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Cole Stuart’s Review of Baskerville’s “Taken Into Custody”

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For anyone who hasn’t read Taken into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood, Marriage, and the Family [1], I just finished it and highly recommend it. Many are familiar with Professor Stephen Baskerville’s [2] basic theories and some have read excerpts from the book. Published in 2007, this book is a comprehensive and up-to-date description of the enormity of the problems endemic to the current tyrannical status of the judicial system as a whole, not merely family court. It is an extraordinary work.


For those of you, like me initially, who have been suspicious that he was another “fathers’ rights” zealot, you should reconsider. Certainly Baskerville takes the position that fathers far more than mothers are the early targets of state intrusion and control (i.e., having their children, assets, freedom, and even lives stripped from them) by the current system. Yet he’s not a “woman-hater.” In fact, he sees the real culprit as an increasingly voracious bureaucracy, including legislators and judges, who have provided irresistible incentives to mothers to initiate divorce proceedings as a first step in a process whereby the state — not mothers — takes control over the children, the family’s assets, and eventually even the mothers. He identifies divorcing mothers as yet one more defrauded victim of the destroyed family.

He’s also different from many leaders in the “fathers rights” groups who more or less “shoot from the hip” with anecdotal evidence of a laundry list of injustices of which they are personally aware. He’s a political scientist — an academic — and has studied the political, legal, and social issues and dramatic changes within those systems extensively. The book contains nearly 1,000 footnotes in its 300 pages, most referencing respected academic texts and journals. As such, he presents a much more sophisticated and comprehensive study and as such makes a far more compelling investigation of how the decay in family court’s respect for the law is directly related to the decay in constitutional government.

He places his analysis in historical context, using many known examples from the terrorist regimes of Nazism, Stalinism, Eastern European tyrants in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.

Further, unlike the stilted high-brow style prevalent in many academic works, his style is an accessible and indeed thoroughly engaging read.

It is truly the most compelling and troubling read I’ve encountered on the subject.

A few eye-opening excerpts:

It has become commonplace that the family is the building block of civil society, and many have warned that its dissolution portends the destruction of not only social order but civic freedom and, indeed, civilization itself.

The threat [the family] poses to state power need not be explicitly political; against the totalitarian claims of the modern state the ordinary business of family life is a threat. “Marriage is . . . The true reservoir of liberty.”

“Every new marriage of man and woman is also an act of defiance against ambitious political and ideological powers that would reduce human activity to their purposes.” Almost a century ago, G.K. Chesterton suggested that the family serves as the principal check on state power and predicted that someday the state and family would directly confront one another. The argument of this book is that that day has arrived.

Summoning citizens who are charged with no legal wrongdoing and seizing control of their children, homes, property, movements, and persons is not justice or the rule of law. It is something close to terror.

The linchpin in this expansion of government power over private life and politicization of children has been the judiciary, whose own politicization is likewise a phenomenon that accelerated throughout the twentieth century. . . . Yet ironically, the judiciary today has become so politicized that it is itself now widely perceived as the chief violator of the rights it once protected.

It is likely within the next few years that America will face an unprecedented constitutional crisis, as a bureaucratic judiciary aggrandizes to itself ever more powers in contempt of common citizens and as pressure increases on elected officials to impose some limit. Indeed, part of the argument of this book is that this crisis has already manifested itself less in the visible and exalted circles of high judicial politics . . . Than in the humble realm of family court (where it drastically alters the daily and personal lives of millions of citizens).

Baskerville’s conclusions may sound apocalyptic to some. But having studied politics and philosophy, practiced law in numerous state and federal courts, and having been wrung through the family court system for nearly four years, his conclusions are well researched, balanced, and entirely consistent with my 25 years of legal and academic experience. Many of you, like me, have probably shaken your heads at how the decisions of family court make little or no sense, and in fact frequently are plainly harmful to children and parents alike. Professor Baskerville “connects the dots” between family court rules and practices and broader social and political trends toward ever-expanding bureaucracies, infringement on basic rights, and ultimately totalitarian control.

I urge you to purchase and read this very insightful book. It will likely not only help you understand what’s happened to you, is still happening to you, but even worse, how much more damage the government could impose on you if we fail to act now.

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About the Reviewer

Cole Stuart [5] is an intellectual property attorney who has worked 15 years in his field. In 2007, his ex-wife, San Diego channel 6 news reporter Lynn Stuart, filed for divorce. As many dishonest and vindictive parents do, she has waged war on her son’s father to destroy a parent/child relationship. Even though Cole Stuart had been in many court rooms in multiple states for more than a decade as a practicing attorney, he had never seen anything like what occurred in the San Diego family law court of convicted drunk driver Judge Lisa Schall [6]. In 2009, he and other victims of San Diego family court abuse banded together to form the California Coalition for Families and Children [7] to oppose misconduct by San Diego judges and “experts” such as Dr. Stephen Doyne [8]. In 2010, he became the target for what appears to be illegal political persecution by Judges Lorna Alksne and Christine Goldsmith and City Attorney Jan Goldsmith [9] in their quest to intimidate and silence critics of the corrupt San Diego family law courts. Cole Stuart knows what abusive government and courts are because he’s personally experienced them.

