Connecticut Supreme Court Rules Unanimously on Parental Rights Proceedings

Parental rights advocates in Connecticut may have more to celebrate today, after the state Supreme Court ruled that parents involved in proceedings to terminate parental rights have a right to challenge the quality of work done by lawyers representing their children.

In a precedent-setting and unanimous ruling, the court recognized the high-stakes nature of termination proceedings for both parents and children. "The rights of the [parents] are inextricably intertwined with those of their children," Justice Joette Katz wrote.

"Inadequate representation of the children ... could harm the [parents] because those roles help shape the court's view of the best interests of the children, which serves as a basis upon which termination of parental rights is determined."

The justices stopped short of deciding whether a child's right to representation in termination proceedings, which is now dictated by state law, rises to the level of a constitutional guarantee.

They said the record of the case, after a three-day hearing, did not support the parents' contention that the lawyer representing their children, who favored termination of their relationship, did not adequately protect or convey the wishes of the children.

"We conclude that the record of this case does not support the existence of a conflict of interest, as claimed," Katz wrote.

The court's ruling upholds the trial court's termination of the parents' relationship with their three daughters.

To protect the identities of the minors, no last names are used in the ruling. The Department of Children and Families, in its petition to terminate parental rights, alleged the children were neglected and abused, and that their parents had failed to benefit from efforts by social workers to reunite them.

The parents maintained that a second lawyer or guardian should have been appointed to represent their children's purported statements that they wanted to remain with their parents.

The court noted, in its ruling released Monday, that the only statement that appeared in conflict with the children's lawyer's advocacy of termination was a comment made to a psychologist by one daughter nearly four years ago, when she was 61/2, that she wanted to "go home with mommy and daddy."

At the time "Christine M." was living in a foster home she didn't like and had no memories, according to the psychologist, of any abuse or violence she had experienced.A subsequent foster mother, with whom Christina and her sisters were living at the time of the hearing in December of 2003, testified Christina told her she wanted to live with them forever.

"The record is insufficient to support a determination that the trial court knew or reasonably should have known that a particular conflict existed between what Christina wanted at the time of the trial and what the attorney had advocated," Katz wrote.

Sarah Eagan, staff attorney for the child abuse project at the Center for Children's Advocacy, said the decision "is very significant." The center filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case on behalf of eight child welfare and protective agencies.

"I think it's a very positive thing to be taken from the case for lawyers, that the court is acknowledging a termination proceeding is one of the most profound things that can occur, and that the rights of parents and their children must be zealously guarded by both the parties, and their lawyers," Eagan said.

Katz wrote, "Both the [parents] and the children have a mutual interest in the preservation of family integrity, and the termination of parental status is irretrievably destructive of that most fundamental family relationship."

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who represented DCF on appeal, said the ruling should not be read to invite wholesale challenges by parents whose parental rights have been terminated.

"As we read it, the decision assures that parents must have a solid reason to challenge the effectiveness of the child's counsel," Blumenthal said.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics at UNICEF

by Carey Roberts


At first I assumed UNICEF director Ann Veneman had been terribly misquoted.

This was the statement the media attributed to her: "We know that women do about 66% of the work in the world, they produce 50% of the food, but earn 5% of the income and own 1% of the property." But then I checked, and that's what she had said. It was right on the UNICEF website.

The implication of Veneman's comment was clear: Around the world, men are lazy dolts who lord over down-trodden women.

But I was a skeptical. So I called the UNICEF press office and asked for the source of those damning statistics. Press aide Kate Donovan cheerfully reassured me that Veneman is "very picky about her facts" and promised she'd get back to me. She never did.

Google to the rescue. Many mouse-clicks later I arrived at another UN web page devoted to the Millenium Development Goals.

Ah ha! -- right there on the page 2 was the elusive quote, along with its source: Womankind Worldwide.

So then I contacted Womankind Worldwide, asking for the exact name of the source document. And here's the long-awaited response from a Julia Czastka: "I can tell you that the facts given in this quote are from the UN."

Let's see. Group A relies on Group B, Group B bounces us over to Group C, and Group C sends us back to Group A. In my neck of the woods, that's called recycling the trash. Ms. Veneman, may we consider your statement a candidate for the Phony Statistics Hall of Fame?

While I was perusing the UNICEF website, I couldn't help but notice some other questionable claims.

A March 8 press release quoted Veneman as saying, "Violence against women is the extreme form of inequality." So how does she reconcile that statement with the UN's World Report Violence and Health, which showed 14% of men die from violence-related causes, compared to only 7% of women? Or the recent survey showing women are twice as likely as men to initiate partner abuse?

And a 2005 News Note claims, "Violence in the family affects mainly girls ..." Wrong again, UNICEF.

According to a compilation of 172 studies by Lytton and Romney, it's boys who are consistently subjected to more physical punishment than girls. (This News Note also maligns the traditional family, recklessly claiming that "values promoted by the family . use violence as their main tool.")

Remember the Yiddish proverb, "A half-truth is a whole lie"? If that is true, then UNICEF, which now views the world through the lens of patriarchal oppression, is immersed in a complete and utter lie.

The UNICEF home page informs us, "Women's political power is growing," as if that's somehow going help kids get their tetanus shots and clean drinking water. Its website recounts the woes of girls: educational attainment, female circumcision, abuse, and discrimination. It even has a newsletter called Girls Too!

But nowhere does UNICEF admit to the inequities facing boys: higher rates of suicide, undernourishment, and low healthcare utilization. Not a word about the 12-year-old lads forced into armed combat, or kids sent off to become camel jockeys in the Persian Gulf.

Remember, we're talking about BOYS -- those impish lads who are made of snips and snails and puppy dog tails. It's those tykes who trek through the woods in search of a handful of wilted daisies to proudly present to their moms.

Over the last three years I have chronicled the steady descent of UNICEF into the slough of gender advocacy. These reports have documented how UNICEF has systematically:
Ignored the needs of boys, Given short shrift to children's survival needs in favor of "women's issues", and Fallen under the sway of a radical socialist ideology.

UNICEF has become the target of blistering critiques. In 2004 the Catholic Family and Human Rights Group charged, "Radical feminism has come to define the current UNICEF." Two years ago the prestigious Lancet journal accused UNICEF of "shamefully" failing to develop an effective child survival strategy.

But the gals at UNICEF have turned a deaf ear on their critics.

Last week the Heritage Foundation released an analysis titled "The Status of United Nations Reform." Its sobering conclusion reads: "There has been quite a bit of smoke on reform, but very little fire . Without tying reform to financial incentives, the sound and fury of the current U.N. reform effort, as with past efforts, will prove grossly insufficient."

