Category: Blog

Williamsburg, VA–Not enough sane people are joining, uniting, supporting and giving to the family court reform movement. As a result, the lunatics are slowly gaining control of the asylum. When you finish reading this blogpost, please 1) recruit your friends and family to join this elist, and 2) make a gift to support our work.

Caren Taylor Brown may be one of the lunatics. A non-custodial parent, she is currently being held without bond in Williamsburg, VA after paying $2,000 to an undercover policeman to kill her ex-partner and his wife. Brown”s attorney told me, “This lady has felt for a long time that this child is a victim of child abuse by the father.’ The attorney acknowledges that the child abuse charges have never been substantiated by any authority. Brown remains in jail pending trial, and the child remains in dad”s custody.

Taken by itself, this is just another ho-hum story of a deranged and vindictive person. Of greater interest is that Brown is an advocate for so-called “protective mothers.’ These are people who believe that the family courts are awarding custody to large numbers of secret batterers who manage to fool the court.

Brown is just the latest in a string of “protective mothers’ to be revealed as dangerous, violent, or just plain loony. Others include Genia Shockome, Sadia Loeliger, Bridget Marks, and Amy Neustein, all of whom have been discredited. (Despite their lurid and discredited accusations against the fathers, Marks and Loeliger have managed to end up with custody of their children.)

Brown”s website, Children Without A Voice, was taken down shortly after her arrest on August 1, 2008.

The central claim of these advocates is that 75 percent of fathers who seek shared or sole custody of their children are secret batterers, and that they succeed in getting custody over half the time. Their “Truth Commission’ claims that the courts “are frequently biased, particularly, gender-biased, misogynistic…’ The “Truth Commission’ also claims, “Judges who preside over custody cases exhibit clear bias against women.’

Do I really have to divert from the main point of this story to prove how ridiculous these claims are? Of course the courts occasionally give custody to a secret batterer by mistake, but the sweeping claims of the “protective mothers’ come straight from fantasy land.

Here”s the real point of this story: there is a growing drumbeat around the country by these wing-nuts, and they are getting extraordinary respect and airtime by the mainstream. As a movement, we have to get bigger and stronger before all dads seeking custody are automatically considered suspect batterers.

Here is one way to gauge what I am talking about. Many of the loonies gather annually at the so-called “Battered Mothers Custody Conference,’ held in January in Albany, NY.  Look at the list of presenters at the conference.

There is Toby Kleinman, Esq. She is associate editor of the Journal of Child Custody, and she teaches a course at the Harvard School of Public Health.

There is Wendy Murphy, Esq, a Boston attorney who is a frequent guest on CBS, FOX, CNN, MSNBC and the Tom Finneran Radio Show.

There is Joan Meier, a professor of law at George Washington University, and a featured “expert’ in “Breaking the Silence,’ a “documentary’ broadcast nationally on PBS a few years ago.

There is Garland Waller, a professor at the Boston University College of Communications, (whose supportive husband, Barry Nolan, is a well known television journalist), and Joan Zorza, Esq. who claims to be a co-author of the Violence Against Women Act  (sponsored by vice-presidential candidate Senator Joe Biden).

The real question to be asked is: why is so much deference paid to an obviously nutty movement by the likes of the Harvard School of Public Health, major broadcast networks, the George Washington University School of Law, PBS, Boston University, the Journal of Child Custody, legislators such as Biden, and other respected opinion-makers?

The growing clamor over the delusional beliefs of the “protective mothers’ is manifested in special study commissions, university courses, allegedly scholarly articles, legislative hearings, earnest television reports, newspaper articles, philanthropic newsletters, websites, etc.

Not only are these beliefs delusional, but they border on hate speech. When you take a large class of people, such as fathers in custody contests, and brand them criminals, you better have some strong evidence. If you don”t, you”re doing pretty much the same thing as the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nation when they rail against African-American, Jews and Catholics. The “protective mothers’ have no legitimate research to back up their nutty, hateful claims.

