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Mom Killed the Kids, but at Least They Didn't Give Dad Custody

"She wanted to kill them. I let the court know that. But they took only one side...I loved them. I've been fighting for them."

Note that the woman, apparently a violent lunatic who allegedly had sent her ex threatening letters and set fire to his car, was granted an order of protection. Now, despite the fathers' repeated warnings to social workers, the kids are dead.

But at least they didn't give dad custody...

See the story below are also click here to learn more.

'Nassau County killed' them, boys' father cries
BY OREN YANIV and JANE H. FURSE
NY DAILY NEWS
February 25th 2008

The grieving father of two boys allegedly killed by their disturbed mother said social workers failed to heed his warnings they were in danger.

"Nassau County killed these kids," said Innocent Demesyeux, 28, who claimed county authorities ignored his pleas to protect Michael, 5, and Innocent Jr., 18 months, from their "violent" mother, Leatrice Brewer, 27.

Demesyeux, an ambulette driver who has been estranged from Brewer since 2004 and was locked in a custody battle with her, said he warned authorities she had threatened to kill the children as recently as last week.

"She wanted to kill them," Demesyeux told the Daily News. "I let the court know that. But they took only one side."

He said Brewer called him on Wednesday or Thursday sounding "crazier than normal," claiming people on MTV were talking to her and saying "they were making fun of her on TV and that this Spanish woman put voodoo on her."

A custody hearing was scheduled for today in Mineola Family Court, and fear of losing custody also may have caused Brewer to "snap," said Desmesyeux.

He said Brewer's violent behavior - including threatening letters and a 2004 incident in which she burned his car - has been going on for years.

Although she petitioned the court for an order of protection against him, he said she continued to be obsessed with spending time with him - resulting in the birth of Innocent Jr. 18 months ago.

"She basically was playing mind games," he said, saying that during her call last week, "she told me she wanted me to come over" even though she had an order of protection.

"I loved them," Desmesyeux said numbly. "I've been fighting for them."

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

DV Conference Report #11: Feminist DV Expert Criticizes Pizzey, Defends Excluding Teen Boys from Shelters

Background: At the conference "From Ideology to Inclusion: Evidence-Based Policy and Intervention in Domestic Violence" (held in Sacramento, California February 15-16), Erin Pizzey told me about domestic violence shelters' policies of excluding all males ages 12 or older from going to the shelters with their mothers. I wrote about it here.

Pizzey saw Stark's comments and was not pleased. She wrote:

"I am outraged at the inference that boys have never been able to go into shelters in America or refuges in England because the shelter/refuge can't monitor the boys' sexual or violent behaviour.  Why does this man think that the boys will be violent or sexual towards the girls/young women in the shelter?  This shows an appallingly biased mindset.

"Of course some of the girls and some of the boys will be violent and sexual, but it is the job of the shelter/refuge to work with those children just like they should work with the women in the shelter/refuges to help them learn appropriate behaviour.

"It is untrue to say that my refuge did not take boys into the central refuge.  I made it quite clear that the boys could, if they wished, live in the boy's project.  Many boys chose to stay with their mothers.

"Chiswick was a therapeutic community and everyone within the community worked to see that we treated each other with respect and love.  The problem with the shelters/refuges is that most of them are hostels and their purpose is to fund the feminist movements so they exclude young boys because they are the potential enemy."

Stark counters Pizzey's views below.

Feminist DV Expert Criticizes Pizzey, Defends Excluding Teen Boys from Shelters

Pizzey is "outraged" that I support excluding older male children from all shelters. But I never said anything of the kind. What I did was explain that some shelters exclude older boys because they lack the staffing to regulate violence and sexual acting out by these adolescents, females as well as males. In fact, this is no longer as much of a problem as it was 25 years ago, when Pizzey worked in a shelter.

Today, most refuges in England use free standing apartments, so families stay in tact. Here, the picture is mixed. Many of our shelters lack the funding or staff to regulate violence or sexual acting out in the facility and are not equipped for older males. Pizzey admits "some boys and girls" may be violent or sexual, but she thinks we should monitor these behaviors rather than try to prevent them by separating older boys from girls.

Shelters in this country and most in England are not social service agencies. They are spaces where women can be temporarily safe and consider their options. Critical to this experience is the idea that we do not tell women how to lead their lives or set any but the most basic rules to maintain the house.