Ambassador Bolton, we need to make UNICEF the first example of our towering resolve and moral disgust.


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Carey Roberts has been published frequently in the Washington Times, Townhall.com, LewRockwell.com, ifeminists.net, Intellectual Conservative, and elsewhere. He is a staff reporter for the New Media Alliance.
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Study Says Divorce Increases Chronic Stress, Later Illness in Women

AMES, Iowa -- There's a popular belief among spouses in bad marriages that divorce might relieve their stress and lead to a happier life. But divorce actually increased chronic stress and produced greater physical illness over a 10-year span, according to a study of 416 rural Iowa women by researchers from Iowa State University's Institute for Social and Behavioral Research.

Fred Lorenz, K.A.S. Wickrama, Rand Conger and Glen Elder produced the latest paper on their research titled "The Short-Term and Decade-Long Effects of Divorce on Women's Midlife Health," which was published last summer in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, a professional journal.

"What we found was that the act of getting a divorce produced no immediate effects on health, but it did have effects on mental health," said Lorenz. "Ten years later, those effects on mental health led to effects in physical health."

The researchers have been studying romantic relationships and marriage in middle-aged adults through Iowa Youth and Family Project and Midlife Transition Projects -- an ISU study of more than 500 young adults from an eight-county area northwest of Ames that began in 1989. The team just received a $2.5 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to continue the study of romantic relationships and marriage in young adults, and the link of relationship development to changes in physical and emotional health.

The methodology

In this study, they used data from rural Iowa women who were interviewed repeatedly in the early 1990s when they were mothers of adolescent children. Of the 416 women, 102 were recently divorced mothers. The women were interviewed again in 2001.

The researchers found that in the years immediately after their divorce (1991-94), divorced women reported seven percent higher levels of psychological distress than married women, but no differences in physical illness. The increased distress among the recently divorced women was found after controlling for other sources of stress, including income, which was only about half ($20,300) the amount reported by married women ($41,400). An important factor linking divorce to later psychological distress was the experience of stressful life events, according to Lorenz.

A decade later (2001), the divorced women reported 37 percent more illness when compared to their married counterparts -- even after the researchers controlled for age, remarriage, education, income and prior health. Lorenz believes that other conditions associated with divorce -- perhaps social isolation and relatively poor job opportunities -- are important in explaining why divorced women report more illnesses a decade after their divorce.

"According to the data, it looks like they (divorced women) are trapped in this vicious circle of financial problems and other stressful life events -- such as having their safety net destroyed in the form of housing, insurance, transportation, social support, sharing in the kids, etc.," said Wickrama. "There are more than 100 events documented in the event history calendar, including such things as demotions, layoffs, accidents, critical illness, and parental problems."

Types of illness

The researchers documented 46 illnesses for the women in this study to choose from -- ranging from the common cold and sore throats, to heart conditions, diabetes and cancer. The severity of these illnesses appears to be linked to the quality of the marriage before the divorce.

"Among married couples, we predicted couples with good quality marriages did not experience early onset of hypertension, while those with bad marriages were more likely to have experienced onset of early hypertension," said Wickrama. "In 1997, we wrote one article that related marriage qualities and physical illness. We showed change in marriage quality links to change in physical illness for both men and women."

Forty of the divorced women in the sample either remarried or cohabitated with a partner. Remarriage was found to have a positive influence on family income, eventually improving health outcomes.

"We found that divorced individuals who remarried indirectly decreased the risk of health problems because they saw beneficial influences on their financial difficulties," Wickrama said. "Consistently divorced people continued to experience higher level of economic and health problems."

The researchers wrote in a related paper that women's self-reports of earlier deviant behavior -- which included adolescent delinquency -- rivaled divorce as a predictor of stressful events and depressive symptoms, suggesting that deviant behavior earlier in life may be influencing both the likelihood of future divorce and future physical and emotional health problems. They are planning future research that prospectively links childhood experiences to adult physical and mental health.

"Comprehensive panel studies that examine multiple health outcomes over time are still few in number, and more are needed if the health consequences of divorce are to be more completely understood," they wrote.

Parents Raise Concern About "Realistic" Safety Drills that Fail to Inform Children

WYOMING, Mich. -- A school safety drill that included police officers in riot gear with weapons has caused concern among some parents who say it was too realistic and frightened some students.

Police in the western Michigan community of Wyoming entered two classrooms at Lee Middle and High School on Thursday and announced there was a threat to the school, the Grand Rapids Press reported.

Students were unaware police were conducting the drill and were taken from the classroom into the halls, patted down by officers and asked what they had in their pockets, the newspaper said.

"Some of these kids were so scared, they just about wet their pants," said Marge Bradshaw, a parent with four children in Godfrey-Lee Schools. "I think it's pure wrong that the students and parents were not informed of this."

Officers wore protective gear, including vests and helmets, and carried rifles that were unloaded and marked with colored tape to indicate they were not live weapons, the newspaper said.

Diana Silva, a parent of an eighth-grade student, said the drill went too far.

"My child was with his face to the wall in the hallway of the high school," Silva said. "I certainly don't want anything like this happening to my child."

Principal David Britten said students weren't told ahead of time to make the drill as realistic as possible. Teachers were informed moments before it took place, he said.

"I think this is the best way to do it," Britten said. "We're not looking to scare anyone, but we want a sense of urgency."

But Wyoming Police Chief James Carmody said his officers were not aware students and parents were not told. He said his department will mandate that parents be notified ahead of time in the future.

"The purpose was to show how we will evacuate the classroom, not to assault the classroom," Carmody said.

Expert Promotes Efforts to Teach Children to Combat School Shooters?

A controversial program encouraging students to confront and counterattack a violent intruder in their school is earning the praise from a Professor at Kansas State University.

Charles Smith, professor of family studies and human service at Kansas State's College of Human Ecology, wrote "Raising Courageous Kids: Eight Steps to Practical Heroism." When he heard about a school district in Texas that is training its students to fight back against an attacker, Smith thought the idea was right-on.

"Finally somebody is really looking at this and saying, 'Don't be a lamb,'" he said. "It's telling kids to keep their heads up and to defend themselves with a sense of honor and self-respect."

Smith said fighting back and fighting for your life is a message that's been delivered to adults as a self-defense tactic for years, and that it's about time children start hearing the same thing.

When he conducts bullying-response programs in schools, one of Smith's messages to children is "don't feed the bully," don't give bullies what they want. Bullies want to intimidate and cause fear in their targets. That's why Smith said a program like the one in Texas is good in that it encourages children to overcome their fear.

Of course, what this issue doesn't explore is the increased chance of a child being shot or stabbed if the attacker poses a serious harm, or has the intent to kill regardless of the outcome.

