Category: Blog

November 9, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

In my post yesterday, I dealt with yet another strange and badly researched article that seeks to cast aspersions on the Family Bridges program.  Family Bridges is a four-day workshop that attempts to reverse the process of parental alienation, usually in kids with the most severe form of alienation.  It’s been around for 20 years and logged an astonishing record of success.  That success is both anecdotal, as I’ve reported before, and scientific.  Dr. Richard Warshak has conducted two studies of its efficacy and found the program highly successful at reintegrating children with their targeted parents.  No such program could hope to be 100% successful and Family Bridges doesn’t hit that mark, but, all things considered, it seems to work well.  That’s why countless judges, custody evaluators and others have referred/recommended alienated children and their targeted parents to the program over the years.

But that success doesn’t keep incurious, mendacious and virulently anti-dad “journalists” from attacking FB anyway.  Such a piece was the NBC Bay Area one I discussed yesterday.

Now, that article quoted three young adults who, when they were minors, had been referred to Family Bridges for help.  Two had been alienated by their fathers and one by her mother.  Each was referred to by their correct first name.

One of those is named Arianna who was found to have been persistently alienated by her father.  Arianna had nothing good to say about Family Bridges and apparently continues to reject a relationship with her mother.  Accordingly, she seems to have met the criteria for quotation by the article.

But interestingly, Arianna has a sister named Madeleine who’s three years her junior.  Madeleine too was deemed to have been alienated by her father from her mother and, like Arianna, was referred to Family Bridges.  Why would the five authors of the NBC piece interview and quote Arianna but not Madeleine?  Here are some pithy quotations from the Final Order of the Superior Court of King County, Washington, i.e. the trial court in Madeleine’s case:

The court finds [mother] and the GAL’s testimony both credible and persuasive that Madeleine is a child who has been detrimentally impacted both psychologically and emotionally by parental relationship distress caused by [father]. The court finds there was substantial evidence that even after the entry of the modified parenting plan in 2015, [father] made significant and repeated efforts to influence Madeleine to unjustifiably dislike, fear, and reject contact with [mother]…

The GAL determined that there was sufficient evidence to conclude that [father] has committed repeated “psychological abuse of the child” and the court agrees. [Father]’s alienating behavior was severe and his conduct constituted repeated psychological and emotional abuse of Madeleine. The testimony from [mother], the GAL, and [mother’s boyfriend], as well as the documentary evidence offered at trial, showed that while Madeleine was enmeshed within the parental conflict and influenced by her father’s perspectives of her mother, she had ongoing emotional and physical problems, including anxiety, nausea, sleep issues, and school attendance issues…

This court has already made findings that [father] improperly withheld access to Madeleine without good cause from October 31, 2015 to April 25, 2016. The court stands by its previous findings that [father] intentionally refused to comply with the parenting plan and return Madeleine to [mother] in bad faith, despite [mother]’s repeated efforts and the recommendations of the former Case Manager … Such withholding of access was found to have had an adverse effect on Madeleine’s best interest…

Based on a finding of abusive use of conflict by [father] that create the danger of serious damage to the children’s psychological development, the court granted primary custody and sole decision-making authority in many areas to [mother]…

[The case manager] concluded that the children had adopted highly polarized positions. She worried that “black and white thinking is a limiting and not useful trait for these girls as they go forward in the world.” She found that [father] supported the polarized positions that the girls adopted about their mother.’’

Madeline had been living with her father for four and a half months at that point. When reviewing the interview with Madeline, she appeared quite angry and obstinate. Madeline spoke disparagingly of her mother…  [The case manager] concluded that the girls’ views of their mother had become more excessively harsh, critical, unreasonable and disproportionate to the situations at hand.

In May 2015, at the end of the Modification Trial, the Court made findings relative to both parents but specific to the father regarding: “the abusive use of conflict by the parent that creates the danger of serious damage to the child’s psychological development.” Since then it appears that things have evolved from a challenging situation to a very serious disruption and change in the children’s attachment to their mother. The girls appear to be chronically angry at her, which shows up in rejecting, rude, aggressive and provocative comments towards their mother along with denying much in the past that was ever good with her and not being interested in any future visits or repair in their disrupted relationship with her. They express no sadness, guilt, loss or objectivity regarding a reasonable cause or view of what happened.

The court goes on in the same vein for some 16 pages.  Anyone remotely acquainted with parental alienation can see that the situation described is a classic case of a father alienating his two daughters from their mother.  He did so persistently and to great effect.  And the emotional and psychological impact on Madeleine was made abundantly clear by the judge and various mental health experts in court, including the excellent Demosthenes Lorandos.

Given the severity of the alienation, the judge ordered the children and their mother to take part in the Family Bridges program.  Unsurprisingly, that meant the father turned his ire on Family Bridges.

The court notes that [father] has voluntarily decided to neglect his parenting duties and instead he has focused on pursuing a campaign against Family Bridges and professionals involved in this case.

Part of the program was to include “aftercare,” i.e. a program to try to get the father to realize the error of his ways and become a better, more agreeable and more constructive parent.  He refused.

[Father] chose not to participate in aftercare and he was found in contempt multiple times by this court and restricted from having contact with Madeline until he engaged with the aftercare professional.

And what of the two girls?  Arianna, as we know from the NBC article, resisted all help and is to this day (as far as we know) alienated from her mother.  But Madeleine’s was a different story altogether.

In the most recent report dated March 22, 2017, [the GAL] found that “Madeline has transformed from a sad and depressed girl who rarely ventured out into the world, had few friends, and hid behind Goth makeup, to an engaged and active participant in her own life. She loves her school, has many friends, spends lots of time with her music classes and guitar lessons, is doing roller derby, has “a person” (a boyfriend), and is looking forward to the future.”