Pizzey's approach was more like a mother superior who treated the residents at Chiswick as if they were immature and needed her personal guidance. We treat women who use the shelter not as problem women but as women who have had problems with abusive partners. In many of these relationships, they were punished, often brutally, for any behavior their partner considered inappropriate or disloyal. Restoring confidence in their own decision-making is a critical phase in recovery. This means letting women make their own mistakes. But many shelters feel they can't extend this philosophy to violence or sexual acting out.

Painting all shelters as feminist is also wrong. While many shelters in the U.S. were started by women's groups and some remain feminist in their orientation, the majority of U.S. facilities were started by the Y, the Salvation Army and other religious, community-based or free standing organizations. Unless these facilities have the staff and space, they too exclude older boys. So this policy has nothing to do with feminism or man- hating. And it is designed to protect boys as well as girls.

Many shelters also exclude women with addictions or serious psychiatric problems. Since many battered women suffer from these problems, this policy also sets limits on what we can do. Again, however, it reflects widely held beliefs about what is safe, not a bias against addiction or mental illness.

I pointed out that Pizzey herself segregated older males in a house behind the main refuge. She admits this, but claims boys had the choice to stay in the refuge with their moms. This may be true. But when we visited Chiswick several years after it opened, there were no male adolescents in the refuge.

The most absurd part of Pizzey's response is her description of Chiswick as a "therapeutic community." When we visited, there were 90 women and children staying in the 5 bedroom house, more than l5 in a room. Pizzey claimed, "If they can manage this, they can manage anything." Since even this chaos was preferable to the violent situations women and children had left behind, it may ultimately have helped women gain confidence in their ability to survive on their own. But there was nothing even remotely resembling therapy taking place.

As several letter writers and Glenn Sacks, I am a feminist as well as a man. This means I believe in full equality, liberty and justice for women as well as men. Women in the U.S. earn a third of what men do for the same work; still do 90% of child care, 90% of housework, 85% of all cooking; represent a tiny proportion of those in political power (though they register and vote in larger numbers than men), etc.

It is only in my lifetime that women in many advanced countries got the right to vote, to sit on juries, to go to the top universities and professional schools, to charge husbands with rape or to enter corporate boardrooms.

I have no question that women can be as violent and abusive as men. But these inequalities and numerous others I could list with more space, mean that women enter personal relationships on an unequal footing with men, though ostensibly both have the same formal rights. It is this unequal footing, exploited by too many men with coercion and control, that drives the millions of women to seek shelter or legal or police protection each year.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

'You almost had your hooks in me, didn't you dear?'

"You almost had your hooks in me, didn't you dear?
You nearly had me roped and tied
Altar-bound, hypnotized
Sweet freedom whispered in my ear...

"I never realised the passing hours of evening showers
A slip noose hanging in my darkest dreams
I'm strangled by your haunted social scene
Just a pawn out-played by a dominating queen
It's four o'clock in the morning
Damn it listen to me good
I'm sleeping with myself tonight
Saved in time, thank God my music's still alive"

We have a collection of divorce songs on this blog, including Toby Keith's Who's That Man?, Tim McGraw's Do You Want Fries With That?, Sting's I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying (later recorded by Toby Keith), and others. Elton John almost got married in the early 1970s, and "Someone saved my life tonight" is about how his friends talked him out of it at the last minute. It's powerful and at the same time funny, particularly the album version with its funereal tones.

The lines: "I would have walked head on into the deep end of the river / Clinging to your stocks and bonds / Paying your H.P. demands forever" remind one a bit of Paul McCartney's situation, don't they?

To watch Elton John performing the song live in 1976, dressed in ridiculous 1970s gear, click here.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

Gina Elise of 'Pin Ups for Vets' Thanks Our Readers

Background: Last month I praised Gina Elise (pictured) for her "Pin Ups for Vets", describing it as a "worthy project." My blog post on it is here. Elise says she "came up with the idea to recreate a nostalgic pin-up calendar that would serve three purposes":

"1. The calendars would be sold to raise funds for our hospitalized Veterans.

"2. The calendars would be delivered as gifts to our ill and injured Veterans with messages of appreciation from the donors.

"3. The calendars would be sent to our deployed troops to help boost morale and to let them know that Americans back home are thinking of them."

Gina recently wrote me a letter:

"I just wanted to thank you for doing a mention of my fundraising project a few weeks back.  I have returned from my trip to visit the Wounded Warriors at Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval Hospital.  Many of your readers purchased calendars to be donated, so I took those with me to distribute at these hospitals.
 
