Category: Blog

I’ve just learned via Dean Tong that Dave Bruer of the Fathers Resource Center was killed Sunday in a motorcycle accident. Dave was a committed advocate who helped many, many fathers with their custody and family law problems.

The newspaper article about this tragedy is below.

Motorcyclist killed in crash ID’d as advocate for fathers
North County Times, 9/24/07

VISTA — A man killed Sunday morning in a motorcycle crash on Highway 78 was identified by the county medical examiner’s office today as the founder of the Fathers Resource Center, an Encinitas-based parenting organization.

David Cavan Bruer, 55, of Encinitas, was pronounced dead at the scene near Emerald Drive, an investigator for the office said.

Authorities said Bruer had been speeding when he tried to pass through a narrow gap in traffic and was clipped by a truck. He is survived by his son, John-David Bruer, the medical examiner’s office reported.

Bruer began working as an advocate for fathers nearly 20 years ago. He brought the Fathers Resource Center — which formed to help fathers with issues such as paternity to domestic abuse, to custody and visitation — to Encinitas in 1997.

The Kentucky Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in a case involving hero father Ren Hinshaw, a “duped dad” fighting to retain custody of the 8-year-old boy he’s raised since birth. Hinshaw didn’t find out that he wasn’t the boy’s biological father until his divorce, when his ex-wife went to court to cut him out of the boy’s life, claiming Hinshaw had no legal right to keep seeing what he thought was his kid. According to a Louisville Courier-Journal article earlier this year:

“‘He is my son, and I am his dad,’ Hinshaw said in an e-mail to the newspaper.

“The child’s mother says Hinshaw should have no right to custody…

“Hinshaw was in the delivery room when the boy he thought was his son was born in 1999.

“He cut the umbilical cord and later changed the boy’s diapers, taught him to talk and volunteered at his school, according to court records.

“Hinshaw, a technology consultant at the University of Louisville’s Kornhauser Health Sciences Library, described the boy in court records as the most important thing in his life.

“But when the child’s mother, Jacqueline, divorced Hinshaw in 2003, she disclosed he wasn’t the biological father and asked Jefferson Family Court to deny him custody.

“Judge Virginia Whittinghill ordered a counselor to meet with the child. She concluded he had bonded with Hinshaw and that it would be ‘very devastating to him if he was not in his life.’ She described Hinshaw as the boy’s ‘psychological father.’

“Whittinghill not only granted Hinshaw’s motion for joint custody, she also made his home the boy’s primary residence and ordered his ex-wife to pay him $25,000 in attorney’s fees.

“The Court of Appeals last September affirmed the decision, saying the case wasn’t about paternity but ‘the custody rights between a husband and wife as they relate to a child born and raised within the confines of the marriage.’

“Hinshaw’s ex-wife, who has since remarried, is now asking the state Supreme Court to hear the case. She and her lawyer, Peter Ostermiller, declined comment, but in court papers they say that DNA should rule, even if the decision is not in the child’s best interests.

“They also contend that Hinshaw had no standing to seek custody, just as the state Supreme Court held last year when it denied such rights to a lesbian partner who was not a child’s legal parent.

“After two years as the boy’s primary parent, Hinshaw said in court papers that his bond with the child has grown even stronger and that it would ‘take a chunk’ out of his heart if the child was taken away.

“‘This is a bond that no person should put asunder,’ he said.”

The case is now being considered by the Kentucky Supreme Court, along with the James Rhoades case. To learn more, click here.

We rarely hear publicly about cases like Hinshaw’s, but I see them often.

As many of you know, Mary Winkler recently appeared on Oprah. To watch the show in its entirety, click here.

Oprah was annoyingly sympathetic to Winkler, and seemed to buy her abused wife shtick. My opinion of her claims is as follows:

1) Winkler provided no substantive evidence for her claims–no medical reports, no police reports, no 911 calls, nothing.

2) The defense did put a few people on the stand who testified as to various indirect indications that Winkler might have been abused. A couple of these were of some value. For example, a doctor said Winkler visited her one time with what he described as a “minor injury” to her face, which Winkler said at the time came when a kids’ softball hit her. She now claims this was an example of Matthew’s abuse of her. The doctor said the injury was consistent with either one.

