Category: Blog

New England–Leaving aside the fact that I’m tired of listening to New England Patriots fans hype their team and whine about their Super Bowl loss, I think the RADAR press release below has some good things to say.

I don’t claim to know what happened between Patriots star wide receiver Randy Moss and Rachelle Washington, who filed a domestic violence restraining order against him. However, the fact that she apparently was having financial problems and allegedly “demanded a $500,000 payment” and “threatened to reveal ‘lots of dirt’ about Moss if the money was not paid” makes one suspicious. (Moss is pictured above making a catch for the Patriots against the Buffalo Bills.)

Randy Moss’ “Trial by Rumor” and the Patriot’s Super Bowl Loss

Just as the New England Patriots were looking to cap off a perfect season, Patriots wide receiver Randy Moss was hit with a claim of “serious injury.” The allegation made by Rachelle Washington over an alleged altercation on January 6, 2008.

Washington is an old paramour of Moss’s who was unemployed and behind in her rent payments. Reports suggest that Washington had a soft-tissue injury to her finger, but how it occurred remains a mystery. Hospital X-rays were negative.

A temporary restraining order was quickly entered against Moss. According to Moss’ agent, attorney David K. McGill demanded a $500,000 payment and threatened to reveal “lots of dirt” about Moss if the money was not paid by January 11th. McGill has refused interviews and has not explained the specifics of the allegations.

Jane Doe, Inc., the Massachusetts Coalition Against Domestic Violence, demanded the benching of Randy Moss for the AFC Championship game, pending a January 28th hearing. Jane Doe claimed, without evidence, that this is the “common protocol” used by employers. The January 28th hearing was postponed by agreement of the parties until March.

In a January 17th interview, a distraught Moss said the woman was hurt by accident and called the allegation “false.”

According to the Boston Globe, Moss was “mad at this situation of extortion.” He claimed Washington was seeking “six figures” to keep the alleged battery “hushed.”

For the season, Moss easily led the Patriots with 1,493 yards and an average of 15.2 yards per pass. But the pressure on Moss appeared to have caused a profound effect on his game performance.

For the AFC championship, “Randy Moss was a non-factor for the second straight game and the highest-scoring team in NFL history sputtered all afternoon,” according to the Associated Press report.

Two weeks later, Moss headed to Super Bowl XLII with a “black cloud” hanging over his head:

“I brought it to Coach and said, ‘Look, Coach, I’m being threatened to do something that I have no idea of what I need to be doing.'”

During the Super Bowl, Moss caught only one pass. The stunned Patriots lost 17-14 to the New York Giants.

Had Moss not been distracted by the allegation of partner violence, Super Bowl XLII might well have turned out differently.

Sports fans must call for sensible reforms of domestic violence laws. We cannot permit extortion and trial-by-rumor to destroy the careers of athletes and to sway the outcomes of games.

We urge you to call your local radio sports shows and write letters to your local newspapers emphasizing that:

There is no evidence to date that Randy Moss abused Rachelle Washington.
The combination of pressures on Randy Moss impaired his focus and playability for Super Bowl XLII.
The outcome of Super Bowl XLII may have been thrown by the domestic violence industry.

http://mediaradar.org

“What has he done to wear so many scars? Has he changed the course of rivers? Has he polluted the moon and stars?”–Bob Dylan

Houston, TX–Background: I’ve covered the Clara Harris “Murder by Mercedes” case extensively, both in the Houston Chronicle, on the radio, and in this blog. As I’ve previously noted, Clara Harris repeatedly ran over David Harris as David’s daughter sat in the front seat, begging Clara not to kill her father.

In my co-authored column Suppose roles had been reversed in Harris case–Murdered dad deserves sympathy being shown Clara (Houston Chronicle, 1/27/07), I explained:

“Harris, her attorneys and her supporters have been largely successful in concealing the true nature of Clara’s crime. Whereas Clara has successfully portrayed herself as the innocent victim of a philandering husband, in reality David Harris was killed while trying to exit a bad and possibly abusive marriage. Clara’s defenders also ignore the fact that considerable evidence was presented that Clara–who played the crying, betrayed wife–was also having an affair at the end of their marriage.