"I don't think we do a very good job of teaching kids about and learning to respond to their own fear," Smith said. "One of the greatest things this program is doing is to encourage public discussion about issues of fear, courage and risk management in kids. I think this is going to bring a sea change in how we look at these kinds of circumstances."

Smith asserts that he has seen firsthand the power that even half a dozen preschoolers can have. When Smith was a preschool teacher, he once engaged his preschool group in a game of tug-of-war. He was surprised by the children's combined strength, as they dragged him around the playground despite his strongest efforts to resist.

Great comparison.

"Although in theory, a group of older grade-schoolers may have enough physical power to combat an attacker, it doesn't mean they can keep their composure in a school shooting situation in the way a middle school or high school student might. They don't have the capacity to control fear, avoid panic and act in any decisive way," Smith said.

Smith said respecting differences in age and maturity level is something schools will have to keep in mind as they consider implementing this kind of program.

"And, adults still have to assume the primary responsibility to do all they can to protect children at all grade levels," he said.

If children are taught how to confront an attacker at school, their parents may worry about whether their children make the right choice.

"It's a matter of how you want your children to live their lives," he said. "Do you want them to manage and overcome fear, to have self-respect and a personal strength that courage can give them? The alternative is to leave them powerless and vulnerable."

Then again, we could just leave it up to the parents to decide what's best for their kids in such a scenario.

New Jersey Rejects Abstinence Funding

The State of New Jersey will not accept federal abstinence dollars--since doing so requires teachers to say that sex within marriage is best, the Kaiser Network reported this week.

The state's health and education department sent a letter to the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that declines about $800,000 in abstinence-education funds -- the first time the state has declined such funds since 1997.

Fred Jacobs, the state health commissioner, said the requirements for schools to teach abstinence until marriage are too limiting.

"Monogamy is not a bad idea," he said, "but having the government of New Jersey dictate these things for families is not something we wish to do."

State government, he said, shouldn't create a standard for sexual activity.

But Linda Klepacki, analyst for sexual health at Focus on the Family Action, said remaining sexually abstinent is the best health choice for any person before marriage.

"And state government has always had a place in determining the best preventative health care for students," she said. "This has been the standard since health education began in public schools. Abstinence not only prevents sexually transmitted infections, it also allows individuals to reach their highest goals."

Massachusetts Appeals Court Says Parental Kidnapping Ok?

A few months ago, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court refused to allow James Mason’s sons to be moved out of state against his will.

Last week, the Massachusetts Appeals Court reversed a Family Court decision and sent Mark Evans’ seven-year-old boy packing to Connecticut . The decision can be read here.

Not surprisingly, parental rights advocates in the northeast find the case to be disturbing on several fronts.

Advocates note that early on, the mother broke the law by moving with the child to Connecticut before obtaining court permission to do so. Later, Family Court Judge E. Chouteau Merrill ordered her to move back.

Judge Merrill found that, “The move is not in [the child’s] best interest.” Judge Merrill also found that “The most generous characterization of the Wife’s reason for moving to Connecticut is because ‘she wants to’. . .” Judge Merrill also found that the wife’s claims that she could not afford to stay in Massachusetts, was able to find employment only in Connecticut, and that she had no support system in Massachusetts all lacked credibility.

Most fathers who have contemplated appealing bad family court decisions have learned that it is almost hopeless to get the Massachusetts Appeals Court to overturn a family court decision.

“Don’t bother,” say the lawyers, “The Appeals Court will never overturn this.” A pattern seems to be emerging that it does so mainly when the aggrieved party is a mother. See, for instance, Rosenthal v. Maney, another case in which the family court had denied a moveaway by a mother only to be overturned by the Appeals Court . It is getting harder and harder to believe that gender bias is absent. <>

Similar patterns are seen elsewhere.

In Fitzgerald v. Fitzgerald, the Washington , D.C. courts found that the Child Support Guidelines were excessive and unconstitutional – when the plaintiff was a non-custodial mother.

In Georgia , a moveaway was reversed by a higher court – when the plaintiff was a non-custodial mother.

In Pennsylvania , the State Supreme Court suddenly discovered that non-custodial parents have substantial expenses for parenting time – when the plaintiff was a non-custodial mother.

Of course, there are many cases in which higher courts have supported the appeals of fathers or rejected the appeals of mothers. But these tend to be cases in which the lower court decisions were flat-out, no-brainer mistakes.

Parental rights advocates hope that their suspicion of gender bias in the Appeals Court is wrong. But it is striking that it reversed Judge Merrill in this case, abandoning its long-established standard that it would do so only when the findings of the lower court were “clearly erroneous.”

Just to add insult to injury, the Appeals Court cited, among other reasons, for the move “the companionship of family, and readily available child-care assistance from family.”

In other words, the court recognized that the mother needed the “companionship of family,” but denied her boy the companionship of his family – namely his father. Likewise, in mentioning the availability of child-care assistance from family, the court seemed to think that an uncle or grandmother is preferable to the child’s own father.

Parental Rights: Are They in Jeopardy?

By Michael Farris

The new term of the Supreme Court opens with a less-than-scintillating lineup of cases for the first two weeks of oral argument. Should immigration authorities use state or federal standards for drug abuse convictions? Does the holder of a patent have to wait until a complete breach of contract has occurred before filing suit? What is the correct statute of limitations for filing claims for leases when a federal agency is the lessor?

The case with the most human interest comes from the notorious Ninth Circuit. It seems that the court from our left-most coast decided to overturn a state murder conviction because three family members of the victim wore buttons to the courtroom that had a photo of the victim. One can only wish that the Supreme Court would issue its first three-word opinion in response: "You idiots! Reversed."

Perhaps it is appropriate to use this period of relative lull at the beginning of the term to focus on something far more important than particular cases and individual decisions. American citizens need to pay a great deal more attention to the development of Supreme Court theories and doctrines than is often the case.

A recent article in the American Journal of International Law tells this story:

In the keynote address to the 2003 annual meeting of the American Society of International Law, Justice Stephen Breyer declared that "comparative analysis emphatically is relevant to the task of interpreting constitutions and enforcing human rights." Justice Breyer concluded that nothing could be "more exciting for an academic, practitioner, or judge than the global legal enterprise that is now upon us." In a room filled with international lawyers and academics, he received a home court standing ovation.

Breyer's use of the term "comparative analysis" means that the Supreme Court should use international law sources to help interpret American law, including the U.S. Constitution. The late Chief Justice Rehnquist said it even more directly: "Now that constitutional law is solidly grounded in so many countries, it is time that the United States courts begin looking to the decisions of other constitutional courts to aid in their own deliberative process."