Also, Winkler’s father testified as to seeing injuries on Mary previously, which Mary denied were related to abuse. Of course, even if these were true examples of abuse–and it’s far from clear that they are–it doesn’t mean that Matthew was the aggressor. Research shows that a large percentage of domestic violence is mutual abuse–Mary’s alleged injuries could’ve been the end result of her attacks on Matthew. We’ll never know whether Matthew was abusive or not, but we do know that one member of that household was violent–Mary Winkler. Anybody capable of shooting a sleeping man in the back and allowing him to bleed to death is certainly capable of initiating domestic violence in the home.

3) Some of the other witnesses were meaningless, including one neighbor who said that Matthew threatened to shoot his dog because it kept coming to Matthew’s house and barking at night and waking him up. I guess my wife and I are abusers, too–at our previous house our neighbors’ dog would bark outside our window at 3 AM, and after several complaints we banged on my neighbor’s door and screamed at him, and, if we didn’t threaten to shoot the damn thing, we should’ve.

4) One of the few times on Oprah where Oprah did voice skepticism was when Mary described the morning of the crime. Winkler told Oprah she was angry at her husband and “just wanted to talk to him,” and then she “heard a boom.’ A more complete description of the incident would have been that she wanted to talk to him, waited until he fell asleep, retrieved the shotgun, pumped it, aimed it at his back, pulled the trigger, and then “heard a boom.’

5) Ironically, the truth-teller on the show was feminist Court TV commentator Lisa Bloom, Gloria Allred”s daughter. Bloom said, “At Court TV a collective gasp went up at this verdict. We all thought it was a first degree murder case….Didn’t she make the decision to allow him to fall asleep? Didn’t she make the decision to go into that closet and get that gun? Didn’t she make the decision to aim it at Matthew and pull the trigger?”

Bloom also asserted that “there wasn’t much corroboration [of the abuse] at the trial.”

6) Perhaps the most absurd aspect of both the trial and Oprah was the way Mary highlighted the white platform shoes which she claimed Matthew “made her’ wear, and which she said were deeply humiliating to her. During the trial, Mary held up the shoe and bowed her head down in mock pain and shame. Oprah bought it, telling her audience that on her show “everybody gasped when they saw the shoe.’ Bloom explained to Oprah that in any “big city” people would have “laughed at’ Mary”s claims that the shoes were part of the “abuse’ she suffered.

Conservative nationally-syndicated radio talk show host Mike Gallagher got it right about Mary Winkler in a recent broadcast. He panned her recent performance on Oprah and criticized the legal system’s slap on the wrist for Winkler. To listen to Gallagher’s broadcast, click here.

To learn more about the Winkler case, see my co-authored column No child custody for husband-killer Mary Winkler (World Net Daily, 9/14/07).

Gallagher doesn’t discuss gender issues very often, but when he does he’s often right on. During the Elian Gonzalez saga in 2000, Gallagher was one of the few conservatives in the country who said plainly and clearly that Elian belonged with his father, Juan Gonzalez. During the Clara Harris trial, Mike hosted a debate between myself and one of Clara’s defenders, and, unlike many, Gallagher saw through Clara’s “betrayed wife” shtick.

“When Tiger became the first black man ever to win the Masters [in 1997] he cried like a little boy in the arms of his father, who was there against doctor’s orders after almost dying in heart surgery.”

Tiger Woods’ father Earl died last year at age 74. Eugene Robinson wrote in the Washington Post:

“Earl Woods did much more than raise a supremely talented golfer. In an age when it’s rare to read a sentence with the words ‘African American’ and ‘father’ that doesn’t also include ‘absent’ or some other pejorative, Earl and Tiger Woods were the world’s most visible, and inspiring, counterexample. ‘He was the person I looked up to more than anyone,’ Tiger Woods said following his father’s death, and even the world’s biggest cynic had to know he meant every word.

“To me, the two defining aspects of Tiger Woods’s career have been his supernatural ability to make a golf ball do impossible things and his relationship with his father. Two moments stand out: The Sunday afternoon in 1997 when Tiger became the first black man ever to win the Masters and cried like a little boy in the arms of his father, who was there against doctor’s orders after almost dying in heart surgery. And the Sunday afternoon in 2005 when Tiger won his fourth Masters and cried again, because Earl Woods, for the first time, had been too sick to come to the course and root him on.”

