NPO Blog Archive

This week, Fathers & Families and I launched a campaign in defense of Rafael Izquierdo, the embattled father in the “Elian Gonzalez II” case in Miami. In that case, Izquierdo, who a Florida court found to be a fit, committed father, is fighting the Florida Department of Children & Families’ long, expensive, and highly-publicized effort to keep his five-year-old girl in foster care. To participate or to learn more about the campaign, click here.

Our campaign asked Florida DCF to contact Ned Holstein, MD, MS, president of Fathers & Families, to discuss how procedures can be changed to help ensure that in future cases, assiduous efforts are made to reunite children with their fit noncustodial parents.

To DCF’s credit, Patricia Badland, Director of DCF’s Children and Families Family Service Program, has contacted Dr. Holstein and opened a dialogue. Badland is a member of DCF’s newly-formed Task Force on Child Protection. Florida’s Award for “Excellence in Child Welfare” has been known as the “Patricia Badland Award.”

To learn more about the “Elian Gonzalez II” case, visit our campaign page here.

Rafael Izquierdo, the embattled father in the “Elian Gonzalez II” case in Miami, yesterday expressed anger over the impact Florida Department of Children & Families’ new legal appeal will have on his daughter’s schooling. He explained: “I don’t want her to fail second grade,” he said. “I thought everything was going to be a lot faster.” Izquierdo, who a Florida court found to be a fit, committed father, is fighting DCF’s long, expensive, and highly-publicized effort to keep his five-year-old girl in foster care. This week, Fathers & Families and I launched a campaign in defense of Izquierdo, and Florida officials have received thousands of letters,
faxes, and calls from our supporters. To email and fax the relevant Florida DCF officials, click here. The Associated Press discusses our campaign in Cuban girl’s fate left hanging during appeal (St. Petersburg Times & others, 10/17/07). Laura Wides-Munoz, the AP reporter, can be reached at Lwides@ap.org. To learn more about the “Elian Gonzalez II” case, visit our campaign page here.

“The world is seeing nobody can just take a child away from you.”–embattled Cuban father Rafael Izquierdo (pictured)

Embattled Cuban father Rafael Izquierdo has publicly said very little during his long struggle to get his daughter back from the Florida Department of Children & Families, but what he said yesterday spoke volumes. In the outrageous “Elian Gonzalez II” case in Miami, Izquierdo, who a Florida court found to be a fit, committed father, is fighting DCF’s long, expensive, and highly-publicized effort to keep his five-year-old daughter in foster care.

This week, Fathers & Families and I launched a campaign in defense of Izquierdo, and Florida officials have received thousands of letters, faxes, and calls from our supporters. To email and fax the relevant Florida DCF officials, click here.

The Orlando Sentinel and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Ft. Lauderdale/Miami cite our campaign in their new article DCF files appeal in case of Cuban girl, 5 (10/17/07). The author, Maya Bell, can be reached at mayabell@orlandosentinel.com.

To learn more about the “Elian Gonzalez II” case, visit our campaign page here.

One area of keen interest for divorced fathers is how alienated children reunite with the parent who was the target of the Parental Alienation campaign. Sadly, sometimes this reunification never occurs. Many times it does, but only years later.

A few years ago I did a His Side with Glenn Sacks show called Hope for the Holidays: Spontaneous Reunification, in which I discussed this issue. One of my guests was Allen Green, author of Blind Baseball: A Father’s War. Green has experienced PAS and reunification firsthand, and he had some interesting advice. I don’t have the exact quote, but he basically said, “Don’t destroy yourself. It’s very, very hard, but if you’re the target parent of Parental Alienation, play for the long haul. Remember you still have the kids as adults, plus you have grandchildren. Fight the best you can, but always keep the long-term in mind–sooner or later, the children usually come back.”

In Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome: Breaking the Ties that Bind, Amy J.L. Baker details many of the reunions between children and their alienated parents, and delineates some common scenarios under which this occurs.

One of Baker’s reunification scenarios is not a happy one–the adult child reunites with the alienated parent because they now themselves have experienced Parental Alienation as a parent, and see through the lies they were fed as a child. I’ve previously discussed the case of David, one of the adult children of Parental Alienation who Baker interviewed–David’s parents divorced when he was six, and he who was caught in his mother’s long-term alienation campaign against his father. (To learn more about David’s case, click here and here).

