NPO Blog Archive

Pajamas Media advice columnist Dr. Helen Smith (pictured) is a forensic psychologist who often has an interesting perspective on gender issues. One of Helen’s recent blog posts concerns false information about domestic violence being put out by the Tennessee Department of Health. Apparently the Department is putting forth the you-must-be-kidding claim that “Approximately 98% of documented domestic assaults are committed by men against women.”

Helen’s post is below.

My Efforts at Educating Officialdom

So I received this card in the mail announcing the new domestic violence reporting requirements for the Tennessee Department of Health. I decided to check out their website and found it to be lacking in the recent research on the role women play in domestic violence. I also noticed that the reporting form had the word “female” listed first under “patient” and under perpetrator in the first column listed:

o Husband
o Ex-husband
o Boyfriend
o Ex-boyfriend

So I sent them this letter:

Division of Health Statistics/DV
4th Floor, Cordell Hull Building
425 5th Avenue North
Nashville, TN37243

Dear Domestic Violence Reporting Coordinator:

As a licensed psychologist, I recently received a card on the new domestic violence reporting requirements that states that licensed professionals are now required to report cases of suspected or confirmed domestic violence/abuse to the Tennessee Department of Health. I am writing out of concern after reading the information on your site and noticing that much of this information is not updated with the most recent research on domestic violence.

I am a psychologist who has worked with numerous patients who have been victims of domestic violence over the years. As you may well know, domestic violence is not just perpetrated by men against women, it is also perpetrated against men by women. Many professionals do not know this and it is not apparent in your literature. For example, your information to EMS workers states:

“Approximately 98% of documented domestic assaults are committed by men against women. As a result, throughout this text, we will refer to the perpetrator as ‘he’ and the survivor or victim as ‘she’ even though some domestic violence is initiated by women and some cases involve people of the same sex.”

Recent studies are finding that both men and women act out physically in relationships and in one recent study, women initiated violence in over 70% of cases. Here is some information from the head of the American Psychological Association:

“Several studies of domestic violence have suggested that males and females in relationships have an equal likelihood of acting out physical aggression, although differing in tactics and potential for causing injury (e.g., women assailants will more likely throw something, slap, kick, bite, or punch their partner, or hit them with an object, while males will more likely beat up their partners, and choke or strangle them). In addition, data show that that intimate partner violence rates among heterosexual and gay and lesbian teens do not differ significantly.”

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 just removed from the bench by this Virginia Supreme Court ruling. To learn more about the case, see my blog posts In Defense of Judge James Michael Shull (Part I), Part II, Part III, or Part IV, or read my co-authored newspaper column defending Shull here.

In the Shull case, Tammy G. had obtained a domestic violence protection order against her husband Keith G., claiming that he had stabbed her. At the time of the G. hearing, the couple”s two young children, then ages three and five, were staying with their paternal grandmother. Keith testified that he hadn”t harmed Tammy, and that if she did have a wound, she had cut herself. Keith also testified that Tammy had committed a similar act on March 22, 2006, harming herself and then calling the police to report that Keith had attacked her.

Shull examined the wounds and found that they were four nearly identical razor blade-like slices in two sets of parallel lines spaced evenly apart–hardly the type of wounds one would receive in domestic combat, and entirely consistent with Keith”s allegations that Tammy had cut herself. Shull also examined the Wise County Sheriff”s Incident Report about Tammy G.”s March allegations. According to the report, Tammy “gave a statement that she had done this to herself to get attention,’ and “admitted that she had self-inflicted her wounds.’

Shull concluded that Tammy G.’s claims were false, and he ruled against her. Despite the later controversy over the case, no party in the dispute is even claiming that Shull made the wrong decision in finding that the wounds in question were self-inflicted.

In this case, Tammy G. attempted to inflict great harm on her husband and their children by falsely accusing her husband of stabbing her. Yet while the judge who worked hard to discover the truth has been relentlessly persecuted, Tammy G. faces no consequences for her false allegations.