At trial, [the GAL] testified that Madeline’s transformation has been remarkable. She appears to be a different kid now; she loves school and reportedly attends even when she is sick. She is doing well both academically and socially. She concluded that Madeline has flourished in Portland and is doing better personally, socially and academically than she has in the last 4-5 years.

[The GAL] testified she could only attribute Madeline’s amazing progress to the intervention and not being subjected to the push and pull of the parents, [father]’s alienating behavior and the constant turmoil that had been occurring. The more normalization of the family structure and situation is a stabilizing factor that has really helped Madeline.

She also testified that it has been helpful to Madeline to be outside the sphere of her sister’s influence.

In short, Family Bridges and its requirements (a 90-day separation from the alienating parent) worked wonders for Madeleine.  She changed from hateful, combative and unreasonable into a normal and apparently positive young woman.

And note that her separation from her sister Arianna helped too.  Arianna, who embraces her own alienation from her mother looks very much like her father’s agent as regards Madeleine.  So which of the two sisters did NBC choose to interview and quote and which did it ignore altogether? 

In so doing of course, NBC’s, like all other articles of its ilk, ends up promoting child abuse.  It’s hard to read the court’s findings regarding Madeleine and her father’s alienation of her and not see what the court expressly found – persistent and unapologetic emotional/psychological abuse by her father.  By criticizing Family Bridges in such frankly biased, unbalanced and unfounded ways, NBC promotes the type of child abuse Family Bridges exists to try to correct.

For NBC, it’s a curious side of the debate about parental alienation on which to be, but there it is. 

November 8, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

As hit pieces that target the Family Bridges program go, this is one of the most benign and professional (NBC Bay Area, 11/2/18).  Don’t get me wrong, its anti-FB biases are abundantly clear and it’s scandalously badly researched (if it’s researched at all), but even so it’s better than the others.  For example, it quotes Linda Gottlieb who’s that rarest of birds in articles of this type, an expert who actually knows what she’s talking about.  That alone puts it a cut above the other nonsense we read.

The NBC Bay Area piece takes a strange tack in its assault on Family Bridges.  The writers (yes, there are five of them) first located three kids who were deemed alienated by the judges in their parents’ custody cases, went through the FB workshop and are willing to say negative and in some cases untrue things about it.  Much of the piece then consists of quotations from the three who are all now young adults.  For example,

“I do not want this to happen to a single other person,” said Arianna, a 19-year-old from Seattle…

“This is the first time I’ve had a voice,” said Leo, a 24-year-old from Toronto…

“I haven’t been the same since that program,” said Samantha, a 19-year-old from Saskatoon in Canada…

“I feel like I was robbed of all of my childhood when I was 12,” Leo said…

“You can’t force somebody into a relationship,” said Arianna. “You just can’t.”   

And on and on in the same vein.  The statements are generally unconnected to any larger point the article attempts to make.  They sort of float in space, suggesting certain things without actually saying them.  Did Leo not “have a voice” in the FB program?  Of course he did, as anyone who knows about the program can affirm.  So why does he say the NBC piece is his first opportunity to express himself?  The article doesn’t say, likely because it can’t do so without revealing that kids in the program have ample opportunity to express their feelings, opinions, etc.

That body of short, declarative sentences, made by the Samantha, Arianna and Leo, make up one side of the article’s teeter-totter.  Because they’re young adults with no apparent understanding of the FB program, and because their statements are never allowed to make a larger point, the article generally fails in its mission to cast aspersions on FB.

The other side of the teeter-totter is Gottlieb and Samantha’s father who’d been alienated from her by her mother.  Reading the piece that careens from the kids’ remarks to those of a qualified and knowledgeable expert who provides actual scientific information about the program tends to give the reader a touch of mental whiplash.

So, Samantha offers this gem:

“These programs the way they are right now do not, do not work,” Samantha said.

And Gottlieb says this about Turning Point, a program that’s similar to FB:

Gottlieb has collected data from the 40 children who have gone through her program. Her data shows (sic) 32 of those 40 children remain connected to their so-called estranged parent after completing the program. Nine children have a relationship with both parents since completing the program. Gottlieb says the children who failed to remain connected with their so-called estranged parent are those cases where the 90-day no contact period was lifted and the so-called alienating parent was still “engaging in alienating strategies.”

That last of course is a common way in which children who’ve gone through the FB program relapse: they return too early to the alienating parent who resumes his/her alienating behavior.

Then there’s Scott, Samantha’s father.

Samantha’s father Scott contacted NBC Bay Area and said he believes Family Bridges worked to re-connect him with his son, but indicated they are not a cure-all for everyone. 

“These programs are the last option. Everything else has been tried and failed. There is nothing else left to try. It is drastic and tough. It’s better than the alternative. I’ve lived both. I’m convinced I would not have any relationship with my kids at all if not for that program,” Scott said. “It breaks my heart it didn’t work for Sam but it worked for my son.”

Yes, it worked for Scott’s son, but NBC only managed to contact his daughter for whom the program didn’t succeed.  Funny how that works.  Five people contributed to this article and not one of them managed to contact the son.  Indeed, not one of them managed to contact any of the countless kids for whom FB has been a miracle-worker.

More telling is the fact that they never managed to locate Dr. Richard Warshak’s two studies of Family Bridges outcomes, both of which find it to be a resounding, if not perfect, success. 

In short, the NBC article is a more professional job of journalism than the other hit-pieces on FB we’ve seen.  The problem is that that sets the bar far too low.  The others were disgracefully bad; this one’s just bad.

This isn’t the last I’ll write about the article though.  Stay tuned.

