Raw News and Politics – Trump Investigations – March 13, 2023 Updates (Glenn skipped a day over the weeekend. So far I’ve kept up, butit’s getting tougher, so I’m throwing this in. She’s not an attorney, or at least I don’t think so, but for that very reason she’s willing to share a little speculation which Glenn wouldn’t touch.)
The Lincoln Project – Only Way
MSNBC – Now Trump is suggesting Pence is responsible for Jan. 6 (Domestic abuser: :She made me hit her!)
Ring of Fire – Republican Groomers Kill Bill To Ban Child Marriages
Yesterday, between spending Monday sleeping late even for me, and having my BFF ome over to help me with some – for me – heavy lifting (and when we get together, it never stops with the object of the meeting. We always have lots to talk about. For one thing, she just completed training and qualified as a notary), I had to start from scratch. That’s rare – I almost always have a little something left over. But I also did some catching up (or getting ahead.) One of today’s short takes is from Substack, and if you aren’t a sybscriber, it will probably present you with a popup with the choices “Subscribe” and “Let me read it first.” Just click on the latter.
Cartoon – 15 J Caesar RTL
Short Takes –
In the Writing Burrow (Margaret Atwood) – What Is This Health Care, Earthlings? #2
Quote – Tommy was keen on publicly funded health care because as a boy he almost lost a leg to osteomyelitis. His parents couldn’t afford to pay for advanced treatment, but an expert orthopedic surgeon treated him without charge and saved the leg. As he said later, “I felt that no boy should have to depend either for his leg or his life upon the ability of his parents to raise enough money to bring a first-class surgeon to his bedside.” We do tend to take things for granted once we have them. But what was it like before public healthcare? Well, my children, I can tell you. I was there. Click through fpr article. Ms. Atwood’s style is lively (as if we didn’t know that from “The Handmaid’s Tale”) but her areticle on Canadian Medicare – and what Canada was like before Canadian Medicare – is revealing. (To read Pat #1, click on the top line – “In the Writing Burrow” You may have to scroll once.
The New Yorker – What We Still Don’t Understand About Postpartum Psychosis
Quote – Postpartum psychosis tends to come on suddenly, often within four to six weeks of childbirth, around the time of weaning, or following a period of extreme sleep deprivation; it is sometimes presaged by anxiety and insomnia. A woman experiencing postpartum psychosis may show signs of mania, depression, or both; she may have aural hallucinations, paranoia, or delusions; she may stay awake day and night. She may, for stretches of time, appear to be perfectly normal. Click through for details. I had heard of postpartum depression, but not of postpartum psychosis. But I also haven’t rread about postpartum depression for a long time. This appears to be yet another way in which the patriarchy short-changes women (and ignores the welfare of children.) Yes, there are women working in medical research today, as there are in virtually any field. But can you name one profession/occupatiuion in which the ethics have altered as a result of the influx of women? I can’t/.
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
I like to try to find articles which contain information that could help someone – help us change our behavior perhaps, or just help us to have a better attitude. But some times an article just jumps up, smacks me in the face, and says, “read me and barf,” For instance, the congenital syphilis one. And now this one. Don’t say you weren’t warned to get a barf bag.
================================================================
Victims of domestic abuse find no haven in family courts
The #MeToo movement may have shifted the balance of credibility on sexual abuse and harassment at work more toward victims and away from alleged perpetrators. But the same cannot be said regarding men’s violence and abuse at home: In fact, women’s reports of domestic violence are still widely rejected, especially in one critical setting: the family court.
When women, children or both report abuse by a father in a case concerning child custody or visitation, courts often refuse to believe them. Judges even sometimes “shoot the messenger” by removing custody from the mother and awarding it to the allegedly abusive father.
For instance, courts reject 81% of mothers’ allegations of child sexual abuse, 79% of their allegations of child physical abuse, and 57% of their allegations of partner abuse. Overall, 28% of mothers alleging a father is abusive lose custody to that father; this percentage rises to 50% when an allegedly abusive father accuses the mother of “parental alienation” (more on this below).
