NPO Blog Archive

Background: The domestic violence establishment is not telling us the full truth about domestic violence, and many destructive family law and criminal law policies have been based on misinformation. Research clearly establishes that women are frequently the aggressors in domestic combat, often employing the element of surprise and weapons to compensate for men’s strength. Yet arrest and prosecution policies are stacked against men, as is the public dialogue on this important issue. Perhaps worst of all, misguided women’s groups’ distortion of the domestic violence issue has been the leading impediment to passing shared parenting legislation.

Last year dozens of leading authorities in the domestic violence field formed the National Family Violence Legislative Resource Center (NFVLRC) to change the domestic violence system. The NFVLRC advocates for non-discriminatory and evidence-based policies and seeks to correct the many damaging laws and policies which have been based on misleading claims. NFVLRC co-founder John Hamel, LCSW, a court-certified batterer treatment provider and author of the book Gender-Inclusive Treatment of Intimate Partner Abuse, explains:

“The founding members of NFVLRC have recognized for some time that current policies are politically driven rather being based on scientifically sound information, and are seeking to change them. As a result of flawed policies, many children are being denied the same range of services simply because of their victimized parent’s gender. Current policies have in many instances also resulted in a loss of civil liberties, and research indicates that they have sometimes resulted in increased danger to victims…NFVLRC believes that unless domestic and family violence policies are reformed, victims, children and future generations will continue to suffer from this social problem.”

Last year over 50 of these authorities signed a letter urging the California legislature to stop the state’s policy of excluding male victims and their children from domestic violence services.

The California Alliance for Families and Children is sponsoring an historic, one-of-a-kind conference–“From Ideology to Inclusion: Evidence-Based Policy and Intervention in Domestic Violence.” The conference will be held Friday/Saturday, February 15-16, 2008 in Sacramento, California, and will feature speakers from the NFVLRC.

There will be 5 Plenary Sessions and 15 Breakout Sessions. Topics include: Current Policy Issues * Research Trends * Male and Female Victims* DV in the LGBT Community * DV in Ethnic Minority Groups * Restraining Orders* Female Perpetrators * DV and Child Abuse * DV and Child Custody * Co-ed Shelters * Gender-Inclusive and Research-Based Interventions * DV and Adolescents * Family Treatment * Working with Victimized Children.

Many of the leading authorities in the domestic violence field will be speaking at the conference. These include: Erin Pizzey, founder of one of the world’s first battered women’s shelters in 1971; author and psychologist Don Dutton, who served as a domestic violence expert on the prosecution team in the OJ Simpson trial; Linda Mills, PhD, LCSW, JD, New York University; Murray Straus, PhD, of the University of New Hampshire; clinical psychologist Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling of the University of South Alabama; Philip Cook, author of Abused Men: The Hidden Side of Domestic Violence; Janet Johnston, PhD; forensic psychologist Dr. Tonia Nicholls; Marlene Moretti, PhD, coauthor of the book, Girls and Aggression: Contributing Factors and Intervention Principles; Miriam Ehrensaft Ph.D, of the Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, at Columbia University; Nicola Graham-Kevan, BSc, PhD, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Central Lancashire [UK]; and numerous others.

The conference will be held at the Clarion Hotel Mansion Inn in Sacramento, CA, and discounted hotel rates are still available. For the conference schedule and to register, visit www.NFVLRC.org and see the bottom of the home page.

Mike Robinson of the CAFC says:

“We already have had a great response in registration, with several county probation departments registering, one state’s Supreme Court staff and justices, family court and private mediation groups, custody evaluators, attorneys, and many more.”

To donate to help support the Conference, click here. To learn more about the National Family Violence Legislative Resource Center, visit their website at www.nfvlrc.org. To contact them, write to John Hamel by clicking here.

[Note: If you or someone you love is being abused, the Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men and Women provides crisis intervention and support services to victims of domestic violence and their families.]

