NPO Blog Archive

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

Ex-tended clans: Divorce often leaves some family ties intact (USA Today, 10/1/07)

DHS program helps noncustodial parents (Tulsa World, 10/1/07)

Helping hand for single dads (Rocky Mountain News, 10/1/07)

Child Support Payments More Accessible (North County Gazette, 10/1/07)

Divorced from Reality (New York Times, 9/29/07)

Duke Apologizes to Lacrosse Players (Associated Press, 9/29/07)

Proposal on domestic violence policy angers FOP (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/26/07)

San Mateo Co.: Governor Signs Child Support Bill into Law (CBS5.com, 9/26/07)

Judge grants father custody in state’s longest divorce case (Boston Globe, 9/25/07)

Centers For Disease Control Finds Women Commit Half Of Domestic Violence, Reports National Coalition of Free Men (EWorldWire, 9/24/07)

Background: I’ve previously covered the “Elian Gonzalez II” case in Miami–a battle over a 4-year-old Cuban immigrant girl which pits her Cuban father, Rafael Izquierdo (pictured), 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.

Judge Jeri B. Cohen faced down the angry Cuban-American community and did the right thing today in the Elian Gonzalez II case, 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. The Associated Press story is below.

Judge Rules for Cuban Father
By LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ
Associated Press, 9/27/07

MIAMI — The father of a 5-year-old Cuban girl at the center of an international custody battle did not abandon or neglect her, so he should get her back, a judge ruled Thursday.

Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen said she would not immediately return the girl to her father, Cuban farmer Rafael Izquierdo, who wants to take her back to Cuba.

The girl went into foster care after her mother brought her to the U.S. in 2005 and then attempted suicide days before Christmas. She has been living with foster parents in Miami for the past 18 months and they want to keep the girl here.

The Florida Department of Children & Families said Izquierdo abandoned the girl and officials want the girl to stay with her foster parents, Joe and Maria Cubas, a wealthy Cuban-American couple. The state’s attorneys said removing the girl after such a long time would cause her serious emotional trauma.

Cohen said she would hold a follow-up hearing to listen to the state’s arguments, but urged the department to “take the blindfold off and see the forest for the trees.”

Izquierdo has denied that he abandoned his daughter and has professed his desire to return with her to Cuba.

“The court cannot deny Izquierdo custody of his child,” Cohen said.

The father, foster parents and mother were all in court as the judge read her 47-page ruling over several hours. The judge said Izquierdo’s efforts to regain his daughter once she was put in foster care “were not marginal for a man of his circumstances.”

“He has diligently participated in what must seem to him a mysterious and daunting legal process. While geographically, Cuba is only 90 miles from the United States shores, the two countries are philosophically and politically worlds apart,” Cohen said.

Amy J.L. Baker’s book Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome: Breaking the Ties that Bind details the stories of adult children of divorce–voices we need to hear much more often. One of the cases she details is that of David, whose parents divorced when he was six.

David’s father worked long hours but he had positive, loving feelings towards him. He and his two siblings visited their father regularly and enjoyed and valued the experience.

However, as so often happens, after David’s father remarried, his mother’s attitude changed, and she began interfering with the visits. According to Baker, “The primary alienation strategy used by his mother was over-reacting to minor incidents that occurred at David”s father”s house, building a case for the fact that his father was careless and/or dangerous.”

David explains:

“Something would happen at Dad”s house like even the littlest thing like I remember one time we were at Grandma”s house and my sister had some jacks and we were playing jacks and we went off to do something else and we came back into the room and we were kind of running around and she fell on one of the jacks and one of them kind of hit her thigh and went in a little bit. I remember it wasn”t that big a deal but when we got home you would have thought someone had beat her. I was seven or eight at the time and my sister was five. I remember thinking at some point after this happened several times that…on my way home and it was about a 30-40 minute drive I remember just dreading it and thinking what will it be…what is going to be the thing that upsets her this time.’

Baker says:

“David”s mother had a way of finding out about what happened during visitation and then zeroing in on the most negative aspect of the visit to the exclusion of everything else. She would inquire about the visit until she heard something negative.”

Another of the mother’s alienation tactics was to invoke a rule that if any of the three children did not want to visit, then none could. When David”s younger sister “decided” that she didn’t want to visit her dad’s house, this gave mom the pretext she needed to cut off all visitation.