November 7, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

In Colorado, and seemingly under the threat of a state Court of Appeals decision, state child welfare agencies are starting to try to locate fathers when mothers are charged with child abuse or neglect (Colorado Sun, 11/5/18).  That of course is a good thing, but the new development fairly screams “Why’d it take so long?”

As I’ve written before, back in 2006, the Urban Institute did a study that found that, in over half of cases in which the father’s identity was known, CPS agencies made no effort to locate him.  They preferred foster care to father care despite the fact that the former costs the state significant sums of money and the latter little or nothing.

Now, one of the primary impediments to locating fathers is getting mothers to identify them.

An untold number of kids caught up in Denver’s child welfare system have had a father named John Doe, a practice that went on for decades and made it less likely for children to find permanent homes. When the dad is unknown, so is an entire side of the family that might otherwise step up to care for an abused child.

But of course the dad is almost never “unknown,” or at least unknowable.  The fact is that women almost always know the identity of the man with whom they’re having sex, so they know who’s the father of any resulting child.  Sometimes of course a woman will have sex with more than one man at or near the time of conception, so she can’t know who is the actual father, but she can identify all the possibilities.  The problem being that no one anywhere requires a mother to identify the father of a child.

Yes, if she receives federal benefits under the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program, she’s supposed to identify the father so he can be dunned for reimbursement.  But if she refuses or identifies the wrong man, there are no consequences to her.  So in fact, she’s free to claim she doesn’t know.

Now, Denver County requires some specific information.

The county, in July 2016, also created a “parentage affidavit” — a document to establish the legal parents. It’s pretty blunt:

It states: “I had sex with the following man/men 45 days before/after conception: (use additional paper if necessary, but included ALL men including the man you believe to be the father of the child).”

Note that the document is called an “affidavit.”  That strongly suggests that it’s signed under oath, which further suggests that false swearing may result in a perjury charge.  Beyond that, however, I see nothing requiring the signatory to tell the truth.  Still, it looks like a step in the right direction.

I haven’t yet located a copy of the Court of Appeals decision that seems to have given rise to the new efforts in Denver to identify and locate fathers.

Now other county child welfare offices are calling Denver for advice on how to remodel their programs, said Jennifer Collins, assistant director of the City Attorney’s Office, human services section. The widespread interest stems from a recent Colorado Court of Appeals opinion that requires lower courts to determine paternity in dependency and neglect cases, which is what Denver began doing in 2016 through its no-more-John-Doe practices.

Hmm.  What the author of the piece refers to as “the widespread interest” in locating fathers looks to me more like a fear of violating the requirements of the law.  After all, if the Court of Appeals is requiring CPS agencies to identify the fathers of abused and neglected kids, that clearly means those agencies are on notice that fathers have the right to be informed of their children’s plight.  That in turn means that the qualified immunity that usually clothes caseworkers has vanished if they fail to identify and locate those fathers.  And that further means that those fathers can sue the state for violation of their civil rights if they’re not so informed. 

In fact, that’s very much what happened back in 2010 in the Ninth Circuit of the federal courts.  I wrote about the case here.  That Federal Court of Appeals ruled that CPS agencies were required to inform fathers of children who’ve been abused or neglected as a matter of those fathers’ fundamental liberty interest in participating in the care, custody and management of their children.  The federal Ninth Circuit is the largest in the nation, but it doesn’t include Colorado, so the 2010 case has no value there as precedent.  But its reasoning can certainly influence other courts and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it did so in the Colorado case.

Irrespective of that though the legal requirement that CPS agencies inform fathers of the abuse or neglect of their child so they can exercise their parental rights seems to be spreading.  It should have happened years ago, but, I suppose, better late than never.

November 5, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Hi everyone.  It’s your intrepid correspondent again, this time breathlessly bringing you the latest on the most important event of the past two years – the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie divorce and custody case (New Idea, 11/1/18).  Yes, wars are being fought, hurricanes are laying waste to entire communities and the Four Horsemen prowl the countryside, but a couple of celebrities are divorcing, so all must drop what they’re doing and take heed.

It seems that Brad has, at least for now, taken the lead in the custody sweepstakes.  The judge appointed a custody evaluator, one Dr. Stan Katz, who has, in due course, interviewed all and sundry – the parents, the kids, relatives and others.  And it turns out the kids prefer his Bradness to living with Angie.

In news that has devastated Angelina Jolie, the Jolie-Pitt children have admitted their true feelings about their mum and dad in secret court tapes.

“The most shocking thing that’s come out of the kids’ interviews with the court appointed child custody evaluator is that they all want to live with Brad,” an insider tells New Idea.

“It seems that all the kids spoke of being tired of how Angelina bad-mouths their dad and say it’s a lot more stressful living with her,” says the source, adding, “The tapes of the conversations are shocking, to say the least, and have really shifted the whole child-custody situation.”

Now, if you follow the doings of the Pitt-Jolie matter closely (and you DO follow it closely, don’t you?), you’ll be aware that barely a day goes by without one or the other of the two being “devastated” by one thing or another, at least according to the gossip press for which the slightest turn of events must be described as a cataclysm.  So whether Angie is in fact drowning in a sea of despond or not is likely an open question.

Still, the fact that the kids seem to prefer Dad to Mom will likely weigh fairly heavily on the judge’s scales.  So, I suspect, will this:

The judge also warned Angelina to stop limiting the children’s access to Brad and warned that she risked losing custody unless she made moves\ to improve the kids’ relationship with their dad.

And this:

Last week it was also claimed Angelina is planning a permanent move to France in a bid to thwart Brad’s efforts to get joint custody.