Further Reading

Stephen Baskerville, PhD: A Site about the Divorce Regime, Family Court Corruption, and Government’s War on Fathers [10]

Married to the State: How government colonizes the family [11]

American Parents, Family Policy, and Courts Contribute to Poor Student Performance [12]

CCFC Family Law Protest in San Diego Results in Arrest of Group Leader [9]

San Diego DA Bonnie Dumanis Attempts to Pervert Justice [13]

Stephen Doyne and San Diego Family Law Courts Under Fire [8]

Father Imprisoned 20 Years on Fake Child Sex Abuse Charges [14]

Many Domestic Violence Temporary Restraining Orders (DV TRO) in the US are Falsely Obtained [15]

Holding Family Law Judges Accountable [16]

Children’s Rights Should Include Life With Both Parents [17]

15 Comments (Open | Close)

15 Comments To "Cole Stuart’s Review of Baskerville’s “Taken Into Custody”"

#1 Comment By From Emad Tadros MD On June 22, 2010 @ 12:00 am

When I first got involved in the forum of family court I, like most parents dragged into this system, expected justice, fairness, and that courts would respect the law. Every child is taught in school that our nation is founded on Constitutional principles of respect for citizens and limited government intervention. Yet that is not the case in the United States today, particularly in family court.

Many of the comments I have made here are the result of my efforts to gather information to understand why the family courts are not working as most parents would expect. At CCFC we’ve learned from many parents that courts are not operating to promote their communities and their citizens. Many parents have been broken not only as parents, but as human beings. It is extraordinarily sad to hear how the courts have produced thousands of frustrated, financially broke parents who, before entering this tragically broken system, were effective, functional, and loving parents. After leaving family court their assets are decimated, likely owned by the so called multi-millionaire psychologists, attorneys, and others whom I have called Family Dismantlers.

Most people don’t understand how the courts, psychologists, and the family court system operators have grown beyond their normal boundaries like a treacherous malignancy. Rather than resolve disputes efficiently, attorneys, courts, and service providers have become quite adept at orienting moms and dads to escalate conflict, setting up every family member, most tragically including the children, for failure, arrests, baseless accusations and on many occasions for the children to be controlled by the state and deprived of their own very loving parents hands.

The state, acting often on no evidence whatsoever, prefers to traffic children into foster homes instead. By virtue of their baseless and irrational actions, in a very real sense, our state is engaged in kidnapping, child trafficking, and child abuse.

Why would a state be charged with responsibility for promoting the general welfare and health and safety of its citizens take such action? The answer is simple: As the whistleblower informant in the Nixon Watergate scandal deep-throat said: follow the money. During my years in practice and family court I learned that when the Evaluator (or attorney at the start) fabricates and heats up instability between parents, the court personnel are rewarded with their own “Stimulus-Package” of court-ordered payments taken out of the family’s savings paid to the so-called court ordered NEEDED SERVICES:

Court-ordered therapists (I use that term with unabashed sarcasm) regularly charge parents $200-$400 per 45 minutes for services to remedy the very havoc the attorneys themselves have engendered, and the courts have utterly failed to resolve. The more time spent fixing a fabricated and desired havoc created by the therapist, the richer the court-ordered therapist becomes. In family court the therapists desire and do attempt to take years and tens of thousands of dollars to resolve what? The problems the attorneys and courts themselves created, and the therapists perpetuate?

To be fair, the therapists are not the primary culprits of the system that incentivizes aggressive parents to engage in this extremely unhealthy battle is the primary culprit. Parents are told that the system is broken and susceptible to manipulation.

They’re told that if they don’t strike first then they could be the victims. Like 29th century duelers, they face a terrifying choice, either I take advantage of this easily-manipulated system first, or my ex-spouse will, leaving me broke and childless. Thus the system effectively encourages, perpetuates, and feeds off of practices which are extremely harmful to litigants, their children, and communities. The
current practices in family court are a shocking offense to the rule of law, community order, our local and national economy, and human rights.

Parents who had never had problem parenting their own children before divorce once in the family court, are suddenly ordered to pay supervisors $100-$200 per hour just to see their children. Why?
Because courts are ineffective at accurately evaluating when supervision is truly necessary, and fearing a blemish on their own political record, err on the side of caution by placing parents into a supervision situation at the drop of a hat.

Yet courts shockingly fail to recognize the clear harm such orders cause by draining parental financial resources, interfering with parent-child relationships, and encouraging abusive parents to use supervision to destroy the relationships between their child and the enemy parent. Often the perceived enemy parent isn’t an enemy at all, but abusive parents driven by their own fears, anger, and aggression, stoked by attorneys and courts are motivated to such actions out of harmful emotions of fear, anger, and vindictiveness. Under supervision, contact with your own children can cost tens of thousands of dollars per year per child. And of course courts are reluctant to remove supervision as abusive parents seek to keep the hurdles in place, the psychologists are eager to pass business off to their regular colleagues in the form of further Court Order Mediators, Case Managers, Special Masters, Reunification Therapists, Evaluators, Exchangers, and others that justifies the family funds to be rechanneled to the Ancillary “SERVICES.”

And courts are fearful that if they remove supervision their own political careers may be impacted. Results burden the child and parents with costly, always unnecessary, and incontrovertibly supervisors at the parent’s own cost, trouble, and expense further enabling the abusive parent and incentivizing the psychologists, attorneys, and service providers to continue the abuse regardless of its legitimacy.

Courts regularly appoint Minor’s Counsel to speak for the child even though the child’s best interests are almost universally the same: Unfettered access with both parents. Minor’s counsel, earning $250-300/hr., regularly have little or no real understanding of the child’s needs (and many have never even seen the child), yet are paid handsomely to advocate for the child. In fact, however, they are advocating for their own job security by perpetuating conflict and hence a need for their services.