To stop the lunatics from taking over the asylum, the sane people need to unite and support. I ask you to do two things: 1) recruit your friends and relatives onto this email list;  2) make a gift now to support our work.

Give us your thoughts below.

Detroit, MI— “It was as if our lives were pristine, and then this tornado tore through and devastated everything…

“My son was emotionally raped by the state, and my daughter was clinically and emotionally raped by the state. I felt so helpless…You’re supposed to protect your children, and these malevolent no-gooders kept me from them.”

From Parents cleared in sex case file suit–Our autistic kids suffered, they say (Detroit Free Press, 9/12/08):

Thal Wendrow was at her mother’s home when the police came to get her. Four West Bloomfield patrol cars pulled up to the curb. Her husband, Julian, at their home a few blocks away, also was being arrested that day last December.

The couple, who had no criminal history, suddenly faced decades in prison. He was charged with repeatedly raping their 15-year-old, severely autistic daughter, and she was charged with child abuse for failure to stop it.

Thus began a four-month ordeal, a prosecution based solely on statements their mute child reportedly made while using a widely discredited method called “facilitated communication,” in which messages are typed on a keyboard with the help of an aide called a facilitator.

Thursday, the Wendrows, who saw all charges against them dropped in March, filed a lawsuit in Oakland County Circuit Court, alleging 38 counts of wrongful imprisonment, invasion of privacy, violation of their due-process rights, malicious prosecution and other misdeeds. Lawsuits on behalf of their daughter and her 13-year-old brother, who was repeatedly interrogated by police, are expected to be filed today…

“It was as if our lives were pristine, and then this tornado tore through and devastated everything,” Thal Wendrow told the Free Press on Thursday at the Bloomfield Hills office of her attorney, Deborah Gordon.
Julian Wendrow, who spent 80 days in jail without bond before prosecutors dropped the case, is furious.

“My son was emotionally raped by the state, and my daughter was clinically and emotionally raped by the state. I felt so helpless,” he said. “You’re supposed to protect your children, and these malevolent no-gooders kept me from them.”

Gordon called the case “horrific.”

“It doesn’t get much worse. They literally broke up a family,” Gordon said. “These people are out of control. We’re hoping this lawsuit stops this insanity.”

Oakland County Prosecutor David Gorcyca (pictured) and his chief assistant, Deborah Carley, named in the suit, did not comment Thursday. Assistant Prosecutor Andrea Dean, who handled the case, also is named in the suit, along with the West Bloomfield Police Department and Joseph Brousseau, the detective who interrogated the couple’s son…

The Wendrows were living a seemingly simple life in December 2007. Julian Wendrow owned his own painting company. Thal Wendrow worked as a research clerk for Oakland County Circuit Court. They were active at their synagogue and involved in their children’s schooling.

Both children had been diagnosed with autism. But their daughter was, by far, the more impaired, with a low IQ and an inability to speak. Their son, two years younger, was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a milder form of autism.

Although facilitated communication had been widely discredited by major universities and researchers, the Wendrows were hopeful it would help their daughter and insisted that Walled Lake schools train a paraprofessional to become a facilitator.

In November, the girl reportedly typed a statement accusing her father of raping her since she was 6, and claiming that her mother knew of the assaults but did not stop them.

A physical exam showed the girl’s hymen was intact. But prosecutors pushed forward with the case.

Within days, the girl was placed in a foster care home in Detroit, and the boy in a Pontiac facility for delinquent minors, even though he had no history of trouble.

Thal Wendrow was released on a tether after five days in the Oakland County jail, but Julian remained for weeks.

When the couple’s daughter was unable to answer questions on a keyboard in March during a courtroom demonstration to determine whether the alleged facilitated statement would be admissible in trial, prosecutors decided to drop the charges.

The girl, now back in school, shows signs of anxiety much of the time, her mother said. And the boy is struggling with his studies and prone to tears.

“This should never have happened,” Gordon said. “The prosecutors…just couldn’t let it go and own up that they’d made a terrible mistake.”

Read the full article here.

