...she needs help. Standing on the court steps he said:

"I think she needs some serious help and I hope she gets it."

I think men should be chivalrous and protective of women to a point, but it seems like whenever a woman does something horrible like this to a man, he makes excuses for her and is such a goddamned lemming that I wonder why I bother being a men's advocate. This guy isn't as bad as some, but the "she tried to kill me, let's try to understand how she feels" stuff is rather weak.

According to the BBC's Woman Who Poisoned Husband Jailed (5/9/08):

"A conwoman who tried to poison her husband with rat killer and anti-depressant tablets has been jailed by a judge at York Crown Court.

"Heather Mook, 58, of Heslington Road, York, will be detained for at least five years as a result of the judge giving her an indeterminate sentence.

"Mook gave her fourth husband, John, the poison to confuse him as she fleeced his mother out of £43,000.

"The judge said she was being jailed for the protection of the public.

"The court heard that as part of her ploy to confuse her husband she mixed rat poison with his spaghetti as she set about stealing his mother's life savings, money earmarked for her care."

The full article can be seen here. Thanks to Malcolm, a reader, for sending it.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

When Women Pay Child Support: Court Allows Anne Heche to Skip a Payment

"You've never heard complaints about paying child support until it's a woman who has to pay it."--Seattle Family Law Attorney Lisa Scott

"Courts almost never allow men to get downward modifications on their child support. I represented a guy who earned $33,000 a month and paid $12,000 in child support. His company went bust and his income crashed down to zero.

"We went in and asked for a downward modification--not an elimination of child support, but a downward modification. The judge said 'no,' and told him 'tough luck--you're capable of earning $30,000 a month, so go do it. I don't care if you live under a highway underpass in the meantime, just pay your support as ordered.'"--Los Angeles family law attorney Adam Sacks

Anne Heche (pictured) is having a hard time paying her child support and it's a good thing she's a woman, so she gets preferential treatment. Apparently Heche has had some career troubles and bad luck and the court is allowing her to skip an upcoming payment. The court is probably correct--I don't know the details--but were the genders reversed, I doubt the court would be so accommodating.

The full article is Anne Heche Doesn't Have to Pay for July (EOnline, 5/14/08).

I've previously discussed Anne Heche's divorce in A Fathers' Rights Perspective on Anne Heche's Divorce/Custody Settlement and A Crucial Point Missed in the Anne Heche/Coleman Laffoon Custody Battle. On the subject of women paying alimony, see From WomenPayingSupport.com--'Be a Man...Don't Ask for Spousal Support.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

Dartmouth Students Rebel Against Feminist Professor, She Sues Her Students (Part III)

Background: In my blog posts Dartmouth Students Rebel Against Feminist Professor's Manbashing, She Reacts by....Suing Her Students! (Part I) and Part II, I explained how a group of Dartmouth students rebelled against a feminist professor and her manbashing. The professor, rather than engaging in debate, pretended to be a victim, cancelled classes for a week, scurried off to another school to teach, and said she is going to sue her students.

Maureen O'Connor of the IvyGate blog writes:

"Few of Venkatesan's students deny disliking her; they just say it had nothing to do with race, gender, or any other federally-protected characteristic. Rather, the lecturer embodied that special brand of neurotic pedagogical tyranny that includes making rules against questions, refusing to interact with students, and, according to www.thedartmouth.com, 'cancellation of class for a week after the class applauded a student who contradicted Venkatesan’s opinions about post-modernism.'

"Spontaneous applause during a class on literary criticism? Obviously, there is something very wrong with this picture, so outrageously shocking as to shake Venkatesan to her very core: In a class at an Ivy League university, students were paying attention. Worse: They were engaged, and they cared.

"'I was horrified,' Venkatesan said. 'My responsibility is not to stifle them, but when they clapped at his comment, I thought that crossed the line ... I was facing intolerance of ideas and intolerance of freedom of expression.' ...She canceled class because the incident caused her 'intellectual and emotional distress,' she said.

"Then again, being outsmarted by a room full of eighteen-year-olds must be pretty humiliating. A kinder choice would have been emitting a spontaneous snore or two, then preoccupying themselves with a more innocuous form of disrespect, like text messaging during class or ostentatious yawning."

Let's see, the feminist professor is suing her students for questioning her views, and she has the goddamn gall to complain about being the victim of "intolerance of ideas and intolerance of freedom of expression." Wow.