“While many see the Clara Harris case as one of love and betrayal, it is in fact a garden-variety domestic homicide. Clara Harris is no better than high-profile wife-killer Scott Peterson. Perhaps Clara is even worse — at least Peterson spared us the crocodile tears.”

To learn more about the case, see my columns In Defense of David Harris (LewRockwell.com, 3/4/03) and Convicted Murderess Can Get Custody but Decent Fathers Can’t (Houston Chronicle, 9/19/03), or click here.

I’ve previously noted the way the media has disparaged David Harris despite the fact that he was by all accounts a good father and a decent man. At the time of the civil trial in January 2007, I wrote:

“Of the 354 news stories covering the wrongful death trial that are indexed on Google News, 233 refer to David Harris as Clara Harris” ‘cheating husband.’ Not one mentions the phrase ‘domestic violence.'”

Were the genders reversed, would we see headlines saying “Man Kills Cheating Wife”? I doubt it.

Now that Harris is back in the news (she’s suing her criminal defense attorney–to learn more, see my blog post ‘Murder by Mercedes’ Killer Clara Harris Whining Again), we once again see the bias on domestic violence. As evidenced by the screen shot above, most news outlets’ headlines are again disparaging and dehumanizing David Harris by referring to him simply as “Cheating Spouse.”

Interested readers might contact these news outlets and ask them to change “Cheating Spouse” to read “Husband.”

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.

The current domestic violence system often mistreats the women it purports to protect. Laura P., who spoke at the conference, is one example.

Laura says that a few years ago there was an unfortunate incident between her and her husband which the police blew way out of proportion. According to Laura, her husband was struggling to control their large, strong dog who was in the entryway to their house. Her husband lost his cool with the dog, and began treating it very roughly in order to control it.

Laura kicked her husband in order to get him to stop doing this. He pushed her away and she fell down. Both of them soon calmed down, and were able to get the dog under control. However, Laura realized that she had a cut on her face from when her husband had pushed her, apparently because of her glasses.

She asked a family friend to come over and watch their three kids, while her husband took her to the hospital. At the hospital she made the mistake of explaining what had happened, and the police soon arrived. Even though the incident was of low-level, mutual violence, and Laura’s husband didn’t initiate it, the police arrested him.

As we’ve discussed, many if not most jurisdictions have “no drop” prosecution policies when it comes to domestic violence. The result is that many cases of trivial, mutual, or nonexistent “violence” are prosecuted as if they are crimes. (To learn more, see my co-authored column Simpson Case Led to Harmful Domestic Violence Policies, Riverside Press-Enterprise, 12/5/06).

Laura protested against what was being done to her husband. She says that she is a strong, independent woman who loves her husband very much. While neither of them are proud of their role in the incident, they want to be left alone to pursue their lives.

Laura takes responsibility for her part in the incident, and does not see herself as a victim. After the police arrested her husband, she says that from that point on “nobody believed me — the police, the judge, the victim advocate who is supposed to be there to help me, even our own attorney.” The victim advocate believed that even her husband’s one act of low-level, mutual violence demands a divorce, and that there is “no hope.”

Laura says that her husband has been on probation for the last three years, and they are hoping that in May it will end, so they can have their normal lives back. She says:

“I never felt like a victim until I dealt with the police”

Russia–Beating up on divorced (“deadbeat”) dads makes great politics in the United States, and apparently Russian presidential candidate Dmitry Medvedev (pictured) has figured it out. United Press International says:

“Medvedev has also gone hunting for votes with the forensic skill of a U.S. campaign strategist. He has targeted the women’s vote by promising to increase child benefits so that the mother of a second child will get a state handout of more than $12,000, and alimony payments will be increased sharply.

“While American strategists talk of ‘soccer moms,’ Medvedev is appealing to the ‘divorced moms.’ One Russian child in three is being raised by a divorced mother, but only 12 percent of divorced men pay alimony.”