Nothing about this case has ever indicated that Pitt isn’t a perfectly fit and loving father, so the above two tactics by Jolie don’t appear likely to bear the type of fruit she’d like.  For one thing, California is a state that requires a separating spouse to promote the other spouse to the kids.  That is, parental alienation, denigration, etc. are frowned upon, as they should be.

So Pitt seems to have been playing the right game all along.

“Even though he’s just as angry over the split as she is, Brad’s made it his mission to never speak poorly of Angelina in front of the kids and has worked hard to make home a calm and happy place for his family,” adds the insider.

“This really came out in the interviews and was a big factor with the evaluator.”

In other words, Pitt’s done what the law requires of parents.  That of course raises the question of what advice Jolie’s been getting from her lawyers.  Did they whip out a copy of the statute and point to the place where it requires her to do the exact opposite of what she’s been doing?  Did they let her know that fleeing to France with the kids wouldn’t be calculated to please the judge?  You’d think they’d have done those two obvious things, but you never know.

Meanwhile, it seems Jolie may be planning to adopt yet another child.  She and Pitt have six, so it appears that her backup plan in case Pitt gets primary custody is to simply obtain another child without a father who’ll be “all hers.”

I’ve written before about Jolie.  Her Wikipedia page strongly suggests that it was her adopted children who essentially saved her from herself.  For much of her adolescent and early adult life, she was seriously self-destructive, to the extent of trying to hire someone to kill her.  Enter the children and she was soon a remarkably successful and famous actress.  That says to me that, in the dark places of her own psyche at least, Jolie owes her stability and maybe her very life to her kids.  The loss of them therefore, looks to portend danger for her.  I hope I’m wrong.

Whatever happens, there’s no reason I can see why the pair shouldn’t share custody.  Yes, Jolie has misbehaved and she seems to have some emotional issues that impair her parenting and certainly her relationship with Pitt.  But that doesn’t look from here to be enough to remove her from the children’s lives.

We’ll see soon enough and your intrepid correspondent will be Johnny on the spot to keep you abreast of the latest news.  I know you’re relieved to hear it.

November 4, 2018 by Rober Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

I suppose this is a case of “anything the U.S. can do, Australia can do … too.”

Three men have been arrested in New South Wales and a woman is sought for arrest in connection with a long-term conspiracy to kidnap and hide children who the conspirators believe have been wrongly taken from their mothers or who are the subjects of joint custody orders.  The group appears to be an extension of the “protective mother” movement.  Put simply, when a mother claims a father who’s gotten some form of custody is abusive, the group stands ready to abduct and hide the child.

Two men will be extradited to Queensland to face allegations that they are part of a group organising parental child abductions.

William Russel Massingham Pridgeon, 64, and Patrick Finbar McGarry O’Dea, 63, had charges against them in NSW dropped in Grafton Local Court on Thursday.

The criminal charges laid against the men included child stealing, conspiracy to defeat justice and stalking, according to the AFP.

Bail was denied for both men, who will be extradited to Queensland where they will face Brisbane Magistrate’s court on Friday.

The police investigation lasted for two years, during which time, some 10 abducted children were returned to their fathers and five of them were linked to this particular group.  That of course suggests that others are doing the same thing the Pridgeon/O’Dea group is.

Dr Pridgeon is accused of being the key financier and organiser of efforts to help two women abduct their children and hide them from authorities.

Mr O’Dea is alleged to have helped in getting money to the women involved in the abductions and portraying the fathers as child abusers on social media.

For his part, Pridgeon looks like a true believer if ever there was one.  A few years ago, he started a political party called the Anti-Paedophile Party.  My guess is that the party’s platform is pretty bare-bones.  Two years ago, a man named Howard Furner sued Pridgeon for defamation.  It seems that Mr. Furner made the mistake of marrying Pridgeon’s daughter and then trying to get custody of his son.  As night follows day, Pridgeon called him a pedophile on social media.  Pridgeon seems never to have met a biological father he didn’t think was an abuser.  I wonder what that says about him.

Well, come to think of it, I know one thing it says about him.  It says he’s a child abuser.  That’s because child abduction and secret isolation is clearly child abuse as numerous mental health professionals have made clear. 

The AFP’s Assistant Commissioner Debbie Platz said the intention of the “well-resourced” and “organised” group was “not to protect” children.

“The continual movement of children, the change in their identity, the change in their location, the change in their appearances, the isolation for lengthy periods of time, has been shown to cause impacts that are long lasting for children.

Indeed.  Platz’s remarks are pretty much chapter and verse of the mental health literature on child abduction.  Kept from friends, relatives and schools and forced to change their names and residences at a moment’s notice, abducted children haven’t even a hint of stability in their lives.  Unable to make long-term friendships, they come to rely solely on their mothers for companionship and all emotional support.  Soon they find that it’s Mom who’s in need of support and so children often become parents to their mothers.  It’s a deeply distorted view of reality and no way to raise a child.

But that’s what the group does.  They’re child abusers, pure and simple.

And they’re a lot like the U.S. organization Children of the Underground that goes to great lengths to assist in the abduction of children to keep them away from their fathers.  I wrote about Children of the Underground here, here and here.

These are sick people who create organizations that only do harm.  Mostly they harm children, but they harm fathers as well.  Fortunately, Australian authorities are clearly taking the matter of Pridgeon and O’Dea’s group seriously.  Bail’s been denied to the three who’ve been arrested.  Sadly, as far as I can tell, if Children of the Underground and its founder Faye Yager have ever suffered any adverse legal consequences for their plainly illegal and abusive behavior, I’ve never heard about it.

We’ll see what happens in Australia.

November 2, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

In the case of In Re the Adoption of L.G.K., both the trial and appellate courts reached a just decision.  I wish I thought it was the correct legal decision and that the case won’t be overturned by the Indiana Supreme Court. 