"I wanted to let you know that I had such a great visit and can't tell you how much the Wounded Warriors appreciated the visit and the donated calendars!  It's a trip I will always remember.

"So, a big thank you goes out to you.  I had a lot of momentum going from that trip, so last Saturday, I visited the VA Hospital in Long Beach to spend some time with the Veterans there and give out more donated 2008 calendars!  I am planning many more hospital trips in the coming months.
 
"Just wanted to write a quick note to you and say 'Thanks!'"

Pictures of Gina at Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval Hospital can be seen here. Gina's website is www.pinupsforvets.com.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

Anybody Know This Lady?

Can you imagine a man ever saying, "I thought I'd use the gift as an opportunity to fix one of my wife's flaws"?

The Onion satire below reminds me of Girlfriend Changes Man Into Someone She's Not Interested In (3/28/01).

Attempt To Buy Gift For Boyfriend Results In Hatred Of Boyfriend
The Onion, February 20, 2008

SIERRA VISTA, AZ—After a week spent searching for the perfect birthday gift for Jed Lowry, her boyfriend of eight months, Susan Novecky realized that she, in fact, despises him.

"I tried to find a book he might like, but now that I think about it, the only reading materials I've ever seen in his apartment are old issues of Maxim and Dennis Miller's The Rants," Novecky said.

"Then I thought I'd use the gift as an opportunity to fix one of his flaws, but why bother buying cologne for someone who doesn't even own a decent pair of goddamn pants?"

When Novecky decided to just call Lowry and ask him what he wanted, Lowry said he needed a new Xbox controller because he spilled beer all over the other one.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

Once Again, Murder Victim David Harris Is Mistreated by the Media

"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

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."

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

A Classy Response from Ad Age Editor in Wake of Harsh Column

Background: A couple weeks ago, I criticized Pepsi for its Super Bowl ad 'Magnetic Attraction.' In the commercial, Justin Timberlake gets beat up and is in severe pain.

In general our protests have been against ads which depict men and particularly fathers as lazy, dumb, or irresponsible. The Pepsi ad was an attempt at slapstick humor and not as offensive, but I thought it was still over the line. I suggested that readers who agreed with me contact Pepsi and BBDO, the agency which created the ad.

Yesterday, Jonah Bloom, an editor and columnist at Advertising Age, one of the leading advertising trade publications, fired back at men's and fathers' activists over our 2007 protest against the advertising agency Arnold Worldwide, the Pepsi issue, and others. In When It Comes to Whining About Ads, Father Knows Best (2/18/08), Bloom depicts advertising guru Richard Smaglick of www.fathersandhusbands.org, who has worked with me on these issues and campaigns, as "unhinged" and an "extremist." To read my response to Bloom, see my morning blog post Ad Industry Hits Back at Fatherhood Activists.

Smaglick and Bloom had a long talk this morning, and afterwards Bloom sent us a response to my critique of his column.  While I don't think Bloom is going to be signing up with us anytime soon, I thought he showed some class both during the conversation and in the letter.

In response, I wrote, "I'm impressed with your response and your willingness to rethink the issue. If you don't mind, I think it would be nice if I could post [the relevant section] so my readers can see it."

Bloom gave me approval. He wrote:

"Nice dissection of my column. I would say you are wasted in finding fault in slapstick commercials - but I've just promised Richard I'm going to try to take the issue more seriously and at least try to see how they might be contributing to socio-economic issues such as fatherlessness and inter-partner violence against men. I find the whole concept a stretch, but I really am going to try looking at it from a different point of view.

"I suspect many of us spend too much time with people who reinforce our narrow points of view, and I'm sure I'm no different--I'll try to put myself in your shoes. In return I asked Richard to consider whether just maybe there's a nugget of truth in my point of view that your approach--NOT the issues you say you want to tackle--is misguided and not the best use of your time."

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

DV Conference Report #4: Feminist DV Expert Evan Stark Defends Excluding 12-Year-Old Boys in Abusive Families from Joining Their Mothers in Shelters

Background: I've been detailing the historic, one-of-a-kind conference "From Ideology to Inclusion: Evidence-Based Policy and Intervention in Domestic Violence" (held in Sacramento, California February 15-16)--to learn more, click here.

