Category: Blog

Los Angeles, CA–Background: I’ve started a blog-based collection of bedtime stories for children, both stories I’ve told my kids and stories that other parents (and grandparents) tell their kids. If you’ve got a good bedtime story, please send it to me for consideration in this collection.

The core of these stories will be those I tell my 9-year-old daughter. She’s pretty demanding–sometimes I pretty much have to come up with a bedtime story every night, which isn’t easy.

My daughter is very interested in racism (which she’s studied in school), baseball, and daddy’s childhood, so many of the stories reflect those. She’s only 9, but she enjoys learning about adult issues. Sometimes if I tell her a story she thinks isn’t sufficiently adult, she’ll say, “C’mon dad, that’s just a baby story.”

The stories I tell are usually just things that I remembered, sometimes recent but often from 20 or 30 years ago. Some of them are stories my father told me when I was a kid. I write these down as I told them, and they are NOT up to my usual standards of journalistic accuracy–given the limits of human memory, many (if not most) probably have at least one factual error in them, sometimes far more. They are also simplistic. I’m not going back and fixing them to make them more accurate or nuanced–they are here as I told them.

If you have a bedtime story you’d like to add to my collection, please send it to me at glenn@glennsacks.com. With your submission, please let me know how you want to be identified, if at all. To read all of the Daddy’s Bedtime Stories so far, click here.

Sometimes people need to stand up for themselves, no matter how powerful or rich or famous the person treating them badly is. Kids need to respect adults, such as their parents and teachers, but sometimes kids need to stand up for themselves too. Let me tell you of one example I saw of a kid standing up for himself. I was so surprised I could hardly believe it at the time. Many years ago one of the best players in baseball was an outfielder named Andy Van Slyke. He played for the St. Louis Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Pirates during years when those teams often made the playoffs. He was a very good hitter and a very good fielder, and was also very fast.

One time I went to a game at Dodger Stadium and was sitting in the bleachers in the outfield when he was playing. It must’ve been maybe 1987 or 1988.Now before each inning all of the players warm up. The pitcher throws to the catcher, the first baseman throws ground balls to the shortstop, to second baseman, and to the third baseman, and they throw the ball back to the first baseman. However, there are three outfielders, and they are too far apart to play catch. So what happens instead is that the centerfielder will play catch with one of the other outfielders, and a bat boy will play catch with the third outfielder, in order to warm him up.

Well, we were watching this at Dodger Stadium one day, and this bat boy, who was probably 10 or 11 years old, was warming up Van Slyke. However, the boy could not throw the ball all the way to Van Slyke. Instead, he would throw it on one hop. This is not a big deal, but Van Slyke apparently got annoyed with it. So Van Slyke, to show his irritation, started tossing the ball back to the boy on one bounce.

Van Slyke was strong enough to throw the ball from deep centerfield all the way to home plate on the fly, so he wasn’t doing this because he couldn’t. He was doing it as a dig at the bat boy.

Well, even though the bat boy was young, he understood what was happening. After the second ball came to him on a hop from Van Slyke, he caught it, turned his back on Van Slyke, and walked back to the dugout. Van Slyke called after him, with his hands extended, asking him to come back. The bat boy wouldn’t hear of it, and instead ignored Van Slyke–a Major League baseball star who earned millions of dollars a year–and walked back to the dugout.

My friends and I were watching this and one friend of mine said, “Did I just see what I thought I just saw?” It was a small incident, but I always respected that kid for standing up for himself.

Sacramento, CA–Background: The historic, one-of-a-kind conference “From Ideology to Inclusion: Evidence-Based Policy and Intervention in Domestic Violence” was held in Sacramento, California February 15-16 and was a major success. The conference was sponsored by the California Alliance for Families and Children and featured leading domestic violence authorities from around the world.

Many of these researchers are part of the National Family Violence Legislative Resource Center, which is challenging the domestic violence establishment’s stranglehold on the issue. The NFVLRC promotes gender-natural, research-based DV policies.

