NPO Blog Archive

Florida–“A woman in Central Florida who was arrested after telling authorities she went ‘on strike’ and left her teens home alone because they would fight is no longer facing charges in the case. Melissa G. Dean, 33, was charged with child neglect after telling Ocala police and the Department of Children and Families that she leaves her children, ages 17, 16, 14 and 13, home alone.

“According to a charging affidavit, Dean said the children needed to start cleaning up and stop fighting and that she had no control over them. Dean also said she was fed up with being run over in her own home and having no privacy, according to the affidavit.

“Dean told a DCF official that she decided to ‘go on strike’ because no one would help with her children, saying the police and courts would do nothing to help her. Dean, a Walgreens manager, said she spends nights at a friend’s house and would only spend one night per week at her home, the affidavit stated…The state decided not to prosecute because the chances of conviction were too slim…”

I don’t know if the father(s) of these four children abandoned them or were driven out by mom or some combination of both. But I do know one thing–if the dad were there, was a functional person, and was allowed to parent his children without being undermined, the mom wouldn’t be “being run over in her own home” by the kids, and the kids would not be out of control. The story is a nice example of what happens when dads are absent.

Thanks to Peter, a reader, for the story.

Phoenix, AZ–One of the big stories out of the southwest this week has been the abduction of a toddler from Child Protective Services–apparently abducted by his parents, apparently with the complicity of someone who has worked with CPS. According to Parents suspected of abuse accused of abducting tot (Arizona Republic, 3/15/08):

“A 17-month-old who police say was abducted by his parents and presumably taken to Mexico has been in the care of Child Protective Services since he was about 2 months old, when abuse allegations surfaced. Authorities’ efforts to find little Miguel Echave-Felix continued Friday…

“Police said Miguel was kidnapped Wednesday with the aid of a liaison who, less than two weeks before, left his job with Southwest Human Development, a company that has worked with CPS for more than a decade. Gonzales said the foster family probably didn’t know that Armando Flores, 47, was no longer an official liaison when he asked to take the baby to visit his parents.

“Flores is being held in a Maricopa County jail on suspicion of conspiracy to kidnap and custodial interference. Maricopa County sheriff’s records show Flores was born in Mexico, and immigration officials have placed a hold on him, meaning he cannot be released on bail. Holds are typically placed on someone believed to be in the country illegally.

“Flores told investigators he agreed to help Sobieda Felix and Angel Echave-Felix, both 35, flee to Mexico with the boy after a tearful plea, court records show.

“The Felixes were the subject of a Phoenix police and CPS investigation that began in December 2006. No charges had been filed in the abuse case, and the nature of the allegations was unclear.

“In the meantime, the boy had been living with foster parents and allowed supervised visits with his natural family…”

I try hard to be fair, but this case seems questionable to me. I realize that CPS has a difficult job. Whenever they remove a child from a home, people scream that it was unfair, abusive, indicative of a police state, etc., etc. On the other hand, whenever a horrific child abuse case is discovered, everybody — on the radio, on TV, in newspapers, in private discussions — says (all together now) “Where on earth was Child Protective Services?”

Perhaps when this case is resolved we will find out that the parents abused or neglected the child and that CPS acted appropriately. That is certainly possible. However, given some of the facts of the case, one wonders. Whatever the abuse was, there were never any charges filed. Even now, we apparently don’t know what it was that the parents are actually accused of doing.

The fact that a CPS liaison sympathized with the parents indicates that this might have been an unjust seizure of a child by CPS. The fact that the parents are from Mexico, are so poor that they apparently do not even own a vehicle, and probably do not speak English well, raises the suspicion that whatever their offense, this may all be more about the parents’ socioeconomic status than any real abuse.

I’m not saying CPS is wrong — I’m saying they might be wrong. In any case, if the state is going to seize a family’s child, I’d like to see a hell of a lot more justification for it than “the nature of the allegations was unclear.”

