NEW CAMPAIGN--Veto Domestic Violence Bill Which Excludes Fathers, Children

September 5, 2006

Partner Abuse: A Comprehensive Approach, asserts that research shows that a third of domestic violence-related injuries are incurred by heterosexual males.

According to domestic violence researcher Richard Gelles, co-author of the groundbreaking 1980 book Behind Closed Doors: Violence in American Families, it is very difficult for fathers who are being abused by their wives or significant others to protect themselves and their children. They can't leave because this would leave their children unprotected in the hands of an abuser. If they take their children they can be arrested for kidnapping. If they divorce or separate, they'd probably lose custody of their children in the divorce, again leaving their children in harm's way.

Tens of thousands of California children are being denied needed domestic violence services solely because their victimized parent is male. By ignoring the needs of these children, we are increasing the risk that they will continue the cycle of violence when they become adults.

AB 2051 was originally introduced for the purpose of addressing domestic violence within the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender communities. Neither Robinson, the CAFC, nor I have any problem with this. However, while the bill's original language was gender-neutral, the author later amended the bill back to gender-specific, discriminatory language, and therein lies the problem.

By vetoing AB 2051, Governor Schwarzenegger can make it clear that it's time to end the state's discriminatory policies. His veto will return the issue to the Legislature next year, so that a solution can be crafted to serve the needs of all victims of domestic violence--including men and their children.

Again, I want all of you to write to the Governor to tell him to veto AB 2051 by clicking here.

To learn more about AB 2051, see my co-authored column AB 2051 Moves California in Wrong Direction on Domestic Violence (Daily Breeze [Los Angeles], 6/1/06). To read the bill, click here. The bill references "battered women" 31 times, yet never once mentions "male victims" or "men."
 

The North Dakota Shared Parenting Initiative

There were two more good articles about the North Dakota Shared Parenting Initiative last week--Wendy McElroy's North Dakota Debates Shared Parenting Law (Fox News, 8/29/06) and Dave Usher's Trust Parents, Not the System (Men's News Daily, 8/22/06).

Both authors question the legality and propriety of state and federal officials openly campaigning against the Initiative. The campaigning is also revealing as to how the government bureaucracies gain from the sole custody norm. Usher writes that, for these officials, "the only thing that matters is maximizing federal income to the state, even if it means senselessly destroying the lives of children and, indeed, fatherhood itself...[HHS Executive Director Carol Olson] cares only about maximizing federal revenues, pretending that decreases in state expenditures [and correspondingly federal entitlements] somehow represent a 'loss' to the state."

To learn more about the events in North Dakota, see ACFC's North Dakota Shared Parenting Battle Heats Up.

Our AlterNet debate over reproductive rights last month drew so many reader comments that AlterNet Associate Editor Laura Barcella wrote a whole separate piece--Birth Control and 'Men's Rights'--on the controversy. Family law attorney Jeff Leving and I had squared off against feminist columnist Kai Ma--our column was Respect a Man's Choice, Too, Ma's was The Difference Between a Womb and a Wallet. Our column was the 3rd most read on AlterNet that week.

Barcella's article doesn't give much space or chance to our side of the issue, and she dismisses many of our side's viewpoints as "tired anti-feminist ideas," etc. She also put men's rights in quotation marks. However, I do try to be positive when I can, so, to Barcella's credit, while she misspelled my co-author Jeff Leving's name all three times, she did manage to spell mine correctly two out of three times...

PBS Update

As I explained in the last enewsletter, the documentary on family law which PBS promised after our Campaign Against PBS's Father-Bashing Breaking the Silence is called Kids & Divorce: For Better or Worse, and it will be airing on PBS affiliates in mid-September. To learn more, see PBS Documentary on Family Law to Be Aired (8/22/06).

Below is a list of some of the stations and dates where Kids & Divorce: For Better or Worse is scheduled to air. Just as Breaking the Silence did not air on some PBS stations, Kids & Divorce won't either. However, if you know of an airing of Kids & Divorce which is not listed, please email us at glenn@glennsacks.com.

PBS is also selling DVDs of Kids & Divorce: For Better or Worse at Shop PBS here.