A third tactic was to try to paint the father as stingy or financially selfish. According to David, the mother would use a meaningless one day delay in the child support check coming as an excuse to malign the dad. David explains:

“There were things with the support checks. The checks came once every two weeks through the court. It was always a big deal when the check arrived. We had to check the mailbox and call Mom as soon as we got home from school and let her know that the check was there and if it wasn”t there it was a big deal. I remember it always showed up the next day if it was late so it was not like it was late.

“There was one incident…one year we went to camp…I can”t remember if it was next summer or two summers after that and we called Dad up and asked him to pay for camp and I remember I got on the phone and my brother got on the phone and my mom got on the other phone and it was real quick and dirty ‘Dad can you pay for camp?’ and either he said no or I”ll think about it or something and then Mom blurted in…there was no negotiation at all. ‘If you can”t pay for camp then forget it.” and we hung up and it was like wow that was fast and it was a big deal, one of those things where there was zero negotiation and no details. I was even crying after the conversation was over and my brother and sister were just balling.’

Eventually the mother moved away with the three children, and tried to prevent the father from finding where they had moved, and the children were denied any access to their father. David turned against his father, and did not realize the way he had been misled until many years later.

The article below details how three heroic fathers sacrificed their lives to save their children over the summer. The fathers are Yves Pilotte, Scott Davis, and Benjie Correos (pictured right with his family, including nine-year-old son Miles). From Canada’s Globe and Mail article “Three fathers who answered the call”:

“Yves Pilotte…a 44-year-old firefighter from the eastern Quebec village of Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes went swimming with his two teenage children at Cavendish Beach in Prince Edward Island National Park.

“A riptide warning had been broadcast on the radio but RCMP investigators surmised the Pilotte family likely had not heard it at their campground in the park.

“When Mr. Pilotte’s 15-year-old son began having trouble in the water, his father went immediately to his aid. The boy made it safely back to the beach but Mr. Pilotte lacked the strength to fight the current and was swept away.

“Riptides are powerful, constricted currents flowing outward from the shore. Swimmers are advised to swim parallel to the shore to get out of the current’s path rather than attempting to struggle against it.

“Mr. Pilotte, a vibrant man actively engaged in his community, was pulled ashore a short time later and died in hospital.

“It is one of the unspeakable horror stories of family life – the parent who dies trying to save a child, the parent who dies in front of his children. It has happened three times in Canada this month.

“Their deaths lead to questions about how children cope with the trauma of seeing a parent die, of knowing that a parent died so they could live.

“They also raise questions about what makes a parent instantly risk her or his life to save a child.

“Perry Adler, professor of family medicine at McGill University, suggested that parents rehearse the sacrificial act many times in their minds as they raise their children – fantasize about it – and so are ready to do it when the time comes.

“It could be biological, he said. ‘We do everything we can to survive. We try to do everything for our species to survive.’

“Benjie Correos, 45, of Whitehorse, and Scott Davis, 38, from the village of Arnstein near North Bay, Ont., drowned on the same day, Aug. 16.

“Mr. Correos, an artist and carpenter, was on an outing with his family on the Millennium Trail that runs alongside the Yukon River.

“According to police reports, he was fishing when his seven-year-old son Myles, playing nearby, slipped and fell into the river’s swollen, fast-moving water.

“Both Mr. Correos and his wife Josephine went in after him. Ms. Correos could not get by large rocks but her husband was able to grab on to Myles and hold his head up.

“However, he could not get free of the undertow. Two other men jumped into the river and were able to pull Myles to safety but Mr. Correos disappeared.

Sigh–no comment needed…

Her word rules, and he goes to jail
Some women swindle with domestic violence law
By Garland M. Baker
Special to A.M. Costa Rica

Women are kicking their mates out of the house in record numbers in Costa Rica. Some of them are enjoying it and using the law designed to protect women against domestic violence to swindle expats [American expatriates]. Many expats come to Costa Rica in search of a relationship and end up shooting themselves in the foot by making bad choices.

Police in Heredia say women are abusing Law 8589 Article 7. The article states, “In order to protect the victims, they will be able to request, from the start of the complaint, the protective measures contemplated in the law against domestic violence, as well as the necessary precautionary measures foreseen in the penal code of procedure.’

Yes, an expat male — or any male in Costa Rica for that matter — can be tossed out of his own home by his wife or girlfriend by merely having a complaint filed against him by the woman if she says he was being abusive. Abusive, as it stands today, can mean anything, including just raising one’s voice.