O'Connor calls the professor "Litigious and Passive-Aggressive." That certainly seems apt.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

Dartmouth Students Rebel Against Feminist Professor, She Sues Her Students (Part IV)

Background: In my blog posts Dartmouth Students Rebel Against Feminist Professor's Manbashing, She Reacts by....Suing Her Students! (Part I), Part II, and Part III, I explained how a group of Dartmouth students rebelled against a feminist professor and her manbashing. The professor, rather than engaging in debate, pretended to be a victim, cancelled classes for a week, scurried off to another school to teach, and is now suing her students.

Some of what the students had to endure reminds me of what I saw when I went to graduate school at UCLA in the late 1990s. In my column Why Males Don't Go to College (She Thinks, 11/13/02) I wrote:

"I recall, for example, my Latin American folklore class, taught by a woman whom we'll call Ms. Smith. Ms. Smith is a kind, gentle, elderly lady whose bigotry rings as loud and clear as that of any stereotypical racist Southern cracker. The sometimes subtle, sometimes slap in the face prejudice which males endured in her class is typical of what occurs in many modern university classes.

"Early in the semester Ms. Smith informed the class that all folklore was widely believed to be a code of misogyny that was developed and employed by men to suppress women. Ms. Smith did say she considered this to be a slight exaggeration, yet whenever a folktale contained a negative portrayal of a woman, it was cited as evidence of the rampant misogyny in men's dark souls. What Ms. Smith never explained was why this 'misogynistic' folklore contained far more negative portrayals of men than of women.

"Ms. Smith also informed us that folklore was largely invented by women, because it was women who had the 'long, tiresome, boring jobs' and thus the motivation to invent it. Unanswered were two questions. One, why would we say that folklore was misogynistic if it had, in fact, largely been invented by women? Two, did we really imagine that the men of that era--or at least 98% of them--did not also have 'long, tiresome, boring' jobs?

"Ms. Smith wrung her hands over the stigma, enshrined in some Spanish folklore, against romantic or sexual activity by Spanish women whose men had gone off to fight the invading and occupying Moors. This was, she said, another example of the oppressive social controls which men placed upon women. What Ms. Smith never mentioned was the nature of the oppressive social controls which made 12 and 13 year-old Spanish boys march obediently off to war for years at a time, many of them never to return.

"Most of the males sat in the back of Ms. Smith's class, an arrangement which started to feel more and more like the back of the bus. The females in front were fully engaged, enjoying the class and its anti-male tales. Not surprisingly, many of the males were disengaged, and seemed to be there simply to put in their time.

"One day, after an hour or so discussing tale after tale where Ms. Smith concluded that the men involved were always wrong or evil or cruel or stupid and the women were always right and good and kind and smart, Ms. Smith began softly describing a soothing tale of a father and his daughter setting off through the woods to go to the big city.

"'The father....and his daughter....rode together... as they went through the beautiful Spanish countryside,' Ms. Smith said softly.

"I sat back and closed my eyes.

"'They...were on their way to the big city....the daughter had never seen the city before.....she was happy that her father was taking her...'

"I imagined a special, loving, father-daughter bond.

"'..and then.....he rapes her.'

"Jolted, I sat up. A male in the back of the classroom pushed his heavy book off of the table and it made a loud, crashing sound.

"An accident? Or a protest?...

To read more and to discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

'When the Spanish influenza was killing people by the hundreds, George Eastman paid for health care for every affected child in the city'

Background: In a society which pays far too little respect to its elders, authors Kim Morin and Rita Blockman did a wonderful and unusual thing--they interviewed and tape-recorded the life stories of individuals between the ages of 88 and 104. Their book, Listen to the Wisest of All, is a series of vignettes which detail the lives of many of the men and women who lived through the World Wars and the Great Depression.

I gave my 80-year-old mother the book for Mother's Day, saying, "The book has two benefits. One, it's very interesting to read about these people's lives and what they experienced. Two, reading about people that old will make you feel young." She has been enjoying the book on both counts.

My first excerpt from the book dealt with the greatest and sometimes most elusive of all things--a good marriage. To read it, see 'Fancy amenities don’t make one happy. It was these simple times we treasured...'

In the excerpt below, 98-year-old Bob Chamberlin talks about the Great Depression, his father, the generosity of George Eastman during the massive influenza epidemic that broke out after World War I, and Eastman's strange death.

Bob Chamberlin's Story
(Excerpted from Listen to the Wisest of All by Kim Morin and Rita Blockman)

Bob and his family were deeply affected by the Depression. His father was out of work, as were so many others. All needed money and were struggling simply to keep their homes and obtain enough food and gasoline. Bob stated, “It was a grim time for everybody.”

He chose to give up his graduate work and go to work to earn money for his family. It was fortuitous that his talents fit nicely with President Roosevelt’s plan to “make work a program of worthwhile projects that are largely man built—not [built] by machine.”

