NPO Blog Archive

On numerous occasions I’ve discussed the ways the taxpayer-funded domestic violence industry vilifies men and promotes unfair and misleading stereotypes about domestic violence. “Restaurant,” an amazing domestic violence public service ad from HomeFront, a Canadian domestic violence agency, captures perfectly the way the domestic violence industry views and portrays men. To watch the ad, click here, or see below.

Apparently the ad was blocked from airing on TV by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. HomeFront uses the ads in their trainings and has them on their website, and the ads are used in DV seminars. The ads in this series portray only men as batterers and women as victims. HomeFront’s slogan is “Stop It Where It Starts.”

Research clearly shows that women are just as likely as men to initiate violence in the home. Men suffer a third of all domestic violence-related injuries, and women use weapons and the element of surprise to help balance the scales. To learn more, see my co-authored column October”s Domestic Violence Awareness Month Ignores Many Victims (Louisville Courier-Journal and others, 10/4/06). To learn more about problems with the way our legal system and the media handle domestic violence, click here.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugTeOz7rsgE]

One common theme in Parental Alienation cases is the alienating parent punishing the children for having any positive interactions with the targeted parent. In Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome: Breaking the Ties that Bind, several of the adults interviewed by Amy J.L. Baker report having this experience.

One of them is David, whose parents divorced when he was six, and who was caught in his mother’s long-term alienation campaign against his father. (To learn more about David’s case, click here).

David’s mother drove his father out of his life, but even years later he would be made to pay a price for expressing interest in his father. David explains:

“I remember one time I mentioned about talking to Dad and she said, ‘I”ll take you out of my will.” That sticks in my mind because at the time I was thinking about calling him.’

Baker writes, “It was not enough for his mother to have eliminated all visits, she also had to eliminate any discussion or mention of the father as well. She made it clear that to talk about him was a betrayal of her.”

David remembers:

“Even when I was in high school and college if I talked about my dad that was like sticking a knife in her. It was just something you did not want to do. It was almost as if I knew if I mentioned that I wanted to go see my dad I would be brow beaten into submission. I was thinking this is crazy that it seems like every time I talk about my dad all hell breaks loose and it was almost easier… it was easier to not broach the subject. It became about survival…at that point in my life to survive you just don”t talk about him at all.’

The alienation and browbeating was so severe that David waited until three years after his mother was dead to contact his father, explaining, “Only then was I beginning to feel comfortable talking to my dad. It still felt like I was betraying her. It took three years for her to be dead.’

I’ve often criticized what one might call the “paternal abandonment script”–the standard assumption that if a father doesn’t remain in his children’s lives after a divorce or separation, it’s because he “abandoned the family” and/or chose to remove himself from his children’s lives.

This script is pushed heavily by both the left and the right, including: feminists; influential fatherhood expert David Blankenhorn of the Institute for American Values; presidential candidate Barack Obama; former Vice-President Dan Quayle (and his famous 1992 Murphy Brown speech decrying fatherlessness); and countless others.

I’ve detailed in numerous newspaper columns the many barriers mothers and the family law system place between fathers and their children and won’t reprise the argument here. But many times I see references to fathers who “abandoned” their kids when, upon closer inspection, it is very unclear that such “abandonment” occurred. This is particularly common when dealing with African-American fathers.

I noticed this again recently when reading the autobiography of Dick Allen (pictured), probably the best hitter in the major leagues during much of my childhood. There are numerous media references to Dick Allen (aka Richie Allen) being raised by a single mother. For example, in Dick Allen, the Phillies, and Racism, William C. Kashatus writes, “Allen was the youngest of three boys raised by a single mother.”

The Encyclopedia of Arkansas reports that Dick Allen was the son of “Era Allen and her husband, a traveling truck driver who later divorced her. Era Allen raised her youngest son primarily on her own.”

Allen doesn’t focus on this issue in his autobiography, but in passing makes several assertions which contradict the paternal abandonment script written about his family life. According to Allen, his mother and father had a rocky, up and down relationship which finally ended when the couple divorced. That’s not exactly “abandonment.”

Allen’s mother and father divorced when Allen was 15, meaning that the father had been with the mother as they raised all of the other children and up until Allen, the youngest, was almost grown. That’s not exactly “abandonment,” either.

