Top Story |
Huffington Post Writer Sides with Sandra Bullock & Husband in Custody Battle, Quotes F & F
 
"We see this all the time where the ex-wife lives with a crazy, harmful boyfriend who can't see his own kids because the court has prohibited him because he may have been convicted of drugs or abuse. Yet he can live with another father's kid," says Glenn Sacks, the executive director of Fathers & Families.
"I've seen many fathers try to bring this to the courts' attention and the courts don't want to hear it."
Author Jill Brooke (pictured) often writes insightful articles about families and divorce. Brooke's newest is Can a Stepmother Like Sandra Bullock Be a Better Parent than a Biological Mom Who's a Porn Star? (Huffington Post, 11/6/09).
Obviously the famous actress vs. porn star battle is unusual. Yet there are many stepmothers and second wives who step in and parent their husbands' kids because their mom can't or won't do it. These women are often caught in the middle of nasty custody battles, are maligned as interlopers for loving their stepchildren, and have little legal standing.
Brooke writes:
Rarely when fathers seek full custody of a child are the facts so stacked against the mother as in the case between "Monster Garage" star Jesse James and his ex-wife, porn star Janine Lindemulder. The couple are battling in court for custody of 5-year-old daughter Sunny.
Not only is Lindemulder a porn star, which is a career that one can argue has negative moral and lifestyle implications on a child's upbringing, but she is married to a felon and has an alleged drug problem. James on the other hand is married to Sandra Bullock, who has been called "America's sweetheart"...
Bullock and James have had sole custody of 5-year-old Sunny for the past six months since Lindemulder was in jail -- yes, jail -- for tax evasion.
Now Lindemulder has gone from the courts to the court of public opinion by appearing on ABC's Good Morning America and throwing what I'm calling the divorce equivalent of the "shot heard around the world" in accusing Sandra Bullock of being an interloping stepmother who is trying to "take away my daughter."
Read Brooke's full article here.
Slate.com & Salon.com Criticize the Fatherhood Movement
 Two major online publications--Salon.com and Slate.com--recently did articles about the men's and fathers movement. I wrote several blog posts analyzing the pieces. They are:
 Slate.com Fixes Misleading Attribution in Piece Criticizing Fatherhood Movement
Slate.com/Salon.com Criticize Movement's Worldview--Does the System 'Separate Innocent Fathers from Their Kids?'
'Critics say the [DV policy reform] movement reflects the tactics of domestic abusers themselves, minimizing existing violence, calling it mutual, and discrediting victims'
Fatherhood activists are 'the abuser's lobby'
'Wives' DV accusations are met with counter-accusations of "Parental Alienation Syndrome"—a medically unrecognized diagnosis'
Connecticut Supreme Court Establishes Basic Rights for those Accused of DV
Restraining orders based on false domestic violence accusations are a major problem. Recently we reported that the New Jersey Supreme Court has agreed to hear the Crespo restraining order case. Now the Connecticut Supreme Court has made a positive ruling in the Fernando A. case. Fathers & Families Board Member Robert Franklin, Esq. reports:
Perhaps the bedrock principle of due process is that, at a bare minimum, a defendant whose rights the state wants to infringe or remove entirely is entitled to notice of the charge against him/her and a hearing before an impartial arbiter. The most heinous mass murderer is entitled to those two basic things. Actually, as anyone who's heard the 'Miranda' rights repeated on a cops-'n-robbers television show knows, he/she's entitled to more than that, like an attorney, the right to not give evidence against him/herself, etc.
So it's interesting that, in the area of domestic violence law, those two basic rights are routinely abridged. The mere allegation of domestic violence, even by someone who's not a witness to the event, can be enough to deprive a person of his right of free speech (restraining orders prohibit the defendant from speaking to, e.g. his wife) and free association (they prohibit contact with his children).
Now the Connecticut Supreme Court has ruled that more is required to support the continuing effect of a temporary restraining order. Read about it here (Connecticut Law Tribune, 11/2/09). The order may be issued initially on little evidence and with no notice to the defendant and therefore no opportunity to defend himself. But that order can now remain in force only for a "reasonable" period of time. Needless to say, what constitutes a reasonable time will vary from court to court and case to case. Surely the Connecticut court will be forced to give some definition to the term in the future.
But,
In an opinion to be officially released this week, a divided court ruled that a defendant must be granted an evidentiary hearing at which the state must prove, by the civil standard of a preponderance of evidence, that the order of protection is a continued necessity.
At that hearing,
"The defendant may… testify or present witnesses on his own behalf, and may cross-examine any witnesses whom the state might elect to present against him," stated Justice Flemming L. Norcott Jr., who wrote the majority opinion.
That's exactly what Fernando A. didn't get from the State of Connecticut when his wife accused him of domestic violence. As we've come to expect, based on her statement alone, he was removed from his house and from all contact with his wife and children. His attorney requested a hearing to contest the continuing effect of the restraining order and was denied. It was his case that the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled on.