The list above is a partial list of the various crimes Tammy G. faces charges for. I have one question–why can we criminally charge her for credit card fraud but we can’t charge her for attempting to defraud the court? Why can we charge her with identity theft, but we can’t charge her for attempting the theft of a father’s children?

Some of you may remember several weeks ago in one of my weekly E-newsletters I asked for Texas custodial dads who receive or are supposed to receive child support. Many of you responded–so many, in fact, that the Houston FOX affiliate on whose behalf I wrote the notice told me they had to have a “cattle call” of all the dads. FOX ended up using three of the dads in the show (pictured, above right), and they spoke about their situations and their struggles.

While I have no complaint about what’s in the show’s clip of me, the totality of my interview was more nuanced. In the interview I also pointed to the many problems with the child support system, and explained that noncustodial moms sometimes fall victim to them just like noncustodial dads often do.

To watch the FOX special, which aired in Houston on Monday, November 5, click here. (Warning, it may take a moment to load.)

To write Emmy Award winning reporter Melinda Spaulding, who put the special together, click here.

I’m usually not one for crime shows, but I saw a touching episode of NCIS while on an airplane recently. It’s about a father’s love for his daughter, and I’m a sentimental sucker on the subject, so be forewarned before you proceed.

NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service) is an action drama starring Mark Harmon as NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, a former Marine who is now a skilled investigator. Gibbs’ daughter Kelly died 15 years ago, when she was 7. In the recent episode “Requiem,” Kelly’s best childhood friend Maddie is in trouble and later kidnapped, and Gibbs saves her.

When Kelly was little she and Gibbs made a time capsule (pictured) out of one of her lunchboxes and buried it in the front yard. When Maddie first contacts Gibbs, he digs up the time capsule from his front yard but can’t bring himself to open it.

At the end of the show, he takes out a picture of the two girls with their arms around each other as children and a picture of him with his arm around Maddie as an adult, puts them together, and starts to open the time capsule. To watch this final scene, click here.

When it comes to the time capsule, open the letter little Kelly wrote to her dad when he was deployed to Kuwait in 1990, and also click on the dog tags.

It’s nice to see an accurate TV portrayal of father-daughter relationship.

I recently stumbled across this article from last year from the Children’s Rights Council’s publication. It’s unbelievable and, given the letters I get and the stories I hear, totally believable. Very, very sad.

CRC Member Loses Child

CRC member and child advocate Tim Dycus of Nebraska lost his 11-year-old daughter, Addie, to brain cancer on July 8, 2005. The day after the funeral, Tim learned that the funeral home had given cards and memorials left for the “Dycus Family” to the mother with the expectation that she share those with him.

Over many months, Tim and the funeral home spent considerable effort trying to get the child’s mother to share the cards left in memory of their daughter with Tim. He wanted to acknowledge and thank those people who were so gracious and compassionate to his family. Tim said that the mom refused to comply, and with her attorney, took the position that his rights to any information about Addie, including cards and memorials, terminated upon her death. They also stated that Tim was not entitled to any of Addie’s clothing to keep as mementos, as they stated that Addie’s personal property is the mother’s exclusive property. Since Tim was divorced, he had paid more than $70,000 in child support.

Tim attended almost all of Addie’s school, church, and recreational events including soccer, softball, and dance, in or out of town since her birth, and continually tried to get more time with his daughters but was confined to the typical every other weekend and a few hours on Wednesday evening.

In a request to the judiciary, the District Court in Adams County, Nebraska ruled for the mother. The court stated that the decision as to whether to share was up to her, stating Tim needed “to wait while the other parent processed and went through the grieving process.” She then ordered Tim to pay the majority of the mother’s attorney fees!

Tim is also grieving.

I debated the issue of Single Motherhood by Choice on Fox’s nationally-syndicated Morning Show with Mike and Juliet yesterday. Also on the show were two single mothers by choice, including Louise Sloan, author of the new book Knocking Yourself Up, a psychologist, and 18-year-old Katrina Clark, a child of a single mother by choice.