Tragically, one of the worst things that could happen to a child (who didn’t hire, doesn’t need, and can’t fire his or her own attorney) is to be appointed someone who doesn’t even know or love them, doesn’t know their parents, needs their money, and is willing to take it to promote their own career. As often as not, minors counsel regularly put liens on the homes of the parents, thereby robbing their own clients of their inheritance and financial future. It is a shocking and despicable practice fraught with conflicts of interest that should never be tolerated by any sane society.

Reunification Therapists (who are purportedly hired to unify what was dismantled by the court professionals) are equally unnecessary. Courts, rather than simply avoid destroying the family in the first place, order that parents pay such professionals $250-300 a session to help to repair what the courts themselves have destroyed. They often insist on taking many years. The younger the child’s age the bigger the investment size for those professionals. If there was no isolation, there will no job for this job title.

A Specific Evaluator Court ordered by name who will evaluate, fabricate, intentionally dismantle for months, reevaluate for years at $250-300 an hour and then kickback re-evaluations from other evaluators to un-entangle the havoc each evaluator created, in the first place. Would that fit the criteria of a RACKET?

A Specific Case Manager and or Special Master is personally court ordered at the same $$ range to do the same. Would you expect anything? I mean anything to EVER be managed?

In addition many claimed non-existent phone charges amongst the so called specific name court ordered professionals making claims of side talks with each other billing and ripping off the parents thousands of dollars per child, per calendar year!

San Diego Parents ask me: How much does the San Diego court get $$ compensated monthly from placing every child away from his parents in foster homes? Does anyone know?

How much the total to the court would be if foster home placements were ordered for many children? Would that be the millions? And if many children were placed for few years, would that be in the tens of millions?

How much does the court get compensated for issuing restraining orders?

Evaluator Stephen Doyne is a good product and live example of our San Diego County Courts. Does this fake credentialed Stephen Doyne, phd, whom his judicial election donations remain secret and not publicly divulged, get his recommendations practically rubber stamped by the judges?

Why the Evaluator creates a havoc to successfully split between parents, fabricating the so-called professional recommendations, thereby creating justification for the court to rubberstamp his referrals to only a specific names of court professionals but not others in the community while in-fact those community’s ones carry REAL SPECIALTY CERTIFICATION credentials?

IS there a secret code or hidden language amongst the limited by names court ordered professionals?

Or is it because corrupt professionals do not wish be uncovered and be figured out by such real caliber certified professional colleagues of how unprofessional they can be?

Would a good parent need the imaginary Evaluator’s and/or ancillary services? What would be the financial consequences on the Court appointed “SERVICES” when stating the truth about a fit parent?

Would the result of stating the truth about how good and loving and of a parent he/she is, cause this specifically named Court Ordered professionals by the judge(s) be broke? Yes or No?

Are these Election donations creating injustice, unfairness and inequity leading to such cesspool fake fraudulent fabricating un-professionals pirating the innocent citizens and their family assets?

Do we have a subtle system that would cause the Kids Funds and family retirement and assets be siphoned down to nothing by such court dismantlers? And Why?

Final question, When the Court lacks to condition its professional qualifications to the real and well respected actual specialty boards, why does the court still limit its court orders against the trusting and innocent families by specifying the order to such deceiving and SPECIFIC NAMES?

Should we call this Justice or Racketeering?

Cole, I have no doubt in my mind that your intelligence was able to very easily see through this Chronic Judicial Fraud and CCFC is proud of you. Your intelligence is striking, giving families and children many hopes and only causing the fraudulent(s) to be on the run. You are well balanced, sensible, respectful and your approaches are professional. You can read others well and your approach is very skilled to all of us to act in the most professional way approaching our San Diego County Courts from fostering any fraudulent behavior and/or violating California Rules of the Court that have been already violated by our County Courts from 2001 till end of 2009. Your fervor is needed to aid those unfairly court ordered moms and dads and their innocent suffering children. Time is on “the justice to prevail side” and I am confident that as we continue to blow the Justice-Horn, fraud associates will vanish and IT IS MATTER OF TIME.

We are proud of you and Professor Baskerville whom both figured out those Family Dismantlers who operate by simply uncovering their “Legal-Art-of-Non-Sense” funneling it down to fuel a High Conflict between moms and dads and victimize the children.

Wake up moms and dads. I do see every parent who continues to utilize the dismantlers’ services as naive and not being able to see the overall picture, yet. Since when the dismantlers care about your child? If that is the case, would those multi-millionaires do it for free? … The dismantlers can read you better than you think….

You do need to get down to the level of your innocent child’s heart desires and struggling mind, before it is too late suffering a product of a victimized child on your hands who would need more of their SERVICES. If you taught your child directly or indirectly to disfavor the other parent; your child will grow to learn how to hate, Period. Eventually you yourself will be added to your child’s hateful mind orchestrated by those clever Family Dismantlers.

If you could not make a homerun in your marriage, strike by the closest you can. This can only be accomplished by peace, love, admiration and respect to each other parent, regardless. Be a good example to your own kids. When you read Baskerville and uptoparents.org, you all parents will realize that you have to lead each other in the most loving and respectful direction of your own suffering child’s mind “I love mom and dad equally” to take the control out of the frauds who are only focused on getting your monies and never your own Child’s Best Interest.

Uptoparents.org: “Tell your child of 10 good things about the other parent. Go down to day one of how you both started and give your child the priority and not your own.

I personally believe that it is never how bad mom or dad is. It is how clever the ancillary destructive services parent to keep parents in the ring, fighting.

Undue pride, fabrication by parents as being guided by the dismantlers, justify the court dismantlers to come back full circle to fuel leaching on everything you own down to the bone. Ask yourselves: Did I love mom more or dad more or both were 100% loved but just different?