To learn more about issues with Child Protective Services, including my criticisms of the way CPS often marginalizes fathers, see my co-authored column Choosing Foster Parents over Fathers (San Diego Union-Tribune, 7/11/07) or click here.

Burmingham, England–One problem for dads in divorce is that they can often be arrested and get bad publicity for things which really are quite trivial and meaningless. As an example, take the recent UK headline Spider-Man arrested for harassing ex-wife. Sounds bad, right? Yet all that really happened is that fathers’ rights activist Ray Barry (pictured as “Spiderman” at a Fathers 4 Justice protest) “was quizzed [by police] after distributing a leaflet containing details of his marriage split.” According to Barry: “The leaflet details my belief that the family courts do not deliver justice and so I have to seek it differently, through the public. The leaflet was not much different to one I had been using for the past four or five years.”
The “58-year-old claimed not to have seen two of his three children for eight years and had only fortnightly access to the other.” So his crime? Distributing a leaflet complaining about his mistreatment in family court and by his ex-wife. Big deal. For a variety of reasons I don’t like it when protesters target judges’ homes or their ex-wives’ homes, and it isn’t generally done. But here Barry has been unlawfully cut off from his children for 8 years and–gasp–distributes a leaflet complaining about it in the neighborhood, and he gets arrested?! Sounds pretty cockeyed to me. And why have there been no legal consequences for the wife cutting Barry off from his children? The article is excerpted below. I met Ray at the Men’s Equality Congress in Washington DC last year–seemed like a nice guy. Spider-Man arrested for harassing ex-wife By James Cartledge Birmingham News, 3/17/08 A FORMER Birmingham civil servant who occupied a church roof dressed as Spider-Man has been arrested on suspicion of harassing his ex-wife. Fathers’ rights activist Ray Barry, who worked at Jobcentre Plus, in Hagley Road, Edgbaston, was quizzed after distributing a leaflet containing details of his marriage split. He twice scaled St Peter’s Church, Wolverhampton, in 2005, as part of the Fathers 4 Justice campaign and now plans to stand for election on a family law reform ticket. “The leaflet details my belief that the family courts do not deliver justice and so I have to seek it differently, through the public,” Mr Barry said. “The leaflet was not much different to one I had been using for the past four or five years. “The questions I was asked by the police seemed really rather innocuous.” Mr Barry, of Windsor Gardens, Castlecroft, Wolverhampton, distributed the leaflet around Tettenhall in the city, near his ex-wife Liz’s home. The 58-year-old claimed not to have seen two of his three children for eight years and had only fortnightly access to the other. He said he planned to stand in this year’s Wolverhampton City Council elections for the Equal Parenting Alliance, which campaigns to reform family law. Mr Barry now runs an insurance and personal injury consultancy is demanding greater openness in family court proceedings. West Midlands Police said a 58-year-old man had been arrested and bailed on suspicion of harassment.

Phoenix, AZ–One of the big stories out of the southwest this week has been the abduction of a toddler from Child Protective Services–apparently abducted by his parents, apparently with the complicity of someone who has worked with CPS. According to Parents suspected of abuse accused of abducting tot (Arizona Republic, 3/15/08):

“A 17-month-old who police say was abducted by his parents and presumably taken to Mexico has been in the care of Child Protective Services since he was about 2 months old, when abuse allegations surfaced. Authorities’ efforts to find little Miguel Echave-Felix continued Friday…

“Police said Miguel was kidnapped Wednesday with the aid of a liaison who, less than two weeks before, left his job with Southwest Human Development, a company that has worked with CPS for more than a decade. Gonzales said the foster family probably didn’t know that Armando Flores, 47, was no longer an official liaison when he asked to take the baby to visit his parents.

“Flores is being held in a Maricopa County jail on suspicion of conspiracy to kidnap and custodial interference. Maricopa County sheriff’s records show Flores was born in Mexico, and immigration officials have placed a hold on him, meaning he cannot be released on bail. Holds are typically placed on someone believed to be in the country illegally.

