angiEmedia

The San Diego County Grand Jury conducted years of investigations into misconduct of San Diego County DSS and CPS and their social workers. Despite overwhelming evidence of a routine pattern of misconduct and government abuse of power, the problems have not stopped even years later. This letter from the San Diego County Grand Jury in 1992 explains the problems well. Sadly, nothing much has changed other than the name of the agency, now called Child Welfare Services. The children and families, particularly the fathers, continue to pay the high price of lives damaged and destroyed by San Diego County Child Welfare Services.

In the early to mid 1990’s, there was a push to force CPS agencies to behave according to due process and to be accountable for their misconduct. This was only partly successful. Although the extreme atrocities of the Alicia Wade and Dale Akiki cases are now less common, CPS continues to abuse its power and acts with incompetence, irresponsibility, and impunity ruining the lives of children and their parents without due process.

Read more…

Another of my favorite “real feminist” authors is Erin Pizzey. She was a pioneer in domestic violence activism, in 1971 setting up the Chiswick Refuge in London, UK as one of the first shelters for battered women in the world.

Early on in her work at Chiswick, she noticed that many of the women coming to her shelters were “violence prone”. They sought out abusive relationships and committed a significant amount of violence themselves. Often their violent ways triggered their partner’s abuses against them. Worse, these families raised their children to be a new generation of abusers addicted to violent behaviors.

Read more…

We ran across this story in the Winter 2008 issue of USAA Magazine on page 7. For those of you who don’t know, USAA is an insurance and financial services company that specializes in serving active and retired military members and their current and former dependents.

The story goes that USAA member DaLonna Rimsky wanted a way to keep her kids thinking about their father who was overseas working in the Air Force. She came up with the idea of custom coloring books that are created using family photographs turned into coloring book line drawings. An example using one of her family photos is below.

Read more…

(Click here for more coverage of CPSIA.)

With the February 10, 2009, start of enforcement of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 just 3 days away, we are relieved to see that the Consumer Product Safety Commissions has issued a press release outlining exceptions for children’s books printed using ordinary processes from 1985 onwards and for children’s clothing manufactured using natural fibers.

Read more…

We received this update from the people sponsoring the Equal Parenting Petition we mentioned last week and wanted to share it with you.

(Click here to see our original posting on this Equal Parenting Petition.)

From “JimBWarrior” ([email protected])

WOW – 506 signees last count!

Have a look – We are from all over the world and growing at an ever faster rate.

Read more…

In the back of my mind, I think of myself as a “real feminist”. I support equal opportunity for women, equal pay for equal work, and the rights of women to vote, be free from discrimination based upon their gender, and to enjoy self-determination of their lives. Unfortunately, the feminist movement of mainstream culture was subverted years ago by people who are not aiming for gender equality but instead seek superiority for women over men by any means they can. This presents a dilemma for people like me who genuinely want women and men to enjoy the same rights and responsibilities.

I’m a father, and I have daughters. How could I want anything less than equal opportunities and equal protection under the law for my daughters? Most fathers my age whom I know think similarly. Maybe men twenty or more years ago were not as egalitarian-minded, and even today in Muslim nations there is extensive inequality for women. But nearly all of the men I know today living in Western nations and sophisticated developing nations such as China are used to working with women and reporting to female supervisors. We’ve supported our female partner’s careers and educational goals. We love our children, both our sons and daughters, and want them to have the opportunities the deserve to have good and fulfulling lives pursuing their lives how they want to do so, whether that means as doctors, engineers, lawyers, scientists, librarians, soldiers, business managers, or stay-at-home parents if that’s what they chose.

Read more…

We’re in favor of equal time (50/50) shared parenting after the breakup of marriages and relationships unless there’s evidence to make a strong case it is not appropriate. We believe that children need both parents in their lives and that laws and practices that tend to remove one parent from the picture without just cause, simply based upon gender, are immoral and against the best interests of the children.

While in many Western societies the gender bias is against fathers, in other societies it is against mothers. We believe that neither is appropriate to the welfare of children. As an example of common legal practice with bias against mothers, we cite Shari’a law as implemented in many Muslim nations. Below we post some excerpts of writings on Shari’a legal thinking to illustrate the point that gender bias is widespread and not always against fathers.

Read more…

Minnesota is considering passing legislation to make shared physical custody of children between both parents a presumption of the court. Under the current law, the courts presume that parents will share legal custody. But physical custody is up for grabs. Detractors of the current law believe that it sets up families for bitter custody disputes and frequently results in fathers and children being short-changed of time with each other.

Read more…

A Tennessee child custody case involving a little girl named Kate Hopkins and her father Jeremy Hopkins is developing into a test of the 14th Amendment equal protection by the law. If the 14th Amendment is found to apply to child custody rights as it appears it should, then it follows that the apparent and widespread bias of the US courts against fathers is unconstitutional. Therefore this case could affect child custody decisions across the entire United States.

Read more…

Earlier this month a court in Toronto, Cananda, transfered full custody of three daughters ages 9 to 14 to their father after a long-term parental alienation campaign by their mother. She had worked for years to brainwash them to hate their father. Judge McWatt of the Superior Court of Justice found that this constituted emotional child abuse and banned the mother from all further contact with the children except for counselling programs, including a program to help the children recover from parental alienation syndrome.

Read more…