In my recent blog post DV Conference Report #3: 12-Year-Old Boys in Abusive Families Aren't Allowed to Go to Shelters with Their Mothers, but Instead Go to Foster Care, I discussed domestic violence shelters' policies of excluding all males ages 12 or older from going to the shelters with their mothers. I wrote:

"One morning during the conference, I had breakfast with two remarkable ladies, Erin Pizzey and Patricia Overberg. Pizzey founded the first battered women's shelter in the world in 1971, and Overberg was the first battered women's shelter director in California to admit male victims of domestic violence to a shelter.  As bad as things are, both of them told me things which were amazing and horrifying. Pizzey told the following story:

"A woman was being abused by her violent husband and sought shelter.  She had three children, two young ones and a 12-year-old boy.  She wanted to go to a battered women's shelter and, of course, take her children with her.  However, the feminists who run the battered women's shelters in England have a policy that no boys aged 12 or older are allowed into the shelters.

"The woman was presented with the equivalent of Sophie's Choice.  Either she could return to her violent husband, and risk both herself and her children, or she could submit to the feminist policy.  She chose the latter.  Rather than allow the boy to stay with his mother and his siblings in the battered women's shelter, the boy instead had to wait in the police station, while his mother and siblings went off to the shelter.  The English equivalent of child protective services was called, and the boy was picked up and placed in foster care!

"Overberg told me the same thing happens in California and in much of the United States."

Stark is an influential member of the domestic violence establishment which researchers at the conference often criticized, and was also an opponent of our successful Campaign Against PBS's Father-Bashing Breaking the Silence in 2005

This morning, Stark posted a comment on my blog defending the policy excluding males ages 12 or older from joining their mothers in battered women's shelters. I deleted Stark's comment so I could devote a full blog post to it here. I disagree with Stark's view (and the second sentence in the first paragraph below in particular), but I'm pleased that he is interested in a dialogue of sorts. Stark writes:

"The issue Pizzey raises, of young men not being able to come to shelter with their moms, has been a serious problem since the beginning of the shelter movement. The reason for this policy, which you don't mention, is that many shelters take younger women, including girls in their teens, and the boys in families are often older than some of the females in the facility and there are no provisions to monitor their behavior-- violent or sexual.

"At Chiswick, Pizzey didn't admit boys to the shelter, either, but housed them in a separate building. She could do this because she had a large grant from a private company to buy the houses. But most shelters in England, as here, run on a shoestring budget and, in England, were located in Housing Estates (equivalent to our housing projects) and had no separate space for male children.

"Today, many shelters in England use free-standing apartments rather than houses and have no restrictions on male youth coming with their mothers. You are shocked that some of these boys have to go to foster care. But, as you rightly point out, this is often preferable (and is temporary) to staying in a home where all families members are exposed to the man's violence."

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

DV Conference Report #5: Erin Pizzey--'In the early days of the battered women's movement, it was men who helped give us support'

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.

I have previously detailed some of what Erin Pizzey had to say at the conference, but she said enough to fill a small book.  (She is pictured above--she's the blonde lady in front of one of her battered women's shelters surrounded by supportive protesters.)

It is interesting to see how she built the women's shelters in England even though she was largely in conflict with the English feminist movement at the time.  She said when she first went to a UK women's group she heard all sorts of manbashing.  She said she did not buy into it, for a few reasons. 

For one, she considered herself lucky to be able to be home with her children while they were young and have her husband support them.  Also, she grew up with a violent, manipulative, dangerous mother who "beat me regularly because I look like my father." 

Her father was no prize either, as he also had a violent temper. Pizzey grew up in China and her father was an English diplomatic official there before, during, and after World War II.  She says that her parents were so bad that when her city was overrun by the Chinese Communists in 1949, her parents were held as prisoners for over three years--and she was happy about it.

She says that in the early days of the battered women's movement in England, it was men who stepped forward and gave her the support she needed to help battered women. 

One of her earliest breaks came when a man bought a house in which she could house her shelter.  She said that the men she approached were very willing to help women. 

She also said that later on, when she asked men to assist her in creating services for male victims of domestic violence, the wealthy men who helped her build shelters for women "wouldn't give a dime" to help men.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

DV Conference Report #6: How a Child Grows up to Be an Abuser

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.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

DV Conference Report #7: Laura P.--'I never felt like a victim until I dealt with the police'

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, Peterson 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 im.

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 nonex