NPO Blog Archive

“George Howard Buell, an inmate wrongfully imprisoned at Stateville Correctional Center for third-degree sexual assault and aggravated battery, won’t shut the hell up about being innocent.“Buell, 46, an Elmhurst, IL electrician, was convicted of raping and burglarizing his elderly neighbor in 1994, despite the fact that he was at work when the crime occurred. He was mistakenly sentenced to a prison term of 20 years to life. Since then, his imprisonment has been a source of nonstop bellyaching.”

The theme of the 2005 Onion satirical piece “Wrongly Imprisoned Man Won’t Shut Up About It” is that George Howard Buell, an innocent man serving 20 years to life in prison, won’t shut up and quit complaining about his situation. The piece is funny but also sad, and it’s always reminded me of the reaction so many divorced dads get when they complain about the way they were treated in family court. Perhaps one day we’ll see an Onion piece that reads something like this:

“George Johnson, a loving father of three who was permanently separated from the children he loves because of false charges of domestic violence, just won’t shut up about it. Johnson, who was very involved in his children’s lives until his wife decided she wanted a divorce and booted him out of his house on a restraining order, bellyaches nonstop over the fact that he cannot see his children.”

Perhaps someday. The Onion piece is below.

Wrongly Imprisoned Man Won’t Shut Up About It
The Onion
August 31, 2005 | Issue 41•35

JOLIET, IL–George Howard Buell, an inmate wrongfully imprisoned at Stateville Correctional Center for third-degree sexual assault and aggravated battery, won’t shut the hell up about being innocent.

Buell, 46, an Elmhurst, IL electrician, was convicted of raping and burglarizing his elderly neighbor in 1994, despite the fact that he was at work when the crime occurred. He was mistakenly sentenced to a prison term of 20 years to life. Since then, his imprisonment has been a source of nonstop bellyaching.

“I’m completely innocent of the charges brought against me,” Buell said in yet another long-winded jailhouse statement last week. “I am a victim of inept police work, conflict-of-interest issues among the prosecution, and a lackadaisical defense. Anyone with even a peripheral familiarity with my case could see the inconsistencies. It’s a complete miscarriage of justice.”

Buell’s insufferable tirades have taken the form of numerous appeals to state and federal courts, unsuccessful attempts to launch public petitions, and e-publishing a 400,000-word autobiography titled Won’t Someone Please Hear My Anguished Plea?

“Okay, I get it–he’s innocent already,” said Eric Holsapple, Buell’s court-appointed attorney. “Like I don’t know that. I only toiled for, like, forever years making a case out of it. Every time I talk to him, I have to brace myself–okay, here comes the sob story, again.”

After spending four years trying to capture the media’s attention with the story of his innocence, the wrongfully imprisoned inmate began pestering the courts in 2001 for additional DNA testing or a declaration of a mistrial.

“I will take a lie-detector test. I will do anything. I don’t belong in prison,” the incessant motormouth said. “The security tape in the garage where I work shows me pulling into the lot at the time the crime took place. It wasn’t admitted as evidence. That fact alone should be grounds for a mistrial.”

Buell’s cellmate, Bob Hannan, has heard the “in jail for a crime I didn’t commit” song and dance “about a million times.” Said Hannan: “The parking lot surveillance videotape, the horrible injustice. I’ve heard it all. A lot. I didn’t like the way they handled my case either. But you don’t hear me yammering about it all the time. It’s called moving on.”

Read the full article here.

John Hamel, LCSW, a court-certified batterer treatment provider and author of the book Gender-Inclusive Treatment of Intimate Partner Abuse, has just come out with The Context of Intimate Partner Violence: Three Common Myths–An Annotated Bibliography. In it, Hamel identifies three common myths about Intimate Partner/Domestic Violence:

MYTH #1: Mutual abuse is a rare phenomenon. Even if men and women assault each other at comparable rates, men are typically the initiators and the dominant partners.

THE FACTS: Most Intimate Partner Violence is mutual. Women initiate somewhat more often than men.

MYTH #2: Men use violence intentionally to control their partners, whereas women use violence in self-defense, or as a way to express frustration or to communicate.

THE FACTS: Self-defense is an equally unlikely motive for both genders. Male and female perpetrators are motivated to abuse their partners for various reasons, including a desire to retaliate or to communicate feelings, and there is no convincing evidence that men are significantly more motivated to control.