There is no doubt that the Court has already begun this process. In the 2003 decision of Lawrence v. Texas, the Court used international political and legal developments to invent a constitutional right to commit homosexual sodomy.

Since this right was "found" in the 14th Amendment, one has to wonder if the Supreme Court was tacitly embracing a theory that post-Civil War lawmakers engaged in time travel so that they could be guided by the political opinions of modern western Europeans as they penned the words to the Amendment. Correct constitutional analysis asks the question: "What did these words mean to the people who wrote and ratified this provision of the Constitution?" Modern European thought is utterly irrelevant to such an approach.

Similarly, international law was used to interpret the Eighth Amendment in the 2005 decision of the Supreme Court declaring that it was unconstitutional to impose the death penalty on a juvenile murderer. The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child – a treaty that has never been ratified by the United States – was employed to protect the rights of a 17 year-old thrill murderer who threw an elderly woman off a bridge.

A decision last month by the European Court of Human Rights shows us what is in store if our Supreme Court continues on this path of using international sources to interpret our constitutional protections of human rights.

Germany banned homeschooling. Christian homeschooling families who faced criminal prosecutions, jail sentences and removal of their children by social services agencies raised religious freedom and parental rights claims in defense of their right to homeschool their children. Declaring that "pluralism in education" is "essential for the preservation of the 'democratic society,'" the European high court declared that "in view of the power of the modern State, it is above all through State teaching that this aim must be realized."

Even though the decision was addressing a home education case, no one should miss its bigger meaning. The state has the power to demand attendance at government schools so that children may receive indoctrination in today's theories of pluralism.

Will this European decision be followed in the United States? The Supreme Court has declared parental rights to be a fundamental right, but it's an open question whether the Supreme Court will follow its own precedents or the decisions of modern Europe. In both the death penalty case and the homosexual sodomy case, the Court used international law to overturn its own precedents.

And it must be remembered that parents' rights are protected because the Supreme Court found such rights to be implied in the text of the 14th Amendment. Because parental rights are not listed in the specific text of the Constitution, Justice Scalia – who is no fan of international law – voted against judicial protection of parental rights.

If parental rights are going to survive as a viable legal theory for the rest of this century, it is going to be necessary to place a specific provision into the text of the Constitution. We must give conservatives like Scalia a text to rely on in order to stop the internationalists from using European law to erode our liberty to educate our children outside the orb of state efforts to indoctrinate them in pluralism.

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Michael Farris is the chancellor of Patrick Henry College where he teaches constitutional law. He is also the chairman and general counsel of Home School Legal Defense Association.
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Ohio Dad Files Writ of Certiorari to Protect Parental Rights in Custody Determinations

(COLUMBUS) – An Ohio father who has been doing battle with that state’s lower courts pertaining to the custody of his children for more than 12 years is finally moving up in the world. On Oct.17th, Michael Galluzzo, who has been challenging his state's child custody statutes as being unconstitutional, filed 2 Petitions for Writ of Certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The first case derives from a constitutional challenge to the state's custody statutes. At issue is the authority of the state to deprive a fit parent of custody in a divorce case without a finding of unfitness by the use of clear and convincing evidence to deny custodial rights.

The second case derives from a child support issue originating from Champaign County, raising a number of constitutional issues to address the failures of the Ohio courts, including the right to custody, right to compel witnesses, and double jeopardy.

Originally filed in April 2001, the case has slowly worked its way through the lower courts to where it is presently. The cases are tied together in several ways.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in many cases that parents have fundamental liberty interest to raise their children, upholding the rights of parents to raise their children without undue state intrusion for more than 80 years.

Galluzzo cites cases such as Stanley v. Illinois (1971), Santosky v. Kramer (1982), and Troxel v. Granville (2000), where the Supreme Court held that parental rights constitute a fundamental liberty interest. Laws and individual orders against such rights have a level of review called strict scrutiny applied.

In Santosky, the court articulated that in order to terminate parental rights, the state must prove its allegations of parental neglect or misconduct by “clear and convincing evidence.” Lacking a compelling interest where fundamental rights are at stake, the Equal Protection Clause under the 14th Amendment does not allow the placing of citizens into separate classes (custodial and non-custodial), without a finding of clear and convincing evidence of unfitness by one of the parents.

The cases are seminal in a long history of U.S. Supreme Court decisions pertaining to fundamental rights that should properly establish constitutionally compliant procedures between suitable and fit parents in a divorce situation with children.

The Court has addressed the rights of adoptive parents, grandparents, unwed parents, single parents, unfit parents, state agencies, and legal guardians. The ultimately critical, and unresolved issue remaining is the determination of the rights of fit parents in divorce and child custody cases.

Department of Education Approves New Regulations that Deny School Districts the Ability to Evaluate Homeschoolers without Parental Consent

(CHICAGO) On October 13th, the U.S. Department of Education placed regulations into effect that explicitly deny school districts any ability under the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) to override a parent’s refusal to have their homeschooled child evaluated for disabilities.

Advocacy groups such as the Home School Legal Defense Association have seen an increase in such cases over the last several years where homeschooling parents deny consent for an evaluation and the school district files a due process procedure against the family.

The new regulations are in part a result of HSLDA’s victory in the case Fitzgerald v. Camdenton R-III School District (2006), where the trial court ruled that a school district did not have the right to override a parent’s consent.

“Where a home-schooled child’s parents refuse consent [for an evaluation], privately educate the child, and expressly waive all benefits under the IDEA, an evaluation would have no purpose. . . . [A] district may not force an evaluation in this case.”

After the Fitzgerald decision, HSLDA inspired thousands of homeschooling parents from across the country to attend meetings and sent in comments regarding the Department of Education’s proposed regulations.

The Fitzgerald case, in conjunction with the comments of HSLDA and it's members resulted in an expansion of the language that was already in the comments on the proposed IDEA regulations.

Now, it appears that a completely new section in the IDEA regulations provides protection for parents who homeschool. The new regulations state that if a homeschooling parent does not provide consent for any initial evaluation or reevaluation of their child, the school district cannot even initiate a due process procedure to override that consent.

<>“Our hard-won victory in Fitzgerald brought this matter to the attention of the Department of Education,” according to HSLDA Attorney Jim Mason. “Even the DOE acknowledged that this has always been the intent of the law. Now they say it clearly.”

APA President Says Psychological Science Is Not P.C.

American Psychological Association President Dr. Gerald P. Koocher recently chimed-in on viewpoints provided on the topic of domestic violence in an APA article published October 9, 2006, where he says that many groups and individuals have tried to use the topic of behavioral science as a rationale to promote or oppose a political and social policy agenda.