Last enewsletter I wrote about John Murtari, a loving father to his 13 year-old son Domenic, who refused food and water after his incarceration on July 31 for a questionable child support arrearage. Murtari subsequently received a feeding tube. I've read John's e-newsletter for the past several years, and while at times I've disagreed with his tactics, I do respect his courage, courteous manner and fighting spirit. To learn more about John's situation, and for the latest updates, go to Teri Stoddard's blog here.

Also, see the Syracuse TV news broadcast Syracuse inmate on hunger strike.

The Associated Press story Police: De Queen woman slaps self, tells cops that husband did it sounds like something out of my email box:

"DE QUEEN, Ark. Police at De Queen say a woman slapped herself several times in an effort to fake injuries from domestic abuse after she had stabbed her husband. But the effort didn't prevent police from arresting Dorris J- Holcombe on a charge of second-degree domestic battery.

"The 41-year-old Holcombe pleaded not guilty to the charge in Sevier (suh-VEER') County Circuit Court. Her 38-year-old husband Gary said his wife beat herself in the face after he called police to report she had stabbed him on August Tenth.

"Deputy Cameron Petross said Gary Holcombe suffered a minor cut in his chest. A police report filed in the case said the couple's landlord saw Dorris Holcombe slapping herself.

"Police said that, while in the back of the patrol car following her arrest, Dorris Holcombe started hitting her head on the restraining cage, causing a small cut near her right eye."

If it weren't for the witness, and had the woman behaved herself in the patrol car, the scam probably would have worked...

Obviously I'm a frequent critic of the National Organization for Women. A few examples include: NOW at 40: Group's Opposition to Shared Parenting Contradicts Its Goal of Gender Equality (New York Daily News, 7/27/06); Alito and the Rights of Men (Los Angeles Times, 11/1/05); HB 5267 Will Help Michigan's Children of Divorce (Lansing State Journal, 5/28/06); California NOW Takes Stand Against Working Mothers (Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 2/23/04); New California Move-Away Law Hurts Children of Divorce (Long Beach Press Telegram, 10/18/03); Fathers Bear the Brunt of Gender Bias in Family Courts (Insight magazine, 8/19/02); and Why Are There so Many Women in the Fathers' Movement? (Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 6/21/02).

However, though NOW is often wrong, it doesn't mean that they're always wrong, and it certainly doesn't mean they're responsible for every damn thing which is wrong in the world of gender relations. NOW is often scapegoated, and is the target of incessant stupid criticism from both men's activists and conservatives. On His Side with Glenn Sacks I once explained:

"Over the past three decades women and feminists have locked men into endless double-binds, where whatever men do, they're wrong. However, on a much smaller scale, men's activists have begun to lock women into double binds, too.

"For example, when groups such as the National Organization for Women oppose the war in Iraq, we accuse them of betraying the men who are abroad putting their lives on the line for our country. Yet when women support military action (like the war hawk columnist/talk show host Tammy Bruce) we say 'yes, you want to send all the men off to die and women don't even have to register for the draft!'

"When women want a larger role in the military, we point to biological gender differences and say women will screw up the military. When they don't, we talk about how unfair it is that only men get drafted.

"When a mother pursues her career, some MRAs blame her for putting her self-fulfillment above her kids. Yet if she doesn't work, she's condemned for burdening her husband and not pulling her weight.

"Many, such as radio talk show host Tom Leykis, condemn women for grinding out children they and their husbands can't afford. Yet they are the first ones to call a woman who looks for a high-earning man a 'gold-digger.' And the guy who blames feminists for the loose sexual morality and mores of modern society is the first guy to condemn the woman who won't put out."

One example of this incessant stupid criticism is political commentator Carol Liebau's recent criticism of NOW on the Independent Women's Forum blog. In the blog entry "Misplaced Outrage" Liebau writes:

"The New York Times runs a blood-chilling piece on the disregard for human rights--and brutal mistreatment of women -- that's taking place in Chechnya.

"So what do the American feminists have to say?  Typically, NOW has chosen instead to focus on the really important things...like complaining that Plan B's placement behind pharmacy counters may mean that a woman seeking emergency contraception must endure 'a moralizing lecture from the cashier or pharmacy clerk.' Oh, the horror."

A few points:

1) As far as I can tell, NOW's position that Emergency Contraception should be available over-the-counter is correct. NOW President Kim Gandy's statement on it is here.