In the book, Allen wonders what became of his father, but says that he would never discuss it in his family because any mention of his father greatly upset his mother. In other words, Allen thought that if he had a relationship with his father, it would have been a betrayal of his mother. Allen was fiercely loyal to his mother, often with good reason. But the “having a relationship with your dad is a betrayal of mom” is a central part of Parental Alienation. Again, this isn’t exactly “abandonment.”

Dick Allen’s father was a traveling truck driver, so he was probably gone a lot, even during the time his relationship with Allen’s mother was good. Allen’s dad probably wasn’t a Father of the Year candidate, but there’s not much evidence that he was a bad guy, either. All we know for sure is that he didn’t get along with Allen’s mother. And that doesn’t mean he abandoned his kids or was a bad father.

[Late note: Richard Allen Jr., Dick Allen’s son, wrote to me about my piece above, and adds some new information. According to Richard Jr., Dick Allen, in contrast to the paternal abandonment script, “did have a relationship with his father, however it was separate from his mother.” In other words, he continued his relationship with his father after the divorce, but probably refrained from mentioning his relationship with his father to his mother.

Sources I’ve read say that Dick Allen’s father was a truck driver and Allen was the youngest child. According to Richard Jr., Dick Allen’s father was a sanitation worker, not a truck driver, and he was not quite the youngest in the family–he had one younger brother, in addition to several older siblings.]

Recently my daughter and I were watching her second favorite movie, The Sandlot 3. (Her favorite movie is The Sandlot 1). The movie is the story of arrogant baseball star Tommy “Santa” Santorelli who (warning: plot spoiler ahead) travels back in time to 1976 and relives his boyhood days on the sandlot baseball team. This time he chooses friendship over individual accomplishments, and ends up turning his life around, becoming a beloved baseball star instead of a hated one.

When Santorelli goes back to his childhood he is reunited with his mother, who died when he was about 12. The boy’s bond with his mom is touching and sad, no question. However….Santorelli’s father is not mentioned.

I don’t mean that he’s not there–we’re used to that. Normally when they want to depict an absent father they’ll depict him as dead or, more commonly, as having run off. (Just once I’d like to see a kid in a mainstream movie casually say “Oh, my dad’s not around–mom divorced him and used family court machinations to drive him out of my life when I was younger.”) But here, unless my daughter, my wife and I all missed something, Santorelli’s father is not referred to at all. A child not having a father has become so routine that the screenwriters don’t even feel obligated to throw in a one sentence reference to dad and why he’s not here.

This is an increasingly annoying feature of many modern movies–“John Tucker Must Die” and Toy Story” are a couple of other examples. It seems particularly offensive here because, dammit, this is a baseball movie. Dads, boys and baseball go together. So in honor of the father-son-baseball bond which The Sandlot 3 has besmirched, I’ve put together some details about the loving bonds many current and former major league baseball players shared with their dads. Some examples include:

Former New York Mets relief pitcher John Franco, one of the better closers in baseball during the 1980s and 1990s, always wore an orange NYC sanitation T-shirt under his baseball uniform, in honor of his father, a New York City sanitation worker.

Former New York Yankee right fielder Paul O’Neill published the book Me and My Dad: A Baseball Memoir after his playing career ended. O’Neill’s father, Charles “Chick” O’Neill, was a paratrooper in World War II and pitched in the minor leagues. He died after Game 3 of the 1999 World Series. Paul O’Neill went to his father’s funeral, then played in Game 4, helping the Yankees complete their sweep of the Atlanta Braves.

Former Kansas City Royals third baseman George Brett honored his father in his Hall of Fame induction speech.

Current Houston Astros star first baseman Lance Berkman recently told a reporter, “My dad is my hero…I think so much of him. He’s just got tremendous moral values, and he’s just a wonderful person and somebody who’s very comforting to be around…He’s someone I’ve learned through by example more than anything else, particularly with his honesty…He’s not a man of many words. He’s not very charming. He’s not necessarily a guy that will walk up and take the floor and talk a bunch. But the way he lives is an example to a lot of people. He’s a true gentleman. He’s got a lot of people that look up to him and the way he carries himself. A lot of times actions speak louder than words, and he’s a guy that certainly lives that out.”