Koocher asserts that in many instances, psychological science can provide important answers to guide policy, but that the very nature of behavioral science data will often contribute ambiguity.

He says that most of the variables psychologists study originate with hypothetical constructs (e.g., adaptation, coping, intelligence or personality). How people choose to define and measure these constructs leads to assorted claims of validity in all its forms.

Koocher offers that as we strive to conduct and disseminate high quality behavioral research, some people might respond angrily to, discount or ignore data that do not comport with their beliefs about how things are or ought to be, and lists the following example:

John Jost and his colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of 88 samples from 12 nations analyzing political conservatism as motivated social cognition and confirmed that several psychological variables predict political conservatism (e.g., heightened dogmatism, reduced openness to experience and intolerance of ambiguity). They concluded that the core ideology of political conservatism stresses resistance to change andjustification of inequality, modifiedby needs that vary across situations and disposition to manage uncertainty and threat.

Christopher Ellison and colleagues found domestic violence reports lower for the more religiously observant couples sampled.

Several studies of domestic violence have suggested that males and females in relationships have an equal likelihood of acting out physical aggression, although differing in tactics and potential for causing injury (e.g., women assailants will more likely throw something, slap, kick, bite, or punch their partner, or hit them with an object, while males will more likely beat up their partners, and choke or strangle them).

In addition, data show that that intimate partner violence rates among heterosexual and gay and lesbian teens do not differ significantly. Such findings can serve to spur on further research in a given area.

Suffice it to say: Psychological science cannot be held to a standard of political correctness by social liberals or conservatives, and thus any attempt to use isolated behavioral science findings to frame answers to broad social policy questions will require a level of explanatory detail and nuance that defies the sound bite mentality of many news outlets and political messages.

Ideally, policy-makers need to draw on the body of psychological research in a given area to inform their decisions.

Abortion Advocates Sue to Provide Plan B Access for Other People's Kids?

Just when you thought you'd heard enough about fringe groups wanting to gain access to children for sordid political motivations, the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) recently stuck their foot in their mouth by telling the public [in so many words] that other people's children shouldn't have to seek parental consent to get an abortion by using the morning after pill, known as Plan B.

That is the impression they've recently provided America's parents in their new lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), hoping to make the morning-after-pill available to girls under 18. The move flies in the face of an agreement the FDA made with Barr Laboratories, which prohibits younger girls from getting the drug without a prescription.

But it hardly comes as a surprise to those in the pro-life and parental rights movements, many of whom suspected that abortion advocates would bring such a case.

"This type of effort does nothing but undermine parents' involvement in kids' lives and undermine the role of parents in trying to hold families together, which is part of our social fabric," said Daniel McConchie, vice president and chief of staff at Americans United for Life.

The morning-after pill, also known as Plan B, delivers a high dose of the same hormones used in birth-control pills, and can sometimes cause an early abortion.

Sandy Rios, president of Culture Campaign, said if the legal challenge to the FDA's decision to make Plan B available over-the-counter to children is successful, it will be "open season on our kids."

"When you make this kind of a pill available to adolescents, it's going to increase the amount of adult-on-teen sex."

And while the Center for Reproductive Rights probably won't profit from the lawsuit, groups like Planned Parenthood have a little more at stake.

"Planned Parenthood stands to gain," McConchie explained, "because they own part of the Plan B patent and they stand to profit financially if more people are taking or purchasing this drug."

CRR attorneys are also asking for access to presidential records to see if the Bush administration improperly lobbied the FDA to keep Plan B out of the hands of children without a prescription.

A judge is reviewing documents to see if there is enough evidence to allow the suit.

Study Reports Unmarried Households Become Slim Majority in U.S.

For the first time in U.S. history, a new report shows that marriage may no longer be the predominant living arrangement in a majority of American households.

The change, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau in its 2005 American Community Survey, could signal a change in many important facets of American life--from Family Law to national politics and its current emphasis on family values.

The findings were released in August but largely escaped public attention until now because of the large volume of data, indicating that marriage did not figure in nearly 55.8 million American family households, or 50.2 percent.

The study indicated that more than 14 million households are headed by single women, with another five million headed by single men, and 36.7 million belonged to a category described as "non-family households," a term that experts said referred primarily to couples co-habiting out of formal wedlock.

In addition, there were more than 30 million unmarried men and women living alone who are not categorized as families, the report indicated.

By comparison, the number of traditional households with married couples at their core stood at slightly more than 55.2 million, or 49.8 percent of the total.

Unmarried couples gravitated toward big cities such as Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, while the farm states in the Great Plains and rural communities of the Midwest and West remained bastions of traditionalism, according to the survey.

The trend represented a dramatic change from just six years ago, when married couples made up 52 percent of 105.5 million American households.

It indicated that efforts by President Bush and his allies, who over the past five years have made a concerted effort to shore-up traditional marriage and families through tax breaks, special legislation and church-sponsored campaigns is bearing less fruit.

The shift, experts said, also raises the question about the future effectiveness of so-called "family value" politics currently played by both Republicans and Democrats.

Douglas Besharov, a sociologist with the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based Think-tank, said it is difficult for the traditional family to emerge unscathed after three and a half decades of divorce rates reaching 50 percent and five decades out-of-wedlock births.

"Change is in the air," Besharov said in a recent interview with the State Department journal called U.S. Society and Values. "The only question is whether it is catastrophic or just evolutionary." He predicted that co-habitation and temporary relationships between people were likely to dominated America's social landscape for years to come.

"Overall, what I see is a situation in which people--especially children--will be much more isolated, because not only will their parents both be working, but they'll have fewer siblings, fewer cousins, fewer aunts and uncles," the scholar argued. "So over time, we're moving towards a much more individualistic society."

In the opinion of Stephanie Coontz, who heads the Council on Contemporary Families, growing life expectancy as well as women's earning potential are impacting the traditional marriage in unexpected ways.

If before World War II, the typical American marriage ended with the death of one partner within a few years after the last child had left home, she pointed out in the journal, that today couples can look forward to spending more than two decades together in an empty nest.

"The growing length of time partners spend with only each other for company, in some instances, has made individuals less willing to put up with an unhappy marriage, while women's economic independence makes it less essential for them to do so," Coontz wrote.

Domestic Violence Awareness Meets Marriage Protection

by Dr. Stephen Baskerville


If it's October, it must be "Domestic Violence Awareness Month." This federally driven observance has generated a steady stream of dishonest claims about how domestic violence is a gender crime perpetrated entirely by men against women. This non-existent crisis will be used to set aside more constitutional protections in order to railroad innocent men into jail.