“Flores told investigators he agreed to help Sobieda Felix and Angel Echave-Felix, both 35, flee to Mexico with the boy after a tearful plea, court records show.

“The Felixes were the subject of a Phoenix police and CPS investigation that began in December 2006. No charges had been filed in the abuse case, and the nature of the allegations was unclear.

“In the meantime, the boy had been living with foster parents and allowed supervised visits with his natural family…”

I try hard to be fair, but this case seems questionable to me. I realize that CPS has a difficult job. Whenever they remove a child from a home, people scream that it was unfair, abusive, indicative of a police state, etc., etc. On the other hand, whenever a horrific child abuse case is discovered, everybody — on the radio, on TV, in newspapers, in private discussions — says (all together now) “Where on earth was Child Protective Services?”

Perhaps when this case is resolved we will find out that the parents abused or neglected the child and that CPS acted appropriately. That is certainly possible. However, given some of the facts of the case, one wonders. Whatever the abuse was, there were never any charges filed. Even now, we apparently don’t know what it was that the parents are actually accused of doing.

The fact that a CPS liaison sympathized with the parents indicates that this might have been an unjust seizure of a child by CPS. The fact that the parents are from Mexico, are so poor that they apparently do not even own a vehicle, and probably do not speak English well, raises the suspicion that whatever their offense, this may all be more about the parents’ socioeconomic status than any real abuse.

I’m not saying CPS is wrong — I’m saying they might be wrong. In any case, if the state is going to seize a family’s child, I’d like to see a hell of a lot more justification for it than “the nature of the allegations was unclear.”

To learn more about issues with Child Protective Services, including my criticisms of the way CPS often marginalizes fathers, see my co-authored column Choosing Foster Parents over Fathers (San Diego Union-Tribune, 7/11/07) or click here.

Birmingham, England–One problem for dads in divorce is that they can often be arrested and get bad publicity for things which really are quite trivial and meaningless. As an example, take the recent UK headline Spider-Man arrested for harassing ex-wife. Sounds bad, right? Yet all that really happened is that fathers’ rights activist Ray Barry (pictured as “Spiderman” at a Fathers 4 Justice protest) “was quizzed [by police] after distributing a leaflet containing details of his marriage split.” According to Barry: “The leaflet details my belief that the family courts do not deliver justice and so I have to seek it differently, through the public.
The leaflet was not much different to one I had been using for the past four or five years.” The “58-year-old claimed not to have seen two of his three children for eight years and had only fortnightly access to the other.” So his crime? Distributing a leaflet complaining about his mistreatment in family court and by his ex-wife. Big deal. For a variety of reasons I don’t like it when protesters target judges’ homes or their ex-wives’ homes, and it isn’t generally done. But here Barry has been unlawfully cut off from his children for 8 years and–gasp–distributes a leaflet complaining about it in the neighborhood, and he gets arrested?! Sounds pretty cockeyed to me. And why have there been no legal consequences for the wife cutting Barry off from his children? The article is excerpted below. I met Ray at the Men’s Equality Congress in Washington DC last year–seemed like a nice guy. Spider-Man arrested for harassing ex-wife By James Cartledge Birmingham News, 3/17/08 A FORMER Birmingham civil servant who occupied a church roof dressed as Spider-Man has been arrested on suspicion of harassing his ex-wife. Fathers’ rights activist Ray Barry, who worked at Jobcentre Plus, in Hagley Road, Edgbaston, was quizzed after distributing a leaflet containing details of his marriage split. He twice scaled St Peter’s Church, Wolverhampton, in 2005, as part of the Fathers 4 Justice campaign and now plans to stand for election on a family law reform ticket. “The leaflet details my belief that the family courts do not deliver justice and so I have to seek it differently, through the public,” Mr Barry said. “The leaflet was not much different to one I had been using for the past four or five years. “The questions I was asked by the police seemed really rather innocuous.” Mr Barry, of Windsor Gardens, Castlecroft, Wolverhampton, distributed the leaflet around Tettenhall in the city, near his ex-wife Liz’s home. The 58-year-old claimed not to have seen two of his three children for eight years and had only fortnightly access to the other. He said he planned to stand in this year’s Wolverhampton City Council elections for the Equal Parenting Alliance, which campaigns to reform family law. Mr Barry now runs an insurance and personal injury consultancy is demanding greater openness in family court proceedings. West Midlands Police said a 58-year-old man had been arrested and bailed on suspicion of harassment.