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

Torn by distance, he wonders how far to take custody fight (Boston Globe, 9/24/07)

Rell Cancels Plan To Charge Custodial Parents For Child Support (Associated Press, 9/24/07)

When Ties to a Parent Are Cut by the Other (New York Times, 9/23/07)

Marriage declining in Oregon, especially suburbs, rural counties (Associated Press, 9/23/07)

Men are smartest and dumbest, say scientists (London Times, 9/23/07)

Stephen Baskerville’s Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family will be released soon–click here to learn more.

Video: Domestic Abuse No Longer A Problem, Say Bruised Female Researchers (The Onion, 9/21/07) (Satire)

Inside the Charlie & Denise Custody Battle (OK! Magazine, 9/21/07)

N.D. group studies state custody laws (Fargo Forum, 9/20/07)

Public committee to abolish automatic maternal custody of children under 6 (Haaretz, 9/20/07)

“Ah, yes, divorce … from the Latin word meaning ‘to rip out a man’s genitals through his wallet.”–Robin Williams

Robin Williams had one divorce, but I don’t know to what degree it shaped his thinking on the issue. It’s interesting though, that a couple of the characters Williams has played in movies are divorced men who were very hurt by the experience.

He plays Tom Dobbs, a comedian-turned-presidential candidate, in Man of the Year, and Dobbs speaks of his divorce in hurt tones, as if he had been greatly criticized or vilified by his ex.

Of greater significance is Williams’ role in Mrs. Doubtfire, where, cut out of his beloved children’s lives by his ex-wife after their divorce, he poses as an elderly Scottish woman to get a job as a nanny for his own children. Wikipedia’ s write-up of the plot can be found here.

Thanks to Michael Robinson of the California Alliance for Families and Children for the quote.

Ford has come out with a new father-positive car commercial for its 2008 Taurus. The ad, called “We Know,” depicts a father looking out for his little son as he rides his bicycle, and then draws an analogy between the way the father knows how to keep his son safe and the way Ford says its automobile engineers know how to keep people safe. The ad depicts the father as being what the vast majority of fathers (and mothers) are–caring, loving parents. To watch, click here. Last year there was considerable controversy in the fatherhood movement over Ford’s controversial “Bold Moves’ divorced dad ad for the Ford Freestyle. The ad can be viewed here.
Some saw the ad as degrading or insulting to divorced dads, and I received numerous letters urging me to launch a protest campaign against the ad, as we’ve done in the past. Others saw the commercial as a positive for divorced dads. I discussed the ad’s pros and cons in my E-newsletter here. As I’ve noted, while I understand people’s negative reaction to the commercial, as a whole I see it as a positive development. In my co-authored column Dads finally get fair shake in the media (Chicago Sun-Times, 12/24/06) I explained: “[The ad] was another step forward for fathers. The ad begins with a stereotypically happy family taking a trip to the beach in a Ford Freestyle SUV. At the end of the commercial comes an unexpected twist–the car pulls into a housing complex, and dad gets out. He hugs his kids, tells them he”ll see them next week, tells his ex-wife, ‘Thanks for inviting me this weekend,’ and waves goodbye. “The ad does more than give heretofore invisible divorced dads some needed visibility; it also provides an important image of a divorced couple working to preserve their children”s relationships with both parents. Dad remains involved, and his ex, instead of putting forth her new husband as the children”s ‘new dad,’ invites him along.” Thanks to Justin, a reader, for sending me the new Ford commercial.

A recent episode of Law and Order SVU has a nice depiction of Parental Alienation. It depicts a grandmother falsely accusing a mother of molesting the child as part of a custody maneuver. (It would have been better, of course, if they had depicted a false charge being leveled against a father, since they’re the most frequent targets, but I’ll take it).

When the police psychologist says the charges are false and are the result of “Parental Alienation Syndrome,” another cop says, “I thought PAS was when a couple splits up and the mom brainwashes the kids into thinking the Dad’s a bastard.” The police psychologist explains that, in this case, it’s “emotional abuse inflicted [on the girl] by her ‘loving’ grandmother’.”

Watch the short video clip here.

Thanks to Greg Andresen of Dads on the Air in Australia and Keryn McLachlan for the video.