I have been and will continue to detail the conference and some of the research that was presented there in this blog–to learn more, click here.

John Hamel, LCSW, is a court-certified batterer treatment provider and author of the book Gender-Inclusive Treatment of Intimate Partner Abuse. A leading authority in the field, John was one of the principle organizers of the Sacramento domestic violence conference. Springer publications did an interview with John (pictured, photo by Kevin Graft) which encapsulates many of the major themes of his work. It is reprinted below.

An Interview with John Hamel

Both of your books are based on the concept that men and women are equally capable of abuse against each other. This runs completely counter to conventional thinking, which insists that men are always aggressors and women are always victims. What first led you to this line of research, and what prompted you to begin writing about it?

In 1991, I took over a domestic violence caseload and was trained in a variation of the well-known “Duluth’ model. In the Duluth theoretical framework, domestic violence is caused by a patriarchal society that sanctions violence by men against their female partners. Women are assumed to be either victims or, when they are found to aggress against their male partners, to be doing so in self-defense.

In group, many of the men I was working with claimed that their female partners were equally or more abusive than they were, and wondered why I wasn”t treating them as well. I had been trained to automatically disbelieve such claims as victim-blaming. However, while many of my clients did in fact seek to displace responsibility for their actions onto others, I found other claims to be quite credible, so I changed my assessment procedures and began to insist on interviewing victims separately. According to the victims themselves, the majority of these cases did indeed involve mutual abuse and, and some featured a dominant female perpetrator whose partner was arrested after fighting back. This clinical data contradicted much of what I had been taught, and led me to conduct an extensive review of the research literature. What I found more than corroborated my clinical findings.

Would you say that the idea that both females and males can be both aggressors and victims is becoming more accepted among those in the field? Why or why not?

These notions are not new; they had found support as far back as the 1970″s, in the work of Murray Straus, Peter Neidig and other researchers. For years, studies conducted by these mavericks were dismissed, and in some cases suppressed, because of the long-dominant patriarchal paradigm advanced by victim advocates.

California–From Carl, a reader:

I’m in the military. Divorce took place the month I departed California. I was there for training and was not a resident. CA. took complete jurisdiction. Kids and ex were in Florida at the time. Ex took kids to Mississippi same time divorce was filed. Divorce took place Oct 06, and is still open.

Since then my wages are garnisheed at 65% and I’m still in arrears by $400 monthly. My ex will not let me see the kids regardless of California court orders. California will not enforce the order, Mississippi will not enforce the order. It seems no agency will help me to see my children.

Also at this time I’m in jeopardy of losing my job of six years because of the arrearages. I’m on salary–I can’t make the amount California wants.

Everyone says I have to get a lawyer, but I have no money. I make enough for food, shelter, and gas to get to work, usually with less than $100 in my bank at any given time. Any help suggestions appreciated.