MYTH #3: Only men are controlling and engage in the combination of repeat emotional and physical abuse known as “battering’ or “intimate terrorism.’

THE FACTS: Although women are far more often the victims of sexual coercion, they are just as likely as men to be the perpetrators of most psychological abuse and controlling behaviors, and this includes stalking when broadly defined.

To read Hamel’s full paper, click here.

Hamel helped found the National Family Violence Legislative Resource Center and works with Michael Robinson and the California Alliance for Families and Children to reform California’s domestic violence policies. The pair are sponsoring the ground-breaking conference “From Ideology to Inclusion” early next year.

[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.]

Background: My recent co-authored column, Passport Rules Unfair to Child Support Debtors (San Antonio Express-News, 9/8/07), criticizes the new child support/passport rules which are so overwhelmingly popular among the editorial boards of our nation’s newspapers. The column was a response to the Express-News’ recent editorial “Federal law catching up with deadbeat parents’ (8/23/07). I commend the paper for its willingness to publish such criticism.

Texas shared parenting advocate Don Mathis had a letter published in the Express-News concerning my column, in which he called upon the paper to “remove the word ‘deadbeat’ from its lexicon.” His letter is below, and can also be seen here.

Dads are dead broke, not deadbeat

The statistic from the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement quoted by Jeffery M. Leving and Glenn Sacks is more than interesting (“Passport rules unfair to child support debtors,’ Sept. 12). It was reported that fewer than 4 percent of the national child support debt is owed by those earning $40,000 or more a year.

Why is it that if a poor custodial mom cannot make ends meet, we offer her assistance? And if an impoverished noncustodial dad has the same problems, we make him a criminal?

It is time for the Express-News to remove the word “deadbeat’ from its lexicon. “Dead broke’ is more like it. Being poor should not be a crime.

–Don Mathis,
Sherman, Texas

To write a Letter to the Editor regarding Passport Rules Unfair to Child Support Debtors (9/8/07), write to letters@express-news.net.

I’ve often noted that the media is very hesitant to use the term “domestic violence” when the victim is a man. The story “Victim of Domestic Violence Dies at Hospital” from Eyewitness News in Memphis is a commendable exception. Read the story here. To commend the station for its story, write to newsdesk@myeyewitnessnews.com.

To learn more about the problems with the way our media and legal system treat domestic violence, click here.

BTW, for those who insist that DV against men isn’t serious, in this case the man died. The killer will probably claim she’s a victim of abuse and get off with a slap on the wrist, as many women who kill their husbands or boyfriends do. We’ll see.

[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.]

Boston, MA-Judge Paula M. Carey has been named to succeed Chief Justice of the Probate and Family Courts Sean M. Dunphy, who will retire on September 30, 2007.

Judge Carey is best known in the popular media for strictly enforcing the child support obligations of singer Bobby Brown, Whitney Houston”s ex-husband and father of two children with Kim Ward.

In my experience, Judge Carey is intelligent, thoughtful, likable, and respectful towards many points of view. I have seen no indication, however, that she has any basic disagreements with the traditional practices of the family courts with which we disagree.

Fort Lauderdale, Florida-CNN has concealed the name of a perpetrator of “paternity fraud”. Why?

Francisco Rodriquez is the victim of an ordinary case of paternity fraud. The state of Florida insists that he owes $10,000 in back child support payments for a fifteen year old girl who, according to DNA results, is not his daughter. The state even jailed Rodriquez for failure to pay.

Here is my twist on this otherwise ordinary case: In reporting this story, CNN refused to divulge the name of the mother  —  a perpetrator of fraud who wrongly named Mr. Rodriquez the father. Why did CNN protect her? She is not a victim. She is a perpetrator.

Mr. Rodriquez is struggling to support a family and cannot afford to pay $305 per month to support the girl. Mrs. Rodriquez says “It’s hard when your daughter needs sneakers and you have to pay $305 or your husband goes to jail. It’s just unfair.”

We call on CNN to reveal the name of the mother, as they would for any other story involving fraud.

