly suggests she knows exactly what happened to the child.  After all, why go looking for a child whose whereabouts you already know?

In a desperate attempt to paint Metalwala as the bad guy in all this, Biryukova emailed an ABC reporter that her ex is a “sadistic Muslim Pakistani.”  She of course knows that to be false.  Metalwala is a Christian and the two of them attended church together.  So the “Muslim” claim looks to be an attempt to recruit American anti-Muslim feelings post 9/11/01 to the cause of smearing Sky’s father.

Some of Biryukova’s medical records have been examined by media outlets in the Seattle area and have been received by Fathers and Families.  Because of suicidal ideation, she was taken by the police to an area mental hospital involuntarily for assessment.  Chillingly, her assessment on admission shows that she scored 15 out of a possible 100 on the General Assessment of Functioning.  That means that she was considered a danger to herself and/or others.

Various psychiatrists diagnosed her with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder and one with bi-polar disorder.  One mental health professional was troubled by the fact that Biryukova was in denial regarding her diagnoses.

Eventually, she was placed on psychotropic medication and released.  By that time, Metalwala had temporary custody of his two children.  Within three months of her release from the hospital, Biryukova was claiming to the family court that Metalwala was physically and sexually abusive of both children.  She had never previously made such a claim during the course of the children’s lives.  The only evidence of abuse came from minor bruising to Maile that apparently had occurred during her time with her mother.

Still, in February of this year, the family court gave sole custody to Biryukova, who a mere 10 months before had been diagnosed with severe mental disorders that made her a danger to herself and others.  Metalwala was prohibited from all contact with his children.

That of course brings us to the present in which, while in his mother’s “care,” Sky Metalwala mysteriously vanished – if he did.  My guess is that he was never in the car that day.  I believe he was placed by Biryukova in the hands of a co-conspirator who has him to this day.  If not that, then the boy is dead.

But whatever has actually happened to Sky Metalwala, the case once again demonstrates the terrible consequences of the anti-father bias of family courts.  Face it, the chances of a father who’s been diagnosed with severe mental disorders that render him a danger to himself and others being given sole custody of his children over the claims of a fit mother are essentially nil.  Likewise, the chances of a father’s using unproven claims of physical and sexual abuse for the first time in a divorce case to deprive a fit mother of all contact with her children are all but nonexistent.

But both of those things happened in this case, and with possibly tragic consequences.  They happened for one reason only – Biryukova is a mother and Metalwala is a father.

If Sky Metalwala is dead, or harmed in any way – and we all devoutly hope he’s not – there is a judge in Seattle, Washington who bears a heavy load of responsibility for it.  If Sky is injured, dead or abducted, Commissioner Jacqueline Jeske should be made to answer for the fact that she ignored such obvious signs of danger in rendering her custody order.

Thanks to our area supporters who got us the court records.

November 28th, 2011 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
In my post about the Australian family court that awarded sole custody to a mother who openly and frankly refused to allow their child to have any contact with her father, I omitted one thing.  The case is outrageous enough that I’d like to include that now.

As you’ll no doubt recall, the judge originally awarded the father the usual modest access to his daughter – two days out of every two weeks. 
But the mother didn’t like that so she simply refused to allow him the access the court had ordered.  She wasn’t devious about her intentions; she said she wasn’t going to allow access and she didn’t.

To that the court apparently felt there was nothing it could do, despite the fact that courts are vested with the power to hold those who disobey their orders in contempt.  As I said in my last post, there are plenty of actions the court could have taken to try to bring the mother to heel, and, failing that, it could have simply switched custody to the father.  But Judge Keith Wilson preferred to not even attempt to remedy the situation.  He simply threw up his hands and gave the child to the wrongdoer.  Into the bargain, he ordered the father to have no contact with the child for the next 13 years, i.e. until she turns 18.  And the appellate court backed him up.

Now, I pointed out most of what was wrong with that, but I omitted one important thing.  Both the trial and the appellate courts engaged in a bit of literary sleight of hand.  While admitting what the mother had done, they managed to make it appear that the father was equally at fault.  They noted that the mother had kept the child from the father in violation of the court’s order, but then turned around and said that the reason for cutting the father out of the child’s life completely was because the two were unable to “co-parent effectively.”

Well, I suppose that’s true.  After all, how’s the dad supposed to “co-parent” with a mother who refuses?  The concept of co-parenting necessarily involves two parents; Dad can’t do it alone.  And so, the court tagged him with equal responsibility for the pair’s inability to co-parent, even though it was solely Mom’s doing.

The judge also criticized the father for being angry with the mother.  Who wouldn’t be?  After all, he clutches a court order saying he has the right to access – not much access, but access nonetheless.  Faced with a mother who openly flouts the authority of the court and the father’s rights, and a court that sits passively by while she does so, it’s hard to imagine a father “smilin’ through.”  But apparently that’s exactly what the court demanded.

So again, the mother’s bad behavior becomes the father’s fault.  She’s the bad actor, but he’s the one punished – he and the child, that is.  Whatever wrong he’s done was brought about solely by her outrageous behavior, but somehow that becomes his fault.  In fact it becomes solely his fault because he will now never see his daughter before her 18th birthday, if then.

It’s another aspect of the astonishing anti-father bias of family courts that the worst possible actions by a mother become the fault of the father.

Not for nothing did the article I linked to pronounce shared parenting in Australia to be dead.  After all, if a mother can get away with what this one did, what fathers will ever get access to their children?  The answer is, “the ones whose ex-wives decide to permit it.”  Never have fathers’ rights to children and children’s rights to fathers been placed so squarely and frankly in the hands of mothers.  When even a mother’s open violation of the court’s order, to say nothing of the law that prefers joint custody, aren’t enough to get a father any help at all, there’s not much left of fathers’ rights.

And as I said before, this won’t be lost on mothers.  They’re not stupid, they read the newspapers, and if they don’t their lawyers do.  Any mother who wants a child all to herself now knows exactly what to do.  Simply deny all access and eventually the court will accede to your wishes – no cost, no punishment, no loss of custody.  Easy as that.