2) More importantly, what on earth does one issue have to do with the other? NOW wasn't immediately on top of the Chechnya story, so that means they're wrong for taking a public position on Emergency Contraception in the US? Because there's something else horrible going on in the world, efforts to change the things which we have the power to change are invalidated? NOW is often criticized by men's activists and conservatives this way, and while it's sometimes fair, it usually strikes me as a cheap shot.

It also reminds me of some of the logic of critics of my Campaign Against 'Boys are Stupid' Products. I was slammed in newspapers and on TV and radio because, after all, "Boys are Stupid" products aren't the most important thing on the planet, and there are other, more pressing problems in the world. Gee, no kidding...

The best one was some guy who saw me on TV and told me that I was wrong to use my radio show to attack the "Boys are Stupid" T-shirts when there's so much hunger in the world. I told him "You're right--you've got me. I should've used my radio show to end world hunger instead."

My recent co-authored column, New American Bar Association Article Points to Crisis in False Paternity Judgments (Baltimore Sun, 8/20/06), discusses the problem of fallacious default paternity judgments and attorney Ron Henry's excellent new Family Law Quarterly article The Innocent Third Party: Victims of Paternity Fraud (Summer, 2006). In the column Mike McCormick, Executive Director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, and I wrote:

"Child support enforcement programs are supported by all sides of the political spectrum, from women's advocates on the left to traditionalists on the right. While this popularity is sometimes understandable, it has also allowed glaring and inexcusable abuses to fester and grow. Of these, none is more egregious than when men are forced to pay 18 years of child support for children who are not theirs, and who in many cases they've never even met...

"Because of the indifference of both the states' child support enforcement systems and their federal funders, no firm figures exist on how many men have been mistakenly defaulted into fatherhood. Henry estimates that the number could exceed one million.

"Child support debtors receive little public sympathy, at times with reason. Yet the victims of false paternity judgments aren't men trying to evade their legitimate responsibilities, nor are they Nicholas Barthas determined to ensure that their exes will never get a penny. They are instead victims of one of the most indefensible civil rights violations in America today--an injustice which cries out for redress."

We have formed the Default Paternity Judgment Innocence Project for the purpose of ending the cruel practice wherein unsuspecting men are trapped by default judgments into paying 18 years of child support for children who are not theirs, and who in many cases they've never even met.

This money rarely goes to children, but instead to the state. The problem is a result of bureaucratic bungling and misguided state and federal child support enforcement policies which benefit no one, and which could be corrected at a relatively small cost.

The DPJIP has been endorsed by numerous family law and mental health professionals, African-American and Latino community leaders, journalists and others. DPJIP members have written about or been quoted on this issue in numerous publications, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Reason Magazine, the Orange County Register, the Los Angeles Daily News, the Detroit News, the Washington Times and many others.

Dozens of Family Law, Mental Health Professionals Endorse the Default Paternity Judgment Innocence Project

The Default Paternity Judgment Innocence Project has been endorsed by nearly 50  family attorneys, mental health professionals, journalists and others. Some of our endorsers include:

Reginald Brass, president of My Child Says Daddy, a parenting organization which works with young African-American fathers in Los Angeles.

Linda S. Ferrer, the Orange County, California attorney who won the decisive Navarro default judgment case.

David Perry Davis, the New Jersey family law attorney who won the Pasqua v. Council case, wherein Davis successfully challenged New Jersey's unconstitutional practice of failing to appoint attorneys for indigent child support obligors at enforcement hearings where they face incarceration.

Taron James, founder of Veterans Against Paternity Fraud.

Marc Angelucci, the Los Angeles attorney who represents Taron James.

Psychiatrist Michael Friedman, M.D., a Board Member of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts of California.

Jayne A. Major, Ph.D., Executive Director of Breakthrough Parenting Services in Los Angeles.

Diana Mercer, an Attorney-Mediator with Peace Talks Mediation Services in Playa del Rey, CA.

Bert Riddick, the nation's poster boy for false default judgment victims.

Michael Robinson, Legislative Advocate & Policy Consultant for the California Alliance for Families and Children in Sacramento.

Peter M. Walzer, a family law attorney who was one of the important figures in our 2004 and 2006 campaigns to preserve the California Supreme Court's LaMusga decision.

What's the Solution?