Your child is not any different and this is what your child thinks. Both parents need to help your children “with their innate needs” and never our own. A child reared by one parent is never healthier than a child reared by both parents, regardless of what the dismantlers falsify! Would one parent be in the child’s best interest? It is in-fact the child’s worst interest!

Child’s best interest is the mantra that such fraudulent misleading San Diego County Continuing Legal Educator teacher, Resume Repeated Fraud, Stephen Doyne phd, who publicizes to own Diplomate certification when in-fact he purchased a useless piece of paper over the internet for $350 to lull the judges, deceive the attorneys and intimidate the naïve average public. He purchased it the same owner of this Diploma-Mill who sold a Diploma to Zoe the cat.

Google Expertise to GO the Print by Mark Hansen & Professor Carolyn Henderson Scientific Evidence Review and Expert Witness Testimony in the Court Room page 7 & 8 & the Credentialing Con. The truth, logic and science speak for itself here.

Thank you and wish both parents of every child the very best for your child’s endeavors.

Emad Tadros, M.D.
Diplomate American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.
Co-Founder California Coalition for Families and Children/CCFC

#2 Pingback By Holding Family Law Judges Accountable | angiEmedia On July 10, 2010 @ 12:41 am

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#3 Pingback By American Parents, Family Policy, and Courts Contribute to Poor Student Performance | angiEmedia On September 26, 2010 @ 4:49 am