The case was so outrageous and the article so accurate in pronouncing shared care in Australia to be dead, it drew the ire of the country’s attorney general, Robert McClelland.  Here’s his letter to the editor (The Australian, 11/25/11).  It’s the third letter.

YOUR assertion that “shared care is dead” is wrong. The federal government strongly supports shared care and a child’s right to a meaningful relationship with both their parents.

We’re all glad to know that of course.  But in his entire letter, McClelland makes no reference whatever to the case that spurred The Australian to write the epitaph of shared care.  He utters not a word in defense of Wilson’s bizarre and indefensible decision.  That’s understandable of course; I couldn’t think of much to say in that regard either.

But of course that’s precisely why The Australian said shared care is dead; if behavior like the mother’s in that case is not only acceptable, but rewarded, exactly how does McClelland contend that dads should assert their rights to love and care for their children?  Tellingly, he doesn’t even try.

Weirdly, what he does do is attempt to recruit the just-passed amendment to the Family Law Act to support his claim that the government is enthusiastic about shared parenting.

That’s why the legislation, which has now passed the parliament, retains the shared-parenting provisions introduced in 2006 with one important change – the reforms will only support shared-care parenting arrangements for children where these arrangements are safe.

That’s about the most tepid support for shared parenting I’ve ever seen.  Let’s see.  We have an existing law that apparently permits a mother unfettered power to deny her daughter access to her father.  That law has now been amended to make it far easier for a mother to dispossess a father of his rights.  It does so by defining “abuse” so broadly that virtually anything can qualify and then fails to punish false allegations.  The new law is absolutely guaranteed to separate more and more fathers from their children, and in truth, that’s its purpose.  Look at who supported the change, and you’ll see what I mean.

Somehow all that adds up, in McClelland’s telling, to a government that “strongly supports shared care and a child’s right to a meaningful relationship with both their (sic) parents.”

As I said last time, he may be able to fool himself, but he can’t fool me.  Words like “strongly supports” just don’t cut the butter.  Actions are what matter, and the actions of the current government and family court judges leave no doubt about the future of fathers and children in the land down under.

November 28th, 2011 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
We all remember the case a few years back in which a woman used a man’s semen to impregnate herself without his knowledge or consent.  The two always used a condom when they had sex, leading him to believe he was taking appropriate precautions against pregnancy.  But she used the semen anyway, got pregnant and had a child.  The man went to court to contest his child support obligation only to be told that his consent was irrelevant.  He was on the hook for a child he never wanted, whom the woman knew he never wanted and who was conceived by fraud.

So Texas, among other states, passed a law saying that a man’s consent was required before an in vitro fertilization clinic could use his semen to fertilize a woman’s egg.

The act says that consent must be given by an unmarried man for his sperm to be used for reproduction, and consent “must be in record signed by the man and the unmarried woman and kept by a licensed physician.”

In other words, the state legislature wasn’t kidding when it required consent.  It has to be written consent.

But one woman at least just didn’t get the message.  Oh, it’s not that she didn’t know the law; she seems to have known it all too well. 

It seems that Joseph Pressil moved from New York to Houston to be with his girlfriend, who, amazingly enough, is not named in this article (ABC News, 11/24/11).  They met in May of 2006 and broke up in November of the same year.  Three months later, she told him she was pregnant.

Now, they’d always used condoms during sex, so I guess Pressil figured one hadn’t done its job, as condoms are known to do.  Still, he had genetic testing done, just to be sure, and that proved he was the father of the twins his girlfriend bore.  He got a shared parenting order and began paying child support. 

Then he got a receipt in the mail from a cryogenic company for semen preservation.  He did a little research and learned that in fact, his frozen semen had been used by his girlfriend to conceive the twins, all without his consent and in violation of Texas law.  And once he thought about it, a few things started falling into place.

“At the time she was giving me these condoms, and she said because of her fibroids these condoms were not lubricated, and would not affect the fibroid enlargement,” he explained. “Every time she would give me these condoms after the sex she would leave the room. She’d come back, give me something to drink. We always had sex in the morning and she’d say she had to go do something. She would leave about 10 or 15 minutes afterward.”

So her malicious deceit is obvious.  What’s also clear is that she knew more about the law than most people.

Pressil has sued the clinic and apparently his ex.  The clinic claims it has a consent form signed by Pressil, but he says the signature’s a forgery.  Hmm.  I wonder who might have forged his name.  The clinic also claims its bills were paid with his credit card.  Hmm.  I wonder who might have used his credit card if not him.

For her part, Pressil’s ex doesn’t seem to think she did anything amiss.

Pressil confronted his ex, who according to him said, “Oh you’re not stupid. I thought you knew.”

Let’s see.  The couple never discussed either IVF or having children at all.  Indeed, they were together for all of six months, so it doesn’t look like either of them thought it was a lifetime relationship.  More to the point, reread Pressil’s description of her deceit and tell me she thought he understood what she was doing.  Nonsense.  If you want a child, you tell the other person; you don’t sneak off to the cryo-lab minutes after sex, forge your boyfriend’s signature on a consent form and maybe on his credit card charges.

Pressil’s also going for custody of the children and it’ll be interesting to see how that comes out.  After all, here’s a mother whose idea of morality has been well-described.  You’d think that (possibly criminal) behavior like hers would militate against her as a parent in the eyes of a family court. 

But as we all know, family courts have overlooked far worse than what Pressil’s ex apparently did, so we’ll see what happens.  State law seems to be less settled in the area of paternity fraud than in most.  The concept that mothers ought to bear some sort of consequences for paternity fraud is one that state courts and legislatures haven’t yet come to grips with. 

Whatever the outcome for Pressil, it’ll be yet another indicator of how much or how little progress fathers are making in their bid for justice in family court.

