NPO Blog Archive

Los Angeles, CA–In the music video “Do It Well,” singer Jennifer Lopez packs all of the following into a 3 minute, 17 second video:

She pushes a man down a flight of stairs

She kicks a man in the head

She wraps a man’s arm behind his back and shoves him

She hits a man in the head (twice)

She kicks a man

She throws a man

She pushes a man over a stairway railing, and he flips back head first.

The video is considerably more violent than Carrie Underwood’s anti-male Before He Cheats, which was bad enough.

To watch the video, click here. Thanks to JC, a reader, for sending it.

Boston, MA–Background: The Boston Globe recently discussed Fathers & Families‘ shared parenting bill at great length in their editorial A fair role for fathers. While the Globe did not endorse the bill, the editorial essentially agrees with the main arguments behind shared parenting. Ned Holstein, MD, MS, Executive Director of Fathers & Families, responded to the Globe here.

I don’t know if anybody else caught it or thought of it, but I thought this paragraph from the Boston Globe editorial was particularly annoying. The Globe wrote:

“Charles Kindregan, a law professor at Suffolk University, soundly argues that a presumption of joint legal and physical custody could handcuff judges who should be free to consider the best interests of children on a case-by-case basis. ‘You don’t need a presumption when you have facts,’ Kindregan says. The relevant facts include children’s age, temperament, emotional development, and medical needs, as well as how parents get along and how far apart parents live from each other. A judge looking at an infant will have to make very different decisions than a judge looking at a teenage boy.”

In case anybody missed it, what he said is code for “Dad can see the infant maybe an hour or two a week if he’s lucky, and if mom allows it. However, we may be more solicitous of dad’s time when his kid is a teenager. Of course, by then the kid will already be damaged from growing up without a father, but it’s okay for dad to spend real time with the kid, as long as mom is not unhappy about it, and as long as they still live within 1,000 miles of each other.”

The most irritating part of this is the presumption that an infant needs only its mother, not its father. From time to time I get letters from mothers of infant children who are outraged that the fathers want to see the children and — gasp — want to spend some time with the infants in their own homes.

Longtime readers of mine already know what I am going to say. I have been the primary caregiver for my daughter, now almost 10 years old, from the time she was six weeks old. Those first few years home all alone with her, before she went to preschool, were the greatest years of my life. She and I shared everything together, and we were as happy and close as any two people could ever be.

The only downside to it was that I worked in the evenings and my little girl would cry herself to sleep every night because she missed me and I was not there. I still believe that one reason my daughter and I are so close are those special years we had together.

The Globe editorial and the expert it quotes are wrong–there is absolutely no reason why a father should be kept away from his baby or toddler, even if mom and dad are separated.

San Mateo, CA–“Prosecutions for filing a false police report are relatively rare in San Mateo County and often don’t result in much jail time, if any, Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said.

“Defendants convicted of the offense and sentenced to jail often serve that time in the sheriff’s work program, picking up roadside trash or similar tasks, Wagstaffe said.”

It’s rare that a woman goes to jail for making a false rape claim, even though false claims are common. In this case it happened, though–see the San Francisco Chronicle article below.

(As an aside, note her idiot husband–she cheats on him and makes a false rape accusation, and he apparently still wants her. I’ll give you 10 to 1 odds that within five years he’ll be filling out my Family Law Help Form.

He’ll be under a restraining order, booted out of his house, unable to see his kid, and in arrears on his child support, and then he’ll write to me for help. And he’ll be shocked that I don’t know of a pro bono attorney who’s willing to drop everything he’s doing and go work for him for free.)

San Mateo woman who lied about sex attack to fool husband gets 90 days
John Cote, Chronicle Staff Writer
February 26, 2008

A San Mateo woman sentenced to 90 days in county jail for lying about being sexually assaulted at gunpoint by a group of men made up the story to deceive her husband after coming home from a date, authorities said.

Karyn Galila, 24, sobbed Tuesday in a Redwood City courtroom as Commissioner Kathleen McKenna ordered her taken into custody immediately. Galila was handcuffed as her husband looked on. He tried to hug her before she was led away, but was ordered by a bailiff not to touch her.

Galila apparently concocted the story of being assaulted after her SUV broke down in Foster City to explain to her husband why she had come home late after rendezvousing at a restaurant with a man she had recently met online, according to her probation report.

“This was such a detailed, fabricated story,” said McKenna, the San Mateo County Superior Court magistrate who handled sentencing. “This kind of conduct does warrant a jail sentence.”