Two weeks ago a woman put her expat boyfriend in jail all night when he raised his voice to her adult son — he is over 18 years of age — for popping bubble pack and painting satanic symbols on the wall. The son, who has tested positive for drugs in the past, became vocally abusive, so the expat called 911. When the police arrived, the girlfriend and her son asked the police to take the expat to jail. Officers did so without question. The woman also said that he struggled with the son and bumped into her.

The man who was jailed is the legal owner of the home.

The girlfriend took a coat to the expat that night because it was very cold in Heredia. Either she had a guilty conscience or she was looking for information. While at the jail, she spoke with the police, and they gave her pointers on what she should file with the judge the next morning in court.

In the morning, the police escorted the tired man from his jail cell to the court. He was lucky, he had a cell phone, and the police let him use it in the patrol car. He called an attorney who met him at court.

The judge told the man that the police would take him to his own house where he could pack two suitcases of essentials but that he had to vacate his home immediately.

A police officer escorted the expat and his attorney into the house. While the retired man gathered his belongings, the police officer told the attorney that throwing men — mostly foreign men — out of their homes in Heredia was their daily routine. He said they use to chase robbers and other bad people, but now they were bored because mostly they just deal with domestic violence cases. The police officer further said: “Women in Costa Rica are taking advantage of this new law. They throw out their boyfriend and then steal their things and leave.’

Other women do not leave. They start court cases against expats for damages or palimony to wear them down to get a payoff. The lucky ones get off with the women taking a few TV sets and the home computers. At least in these cases the expat can move back into his house.

When the girlfriend does not leave the home, expats have a serious problem.

I’ve just learned via Dean Tong that Dave Bruer of the Fathers Resource Center was killed Sunday in a motorcycle accident. Dave was a committed advocate who helped many, many fathers with their custody and family law problems.

The newspaper article about this tragedy is below.

Motorcyclist killed in crash ID’d as advocate for fathers
North County Times, 9/24/07

VISTA — A man killed Sunday morning in a motorcycle crash on Highway 78 was identified by the county medical examiner’s office today as the founder of the Fathers Resource Center, an Encinitas-based parenting organization.

David Cavan Bruer, 55, of Encinitas, was pronounced dead at the scene near Emerald Drive, an investigator for the office said.

Authorities said Bruer had been speeding when he tried to pass through a narrow gap in traffic and was clipped by a truck. He is survived by his son, John-David Bruer, the medical examiner’s office reported.

Bruer began working as an advocate for fathers nearly 20 years ago. He brought the Fathers Resource Center — which formed to help fathers with issues such as paternity to domestic abuse, to custody and visitation — to Encinitas in 1997.

The Kentucky Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in a case involving hero father Ren Hinshaw, a “duped dad” fighting to retain custody of the 8-year-old boy he’s raised since birth. Hinshaw didn’t find out that he wasn’t the boy’s biological father until his divorce, when his ex-wife went to court to cut him out of the boy’s life, claiming Hinshaw had no legal right to keep seeing what he thought was his kid. According to a Louisville Courier-Journal article earlier this year:

“‘He is my son, and I am his dad,’ Hinshaw said in an e-mail to the newspaper.

“The child’s mother says Hinshaw should have no right to custody…

“Hinshaw was in the delivery room when the boy he thought was his son was born in 1999.

“He cut the umbilical cord and later changed the boy’s diapers, taught him to talk and volunteered at his school, according to court records.

“Hinshaw, a technology consultant at the University of Louisville’s Kornhauser Health Sciences Library, described the boy in court records as the most important thing in his life.

“But when the child’s mother, Jacqueline, divorced Hinshaw in 2003, she disclosed he wasn’t the biological father and asked Jefferson Family Court to deny him custody.

“Judge Virginia Whittinghill ordered a counselor to meet with the child. She concluded he had bonded with Hinshaw and that it would be ‘very devastating to him if he was not in his life.’ She described Hinshaw as the boy’s ‘psychological father.’

“Whittinghill not only granted Hinshaw’s motion for joint custody, she also made his home the boy’s primary residence and ordered his ex-wife to pay him $25,000 in attorney’s fees.

“The Court of Appeals last September affirmed the decision, saying the case wasn’t about paternity but ‘the custody rights between a husband and wife as they relate to a child born and raised within the confines of the marriage.’

“Hinshaw’s ex-wife, who has since remarried, is now asking the state Supreme Court to hear the case. She and her lawyer, Peter Ostermiller, declined comment, but in court papers they say that DNA should rule, even if the decision is not in the child’s best interests.

