Los Angeles, CA— “What’s a conference on domestic violence without fireworks? An American speaker shot off a doozy here yesterday, charging that the leaders of some fathers’ rights groups are abusers who use the organizations as tools to harass women.’
“It’s really important that we recognize that they’re gaining traction,’ Rita Smith, executive director of the U.S. National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, told an international women’s shelters conference.
“In a later interview, Smith said her experience of men working on fathers’ rights is that many of the leaders are abusers or were accused of abuse.
“‘The agenda, often by the leadership, is to completely undermine women’s rights,’ she said. ‘The ones that are the most dangerous are, in fact, creating safety problems for women and children.'”
Domestic Violence leaders throw out some wild accusations and false facts in Mindy Jacobs’ new Edmonton Sun column When dad is just bad (9/10/08). Rita Smith, executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, charged that the leaders of some fathers’ rights groups are “abusers.”
That’s a hell of an accusation to make, and a hell of an accusation to pass along in a newspaper column. I would ask Rita Smith to specify–naming names–which “abusers” and organizations she is referring to.
I suggest you write to Mindy Jacobs at mindy.jacobs@sunmedia.ca. While Jacobs’ article was not friendly, I don’t get the impression that she’s a true believer, either–she seemed more to be passing along Smith’s comments rather than explicitly endorsing them. She also has occasionally written articles sympathetic to fathers. Give her our side of the story, stick to the point, and be polite.
I also suggest you write the Edmonton Sun at mailbag@edmsun.com.
Jacobs passes along Smith’s falsehood that “domestic abusers who fight for custody in U.S. courts win full custody, joint custody or unsupervised access 70% of the time, regardless of the evidence of the mother” and that courts are handing custody of children over to abusive men.
The 70% statistic is long discredited. Also, I examined several of the feminists’ most publicized cases of abusive men allegedly being given custody of children in Shockome Syndrome. In every case I examined, the feminist claims were misleading or false.
In most cases, the mothers only lost custody of their kids temporarily, and they did so through their own egregious and/or abusive behavior. For example, in the Genia Shockome case, Shockome didn’t lose her kids because of “gender bias” or underhanded “fathers’ rights” tactics–she lost because she’s so nuts that even the pro-mother family courts were forced to side with the kids’ father. To learn more, click here.
Jacobs writes:
As [Jan Reimer, provincial co-ordinator of the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters], the prime organizer behind this incredible gathering, commented to the delegates Monday night, shelter workers toil in the middle of a “hurricane of suffering” to keep women alive.
No other profession, she added, sees such a constant reminder of men’s inhumanity to women.
Not only is this a huge exaggeration of men’s violence against women, it also ignores the fact that women are at least as likely as men to initiate and engage in domestic violence. For the research behind that, click here and here, and also see my co-authored column Schwarzenegger Should Veto AB 2051 (Orange County Register, 9/20/06).
Jacobs’ section on fathers & custody in When dad is just bad (Edmonton Sun, 9/10/08) reads:
What’s a conference on domestic violence without fireworks? An American speaker shot off a doozy here yesterday, charging that the leaders of some fathers’ rights groups are abusers who use the organizations as tools to harass women.
“It’s really important that we recognize that they’re gaining traction,” Rita Smith, executive director of the U.S. National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, told an international women’s shelters conference.In a later interview, Smith said her experience of men working on fathers’ rights is that many of the leaders are abusers or were accused of abuse.
“The agenda, often by the leadership, is to completely undermine women’s rights,” she said. “The ones that are the most dangerous are, in fact, creating safety problems for women and children.”
Many who join such groups aren’t abusive – they just lost a custody battle, Smith said, and are being used.
“Our responsibility is to try to figure out which of those groups are legitimate and which of those groups are simply a way for abusers to continue using the legal system to abuse women.”
Want more fireworks? Here goes. Smith also said domestic abusers who fight for custody in U.S. courts win full custody, joint custody or unsupervised access 70% of the time, regardless of the evidence of the mother.
She attributes it to a court gender bias. “For whatever reason, women are not believed,” she told me. “There’s this myth in the family court system in the U.S. that women lie about abuse to gain custody. There’s been no … evidence to indicate that’s true.”
Advocates and experts are trying to reform the U.S. family court system, she added. “It’s pretty broken.”
Her comments were echoed by speaker Sandra Ramos, who runs a shelter for homeless battered women and children in New Jersey and teaches college students about domestic violence.
Said Ramos: “When I tell my students batterers and child molesters get custody, they go, ‘No, that’s ridiculous.’
“If you have money for a good lawyer, you can win anything.”
Abusers fight for custody as a backlash, to try to regain control and hurt the victims for leaving them, said Ramos.
“Batterers are insecure cowards and bullies,” she added. “The way to hurt (their ex-wives) and not have to pay child support is to get the children.”
Abusive men win custody of their kids in Canada as well, said Jan Reimer, provincial co-ordinator of the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters. “There’s a feeling that even if a perpetrator is abusing the mom, he doesn’t hurt the child,” she said. “The child is used as a pawn to get at the mother.”
Let’s count our blessings, folks, that the vast majority of custody cases are settled amicably outside court.
Read her full column here.