Galila was arrested after initially telling police she had been sexually assaulted the night of June 12 when her Jeep sport utility vehicle broke down on Foster City Boulevard. She admitted she had lied when she said a group of as many as five men had pushed the Jeep onto a nearby street, then assaulted her at gunpoint.

A fingerprint from Galila’s SUV led investigators to Robert Salapuddin of San Mateo, whom they arrested on unrelated outstanding warrants for felony forgery and misdemeanor embezzlement, prosecutors said.

Salapuddin, 25, had met Galila online and the two decided to meet at a local restaurant that evening, prosecutors said. Police initially focused on him as a possible participant in the alleged assault, but he was able to produce a receipt from the restaurant and a witness who placed both him and Galila there when the assault was supposedly taking place, authorities said.

Galila pleaded no contest Dec. 31 to one misdemeanor count of filing a false police report.

“She at this point is still struggling to figure out why she conducted herself the way she did,” Galila’s attorney, Earl Jiang said at sentencing. “She is genuinely sorry for her conduct.”

Jiang pleaded for leniency, saying Galila had a young child to care for. But prosecutor Rebecca Baum argued that Galila’s actions warranted jail time, saying they could have led to Salapuddin being wrongly incarcerated. McKenna agreed.

Salapuddin was released in July upon pleading no contest to a single count of misdemeanor embezzlement after spending 17 days in jail, prosecutors said. Under his plea deal, he was sentenced effectively to time served.

He is now a fugitive after an arrest warrant was issued for him in November because he failed to pay $900 in restitution in that case, prosecutors said.

Galila, a dental assistant, now faces jail time and a court order to pay police about $5,000 to cover the cost of their investigation.

Jiang said outside court that he was disappointed in the sentence, calling it “harsh.”

Prosecutions for filing a false police report are relatively rare in San Mateo County and often don’t result in much jail time, if any, Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said.

Defendants convicted of the offense and sentenced to jail often serve that time in the sheriff’s work program, picking up roadside trash or similar tasks, Wagstaffe said.

The unique element in Galila’s case was McKenna’s decision to have her jailed immediately, forcing her to apply from behind bars for an alternate sentencing program, Wagstaffe said.

“It’s a very, very unusual step,” Wagstaffe said. “I think it was because the conduct was outrageous. We have a criminal justice system that is based from A to Z on being able to rely on the truth of our victims.”

Boston, MA–Background: The Boston Globe recently discussed Fathers & Families‘ shared parenting bill at great length in their editorial A fair role for fathers. While it’s somewhat annoying that the Globe does not endorse the bill, the editorial is in many ways very positive. The Globe, which generally leans towards feminist views and positions, essentially agrees with the main arguments behind shared parenting, but opts for defending judicial discretion, excessively in my view.

Ned Holstein, MD, MS, Executive Director of Fathers & Families, responded to the Globe in his blog post A Win or a Loss? You Decide, Then Email Globe

Paul Sawyer, a longtime reader and supporter of several our legislative campaigns, wrote a nice response to the Boston Globe in defense of the shared parenting bill. The best line:

“You call for research and pilot studies. The research has been done. Children do better with both parents actively involved in their lives.”

What’s best for kids at issue for dads
February 27, 2008

THE GLOBE got it wrong on the “shared parenting” bill (“A fair role for fathers,” Editorial, Feb. 23). You cite law professor Charles Kindregan, who should know better, writing that he “argues that a presumption of joint legal and physical custody could handcuff judges who should be free to consider the best interests of children on a case-by-case basis.” The bill would not take any discretion away from judges, as you noted three paragraphs earlier. Rather, it would require judges to state the reasons for their rulings in the event that one parent got sole custody.

Kindregan says, “You don’t need a presumption when you have facts.” Which should be true, but the experience of so many fathers in family court is that judges ignore facts and rule based on their own prejudices about mothers and fathers.

Lawyer Fern Frolin says, “We trust the discretion of judges.” The bill would never have been filed if judicial discretion was working. It is not, and data from case after case support this.

You call for research and pilot studies. The research has been done. Children do better with both parents actively involved in their lives. That is our goal: not father’s rights, but the best lives for our children.

PAUL SAWYER, Westford

Wise County, VA–Background: Conscientious Virginia judge James Michael Shull, who smoked out a woman who sought to extend a restraining order based on false charges of domestic violence, was removed from the bench last fall by this Virginia Supreme Court ruling. Not only was Shull railroaded, but he has been the target of widely-disseminated misleading reporting. To learn more about the case, see my blog posts In Defense of Judge James Michael Shull (Part I), Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, and Part VII, read my co-authored newspaper column defending Shull here, or click here.

The lying mother who cost Judge Shull his career has abducted her child from the custody of her ex-husband, and is now on America’s Most Wanted.