David only began to gain insight into the way he had been misled when, in his 20s, he himself divorced and his ex-wife turned his daughter against him. Of his divorce, David explains:

“Initially there was some problems with the parenting time but then I was always able to get things worked out. I started keeping pretty good notes so that if I had to go back to court I would be prepared. When we did go back to court they would slap my wife”s hand and I would see my daughter for a while until the next time. I noticed this from an adult perspective and I started to remember things that had happened to me and there started to become a number of similarities. For example, little instances would happen (between he and his daughter) and they would be blown up way out of proportion and out of context and then I wouldn”t be able to see my daughter. I started to see too many similarities. And actually my current wife started to say that I should get back in touch with my dad and then I called him up and made arrangements to get together.’ David had seen his mother employ the same tactics when he was a kid, and began to see that his negative feelings about his dad had largely been created by his mom. He contacted his father, for the first time in decades. He explains:“It went pretty well actually. I called him up and introduced myself and he said, ‘Fine. Great.” We talked for a while and made arrangements to meet for lunch and we went there and we sat and talked and ate lunch and really things couldn”t have gone smoother. We talked a little bit about that (the alienation) but never really in detail like maybe we could have because I never really felt like we had to.’Sadly, to date David has been unable to reunite with his own daughter, who is now 25, and who he has not seen in over 10 years. He says:

Continue reading “From ‘Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome’: Reuniting with the Targeted Parent (Part I)”

Background: TV often portrays men and fathers as idiots–to watch some videos of “dad as idiot” TV commercials, click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

We’ve done two campaigns against these types of commercials, and have been more or less successful. To learn more, see Campaign Against Anti-Father Verizon Commercial and Campaign Against Anti-Male Advertising on our campaign page here.

If you have a daughter in the nine-year-old range, you’re probably familiar with the Disney show Hannah Montana. My daughter often forces me to watch it with her. Well, “forces” isn’t exactly accurate, since she snuggles up in my arms as we watch, which would probably make even going to the opera worth it.

Anyway, there’s a surprising thing about this show. In an era when we have a long parade of “doofus dads,” in Hannah Montana the family is being raised by a single father, and the father is actually a smart, loving, very-competent dad who is respected by his children. It’s refreshing to watch a show where a father’s intervention in a crisis or incident isn’t just a set-up for a joke about what an idiot he is.

In the show, the father, played by country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, is a widower who is the sole caretaker of his children and who gave up his successful career as a country singer to raise his kids. Hannah is played by Billy’s real-life daughter and the show often has nice flashbacks of pictures of the two of them together as the little girl grew up.

Background: In my co-authored column, Servicemen victimized by child support system (World Net Daily, 6/27/07), I discuss the ways the child support enforcement system victimizes innocent citizens, particularly military personnel. I wrote:

“In 1998, Congress held extensive hearings on the myriad abuses committed by the Internal Revenue Service against law-abiding citizens. What few realize is that there are a similar number of men, fathers and families who have been victims of the same types of abuses by child support enforcement agencies. Because federal funding helps shape the way child support enforcement bureaucracies operate, similar hearings are needed to investigate and remedy these abuses.”

James Beaty’s article As he prepares to go to war, soldier faces DHS red tape (McAlester News-Capital, 10/13/07) is yet another example of the way the child support system harasses and abuses our military personnel. In this case, a father is scheduled to deploy to Iraq, so he went to child support enforcement to get a modification on his child support, since his income was going to decline. I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions that downward modifications are often difficult to get, and here’s another example. Instead of the downward modification, the father (pictured above, with his wife), got an unexplained increase in his child support, and child support enforcement seized all of his and his wife’s bank accounts. Nice.

This kind of outrage isn’t unusual–I hear stories like this all day long. It’s to Beaty’s credit that he pursued this story. I suggest that readers send him a quick note to thank him–click here. The story is below.

Thanks to child support expert Jane Spies of the National Family Justice Association for sending me the article. Jane discusses problems with the child support system in her recent article The Myth of the Successful Child Support System.