He vividly remembers driving to a park and dropping off his father and another gentleman who had been a banker. These men were given a pick and shovel and put to work.

Bob states that, in one way, the manual labor felt demeaning. Yet he remembers the sense of pride they felt in doing something for which they earned money and gained instant gratification from their efforts, instead of sitting at home ruminating over their misfortune. During the following years, President Roosevelt continued to expand existing parks and lay out new parks, thereby creating more jobs for people who needed them...

To read more and to discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

Advice Columnist Amy Dickinson Gives Some Harsh Advice to Woman about Her Man

"Dear Amy: My boyfriend and I were watching my 5-year-old niece. She came to me and told me that my boyfriend said he was going to punch her in the nose. I know that when my boyfriend is playing with the kids he plays around and says things, but he is adamant that he didn't say that.

"I spoke with my niece's parents, and we chalked it up as a misunderstanding.

"But now my boyfriend does not want her playing with him, and he refuses to watch her unless someone is with him every minute.

"He is in law enforcement and says he sees things like this all the time, situations in which a kid accuses an adult of doing something and the adult gets in trouble. His exact words were, 'God forbid she said I touched her.'

"I don't know how to get him to understand that she is a 5-year-old kid with a vivid imagination, and I feel this might be the end of our relationship.

"HELPLESS AND CLUELESS"

I thought the boyfriend in the scenario above was overreacting a little but I was floored by the response by advice columnist Amy Dickinson. Dickinson writes:

"Most of what young children say has some basis in reality. You should believe your niece but also assume that perhaps your boyfriend was horsing around and that his statement was taken out of context.

"Your boyfriend is the adult in this scenario, and it is his job to put things in perspective. Being in law enforcement, he should be more -- not less -- understanding about this incident. The fact that he is so punitive and blames a 5-year-old for this incident highlights his own immaturity.

"I do agree with him about this one thing, however: He should not be alone with your niece because he can't be trusted to treat her well."
 
The full column is Boyfriend defensive about girl's comment--thanks to Justin, a reader, for sending it.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

UK Mirror: Shock as paternity tests reveal different dads

From the Maury Povich Show to real life. From the UK Mirror's Shock as paternity tests reveal different dads:

"More than one in three women seeking paternity tests discover that the man they thought was the father of their child is not the biological dad.

"Some mums needed tests done on five different men to identify the real father.

"In the past year, the number of women giving the wrong name as parent of their child has gone up to five per cent to 39 per cent, according to paternity testing firm Anglia DNA. Director Dr Thomas Haizel said in such cases, women were asked to name the men they had had sex with in the month leading up to becoming pregnant.

"He added: 'One client gave up, claiming, "It could be any number of people." The same woman had already tried five different potential fathers with no positive result.'"

On a related note, see my blog post Remember, Family Breakdown Is All Men's Fault...

Thanks to Kris, a reader, for sending the UK Mirror story.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

'For women, online vengeance serves as both catharsis and punishment...it's the most public way of dragging down an ex-lover'

"The devastating power of the internet as a tool of revenge was revealed in January by actress Jane Slavin who took 'e-venge' on her lover, world-famous composer Michael Nyman, after he spurned her with no explanation.

"Posing as a beautiful woman called 'Lucia', she began a flirtatious online relationship with Nyman, who began bombarding 'Lucia' with explicit e-mails.

"The crowning moment of her revenge came when 'Lucia' agreed to meet Nyman in a café in North London. At the appointed time, it was Jane, of course, who walked in.

"To compound the humiliation of the man who wrote the haunting film score for The Piano, Slavin wrote an online diary drawing attention to Nyman's physical failings...

"In the U.S., there are countless websites and blogs dedicated to wronged women and the men who have hurt them - and the UK is fast following. Boiling bunnies is a thing of the past: revenge, it seems, is a dish best served up on a web page.

"For the women, online vengeance serves as both catharsis and punishment. It is also possibly the most public way of dragging down an ex-lover - the modern-day equivalent of putting him in the stocks and pelting him with rotten tomatoes."

The article "Don't get mad, get E-venge!" UK Daily Mail, 5/8/08) details all of the vindictive, vicious things (allegedly) mistreated women do to the exes who (supposedly) mistreated them. It's an odd societal disconnect: we often see these "hell hath no fury/you go girl" type stories, yet our society is in denial about the most common vehicle for women to extract their revenge--the family court system.

Does anybody really believe that the women who do the vicious acts described in the article wouldn't use the system against their exes? In fact, there's no better vehicle for revenge--the kids can be (and sometimes are) poisoned against their fathers and held as de facto hostages of the vindictive mother, child support and alimony are used as weapons, and the overwhelmed and anti-male family law system often unwittingly enables such behavior.