Family courts’ hostility – both in the U.S. and abroad – toward claims of paternal or spousal abuse has been widely reported by scholarsand litigants. But it’s only recently that empirical data has been produced that validates the growing chorus of distress.
I am a scholar of domestic violence and the law. Working with four other researchers, I conducted a federally funded study that reviewed all electronically published family court cases between parents in the U.S. between 2005 and 2014 related to custody or visitation that involved abuse or alienation claims.
Among the results from this analysis of thousands of cases: Courts rejected women’s claims of partner violence and child abuse by men, on average, roughly two-thirds of the time. They rejected mothers’ claims of child abuse by fathers approximately 80% of the time. And they reversed custody from mothers alleging abuse to the allegedly abusive fathers at rates ranging from 22% – for partner violence claims – to 56% when mothers alleged both sexual and physical child abuse.
Courts’ skepticism in these cases is due to many factors, but a key driving force is the concept of “parental alienation” or “parental alienation syndrome,” which was invented in the 1980s by a psychiatrist named Richard Gardner.
Gardner claimed that the vast majority of child sexual abuse claims in custody court were false. In addition to attributing false allegations to mothers’ vengeance against their ex-husbands, he theorized that mentally unbalanced mothers also convince themselves (falsely) that their children are being abused by their fathers.
Thus, our study found, consistent with Gardner and parental alienation theory, that when a father accused of sexual abuse responded by accusing the mother of parental alienation, 50 out of 51 courts sided with the father and refused to believe the sexual abuse claim.
Our study also found that when allegedly abusive fathers respond to any type of abuse allegations by accusing mothers of alienation, mothers are roughly twice as likely to be disbelieved, and their rate of custody losses doubles to roughly 50%.
More specifically, there is no empirical research supporting the idea that, when one parent bad-mouths the other or takes other steps to undermine the other’s relationship with a child, the child actually turns against the “targeted” parent. In fact, research has found the opposite: that bad-mouthing can actually backfire, by turning the child against the bad-mouthing parent.
Nor is there any objective way to distinguish a child’s legitimate and justified estrangement due to the avoided parent’s own behaviors from an estrangement unjustifiably fueled by the other parent.
In short, there is no scientific or objective means of applying the alienation label. Rather, it is applied whenever an evaluator or court subjectively chooses not to believe a mother and/or a child’s abuse claims and chooses to instead believe the mother is malicious or sick and the child is not in reality.
The belief that it is fathers, not mothers, who can’t get a fair shake in custody cases is further fueled by fathers’ rights groups’ claims that courts are biased against fathers.
In fact, while family courts’ special valuation of fathering is difficult to prove empirically, our study did find that protective fathers are not penalized for accusing the mother of abuse, as are mothers who accuse fathers of abuse. The study also found that parental alienation claims benefit fathers more than mothers.
Deadly consequences
The harm to both children and their protective mothers from these family court practices is significant.
One study of what are called “turned-around” cases involved allegations of child abuse that were at first viewed as false and later judged to be valid. This study found that a majority of children in these cases were forced to live with their abusive fathers, that the vast majority reported new incidents of abuse and that children’s mental and physical health significantly deteriorated before a second court finally sent them back to their safe mothers.
Worst of all, family courts’ refusals to take seriously one parent’s claims that the other parent is dangerous have enabled over 100 child homicides.
================================================================ Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, of all the places in the world where children’s well being should be the number one priority, family court ought to be at the top of the list. I don’t expect people who work in family court to be oerfect, but I do expect them to have learned more than Freud when he deccided that thh those women patiens claiming their fathers raped them must be making it up, because people – men – prominent persons in the community – don’t sdo such things. Well, surprise, surprise. And now Republicans want to take us backward instead of forward, and essentially declare open season on women and children 24/7/365*.
I couldn’t help thinking of Andrew Vachss as I read this. He has been pedophiles’ worst nightmare for decades. We could certainly use more like him – a lot more like him. Stuff like this goes far to explain why he now looks about a hundred and eighty (he’s actually 79. And, when we lose him, who will we have?)