The child’s father, G.C. and her mother, J.K. were never married, but had a sexual relationship for about 10 months, from December, 2013 to October, 2014.  In December, 2014, J.K. told G.C. that she was pregnant.  G.C. took little part in her pregnancy or childbirth, but both his parents did.  Once L.G.K. was born though, G.C. moved in with J.K. and took an active part in her care.  She soon was calling him “Dad” and his parents “Granny” and “Poppy.”  He and J.K. separated, but he continued caring for his daughter, paid support to J.K. and had sole care of the child at certain times.

Meanwhile, J.K. repeatedly held out G.C. as the girl’s father and accepted the support he provided.

Still, once J.K. met another man whom she agreed to marry, she filed a petition with the trial court to allow her fiancé to adopt L.G.K.  She told G.C. nothing about her plans for the girl’s adoption.  Later, her father filed another petition to adopt L.G.K. and apparently, J.K.’s fiancé withdrew his petition.  In the grandfather’s petition, it was stated that J.K. didn’t know who the father was.

Given this misrepresentation of the known facts of paternity, the trial court granted the grandfather’s petition for adoption.  That was on May 22, 2017.  During the pendency of that case, no one ever told G.C. about the adoption and J.K. allowed him to play the paternal role and accepted his child support payments.  Even after the adoption was finalized, she continued in the same way, once allowing G.C. to have L.G.K. for a weekend on his own.

About three weeks after the adoption was finalized, G.C. discovered the ruse and filed a petition to establish paternity.  Two months later, he filed appropriate documents with the Indiana Putative Father Registry.  He also demanded that the trial court reverse its decision on the adoption due to J.K.’s and her father’s patent fraud in obtaining the judgment.  The trial court agreed and vacated the adoption decree, finding, among other things that,

[Mother] held [Putative Father] out to be the [Child’s] Father to [Putative Father], his family, her family and to the child up to and including the summer of 2017. The photos and text messages entered into evidence establish that [Putative Father] and his family have loving relationship with [Child]. Based on the Court’s observation of [Mother] and the evidence presented, the Court does not find her to be credible…

The child’s rights as well as [Putative Father’s] rights are not well served by denying notice and hearing to father whose identity and location were known by the Petitioner. Further, by not setting aside this order, the child’s right to an involved and loving parent is compromised. [Putative Father] has demonstrated that he established substantial relationship with the child and was not given the right to contest the adoption 0r proceed with his Paternity matter, and/or the Petitioner procured fraud upon the Court by stating in his Petition that “‘The biological father is unknown and has not been disclosed to the petitioner or petitioner’s attorney by the Mother’” when it was clear to the Court that the Petitioner knew that [Putative Father] had been acting as and was believed to be the child’s Father, therefore invoking the Court t0 set the Adoption aside under Indiana Trial Rule 12(b)(6) [sic]. Further, that [Putative Father] was fraudulently induced, through material misrepresentations by [Mother], to not exercise his obligations or rights to take legal action to establish his rights legally. The Court further finds that [Putative Father] had standing to join in the Adoption because 0f the fraudulent actions of the Petitioner and to protect his due process rights allowing him to be equally protected as parent and/or to proceed with his right [to] establish legally whether or not he is the Father. Further, he is furthering the rights of the child to determine whether she will be able to continue with their relationship and relationship with her possible half-sister. [Putative Father] should have been notified of the filing of any Petition for Adoption of the minor child, [L.G.K.].

All of that is well and good.  Mom and her father clearly perpetrated a fraud on G.C. and on the court.  Generally speaking, judgments procured by fraud or by the intentional misrepresentation of fact can be vacated as a matter of the court’s inherent equity powers.  So, absent the requirement of G.C.’s filing with the Putative Father Registry, vacating the adoption would seem to be perfectly in order.

But Indiana has a PFR and the statute regarding the obligation to file and the consequences of not doing so leave little to the imagination.

“A putative father who fails to register within the period specified by section 12 of this chapter waives notice of an adoption proceeding. The putative father’s waiver under this section constitutes an irrevocably implied consent to the child’s adoption.”

Plus,

“[A] putative father whose consent has been implied may not challenge the adoption or establish paternity.”

G.C. did not file with the registry within the allotted time, which was 30 days after the child’s birth or the filing of the adoption proceeding, whichever occurs later.  Accordingly, as I see it, G.C. had no legal power to challenge the adoption, regardless of how it was obtained.  After all, what if the grandfather’s petition had stated that G.C. is the father, i.e. told the truth?  G.C. would have had no right to challenge the adoption or even be given notice of the case.  His consent to it would have been implied and his suit to establish paternity would have been a nullity.

Both courts tried to reason around those barriers that to me seem insuperable.

Regardless of Putative Father’s statutory waiver of notice of the adoption proceeding for failure to register with the Putative Father Registry, the fraud perpetrated by Mother and Maternal Grandfather precluded the trial court from having an opportunity to consider Putative Father’s relationship, as well as his family’s relationship, with Child which compromises the best-interests aspect of the adoption decision making process.

All true, but since when did a child’s best interests intrude on the action of the Putative Father Registry.  The statute is as plain as it can be and makes no mention of a child’s interests.  Yes, other Indiana statutes do so, but the PFR statute does not.  If an unmarried father fails to register within the appropriate time, he’s out of luck.  He has no right to challenge an adoption because he’s consented to it, irrespective of the fact that he may or may not even know a child exists.

That’s how PFRs work.  It’s how they’re supposed to work.  They exist for the sole purpose of removing unmarried fathers from the adoption process.  Bringing a child’s best interests into the process would seriously undermine the effectiveness of PFRs.