I'm also amused at these women's bottomless sense of being wronged and how it's always his fault. The best example is Laura, who started an affair with a married man, and then is an outraged victim she discovers that--gasp--he's cheating on her with other women!

The full article is here. As usual, anything a woman does to a man, no matter how outrageous or destructive, is A-OK.

I enjoyed author Laura Topham's clueless line about the Jane Slavin/Michael Nyman (pictured above)--Nyman dropped Slavin "without an explanation." Actually, what Slavin's subsequent behavior says about her provides plenty of "explanation" why Nyman wanted out.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

Should Former Sex Offender Be Banned from Son's Graduation?

From the Associated Press' Sex Offender Banned from Son's Graduation (5/10/08):

"School and law enforcement officials have told a St. Joseph man that he can't attend his son's eighth-grade graduation because he is a convicted sex offender and isn't allowed on school property.

"James Jones, 36, said he may go anyway although the Buchanan County Sheriff's Department has told him he would be arrested and face up to four years in prison.

"'I've already been punished for this. This isn't about me anymore. Now they're punishing my kids, and that's taking it a little too far,' said Jones, who served five years in prison after being convicted in 1990 of forcible rape of a 15-year-old girl when he was 17.

"'I'm always preaching education to my children. How does that make me look if I'm not there at graduation?'..

"Sheriff's investigator Shawn Collie said although Jones has argued against the school property restriction more than any other offender, he has signed an agreement acknowledging he knows about the restriction. That means he can't claim ignorance if found on school grounds, such as for the May 22 graduation.

"'We'll be there. And we'll arrest him if he's there,' Collie said."

A few thoughts:

1) Regarding the rape, he was convicted, so let's assume he's guilty. "Forcible rape" is pretty bad stuff, and it's real hard to feel sorry for a rapist. Yes, Jones was only 17, and that's young, but it's old enough to know it's wrong to cause other people pain. And I'm sure that two decades later the young woman he assaulted still suffers because of it.

2) Prison is supposed to be about punishment and rehabilitation. Rape is a terrible crime, but Jones paid for it with five long years in prison--upon his release, he's paid his debt to society and should not be subjected to further punishment.

3) The best thing for society is if criminals are able to be rehabilitated, and from what we see in the article, it sounds as if Jones is an excellent and admirable example of this rehabilitation. For this, Jones deserves credit, not exile.

4) It probably will mean a lot to his son for him to be at his graduation, and will be hurtful if he can't attend.

All in all, I side with Jones.

Thanks to Jeremy, a reader, for sending the story.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

Christian Groups' Hysterics over New CA. Pro-Gay Marriage Decision

Sometimes you find out a marriage is over when you come home and your house is empty except for a note from your soon-to-be former wife. Sometimes it happens after a fight. Sometimes it happens when you find out about an affair.

I found out my marriage will soon be over in a different way--the Campaign for Children and Families and the Alliance for Marriage Foundation told me.

According to the Campaign for Children and Families, today's California Supreme Court pro-gay marriage ruling in the case Lockyer v. City and County of San Francisco "has destroyed the civil institution of marriage." The Alliance for Marriage Foundation says the decision has "struck down marriage." All because the ruling would allow the 2% of the population who are gay to marry. Read the full story of the catastrophe here.

Ignorant me, I thought that marriage was under greater threat from the fact that hundreds of thousands of innocent fathers have been booted out of their homes with little judicial oversight via restraining orders based on false domestic violence allegations. Or that courts allow children of divorce to be dragged half way across the country so mothers can exclude their fathers from their lives. Or that the abusive child support system often traps low income men in a hopeless spiral of debt. Or that family courts are allowing military parents to be permanently removed from their children's lives while they're overseas. I was wrong--it's gays being allowed to marry that is the real threat.

On KABC Matt Barber of Concerned Women for America said that the California Supreme Court had "imposed gay marriage on the citizens of California." How exactly is anybody "imposing" gay marriage on me?

The announcement is the second terrible blow to my marriage in the past 18 months. In October 2006, the Campaign for Children and Families informed me that in signing a bill to allow California gay couples to file taxes as if they were married, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had "put the last nail in the coffin for marriage between a man and a woman in California" and "Terminated [the] Last Piece of Marriage."

The worst part of this is that these tax changes may also lure my teenage son into the gay lifestyle. If the Campaign for Children and Families is correct about the dire threat gays pose to heterosexuals and heterosexuality, perhaps the only thing that's kept my son from doing it so far was the tax disadvantage he knew he'd face one day...