Thanks to Joseph, a Michigan reader, for the story.

“I am deeply afraid of what a McCain /Palin presidency would mean…

“I still shudder at the words of ultra-conservative Judge Robert Bork on the issue:  There is no substantive right to ‘so tenuous a relationship’ as visitation by a non-custodial parent…”

Los Angeles, CA– Family law attorney David Perry Davis, Esq., a longtime fatherhood activist and shared parenting advocate, recently posted a comment on my website concerning Obama and fathers. Since it was posted to an old blog post, I offered David the chance for it to be a stand alone blog post so more people would see it, and he agreed. He has some interesting thoughts on the perils fathers face both from the Democrats and from the Republicans.

Father-unfriendly Obama presents a dilemma for men
David Perry Davis, Esq.

Dilemma is an often misused word.  It actually means “two horned” and refers to a situation with two unpleasant alternatives.

On Father’s Day, Obama gave a speech ripping into fathers, blasting “walk away dads.”  That’s fine, but there are a whole helluva lot of dads who are kicked out of their kids’ lives by Family Courts that refuse to enforce parenting time orders.  They count, too – in spite of Obama’s statements, they are human beings who have been injured by and/or ignored by our system.  Obama’s website says he will, if elected, “force men to pay child support.”  Hillary’s made reference to gender-neutral “enforcement of child support orders.”  21% of custodial parents in this country are dads.  The moms don’t have to pay support?  Huh?  Repeated, repeated requests to his campaign to correct this have been ignored; if we learned nothing else from Mein Kampf, it’s that we should take a politician’s words as true. 

Obama has some serious gender issues.  He then picks Biden, who authored the Violence Against Women Act in spite of the fact that a full 1/3 of spousal homicides have male victims.  He’s been asked (to the point of billboards being put up near his office) to make it gender-neutral.  He won’t.  In fact, he says the VAWA is his greatest accomplishment. 

Again, we (dads, men) don’t seem to count; we’re less than human.  I can’t vote for that ticket.  But I can’t disregard all the other issues I care about (only a few of which are above) ignored.  Sit out the election?  I vote in Pennsylvania, which is polling a tie for Obama and McCain – my vote matters.

On the other hand, I am deeply afraid of what a McCain /Palin presidency would mean.  In 2000, when Bush came into office, we were on track to completely wipe out the national debt by 2012.  We’re now calculating the national debt in the trillions.  In a very real sense, the federal government is using a Visa check to pay the MasterCard bill.  This is not just “unsustainable”, it’s madness; it’s irresponsibility that will eventually lead to a crash like we haven’t seen since the 1930’s.  McCain wants more tax cuts for the wealthy.  This is insane.

Regardless of how we might feel personally about the abortion issue, are we really ready to tell a 16-year-old victim of rape or incest that she cannot take a “morning after” pill?  That’s McCain’s and Palin’s position.  We have 3 Supreme Court justices over the age of 80 and we’re one vote away from Roe being dumped and 2 votes away from a determination that “like begins at conception in every case” and the complete elimination of all abortion rights – period; a national ban – a “reverse Roe.”  Is this where we want to go as a country?

I am deeply concerned about the rights of noncustodial parents if the Right continues in power.  I still shudder at the words of ultra-conservative Judge Robert Bork on the issue:  There is no substantive right to “so tenuous a relationship” as visitation by a non-custodial parent. I cannot agree that the Constitution of its own force establishes any such right for a non-custodial parent – (Excerpts from a dissenting opinion of Robert Bork in Franz v. United States, which involved a child who was secretly relocated, with her custodial mother, to a new home. Mother’s new husband was a protected witness in a major criminal investigation, and father was unable to see or even know the whereabouts of the child.  Thankfully, Bork’s opinion was a dissent – two far more reasonable judges permitted Franz to see his child). 