Sacramento, CA–Background: The historic, one-of-a-kind conference “From Ideology to Inclusion: Evidence-Based Policy and Intervention in Domestic Violence” was held in Sacramento, California February 15-16 and was a major success. The conference was sponsored by the California Alliance for Families and Children and featured leading domestic violence authorities from around the world. Many of these researchers are part of the National Family Violence Legislative Resource Center, which is challenging the domestic violence establishment’s stranglehold on the issue. The NFVLRC promotes gender-natural, research-based DV policies. I have been and will continue to detail the conference and some of the research that was presented there in this blog–to learn more, click here. Dr. Donald Dutton (pictured, photo by Kevin Graft) is one of the premier domestic violence authorities in the world. He co-founded the Assaultive Husbands Project in 1979 and has published more than 100 papers and books, including the Domestic Assault of Women, The Batterer: A Psychological Profile, The Abusive Personality, and his latest work, Rethinking Domestic Violence. Dr. Dutton can be reached at dondutton@shaw.ca. At the Sacramento conference, Dutton criticized the way the domestic violence establishment–of which he was once very much a part–has distorted the research to minimize and ignore female and mutual domestic violence. He also criticized feminist “Groupthink,” but what I found most interesting about it is that his analysis could easily apply to elements of the men’s and fathers’ movement, too. According to Dutton, Groupthink occurs “when an activist group with a predetermined direction confers in isolation from dissenting views.” In these situations, Dutton says: 1) Status is gained from taking more extreme positions (in the pre-determined direction). 2) People with strong needs for dominance will advance more extreme positions in order to gain status, power and control of the group. 3) These traits will then be projected onto the outgroup (“battering is all about power and control’). In our movement, one can certainly find people who seek to gain status “from taking more extreme positions.” One can also find people projecting the worst traits onto the outgroup, in our case, the feminist movement. Personally I have no use for the ludicrous pretense that our side is always good and right and virtuous and their side–the feminist side–is always bad and wrong and evil and sleazy. As I’ve noted on many occasions, as our movement expands and builds, I hope we won’t simply replace one set of Groupthink with another.

Sacramento, CA–Background: The historic, one-of-a-kind conference “From Ideology to Inclusion: Evidence-Based Policy and Intervention in Domestic Violence” was held in Sacramento, California February 15-16 and was a major success. The conference was sponsored by the California Alliance for Families and Children and featured leading domestic violence authorities from around the world. Many of these researchers are part of the National Family Violence Legislative Resource Center, which is challenging the domestic violence establishment’s stranglehold on the issue. The NFVLRC promotes gender-natural, research-based DV policies. I have been and will continue to detail the conference and some of the research that was presented there in this blog–to learn more, click here. One of the presenters at the conference was Claudia Ann Dias, MSC, JD, who provides education and training in the fields of substance abuse, family violence, cultural awareness, sexual harassment and communications skills to both public and private sectors. She has been featured on 20/20 and Oprah for her work with male and female family violence perpetrators. Dias (pictured, photo by Kevin Graft) said that she had a 10 year contract with a Sacramento County Jail to counsel newly arrested male domestic violence perpetrators. She says that within six months of mentioning the problem of female abusers and of mutual abuse, her contract was canceled. She had some interesting things to say about the way kids handle domestic violence she says that when kids are four or five years old, they will often try to step between warring parents and stop them from fighting or hitting each other. By age six or seven they begin finding hiding places when mom and dad are fighting. By age 11 or 12 the kids come back out and intervene in the conflict. Sometimes an 11 or 12-year-old child will hide the younger sibling down the hall from where the parents are fighting. Interestingly, Dias says that regardless of who is at fault in the fighting, children will intervene on mom’s behalf. She says it is inherent. One of the significant aspects of this is that because kids will inevitably intervene on behalf of mothers against fathers, even when it is the mothers who are instigating and engaging in abuse, kids often have a skewed and distorted description of the violence. In other words, kids will remember their mom being abused, even if the abuse was mutual, or mom was the real instigator or perpetrator.

Los Angeles, CA–In the music video “Do It Well,” singer Jennifer Lopez packs all of the following into a 3 minute, 17 second video:

She pushes a man down a flight of stairs

She kicks a man in the head

She wraps a man’s arm behind his back and shoves him

She hits a man in the head (twice)

She kicks a man

She throws a man

She pushes a man over a stairway railing, and he flips back head first.

The video is considerably more violent than Carrie Underwood’s anti-male Before He Cheats, which was bad enough.

To watch the video, click here. Thanks to JC, a reader, for sending it.

Boston, MA–Background: The Boston Globe recently discussed Fathers & Families‘ shared parenting bill at great length in their editorial A fair role for fathers. While the Globe did not endorse the bill, the editorial essentially agrees with the main arguments behind shared parenting. Ned Holstein, MD, MS, Executive Director of Fathers & Families, responded to the Globe here.