Dr. Ned Holstein addressed the ancient question of how best to live one’s life after suffering serious injustice. Ned’s remarks were offered at the September 24 meeting of Fathers & Families near Boston. Over 80 people attended to hear Dr. Amy Baker on the subject of parental alienation, to honor Dan Hogan for his service to the fathers’ and children’s movement, and to hear Ned. His attempt to answer the question of injustice in human affairs follows. The meeting was lively, with good energy and high resolve to end injustice to our children.

The Answer to an Ancient Question

September 24, 2007

About five years ago, the Boston Globe ran a headline story claiming that the leading cause of death of pregnant women was murder at the hands of their male partners. The story was occasioned by a Massachusetts Department of Public Health special report, accompanied by a press release. As a doctor, I was dubious about this claim, so I looked up the DPH report. It did not surprise me to find that medical causes of death far outnumbered any other cause, and that motor vehicles and drugs came next, with domestic violence making a modest contribution. The Massachusetts DPH never distanced itself from the Globe story, despite its own research report that contradicted the Globe.

Two years ago, PBS ran a so-called documentary called “Breaking the Silence.’  Its central claim was that two-thirds of fathers who seek the custody of their children, even shared custody, are secret batterers. There is no research basis for this claim whatsoever. I know, because I asked the authors of this travesty for their sources, and then I studied the papers they cited, and I found that this slander was a complete fabrication.

About the same time, I learned that Australia Airlines and New Zealand Airlines will not seat unaccompanied children next to men. Instead, they will ask the men to switch seats. This is profiling, and it occurs in the absence of any data whatsoever showing that men have ever molested children on an airplane.

Recently, the state of Virginia erected billboards showing a picture of a grown man holding the hand of a child. It instructed citizens to report men holding the hands of children to the child abuse agency, since, apparently, if you hold hands with a child, you are likely to be a sexual pervert.

And, about a month ago, Steve Patterson of Fathers & Family alerted me to the fact that an esteemed organization, the Massachusetts Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children  —  or MSPCC – was running an ad on television intended to inspire the public to support the fight against child abuse. Its style was that of a trailer for a horror movie. Filmed in creepy black and white, the camera angle was that of a child hiding under her bed, and then in a spooky garage, and then in a frightening basement. Every ten seconds or so, the screen dissolved to black, and titles appeared in stark white:  “Where would you hide . . . . if you were ten years old . . . . and your father was coming home  . . . . and he was angry. . . . . very angry . . . and he was looking for you . . . . like he did last night . . . .  and the night before. . . and the night before that…’  I”m sure the average viewer now mistakenly believes that fathers commit most child abuse, whereas the opposite is true.

The fathers” movement targeted three of these outrages and got them taken down.

But we cannot escape the larger point:  We live in a society in which respected institutions such as the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the Boston Globe, the State of Virginia, two international airlines, the MSPCC and PBS are content to stereotype fathers as vicious villains, stereotypes that are unfounded lies.

And when we are not vicious, we are foolish, egotistical, narcissistic idiots. Just watch prime time television, and you will see a parade of male buffoons far more offensive than the ditzy females served up in the fifties. At least Lucy was a lovable ditz, not a repugnant narcissist. This is well documented on Fathersandhusbands.org and by a study several years ago by the National Fatherhood Initiative.

Does this slander matter, or is it harmless fun? Yes, it matters. We need to remember that family court judges are ordinary human beings. They watch the same shows and read the same newspapers that everyone else does. Few of them are intellectuals, and they were never trained in child development, or how to understand research data, or how to identify a good study vs a bad one. That doesn”t seem to stop them from considering themselves experts on these topics, taking their “wisdom’ from the corrupted images of men perpetrated in the media.

So it should not surprise us that the treatment we receive in family court as fathers and men reflects the ugly stereotypes we are seeing from respected authorities such as PBS or the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. It is little wonder that we are treated as selfish, dangerous, indifferent to our children, cheaters, workaholics, or philanderers, since that is how we are widely portrayed. Most crucially, we are treated as a stereotyped class of underlings, not as individual human beings to be judged on our merits. Why is it surprising, then, that so many loving, caring and wise parents, especially fathers, are deprived of their children?