I take it that alimony in Russia largely means child support, as opposed to the US where the two are differentiated. Given Russia’s problems with alcoholism and domestic violence, I’m not going to uncritically defend Russian divorced dads, but I strongly suspect that many of those who aren’t paying their alimony are poor or unemployed.

During Putin’s eight years in office, the Russian economy has done well, largely due to record high prices for oil, gas, and its other natural resources. But the country still has much poverty and a weak manufacturing base. Moreover, many of the marriages in question fell apart during the disastrous 1990s, when even the official poverty rate was 30%.

As I’ve noted many times, research clearly shows that most American deadbeat dads are poor. I don’t imagine it’s any different in Russia.

I also question that “only 12 percent of divorced men [in Russia] pay alimony.” I don’t know where that statistic comes from, but I strongly suspect that it was arrived at simply by doing surveys of divorced women without asking divorced dads. American research shows that divorced women underestimate the amount of child support/alimony they receive, while divorced fathers overstate it. To get an accurate figure, you need to ask both.

BTW, for those who think that it’s only feminists or the left who bash dads or are responsible for the family court horrors dads face, I would add that Medvedev hardly fits that description.

The story is below.

Walker’s World: Putin’s heir and rival
Feb. 20, 2008
By MARTIN WALKER, UPI

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 (UPI) — Russia’s presidential election is just two weeks away, and the Kremlin’s own candidate Dmitry Medvedev has been campaigning almost like a liberal.

“Freedom is better than the absence of freedom. This is the quintessence of the whole experience of humanity. I mean freedom in all its manifestations: individual freedom, economic freedom and, finally, the freedom of self-expression,” he told an economics forum in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia.

“Freedom is the soul of everything,” Medvedev went on. “Everything will be dead without freedom. I want everybody to abide by laws, but the laws should not be intended for slaves. Freedom is inseparable from the actual recognition by the people of the power of law. Freedom does not bring about chaos. It creates respect for the system existing in a country. The supremacy of law should become one of our basic values.”

“We should cross out infringement on law from the list of habits our citizens live by and see to it that legal infractions stop enriching some people and depraving others,” Medvedev said and went on to call for more media freedoms: “We must defend the real independence of mass media that provide the agencies of power with feedback signals from society.”

This is striking rhetoric, coming from President Vladimir Putin’s handpicked successor. But how much power will Medvedev really have, now that Putin is to become his prime minister? And Putin has also noted that he will not be hanging Medvedev’s presidential portrait in his own Kremlin office.

Putin’s entire Kremlin team, many of them old comrades from the KGB, looks as if they will be remaining in place. Medvedev comes from another part of Putin’s life, when he was working for the liberal, post-soviet mayor of St. Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak. Medvedev, a young law student, was Putin’s assistant. Westernized and idealist, he once agonized about where he could rake up 200 rubles to buy a bootleg of Pink Floyd’s album “The Wall.”

Santa Rosa, CA–“Liddell, 61, said ongoing financial issues resulting from her 2006 divorce were prompting her move out of California, where her ex-husband is legally entitled to a substantial portion of her retirement benefits.

‘As long as I stay in the state of California, it continues to accrue,’ she said. ‘It’s surprising.’

Liddell, who earns about $175,000 annually, said she has not yet sought another job but does not plan to retire.

Liddell married Ron Liddell in 1986; they separated in 2004. She filed for divorce from the retired Air Force major in 2005.’

There aren’t many details provided here and maybe what the woman in question is doing is justified, but I do know one thing–if a prominent man were quitting his job and leaving the state in order to avoid sharing his retirement benefits with his wife, the article would not be nearly this sympathetic.

Thanks to readers Steve and Scott for sending it.

Santa Rosa school chief quits due to divorce
Liddell says financial implications prompting her to move out of state
By KERRY BENEFIELD
Santa Rosa Press Democrat, 2/20/08

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT Santa Rosa schools chief Sharon Liddell on Tuesday announced her resignation, saying financial issues related to her divorce two years ago were forcing her to move out of state.