Of course, to my way of thinking, that would be an excellent idea.  PFRs serve only to ease the adoption process and line the pockets of adoption agencies and their lawyers.  They do so by denying fit biological fathers to children and substituting adoptive ones.  In so doing, they remove couples from the small pool of adoptive parents and therefore deny good adoptive parents to children who need adoption.

In short, PFRs should be removed altogether from our statutory landscape.  They do no good, only harm.  But as long as Indiana’s is in place, it looks like this case was wrongly decided.

Perhaps we’ll see.

November 1, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

As of mid-October, we have the latest analysis of the Family Bridges workshop that seeks to repair the relationships between severely alienated children and their targeted parents.  Previous studies of Family Bridges strongly suggested positive results of the program along with positive attitudes of its participants.  The latest study is larger and a more comprehensive examination of both.

It must be noted that the study was conducted by Prof. Richard Warshak who originated the concepts put into practice by Family Bridges.  That said, Warshak has had no professional, legal or financial connection either to Family Bridges itself or to the professionals who conduct its workshops.

The study, published by the Journal of Divorce and Remarriage can be found here.  It involved the most intractable cases of alienation.

According to the parents, the children had rejected them for an average of 3 to 4 years. Typically the judges, custody evaluators, and guardians ad litem said that this was the “worst case of parental alienation” or the “most severely alienated child” they had seen in their career.

In the study, 83 children and 68 parents who’d taken part in the Family Bridges program were both analyzed by the mental health professionals conducting the program and were themselves asked about their experiences and attitudes about Family Bridges.  That was done both before and after the workshop.  The results were impressive.

For example, a signal aspect of parental alienation is that children feel free to ignore court orders to have contact with the targeted parent.

[A]t the outset the parents perceived that only 15% of the children cooperated with the orders a lot or moderately. By the end of the workshop, the percentage of perceived cooperation rose to 94% as rated by parents and 96% as rated by professionals.

Overwhelmingly, mental health professionals assessing children’s behavior regarding court orders came to the same conclusions as did the parents.

If the criterion for “success” is a post-workshop alienation score in the bottom half of the scale, then 96% of the children had significantly overcome their alienation…

Parents rated 75% of the relationships as “much better” and another 24% as “somewhat better.” The professionals’ perceptions resembled those of the parents.

In contrast, only 31% of the children reported that their relationship was “much better,” and 43% reported “somewhat better.” These results are encouraging, considering that the children were described as the most severely alienated children by the professionals with whom they were previously involved, that previous attempts to help them reconnect with their rejected parent had failed, and that most admitted experiencing very negative feelings about Family Bridges at the outset.

And parents and children alike considered Family Bridges a positive, constructive experience.

The results suggest a high level of parent satisfaction with the workshop. Even those parents whose children did not all sufficiently overcome their alienation rated the experience as good and beneficial. In no case did parents report that the workshop harmed their relationship with their child.

As predicted, most children (83%) began the workshop with predominantly negative expectations. Also as predicted, most of the children (nearly 90%) felt better about the workshop after having experienced it. Two-thirds of the children rated the workshop as “good” or “excellent,” and only 8% rated it as “poor.”

Of course, the sine qua non of any program that aims to reverse the alienation of a child from a parent is whether their relationship improves because of their participation in the program.

Parents and children rated on a 4-point scale the extent to which the workshop helped improve various aspects of their relationship. As seen in Table 4, parents gave the workshop very high ratings on achieving all its goals. As predicted, children’s ratings were lower than parents’ ratings, but still on the positive end of the scale. Children gave the workshop the most credit for improving their ability to communicate and manage conflict with their parent. But it is noteworthy that most children also credited the workshop for improving their feelings about the parent, making the relationship better, and helping them get along with each other better.

Specifically, 74% of children, 99% of parents and 94% of professionals rated the parent-child relationship “much better” or “somewhat better” following the four-day program.

This of course is not the last word on Family Bridges or on other efforts to rectify parental alienation.  One obvious area for future study is the duration of the change in the parent-child relationship.  The current study asked participants their opinions shortly after the conclusion of the workshop and of course those can change.  Alienators don’t often change their tune about the targeted parent and, since Family Bridges requires that physical custody be changed from the alienator to the targeted parent, usually for 90 days, what happens once the alienating parent re-establishes contact with the child is of interest to researchers and Family Bridges personnel.

But Warshak’s most recent effort is impossible to dismiss, however much those who deny the existence of parental alienation would like to do just that.  Periodically, we see those people resort to the most scurrilous tactics to attempt to discredit the very concept of PA.  I’ve written a fair amount about those unprincipled efforts.  Most importantly, those who do so implicitly promote child abuse, which is what parental alienation unquestionably is.  Considered criticisms of judicial conduct are fine as are those of attempts to ameliorate parental alienation.  Nothing and no one is above criticism. 

But the people I refer to and about whom I’ve written are the furthest thing from principled critics.  They reflexively view PA and efforts to improve relationships between targeted parents and their alienated children as little more than attacks on “protective mothers.”  Their astonishing ignorance demonstrated by their claims would alone be bad enough, but clearly, if the arguments they put forward are the best they have to offer, our understanding of PA and how to address it, both in court and in settings like those of Family Bridges are in no danger.  More importantly, we’re coming to understand that even the most severely alienated children can be helped to re-establish meaningful relationships with their targeted parents and avoid the type of long-term harm caused by parental alienation.

October 31, 2018 by Don Hubin, Ph.D., Chair, Ohio Affiliate and Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

National Parents Organization’s groundbreaking study of Ohio’s domestic relations courts’ standard parenting time guidelines has provoked a response for the Ohio Association of Domestic Relations Judges (OADRJ).