At this time of year, we always read of those parents who take their first child to college. They carefully put the sheets on their kids” dormitory beds and neatly arrange their clothes  — a momentary nostalgic return to the childhood years that have fled. The new collegians are desperate for them to leave. They depart. They look over their shoulders at their beloved child, overflowing with emotion.  They arrive home, open the door  — and the house is silent. The doors do not slam. The phone does not ring. No backpacks are plopped down on the floor. The cereal has not been devoured. And they feel empty. They gaze at the photographs of their boy when he was three.

And they know that what was, is no more, and can never be.

How much worse when this happens before its proper time, when the children are young, when it happens to a loving parent who has done no wrong, when it happens simply by order of an ignorant judge, influenced by degrading media portrayals of men, and empowered by blind laws. This we never read about.

And here is the ultimate wound: it is done, they say, because it is in your child”s best interest– to be torn away from you! These amateur psychologists have concluded that your child is harmed by your loving care.

Many of those who do this to us are haughty and arrogant. The haughty are worse than those who sin, because the haughty believe they are free of sin. And they are ignorant. They do not see that they are injuring children. They do not see that they are ruining lives. They do not see because they do not wish to see.

And I must tell you that these same people are feted —  they are celebrated. Dinners are held to honor them. They receive awards. They sit on distinguished panels, and respectful drivers are sent to pick them up. Their opinions are sought. They are full of honors.

And so this brings us to an ancient question:  Psalm 94 asks, “Lord, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked triumph?’ And Job asks: “Why do the just suffer and the wicked flourish?

So there is nothing new about our dilemma. Show me one time in all of history when the wicked did not flourish!

Wise philosophers have struggled to answer this question for thousands of years. We tonight will not solve the question of why the wicked flourish.

Instead, we must struggle to repair our lives, to fill the gaping hole, just as millions of victims of injustice over the millennia have had to do. We are one with people of all ages who have suffered.

How do we do this? How can this be possible? The sorrow is too great. The anger intrudes into our thoughts every day.

It helps to remember that the past is gone  — for all of us, for every human being. No one can live in the past. It simply does not exist  — for anyone. It slides out of our grasp. We must stop trying to recover what once was.

And the future is equally elusive. We cannot grasp the future even though so many of us frantically pursue it.  If only we can get the next promotion, or work hard enough to get the next raise, or be elected to office, or buy just the right car, or make the furnishings perfect  —  or win the next court battle  —  then we will be happy.

But when the future comes, it is no longer the future  — it is the present. And it is still we who inhabit it. We have brought ourselves along, bearing all our inner conflicts.  And we are still pursuing the future, or trying to grasp the past.

The only place we can live is the present. Right here. Right now. No other time or place. What was, is no more, and can never be again. For any mortal human. We must be here now.

There is a story about the famous violinist Yitzhak Pearlman. He was the featured soloist at a very big, very important concert, attended by a huge crowd of those who glitter. He lurched out on the stage on his crutches  — he had suffered polio as a child  — made his way to his chair in the front, sat, picked up his violin, and nodded to the conductor that he was ready. The orchestra began to play, and after a few bars, Pearlman”s violin joined, soaring over the orchestra like a heavenly angel, the sound unbelievably sweet.

Suddenly, there was an unmistakable “ping’ as one of his strings broke. The audience expected the orchestra to stop, for everyone to wait while he re-strung his violin.  Instead, Pearlman nodded to the conductor to continue, and he played through the entire sonata with only three strings. Where he needed his fourth string, he improvised brilliantly, sometimes moving far up the third string, sometimes going down an octave, sometimes inventing an entirely new line as he went. It was as beautiful as anything the audience had ever heard.

Afterwards he was asked, “Why didn”t you replace your fourth string?’ He answered, “My heart demands to make beautiful music with however many strings I may have.’

And that is what we must do. We cannot try forever to recapture a past that is gone. We cannot be the captive of an imagined future when we will have four strings. We must play our lives with what we have. We must make music with however many strings we have, we must sound the trumpet we have, and we must ring whatever bells remain in the tower.