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”–Mark Twain, novelist

Background: Child support enforcement agencies are relentless with their errors and bureaucratic bungling, and it’s men and fathers who pay the price. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (pictured) often beats his chest during his frequent crackdowns on low-income fathers he labels “deadbeat dads,” but I get more complaints about screw-ups and abuses regarding his office as I do about CS enforcement in all other 49 states combined. To learn more about Abbott, click here.

It seems that if you’re a Latin guy in Texas or California and your last name is Garcia or Lopez, sooner or later child support enforcement is going to get you mixed up with someone else and start taking your money. And let’s be clear–in the case below, the error was apparently resolved in reasonable time only because a local TV station got involved.

Money being taken out of check for nearly two months
(KRGV 5, 12/7/07)

HARLINGEN – A Harlingen man is paying child support for children he doesn’t have.

Ricardo Garcia says money has been taken out of his monthly check for almost two months.

He tells us, “In the process of refinancing our house, they showed us the paperwork that the government was taking child support from my checks.”

Garcia and his wife, Monica, have been married for more than 15 years. They have two children in high school. Garcia doesn’t have any other children and have never been in trouble for child support payments.

But every week, $30 to $40 was being taken out of his paycheck.

Garcia called the Attorney General’s Office. But he says he got nowhere.

“It kind of upset me. Because I already knew that name was very common,” says his wife. “I never knew it would come to this.”

Garcia tells us, “They were saying someone was falsely using my identity. Then it ended up being my driver’s license, then my social security card. So they weren’t really clear on what exactly it was.”

NEWSCHANNEL 5 called the Attorney General’s Office in Austin. A spokesperson for the Child Support Division admits they’ve got the wrong guy.

She tells us these things take time and they hope to get everything worked out in the next month.

Garcia says he hopes things get worked out quickly. For now, he warns other people with common names about the situation. He says, “Check your background at least once or twice a month to make sure they’re not getting falsely accused of anything.”

Right before this story aired, NEWSCHANNEL 5 received a call from the Attorney General’s Office. They wanted to thank NEWSCHANNEL 5 for bringing the problem to their attention. They tell us Garcia will be receiving a refund check very soon.

[There’s also a video of the TV report–to watch, click here. Thanks to child support expert Jane Spies of the National Family Justice Association. Jane discusses problems with the child support system in her recent article The Myth of the Successful Child Support System.]

“I’ve always had the feeling that I could do anything; my daddy told me I could, and I was in college before I found out he might be wrong.”–Ann Richards, feminist and governor of Texas, 1991 to 1995.

The drawing is taken from Kara Bishop’s www.postcardsfromsplitsville.com. Bishop works with Children of Divorce, a class run by Tucson, Arizona-based Divorce Recovery.

The class did an art project that included “sending away” the frustrations of divorce. The website is a place where Kara says “children can share their divorce-related feelings anonymously and parents can get a new perspective on how this life-changing experience impacts their children”s lives.”

To learn more, click here.

Kara can be reached at Kara@PostcardsfromSplitsville.com.

I’ve often criticized the Christian Right’s policies on marriage. My complaints are:

1) They ignore the true threat to marriage and parents’ rights–the family law system.

2) They do nothing to defend fathers’ rights, which are particularly vulnerable under the current system.

3) They bash gays, who haven’t done anything to anybody and deserve to be left in peace.

4) They waste an appalling amount of time and effort on non-issues like gay marriage while millions of children have been needlessly separated from the fathers they love and need.

The latest is a new New Jersey campaign from the National Organization for Marriage. Conservative columnist Maggie Gallagher, an otherwise intelligent lady who has inexplicably decided to fritter away her time on gay marriage, recently sent Opponents of gay marriage launch all-out N.J. campaign (Newark Star-Ledger, 11/29/07) out to her elist. The article states:

“A national campaign to block gay marriage came to New Jersey this week as conservative groups began airing radio advertisements and bombarded a key lawmaker’s office with as many as 200 phone calls an hour.