Men's groups are beginning to fight back, pointing out decades of unchallenged research establishing that domestic violence is perpetrated as much by women as men. But more needs to be said. Most of the domestic violence hysteria is generated for one purpose: to gain advantage in custody battles. In other words, trumped-up domestic violence accusations break up marriages and separate children from their fathers.

It is ironic but perhaps also fitting that just a few years ago at this time President Bush proclaimed a Marriage Protection Week. Though this was a response to the flap over gay marriage, it might be even more constructively used to raise awareness of how the domestic violence industry is destroying marriage and creating fatherless children.

Now domestic violence hysteria is becoming so extreme that it is creating a quasi-totalitarian gulag, where fathers are evicted from their homes without any evidence of wrongdoing, interrogated, and forced to confess to crimes they never committed. That's right. American citizens are routinely forced, on pain of incarceration, to sign confessions. Forced confessions are familiar from the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe. Prisoners were required to denounce themselves for their "crimes" against socialism. Arthur Koestler described this vividly in his novel, Darkness at Noon.

In Warren County, Pa., fathers like Robert Pessia are told they will be jailed unless they sign documents confessing to acts of violence. The confessions require the father to admit, "I have physically and emotionally battered my partner. I have committed the following acts of violence against her."

He must then describe the violence, even if he insists he committed none. The documents require him to state, "I am responsible for the violence I used. My behavior was not provoked." As Pessia says, "This means I have lied and admit to something that I did not do."

Other men testify, "It will be useless to try to defend myself because it will just make it worse." The "violence" in question need not even be, in fact, violent. It may be anything the "victim" (who may only be "emotionally battered") says it is. "Depriving her of clothes" and "harassing her over bills" are among the definitions of "violence" promoted by some domestic violence authorities. Words like violence are debased into meaningless Newspeak, so that no defense is possible and no due process of law is applicable.

The line between law enforcement and psychotherapy becomes dangerously blurred, since the required confessions usually begin as involuntary therapy. Politicized psychotherapy echoes Soviet practice, where psychiatric prisons were used to confine and drug dissidents like V.I. Fainberg and V. E. Borisov, whose political views and ethical principles were taken as indications of mental illness. These officials are not joking.

In Massachusetts, minister Harry Stewart was jailed for six months for refusing to confess.
In Britain too, the Labour government is employing Gestapo methods and destroying centuries-old Common Law protections for individual rights in the name of domestic violence.

Home Secretary David Blunkett recently announced police raids to round-up and arrest men. The operation was carried out by something called the "Diversity Directorate" of the London police. Blunkett's Conservative Party counterpart, Oliver Letwin, calls his methods authoritarian.

Something extreme is taking place when a right-wing law-and-order spokesman can criticize the police methods of a left-wing government as heavy-handed. It is clear that the purpose here is not to arrest individual lawbreakers but to instill fear in a target population.

Gloria Steinem isn't joking when she says, "Feminism is a revolution." If so, the domestic violence machinery is executing its Reign of Terror.

Too many conservatives turn a blind eye to these abuses because they assume it is a matter of law-and-order. It is not. It is the perversion of criminal justice to serve an ideological agenda, bringing the law into contempt and leaving the weak at the mercy of truly dangerous criminals.

Perhaps this year we might celebrate Domestic Violence Awareness Month and Marriage Protection Week together, by becoming aware of how the domestic violence hoax is being used to destroy marriage and erect a police state.


Also see: www.mediaradar.org,

Newsweek Bashes Dads; CBS Covers Shared Parenting, PAS

In Defense of David Harris

"What has he done to wear so many scars? Has he changed the course of rivers? Has he polluted the moon and stars?"
--Bob Dylan



By Glenn Sacks


A murder trial recently concluded in Texas wherein a woman who killed her husband was defended by the husband's own mother, brother and father, who explained that, aside from what might be described as some unpleasantness on a bad day, the woman is really a good, law-abiding person.

The press on both the left and the right has poured derision upon the murder victim, referring to David Harris as a "creep," a "rat," a "a lying, cheating scumbag" and Clara Harris' "unfaithful dog of a husband." Feminist Susan Estrich asked "Who could blame [Clara] for getting into her Mercedes and running him over?" and seemed a little sad that the jury did. She fantasized a Cochranesque defense for her, noting:

"Every day across America, women crowd into the offices of plastic surgeons and beauticians and aestheticians, spending money we don't have on painful procedures we don't really need, trying to hang on to men who don't deserve us...with their votes, the Harris jury could have sent a shot across the bow to all those cheating men. If you cheat on your wife, she can kill you and get away with it. If he deserved to get hit, you must acquit."

Joseph Farah, editor and chief executive officer of WorldNetDaily, penned a column entitled "Free Clara Harris!" in which he wrote "I'd give her a medal....she did the right thing. That creep deserved what he got" and urged readers to "live like her." John Kasich, guest host on The O'Reilly Factor, also expressed sympathy for Clara who, he claimed, had been "mentally tortured" by her husband.

On the radio and the Internet many observers expressed similar sentiments, such as: "If at first you don't succeed, run over him again"; "I feel much compassion for Clara but absolutely none for her husband the victim..[he’s] not worth killing"; and, of course, "You play, you pay."

Even the prosecutor, Mia Magness, apparently quibbles with the killer only over her choice of methods, expressing a preference that, instead of killing David by her own hand, she should have driven him to suicide by divorcing him and "[doing] like every other woman...get his house, car, kids -- make him wish he were dead."

In Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear, Lear is abandoned by his family with the exception of one loyal daughter, Cordelia. In the Texas tragedy David Harris has been abandoned by his family except for his loyal daughter Lindsey, who loved her father and begged her stepmother not to kill him. The murder of her father and the betrayals of her grandmother, grandfather and uncle have exacted a high toll on her, driving her to four suicide attempts in the past six months.

What did David Harris do to deserve this cruel fate? He had an affair.

As Shakespeare’s Marc Antony said of the fallen Caesar’s "ambition," David’s infidelity was "a grievous fault--and grievously hath he answered it."

It goes without saying that were the genders reversed few would be talking about infidelity as a justification for murder. Imagine a woman trapped in a loveless marriage with a jealous, potentially violent husband whom she believes may be cheating on her. She stays in the marriage because she fears she could be separated from her children should they divorce, and finds understanding, companionship and passion in a relationship with a coworker. Her husband finds out about the affair and goes on a violent, jealous rampage, slaughtering her in front of her daughter as the daughter begs him not to kill her mother.

There would be no tears or excuses proffered for the killer, and he would be just one more murderer sitting on Texas’ death row. The public would view the woman’s affair as a sad, desperate attempt to gain some comfort in the hellish life her brute of a husband had imposed on her. The mere mention of the fact that his wife had been cheating on him as an excuse for murder would be correctly denounced by feminists, who would also express outrage at the murderer’s "blame the victim" defense.