November 29th, 2011 by Glenn Sacks
Short version: Washington Department of Social and Health Services seized Maile Metalwala, the 4-year-old daughter of Solomon Metalwala, away from her unfit mother, Julia Biryukova, and put Maile in foster care. It is a common but unjust practice for child welfare agencies to put children in foster care instead of giving them to their fathers. Moreover, the Washington court separated Maile from Solomon based on spurious abuse allegations from a now thoroughly discredited accuser. We want you to contact all relevant Washington authorities and demand that Solomon and little Maile be reunited–to email and fax them a letter, click here.

Maile Metalwala (left) and Sky Metalwala (right)

Full version: Solomon Metalwala has had almost no contact with Maile Metalwala, his 4-year-old daughter, for the past year.

First, Family Law Commissioner Jacqueline Jeske, a former domestic violence prosecutor with a reputation for rubber-stamping domestic violence protection orders, approved a restraining order against Solomon. This was done despite the fact that his accuser, estranged wife Julia Biryukova, had previously made false abuse charges, and Child Protective Services had concluded that these new abuse charges also were false. As is explained below, Biryukova has a clear history of mental illness, and on several occasions has made charges and claims that investigating authorities found to be baseless or outright lies.

On November 6, CPS took Maile from Biryukova and, instead of giving Maile to her father, put her in foster care. Clay Terry, Esq., one of Metalwala’s attorneys, and we hope that he is correct. However, we have often seen such cases drag on for months or even years, even to the point where a judge decides that the child has bonded with the foster parents and should not be disrupted by returning to his or her father.

We want to push WA DSHS and King County Superior Court to resolve this case as soon as possible. We want you to contact all relevant Washington authorities and demand that Solomon and little Maile be reunited–to email and fax them a letter, click here. To call them, click here.

Solomon Metalwala.

Why This Campaign?

On November 6, Julia Biryukova told police that she ran out of gas with her 2-year-old son Sky and 4-year-old daughter Maile in the car. Julia alleges that she and Maile left Sky to go get gas, but when she returned, Sky was gone. However, the Bellevue  police investigated and discredited her story.

Currently everyone’s focus is on the disappearance of two-year-old Sky Metalwala, as it should be. Like everyone else, Fathers and Families can only speculate as to Sky’s whereabouts or if he’s still alive. The evidence suggests that Biryukova has stashed him with a friend or relative, or moved him out of the state. We hope that Sky is safe and that he will be reunited with his father as soon as possible.

This case is complicated, with many legal issues. But it is outrageous that Solomon and Maile have been kept apart for  nearly a year, particularly now that Biryukova has been completely discredited. What we seek to do is to apply public pressure to the relevant authorities to reunite Solomon and Maile.

In this campaign we are working with the Washington Domestic Violence Commission, a nonprofit organization whose goals are to ensure equal protection under the law and to fight against both domestic violence and abuses of the domestic violence system. The WADVC’s Chris Hupy says:

“It is unfortunate, but Domestic Violence Protection Orders are issued in King County like passing out candy. Fighting one is very difficult, even in a case such as this, where the evidence is overwhelming that the children should have been in the father’s care and custody.”

We want you to contact all relevant Washington authorities and demand that Solomon and little Maile be reunited–to email and fax them a letter, click here. To call them, click here.

There is much more to learn about this case and the issues surrounding it–to learn more, click on Campaign to Reunite Solomon Metalwala with His Daughter Maile.

Running these campaigns takes time and money–please contribute to the organization which fights for you by going to www.FathersandFamilies.org/give.

Together with you in the love of our children,

Glenn Sacks, MA
Executive Director,
Fathers and Families

Ned Holstein, M.D., M.S.
Founder, Chairman of the Board,
Fathers and Families

November 30th, 2011 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
I’ve said before that fathers who opt for the stay-at-home dad role should beware.  In the event of divorce, courts may still look at them as dads, not as stay-at-home dads.  That is, they may get the treatment that’s so familiar to fathers across the country and the English-speaking world – non-custodial status, minimal parenting time, child support.

The following is a case in point.  It’s also a cautionary tale for any father who considers embracing “role reversal.”  What the dad in this case found was that, while he accepted a reversal of sex roles with his wife, family courts did not.

Scott and Kathleen Ritchie were married in 1994.  At the time, he was a well-paid pilot scheduler for American Airlines and she was employed too.  For several years they lived a nomadic existence due to the fact that Kathleen often changed jobs seeking better pay.  That took them from Hershey, PA to St. Louis to Chicago, back to St. Louis, to Dearborn, MI, and finally to the Kalamazoo, Michigan area where both had extended family and friends.

When Kathleen discovered she was pregnant in 2003, both parents decided that Scott would be the stay-at-home parent.  Kathleen earned more than he did anyway, so the arrangement made sense.  For the first six years of their son Kyle’s life, Kathleen worked and received a paycheck and Scott stayed home and cared for their son who flourished under the arrangement.

Kathleen got laid off in the economic downturn in 2009 but eventually found work with Conagra in Omaha earning $120,000 per year.  She took that job in October of 2009, but they both wanted to stay in Michigan due to deep family ties there.  Kyle had started school, so, according to their agreement, Scott would once again start earning.  The plan was for both of them to seek employment in Michigan for one year, and if that didn’t work out, they’d pull up stakes and move – this time to Omaha.

From the time she took the job in Nebraska to about the summer of 2010, Scott and Kyle traveled there three or four times, but Kathleen came to Michigan more often.  As far as Scott knows though, she never applied for a job there despite the fact that Kellogg’s and Ford had both told her, when she left them, that she was welcome back any time.

Then, in the summer of 2010, Scott got several surprises.  The first was that Kathleen hadd cleaned out their joint bank accounts, placing all the money – $73,000 – in hers.  She also cleaned out the account they’d established for Kyle, about $1,500 in all.  A month and a half later, she filed for divorce, demanding custody of Kyle into the bargain.