Feminist sparkplug Gloria Allred represented some of the plaintiffs in the case decided today. Gloria and I don't agree on much--we once debated family law issues on the radio and after an hour of battle I said, "Gloria, any common ground here?" and she replied, "Still looking, Glenn." But she's right on this issue and I congratulate her and the gay groups which won today.

As for "protecting families," Gloria's victory in the 1996 Burgess case--which allowed custodial mothers to move children thousands of miles away, thus destroying the father-child bond--genuinely harmed families. Today's Allred victory did not.

Ron Prentice, the executive director of California Family Council, says:

"In November, the people will have an opportunity to overrule the Court's decision by passing a constitutional amendment - and California's voters must respond in strength and number."

Great. So while the California shared parenting movement--the real defenders of families--remains unfunded and starved, these fake "defenders of families" are going to pour millions of dollars into a campaign against gays. I guess these people never heard their elementary school teacher say, "If the other person hasn't done anything to bother you, then leave them alone."

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

Wife Steals Deployed Husband's Money, Is Convicted--but Still Comes out on Top

According to Jury convicts wife of forging checks while her husband was serving in Iraq (Minneapolis Star Tribune, 5/2/08):

"Dana M. Kieser deceived and defrauded her husband when he was at his most vulnerable, serving in Iraq with the Minnesota National Guard, a Ramsey County jury heard Friday.

"She closed out John Kieser's retirement and college-savings accounts, forged his name on two checks totaling almost $25,000, bought a home in Fargo, N.D., and sold their home in Maplewood -- all without his knowledge or consent, prosecutor Laura Rosenthal said.

"Dana Kieser showed little emotion when the verdicts were read. John Kieser was in the courtroom, too, but he clearly took no joy in them. He was served with divorce papers while home on leave in early January 2007 but still held out hope for reconciliation, even two months after his tour of duty ended in July.

"The couple's contested divorce is pending in North Dakota. Dana Kieser said during testimony that she has custody of their two boys, ages 6 and 4...

"Rosenthal said that Dana Kieser left her husband essentially homeless and that he never has and never will live in the Fargo house.

"District Judge James Clark set sentencing for June 12. Dana Kieser is unlikely to serve any time in prison. The presumptive sentence for check forgery is a stayed sentence. The amount of restitution would be determined by probation officials."

There are many, many truths which this case illustrates. Here's a few:

1) It is usually the woman, not the man, who initiatives the divorce and breaks up the family, and it is often done without a genuinely compelling reason.

2) It is often husbands, not wives, who "hold out hope for reconciliation" and try to work the marriage out.

3) Many men are in harm's way in Iraq or Afghanistan and are--let's be blunt--stabbed in the back by their wives. Sometimes it's through wives looting them, as in this story. More often it's through women initiating unwarranted divorces and then moving "back home" with their kids, and then making weighty financial demands upon the father. As I explained in my co-authored column Protect Deployed Parents’ Rights (Trenton Times & several others, 11/11/06), "Many married parents deploy overseas, never suspecting that their parenthood essentially ended the day they left home." In most cases, the victimized parent is the father. It is indicative of our society's disregard for men and fathers that there is no negative social stigma attached to these acts.

This represents a societal change, and a bad one. When my grandfather was fighting against Germany in the Argonne Forest in 1918, can you imagine what the reaction would have been if my grandmother had left him? She would have been condemned--rightly--for betraying her husband. Her relatives would have told her, "How can you betray him when he is in danger? How could you take a man's kids away while he is abroad? Why are you breaking up your family unnecessarily?" This ethos is long gone now. (To learn more, see my blog posts Reflections on Veterans Day Part I and Part II.)

4) I had to laugh at the line, "[Prosecutor] Rosenthal said that Dana Kieser left her husband essentially homeless." Actually, we don't have any problem with that--the wife could have made a false claim that the husband "threatened her" or that she is "afraid of him" and she would have easily gotten a restraining order which would have barred him from his home and made him homeless. Hundreds of thousands of women do this every year and nobody even blinks. To learn more, see my co-authored column Letterman Case Shows Problems with Restraining Orders (Albuquerque Tribune, 1/17/06).

5) I get letters all the time from soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan who tell me that their wives have cleaned out their accounts and disappeared, and I doubt that 1 in 10 of them ever gets justice for it. My first thought in reading this story was, "Dana Kieser must have really screwed up--women get away with this all the time."

6) After all of this, "Dana Kieser is unlikely to serve any time in prison. The presumptive sentence for check forgery is a stayed sentence. The amount of restitution would be determined by probation officials." So all that happens might be that she is asked to pay some of it back, though even that amount will probably be light, because, after all, she's a single mother with two kids to take care of.