The Default Paternity Judgment Innocence Project proposes several solutions to this problem. State child support collection efforts are heavily subsidized by federal dollars. The federal government could greatly reduce the problem of false paternity establishments by reimbursing states only for establishments which are confirmed by DNA tests. DNA tests could be purchased in bulk at a cost per unit considerably less than even one month of child support.

To be a part of our efforts, sign up for the DPJIP's e-newsletter on this page.

Mark Huddleston is the biological father of a two year-old boy he says he wants to raise. But a judge has ruled the child should remain with its adoptive parents, who have had custody since the infant was three days old. Huddleston claims he didn't know the baby existed until two months after its birth, and the state said the private adoption agency hadn't properly notified Huddleston.

Despite doing everything possible to be a father to his son, Huddleston's baby boy was given away by a vindictive mother working hand in glove with a predatory adoption agency. Last summer we covered the Mark Huddleston case on His Side with Glenn Sacks--to listen, go to Father Fights Adoption Agency for Right to Raise His Son (7/17/05).

Jane Spies of the National Family Justice Association, who has done wonderful work on the Huddleston case, informs me that Huddleston is now suing the adoption agency. According to Biological parent of toddler files lawsuit against Albuquerque Agency (Albuquerque Tribune, 8/22/06):

"The biological father of a 2-year-old boy has filed a lawsuit against the Albuquerque agency he says put his son up for adoption without his permission.

"The lawsuit, filed late Monday in state District Court in Albuquerque, charges that Adoptions Plus knew or should have known that Mark Huddleston, 40, was the father of the child but purposely failed to notify him of the existence of his child and failed to obtain his consent to the adoption...

"Huddleston's lawsuit comes nearly a month after the state Court of Appeals reversed a decision by state District Judge John Pope in Valencia County to terminate Huddleston's parental rights.

"According to that opinion, it was not sufficiently proven that Huddleston had abandoned the child after the birth and that his consent was required before the mother proceeded with the adoption.

"The appellate court also ruled that Huddleston's actions, or lack of them, before the baby's birth didn't prove that he caused the parent-child relationship to disintegrate.

"According to the appellate opinion, the child was the result of a six-month relationship that ended June 2003 between Helen G., an Albuquerque hotel employee, and Huddleston, an account executive for a company that delivered chemicals to the hotel.

"Huddleston's lawsuit said that the mother kept her pregnancy a secret and that she 'insisted' that he have no further contact with her once the couple split up.

"In January 2004, the lawsuit said that Helen contacted the agency to put her unborn son up for adoption and that she identified Huddleston and another man as the possible fathers.

"The baby was born Feb. 14, 2004. According to previous court documents, the infant was placed three days later into the adoptive home of Bobby and Rosario Romero...

"But Huddleston said he did not know he had fathered a child until he received a notice from the adoption agency three days after the notice date of April 16, 2004, the lawsuits said.

"Huddleston, the lawsuit states, immediately called the agency but was told to call back in the morning. That day, he and his wife spoke with Catherine Troy, Adoptions Plus executive director and placement supervisor, in person and were told by her that he had no right to the child, the lawsuit said.

"'She said he would never get custody of the child and that the child had been placed in a good home,' the lawsuit said. 'Ms. Troy also admitted that she never notified Mr. Huddleston about the adoption and termination proceedings.'"

"That same day, Huddleston hired an attorney. Later that month, he filed a paternity suit to contest the adoption.

"A DNA test court-ordered in May 2004 was delayed by the Romeros and finally conducted in June 2004; the test indicated that Huddleston was the father, the lawsuit said.

"Despite that, the lawsuit said Huddleston was denied visits with and photos of his son until December 2004 when he was allowed limited, supervised visits after the state Children, Youth and Families Department intervened.

"Those visits were stopped with Pope's decision to terminate his parental rights on April 14, 2005.

"The lawsuit says that as a result of the actions of Adoptions Plus Huddleston has suffered severe emotional pain, distress and anxiety, loss of earnings and substantial financial expenses.

"The lawsuit seeks financial compensation of more than $40,000 in legal fees as well as punitive damages."

Read the rest of the article here. Let's hope Huddleston wacks the agency good--perhaps that will provide these adoption agencies with the incentive to stop giving fathers' children away...

One of my readers wrote me and told me that when he tried to post my recent column Respect a Man's Choice, Too (AlterNet, 8/1/06) on www.freerepublic.com, a popular conservative website where he frequently participates in forums, freerepublic blocked him and sent him the following message:

"Source is Blocked, article not posted alternet.org material not wanted on FR."