[…] var searchbox = MGJS.$("searchbox"); var searchtxt = MGJS.getElementsByClassName("textfield", "input", searchbox)[0]; var searchbtn = MGJS.getElementsByClassName("button", "input", searchbox)[0]; var tiptext = "Type text to search here…"; if(searchtxt.value == "" || searchtxt.value == tiptext) { searchtxt.className += " searchtip"; searchtxt.value = tiptext; } searchtxt.onfocus = function(e) { if(searchtxt.value == tiptext) { searchtxt.value = ""; searchtxt.className = searchtxt.className.replace(" searchtip", ""); } } searchtxt.onblur = function(e) { if(searchtxt.value == "") { searchtxt.className += " searchtip"; searchtxt.value = tiptext; } } searchbtn.onclick = function(e) { if(searchtxt.value == "" || searchtxt.value == tiptext) { return false; } } google_ad_client = "pub-9057472736600846"; /* angiemedia link ad top of page 468×15, created 3/21/10 */ google_ad_slot = "7922067457"; google_ad_width = 468; google_ad_height = 15; American Parents, Family Policy, and Courts Contribute to Poor Student Performance Written by: Rob  Print This Article &nbsp&nbsp Share Use of Our Content (Reposting and Quoting) September 26th, 2010 Leave a comment Go to commentsThe recent release of Davis Guggenheim’s film Waiting for Superman has contributed to a flurry of discussion over how to fix failing American schools. I’ve read quite a bit on thoughts regarding school reform and find that there is a striking absence of discussion of American family policies and the abusive family law courts as major contributors to poor student performance.Parties as diverse as social scientists, economists, and national security experts point out that America’s under-performing educational system is a threat to the future of the nation. The United States has long maintained the economic and military superiority over its adversaries that lead to a secure and prosperous nation in large part due to the educational opportunities available to American children. Universal K-12 education means every child is supposed to have access to the knowledge and skills needed to get a start in life. American universities attract the best and brightest students from around the world. The inventiveness of these students is immense. They often become scientists, entrepreneurs, and other major contributors to the advancement of knowledge and wealth of the nation.But American’s academic performance has been on a steady downward slope, along with the integrity of its families and the ability of parents to provide good environments for their growing children. The two phenomenon are directly related. While parents do make mistakes, failed government policies are the glue that binds together these interconnected disasters into a destructive spiral. Americans Kids Are #1 — In Their Own MindsGuggenheim’s film points out that the only area in which American students excel is self-confidence. They are sure they are the best, after all they are so often getting excellent grades — never mind they don’t deserve them or that their actual competency versus students in other nations is sorely lacking. (from Why Narcissism and Other High Conflict Personalities Are On the Rise)Ask any university professor about the degree of entitlement in recent generations of students who believe they should get A’s just for showing up. Oftentimes, when these young adults get the lower grades they deserve (e.g., poor attendance, incomplete work, poor test cores or not following assignment directions), the students complain to the professor and then escalate to the dean and right on up to the university president or, worse yet, get their outraged and enabling parents to do it for them.Small Changes in Parent’s Attitudes Can Lead to Huge Outcome Differences Authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman’s book NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children discusses some of the ways that parents are creating this narcissism problem in children. They cite research by psychologist Carol Dweck that shows even small differences in how parents interact with their children can make huge differences in academic performance.One such observation is that the way parents praise children affects what kind of risks the children are willing to take. Dweck found that telling kids they are smart actually hurts them. It creates a perceived psychological risk that they may fail and then be seen as not so smart after all. So when it comes time to choose between stretching to learn something new and risk failing or doing the same old thing again and doing well, the kids who have been inundated with praise of their intelligence will not stretch to try something new because doing so risks failure. Praising them for effort, by contrast, doesn’t set up this perverse disincentive for stretching to learn new skills.Other research shows that variations in corrective style also have huge impact on kids. Bronson describes research that shows what happens when mothers are told their children did not do well on a test and take differing approaches to help their children cope. Psychologist Florrie Ng did an experiment with American kids in Illinois and Chinese kids in Hong Kong. She found that after telling mothers their children didn’t do well on a test, American moms don’t bother to try to help their children do better, unlike Chinese moms. The Americans ignore reported poor performance and talked about anything but the test, as if to shield their children from failure. The Chinese instead try to encourage their children to do better. The results? On a retest, Chinese students have more than twice as large a performance improvement as their American counterparts. The American kids seem to get the message that it doesn’t matter how they do, the Chinese get the message that they are loved but can do better. (from Excerpt: NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children)Brushing aside failure, and just focusing on the positive, isn’t the norm all over the world. A young scholar at the University of Illinois, Dr. Florrie Ng, reproduced Dweck’s paradigm with fifth-graders both in Illinois and in Hong Kong. Ng added an interesting dimension to the experiment. Rather than having the kids take the short IQ tests at their school, the children’s mothers brought them to the scholars’ offices on campus (both in Urbana-Champaign and at the University of Hong Kong). While the moms sat in the waiting room, half the kids were randomly given the really hard test, where they could get only about half right inducing a sense of failure. At that point, the kids were given a five-minute break before the second test, and the moms were allowed into the testing room to talk with their child. On the way in, the moms were told their child’s actual raw score and were told a lie that this score represented a below average result. Hidden cameras recorded the five-minute interaction between mother and child.The American mothers carefully avoided making negative comments. They remained fairly upbeat and positive with their child. The majority of the minutes were spent talking about something other than the testing at hand, such as what they might have for dinner. But the Chinese children were likely to hear, “You didn’t concentrate when doing it,” and “Let’s look over your test.” The majority of the break was spent discussing the test and its importance.After the break, the Chinese kids’ scores on the second test jumped 33 percent, more than twice the gain of the Americans.The trade-off here would seem to be that the Chinese mothers acted harsh or cruel — but that stereotype may not reflect modern parenting in Hong Kong. Nor was it quite what Ng saw on the videotapes. While their words were firm, the Chinese mothers actually smiled and hugged their children every bit as much as the American mothers (and were no more likely to frown or raise their voices). Po Bronson on the Inverse Power of PraiseFrom this research, it is clear that minor differences in how children are praised or corrected can create enormous differences in outcome as measured by academic performance.Given this, how do you think big differences like having two loving cooperative parents versus two warring parents will affect academic performance?American has turned its children into mediocre kids who are little narcissists suffering from insecurity complexes. Parents are contributing