Los Angeles, CA–I can do without some of the man-blaming in Adam Voiland’s U.S. News & World Report article Why Men Are So Good at Dying (3/14/08), which is not to deny that he’s partly correct. Voiland writes:

“Until about 15 years ago, it was women who lacked information; traditionally, the standard patient in all kinds of medical research on disease and treatments had been the white male. In 1991, the Women’s Health Office was created in the Department of Health and Human Services to promote gender equity in research and raise awareness about conditions such as breast cancer, osteoporosis, and depression. Since then, men’s activists have been grousing that it’s men who aren’t getting a fair shake from the federal government. A bill calling for the establishment of a Men’s Health Office to tackle such urgent male concerns as prostate cancer, accidents, and suicide has been languishing in congressional committees for years.

“Considering the statistics that supporters of the men’s office brandish, you’d think it would be an easy sell. According to the Men’s Health Policy Center, for example, men die at higher rates than women for many leading causes of death. That includes, for example, a death rate for men that’s 50 percent higher than that of women for cancer; twice that of women for ischemic heart disease, and three times that of women for HIV/AIDS. On average–as it’s often pointed out–men live a total of 5.2 years less than women.

“Yet, the bill has been the victim of controversy about funding between the men’s health activists who argue that in the past 20 years medicine has tilted too far toward Venus and feminists unprepared to give up an inch of their hard-won territory. Men’s health advocate Glenn Sacks, for example, makes the case in this column that men’s health is underappreciated and under funded by the federal government. It’s true that women’s health initiatives have seen a boost in funding, says the Wall Street Journal. Yet, there’s a good argument to be made that that’s no reason to start a gender war…”

My column that Voiland cites is When Men’s Health Doesn’t Count (Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, 10/9/02)–it appears below. I hardly think the Men’s Health Act has been the victim of a male-created “gender war”–the Men’s Health Network, and its associated activists are supportive of the Office on Women’s Health, as was my column. We see a need for similar efforts for men, and have cited the Office on Women’s Health’s success as something we’d like to emulate for men.

Read the full U.S. News & World Report article here. My column, co-authored with Dianna Thompson, is below.

When Men’s Health Doesn’t Count
By Dianna Thompson and Glenn Sacks
Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, 10/9/02

Learn more about major areas of men’s health like how to protect against Male Prostate Cancer. there are even more subtle issues specific to men’s health like Health Supplements which meet the nutritional needs specific to men.

Congress is sending a message to American men: men’s health doesn’t count.

The disturbing health and mortality disparities between American whites and blacks are well known, but most people do not realize that the health and mortality disparities between women and men are just as great. For example, the gap in life expectancy between whites and blacks is six years, while the gender gap is 5.7 years. Adjusted for age, men are 1.6 times as likely as women to die from one of the top 10 causes of death, and blacks are 1.5 times as likely to die from them as whites.

Despite this, it is women’s health, not men’s, which continues to receive government attention and funding. For example, the National Institutes of Health–the federal focal point for medical research in the U.S.–spends nearly four times as much on female-specific health research as on male-specific research. And though the average man is as likely to die from prostate cancer as the average woman is from breast cancer, the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Cancer Institute spends three and a half times as much money on breast cancer research as on prostate cancer research.