And there is something else that we must do. We must help others. There is no more certain way to heal ourselves than to devote ourselves to helping others. A woman of 96 years had lost her parents, her husband, all her brothers and sisters, three of her four children and even two of her grandchildren. She had outlived her money, and she had lost most of her hearing. Her friends were amazed that every morning she arose promptly, dressed and went out in good humor.

They asked her where she went. She answered, “To the soup kitchen to serve soup to the homeless. I have many friends there, and my life is rich.’

That is why we must unite together to help others. The greatest beneficiary will be you. You can help those who will go down the same road as you unless we do something about it. To be perfectly honest, I do not know for sure how long it will take to revive the angel of justice. Perhaps it will be in time to help you, and perhaps it will not.

But I do know that you can help those innocents who do not yet know what will befall them if we do not help. I do know that we will right the scales of justice. I do know that the little children will not forever have their hearts broken by a judge ordering that they need not see one of their parents; that the one they love will be there to protect them from the neighborhood bully; that he will wrestle with him, letting him win, and then tuck him into bed; and that he will secretly let him steer the snowmobile like a big boy.

You can help these victims of the future, prevent them from re-living what you and your child have lived in the past. Let us live together today, in the present. Let us be here now. Together we will clear a path, make the rough way straight, and remove all obstacles. Together we will sweep away injustice. We can do this. We will do this. We will win. Help others today and tomorrow, and God bless you.

Background: The “Elian Gonzalez II” case in Miami is a battle over a 4-year-old Cuban immigrant girl which pits her Cuban father, Rafael Izquierdo, against wealthy Cuban-American foster parents Joe Cubas, a well-known sports agent, and his wife Maria. Just as Elian’s father Juan Gonzalez faced numerous unfair hurdles to get his son back, Izquierdo has been manhandled by the child welfare system, in part because of the system’s anti-father bias.

In 2005, the girl’s mother brought the girl to Miami from Cuba. The Florida Department of Children & Families removed the girl from her mother’s custody in 2006, after an investigation found that the woman’s mental illness rendered her an unfit parent. She was placed with a foster family, and Izquierdo came to the US to bring his daughter home.

Izquierdo has spent months in the US and has been denied custody of his daughter–an outrageous violation of fathers” rights. Izquierdo should not have to fight to raise his own child. He is a fit father–how and where to raise his daughter is his decision.

Last week, Judge Jeri B. Cohen faced down the angry Cuban-American community and did the right thing, ruling that Rafael Izquierdo is a fit parent who did not abandon his daughter, and should be permitted to take the girl back home to Cuba. Outrageously, the Florida Department of Children & Families has done everything it could do to malign Izquierdo and wrest custody away from him, spending over a quarter million dollars to do so. To learn more, click here.

Havana journalist/professor Manuel E. Yepe Menendez’s article Twisted Justice in Miami (The Cuban Nation, 9/27/07) gives the Cuban government’s view of the “Elian Gonzalez II.” I’m not familiar with the Atlanta case Menendez discusses near the end of the article, but I believe his view of the Elian II is more or less accurate, though somewhat exaggerated.

Twisted Justice in Miami
The Cuban Nation, 9/27/07
By Manuel E. Yepe Menendez
Havana’s Higher Institute of International Relations.

Similar to the kidnapping of the Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez, seven years ago, a five year-old Cuban girl is today the center of an international dispute over her custody in the only place in the world where something like this could happen: the U.S. city of Miami, in south Florida.

Like the Elian case that won world notoriety, the plaintiff is the father of the child and the arguments of the kidnappers are mostly based on the irrational policy of the United States against Cuba.

In this case, the alleged kidnapper is a wealthy entrepreneur involved in human trafficking called Joe Cubas who, under the façade of a sports agent, has made a fortune in the illegal dealing of Cuban athletes using intelligence logistics and US subversion against the island and the support of Cuban-American extremist groups which have transmuted hatred of the Cuban socialist project into a money-making business which includes political wheeling and dealing directly involving top-ranking government officials of the state of Florida in the United States.

Bob Butterworth, secretary of the Department of Children and Families in the State of Florida (DCF in its English acronym) whose lawyers are battling to prevent the Cuban father from obtaining custody of his daughter, told the Miami press that this “unusual” case is the costliest he has ever seen.