As I’ve mentioned before, Tammy Huffman-Giza has a rap sheet as long as your arm. On February 22 Huffman-Giza was found guilty of welfare fraud and sentenced to prison. However, instead of going to prison, she was given two years supervised probation–perhaps due to the female sentencing discount. If she had gone to jail where she belongs–for the welfare fraud and a variety of other crimes–she would never have been able to abduct her son.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s page is here. A Fox News story on it is here.

From America’s Most Wanted:

Child Abduction In Virginia

On Feb. 25, 2008, State Police and investigators in Wise County, Va. issued an Endangered Missing Child Alert for 8-year-old Brayden Reid Carty.

According to police, Brayden was taken by his biological but non-custodial mother, 32-year-old Tammy Huffman-Giza the weekend prior, when Brayden’s father brought the child over to her apartment in Coeburn, Va. for a visit.

Cops say when the father went to pick up Brayden, the apartment was empty — except for a letter Huffman-Giza allegedly penned before taking off with the child. In the letter, police say Huffman-Giza wrote she had met someone named “Richard” online, and that she’d made plans to go to London, England to meet him. Police have issued a felony warrant for Tammy, charging her with child abduction.

According to police, Huffman-Giza suffers from mental health issues and has attempted to harm herself in the past. Cops fear Brayden is endangered.

Sacramento, CA–Background: The historic, one-of-a-kind conference “From Ideology to Inclusion: Evidence-Based Policy and Intervention in Domestic Violence” was held in Sacramento, California February 15-16 and was a major success. The conference was sponsored by the California Alliance for Families and Children and featured leading domestic violence authorities from around the world.

Many of these researchers are part of the National Family Violence Legislative Resource Center, which is challenging the domestic violence establishment’s stranglehold on the issue. The NFVLRC promotes gender-natural, research-based DV policies.

I have been and will continue to detail the conference and some of the research that was presented there in this blog–to learn more, click here.

Dr. Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling (pictured, photo by Kevin Graft) of the University of South Alabama specializes in Juvenile, Family, and Intimate Partner Violence. Her email address is jlr@usouthal.edu.

At the conference, she co-presented the Plenary “Family Roots of Adolescent Violence in Relationships and Effective Interventions: A Developmental and Relational Perspective” with Marlene Moretti, PhD. Some of the points Jennifer made include:

1) When grappling with the emerging reality that women commit Intimate Partner Violence as often as men, she said, “Every time we tried to say that women’s intimate partner abuse is different than men’s, the evidence did not support it.”

2) Jennifer interviewed women in shelters about whether they had stalked their intimate partners. She wanted to ask them if they had committed violence against their intimate partners, but was not allowed to. She says that 25% of the women who were being stalked by their intimate partners said they had stalked their partners too.

3) Jennifer wondered why some of the women were leaving the battered women’s shelter in less than a week. The answer, she said, is that they too were engaging in violence against their partners, and in some cases had left to pick up the battle again. Jennifer explained, “We weren’t helping these women because we were ignoring their paradigm.”

4) Jennifer also said that many women who stay with their batterers or abusers are not staying out of fear or because of their kids. “Love has a lot to do with it,” she explained.

5) She said that some of her work has been “suppressed,” and that people in positions of authority have refused to publish it.

6) She believes that in some ways Intimate Partner Violence researchers have not done enough to bring their findings to the media and to present it in ways that are commonly understandable and digestible. She says that among researchers in many fields, there is a perverse desire to make the academic journals as difficult for the layperson to understand as possible. She criticized this.

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

Some child-support recipients to pay annual service charge (Examiner, 2-29-08)

Military Divorce Rate Holding Steady (Associated Press, 3-1-08)

Evangelical stance on divorce is changing (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 3-1-08)

Man to get child support back (Augusta Chronicle, 3-2-08)

Who’s your daddy? (Lancaster Online, 3-2-08)

Court to offer faster cases (Greenville Daily Reflector, 3-2-08)

Texas attorney general, family-court judges battle over child support collection (Dallas Morning News, 3-2-08)

Obesity new factor in grading parents (National Post, 3-3-08)

Custody statue is bad math (Denver Post, 3-3-08)

Child support: pay up or lose welfare (Sydney Morning Herald, 3-4-08)

Sacramento, CA–Background: At the conference “From Ideology to Inclusion: Evidence-Based Policy and Intervention in Domestic Violence” (held in Sacramento, California February 15-16), Erin Pizzey told me about domestic violence shelters’ policies of excluding all males ages 12 or older from going to the shelters with their mothers. I wrote about it here.