As he prepares to go to war, soldier faces DHS red tape
By James Beaty, Senior Editor
The McAlester News-Capital, 10/13/07

Retha Gail Whitlock kept a brave face as long as she could.

It started with her chin, which slightly trembled, almost imperceptibly at first. A single tear streamed down her cheek, followed by one more and then another.

Finally, she lowered her head, unable to hold back a flood of tears which had been welling up inside her for the past few days.

“I”m sorry,’ she said. “I told myself I was going to be strong.’

Retha Gail looked at her husband, National Guardsmen Brian Whitlock, who is set to report for active duty on Oct. 21 before going on to Fort Bliss, Texas, and then deployment to the war in Iraq.

She said she”s concerned about him, as well as her stepson Daniel Whitlock and their cousin, Jeremy Snow — a trio of family members who joined the National Guard together as a family unit last year.

But her worries about the war weren”t the only reason for her tears. She feels that while her family members will be fighting overseas for their country, the state of Oklahoma — or at least some of its agents or employees — has dealt her a crushing blow, a blow that”s almost too much to bear.

“I”m terrified for him over there,’ she said. “I told him not to worry about us. We”ll be all right.’

David E. Cook’s article Deadbroke dads: The system makes Darryl Gay pay child support. But it”s more than he can afford and his daughter doesn”t get the money. Is this how it”s supposed to work? (Sacramento News & Review, 10/11/07) is an excellent description of the way the current child support system wages a ruthless war against low-income and minority fathers.

Cook focuses on the story of Darryl Gay–a loving African-American father of modest means–and his struggle to survive in the child support system and be there for his six-year-old daughter. Cook writes:

“Six-year-old Tynea fidgeted at the dinner table, bored, counting a stack of crackers on her plate. A Warner Bros. cartoon murmured faintly from the living room of the Mack Road apartment where she was visiting her father, Darryl Gay, for the weekend.

“Tynea”s parents never married and broke up soon after she was born. Gay, 41, continued to visit his daughter almost daily, and, though there was no child-support order, contributed to her upbringing by buying diapers, clothes, formula and other necessities.

“‘I was buying my daughter whatever she needed because I was there every day,’ Gay says. ‘I knew what her needs were. I was buying what she needed.’

“But then, Gay says, Tynea”s mother moved out of town without telling him, taking his daughter and her six other children from different relationships with her. Two years and two private investigators later, Gay finally found Tynea living in Oakland with her mother. He was eager to renew his relationship with his daughter and begin contributing what he could to her upbringing.

“That”s when the welfare bureaucracy put its boot up Gay”s backside.

“After Tynea”s mother moved to Oakland, she applied for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, otherwise known as welfare. Because of new regulations enacted in the 1990s, she was required to name Tynea”s father to Alameda County welfare authorities. A court order was issued requiring Gay to begin providing child support and to reimburse any money paid to Tynea by the state.

“Because Gay”s whereabouts were unknown at the time, he was unaware of the order. But when he tracked down his daughter on his own accord, Alameda County slapped him with a $227-per-month child-support payment. As an in-home health aide, Gay makes $830 per month. That leaves him with just $603 to make ends meet after paying child support. None of the money he paid on his own in the past counts. But here”s the real rub: Most of the child support goes not to Tynea or her mother, but to Alameda County. Only $50 goes to Tynea.

“Welcome to welfare reform, American style.

“Thanks to a convoluted bureaucracy, flawed research and our country”s never-ending war on the poor, Gay must now choose between providing care for his daughter or obeying the law and reimbursing the state for welfare paid to Tynea”s mother over the years. He is not alone. Our national obsession with pursuing deadbeat dads is leaving many well-intentioned fathers destitute, and even homeless.

“Call them deadbroke dads…

“Unfortunately, the child-support system does not recognize the informal, undocumented assistance fathers like Gay provide their children. The only factor the system considers in measuring responsible fatherhood is the payment of formal child support. …

“Child-support orders are usually retroactive to the day the child was born, and fathers are ordered to reimburse the state for any public assistance paid to the child. A father can owe back child support, or in the jargon of the system, ‘arrearages,’ even before the court issues a formal child-support order. Private arrangements between parents are now ignored, even with notarized documents.