The little girl is daughter of the Cuban campesino from Cabaiguan in the central region of the island and Elena Perez a 35-year-old woman who left Cuba legally and arrived in the United States in December 2005 with the daughter in question and her son. Shortly after her arrival in the Miami, her new husband, Jesus Melendres, abandoned them.

According to reports in the Miami press, Elena, evidently disturbed because of the economic situation she faced for several months, tried to commit suicide. This was the reason her children were taken from her. The DCF took her children from her in March of 2006 and placed them in the care of Joe Cubas.

When Rafael Izquierdo found out, he decided to assume his duty and his right as a father, and was able to travel to the United States to bring his daughter back.

Background: Mary Winkler–who shot her husband in the back and then refused to aid him or call 911 as he slowly bled to death for 20 minutes–walked away a free woman last month after serving a farcically brief “sentence” for her crimes. She is currently in a custody battle with Matthew Winkler’s parents, who have been raising their three daughters for the last 18 months. The Winklers seek to terminate Mary Winkler’s parental rights and adopt the girls. I support their position. Last week, Mary Winkler was granted supervised visits with her daughters–an important step towards getting custody of them. To learn more about this horrendous injustice, see my co-authored column No child custody for husband-killer Mary Winkler (World Net Daily, 9/14/07), or click here. A Tennessee appeals court yesterday blocked a supervised visit between Mary Winkler and her children, in response to an appeals by Dan and Diane Winkler, the children’s grandparents.
The Associated Press story is below. Mary Winkler Visit With Children Blocked Associated Press, 9/30/07 JACKSON, Tenn. (AP) — An appeals court Friday blocked a supervised visit between a woman convicted of killing her minister-husband and their children. The court issued a stay against the Saturday visit after a last-minute application from the children’s paternal grandparents, who have had temporary custody of the three young girls since Mary Winkler went to jail after the March 2006 shotgun shooting. Winkler, 33, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in April for shooting Church of Christ minister Matthew Winkler at their residence in Selmer. “It’s very devastating to Mary and I’m sure to the children,” said Winkler’s attorney, Kay Farese Turner. The stay is only temporary pending an investigation of Dan and Diane Winkler’s accusations that the judge who originally granted the visit ruled erroneously, Turner said. A call to the office of William R. Neese, Dan and Diane Winkler’s custody attorney, late Friday was not immediately returned. Winkler has said the grandparents will not let her see or talk to her children, who are now 10, 8 and 2 years old. They are seeking to terminate her parental rights and adopt the children while Winkler is attempting to regain custody. Her former parents-in-law also have filed a $2 million wrongful death lawsuit against her.

When there’s domestic violence and it’s committed by a woman, it’s not domestic violence. Here a woman allegedly hit her husband with her car, drove a 1/2 mile with him on the roof, fractured his leg, and drove off–and she says she’s the victim. She is being charged with some appropriate crimes–at least until her “I was afraid” shtick gets some traction and the prosecutors cave–but there’s no mention of “domestic violence.”

Woman Allegedly Drives With Hubby on Car
Associated Press, September 27, 2007

HASTINGS, Minn. – A Farmington woman accused of driving for half a mile with her husband on the hood of her car and her 9-year-old child in the front passenger seat now faces criminal charges.

The Dakota County Attorney’s office filed a felony criminal complaint this week charging Jill Ann Miller-Cooper, 34, with two counts of criminal vehicular operation resulting in substantial bodily harm and one count of child endangerment.

Miller-Cooper is accused of hitting her husband on Aug. 15 in the parking lot of the restaurant he owns. The complaint said the impact tossed Randall Cooper onto the car’s hood and Miller-Cooper drove off. The complaint said she eventually stopped and her husband fell off the car, then she drove away.

However, Miller-Cooper told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that her husband climbed on the car while it was parked.

“He was very threatening, and I wanted to leave,” she said. “I stopped two times. He put his leg down, and I slammed on the brakes. … It’s been an ugly situation.”

Cooper suffered a fractured knee.

Thanks to Mike Saucedo, a reader, for the story.

[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.]