Now, recall that Scott was a stay-at-home dad.  He hadn’t worked in several years and was way out of the loop in terms of his resume and his work skills.  He hadn’t worked and he hadn’t expected to work because that was their arrangement.  Now he had a six-year-old son to care for, no job and no money.  But he still had credit cards, right?  Nope, Kathleen had cancelled them as well.  Scott maintained one credit card he’d had before they married, but with no money to pay with, it was largely useless. Due to his wife’s theft of his share of their joint funds, Scott and Kyle had their backs against the wall – no job, no money, no credit. 

Into the bargain, Kathleen also had the utilities cut off in the house in which her husband and son were living.  With no job and no money, Scott and Kyle were trapped.  This was Michigan in 2010, the depths of the recession.

Now, you might think that all of that would mean a family judge would immediately issue a temporary order giving Scott custody and making Kathleen pay him child support of at least $2,000 per month.  Indeed, you’d probably think that the judge would be fairly ticked off at Kathleen for placing a little boy in such dire financial straits.  You might think those things because, if a father had done that to his son and wife, the judge wouldn’t hesitate to throw the book at him.

But you’d be wrong.  In fact, when they went before Referee Richard Minter in January of  2011, he gave custody to Kathleen. 

What were his reasons?  Michigan state law required him to consider 12 factors in deciding the relative merits of the parents.  Minter decided that all factors weighed equally between the two parents except one – the “capacity and disposition” of the parents to provide the child with food, clothing, medical care and… other material needs.”  In other words, Kathleen earned more money than Scott as per their agreement, and therefore should have custody.

Now, I know what you’re thinking.  There are some six million stay-at-home mothers in this country and they don’t all lose custody on divorce because their husbands did the earning in the family.  In fact, virtually none of them do.  So how could all those other factors be considered equal between the Scott and Kathleen when it was Scott who did the hands-on parenting?

A few interesting remarks Minter made during the initial hearing suggest the answer.  Those made it clear that he simply couldn’t wrap his brain around the concept of a stay-at-home father.  Stay-at-home mothers were familiar to him and he enthusiastically approved.  But a stay-at-home father was a strange and dangerous animal to the referee.  From the trial transcript:

Page 27, Line 7: “But I really struggled with that whole gender issue. And, you know-and that was the first question in my mind as I sat and went through this.   Well, a lot of things.
 
Line 13: “You know, if this were the dad that went away and got a job, and a mom who was home, what would I do? And I really, really struggled with that.
 
Page 31, Line 9: “On the gender issue, boy, I-the only answer I can give you at this point is that perhaps we are wrong if we look at favoring-and I have always tended to favor stay at home moms. I will admit that. Or stay at home parents. I respect that and admire that very, very much. Given these same circumstances in the future, I will remember this case, and I’m not going to rule in favor of a woman just because she’s a woman from here on in on these kinds of circumstances.

It doesn’t get a lot clearer than that.  Minter admits to having “always tended to favor stay at home moms.”  He respects and admires them “very, very much.”  But when a dad does the same thing, he all of a sudden doesn’t admire it so much.  He also admits to having ruled “in favor of a woman just because she’s a woman.”

So in the initial phase of his divorce and custody case, Scott Ritchie lost custody of the son he’d raised since birth, not because he was a bad dad, not because he was violent or uninvolved in Kyle’s life.  He lost his son for one reason only – he was a stay-at-home dad in a family court system that embraces only stay-at-home moms.

November 30th, 2011 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
So it was off to Nebraska for Kyle, in the suddenly-loving care of his mother.  I say “suddenly” because before she filed for divorce, she’d never been much of a hands-on-mother.  Oh, she loved her son and did what she could for him, but she was a career woman first and a mother second, just the way countless dads are.  But once she filed, all that changed and she became the doting mother every judge likes to see.

But Referee Richard Minter’s decision was only temporary.  A second judge, Patricia Conlon, would have to rule on the case and make permanent orders.  She did that on October 25, 2011.

Conlon’s order is like none I’ve ever read.  It can be charitably called “rambling.”  Much of it is simple a stream of consciousness narrative that veers from legal order to the tone of a school principal correcting a wayward child, to am amateur psychotherapist and back to judge.  Conlon contradicts herself more than once and throughout the 34-page order is at pains to construe every ambiguity against Scott Ritchie, the stay-at-home father.  It is, in short, a barely coherent exercise in misandry.

Was Scott a stay-at-home father for all of his son’s life?  Yes, Conlon admits that he was, but, according to her, he failed to behave enough like a stay-at-home mother, principally one of, say, 100 years ago. 

First of all, it does not appear that the father was a “homemaker” under the traditional interpretation of that concept held by females for centuries who tended to be the “stay at home parent.”

True, he cared for his son night and day.  True he was an excellent and loving father who has raised a fine little boy to school age.  But all of that meant little or nothing to Conlon.  Indeed, her opinion entirely skips the first six years of Kyle’s life, preferring to focus on Scott’s failure to get a job prior to his son’s starting school and move to Nebraska to be with his wife.

Never mind that that was their agreement.  Never mind that Kyle was in school in Michigan and had friends and family there.  Never mind that, if they couldn’t get work in Michigan, Scott had agreed to move.  And never mind that he never refused to move until she filed for divorce and cleaned out their bank accounts.

It’s a strange judge who finds fault with a stay-at-home father for refusing to displace himself and his child to be with his itinerant wife who’s just stated via her petition for divorce that she wants nothing to do with him.  As a client of mine used to say, “That just don’t make no damned sense.”  Indeed it doesn’t, but Conlon was just getting started.

You’re probably wondering what Conlon did with the fact that Kathleen cleaned out their bank accounts.  Here’s how.  She found fault with Kathleen’s having done that.  It seems that, according to Conlon, Kathleen was living the high life in Omaha, while Scott and their son “did without.”  That’s not surprising considering she was earning $120,000 a year of her own, plus having taken the $73,000 from their accounts.  A single person can live pretty well on that.  By contrast, a man and a little boy, with nothing at all to live on fare decidedly worse.  All that Conlon called “cruel” on Kathleen’s part.