Listening to the public and media reaction to the Harris case one would imagine that infidelity were a vice owned exclusively by the male of the human species. In reality, research estimates that for every five unfaithful husbands, there are four unfaithful wives. According to the American Association of Blood Banks, of the nearly 300,000 cases evaluated each year in the United States, roughly 30% exclude the tested individual as the biological father of the children. Even blood typing examinations taken decades ago showed that at a bare minimum 10% of the fathers who signed their babies' birth certificates were unknowingly claiming paternity of children who weren't theirs.

Unlike her husband, Clara is alive to spin her version of the events and naturally portrays herself as the loyal, devoted wife of a man who betrayed her. However, upon closer examination the evidence is overwhelming that the bad spouse in this marriage was Clara, not David.
David's daughter, Lindsey, says that her father had the affair in part because of the way Clara mistreated and neglected him. According to her testimony, David told his daughter on many occasions how lonely he felt. Lindsey also testified that her stepmother Clara made her feel unimportant and as if she were not part of the family, and that the only place where pictures of her were allowed in the home were in her father’s bathroom. By contrast, pictures of the twins (the children Clara and David had together) dominated the house. Lindsey also testified that Clara had physically assaulted David on at least one prior occasion.

According to testimony by a detective at Blue Moon Investigations, the private detective agency which Clara had hired to spy on David, when Clara first came to the agency for help she described her husband as a "good man" who had fallen into the "trap" set by his coworker Gail Bridges, a "deceitful woman." Clara told the detective that her own neglect of David was the cause of his affair.

A vice president for Blue Moon Investigators told the court in November that she had conducted an investigation of Clara and presented several audio tapes on which, according to the news department of a Houston television station, "witnesses claim that Clara Harris was also having an affair before her husband died" [emphasis added].

Clara also lies, as evidenced by her preposterous courtroom claim that she didn't know she was running over her husband, despite a video which shows her repeatedly circling and running him down with her Mercedes.

Most importantly, David Harris was married to a person capable of killing an unarmed man as the man's daughter begged her not to kill her father. While we'll never know exactly what happened between David and Clara behind closed doors, can there be any doubt that a person capable of such a heinous crime was not exactly the perfect spouse? That David probably had good reason to distrust or dislike her and seek the affections of another? That somewhere along the line it might have been Clara's um......personality that might have created the problem?
One of the main clubs used against David Harris is the conversation he had with Clara at an airport hotel bar on July 18 in which he allegedly listed the reasons he preferred Bridges over Clara.

According to Clara, these reasons included the fact that Clara made negative, pessimistic comments, was loud and dominated conversations, and that David found Bridges more physically attractive than Clara. Many have cited this as evidence of what a cad and a creep David was. Yet few husbands would have the courage to speak to their wives about their wives’ physical appearance in the way Clara claims, particularly to a jealous, violent wife like her. It is extremely likely that David broached these subjects with Clara only under direct pressure from her. I imagine the barroom conversation/interrogation went something like this:

Clara: Tell me how she is better than me. Tell me why you prefer her.
David: I don’t want to talk about it.

Clara: Tell me. That’s the least you can do.
David: I said I don’t want to talk about it. You two are two different people.

Clara: How are we different, I want to know. Tell me why she is better than me (pounds fist on table). Tell me.
David: (Sighs) Well, she is less.....vocal. She listens more. She’s not so...negative, pessimistic.

Clara: (Ignoring David’s comments) It’s her looks, isn't it? It’s got to be her looks. Tell me about her looks.
David: I don’t want to talk about it. It’s got nothing to do with her looks. I like her because she’s nice to me...

Clara: I demand to know about her looks.
David: It’s not her looks...

Clara: Tell me about her looks. I deserve to know.
David: (Sighs) Well, she is (quivers)......well, she is...(quivers again)...thinner than you, just a little bit honey, just a little bit....

Clara: And? And?
David: (Still quivering) Nothing. That’s all.

Clara: No it isn’t. What about her breasts? Is it her breasts? What are her breasts like?
David: (Head swivels, looks around in every direction for a waiter) Clara, please...

Clara: What are her breasts like?
David: (Sighs) Her breasts are... (quivers)....are.... nice
Clara: Nice! Nice! How nice? What are they like? Describe them to me....

Clara, the appearance-obsessed former beauty queen, was probably capable of seeing her and David's problems only in terms of her looks and focused on this instead of David’s real message, which was that Clara’s neglect and personality were the cause of the problem.

Many have used the conversation as an excuse to speak of David's affair as if he were carrying on with a 19 year-old cheerleader. In reality, Bridges is only a few years younger than Clara and is the mother of three children. Since she was also a coworker, odds are that David looked to her at least as much for companionship as for sex.

Why did David stay? Probably because of his young twin boys. He probably knew that in a divorce he had little chance of winning even shared custody of his children and that it is common for custodial mothers to block noncustodial fathers' access and visitation to their children. He almost certainly knew that Clara was just the type of vengeful person who would do such a thing.

Despite Clara's attempt to save herself from justice by maligning her dead husband, there is no evidence that David Harris was anything worse than a fallible human being who was caught in a difficult situation. By all estimations he was a good father, a good provider and a good husband for the vast majority of his and Clara's 10 year marriage. The fact that this flawed but decent man could be slaughtered and then vilified for his one comparatively minor transgression speaks volumes about our society’s noxious mix of anti-male feminism and anti-male male chivalry.

The product of this witches' brew is a sick cultural norm where, in any conflict between a man and a woman, the man is always wrong.


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This column first appeared on LewRockwell.com

Are Civil Courts In Contempt of Justice?

By Wendy McElroy

Corporate lawyer H. Beatty Chadwick has passed 11 years in a Pennsylvania county jail on a contempt of civil court charge relating to his divorce.

He 'refuses' to produce $2.5 million that may not exist. If he were in the federal system, the maximum penalty for contempt would be 18 months. As it is, Chadwick -- who has never been convicted of a crime or faced a jury -- is indefinitely imprisoned without possibility of parole.

Has Chadwick fallen through a crack in the legal system or is he proof that family courts are out-of-control, especially regarding 'contempt of court' power?

The 'legal crack' theory immediately confronts a problem. According to the Chicago Tribune, the case has produced a "dozen pleas to the county courts, nine to state appeals courts, nine to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, six to the nearby federal court, four to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and two to the U.S. Supreme Court." That's one massive and meticulously sustained 'crack.'

The 'out-of-control' theory immediately confronts a question: what act of contempt could possibly elicit such draconian punishment?