“They also contend that Hinshaw had no standing to seek custody, just as the state Supreme Court held last year when it denied such rights to a lesbian partner who was not a child’s legal parent.

“After two years as the boy’s primary parent, Hinshaw said in court papers that his bond with the child has grown even stronger and that it would ‘take a chunk’ out of his heart if the child was taken away.

“‘This is a bond that no person should put asunder,’ he said.”

The case is now being considered by the Kentucky Supreme Court, along with the James Rhoades case. To learn more, click here.

We rarely hear publicly about cases like Hinshaw’s, but I see them often.

As many of you know, Mary Winkler recently appeared on Oprah. To watch the show in its entirety, click here.

Oprah was annoyingly sympathetic to Winkler, and seemed to buy her abused wife shtick. My opinion of her claims is as follows:

1) Winkler provided no substantive evidence for her claims–no medical reports, no police reports, no 911 calls, nothing.

2) The defense did put a few people on the stand who testified as to various indirect indications that Winkler might have been abused. A couple of these were of some value. For example, a doctor said Winkler visited her one time with what he described as a “minor injury” to her face, which Winkler said at the time came when a kids’ softball hit her. She now claims this was an example of Matthew’s abuse of her. The doctor said the injury was consistent with either one.

Also, Winkler’s father testified as to seeing injuries on Mary previously, which Mary denied were related to abuse. Of course, even if these were true examples of abuse–and it’s far from clear that they are–it doesn’t mean that Matthew was the aggressor. Research shows that a large percentage of domestic violence is mutual abuse–Mary’s alleged injuries could’ve been the end result of her attacks on Matthew. We’ll never know whether Matthew was abusive or not, but we do know that one member of that household was violent–Mary Winkler. Anybody capable of shooting a sleeping man in the back and allowing him to bleed to death is certainly capable of initiating domestic violence in the home.

3) Some of the other witnesses were meaningless, including one neighbor who said that Matthew threatened to shoot his dog because it kept coming to Matthew’s house and barking at night and waking him up. I guess my wife and I are abusers, too–at our previous house our neighbors’ dog would bark outside our window at 3 AM, and after several complaints we banged on my neighbor’s door and screamed at him, and, if we didn’t threaten to shoot the damn thing, we should’ve.

4) One of the few times on Oprah where Oprah did voice skepticism was when Mary described the morning of the crime. Winkler told Oprah she was angry at her husband and “just wanted to talk to him,” and then she “heard a boom.’ A more complete description of the incident would have been that she wanted to talk to him, waited until he fell asleep, retrieved the shotgun, pumped it, aimed it at his back, pulled the trigger, and then “heard a boom.’

5) Ironically, the truth-teller on the show was feminist Court TV commentator Lisa Bloom, Gloria Allred”s daughter. Bloom said, “At Court TV a collective gasp went up at this verdict. We all thought it was a first degree murder case….Didn’t she make the decision to allow him to fall asleep? Didn’t she make the decision to go into that closet and get that gun? Didn’t she make the decision to aim it at Matthew and pull the trigger?”

Bloom also asserted that “there wasn’t much corroboration [of the abuse] at the trial.”

6) Perhaps the most absurd aspect of both the trial and Oprah was the way Mary highlighted the white platform shoes which she claimed Matthew “made her’ wear, and which she said were deeply humiliating to her. During the trial, Mary held up the shoe and bowed her head down in mock pain and shame. Oprah bought it, telling her audience that on her show “everybody gasped when they saw the shoe.’ Bloom explained to Oprah that in any “big city” people would have “laughed at’ Mary”s claims that the shoes were part of the “abuse’ she suffered.

Conservative nationally-syndicated radio talk show host Mike Gallagher got it right about Mary Winkler in a recent broadcast. He panned her recent performance on Oprah and criticized the legal system’s slap on the wrist for Winkler. To listen to Gallagher’s broadcast, click here.

To learn more about the Winkler case, see my co-authored column No child custody for husband-killer Mary Winkler (World Net Daily, 9/14/07).

Gallagher doesn’t discuss gender issues very often, but when he does he’s often right on. During the Elian Gonzalez saga in 2000, Gallagher was one of the few conservatives in the country who said plainly and clearly that Elian belonged with his father, Juan Gonzalez. During the Clara Harris trial, Mike hosted a debate between myself and one of Clara’s defenders, and, unlike many, Gallagher saw through Clara’s “betrayed wife” shtick.