But it turns out it was all Scott’s fault.  The fact that Scott wanted to stay in Michigan, as they’d agreed to do if possible “led her to withdraw the money from their accounts.”  It apparently also led her to refuse to put any of it back when he asked her multiple times to do so.  How Scott’s hewing to their agreement that was clearly in Kyle’s best interest meant that he “led her” to make off with their only savings, threatening their child with privation, Conlon doesn’t explain for what must be obvious reasons.

Conlon’s self-contradictions and inconsistencies make reading her order like driving on a curving road; it almost makes you motion sick trying to follow it.  For example, one of the reasons she ended up giving custody to Kathleen is that, after she moved to Omaha, she returned to Michigan to visit Scott and Kyle on occasion.  That’s a good thing – a mother visiting her son.  Except maybe it isn’t; according to Conlon, “she got tricked” into doing so by Scott.  How he did that, she doesn’t say, any more than she says why he’d need to “trick” a mother into visiting her son.

Another example of Conlon’s bewildering patterns of thought involves the question of what constituted Kyle’s “established custodial environment.”  Under Michigan law, a child’s established custodial environment dictates which parent should get custody, all other things being equal. 

Now, follow this if you can.  According to Conlon, Minter was wrong to say there was a joint custodial environment because Scott provided that alone at their home near Kalamazoo.  Except the minute Kathleen moved to Nebraska, there was a joint custodial environment.  That’s because she made the effort to see Kyle after she moved.  So Kathleen lived with Scott and Kyle in Michigan, but that’s not a joint custodial environment because Scott was the stay-at-home dad.  But when she moved away without either father or son, that created a joint custodial environment because she came back to visit sometimes.  You figure it out, because I can’t.

Then of course there’s the fact that Conlon decided that as of the date of the trial, Kyle’s primary residence was in Omaha because he’d spent most of his time there for six months.  What about the six years he’d spent in Michigan with his father?  She doesn’t say.

Then there are the strictly gratuitous slaps she takes at Scott.  The most outstanding of which is her opinion that Scott is narcissistic, believing that Kyle is an “extension of himself.”  Her basis for that? 

Somewhere (sic) during the course of this marriage, the father began to see the minor child as being an extension of himself and that was evident in his testimony that the wife was “threatening Kyle and me.”  This is not rational considering the fact that the child is the child of both parents and not just one, and there was nothing to indicate that the mother was abusive to either the child or the father.

Nothing more supports her amateur’s diagnosis. 

But more important is the fact that there was indeed proof of abuse.  If stealing all their savings, including Kyle’s, leaving father and child destitute, in the middle of a severe recession when the father hadn’t had a job for over six years isn’t threatening, I don’t know what is.  But if you’re Judge Patricia Conlon, it not only isn’t abusive, it’s something to use against Scott.  He complained about it in court and that, in Conlon’s telling, renders him irrational.

Well, I know who’s irrational here, but it isn’t Scott Ritchie.

But the real kicker comes when Conlon lists the factors she’s required by Michigan law to consider in deciding custody.  There are 12, and they’re all ties, i.e. neither parent comes out better than the other, except in one instance.  Like Minter, Conlon found that Kathleen is more able to provide for the child than Scott is.

And of course that’s true.  Scott, like almost every stay-at-home parent suddenly faced with the need to go to work, is scrambling to do so in one of the worse economies the country has ever seen.  Kathleen of course is in the catbird seat.

But if earning capacity were the thing that tipped the scales, essentially every divorced father in the country would have primary custody of his child.  But that’s not so.  Indeed, similar analyses of fathers’ and mothers’ contributions describe stay-at-home moms as the next best things to saints, while fathers who go to work every day, just don’t seem to care much about their children.  Indeed, that narrative seems to hold that working to support your wife and child is a suspect activity.  It likely means the dad is an egoist, more interested in his own career advancement than in his child.

Let the sexes be reversed, however, and that narrative disappears entirely replaced by, once again, the mother as heroine.  And so it is in Conlon’s telling.  The fact that Scott stayed home, cared for his son and involved the neighbors in the little boy’s life meant that he was the “social butterfly of the neighborhood.”  Has she said the same about mothers who take their little ones to the park to visit with other mothers who’ve done the same?  What about mothers who have other moms over for coffee and a chat while the children play?  I doubt it. 

The life Scott led was, Conlon writes, “all due to the efforts of his employed wife.”  True, just as it is when fathers work to support their children and stay-at-home mothers.  But it’s only when a father stays at home that the activity becomes suspect.  Did Conlon notice that Kyle’s care was “all due to the efforts of her stay-at-home husband?”  She did not, the well-being of the child having temporarily escaped her notice.

Gone are the encomiums to stay-at-home parents that are so much a fixture of court orders when the parent in question is female.  Amazingly enough, Conlon noticed that Kathleen really had little to do with Kyle up until she filed for divorce.  Then she became a “more attentive parent than she had been in Michigan.”  But no matter that she’d played little part in the boy’s life until it behooved her to do so in her bid for custody.  She’s the boy’s mother and Conlon was bound and determined for her to have custody, the facts be damned.

And so Scott Ritchie lost custody of his son.  Indeed, during the school year, he barely gets to see him at all – only on certain holidays.  In the summer he’ll have him for two months, and that’s it.  Now, if Scott follows his wife to Omaha, then custody is 50/50.  But just consider what that means in terms of Kathleen’s propensity for changing jobs and moving here and there.  As far as I can count, she’s now done that six times during their 14-year marriage.

So what Scott can look forward to is following his ex-wife around the country, dutifully paying child support in order to keep contact with the son he did everything to raise.  He’ll be like a dog following a nomadic band of humans hoping they’ll throw him a bone. 

In the meantime, what does that do to his ability to establish a career for himself?  After all, he no longer has his son, so what’s a dad to do?  The workplace is pretty much it, but if he wants to keep contact with his son, he’ll need to keep to Kathleen’s schedule, not his own.  And since Kathleen moves so much, Scott will need to do that as well, and at a moment’s notice.  How is he supposed to make a career that way?  Conlon’s not only damaged Scott’s relationship with his son, she’s destroyed his ability to pursue a career.