Okay, for those of you who do not understand paternity fraud, here’s how it works. The mother wrongly named Mr. Rodriquez the father of the girl in about 2000. The court sent legal papers to an outdated address for Mr. Rodriquez, but no serious effort was made to find him — until, of course, substantial child support arrearages had built up three years later. When he did not appear in court, because he never received the legal notices, the court named him the father and began accumulating child support arrearages. When they found him in 2003, it was already too late for him to contest the finding of the court in 2000 that he was the father., based only on the mother’s say-so. All the DNA tests in the world will not get him off the hook now for paying child support, and even from being jailed.

This story is not just about helping out a fifteen year girl in need. By insisting that Mr. Rodriquez pay child support for this girl, Florida is hurting the three other children Rodriquez supports with his wife.

Of course, this does not stop the apologists for an unjust law. Susan Paikin of the Center for Support of Families in Delaware offers the platitude, “There are no perfect answers.” Actually, there are some simple answers, such as 1) insist that unwed mothers disclose ALL the possible fathers of their children; 2) institute universal DNA testing at the time of birth if the parents are unwed; 3) make a serious attempt to find biological fathers at the time of birth, not just after they owe child support arrearages, at which time our government suddenly becomes very interested in finding them. (Fathers & Families supports a bill in the Massachusetts Legislature that would institute near-universal DNA testing in such cases.)

DNA testing did not exist when these laws were written. Let’s use it for everyone’s benefit. It is best for children if we identify their true biological fathers right from birth, for medical reasons and so they can enjoy the lifelong support of their true fathers.

And finally, why should CNN protect a mother who outright lied, or, at the very least, failed to tell the whole truth about the father of her child?

How to Increase the Marriage Rate.  Professor Gordon Finley hits the nail on the head in USA Today.

Miami, Florida–Professor Gordon Finley of Florida International University published a great letter today in USA Today. His letter, reproduced below with his permission, tells us that marriage rates cannot be improved without first removing gender-based biases from divorce court. It is a nice, succinct statement of the problem.

Fear of divorce stunts many young adults’ decision to marry
Gordon E. Finley, Professor of psychology, Florida International University – Miami

While social science commentators quoted in USA TODAY’s article gave a variety of reasons for why young adults are delaying marriage, they omitted the most critical: divorce (“Young adults delaying marriage,” Life, Wednesday).

With a 50% divorce rate for first marriages, women overwhelmingly initiating divorce and mothers getting custody about 85% of the time while fathers get visitation, child support and alimony, it is easy to see why any man wouldn’t want to get married.

Further, many of these young adults are children of divorce who know firsthand the consequences.

If one wants to increase marriage rates, one first must reform divorce laws to make them equitable for both fathers and mothers and help children maintain relationships with both parents.

Judge Paula M. Carey Named Chief Justice of the Probate and Family Courts in Massachusetts September 18th, 2007 by Ned Holstein, M.D. CNN Protects Perpetrator of Fraud September 18th, 2007 by Ned Holstein, M.D. How to Increase the Marriage Rate. Professor Gordon Finley hits the nail on the head in USA Today. September 18th, 2007 by Ned Holstein, M.D. An ‘Elian Gonzalez in Reverse’ Case September 13th, 2007 by Glenn Sacks His Side with Glenn Sacks Radio Commentary: Texas Supreme Court Gets It Right in Frozen Embryo Case September 13th, 2007 by Glenn Sacks
Iraq Veteran Wins Custody of Two Surviving Kids After His Son Was Beaten to Death September 13th, 2007 by Glenn Sacks Former NFL Star Bennie Blades Pays over $1 Million in Child Support, Yet Is Jailed for Being a ‘Deadbeat Dad’ September 11th, 2007 by Glenn Sacks Ouch–‘I think my mom and dad are fighting because of me’ September 11th, 2007 by Glenn Sacks ‘If the family court system had even once punished her for false allegations, maybe my family would not have suffered so much’ September 11th, 2007 by Glenn Sacks NOW takes fatherhood programs to court. What do they oppose? September 7th, 2007 by Ned Holstein, M.D. Do children of divorce want more or less involvement with their fathers? What did researchers find? September 7th, 2007 by Ned Holstein, M.D. ‘The Bronx Is Burning,’ Billy Martin, & the Misleading ‘Paternal Abandonment Script’ September 6th, 2007 by Glenn Sacks Two Heroic Wives Remained Loyal to Their Husbands as They Served Three Decades in Prison for a Crime They Didn’t Commit August 28th, 2007 by Glenn Sacks