7) Dana Kieser lied and deceived but she has custody and probably will keep custody and John Kieser will face stiff child support obligations. Despite her crime and the criminal conviction, in the end, she wins and he loses.

The full Minneapolis Star Tribune article is here. More details can be found in this video and also this older article.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

Feminists Angry at John McCain over Comment on Daily Show

Women's Studies professor Courtney Martin of www.feministing.com recently wrote:

"John McCain was on The Daily Show last night and wouldn't you know he took time out to acknowledge one of his 'very attractive young woman' detractors at a recent town hall meeting who was wearing a shirt that said, 'John McCain Doesn't Represent Me'...

"According to John boy, 'I called on her and asked her what it was that she'd like to say. That's the essence...' But Stewart interrupted his moment of town hall poetics and asked the key question: 'And what did she say?' So McCain was forced to answer, chuckling the whole time, 'She said, "Why did I want to discriminate against women?" I tried to defend my belief in equal opportunity for all in this country.'

"Except of course, when it comes to a little thing called bodily integrity. And good thing this little minx was attractive so that McCain deigned to call on her. And good thing he chuckled through retelling her very apt question. And good thing he understands the breadth and depth of 'equal opportunity.'

"Don't sleep people. This guy doesn't have what's best for 'attractive young women' in mind."

Having read this, I wondered what assault of women's "bodily integrity" Senator McCain had made. The incident Courtney Martin discusses occurs at about 3:20 in the tape. It is, in my mind, more evidence that modern feminists can always, always find some fault with men whose politics or views they don't like, and blow the fault up as if it means something. If anybody watching this video would like to explain what on earth McCain did that any sane woman would take offense to, I'd be happy to hear it.
 
To watch, click here.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

Dr. Warren Farrell's Shared Parenting Evidence Kit--What You Need to Win Shared Physical Custody Dr. Warren Farrell, a top expert on children of divorce now offers a complete evidence kit to help you win shared custody.  The DVDs, audio CD and electronic files summarize the best scientific research available collected over decades.  Scientific research has proven that children do far better with near equal time with both parents with minimal conditions.  This video set was developed to educate parents, judges, lawyers, psychologists and other divorce professionals. Most judges are doing exactly what is worst for children with sole-custody.  Submitted as evidence this will maximize your chances. Divorce Reform groups call(508) 381-1450 to use as fundraiser. www.BestInterestofChildren.org

Help for Michigan Dads Michigan family law attorney Mindy L. Hitchcock has experience fighting for noncustodial parents against Michigan's abusive FOC. Her holistic approach to divorce gets results for her clients while avoiding the scorched earth approach to law that leaves families emotionally and financially devastated. Lady4Justice.com

Holstein: NY Bill Is the 'Worst Family Court Legislation in the Country'

In my co-authored column NY Electronic Tagging Device Bill--An Orwellian Measure (Buffalo News, 5/30/07), I criticized New York Assembly Bill 5424, which requires “any person against whom an order of protection is issued…to wear an electronic monitoring device.” The device will allow pinpoint tracking of the wearer, and tampering with the device will be a felony.

The bill is back again this year, and Dr. Ned Holstein, president of Fathers & Families just wrote a good piece about it. Holstein writes:

"This device would allow the government to track their whereabouts 24/7. It costs about $4,000 per year to monitor a person wearing such a device. The monitoring is carried out by private companies that win contracts with the State to do the job. For about 50,000 restraining order per year in New York, the tab comes to about $200 million per year. But note that the New York State website states that the financial impact to the state would be 'minimal.' That means that they are planning to dun the wearer for the costs.

"This bill takes away judicial discretion  -- in other words, the judge would be required to order the dog collar, rather than judging the need on a case-by-case basis. It is striking that whenever the family court reform movement presses for a change, take shared parenting, for instance, we hear the hue and cry that our proposal would remove judicial discretion – even though most such bills would not. But here we have clear-cut loss of judicial discretion, and they are all rushing to pass this bill."

To continue reading, click here.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

Protest Ohio Outrage: Father Jailed Because His Daughter Didn't Get Her GED!

A few days ago I shared this outrageous story with you--Father Jailed Because His Adult Daughter Fails to Get Her GED. In the case, father Brian Gegner was ordered to see to it that his daughter gets her GED, but she has not done so, in part because she struggles with math. The daughter's problems in school came at a time when she lived with her mother. The daughter herself--now almost 19-years-old--says that she alone is responsible for her own problems and that her father shouldn't be blamed. Nevertheless, the father is in jail on a six month sentence.