factors, as the research mentioned above shows.But parents are often being driven to fail their children by failed government policies. The government and its “child protection” agencies and family law courts pit parents against each other in custody wars, sapping the family’s resources that could have been better allocated to education and raising children.The parental warfare often results in children learning that being emotional manipulators is a path to success as parents cave in and reward these behaviors due to the fear their children will turn against them and the courts will strip them of their roles as parents if they do not. A parent in a custody battle may shy away from telling little Johnny and Jane that they need to work harder in school because that parent might never see them again as a result. All it takes for that to happen is the other parent making false accusations of emotional abuse or using the corrective comments as propaganda in a parental alienation brainwashing campaign.Most of our readers know people who have lost their children to parental alienation, false child abuse allegations, or bribery by a selfish parent. Many of them have had it happen to them.High-conflict parents driven by high-conflict courts create narcissistic children who will engage in their own selfish and high-conflict behaviors in the future. Such children are often emotionally immature, suffer from increased insecurities, and are frequently exposed to damaging conflicts between parents that teaches them severe conflict is normal and they can’t count on the people who supposedly love them. Their troubled lives mean they cannot effectively focus on education, taking reasonable risks, and “just being kids” like most children used to be able to do.The parental warfare also means that educational enrichment opportunities are fewer for them as their parents are paying their life savings to the divorce industry that is destroying their families and are so busy writing declarations, testifying, scheming, and/or defending against false allegations that they pay much less attention to their children.Family Conflict Impedes Academic AchievementThe connection between divorce and poor school performance is not a new discovery. The 1991 study Academic performance in children of divorce: psychological resilience and vulnerability found children of divorce suffered lower academic performance compared to children of intact families. Yet the researchers noted that not all children of divorce fared equally poorly. There appeared to be two subgroups of children of divorce, those who were not far different from their peers in intact families and those who performed drastically worse. I call the second subgroup the “children of conflict” to emphasize that it is not merely a divorce that is causing the trouble, it is a conflict-prone family life that leaves children feeling very insecure.Why do the children of conflict fare so much more poorly? There is more than one answer to this.First, the level of conflict they experience hurts their emotions and mental health, leaving them less able to focus on schooling. If you’re being taught to hate your other parent and don’t know when you’ll see dad or mom or grandma and grandpa next, a lot of your attention and mental energy is being wasted on conflicts and feelings of insecurity rather than learning.Second, the economic resources sucked out of their families into the greedy hands of the divorce industry and the government probably would have been spent in part on enrichment activities. Some parents might choose camps, others may choose educational vacations, others arts and crafts or fix-it projects, and still others might work part-time to spend more time with their kids. But American style divorce means that all of these options are largely lost except for the very wealthy.Third, even if somehow the money wasted doesn’t preclude opportunities, the wasteful court process causes many parents to spend countless hours hiring and consulting with lawyers, writing court papers, testifying, and attending hearings and mediations. The courts often pile on mandatory counseling and parenting classes in a deceitful attempt to make it look like they are trying to pour water on the conflict when in reality they are doing all they can to light a fire under both parents to scare them to death and motivate them to pour their time and money into the war. After all of this, there is a lot less time remaining for the children and a lot less energy for them, too. Parents are emotionally burned out by the warfare and it drastically worsens the quality of time many of them have with their children. Some parents no longer see their children at all despite all their efforts. The children suffer badly from this.Cycle of Abuse and Poor PerformanceKids exposed to extensive family conflict are more prone to develop mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. All of these interfere with academic performance. They are also more likely to have difficulty with trusting others and having successful relationships. Anybody who can remember being a teenager or young adult probably recalls the hours spent pining over some confusing love interest. Kids who can’t trust, are self-centered, and are mentally unhealthy are likely to spend even more time pining away, not just about potential love interests but also about when they will get to see each parent next, whether they parents will keep fighting, and so forth. This is stressful time that could have been better spent on education.When these kids grow up and have families of their own, they are far more likely to repeat the destructive examples they observed in their youth. The result is that the problems pass from generation to generation. Michelle RheeCurrent School Reform EffortsEducational reformers like Michelle Rhee of Washington D.C. are making progress on firing abusive and poorly performing teachers, shutting down failed schools, and raising student performance. It appears they are well-motivated and are having some success. But reformers like her are dogged by criticism at every step of the way, even when she is right and is measurably improving the really bad schools in the city. (from Michelle Rhee: Tenure as chancellor of D.C. Public Schools)Rhee has also told a national business magazine that some of the 266 teachers laid off in October’s budget reductions had sex with children or had hit them. “I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school. Why wouldn’t we take those things into consideration?” she said. At the time, she did not provide evidence of her accusations nor comment when asked why these accused teachers were allowed to be in the district prior to the dismissals. Union leadership responded that an apology from Rhee was owed to the 266 teachers for making such remarks which, they stated unequivocally, were without basis in facts.[36] On September 2010, a lawsuit was filed by a high school student who said she had been impregnated by her teacher in 2008.[37] Paternity tests confirmed the teacher was the father of the student’s child.[37]Can Rhee Succeed At Massively Boosting Student Performance?Let’s say Rhee somehow succeeds at firing every bad teacher, hiring plenty of good new ones, and cuts wasteful bureaucratic overhead so that tax dollars are actually being spent on education rather than fancy titles, fancy offices, corruption, and all the other ways that government wastes taxpayer money on itself.Do you think that Washington D.C. students are going to become star performers if she accomplishes all of that?I don’t.Kids in D.C. suffer from a much higher rate of conflict-prone and insecure families. Single-parent households, poverty, teen pregnancies, and mental health problems including depression, anxiety, and substance abuse are all quite common. Every one of these problems is a substantial impediment to educational attainment.All of these problems flow directly from the failed American family policy perpetrated by the US government and its political subdivisions.As an example, consider the AFDC program that ran from 1936 to 1996 and was intended to provide a financial base for kids in single-parent homes (i.e., homes without fathers). The way it was run created incentives to destroy families. Among other destructive outcomes, mothers were expected to kick fathers