The resignation is effective June 30.

Liddell’s departure was announced to about 70 school district employees after a brief closed-door meeting with the Santa Rosa School Board.

“She has had an amazing impact on our district,” board member Frank Pugh said after the announcement.

Liddell, 61, said ongoing financial issues resulting from her 2006 divorce were prompting her move out of California, where her ex-husband is legally entitled to a substantial portion of her retirement benefits.

“As long as I stay in the state of California, it continues to accrue,” she said. “It’s surprising.”

Liddell, who earns about $175,000 annually, said she has not yet sought another job but does not plan to retire.

Liddell married Ron Liddell in 1986; they separated in 2004. She filed for divorce from the retired Air Force major in 2005.

She notified the school board five months ago that her divorce attorney had recommended that she leave California. Board members said they sought various solutions, but none was feasible.

“This is the worst of all situations, where both parties don’t want it to happen,” board member Bill Carle said. “It’s really frustrating, and it’s a new one for me.”

Read the full article here.

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.

Marlene Moretti, PhD (pictured) is a full professor of psychology at Simon Fraser University and currently leads a multisite Canadian Institutes of Health Research New Emerging Team Grant on gender and aggression. She has published extensively in the fields of developmental psychopathology, social-clinical psychology, and intervention. Moretti has served as a member on several government committees working to promote the use of evidence based intervention. She is a coauthor of the book, Girls and Aggression: Contributing Factors and Intervention Principles (Kluwer-Plenum, 2004). Dr. Moretti can be reached at: moretti@sfu.ca.

At the conference, Moretti co-presented the Plenary “Family Roots of Adolescent Violence in Relationships and Effective Interventions: A Developmental and Relational Perspective” with Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling, PhD.

While the current domestic violence paradigm is very dismissive of intimate partner abuse by women, Moretti says both mothers and fathers who engage in violence toward their partners put their children at risk for aggression in their relationships. Boys and girls who observe their mothers engage in violence toward her partner tend to use more violence in their romantic relationships. As well, girls who observe their mothers violence toward her partner are more likely to be aggressive with their peers; similarly boys who observe their fathers violence toward his partner are more aggressive with their peers. These results are published in Aggressive Behavior, 2006, 32 (4), 385-395.

Moretti also says that boys tend to be more aggressive towards their friends, and girls tend to be more aggressive towards their romantic partners. She explained that, according to Crime in the US 2001, Table 33, there is an increase in violence by girls and a decrease in violence by boys.

Baghdad, Iraq–“Iraqi parents will go to any lengths to improve the quality of their children’s lives. Blauser points to one of his favorite photographs (pictured), of a father carrying his son in his arms, an endless desert road behind him. He had carried his son more than 6 miles to get a wheelchair.

“‘In August 2006 we had a distribution in northern Iraq,’ Blauser remembered. ‘We watched him [the father] come forward, and people rushed to take the boy from his arms. And he said, ‘No, I’ve been carrying this child all my life. I can carry him the last 100 meters to receive his wheelchair.'”

This is a touching story about the way one American, Brad Blauser, is helping crippled Iraqi children. In the video to the story, we see many fathers carrying their little sons and daughters into the clinic. The article is below–to watch the video, click here.

It is also nice to see the American convicts getting the chance to be a part of something positive.

Thanks to Brian, a reader and loving father, for the story.

Disabled Iraqi children get wheelchairs, big smiles
By Carol Jordan and Arwa Damon
CNN

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Mothers cradle children in their arms. Fathers smile softly at the helpless bodies they hold. Other parents are bent over from the weight of their teenage kids whose legs fall limp, almost touching the ground. In the absence of basic medical equipment, these parents do this every day.

Khaled is a father of three. On this day, his young daughter, Mariam, is getting fitted for her new wheelchair. Her arms and legs are painfully thin, little more than skin and bone. She’s 7 years old, but looks barely half that. She and both her siblings, a sister and brother, suffer from varying degrees of polio. None of them can walk.