The jailed father goes before Judge David J. Niehaus on Friday--I urge all of you to call Niehaus and also the Governor of Ohio to demand Brian Gegner's release. The contact information is:

BUTLER COUNTY
Juvenile Justice Center
Judge David J. Niehaus 513-887-3318
fax: 513-887-5592
 
Contact Ohio Governor Strickland here:
http://www.governor.ohio.gov:80/Default.aspx?tabid=448
Phone: (614) 466-3555
Fax: (614) 466-9354

Michael Robinson of the California Alliance for Families and Children issued a call to action on this case earlier this week, and has been checking into the case and speaking with Ohio officials. Robinson reveals several important facts about the case:

1) Both Robinson and Ohio WCPO TV reporter Deb Silverman have been digging into the Gegner family's history, and Robinson says "both parents are clean, they simply were unable to get their daughter to stay in school."

2) This sad chain of events was set off because the parents did the right thing--they were concerned about their daughter's truancy, acknowledged that they were not able to control her, and called the police for help. I would also add that this is an example of two divorced parents working together to try to help their child, something this country needs a lot more of.

3) Perhaps most significant of all, Judge David J. Niehaus and two colleagues were specifically accused of judicial abuse by Butler County Commissioner Mike Fox in his 2003 report "A Culture of Secrecy, Fear and Judicial Abuse."

Again, I urge all of you to call the judge in this case and also the Governor of Ohio to demand Brian Gegner's release. The CAFC press release has generated protest calls but we need a lot more--the contact information is above.

Other relevant details:

1) According to CBS, the judge is "standing firm" and says Gegner will "only be released if his daughter passes the GED." So a parent can be held in jail until his or her child passes a test?! If my son fails Geometry, should my wife and I be jailed until he passes Geometry in summer school?

2) In "A Culture of Secrecy, Fear and Judicial Abuse," Fox writes:

"The Domestic Relations and Juvenile Courts of Butler County foster a culture of secrecy, fear and judicial abuse that violates the most fundamental and sacred rights guaranteed by our nation’s Constitution — the rights of due process of the laws. Those who are most directly affected by decisions of these courts — parties to the actions — are routinely excluded from court proceedings and deliberations, told to wait outside the hearing room in a hallway while their lives, personal property, children and homes are divided up by strangers." To read the full report, click here.

3) The CAFC's press release on this case can be seen here.

3) The most recent Associated Press article on the case can be seen here. A Butler County TV station cites the CAFC on the case here.

4) To watch a video of the daughter discussing her father's jailing, click here.

5) In a letter to officials, Robinson poses an excellent question:

"What was the juvenile court doing to help these parents with dealing with Brittany's destructive behavior before it got this far? Did the court offer any kind of parenting resources like The Parent Project, which help parents deal with such problems?

"The Parent Project is a parenting skills program designed specifically for parents with strong-willed or out-of-control children. Because of its success in preventing, identifying and intervening in the most destructive of adolescent behaviors, the Parent Project has won three state awards in California and has been successfully adopted for use by hundreds of communities throughout the nation."

I think Robinson's remarks are particularly relevant because the parents got in trouble because they went to authorities asking for help.

Again, I urge all of you to call the judge in this case and also the Governor of Ohio to demand Brian Gegner's release.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

Newsweek Does Sympathetic, Fair Article about Black Fathers

"This reinforces the notion that a man's value as a father only goes as far as his ability to earn money. 'What's important to black men in a society that has a fair amount of racism is a notion of manhood,' says Mark Anthony Neal, an associate professor of black popular culture at Duke University. 'Manhood is all they have, and what that usually means in our culture is the ability to provide for your family financially.'

"This role is easy to fill when you're Snoop Dogg, the millionaire rapper who stars in his own family reality show. But for low-income, low-skilled black men, keeping consistent employment isn't always easy. A 2007 study noted that a black father's ability to financially contribute is one of the biggest determinants of whether he stays in the home.

"'There's a host of evidence noting that men who cannot fulfill the breadwinner role often experience distress and interruptions in positive engagement in family life,' says Boston University professor Rebekah Levine Coley, who worked on the study.

"Low-income, low-skilled men are culturally expected not to care about being good fathers, and those who do care feel like failures when they cannot meet a definition of successful fatherhood in which being the breadwinner is the sole metric. This conundrum gives rise to the absentee father, the lion who would rather be proud than lead his pride."--Josh Alston, Newsweek

Excellent article on black fathers by Josh Alston of Newsweek, and I thank Josh for being kind enough to send it to me. I have long argued that our popular perception of black fathers is distorted and unfair--they (and fathers in general) certainly bear some of the blame for broken families, but only some.