out of their homes or their AFDC payments were at risk if they stayed. The government was clearly sending the message that money is more important than having two parents.AFDC was ended in 1996, but there have been plenty of other anti-family policies that have come in to fill the vacuum.For instance, VAWA is ostensibly supposed to help stop child abuse. Yet it creates an environment in which any angry and malicious mom can have the father of her children turned into a criminal banned from seeing the children on almost a moment’s notice. Such a banned father might not understand how he can be stripped out of his children’s lives with nothing but baseless accusations. So Dad calls to check to see if the kids need help with homework, next thing you know he’s being arrested and prosecuted and put in prison for several months as according to VAWA a falsely accused father who calls his children is obviously a criminal and should be imprisoned.Moms are increasingly being affected by this insanity, too, but this is being covered up the the male-bashing feminist thought police who are willing to sacrifice some number of their sisters to skewer as many men as possible.The United States has the highest annual divorce rate in the world. The US specializes in destroying families and making its citizens subservient to the government. All the huff-and-puff from the “family values” politicians is largely posturing and lies — they almost universally fail to do anything that really stops the destruction of families. Divorce and the resulting problem of warring parents are probably the biggest contributors to family conflict and insecurity.Now an astute reader may point out that Washington D.C. has a lower divorce rate than many other areas in the US and therefore my connection between divorce, family conflict and insecurity, and poor academic performance looks iffy. (from U.S. Divorce Statistics)In 2004, the state with the highest reported divorce rate was Nevada, at 6.4 (per 1,000). Arkansas was a close second, with a divorce rate of 6.3, followed by Wyoming at 5.3. The District of Columbia had the lowest reported divorce rate, at 1.7, followed by Massachusetts at 2.2 and Pennsylvania at 2.5. (Figures were not complete for California, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, or Oklahoma.)But consider why D.C. has a lower divorce rate. It is in part because so many people there are having children without getting married. No marriage, no divorce. It’s that simple.It’s clear that you can have a low divorce rate and a low rate of two-parent homes at the same time. Simply have a bunch of teenage girls have babies and not have the fathers living with them. D.C. is that kind of place.Author Po Bronson keeps a bunch of interesting family statistics on his website that help show the massive breakdown of families directly correlates with poor outcomes for children: “As the divorce rate soared after 1960, three other major trends started to emerge that were part of the 20th century’s transformation in pair-bonding in the Western world: the rate of marriage decreased, while the rates of cohabitation without marriage and nonmarital births increased . . . . This nonmarital birthrate increase is particularly impressive because it occurred at the same time that women in the West had more contraceptive choice than ever before in the history of the human species.”26 percent of U.S. children under the age of 18 lived in a single-parent home.12 percent of U.S. children live in single parent families with householders who had at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with 9 percent of children living with neither parent and 30 percent of children living in a married-couple family.Children growing up in a single-parent family are twice as likely to have a child before the age of 20 than those raised in a two-parent family.Children growing up in a single-parent family are one and a half times as likely to be out of school and out of work in their late teens and early 20s as those who grow up in a two-parent family.While the number of single-mother families has grown dramatically, so has the gap between their incomes and those of married-couple families. “From 1969 to 1999, the income gap between [U.S.] families maintained by women with no husband present and married-couple families widened. During that time, [U.S.] families maintained by women with no husband present had a smaller percentage increase in median income (32 percent) than that of married-couple families (44 percent).”There should be no question that kids growing up outside of environments with two involved cooperative parents are going to suffer.Is Having Married Parents the Key to Children’s Success?Unlike some, I am not convinced that it is marriage in and of itself that helps children be more successful. I suspect it has more to do with the children getting the benefit of two loving and involved parents along with their extended families who nurture, teach, socialize, and provide for the children in different ways. Kids get a greater diversity of exposure to different ways of thinking, interests, and ways of living when they have two involved parents rather than one. Having two involved parents also means it is more likely that the kids will be around somebody with an advanced education who will encourage them to pursue college and graduate school. If their parents get along, even if they are not married, they also see that people can cooperate and that it benefits the children. They may also learn successful coping and negotiating strategies for when family members are not in total agreement.But American family policy does not encourage intact families. It doesn’t encourage parents to get along, either. Instead, it rewards malicious parents who kick the other parent out of the home, falsely accuse them of being criminals or abusers, and keep the children from seeing them. VAWA, divorce laws, the pervasive tendency for courts to issue sole custody orders, and a child support system that rewards abusive parental alienators with money and rightly infuriates the target parents and causes them to fight for their rights to see their kids for years are all part of this systemic abuse against children and families by the government.The single biggest enemy of American children is the American government and its destructive policies towards families.The problems with underachieving American schools cannot be fully fixed without fixing the broken family policies in this country. Any politician who advocates school reform without also advocating reform of this country’s abusive laws is, in my opinion, either an idiot, a coward, or has some agenda that is not good for the nation and its children.Further ReadingHow Sociopathic Parents Use Police Reports for DefamationSingapore Schools and Courts Enable Parental Alienation Child AbuseDivorce Books for KidsSerenity Gandara’s Grandmother Speaks Out Against CPS and Foster Parent Abuses, Advocates Grandparents’ RightsStopping Parental Alienation Requires Family Court ReformsGender Polarization Impedes Family Law ReformParental Alienation Book For Middle School Kids: “I Don’t Want to Choose!”Breaking Mental Illness, Violence, Divorce, and Murder CyclesHow Not to Talk to Your Kids: The inverse power of praise.Excerpt: NurtureShock: New Thinking About ChildrenObama’s Class ProjectDoes Fenty’s Defeat Mean Rhee’s Exit? Future of D.C. school reform unclear following mayor’s primary-election loss.Schoolyard Brawl: A leading reformer and a union head square off over teacher tenure.Waiting for Superman var SurphaceSettings = { s4id: 'YWH1AN33' }; var _surphld = document.createElement("script");_surphld.type = "text/javascript"; _surphld.src = " [18];; (document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(_surphld); CPS, Child Abuse, Child Custody, Child Support, Children, Courts, Divorce, Domestic Violence, Family, Federal Government, Government Abuse, Marriage, Parental Alienation, Politics, Prosecutor, SchoolsAFDC, Ashley Merryman, Carol Dweck, Davis Guggenheim, Florrie Ng, Michelle Rhee, Po Bronson, school reform, VAWA, Violence Against Women Act, Waiting for Superman, Washington D.C. Comments (0) Trackbacks (1) Leave a comment Trackback No comments yet. September 26th, 2010 at 04:44 | #1 Cole Stuart’s Review of Baskerville’s “Taken Into Custody” | angiEmedia […]