Martinsburg, WV–As we’ve previously discussed, false charges are a major problem in divorce and custody cases. Men and Women Against Discrimination, the West Virginia affiliate of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, has been making progress on the issue. Both houses of the WV legislature just passed a bill that “slaps criminal charges on those who falsely report child abuse or neglect in order to influence a custody case.” The article is excerpted below. Bill would criminalize false abuse charges By Michael C. Lewis The Journal, 3/10/08 MARTINSBURG–Nine times, one aggrieved father says he fought to protect his name and his relationship with his daughters after he was accused of child abuse in a custody dispute.
The man, whose name we will not use to protect the identity of his daughters, said he is pleased that West Virginia legislators last week passed a bill that slaps criminal charges on those who falsely report child abuse or neglect in order to influence a custody case. On Thursday, state senators passed House Bill 3065, after the measure met overwhelming approval in the House of Delegates last week. The bill charges those who makes a false abuse report with a $1,000 fine, or forces the plaintiff to pay for the defendant”s legal fees. The misdemeanor crime would also carry a punishment of up to 60 hours of community service. The man, previously a resident of Huntington who now lives in Burlington, Ohio, said in 2003 and 2004, he was accused of breaking and entering, assault and sexual and physical abuse against his two daughters. Faced with serving at least one year in jail and losing custody of his daughters, the man fought the charges. “They were never proven to be false. They were said to be ‘unsubstantiated.” They found me not guilty. But I know I”m innocent. I want the satisfaction of knowing that on my record it was a lie, but I”ll never get that,’ said the man, who said he spent thousands of dollars in legal fees to prove his innocence. “People have no idea how much time and money this wastes in the system.’ In West Virginia, from March 2007 to March 2008, West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources Child Protective Services received and did paperwork on 37,165 incidents of child abuse. From those, 26,904 cases were further investigated, said John Law, spokesperson for WVDHHR. Only 3,998 cases were found to be substantiated, or less than 20 percent of all investigated incidents.

Etobicoke, Canada–Another false rape claim, another admission that police rarely file charges over such claims. Perhaps the best part is this–most of the story is dedicated not to the men who could have been targeted, or the men who have been the victims of false rape claims, or even to the waste of police time, money and resources. Nope. Most of the story is dedicated to how difficult it is for rape victims to come forward–as if we were discussing a real rape.

Also, nice quotes from a feminist professor:

“Cheryl Regehr, a professor of social work at the University of Toronto, said that only makes sense, because such fabrications are almost always ‘a call for help in many cases.’

“While she said false rape charges are ‘exceedingly rare,’ they usually draw a disproportionate amount of publicity.

“‘They become highly sensationalized and highly publicized, because they’re so rare,’ said Prof. Regehr. ‘And usually they’re pretty lurid stories.’

“But the effect they can have on real victims of sexual assault can be chilling, she said. ‘Since the dawn of time there’s been this urban myth about how women make up rapes,’ she said.

“‘Every time a case like this comes out, it feeds that … and it really dissuades the real victims from disclosing.'”

As for false rape charges being “exceedingly rare,” that is not the case, as I explained in my column U. of Maryland right to deny protesters a forum to publicly name alleged rapists (Baltimore Sun, 10/15/07). And if they are rare, we certainly seem to get a lot of them–I’ve posted God knows how many on this blog.

The story is below–thanks to Jeremy Swanson.

Etobicoke Rape A Lie, Police Say Chill Effect; Woman claimed she was abducted at gunpoint
Chris Wattie, National Post
Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Police spent hours this weekend searching for two men who hijacked a woman’s car in her Etobicoke neighbourhood, sexually assaulted her and drove away, dumping her in front of her home.

The woman told police she was abducted at gunpoint, forced into a dark green van, driven to an unknown location and sexually assaulted.

Her car was found abandoned at Woodbine Raceway, but officers were unable to find any sign of the two suspects.

They soon concluded the unidentified woman made up the whole story.

Read the full article here.

Los Angeles, CA–We’re accustomed to listening to wives complain about their husbands who golf. Apparently this lazy, good-for-nothing hubby can’t even muster the energy to go to the golf course so his wife can be mad at him about it.

From Dana Summers’ comic Bound and Gagged.