If you’ve never been falsely accused of something and/or never had a loved one be falsely accused), you’re probably not aware of how important habeas corpus is to proving innocence.  We have a Supreme Court that ruled that “actual innocence” is not sufficient basis to compel a federal court to stop an execution and order a state to retry an innocent person — prompting the now famous remark from Justice Blackmun that “The execution of a person who can show that he is innocent comes perilously close to simple murder.”  Any chance of restoring habeas dies with the election of McCain / Palin.

These are just a few of the many important issues in the upcoming election; issues I agree with Obama on about 95% of the time.  But walking into a voting booth and supporting an anti-male, anti-father, gender biased ticket is something my conscience will not allow.

What to do?  It’s a dilemma, all right.  The very definition of the word.

Los Angeles, CA– Unemployment is difficult financially and emotionally, particularly for men, whose identity and worth is tied to the ability to be breadwinners. Scott, a reader, told me about a new campaign from Men’s Wearhouse–their first annual National Suit Drive to help give unemployed men a “second chance.” According to the Men’s Wearhouse:

For many unemployed men, a new suit is the first step toward a second chance. During the National Suit Drive, every one of our over 550 stores will be collecting gently used professional attire to benefit at-risk men and youth transitioning into the workforce. All clothing we receive will be distributed throughout the community by local nonprofit organizations.

In addition to the nonprofit organizations receiving clothing donations, we are asking companies and membership organizations across the country to join us by asking their employees or members to clean out their closets and bring in gently used dress apparel to their local Men’s Wearhouse store. This will substantially increase the volume of clothing donations collected and allow many more underserved men to look and feel great as they get prepared for job interviews…

Simply visit your nearest Men’s Wearhouse store during the months of September and October and donate professional clothing, such as suits, sport coats, slacks, ties, and belts. All donations are tax deductible, and participants will receive a coupon for 10% off their next Men’s Wearhouse purchase as a special thank you. Plus, we’ll contribute a new dress shirt for every suit we receive.

I commend them–to learn more, click

Hollywood, CA– “I Heard From Your Mom That You Cried Out Last Night / For A Certain Someone To Turn On The LightsYou Found That Someone Was Not By Your Side And Mom Had To Wipe Away Your Tears / You Asked Her Why Dad Isn’t Here”A positive divorced dad song from Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds about his breakup with ex-wife Tracy Edmonds (pictured). The song is Not Going Nowhere–to watch the music video, click here.According to last year’s www.eonline.com article Babyface Makes Music from Divorce:

Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds is talking about his breakup with his ex-wife, Tracy Edmonds. And I”m happy to report the split is anything but messy.

“We”re good,’ Babyface said at a private concert I attended last night at the House of Blues in West Hollywood. “We”re really good. It”s as good as it could get. We”re still very good friends.’

The Edmondses announced about two years ago they were splitting after 13 years of marriage. Shortly after their divorce was finalized this June, Tracy and Eddie Murphy announced they were engaged.

Playlist, Babyface’s new album (releasing next month), is primarily a compilation of eight covers, including Bob Dylan”s “Knockin” on Heaven”s Door,’ James Taylor”s “Fire and Rain’ and Eric Clapton”s “Wonderful Tonight.’

But Babyface”s music-label boss, Antonio “L.A.” Reid, insisted that the man responsible for writing and producing superhits by Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige and Céline Dion include some of his own original material, too. Babyface wrote one of the two new songs, “Not Going Nowhere,’ about when he and Tracy told their two sons they were separating.

“I”m still best of friends with your mom,” Babyface sings in part. “Have no doubt that we”ll still make time to hang out/ I promise I won”t let you down.’

Babyface, 49, said he”s been getting his heart broken ever since he could remember. He recalled the time when a girl he was dating in the eighth grade asked him for what would be his first kiss. “As soon as I pulled away she said, ‘I”m afraid we”re not going to be able to see each other anymore,” ‘ he said with a laugh. “I died right there.’

Los Angeles, CA– Several of you have written to me about the Associated Press story Dad chases nude boy from daughter’s room with pipe (9/12/08) and expressed confusion over why the father is being charged. It also seems rather baffling to me.

There may well be more to the incident than the AP explains, but from what’s there, the father’s reaction seems fair enough–he thought he was protecting his daughter from a sexual assault.