#4 Comment By karen On May 14, 2011 @ 4:27 pm

Its all true child private court all illegle private courts.My daugter asked for there help.what a mistake that was. they took one child out of her four we fought 50,000 dollars, we proved each aligation false. but in the private court where the judge sleeps they prevailed no constitutional rights,no public to hear.no attorny you can hire the has not been hired secretly by them all in there favor,lies up held in there favor. court date after court date waisting the unsupecting tax payers money, bonuses paid …mothers and fathers distroyed..A child taken 18 years later facebook he’s found he was told his mother didn’t want him at birth.he’s been kept a prisoner. Raised in a cage assigned rooms there collecting money from his asperger’s still, adult adoption.They monitor all internet communication still. We were military for 26 years could have given him the best like are other 12 grandchildren all desent kids raised up happy adults they screwed him up.we searved this discusting country.AND THEY STILL GET AWAY WITH IT .MONEY AND LIES

#5 Comment By karen On May 14, 2011 @ 5:12 pm

DSHS is the one scewing up medicare and the Oboma health thing was written by them for them to extract more. the amount of money given to there needles programs and young americans told there disabled make me fill like vomiting. In are town you see there dshs valtures at Safeway with there cart full of wine bottles so they can live with themselves.Getting into there fancy cars.going to there fancy homes all bought and paid for from there most fraudulant adoption money scemes. They use the media to blow up the few bad cases to make the public believe that they are doing them a service, protection the children SOUNDS GOOD DOESN’T IT. EVEN THERE USING HOLLYWOOD TO SCARE US INTO THINKING ALL MEN MOST WOMEN ARE KILLERS,CHILD MOLESTERS.. I believe the are creating them and the drug problems.I bet alot of them are using the bad drugs comming into this country so they can live with themselve they certinly can aford it.THE BIBLE SAYS DO NOT JUDGE other what happens to us after being put to there indecent treatment we are turning into an ugly hateful population looks at the revenge everywhere from the greed . Right or wrong men should take back there rightful poistions inthe home without outside interferance, women need to stay home and get out of others business. Women are clever in there homes made to take care of there homes not goverment&world the bible tells you so.DSHS has written the new rules to make all men greer cause they say there better fathers THEY WROTE THESE NEW RULES I READ THEM ON THE INTERNET BEFORE THEY STOP ARE INTERNET FREEDOM .LOOK AT THE CATHLIC CHURCH AND WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THESE YOUNG BOYS.SIC

#6 Comment By karen On May 14, 2011 @ 5:25 pm

I NOW BELIEVE WE DON’T NEED GOVERMENT AT ALL .WE NEED ARE CONSITUTION AND RIGHT’S RESTORED GUN RIGHT’S.stopworking grow are gardens stop giving the the power to them to distory america. EVEN IF SOME ARE NOT GOOD PARENT why distroy the whole bunch to save a few stop working give no more distroy the dollar is my stand.MOVE TO A FARM HELP FOR FREE MOVE OUT OF THE DISMAL CONTROL

#7 Comment By karen On May 14, 2011 @ 5:43 pm

AMERICA, WAKEUP GROW UP, WE CAN FEED AND GAS UP WITHOUT THE GOV.AND OTHER COUNTRYS WE CAN BUILD ARE ROADS AND VOLINTEER TO DO THE OIL DRILLING, TRADE WITH IN ARE COUNTRY FEED ARE SELFS HELP EACH OTHER. THE POOR WON,T LOSE. JUST THE RICH WILL LOSE THERE MONEY IF THE DOLLAR DROPS. WE CAN DO IT.WE ARE AMERICAN’S .GET RID OF THE LAWS STOPPING ARE MEN FROM SMALL BUSSINESS QUIT THE INSURANCE COMPANYS THAT COST SMALL BUSINESS TO MUCH AND THE COURTS SUEING AND TAKING CHILDREN LIKE THERE BETTER QUILIFIED THE BLOOD. FOR GODS SAKE THERE IS NATURAL HEALTH HERBS PEOPLE DO DIE YOU CAN’T LIVE FOR EVER LET GO OF IMMORTALITY BE HUMAN AGAIN .STOP IT

#8 Comment By karen On May 14, 2011 @ 5:46 pm

THERE IS NO GOOD OBOMA CARE JUST MORE CONTROL FOR DSHS AND THE DRUG COMPANYS

#9 Comment By karen On May 14, 2011 @ 5:59 pm

EVERYONES CELLS GET FULL OF TOXINS AND CHEMICALS AND WILL CAUSE MENTAL PROBLEMS LIKE KING GEORGE AND HIS PORPHRIA ,IF YOUR NOT EATTING NATURAL GOOD FOOD. THE DRUG COMPANYS ARE MAKING SOMBIES OUT OF ARE CHILDREN AND TURNING US INTO A CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT THESE BAD DRUG. IT IS UGLY OUT THERE FOR SURE DEPRESSING…THAT IS WHY THEY DONT WANT THE HARMLESS NATUAL CANABUS LEGIZED CAUSE THEY WANT THE DIRTY DRUGS IN YOUR CELLS TO CAUSE YOU MENTAL ILLNESS SO THEY HAVE TO CONTROL AND TAKE CARE OF YOU. SO THEY CAN MAKE US SLAVES TO THEM MONEY

#10 Comment By karen On May 14, 2011 @ 6:48 pm

LOOK UP PORPHIRA THE CELLS~ MIRSA~HEPITITUS~MENTAL PROUBLEMS ALL CAUSED FROM THE CRAP FILLING UP THE CELLS.
ITS NOT THE CARTEL,IRAG, AFGAFISTAN,GADOFIE,PAKISTAN, THAT WE HAVE SHOVED DOWN ARE THROATS ON A DAILY BASIS SO WERE SO CONFUSED WE DON’T SEE WHAT HAPPENING TO THE CONSTITUTION AND BIBICAL WAYS.
THEY ALL WANT TO BE THE STARS THE CONTROLERS.THEY WILL DO ANYTHING FOR THE JOBS AND POLITICAL SPOTS SO THEY CAN FILL GIFTED AND ABOVE THE REST.THATS THE TRUTH THEY ARE US IF GIVEN THE POSITION GREED THAT WAY IS WHAT IS SPOKEN IN THE BIBLE THAT ARE COUNTRY &CONSTITUTION WAS BASED ON BUT WITHOUT THOSES MEN MEN IN THE HOME THE HOME IS DISTROYED BY THE WAY I AM A WOMAN AND ITS IMPORTANT FOR MOTHER TO TEACH THERE DAUGHTER TO BECAREFUL OF WHOM THEY MARRY

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[…] and dislike by the government until you are terrorized into subservience to the government. Our review of Baskerville’s “Taken Into Custody” can get you started in the right direction.Further ReadingDepressed and Exhausted from Divorce and […]

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#15 Pingback By Treatment of Depression and Anxiety from High Conflict Divorce and Child Custody Battles Using Antidepressants and Benzodiazepines Is Risky | angiEmedia On May 14, 2016 @ 11:41 pm

[…] and dislike by the government until you are terrorized into subservience to the government. Our review of Baskerville’s “Taken Into Custody” can get you started in the right […]