Now, this is far from a guarantee of a fair process. As the article points out, how long a defendant may be deprived of his home, his belongings, access to his children, bank accounts, etc., is an open question. Likewise, the standard of proof is the civil one of "preponderance of the evidence," which means, if the prosecution produces barely more than half the weight of evidence, it wins and the defendant's children may face an indefinite time apart from him. Why the standard of proof should be so low in what is in fact a criminal case, is beyond me.
And the state can prove its case with hearsay and, indeed, hearsay upon hearsay. The state can have a restraining order continued indefinitely on the hearsay written report of a police officer who was not present at the incident and whose report contains only the hearsay statements of the complainant. And needless to say, a defendant cannot cross-examine the piece of paper on which such a report is written.
But the defendant will have the opportunity to subpoena witnesses, including the police officer and the complainant.
For domestic violence advocates like Anne C. Dranginis, attorney for the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence, even that's too much. Her complaint is the one made by police officers everywhere - give defendants rights and you make it hard to convict them.
Dranginis said if women knew they would have to face their abuser in court a day or two after an arrest, that would have a "chilling, deterring effect" on abused spouses and partners bringing charges.
That may be true. If so, it's probably true in all cases in which violent crime is alleged. Surely it's difficult for the victim of any violent crime to confront his/her assailant in court. But Dranginis' argument ignores the obvious - that when the state seeks to deprive individuals of their basic rights, it must do so only via due process of law. Police and prosecutors never like that idea because it gets in the way of putting people in prison. It's worth noting that the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence stands firmly with the state against the individual on this one. Theirs is the stance of someone who's never faced the power of the state in criminal cases, who's never looked at years behind bars on a trumped up charge.
All in all, this is far from a perfect outcome, but it's definitely a step in the right direction, i.e. toward sanity and back to the concepts of due process that have made up the basis of Anglo-American law for centuries.
|
|
| Join Fathers & Families |
 Fathers and Families is a family court reform organization with a comprehensive strategy, an impressive history of fundraising success, and the largest reach of any advocacy group of its kind:
|
|
|
Please Take a Moment to Fill Out This Form |
Fathers & Families has a massive E-Newsletter list numbering over 50,000 members and supporters. However, we could do more with more information about our supporters. We ask that each person reading this email take a brief moment to fill out this form. It will help our movement organize better and grow stronger.
Please click here to fill out the form.
Glenn Sacks, MA
Executive Director, Fathers & Families
Ned Holstein, M.D., M.S.
Founder, Chairman of the Board, Fathers & Families |
|
|
Kids & Dads |
Joba & Harlan Chamberlain: ‘We Did It, Dad'
Young New York Yankees pitcher Joba Chamberlain was raised by a single father, Harlan Chamberlain, who was partially crippled with polio as a child and grew up in foster homes. Harlan also raised Joba's sister.
The Yankees recently beat the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series, and there were several special father-child moments in the aftermath. From Yahoo Sports:
The throng of media members around the makeshift stage seemed impenetrable, but Harlan Chamberlain motored his way through all of the cameras and notepads anyway. Reaching a blue barrier, he stopped his scooter, strained to look over a crowd of world champion Yankee ballplayers and tried to get a glimpse of his son. When that proved useless, he simply resorted to his considerable vocal chords.
"Jaaaaaaahba!" he yelled...
Joba Chamberlain put down the giant blue Yankee flag he had been waving up on stage. The big Yankees pitcher hopped off the stage, disappeared from the view of the Fox cameras and quickly made a beeline for his father. When they came together, they wrapped each other in a huge rocking bearhug.  It wasn't long before both were crying.
They said the same thing over and over.
"We did it, dad," Joba said.
"We did it," Harlan said.
"We did it," Joba said.
"We did it," Harlan said.
And on and on. They held tight for almost a minute. Their eyes were red when they let go.
You see the Yankees' $200+ million payroll and it's easy to get cynical...But then you see this very simple and very real scene of a 24-year-old pitcher sharing the hug of a lifetime with his dad and you remember that those father-son relationships — one of the only things that really matter — are at the very heart of this great game that we love.
The same dynamic was on display everywhere at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday night. Way up in the upper deck, a dad tossed his little son into the air whenever Hideki Matsui came through (which was often). A mid-20s hipster sitting next to them made sure to ask one of my co-workers to snap a photo of him and his pops with his grainy cell phone camera. CC Sabathia did his postgame interviews with his little son on his shoulders the whole time.
And while all of those tiny little snapshots meant the world to those pictured in them, none of them seemed quite as remarkable to outsiders as the one taken by the Chamberlains.
Read more here. |
|
|
 |
| "If I can be half the man and half the father he was, I'll be very, very happy and have a great life...He was out there after work, and doing the things he did with one arm. We made do with what we had...to be given what he was given and never to bat an eye, never look back." |
| —New York Yankees pitcher Joba Chamberlain, on Harlan, the crippled single father who raised him |
 |
|
|
|