If anything, I fault the guy more for not knowing that his daughter had a boyfriend who was sneaking into her room to have sex with her…

According to the story:

An angry Deltona father whacked his teenage daughter’s boyfriend with a metal pipe after finding the boy naked in his daughter’s room. Authorities say the father, 45, didn’t even know his daughter had a boyfriend or that the youngster had been sneaking into the home for more than a year.

When he heard noises coming from his daughter’s bedroom Thursday morning and saw a stranger standing naked on the girl’s bed, he swung a metal pipe. He then chased the teen out the front door and called police.

The boy was taken to the hospital where doctors closed a head wound with staples.

The father was charged with aggravated battery on a child and bonded out on $10,000

In retrospect, I guess I was lucky I never had this boy’s problem–when I was a teenager I had a girlfriend who I would often sneak out of her window late at night because her father opposed her dating. We weren’t having sex, though…

Los Angeles, CA– I reported last week that Rita Smith, executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, charged that the leaders of some fathers’ rights groups are “abusers” in Mindy Jacobs’ new Edmonton Sun column When dad is just bad (9/10/08).

According to Jacobs:

What’s a conference on domestic violence without fireworks? An American speaker shot off a doozy here yesterday, charging that the leaders of some fathers’ rights groups are abusers who use the organizations as tools to harass women.’

“It’s really important that we recognize that they’re gaining traction,’ Rita Smith, executive director of the U.S. National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, told an international women’s shelters conference.

In a later interview, Smith said her experience of men working on fathers’ rights is that many of the leaders are abusers or were accused of abuse.

“The agenda, often by the leadership, is to completely undermine women’s rights,’ she said. ‘The ones that are the most dangerous are, in fact, creating safety problems for women and children.”

I suggested you write to Jacobs at mindy.jacobs@sunmedia.ca and the Edmonton Sun at mailbag@edmsun.com. I just spoke with Jacobs, and she said she had “received hundreds of letters” over her column.

I told her I was sorry if a few of my readers forgot their manners, but that this is an issue they feel passionately about.

As she has told many of you in her responses, she is writing a follow-up which will come out later this week.

The Edmonton Sun also published a couple letters over the column on Friday. One of the letter writers, Brad Gray, wrote:

Regarding Mindy Jacobs’s column about the domestic violence conference, it is apparent she perpetuates false stereotypes about men. Having a Y chromosome does not make one an abuser. She quotes Rita Smith as saying fathers’ rights groups are often led by abusers or those accused of abuse.

I was falsely accused of abuse and spent considerable time and thousands of dollars in legal fees just to see my kids. I feel these groups perform an important role helping men during marital breakdown and custody battles.

Thanks to all of you who participated.

To read my previous blog posts on this matter, click here and here.

Los Angeles, CA— “What’s a conference on domestic violence without fireworks? An American speaker shot off a doozy here yesterday, charging that the leaders of some fathers’ rights groups are abusers who use the organizations as tools to harass women.’

“It’s really important that we recognize that they’re gaining traction,’ Rita Smith, executive director of the U.S. National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, told an international women’s shelters conference.

“In a later interview, Smith said her experience of men working on fathers’ rights is that many of the leaders are abusers or were accused of abuse.

“‘The agenda, often by the leadership, is to completely undermine women’s rights,’ she said. ‘The ones that are the most dangerous are, in fact, creating safety problems for women and children.'”

Domestic Violence leaders throw out some wild accusations and false facts in Mindy Jacobs’ new Edmonton Sun column When dad is just bad (9/10/08). Rita Smith, executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, charged that the leaders of some fathers’ rights groups are “abusers.”

That’s a hell of an accusation to make, and a hell of an accusation to pass along in a newspaper column. I would ask Rita Smith to specify–naming names–which “abusers” and organizations she is referring to.