Asked how he and his family cope, Khaled chokes up, fighting back tears.

“I am sick of life — what can I say to you?” he says after a long pause.

One man, Brad Blauser, has vowed to try to make life a little easier for these families by organizing the distribution of wheelchairs, donated and paid for by his charity, Wheelchairs for Iraqi Kids. He first came to Iraq in 2004 as a civilian contractor. Struck by the abject chaos surrounding him and seeing helpless children scooting along the ground, he pledged to find a way to help. Watch dads, moms carry kids; tears flow when wheelchairs arrive »

His first step was to consult an Army medic to find out what hospitals really needed. “He surprised me with his answer about pediatric wheelchairs. We’ve got so many children out in the city that the ones who can get around are following their friends by dragging themselves around on the ground, which is heartbreaking to see,” he says.

“I was surprised. It took me aback.”

Enlisting the help of generous supporters and an Iraqi humanitarian group Wheelchairs for Iraqi Kids was born in August of 2005. Thirty days later its first 31 chairs were delivered. To date more than 250 Iraqi families have received the wheelchairs.

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

State offers discounted paternity tests (Associated Press, 2-18-08)

New Minn. divorce laws may settle custody problems (WCCO, 2-19-08)

Woman pleads guilty for not paying child support (The Plain Dealer, 2-20-08)

Legal Strategies: the dos and don’ts of divorce (Globe and Mail, 2-21-08)

Friendship after divorce can be great, but ‘be careful’ (Salt Lake Tribune, 2-21-08)

Among evangelicals, divorce doesn’t carry the stigma it once did (Kansas City Star, 2-22-08)

Daddy’s DNA (Wall Street Journal, 2-22-08)

On your side: tri-state deadbeat parents (Kentucky Post, 2-23-08)

Offering financial calm amid the storm of divorce (New York Times, 2-24-08)

Study finds divorce divides dads from kids (The Star Ledger, 2-25-08)

Boston, MA–The Boston Globe panned Fathers & Families” shared parenting bill, HB 1460, in a long editorial last Saturday, February 23. If you think this editorial is a defeat, then you probably think Mike Huckabee has suffered a string of defeats  —  “defeats’ that have taken him from obscurity to primetime. Likewise, we have now made shared parenting primetime in Massachusetts. This isn”t too satisfying if your child is slipping out of your life because an obtuse family court judge didn”t understand that she needs more of you than four days per month. And there is enough nonsense in the editorial to make any true parent bristle with indignation. But for those of us who have the good fortune to be able to take the longer view, consider these big positives:

• Our movement, long considered the province of wingnuts, is now taken seriously.
• Fathers & Families is fighting for a vision “in which fathers have the time and access to be a positive presence in the lives of their children.’
• “It”s a goal with great merit.’
• “Children should have both parents in their lives sharing daily tasks such as homework and household chores as well as big events. . . “
• “. . . it makes sense for judges to maximize the role of fathers. . .
• “One challenge, though, is expanding this culture [more shared parenting]. . . “
• “. . . the legal system can protect children. . . by making sure judges. . . protect the place of fathers as well as mothers. . . “

In other words, shared parenting is good! But they just don”t like our bill our bill as the solution. Our job now is to build on this foundation. Please email the Globe at letter@globe.com with a copy to us at info@fathersandfamilies.org  Tell them why your child needs shared parenting and can”t get it from today”s family courts. Also send a copy to Governor Deval Patrick. Our goal: 200 emails. Women, help us out  — your words count for a lot. Keep four points in mind:

• Letters over 250 words are rarely printed.
• Talk about your kids, not yourself.
• Curb your anger. You are entitled to be angry, but venting will hurt our movement. Just tell the facts.
• Stay on topic. Don”t write about restraining orders, child support, the DOR etc.

We”d like to know what you think of the editorial, so leave us your comments below. (Note: The editorial grew out of a meeting between two Globe editorial writers and Ned Holstein and Peter Hill. Peter deserves credit for seeking and obtaining the meeting.)