Normally, it would be appropriate to thank the judges for reviewing the NPO Ohio Parenting Time Report, judiciously weighing the points made in the report, and thoughtfully responding. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that the judges actually read, or at least read carefully, the NPO report. Indeed, there is clear evidence that they didn’t read, or at least didn’t understand, the report.

The most important way in which the OADRJ response demonstrates a misunderstanding of the NPO study is captured in this complaint: “An intrinsic flaw in the NPO report is that there was no review of actual outcomes in any Domestic Relations or Family Court cases in Ohio. … without actual review of actual orders, the conclusions stated in the NPO report are inaccurate, misrepresentative and speculative.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. The NPO study was not, and never purported to be, a study of the actual orders issued by Ohio courts. The NPO report clearly stated this: “The Ohio Parenting Time Rule Project is not an evaluation of Ohio counties’ domestic relations courts’ actual patterns of awarding parenting time” (p. 2). It’s hard to make it clearer than this. The report is not an “inaccurate, misrepresentative and speculative” report on actual parenting time orders. It is an accurate, representative, and carefully researched report on county courts’ standard parenting time guidelines.

It would be easy to go on detailing the ways in which the defensive response of the OADRJ misrepresents the NPO report. For example, OADRJ alleges that the NPO report “erroneously assumed that a court automatically adopts its standard parenting order in cases in which both parties participate in a hearing but have not reached agreement on a shared-parenting plan” (it did not!) and that the “underlying goal of the NPO is for Courts to automatically issue an order for equal parenting time between parents upon the filing of a complaint” (it is not!).

But that sort of back-and-forth doesn’t lead us forward. Instead, National Parents Organization would like to work with OADRJ to make progress.

The OADRJ response show a recognition of the importance of determining the actual parenting time outcomes in Ohio’s courts. NPO agrees. But the NPO report explains why this NPO study did not focus on actual court orders: “Courts do not compile records of the frequency with which any given parenting time schedule is ordered. Accordingly, NPO has no means of knowing how frequently courts in any county order a default (or any other) parenting time schedule” (p. 2).

So, while the OADRJ response calls for evidence concerning the actual orders issued by Ohio courts, Ohio domestic relations courts do not compile these records, making it very difficult for citizens to determine the actual behavior of Ohio courts. On October 5, NPO wrote to Judge Paula C. Giulitto, OADRJ President, to invite the Association to work together with NPO to gather and analyze the data concerning the actual pattern of parenting time orders.

There is no feasible way for NPO to conduct this study without the cooperation of Ohio’s domestic relations courts. Together, though, NPO and OADRJ could move forward and determine how our courts are actually resolving disputes concerning parenting time when parents divorce.

Those who truly care about the best interest of children, and are aware of the growing scientific consensus that children’s interests are best served by a presumption of equal parenting when parents divorce, should welcome the opportunity to determine the degree to which actual parenting time orders of Ohio courts conform to what that research recommends.

NPO is still awaiting a response from Judge Giulitto.

Donald C. Hubin, Ph.D. is a member of the National Board of National Parents Organization and the Chair of the Ohio NPO. He is a professor emeritus in the Philosophy Department and Director of the Center for Ethics and Human Values at the Ohio State University.

October 28, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

The case of Teagan Batstone may come to a close soon.  Teagan was the little Canadian girl who was killed by her mother, Lisa Batstone, back in December, 2014.  Lisa Batstone was apprehended when she backed her car into a ditch and Teagan’s body was found in its trunk.  The child was eight years old.

Just why it’s taken almost four years to bring Lisa to trial is anyone’s guess.  Mental health professionals said she was fit to stand trial shortly after her arrest, but so far no trial has taken place.  The latest proceeding is a one in which the judge must determine whether Lisa’s statements to various people at the scene and at the hospital later are admissible in her trial for Teagan’s death (Abbotsford News, 10/16/18).

Her statements are damning.

Justice Catherine Murray heard testimony from Peace Arch Hospital psychiatrist Dr. Douglas Maskall and PAH social worker Jennifer Culbert, who both had direct interactions with Batstone at the hospital that day.

Both shared statements attributed to Batstone, including disturbing accounts of how Teagan died.

The mother and daughter had been having a “camp out” in their living room the night before, but Batstone was “frequently awakening,” Maskall told the court, reading from his report on his interview with the then-41-year-old.

Batstone told him that Teagan “looked so peaceful sleeping and I just wanted her to be with Jesus,” Maskall said.

“She proceeded to take a plastic bag and hold it over (her daughter’s) face.”

According to Maskall’s report, Batstone said she killed her daughter to “protect” the youngster from her father – who the court heard Batstone had an “acrimonious” relationship with – and because she didn’t want Teagan to “have her (mother’s) brain.”

“Lisa tells me it was then her intention to kill herself and die with her daughter.”…

Culbert said Batstone repeatedly referenced Teagan’s dad, “saying several times, ‘You win, Gabe.’”…

Culbert said there was one statement that has “kind of not ever left my mind – that she had done this to spite Gabe.”

“Gabe” of course is Teagan’s father.  From that statement, it seems clear that Lisa feared losing custody of Teagan to Gabe Batstone and, rather than see that happen, she took her daughter’s life.  If that’s the case, it appears she had good cause for her fear.

Maskall later noted that Batstone had struggled with mental health since her teens. She was involuntarily hospitalized in 2012, and told Maskall she had asked for psychiatric help months before Teagan’s death.

Teagan was born in 2006 and Gabe and Lisa divorced two years later.  Gabe was a businessman, too embroiled in his role as CEO of a startup company to have full custody of his daughter.  But when Lisa was hospitalized in 2012 following a suicide attempt, he gained temporary custody of Teagan.  Given his ex-wife’s mental condition, he asked the court for long-term custody, but was denied.  As soon as Lisa left the hospital, the court ordered Teagan back with her.  Two years later, she was dead.

