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(Note: This article was published together with Personality Disordered Abusers in Psychological Evaluations. That article focuses on problems encountered when psychological evaluations are used in an attempt to deal with a personality disordered abuser in a family law dispute.)

William Eddy is an attorney and licensed clinical social worker who has written many excellent books on personality disorders and how they manifest in family law battles. In his recent books, he has taken to calling people with personality disorders who engage in extensive and unreasonable litigation as High Conflict Personalities (HCP). He’s stated that a large part, possibly as much as 40%, of the litigation in family courts involves HCPs.

Yet despite the prevalence of these psychological problems in family law courts, judges often fail to understand the problems and are prone to reward the abusers for their conduct. This is likely to intensify the abuses because they have been positively reinforced with rewards such as sole physical and/or legal custody, financial awards, or simply emotional satisfaction of seeing the hated target being berated by a judge the abuser manipulated.
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(Note: This article was published together with Personality Disordered Abusers in Family Law Courts. That article focuses on the more general problems encountered in family law disputes involving personality disordered abusers.)

A common opinion of many people suffering harm due to a current or former partner who is a personality disordered abuser is that a psychological evaluation performed for a family law case will describe and label the personality disorder and help protect the victims, including the children and spouse, from the abuser. Disturbingly, this seldom occurs. Instead, what often happens is that the evaluation leads to more conflict and poor outcomes in family law courts that put children and the target parent and their extended family at increased risk of continuing abuse at the hands of the personality disordered abuser and her or his associates.
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John Van Doorn has announced he is running for San Diego County Supervisor in 2010. We believe he deserves strong consideration for your vote in the June 2010 primaries.

The corruption and abuse within the County of San Diego government threatens the well-being of the citizens and particularly children and parents of the county. Bill Horn, the incumbent candidate, has participated in hiding and continuing these abuses. Despite two decades of San Diego Grand Jury reports detailing how San Diego CPS has wrongly removed children from families, fabricated evidence, perjured, and acted in a malicious fashion against many parents and children, Bill Horn has not lifted a finger to correct these problems despite being a member of the County Board of Supervisors during this long era of egregious CPS misconduct.
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In February 2010, the United States federal government cranked up the pressure on Japan to start cooperating with resolving international parental child abduction cases involving Japanese parents taking kids back to Japan and preventing them from seeing their non-Japanese parents. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell issued a warning to Japan to revise its family law system to permit non-Japanese parents to have contact with their children.
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I’ve been a fan of the nutritional supplement DMAE (dimethylaminoethanol or dimethylethanolamine) for some time. Some women swear by it for reducing wrinkles and age spots, especially when applied in cream form. However, I believe this nutrient has a much wider and more important use than skin care. That use is boosting brain function in people experiencing problems with sleep, focus, and attention.

When I started taking DMAE years ago, I noticed about an hour reduction in the number of hours of sleep I needed each day to feel rested. I also noticed improved ability to concentrate. As with any supplement, your results may vary due to many factors including diet, weight, biochemistry, genetics, dosages, and perhaps random chance. That said, if you’ve got concerns about excessive sleepiness, trouble focusing, and problems maintaining attention, it’s my opinion that DMAE is worth a look as it is an inexpensive dietary supplement with a long track record.

DMAE is especially worth consideration by parents who are being threatened by schools, CPS, and courts with removal of child custody because of their children’s problems with educational achievement due to problems with attention, focus, and hyperactivity. These kids are often diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). Mainstream doctors prescribe Ritalin for this condition, but sadly this drug has killed hundreds of children while safe alternatives such as DMAE are widely ignored. Furthermore, problems with attention and school performance can often be traced back to social problems like the impact of bad parenting and child abuse endemic to divorces. You may be a fine parent, but your child could be stressed out from custody exchange conflicts and mommy-bashing or daddy-bashing from the other parent who is far from fine. The result may be a misbehaving child who seems hyperactive and gets categorized as an ADHD case to be medicated.
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Three candidates are running to fill deceased Massachusetts politician Ted Kennedy’s position in the U.S. Senate. They are Scott Brown, Martha Coakley, and Joe Kennedy. Massachusetts citizens will be voting in this important race on January 19, 2010. We urge them to vote for Scott Brown to support the rights of children and parents to be involved in each others’ lives.

Of the three candidates, Scott Brown is the only one with a record of supporting shared parenting. He’s presently a state senator in Massachusetts who has co-sponsored shared parenting legislation.

Martha Coakley’s track record in office makes it clear she supports prosecutorial and judicial abuses against parents, particularly men and fathers. She’s an attorney general and her track record in similar offices shows she is strongly against civil rights and against correcting the unjust outcomes of wrongful prosecutions.

Joe Kennedy’s positions on such matters are unclear, perhaps in part because he’s not presently in office. But he is running as a Libertarian candidate, an advocate for smaller government, and is no relation to the Kennedy clan or Ted Kennedy’s leftist politics.
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Do you have an unsecured wireless network or wireless access point in your home or business? If so, you may think all you have at risk is somebody wasting your bandwidth. But there’s a lot more at risk than megabits per second here. If you’re running unsecured wireless networks, you may be setting up your friends, employees, family and yourself for being scapegoated as child pornography or identify theft criminals.
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Parental alienation is a form of emotional abuse in which a normal positive parent/child relationship is damaged or destroyed by another party using emotional manipulation, threats, false accusations, and other means. It involves at least two basic elements. The first is an alienator engaging in access blocking to keep a child from seeing a parent. The second is a pattern of denigration and destruction of reputation to make the child dislike the parent. When parental alienation becomes severe and/or extended in duration, the child may start to avoid seeing the target parent, repeat the statements of the alienator as if they were the child’s own, and even make up new “reasons” to dislike having contact with the target parent. Often these “reasons” are complete nonsense and have little to no accuracy.

If you’re suffering as a target parent and are aware of parental alienation, probably none of this is news to you. However, what may be news to you is that parental alienation isn’t limited to the most commonly discussed situation of parents involved in divorce or child custody battles. For starters, you may be alienated from your children by your spouse while married.
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As I previously reported in DCF Poaching on the Tiger Woods, Elin Nordegren Kids?, Florida’s Department of Children and Families visited the home of Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren to investigate a child abuse complaint.

Now State Senator Ronda Storms of Florida is calling for an investigation of the complaint that led to this visit. She believes that the complaint was filed falsely and maliciously and if evidence exists to prove this, she wants the Orange County State Attorney to prosecute those responsible for the complaint. She’s concerned that false child abuse reports waste state funds needlessly and take away resources from children who really do need help.
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Legally Kidnapped has announced the results of their “Babystealer of 2009” poll. Judge Suzanne Stovall of Montgomery County, Texas, 221st District Court is the winner with 46% of the vote. She beat out candidates Rozita Swinton, Amy Langley, and Mary Callahan for the award.
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