And what about the stability of the child’s home?  That’s usually considered extremely important by judges deciding custody.  But here, placing Kyle with the mother who’s taken little part in his care and who moves every couple of years is preferred to the stable home environment provided by the boy’s father who’s been his sole caregiver almost all his life.

From now on, remember the name Scott Ritchie.  He’s the father who did everything right, who played the game by the mothers’ playbook.  He’s a doting and fine father who devoted his life to his son, only to have the boy taken from him by courts that blatantly apply a double standard to men and women.  Stay-at-home moms get primary custody almost without exception and their selflessness is praised to the heavens.

Stay-at-home dads?  Not so much.  Ever suspicious of fathers, the courts in Scott Ritchie’s case went to absurd lengths to discredit him for doing exactly what countless mothers do.

The case is a disgrace of which any judge of decent sensibilities would be ashamed.

It seems like good fathers just can’t win for losing.

December 1st, 2011 by Robert Franklin, Esq.

Kim Kardashian hits estranged husband Kris Humphries.

As all the world now knows, Kim Kardashian committed domestic violence against her soon to be ex-husband, Kris Humphries.  The world knows that because she did it on television, specifically, a show called “Kim and Courtney Take New York.” Kardashian and New Jersey Nets power forward Humphries are splitting up and so, for whatever reason, she got angry and took a poke at him.
  Here’s a video of the “Dr. Drew” show in which the video of the incident is reprised (CNN, 11/29/11).

I’m of two minds about this.  First, Dr. Drew and his guest do the right thing, which is to call what Kardashian did “domestic violence.”  All by itself, their doing so is a step in the right direction.  I’ve marveled for years at the almost total media blackout of the words “domestic violence” when describing women’s violence against men.  Time and again articles describing a particular violent incident by a girl or woman against a boy or man simply ignore the fact that what happened was domestic violence according to legal and popular definitions of same.

That wouldn’t be so bad except that the blackout comes in the context of a culture that by turns ignores women’s domestic violence, or outright denies it.  So when the news media fail to perform their most basic function – informing the public of pertinent facts – they perpetuate the false narrative that only men commit domestic violence against only women.

So I’m glad that Dr. Drew and his guest called Kardashian’s punch what it must be called – domestic violence.

Also, in passing, Dr. Drew was careful to say that DV isn’t a gendered phenomenon; both sexes do it and both sexes have it done to them.  Good for him.

So why am I of two minds?  For a number of reasons.  First, her punch may or may not have even landed.  Given the camera angle, it’s impossible to know, and Humphries grabbed her wrist so she couldn’t give it another shot.

Of course we know that failure to injure doesn’t take her action out of the realm of DV, far from it.  Much less injurious things than what Kardashian did have been defined as domestic “violence” and that’s part of the problem with the whole concept.  What we call violence often as not has nothing to do with, well, violence, at least in the traditional meaning of physical action meant to injure.

And that’s not just a semantic problem; it’s a real everyday problem, mostly for men and often for fathers.  The astonishing expansion of the concept of domestic violence has had devastating effects on men and families.  It’s opened the door to the state’s intervention into the private lives of Americans far more than anything else.  Think the national security state that’s flourished since the September 11, 2001 attacks has curtailed civil liberties?  It doesn’t hold a candle to the nutty notion that anything we decide to call domestic violence requires action by police, prosecutors, courts and prisons.

Now, if we’d confined our definition of DV to actual physical violence that has some sort of hurtful effect, I wouldn’t mind.  After all, I don’t want people attacking and injuring each other and I don’t think the fact that it occurs inside a residence should exempt the wrongdoer from apprehension and punishment.

But our notions of DV that require state action have gotten way out of hand.  Domestic violence is now routinely defined to include “economic abuse,” otherwise known as the husband badgering the wife to spend less.  Heated words constitute “psychological abuse.”  In some jurisdictions, euthanizing a dying pet has become domestic abuse.

And those definitions aren’t idle wordplay; they have real and often terrible consequences.  Fathers lose their children, men lose their residences, names get placed on sex offender registries.

So when Dr. Drew and his guest shout that what Kardashian did is domestic violence, they’re right, but they’re also promoting state overreaching into the realm of family life.  Face it, Kris Humphries doesn’t need state protection from Kim Kardashian.

The chances are that this incident will be forgotten in a week, and that’s all to the good.  But what shouldn’t be forgotten is that the vast majority of domestic violence is either entirely non-injurious or results in only a minor cut or bruise.  In other words, most DV looks a lot like what Kardashian did, or attempted to do, to Humphries.

So my guess is that his zeal to say that what she did was domestic violence, will leave most of Dr. Drew’s viewers less than impressed.  My guess is that the main reaction will be “what’s the big deal?”  And in so doing, Dr. Drew will diminish the importance of domestic violence.  Won’t most viewers look at the video and say “if that’s domestic violence, it’s not that important”?

In fact, that’s what most people think of domestic violence anyway.  Earlier this year, the Canadian government published its findings of its people’s response to DV.  Seventy-eight percent of people experiencing DV didn’t report the matter to the police.

Perhaps worse, Dr. Drew’s viewers will conclude that female-on-male DV is much like what they see in their mind’s eye – a smaller, weaker woman ineffectually going at a larger, stronger man.  In short, despite Dr. Drew’s statements to the contrary, many viewers will decide, in conformance with popular culture, that women don’t hurt men.

Still worse, Dr. Drew and his guest take pains to inform viewers that “this is how it (domestic violence) always starts,” “it’s progressive,” “it goes to a horrible, horrible place.”  Their implication is that people who do what Kardashian did move on to more and more severe acts of violence until their partner actually does get hurt, perhaps seriously.  That’s a favorite trope of the DV establishment, and it’s flat wrong as much research into the matter shows.