As you can imagine, I was badly outnumbered, and was the only one representing the fathers’ side, which is always fun. They extended our topic over three segments, so it’s lengthy as far as TV goes–to watch the video of the show, click here.

I enjoy reading about Michigan family law attorney Mindy L. Hitchcock’s various battles and victories against the anti-male family law system, and I thought I’d share this one with my readers. It involves a dad who was the victim of his ex-wife’s phony, tactical-maneuver-in-divorce domestic violence restraining/personal protection order. He was almost jailed for the “crime” of visiting his little daughter’s kindergarten

Mindy (pictured) writes:

“David and Julie had five kids during their marriage. Julie was unable to win the exclusive legal custody of her children in the divorce court, so she filed another case and persuaded the judge to issue a personal protection order. The PPO prevented David from appearing within Julie”s sight or communicating with her except by email.

“Armed with this order, Julie then proceeded to make child rearing decisions without input from David. When September came, she picked a kindergarten for their youngest daughter. On the first day, David showed up to meet the headmaster, and there was his ex-wife with their daughter. Julie ran to the county prosecutor, who dragged David into court on an alleged violation of the PPO.

“David had previously faced a similar ‘violation’ with a lawyer who advised him to simply plead guilty, so this was a second offense and he was looking at jail time. When we appeared with David at the arraignment, the judge showed that he was biased against him by volunteering to the prosecutor, ‘If you had asked me to, I would have terminated his parenting time.’

“Nevertheless, we decided to take the case to trial. We told the judge that Julie was using the PPO as a sword, not a shield. With a few well-placed questions we were able to establish that Julie”s goal for getting the PPO was to freeze David out of the children”s lives.

“David also got a little help from the headmaster, who testified that David was never closer than 25 feet from his ex-wife and not 4 feet, as she claimed. David was exonerated of the charge, and Julie”s bad purpose was exposed. He and his ex share joint legal and joint physical custody of their children.”

Background: Recently Newsweek magazine and the British UK Guardian have written sympathetic articles about Single Motherhood by Choice–Knocking Yourself Up–Some women laugh about turkey basters replacing Mr. Right. The ongoing debate over going it alone (Newsweek, 11/5/07) and There’s no shame in going solo, says mum: Career women with eyes on their biological clocks now have a ‘how to’ guide to single parenting, but the topic is provoking a backlash in America (U.K. Guardian, Observer, 11/4/07).

Both articles focus on author/”choice mom” guru Louise Sloan, and hold me up as an example of the “vehement” backlash against single mothers by choice. To learn more, click here.

Single mother by choice guru Louise Sloan, author of Knock Yourself Up, and I debated on the BBC Radio 5 Live’s Stephen Nolan Programme on the BBC Sunday evening. To listen to the show, click here.

The most important part of the show, even though it was a little off topic, was a letter from a 13-year-old boy named James which Nolan read on the air. The letter said:

“My mother loves me but she stops me seeing my dad though I want to. I’m starting to hate her for this. Because she hates my dad, why should I hate him?”

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 just removed from the bench by this Virginia Supreme Court ruling. To learn more about the case, see my blog posts In Defense of Judge James Michael Shull (Part I), Part II, or Part III, or read my co-authored newspaper column defending Shull here.

Tim Perone of the New York Post writes the following:

“A family court judge in Richmond, Va., was removed from the bench after several kangaroo-court moments, including flipping a coin to decide a custody case. James Michael Shull was unanimously stripped of his robe by the state’s Judicial Inquiry and Review Commission, which also found the jurist guilty of calling a teen a ‘mama’s boy’ and a ‘wuss’ as well as telling a woman to marry her abusive boyfriend.”

I’ve dealt with and have been quoted (and misquoted) by plenty of lazy reporters, but this one takes the cake. The Judicial Inquiry and Review Commission did not “find” Shull “guilty” of anything alleged above. The widely-disseminated Associated Press article by Larry O’Dell that Perone cribbed from states that Shull “had appeared before the Judicial Inquiry and Review Commission in 2004 for allegedly calling a teenager a ‘mama’s boy’ and a ‘wuss’ and advising a woman to marry her abusive boyfriend. That complaint was dismissed…” (emphasis added). There was no finding of anything against Shull at all.