I suggest you write to Mindy Jacobs at mindy.jacobs@sunmedia.ca. While Jacobs’ article was not friendly, I don’t get the impression that she’s a true believer, either–she seemed more to be passing along Smith’s comments rather than explicitly endorsing them. She also has  occasionally written articles sympathetic to fathers. Give her our side of the story, stick to the point, and be polite.

I also suggest you write the Edmonton Sun at mailbag@edmsun.com.

Jacobs passes along Smith’s falsehood that “domestic abusers who fight for custody in U.S. courts win full custody, joint custody or unsupervised access 70% of the time, regardless of the evidence of the mother” and that courts are handing custody of children over to abusive men.

The 70% statistic is long discredited. Also, I examined several of the feminists’ most publicized cases of abusive men allegedly being given custody of children in Shockome Syndrome. In every case I examined, the feminist claims were misleading or false.

In most cases, the mothers only lost custody of their kids temporarily, and they did so through their own egregious and/or abusive behavior. For example, in the Genia Shockome case, Shockome didn’t lose her kids because of “gender bias” or underhanded “fathers’ rights” tactics–she lost because she’s so nuts that even the pro-mother family courts were forced to side with the kids’ father. To learn more, click here.

Jacobs writes:

As [Jan Reimer, provincial co-ordinator of the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters], the prime organizer behind this incredible gathering, commented to the delegates Monday night, shelter workers toil in the middle of a “hurricane of suffering” to keep women alive.

No other profession, she added, sees such a constant reminder of men’s inhumanity to women.

Not only is this a huge exaggeration of men’s violence against women, it also ignores the fact that women are at least as likely as men to initiate and engage in domestic violence. For the research behind that, click here and here, and also see my co-authored column Schwarzenegger Should Veto AB 2051 (Orange County Register, 9/20/06).

Jacobs’ section on fathers & custody in When dad is just bad (Edmonton Sun, 9/10/08) reads:

What’s a conference on domestic violence without fireworks? An American speaker shot off a doozy here yesterday, charging that the leaders of some fathers’ rights groups are abusers who use the organizations as tools to harass women.
 
“It’s really important that we recognize that they’re gaining traction,” Rita Smith, executive director of the U.S. National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, told an international women’s shelters conference.

In a later interview, Smith said her experience of men working on fathers’ rights is that many of the leaders are abusers or were accused of abuse.

“The agenda, often by the leadership, is to completely undermine women’s rights,” she said. “The ones that are the most dangerous are, in fact, creating safety problems for women and children.”

Many who join such groups aren’t abusive – they just lost a custody battle, Smith said, and are being used.

“Our responsibility is to try to figure out which of those groups are legitimate and which of those groups are simply a way for abusers to continue using the legal system to abuse women.”

Want more fireworks? Here goes. Smith also said domestic abusers who fight for custody in U.S. courts win full custody, joint custody or unsupervised access 70% of the time, regardless of the evidence of the mother.

She attributes it to a court gender bias. “For whatever reason, women are not believed,” she told me. “There’s this myth in the family court system in the U.S. that women lie about abuse to gain custody. There’s been no … evidence to indicate that’s true.”

Advocates and experts are trying to reform the U.S. family court system, she added. “It’s pretty broken.”

Her comments were echoed by speaker Sandra Ramos, who runs a shelter for homeless battered women and children in New Jersey and teaches college students about domestic violence.

Said Ramos: “When I tell my students batterers and child molesters get custody, they go, ‘No, that’s ridiculous.’

“If you have money for a good lawyer, you can win anything.”

Abusers fight for custody as a backlash, to try to regain control and hurt the victims for leaving them, said Ramos.

“Batterers are insecure cowards and bullies,” she added. “The way to hurt (their ex-wives) and not have to pay child support is to get the children.”

Abusive men win custody of their kids in Canada as well, said Jan Reimer, provincial co-ordinator of the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters. “There’s a feeling that even if a perpetrator is abusing the mom, he doesn’t hurt the child,” she said. “The child is used as a pawn to get at the mother.”

Let’s count our blessings, folks, that the vast majority of custody cases are settled amicably outside court.

Read her full column here.