In fact, that notion is exactly backwards.  It reminds me of the old joke in the 1960s – “every heroin addict started on mother’s milk.”  That saying came up because of the notion that pot was a “gateway drug.”  It was often said by law enforcement types that some huge proportion of heroin users had “started on pot.”  Yes, and a similar percentage started on mother’s milk.

In the same way, every person who’s a serious partner abuser – who hits, stabs, clubs, etc. to hurt – probably does start with a minor push or shove.  But that doesn’t mean that every person who pushes or shoves becomes a violent abuser.  In fact, the vast majority of DV is a one-time thing.  Very little of it is the type of “domestic terrorism” about which the state has a legitimate interest.

Dr. Drew promoted the false concept that anyone who pushes a partner is in danger of becoming a brutal batterer.  It’s just not true.

So Dr. Drew called what Kardashian did by its right name according to the standards of the times.  The problem is that our approach to domestic violence is almost completely wrong and the enormously inflated definition of the term is a cornerstone of that wrong, dysfunctional approach.

In the small picture, Dr. Drew got it right.  In the larger one, he’s part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Thanks to Matt, Mark and Ron for the heads-up.

December 1st, 2011 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
While we’re on the subject of domestic violence, I may as well mention this little matter.

It seems that the police and various members of the domestic violence establishment of Bangor, Maine got together for a press conference recently to bemoan the state of domestic violence in the state.  If you thought that would be an occasion for some vast misrepresentations about the facts of DV, you’d have been right.  View the video here.

Unlike Dr. Drew who simply engaged in promoting the current overreaching definition of domestic violence, the good folks in Bangor demand nothing less than the re-engineering of – you guessed it – men.  It seems there’s been a spate of domestic murder-suicides in Maine over the past several months, and that’s got the local DV establishment up in arms.

It’s true of course that murder for any reason is a senseless tragedy about which we should all be deeply concerned.  So the people speaking into the microphone are right to be concerned.  I’m concerned too.

But it’s too bad that their appropriate concern also includes false claims of fact and wild conclusions about what they believe to be the degraded state of men.

Leading off the press conference is a speaker who tells one and all that we have to “define differently what it means to be a man…”  Exactly what that means we’re left to guess, but what’s not speculative is what viewers will make of the statement.  It’s safe to conclude that the usual DV establishment narrative will be absorbed – men are the perpetrators of DV; women are its victims.  And worse, it’s something inherent in men that makes us violent against women.  After all, what else would require a new definition of what it means to be a man?

That of course assumes that most or even all men commit domestic violence against women.  That’s not true as countless studies show, but the DV establishment long ago ceased caring whether its “facts” were accurate.  Since men and women are equally likely to commit DV, that must mean that we need a new definition of what it means to be a woman, but you didn’t hear anyone at the press conference saying that.

Likewise, reliable data on DV show that men and women are equally likely to commit non-reciprocal violence.  But when the violence is two sided, 70% of the incidents were started by women.  That in turn tends to result in injury to the woman.  So if DV advocates truly wanted to protect women from harm, one of their slogans, repeated again and again, would be “don’t hit first.”

But we never hear that from DV advocates.  That’s because they doggedly refuse to acknowledge the truth about DV – that women have an equal role in stopping it.  This is not news.  Back in the early 1970s, Erin Pizzey, who opened the first women’s DV shelter in the UK, realized that a large percentage of the women coming to her shelter reported being violent themselves.  Pizzey recognized immediately that, to protect women from harm, she needed to teach them to control their own violent aggression.

For that little act of apostasy, Pizzey was drummed out of the movement amid a hail of death threats and the murder of her dog.  The DV establishment has been traveling the wrong road ever since.  Simply put, pretending that women don’t commit DV means that women can’t get help; because they can’t get help, they continue to attack their often larger, stronger partners, sometimes with tragic results.

Men need to learn to avoid violence in their intimate relationships.  So do women.  To date, the DV establishment is content to look at only half the problem.  Is it any wonder that their “solution” to the problem doesn’t work?  Not for nothing have bureaucrats who monitor VAWA said frankly that there’s no evidence that it has had, after 17 years, any effect on levels of domestic violence.

Meanwhile, back at the press conference, one speaker did hastily say that both sexes commit DV, but that truth must have been too traumatic for her because in her next sentence, she lied.  She claimed that, of the 11 deaths due to DV in Maine this year, all were perpetrated by men.

I guess she forgot about this case (True Crime Report, 6/27/11).

It seems that, back in June, Bangor resident Roxanne Jeskey overheard her husband Richard talking on the phone to an ex-girlfriend.  A few hours later, Richard Jeskey was dead, apparently brutally murdered by Roxanne who is now in jail without bail indicted for his murder.

He was found bloody and brutally beaten in the bathtub. His entire body showed signs of massive trauma.

Wrote Detective David Bushey in an affidavit: “These included nose fractures, loss of an eye, rib fractures, rectal incised wounds, and internal hemorrhage from an instrument(s) pushed through his scrotum into his abdomen. Further, Mr. Jeskey was strangled with sufficient force to break the hyoid bone of his neck.”

Needless to say, Roxanne claims to have been a victim of Richard’s DV, but to date there’s no evidence of that.  Her lawyer claims she was covered from head to toe with bruises, but her mug shot shows none.

More importantly, the pair lived in an apartment with neighbors on either side.  This article quotes them as saying the Jeskey’s seemed like a normal, quiet couple to whom nothing untoward seemed to happen (Bangor Daily News, 6/23/11).  There were never any reports of shouting, blows or impacts emanating from their apartment.  The pair were often seen together and Roxanne was a talkative, cheerful neighbor. 

Did anyone ever see bruises or indications of violence?  No one mentioned any such thing.

But on the night of Richard’s slaying, they heard a lot.  Indeed, two different neighbors came to the Jeskey’s door on separate occasions, only to be met by Roxanne who reported that everything was fine.

So my guess is that her claim of victimization is a crock, a lie concocted in the hope of avoiding prison for her brutal act.  We’ll see how the trial plays out.