Evan Stark, a prominent feminist advocate for domestic violence victims and the author of Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life (Interpersonal Violence), took issue with Pizzey’s criticisms of battered women’s shelters’ policy of excluding boys. To read his views, click here.

Pizzey saw Stark’s comments and was not pleased. She wrote:

“I am outraged at the inference that boys have never been able to go into shelters in America or refuges in England because the shelter/refuge can’t monitor the boys’ sexual or violent behaviour. Why does this man think that the boys will be violent or sexual towards the girls/young women in the shelter? This shows an appallingly biased mindset.

“Of course some of the girls and some of the boys will be violent and sexual, but it is the job of the shelter/refuge to work with those children just like they should work with the some of the women in the shelter/refuges to help them learn appropriate behaviour.

“It is untrue to say that my refuge did not take boys into the central refuge. I made it quite clear that the boys, could if they wished, live in the boy’s project. Many boys chose to stay with their mothers.

“Chiswick was a therapeutic community and everyone within the community worked to see that we treated each other with respect and love. The problem with the shelters/refuges is that most of them are hostels and their purpose is to fund the feminist movements so they exclude young boys because they are the potential enemy.”

Stark counters Pizzey’s views below.

Feminist DV Expert Criticizes Pizzey, Defends Excluding Teen Boys from Shelters

Pizzey is “outraged” that I support excluding older male children from all shelters. But I never said anything of the kind. What I did was explain that some shelters exclude older boys because they lack the staffing to regulate violence and sexual acting out by these adolescents, females as well as males. In fact, this is no longer as much of a problem as it was 25 years ago, when Pizzey worked in a shelter.

Today, most refuges in England use free standing apartments, so families stay in tact. Here, the picture is mixed. Many of our shelters lack the funding or staff to regulate violence or sexual acting out in the facility and are not equipped for older males. Pizzey admits “some boys and girls” may be violent or sexual, but she thinks we should monitor these behaviors rather than try to prevent them by separating older boys from girls.

Shelters in this country and most in England are not social service agencies. They are spaces where women can be temporarily safe and consider their options. Critical to this experience is the idea that we do not tell women how to lead their lives or set any but the most basic rules to maintain the house.

Pizzey’s approach was more like a mother superior who treated the residents at Chiswick as if they were immature and needed her personal guidance. We treat women who use the shelter not as problem women but as women who have had problems with abusive partners. In many of these relationships, they were punished, often brutally, for any behavior their partner considered inappropriate or disloyal. Restoring confidence in their own decision-making is a critical phase in recovery. This means letting women make their own mistakes. But many shelters feel they can’t extend this philosophy to violence or sexual acting out.

Painting all shelters as feminist is also wrong. While many shelters in the U.S. were started by women’s groups and some remain feminist in their orientation, the majority of U.S. facilities were started by the Y, the Salvation Army and other religious, community-based or free standing organizations. Unless these facilities have the staff and space, they too exclude older boys. So this policy has nothing to do with feminism or man- hating. And it is designed to protect boys as well as girls.

Many shelters also exclude women with addictions or serious psychiatric problems. Since many battered women suffer from these problems, this policy also sets limits on what we can do. Again, however, it reflects widely held beliefs about what is safe, not a bias against addiction or mental illness.

I pointed out that Pizzey herself segregated older males in a house behind the main refuge. She admits this, but claims boys had the choice to stay in the refuge with their moms. This may be true. But when we visited Chiswick several years after it opened, there were no male adolescents in the refuge.

The most absurd part of Pizzey’s response is her description of Chiswick as a “therapeutic community.” When we visited, there were 90 women and children staying in the 5 bedroom house, more than l5 in a room. Pizzey claimed, “If they can manage this, they can manage anything.” Since even this chaos was preferable to the violent situations women and children had left behind, it may ultimately have helped women gain confidence in their ability to survive on their own. But there was nothing even remotely resembling therapy taking place.

As several letter writers and Glenn Sacks, I am a feminist as well as a man. This means I believe in full equality, liberty and justice for women as well as men. Women in the U.S. earn a third of what men do for the same work; still do 90% of child care, 90% of housework, 85% of all cooking; represent a tiny proportion of those in political power (though they register and vote in larger numbers than men), etc.

It is only in my lifetime that women in many advanced countries got the right to vote, to sit on juries, to go to the top universities and professional schools, to charge husbands with rape or to enter corporate boardrooms.

I have no question that women can be as violent and abusive as men. But these inequalities and numerous others I could list with more space, mean that women enter personal relationships on an unequal footing with men, though ostensibly both have the same formal rights. It is this unequal footing, exploited by too many men with coercion and control, that drives the millions of women to seek shelter or legal or police protection each year.