“The National Organization for Marriage debuted a radio ad warning ‘powerful special-interest groups want to redefine marriage,’ and the N.J. Family Policy Council sent out an e-mail urging people to phone legislative leaders and Gov. Jon Corzine.

“Leaders of both organizations said they were trying to block an effort to legalize same-sex marriage during the lame-duck session of the Legislature that ends Jan. 8, when new lawmakers are sworn…

“Brigid Harrison, a professor of political science and law at Montclair State University, said the anti-gay marriage campaign may be aimed not just at lawmakers, but at voters casting their ballots in the presidential primary on Feb. 5.

“‘This is something that is a wedge issue,’ Harrison said. ‘It drives people to the polls.'”

While the NOM is wasting time and sizeable sums of money bashing gays and gay marriage, New Jersey marriages are being shredded and fathers are being manhandled in family courts. A few examples:

1) Earlier this year a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling did away with even the pretense of meaningful judicial oversight of restraining orders (aka protection orders). According to After-Hours E-Filing Allowed for Domestic Violence Cases, TROs (New Jersey Law Journal, 7/24/07), all that is now needed for a restraining order is for the woman to give testimony over the phone to an on-call judge. The judge then issues the order electronically, so it’s immediately enforceable. In other words, all a woman has to do is pretend to be frightened over the phone and her husband gets booted out of his own home and will be arrested if he tries to visit or call his own children. To learn more, see my blog post New Jersey Does Away with Any Pretense of Meaningful Judicial Oversight of Restraining Orders.

2) A recent New Jersey appeals court reaffirmed a decision mandating that a man must pay alimony to his ex-wife–who killed their son. To learn more, see my blog post She Killed His Son but He Must Pay Her Alimony

3) Sharp anti-father custody bias. For example, in the study “Child custody arrangements: a study of two New Jersey counties’ published in the Journal of Psychiatry & Law, New Jersey mental health experts researched hundreds of custody cases in two New Jersey counties, Bergen (one of the wealthiest) and Essex (one of the poorest). Rich man or poor man, for these New Jersey fathers it didn”t matter–in either county they won custody in only one out of every 20 cases.

The “defenders of marriage” at the NOM probably don’t have a clue about any of these cases and about the myriad ways children are being separated from decent, loving fathers in family court. It’s not as important as the “threat” from gays.

To learn more, see my blog posts:

Phil Magnan of Biblical Family Advocates Sounds the Alarm–Gay Prison Inmates May Start Having Gay Sex!

Some Thoughts on Mary Cheney’s Baby and the Christian Right’s Hypocrisy

Protecting Gays from Domestic Violence Is ‘Promoting Homosexuality’?

Sorry Honey, I Guess It’s Over

Anti-Male Bias among Christian Conservatives

“James Kim put himself through a desperate ordeal, climbing down a ravine over boulders and logs, through nearly impenetrable brush and in and out of an icy creek, in what one rescue leader called a ‘superhuman’ effort to save his family.”–San Francisco Chronicle

Background: In December of last year, hero father James Kim (pictured) gave his life trying to save his wife and kids. Kim, his wife, and two daughters took a winter vacation in Oregon but took a wrong turn and found themselves stranded in snow and lost on an obscure backroad.

To learn more, see my blog post James Kim: Hero Father.

Some of James Kim’s co-workers at www.CNET.com put together a short memorial video for Kim, featuring clips of Kim discussing his work and also his little daughters, and have reposted it on the anniversary of Kim’s death. To watch it, click here.

In his honor, James’ family and friends have established the James Kim Technology Foundation. The foundation provides San Francisco public schools, and the children who attend them, access to emerging technologies like the ones James covered every day for CNET.com and Crave. To learn more about the James Kim Technology Foundation, go to the foundation’s website at http://www.jameskimtechfound.org/.