While we wait for that, the press conference held the other day can be seen as, in part, an attempt by the DV establishment to exonerate her for her apparent crime, to which she’s pleaded not guilty.  After all, the claim that there have been no DV-related deaths in Maine this year committed by women is outright false.  The claim that we have to change the definition of what it means to be a man is a direct slam at a dead man whose wife claims, against all the apparent evidence that he deserved to die.

So, far from opposing domestic violence, the people at the press conference seem to find some DV perfectly fine, thank you.  If they didn’t, wouldn’t they say so?  After all, that’s what press conferences are for.

Thanks to Tatyana for the heads-up.

December 1st, 2011 by FAF Staff
Fathers and Families Executive Director Glenn Sacks, MA appeared on KOMO News Radio AM 1000/FM 97.7 in Seattle today and called on Washington authorities to reunite 4-year-old Maile Metalwala with her father Solomon as soon as possible.

From Group pushing for missing boy’s father to be reunited with daughter (KOMO News, 12/1/11):

A national family advocacy group is urging Washington state agencies to reunite the sister of missing boy Sky Metalwala with her father.

Glenn Sacks, executive director of Fathers and Families, said there is no reason for the 4-year-old girl to have to stay in foster care.

“Solomon Metalwala has been separated from his daughter for almost a year now based on charges that have been discredited…”

The girl was taken away from her mother, Julia Biryukova, after her 2-year-old brother disappeared last month…

“How on Earth could it not be detrimental for a scared little girl to be housed with strangers instead of being with the father she loves and needs? I think any parent can relate to that,” said Sacks. “The daughter should’ve immediately been given to her father.”

Solomon Metalwala is scheduled to have a custody hearing next Monday, and Sacks hopes the court will rule in favor of the father.

“We are trying to apply pressure to the relevant agencies there in Washington to reunite this father and his daughter,” he said.

December 1st, 2011 by FAF Staff
Matt Phelps’ piece National group lobbies to return Sky Metalwala’s sister to father ran today in several of the PNW News newspapers. We encourage our members and supporters to comment on the piece by clicking here.

Phelps writes:

Most feel the holiday season is a time for families to be together. But a judge will have to make a decision Monday on where 4-year-old Maile Metalwala will spend her Christmas and maybe beyond.

Maile’s brother, Sky, went missing Nov. 6… Maile was immediately put into foster care and a judge ruled on Nov. 10 that she stay in foster care until a dependency hearing this Monday in King County Superior Court.

But a national family court reform organization, Fathers and Families, has launched a campaign, demanding the court to return the girl to her father.

The Boston-based organization is urging the public to call the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services and King County Superior Court to give Metalwala sole custody of his daughter.

“Four-year-old Maile was shoved into the foster care system after the mysterious disappearance of her 2-year-old brother Sky,” said National Executive Director for Fathers and Families, Glenn Sacks. “Currently everyone’s focus is on finding Sky, as it should be. Yet it is also important that Maile be reunited with the father she loves and needs as soon as possible”…

“We really want Maile home with her father, and we appreciate the support and prayers of other groups, but as far as Solomon is concerned, he must stay on the administrative track he is on,” said Metalwala’s attorney Clay Terry…

Sacks claims that the DSHS is “being bombarded with calls and letters demanding that they reunite Solomon Metalwala with his daughter,” thanks to the organization’s campaign. Maile has been “unjustly kept for almost a year” from her father, said Sacks.

“Through all the coverage of this highly-publicized case, the fact that this father and daughter have been separated without cause has slipped under the radar,” said Sacks. “Citizens are quick to decry government interference in people’s lives, yet few apply it to what happens in child welfare cases and family court. But if denying a fit, loving parent the right to raise his own child isn’t a governmental abuse, what is?”..

“Little Maile has had to go through a great deal for a little girl,” said Leslie Clay Terry, an attorney representing Solomon Metalwala. “When she was just a baby, younger than Sky’s age, the happy family they had was turned around by the advent of Julia’s OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder).”

By the time Maile was 3 years old, Terry said the girl’s mother had been involuntarily committed by the police for mental observation.

“When the mother got out, she went on a form of revenge ride in judicial system to prevent Solomon from seeing the children,” said Terry, noting the abuse allegations Biryukova brought against her estranged husband. “Then, when everything else failed, the mother claimed the child had been physical abused and possibly sexually abused.”

He said the hospital did not find any signs of sexual abuse. In addition, a polygraph and a second-opinion CPS investigation concluded that there was no physical abuse.

“However, the allegations, the teaming up of victim advocates who are supposed to help retrieve victims, and an abundance (actually, overabundance) of caution by the court prevented Solomon from seeing his children for more than 11 months,” said Terry, adding that Biryukova was given temporary custody of the children. “There was a provision to see the children with supervised visitation four hours a day, but it was connected to some very expensive and long-running domestic violence classes, which he could not afford.”

Terry said there was no domestic violence proven or accepted by any authority other than the court commissioner and “the victim’s advocates who hover protectively around anyone who makes such allegations, without the duty to check it out.”

Solomon has had four separate two-hour visits with his daughter since his son disappeared, and is permitted telephone contact with her every day, said Terry.

But some, like Sacks, believe he should have sole custody.

“When a mother and father are divorced or separated, and a child welfare agency removes the children from the mother’s home for abuse or neglect, an offer of placement to the father, barring unfitness, should be automatic,” said Sacks.

Yet, Sacks pointed out, when fathers inform child welfare officials that they would like their children to live with them, the agencies seek to place the children with their fathers in only 15 percent of cases, according to a study by the Urban Institute…

Fathers and Families claims that Metalwala is a victim of two common problems. First, Family Law Commissioner Jacqueline Jeske, a former domestic violence prosecutor, approved a restraining order against Metalwala.

This was done despite the fact that Biryukova had previously made false abuse charges, and Child Protective Services had concluded that these new abuse charges were also false, said Sacks.

“Biryukova, having lied to police about the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of her son Sky, is a thoroughly discredited accuser,” said Sacks.