The “marry her abusive boyfriend” is dubious, as I explained here. The “mama’s boy” allegation is also dubious. Shull asserts that the witness that alleged that Shull called a 14-year-old boy a “wuss” was Guardian ad Litem Kristen Dean.

I checked up on Dean and found that, according to the Virginia State Bar’s website, the Bar “suspended Kristen Dawn Dean’s law license for five years, effective on or before December 16, 2005, for misappropriating portions of a client’s personal injury settlement for her own use and then taking steps to deceive and to conceal the misconduct. The board found that Ms. Dean failed to properly communicate with her client; failed to obtain a written contingency fee agreement, failed to provide an appropriate account of the client’s funds; made false statements; engaged in deliberately wrongful conduct; and engaged in fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.” What a great witness.

Shull also asserts that the parties in the case contradicted Dean’s accusations. I don’t know if this is true, but the JIRC did dismiss the allegation.

The New York Post also asserts that Shull “flipped a coin to decide a custody case.” Not true–custody had already been decided. All that the coin toss settled was who would get the kids on Christmas, and, given the specific context of the case, Shull was right to determine this in the manner he did. To learn more about this non-incident, click here.

Background: Newsweek magazine writer Lorraine Ali quoted from my co-authored column Rise in Out-of-Wedlock Births Is Bad News for America”s Kids (Washington Times, 12/4/06) in her recent piece Knocking Yourself Up–Some women laugh about turkey basters replacing Mr. Right. The ongoing debate over going it alone (Newsweek, 11/5/07). The piece centers around Louise Sloan, author of the new guidebook Knock Yourself Up: A Tell-All Guide to Becoming a Single Mom. Sloan now has a fatherless 16-month-old son. The piece favors women who decide to have fatherless children. To learn more, click here.

The liberal British UK Guardian, one of the world’s premier newspapers, has a new piece out extolling the virtues of single motherhood by choice–There’s no shame in going solo, says mum: Career women with eyes on their biological clocks now have a ‘how to’ guide to single parenting, but the topic is provoking a backlash in America (U.K. Guardian, Observer, 11/4/07). The article focuses on choice mom guru Louise Sloan. Needless to say, the article sympathizes with Sloan, and holds me up as an example of the “vehement” backlash against single mothers by choice.

The article says that Sloan is “shocked by the vehemence of the backlash” against her. She says:

“I think that if you have reservations or shame about having become a single mother and having chosen to be an alternative family in that way, that shame is going to be transmitted to the people you speak to about it. And it’s also going to come through to your child…I think that it’s really important to make sure that your child feels that the way he or she came into this world was a positive and happy thing. And so you need to have that attitude yourself. Also, in speaking about it to other people, if you present it as a weird, questionable thing, you’re more likely to get a negative response.”

The Guardian counterposes this with my comment:

“To openly advocate single motherhood as a lifestyle choice is to fail to understand how powerfully children hunger for their fathers and the immense benefits reaped by the children who do have fathers in their lives. This misunderstanding is very destructive. At the core of this work is a ‘you go, girl’ belief that mothers can do it alone and always know best. Unfortunately, many women are choosing this lifestyle and it’s our children who are suffering for it.”

The article also has a disturbing statistic near the bottom–one in seven birth certificates in England and Wales in 2006 had no father listed.

Sloan has now joined Rosanna Hertz, author of Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice, and Peggy Drexler, author of Raising Boys Without Men: How Maverick Moms Are Creating the Next Generation of Exceptional Men, to form a troika of feminist gurus advocating voluntary single motherhood. To read my previous critique of Hertz and her book, see my co-authored column Are Single Mothers the ‘New American Family?’ (World Net Daily, 9/28/06). To see my previous critique of Drexler and her book, see my columns Are Boys Really Better off Without Fathers? (San Francisco Chronicle, 8/31/05) and Raising Boys Without Men: Lesbian Parents Good, Dads Bad (World Net Daily, 9/10/05).