The answer begins in 1977 when Chadwick (then 39 years old) married the former Barbara Jean Crowther. She filed for divorce in late 1992. Depending on which account is credited, Chadwick is either the victim of a vindictive wife or he is domineering husband who vowed that his wife would never see a penny.

In 1994, Barbara Chadwick informed the court that her husband had wired $2.5 million out of the country. The judge ordered Chadwick to retrieve the funds and place them in a court-controlled account until the divorce was settled. Chadwick claimed that most of the money had been lost in a foreign business deal gone bad; however, a small fraction of the money showed up in a U.S. bank under Chadwick's name. The judge ordered his imprisonment on civil contempt until the funds were produced.

In civil proceedings, such as divorce, a charge of contempt usually occurs in two circumstances. First, a failure to attend court proceedings despite a subpoena. Second, the failure to comply with a court order. If imprisonment is ordered, the 'sentence' can last as long as the disobedience continues or until the 'contempt limitation' of the particular court system is reached; some courts have no limit. Since the prisoner is considered to 'hold the key' to his own freedom, his constitutional right to due process is not seen to apply.

Chadwick was imprisoned in April 1995.

Traditionally, contempt of court 'sentences' continue only as long as there is a reasonable expectation of coercing compliance. Otherwise, the imprisonment becomes a punishment, which is a criminal sanction beyond the authority of civil courts.

A 1974 New Jersey Supreme Court case finding (Catena v. Seidl) is often cited regarding civil contempt. "It is abhorrent to our concept of personal freedom that the process of civil contempt can be used to jail a person indefinitely, possibly for life, even though he or she refuses to comply with the courts order….[C]ontinued imprisonment may reach a point where it becomes more punitive than coercive and thereby defeats the purpose of the commitment."

In 2002, U.S. District Court Judge Norma Shapiro agreed with New Jersey and ordered Chadwick's release on the grounds that continued imprisonment would not produce the money. Judge Samuel Alito -- now of the Supreme Court but then with the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals -- overturned Shapiro and found instead that Chadwick's incarceration should continue as long as the courts believed he was able to pay.

His ability to do so was called into question last year. A. Leo Sereni, a former president judge in Pennsylvania, was appointed to track Chadwick's money. Eighteen months and two accounting firms later, Sereni reported no trace beyond what had been discovered a decade before. Money had been transferred to Europe and a small fraction had reappeared in U.S. accounts. Sereni concluded, "most of it...nowhere."

He recommended Chadwick's release, stating, "My God -- if he had stolen $2 million, he would have been out a couple of years ago." In February 2006, the court ruled that Sereni had "overstepped his bounds," and Chadwick's incarceration continued.

The ex-wife's attorney, to whom much of any materializing money would go, has produced recent correspondence from Chadwick to a friend about setting up a numbered bank account in the Cayman Islands. Chadwick claims such an account would merely protect assets -- e.g. his future social security checks.

At this point…does it matter?

Chadwick has been imprisoned for over a decade without trial or being found guilty of a crime. That fact alone should bring into question whether imprisoning people for contempt is an appropriate court power.

The power is rooted in British common law. Legal systems that do not share a common law background, which constitute the majority of countries in the world, do not typically grant this authority to a judge.

Indeed, the ability to summarily imprison is one of the reasons that the U.S. judiciary is so politically powerful. It allows even civil court judges to bypass the Constitution.

I believe that the power of imprisonment without due process should be stripped from judges. At minimum, any person imprisoned on contempt should -- at some well-defined point -- have the right to stand before a jury that considers two questions of fact. Is the person able to comply? Does a continuing sanction serve a legally valid purpose?

Ask yourself: what purpose does Chadwick's imprisonment serve?



---

Wendy McElroy is the editor of ifeminists.com and a research fellow for The Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. She is the author and editor of many books and articles, including the new book, "Liberty for Women: Freedom and Feminism in the 21st Century" (Ivan R. Dee/Independent Institute, 2002). She lives with her husband in Canada.

Did Newsweek Magazine Tell the Truth about Parental Alienation and Domestic Violence?

In a recent article "Fighting Over the Kids: Battered spouses take aim at a controversial custody strategy" Newsweek Magazine attempted to sell the American public an impossible theory: alleged abusers are successful at winning sole custody of their children by claiming that the mother alienated them.

The article highlights the case of Genia Shockome, who lost custody of her children to her ex-spouse during her divorce. A recent article reported on the case revealed that the judge made the correct decision:

1. Genia had joint custody of the children 60% of the time. The father filed for change of custody due to chronic custodial interference.

2. Allegations of child and spousal abuse made by Genia against herex-husband were never substantiated by the court.

3. Abuse allegations made by Genia against her husband coincidedperfectly with every custody hearing.

4. Genia was caught on videotape at a supervised visitation centercoaching her children to make remarks against their father.

5. During the hearing resulting in her contempt charge and jailing, she was warned more than 15 times to stop interrupting the judge.

6. Despite a position with IBM paying $80,000 per year, Genia refusedto pay child support, and avoided paying support in a bankruptcy proceeding.

7. A court appointed psychologist characterized Genia as highly controlling, and said the biggest hurdle to an amicable custody arrangement was this fact.

8. Genia "failed to comply with virtually every decision, ruling, and order" of the trial court.

9. Her previous attorney had quit the case because she was too volatile and unpredictable.

10. Genia's appeal to the New York Supreme Court, over the trial court's criminal contempt decision, was denied on September 19,2006.

The Newsweek article quoted Harvard University's Jay Silverman, who claims that "54 percent of custody cases involving documented spousal abuse were decided in favor of the alleged batterers."

The study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, involved 39 women recruited as a non-representative, self-selected sample by the Battered Women's Testimony Project.
The study clearly states that the report "involved reliance on the self-report of participants." ... "It is important that these data be recognized as documentation of a set of issues based on reports of affected individuals (i.e., battered women referred to the project based on their dissatisfaction with family court outcomes or processes) rather than an attempt at definitive research into the prevalence and nature of the types of cases discussed."

The study is a classic example of how opinion is transmogrified into science by federally-subsidized radical activists. It contains no evidence indicating that mothers are being treated unfairly by the courts.

Mothers receive primary custody of children in approximately 85% of divorces. When cases involving false allegations of abuse and parental alienation do get fully heard, as happened in the Shockome case, courts sometimes bravely make the correct decision.

The Newsweek story is a carbon-copy of the discredited PBS documentary, "Breaking the Silence." In both cases, allegations of abuse made by the mother were anecdotal and unsubstantiated, and the mother was found to be the worst parent by the court after great scrutiny and lengthy litigation.