Perhaps there's more to this than I'm aware of--if anybody knows anything, feel free to educate me. But at first glance it appears to be the same type of suppression of voices that conservatives often claim liberals are guilty of.

A few weeks ago Metro Silicon Valley published a large article on the problem of fallacious default paternity judgments--Who's Your Daddy? (Metro Silicon Valley, 7/19/06). As I noted in my co-authored column New American Bar Association Article Points to Crisis in False Paternity Judgments (Baltimore Sun, 8/20/06), these men "are forced to pay 18 years of child support for children who are not theirs, and who in many cases they've never even met...the victims of false paternity judgments aren't men trying to evade their legitimate responsibilities, nor are they Nicholas Barthas determined to ensure that their exes will never get a penny. They are instead victims of one of the most indefensible civil rights violations in America today--an injustice which cries out for redress."

Metro Silicon Valley has a circulation of 200,000 and is one of the largest weekly publications in California. The article has quotes from numerous people involved in the struggle against paternity fraud, including: longtime paternity fraud crusader Carnell Smith; Taron James, the founder of Veterans Fighting Paternity Fraud; Santa Ana family law attorney Linda Ferrer, winner of the Navarro case; myself; and others. To learn more see CA Weekly Does Cover Story on Problem of Default Paternity Judgments

Since then there have been some interesting reactions to the piece. One is feminist Theresa Vander Horn's Men Deserve What They Get. Vander Horn writes:

"Leave it to Metro to trumpet a men's cause that isn't ("Who's Your Daddy?," MetroNews, July 19). By any measure, the overwhelming problem in child support is lack of it. Yet Metro finds a few hapless men who couldn't be bothered even to show up in court on their own behalf. This is not a child support problem, not even a paternity problem. This is a delinquency problem. Their problems would be the same if they had failed to show up in traffic court or small claims court. What the public does need to know is that "men's rights" groups are often tied to religious groups. The "right" that men's groups are protecting is the "right" to have sex whenever they please with whomever, the right to parent if and when they feel like doing so and the right to "move on" if and when it suits them. This is the assertion of biblical domination of women. Any attempt to hold them accountable is assailed as flawed and unfair. (Heaven forbid life be unfair to a man.) If a man is so indiscriminate that he doesn't even know if he has fathered a child, that man is not so innocent after all. These men are reckless, just as reckless as the men who show up months or years later to claim babies they didn't even know they had (i.e., Baby Jessica, Baby Richard ...). The "right" being protected for these men is the right to be reckless and carefree--a rare luxury for women on this globe. Women have been dealing for centuries with the fall-out of men's reckless sexual behavior and all women ever got was advice to be more chaste. Yet when a few not-so "innocent" men are caught in the undertow, they squeal like drowning pigs and their meager cries drown out the wails of women going down shit's creek by the millions. Given the magnitude of paternal delinquency, the gerrymandering of support guidelines and the disparate impact of women, why does Metro trumpet the cause of these few hapless delinquents?"

Another interesting letter is Men R Not Always Pigs from shared parenting advocate Adryenn Ashley. Ashley writes:

"The default rate [in Los Angeles] was so high because the County of Los Angeles hired a process serving company that is known in the industry for less than professional service. So while a default may have been taken against a man, that in no way means that he actually got served. That really depends on who said he got served. Process servers are like roofers, you have some excellent ones and some shabby ones who will do anything to earn the fee, even signing that they served a man in an apartment complex that burned down the month before. Or in Taron James' case, served him at the corner two-story blue house, when he lives in the middle of the block in a one-story white house. And in court, I have seen that evidence not make a bit of difference to the judge."

(A quick note to Metro Silicon Valley's headline writer--we men aren't always pigs? Gee, thanks!)

"The most astounding thing in the whole article is near the end, where Ms. Ruttenberg shows that the government makes no attempt to hold mothers accountable even when (as illustrated earlier in the article) they wreak such havoc by naming the wrong father. Many readers will also have noticed that women generally are not held accountable for lying about anything: rape, domestic violence, and so on ad nauseum. A lot of us have been their victims. (Women are sometimes victims in other ways, but that's beyond the scope of this letter)."

Best Wishes,
Glenn Sacks
GlennSacks.com

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