Yesterday, I managed to get all 8 questions right on the Conversation’s “Weekly News Quiz.” That has never happened before. Usually I get 6 out of eight, occasionally 7 on a good week, occasionally 5 on a bad week. There weren’t that many I actually knew – the rest I got by elimination, including some logic (ocean-going ships “going downhill” is not a thing, for instance.) It’s a small thing – but it does bolster my confidence a little that I am actually keeping up with the good stuff in the barrage of news.
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
The Warning – Have you ever heard of ‘stealthing?’
Quote – “Non-consensual condom removal,” said Google. A behavior and problem so prevalent that it not only had a nickname — “stealthing” — but a range of definitions largely dependent on geography, the most severe being a rape crime punishable by a maximum sentence of life in prison in the United Kingdom. In the United States, however, there was little to no legal definition of this act, which remains the case to this day. The first and only piece of legislation — adopted by California in 2021 — recognizes stealthing in the state’s civil sexual battery code and allows victims to sue for damages. Click through for article (you may have to click on “Keep reading.”) Yes, I’d heard of it, but relatively recently. There were a couple of terms in the article I had to look up, however. Reading the whole thing will probably mak you angry once or twice. But without anger, there is no change.
Colorado Public Radion – One suspect in fatal rock-throwing case had a history of destructive behavior
Quote – Three teens accused of driving around and throwing large rocks at passing cars, one of which investigators say killed a 20-year-old woman, circled back to take a photo of her crashed car as a “memento,” according to court documents released Thursday…. In a hint at a possible motive, Karol-Chik said all three got excited every time they hit a car with a rock that night but acknowledged he felt “a hint of guilt” passing by Bartell’s car, according to the documents. Click through for story. Now that there are identified suspects in this crime, we can get a glimpse of what they were thinking – if you can call that “thinking.” It certainly gives a new, though equally pernicious, meaning to the acronym KKK.
Yesterday, I was hoping for a sort of calm day – but no such luck. I found out Virgil has been moved again, and did not reach anyone to confirm whether I may visit Sunday (I sent an email, and receuived an automated out-of-office message after 5 pm.) So I’ll need to follow up on that today. We shall see. I worked off some of the frustration by rearranging a couple of small tables,which doesn’t sound like a lot of exertion – but was for me. (one was heavier than it looks.)
Cartoon – (Yes, there’s an offensive term here – but TC’s point was tha Republicans ARE offensive.
Short Takes –
Mother Jones – An Obscure Law Is Sending Oklahoma Mothers to Prison in Droves. We Reviewed 1.5 Million Cases to Learn More.
Quote – In Oklahoma, failure to protect is the only child abuse charge levied predominantly against women, and it is disproportionately charged against women of color. People charged with the crime there are less likely to have a previous felony record than defendants in firsthand child abuse cases—a sign of just how much more dangerous abusers are than those accused of failing to stand in the way of their abuse. Since 2009, when the latest version of the state’s law went into effect, at least 139 women have been imprisoned solely for failure-to-protect charges. At least 55 are still incarcerated. Click through for details. Actual failure to protect arguably should be punishable. But the way this law is administered appears to me to be proof that, like abortion bans, the law is not about protection of chilren but rather is a tool to control women.
Crooks and Liars – Bannon Goes There: ‘Deep State May Try To Assassinate Trump’
Quote – Steve Bannon … joined the odious Sandy Hook denier Alex Jones’ BannedVideo podcast to “announce” that the deep state may want to try to assassinate Trump. “I do not think it’s beyond this administrative state and their Deep State apparatus to actually try to work on the assassination of President Trump. I think everything’s on the table. I think his security ought to be at the highest it’s ever been,” Bannon said Click through for story. My instant reaction is “He’s become a liability, so they are going to assassinate him to start a Civil War.” And I didn’t have to go far down the comments before finding another person with a similar thought. So I actally agree with Steve on the security.
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.
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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?)