I don’t know if anybody else caught it or thought of it, but I thought this paragraph from the Boston Globe editorial was particularly annoying. The Globe wrote:

“Charles Kindregan, a law professor at Suffolk University, soundly argues that a presumption of joint legal and physical custody could handcuff judges who should be free to consider the best interests of children on a case-by-case basis. ‘You don’t need a presumption when you have facts,’ Kindregan says. The relevant facts include children’s age, temperament, emotional development, and medical needs, as well as how parents get along and how far apart parents live from each other. A judge looking at an infant will have to make very different decisions than a judge looking at a teenage boy.”

In case anybody missed it, what he said is code for “Dad can see the infant maybe an hour or two a week if he’s lucky, and if mom allows it. However, we may be more solicitous of dad’s time when his kid is a teenager. Of course, by then the kid will already be damaged from growing up without a father, but it’s okay for dad to spend real time with the kid, as long as mom is not unhappy about it, and as long as they still live within 1,000 miles of each other.”

The most irritating part of this is the presumption that an infant needs only its mother, not its father. From time to time I get letters from mothers of infant children who are outraged that the fathers want to see the children and — gasp — want to spend some time with the infants in their own homes.

Longtime readers of mine already know what I am going to say. I have been the primary caregiver for my daughter, now almost 10 years old, from the time she was six weeks old. Those first few years home all alone with her, before she went to preschool, were the greatest years of my life. She and I shared everything together, and we were as happy and close as any two people could ever be.

The only downside to it was that I worked in the evenings and my little girl would cry herself to sleep every night because she missed me and I was not there. I still believe that one reason my daughter and I are so close are those special years we had together.

The Globe editorial and the expert it quotes are wrong–there is absolutely no reason why a father should be kept away from his baby or toddler, even if mom and dad are separated.

San Mateo, CA–“Prosecutions for filing a false police report are relatively rare in San Mateo County and often don’t result in much jail time, if any, Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said.

“Defendants convicted of the offense and sentenced to jail often serve that time in the sheriff’s work program, picking up roadside trash or similar tasks, Wagstaffe said.”

It’s rare that a woman goes to jail for making a false rape claim, even though false claims are common. In this case it happened, though–see the San Francisco Chronicle article below.

(As an aside, note her idiot husband–she cheats on him and makes a false rape accusation, and he apparently still wants her. I’ll give you 10 to 1 odds that within five years he’ll be filling out my Family Law Help Form.

He’ll be under a restraining order, booted out of his house, unable to see his kid, and in arrears on his child support, and then he’ll write to me for help. And he’ll be shocked that I don’t know of a pro bono attorney who’s willing to drop everything he’s doing and go work for him for free.)

San Mateo woman who lied about sex attack to fool husband gets 90 days
John Cote, Chronicle Staff Writer
February 26, 2008

A San Mateo woman sentenced to 90 days in county jail for lying about being sexually assaulted at gunpoint by a group of men made up the story to deceive her husband after coming home from a date, authorities said.

Karyn Galila, 24, sobbed Tuesday in a Redwood City courtroom as Commissioner Kathleen McKenna ordered her taken into custody immediately. Galila was handcuffed as her husband looked on. He tried to hug her before she was led away, but was ordered by a bailiff not to touch her.

Galila apparently concocted the story of being assaulted after her SUV broke down in Foster City to explain to her husband why she had come home late after rendezvousing at a restaurant with a man she had recently met online, according to her probation report.

“This was such a detailed, fabricated story,” said McKenna, the San Mateo County Superior Court magistrate who handled sentencing. “This kind of conduct does warrant a jail sentence.”

Galila was arrested after initially telling police she had been sexually assaulted the night of June 12 when her Jeep sport utility vehicle broke down on Foster City Boulevard. She admitted she had lied when she said a group of as many as five men had pushed the Jeep onto a nearby street, then assaulted her at gunpoint.