“Glenn Sacks, host of His Side with Glenn Sacks, says even direct financial contributions go unacknowledged.

“‘I get e-mails and letters by the hundreds from fathers who show canceled checks for child support paid directly to the mother,’ Sacks recounts, ‘and the state says, “That”s a gift, and it doesn”t count.” It”s like sending him a Visa card with a $20,000 balance already on it.”

Read Cook’s full article here. To learn more about the problems with the child support system, click here.

Copenhagen, Denmark–Denmark has passed a shared parenting law that appears to be the real deal. According to news reports, co-parenting is now the default outcome, and joint custody can be repealed only if there are serious concerns for a child”s safety. Not only that, but parents whose divorces were completed in the past can go back to court and seek shared parenting.

The new law went into effect October 1.

I am often skeptical of claims that true shared parenting legislation has been passed. Usually there is a hidden detail that guts the whole idea. For instance, there will be shared parenting only if the two parties agree. Or, the new law provides only for shared legal custody, not shared physical custody – in other words, same old, same old. Or the new law simply allows shared physical custody, but does not establish it as the preferred option – the result of which is the judges keep doing what they have always been doing.

But as far as I can tell from the news reports, this law is the real deal. Hopefully we will get follow-up information from Denmark putting to rest all the nonsensical objections raised by our opponents in the U.S.

In my post Two Heroic Wives Remained Loyal to Their Husbands as They Served Three Decades in Prison for a Crime They Didn’t Commit, I commended the heroism of two women who remained loyal to their husbands for three decades as the men were incarcerated for crimes the FBI knew they didn’t commit. Both women raised their children, and kept up theirs and their children’s relationships with their husbands as best they could.

Here’s another wonderful example of a loyal wife–Peggy Polinsky:

Wife’s kidney donation saves husband’s life
By Emanuel Parker
Pasadena Star-News, (10/7/07)

PASADENA – For two years, Joel Polinsky’s stomach was so big, children would ask if he was pregnant.

“Yes,” he’d tell them. “I’m going to have triplets.”

But far from being funny, the Pasadena resident’s condition was deadly. What saved his life was a kidney donation in June from his wife, Peggy, 63.

“You only need one kidney, but you have two,” she said. “If you know someone who has none, give them one.”

Being committed to a movement which has not yet come into its prime–the fatherhood movement–I’m sometimes interested in the stories of the unlikely successes of other social movements.

One of the biggest underdog movements in history to succeed, though we don’t talk about it much, is the industrial labor movement.

Most of the big industrial unions were built during the 1930s, under conditions which, in retrospect, seem mind-boggling. It was done amid massive unemployment and widespread poverty. Unionists had to face off against unscrupulous, lawless bosses and their violent hired thugs, as well as hostile and sometimes violent police. Workers utilized strikes, sit-downs and other methods to build strong, vibrant labor unions. I think one could fairly say that, given what these men achieved, it is impossible to ever claim that any reasonable movement cannot succeed.

One of the key battles in the rise of the labor movement is the famous Teamsters strike in Minneapolis in 1934 (pictured). There striking workers and their supporters squared off against police and company-hired thugs in what’s known as the “Battle of Deputies Run.” At the time, truck drivers worked a six day, 60 hour week for less than $75 a month. They had little or no pensions, benefits or workplace safety protections. According to the New Deal Network:

“In Minneapolis and St. Paul the traditional open shop [anti-union] labor principle was militantly maintained until 1934. Then, in May of that year, Local 574 of the Teamsters’ Union ordered a strike and promptly paralyzed the trucking industry in Minneapolis.

“The highlight of the strike was the battle in the market district, where between 20,000 and 30,000 people watched or participated in what became known as the ‘Battle of Deputies Run.’

“Pickets, police, and deputized businessmen joined the conflict in which two of the citizens’ army were killed and scores of strikers wounded. Complaining that no settlement of the larger issues had been attained, truckers struck again in the following July. This time the killing of two pickets and the wounding of 48 brought martial law. Well organized and supported by several farmers’ organizations, the union finally achieved a substantial advantage.”

The victory secured Minneapolis as a union town and brought great benefits to working class families. And no, the subsequent degeneration and corruption of the Teamsters does not diminish what the 1934 strikers accomplished.