In this article from 2014, Gabe calls the court’s decision “a heartbreaking, crushing moment.”(CBC, 12/12/14)

“A month after [the suicide attempt] we were forced to return her. Lisa was the primary caregiver as decided in court, and apparently attempting to abandon your child through suicide did not meet the threshold.”

And he was far from the only one to note Lisa’s precarious mental condition.  Her pastor, Ellis Andre, thought Lisa was a danger to either herself or others.

However, he said, Batstone’s behaviour — which was punctuated by swings from elation to depression— had become more erratic, intense and “out of control” over the past three months.

“There was an increasing desperation taking place, she was seeing a counsellor,” Andre said. “I encouraged her to see a psychiatrist because I thought medication may be helpful to her.”

He said Batstone had been in contact with him over the weekend from a zip-lining camp she was attending with Teagan and “seemed to be happy.”

But, just days later, she sent an “alarming” email that prompted the church to contact police.

“We acted immediately, not knowing that Teagan was already dead at the time,” Andre said.

In short, a court kept a little girl in the care of her mother despite knowing that she was suicidal, had a long history of mental illness and that her father was altogether capable of caring for her.  At the time, Gabe fingered the true culprit.

Teagan’s father said he’s hoping for a deep investigation and substantive change in family law.

“It’s not about [me being] better, or judgment,” Gabe Batstone said. “There were two home environments that were available to Teagan, and we collectively didn’t, unfortunately, choose the safest one. And terribly, it played out in a way that ended her life so many years too soon.”

“Something’s broken. Something needs to change. …That can’t happen to someone else. It just can’t.

“It’s the worst thing you could ever imagine.”

But of course, there’s been no substantive change in Canadian family law since 2014.  Nor has there been a change in judges’ behavior that routinely favors mothers in custody battles.  Sometimes that favoritism ignores realities that scream at us from the pages of psychiatric reports, hearing transcripts and finally the pages of newspapers.  We hear the anguish in Gabe’s voice when he says the intentional killing of a child by her mother “can’t happen again, it just can’t.” 

But it can, and it will.

October 26, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

#BelieveTheWoman took another body blow recently (Minneapolis Star Tribune, 10/17/18).  As many recall, U.S. Representative Keith Ellison, D – MN, was accused back in August by his former girlfriend, Karen Monahan, of physical and emotional abuse against her.  He denies her allegations, but they spurred the Star Tribune and Alpha Media to seek records from his divorce from his wife Kim in 2012.  Presumably, both media outlets sought information to the effect that Ellison is an abuser.

Both Ellison and his ex-wife opposed unsealing the divorce file (why was it sealed in the first place?) citing privacy concerns.  But a judge ordered its contents made public.  What they revealed is that it wasn’t Ellison, but his ex who was the abuser.

In a February 2015 affidavit opposing motions from Kim Ellison for him to pay more in spousal maintenance, Keith Ellison reported that his ex-wife “has hit me too many times to mention.” He said he reported the abuse during a 2009 counseling session during which Kim Ellison told a therapist that she hit him and not their children “because he can take it,” according to the affidavit. Ellison said in the affidavit that he had photographs of injuries she inflicted, and said she once wielded a knife during an altercation at his Washington, D.C., apartment. He said staff members noticed markings left by the alleged abuse.

Kim Ellison attributes her abuse of her former husband to depression occasioned by a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.

“My divorce file contains details of the most difficult time in my life, when I was struggling with my diagnosis of multiple sclerosis,” Kim Ellison said. “I was scared, confused, worried, angry, and became depressed.  

Of course the fact that Ellison didn’t abuse his wife doesn’t mean he didn’t abuse his girlfriend or another woman, Amy Alexander, who accused him of assault in 2005.  But it also fails to establish Ellison as a serial abuser, despite the claims of two separate women.  In short, their allegations against him are, once again, uncorroborated by evidence and denied by the accused.

Ellison’s opponent for the office of state Attorney General, Doug Wardlow, has been attempting to capitalize on Monahan’s accusations, apparently hoping voters will believe them in the absence of corroborating evidence.  My guess is that the voters are smarter than that, particularly after the latest revelations.  I hope I’m right.

For decades, mere allegations of domestic abuse have proven sufficient to diminish the rights of accused men (usually) in divorce and child custody proceedings.  The thinnest accusations are often enough, a fact routinely acknowledged by divorce lawyers.  Due process of law, basic fairness and good sense all require that we not accept naked allegations at face value.  To permit those, with no corroboration and in the face of the accused’s denials, to separate a parent from a child, to deny a qualified candidate a public office (including a seat on the Supreme Court) would be an outrage against children’s welfare, basic decency and good government.

So, despite the fact that Keith and Kim Ellison objected (for perfectly sound personal reasons) to their divorce file being made public, I’m glad it was.  Doing so constituted a process of seeking evidence to either corroborate or rebut otherwise bare allegations.  As such, it’s something that needed to be done.  Keith Ellison is a public figure and, like it or not, accusations against him become public matters.  So anything that tends to support or contradict them should come to light. 

That process of finding and reporting pertinent facts is the very antithesis of #BelieveTheWoman that holds that only the allegations of a woman against a man carry weight.   I don’t know if Keith Ellison has been a good congressman or if he’d make a good state Attorney General.  What I do know is that he, like everyone else, must be free of guilt by aspersion.  No civilized society can accept mere allegations as sufficient to destroy a person’s reputation or diminish their liberty.  However uncomfortable the process has been for the Keith and Kim Ellison, it served to once again assert that most basic of all notions.

Thanks to Joy for the heads up.