Alston's full article is O Father, Where Art Thou? Statistics show disturbing rates of absent black fathers, but a new book depicts the nuance behind the numbers (Newsweek, 5/10/08).

To write a Letter to the Editor of Newsweek, click on Letters@newsweek.com.

To learn more about the challenges faced by black fathers, see my co-authored columns Leonard Pitts’ Column Unfair to Black Fathers, Ignores Reasons for Father Absence (The Southern Illinoisan & others, 3/6/08) and Tyler Perry’s Daddy’s Little Girls Tells an Important Truth About African-American Fathers (Los Angeles Watts Times, 6/14/07)

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

A Classic Parental Alienation Case, with the Genders Reversed

This case seems to be a classic Parental Alienation case, with the genders reversed. All the hallmark features--the child's unreasonable hatred of the targeted parent, the alienating parent's social world completely revolving around the child, etc. The Canadian courts seem to be taking a tough stand against the alienating father here, and I applaud them.

Judge rules father brainwashed son into hating his mother
By Kirk Makin
Toronto Globe & Mail, 5/15/08

TORONTO — A 13-year-old Ontario boy whose domineering father systematically brainwashed him into hating his mother can be flown against his will to a U.S. facility that deprograms children who suffer from parental alienation, an Ontario Superior Court judge has ruled.
 
Mr. Justice James Turnbull ordered the boy – identified only as LS – into the custody of his mother. He said that the boy urgently needs professional intervention to reverse the father's attempt to poison his mind toward his mother and, in all probability, to women in general.
 
“There will probably be future significant problems experienced by LS if the court does not intervene – including significant personal guilt for his part in the rejection of his mother, anger towards women, and dysfunctional relationships with women,” Judge Turnbull said.
 
The judge flatly refused to take the boy's opinion on the therapy into account, saying that LS cannot exercise “free discretion in expressing his views” because of the influence his father has had on him.
 
Judge Turnbull observed that the father, 54, has repeatedly breached court orders granting the mother limited access to her son. He said that the boy has come to perceive himself and his father as “intertwined and unable to distinguish one's thoughts from the other.”
 
As part of his campaign of absolute control over LS, the father dictated toxic e-mails for the boy to send to his mother. He also removed photographs of the mother from her son's bedroom.

Read the full article here.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

'Rebecca Eckler put her kid in day-care and had two nannies--you can barely call her a mother...'

Background: In Author Says Divorced/Separated Dads Owe Their Exes a Mother's Day Gift, I criticized Canadian journalist Rebecca Eckler's recent article Get what you want this Mother's Day. Twist the ex's arm (Globe and Mail, 5/6/08).

Canadian journalist Lydia Lovric (pictured), a critic of Rebecca Eckler, posted on my blog about some of Eckler's history. She cites her blog post Mommy Wars rage in Canada, and writes:

"For those who don't want to read the entire column, here are the Coles Notes version as to why I have zero respect for Ms. Eckler:

1) She smoked while pregnant (and basically bragged about it).
2) She wrote a column about how she was in love with some other guy, while she was pregnant with her fiance's kid.
3) She CHOSE not to breastfeed...didn't even bother to TRY...because she didn't want to be 'tied down' to the baby.
4) The woman put her kid in day-care AND had TWO nannies. You can barely call her a mother.

In the article, Lovric writes:

“'I rarely spend an entire day and night alone with The Dictator,' confesses Eckler. 'The Dictator' is Eckler’s nickname for her 2 ½ year old daughter, Rowan.

“'Usually, I have Nanny Mimi around all week, and we have a weekend nanny too, or The In-Laws to watch her at night, or I’m hanging out with friends with their Dictators. But it’s rare that I’m ever alone with The Dictator all day and all evening, all by ourselves.'

"According to Eckler, her parents, the in-laws and even the nanny are all uneasy about leaving her alone with her child. 'Really, why does everyone think I’ll kill my child, or myself, after a day spent alone with her?' quips Eckler.

"If this is supposed to be funny, I’m not laughing."

Lovric adds:

"When Eckler is faced with the daunting task of feeding her own child, she writes: 'I watch Nanny Mimi feed her and it’s a process that can last sometimes up to an hour. I do not have that kind of patience.'

"After reading Eckler’s blog entry, I questioned how such a woman could offer other mothers parenting advice or insight. I mean, if this is your role model, you may as well put the kids up for adoption."

Lovric's full article can be seen here. For the "Sacks has no right to criticize Eckler because he's a man and doesn't know how hard it is to take care of a baby" crowd, I suggest you click here.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

Best Wishes,
Glenn Sacks
GlennSacks.com

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