A fingerprint from Galila’s SUV led investigators to Robert Salapuddin of San Mateo, whom they arrested on unrelated outstanding warrants for felony forgery and misdemeanor embezzlement, prosecutors said.

Salapuddin, 25, had met Galila online and the two decided to meet at a local restaurant that evening, prosecutors said. Police initially focused on him as a possible participant in the alleged assault, but he was able to produce a receipt from the restaurant and a witness who placed both him and Galila there when the assault was supposedly taking place, authorities said.

Galila pleaded no contest Dec. 31 to one misdemeanor count of filing a false police report.

“She at this point is still struggling to figure out why she conducted herself the way she did,” Galila’s attorney, Earl Jiang said at sentencing. “She is genuinely sorry for her conduct.”

Jiang pleaded for leniency, saying Galila had a young child to care for. But prosecutor Rebecca Baum argued that Galila’s actions warranted jail time, saying they could have led to Salapuddin being wrongly incarcerated. McKenna agreed.

Salapuddin was released in July upon pleading no contest to a single count of misdemeanor embezzlement after spending 17 days in jail, prosecutors said. Under his plea deal, he was sentenced effectively to time served.

He is now a fugitive after an arrest warrant was issued for him in November because he failed to pay $900 in restitution in that case, prosecutors said.

Galila, a dental assistant, now faces jail time and a court order to pay police about $5,000 to cover the cost of their investigation.

Jiang said outside court that he was disappointed in the sentence, calling it “harsh.”

Prosecutions for filing a false police report are relatively rare in San Mateo County and often don’t result in much jail time, if any, Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said.

Defendants convicted of the offense and sentenced to jail often serve that time in the sheriff’s work program, picking up roadside trash or similar tasks, Wagstaffe said.

The unique element in Galila’s case was McKenna’s decision to have her jailed immediately, forcing her to apply from behind bars for an alternate sentencing program, Wagstaffe said.

“It’s a very, very unusual step,” Wagstaffe said. “I think it was because the conduct was outrageous. We have a criminal justice system that is based from A to Z on being able to rely on the truth of our victims.”

Boston, MA–Background: The Boston Globe recently discussed Fathers & Families‘ shared parenting bill at great length in their editorial A fair role for fathers. While it’s somewhat annoying that the Globe does not endorse the bill, the editorial is in many ways very positive. The Globe, which generally leans towards feminist views and positions, essentially agrees with the main arguments behind shared parenting, but opts for defending judicial discretion, excessively in my view.

Ned Holstein, MD, MS, Executive Director of Fathers & Families, responded to the Globe in his blog post A Win or a Loss? You Decide, Then Email Globe

Paul Sawyer, a longtime reader and supporter of several our legislative campaigns, wrote a nice response to the Boston Globe in defense of the shared parenting bill. The best line:

“You call for research and pilot studies. The research has been done. Children do better with both parents actively involved in their lives.”

What’s best for kids at issue for dads
February 27, 2008

THE GLOBE got it wrong on the “shared parenting” bill (“A fair role for fathers,” Editorial, Feb. 23). You cite law professor Charles Kindregan, who should know better, writing that he “argues that a presumption of joint legal and physical custody could handcuff judges who should be free to consider the best interests of children on a case-by-case basis.” The bill would not take any discretion away from judges, as you noted three paragraphs earlier. Rather, it would require judges to state the reasons for their rulings in the event that one parent got sole custody.

Kindregan says, “You don’t need a presumption when you have facts.” Which should be true, but the experience of so many fathers in family court is that judges ignore facts and rule based on their own prejudices about mothers and fathers.

Lawyer Fern Frolin says, “We trust the discretion of judges.” The bill would never have been filed if judicial discretion was working. It is not, and data from case after case support this.

You call for research and pilot studies. The research has been done. Children do better with both parents actively involved in their lives. That is our goal: not father’s rights, but the best lives for our children.

PAUL SAWYER, Westford