angiEmedia

Stephen Baskerville is an advocate for family law reform. In his book Taken into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood, Marriage, and the Family, he documents how the era of the no fault divorce as it spread across the United States in the 1970’s lead to the demise of the marriage contract both in social and legal terms. Divorce was no longer voluntary and agreed upon, it became something that could be forced by one party to the detriment of the other and their children. It enabled the government to throw people out of their homes, deprive children of a father or mother, take their property and income, and even deprive them of fundamental civil rights and throw them into jail without due process or trials in violation of the US Constitution.
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The Parent Custody Blog frequently posts links to news and video clips on topics such as parental alienation, CPS abuses against children, and divorce child custody battles.

The author of the site describe his motivation as follows:

I am a father of three boys. I have one of them living with me as his mother had some “issues”. I am the one with parent custody (placement is the actual correct term here). The other two are living with their mom and I haven’t seen them in about a year and a half due to her new husband and father in law both being lawyers and some mistakes in dealing with her on my part. So obviously in this case she is the one who has parent custody.

One of the problems that I have seen in this system, which has worked both for and against me, is that unless you can afford a lawyer, your rights usually are not enforced. This is something that can be good and bad, but will rarely take into account what is best for the child or children. If both parties are reasonable, they can usually work things out, even if neither is entirely comfortable with the end result. This is usually when both parents are looking out for the child as opposed to their own self-interests.

The flip side of this is that one or both parties are not reasonable. This is far more common, and will usually end with either the person who is able to best afford the lawyer getting their way, assuming it’s not totally outrageous, or an ongoing legal battle in which the children become pawns. Neither of these options are good for the kids more often than not.

People need to learn to drop their agendas, their personal hurts, their own selfish wants and whatever bad feelings are left over for the sake of their kids. This in and of itself would solve a lot of issues when it comes to the parent custody issue. Think about it, and then think of your kids. It can make all the difference in the world.

RationShed is a Christian group in New Zealand promoting the concept of “equal parenting” involving the whole biological family, including both parents and all four grandparents. Its website at http://rationshed.wordpress.com hosts a mix of original content and repostings from other news and opinion sources, including angiemedia .

RationShed is also sponsoring an “equal parenting petition” to show support for shared 50/50 parenting as presumed default. Click here to view and sign it.
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Marie Moore Kills 20-year-old Son

On April 5, 2009, 44-year-old mother Marie Moore killed her 20-year-old son Mitchell Moore by shooting him in the back of the head at point blank range while at a shooting range. She then turned her rented gun on herself. He died at the scene of the crimes in Casselberry, Florida, about 10 miles north of Orlando. She died later at a local hospital.

Marie Moore had been previously banned from the Shoot Straight gun range after a previous suicide attempt there several years earlier. Additionally, she had two DUI (Driving Under Intoxication) convictions and had been involuntarily institutionalized in 2002 for about a year for mental illness under Florida’s Baker Act.

In Marie Moore’s suicide notes and audio recordings, she denies being mentally ill. She had previously stated that God had told her she had to kill her son to send him to heaven and kill herself to go to hell “so there can be a thousand years peace on Earth.” She stated that God had made her the Antichrist, referred to the Bible, and that she must die to save the world from violence. From her comments, it appears her institutionalization didn’t do much to help her long-term mental health. Her words and actions also make it clear that religion can be a tool of the mentally ill to justify their bizarre actions, even homicide and suicide, in their own minds.

This case is another example of the many violent crimes committed by women against their children and current or former family members that should make it clear that domestic violence and child abuse are not exclusively committed by men. It is also yet another case of the “rights of the mentally ill” trumping the “right to life” of others, including innocent children.
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Fink vs. Charney

The recent web site and web advertising campaigns citing Los Angeles lawyer Keith Fink for various alleged misconducts, improprieties, and court sanctions appears to be part of an ongoing battle between Fink and American Apparel and its CEO Dov Charney. Fink has represented client Mary Nelson in a law suit against American Apparel alleging sexually harassing conduct by American Apparel and Dov Charney. The alleged harassment includes weird claims about how Charney conducted business meetings in the nude.
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Child sexual abuse is a serious allegation, often destroying the lives of those accused even when they not convicted. The trauma of the investigation often damages the children, too. In the case of children who were not abused, the investigation can be far more abusive than anything that really did happen to them. Yet apparently the government of Santa Clara County behaves as if child sexual abuse allegations warrant hiding evidence to prevent a defense and possibly bullying children into getting the testimony the police and DA want for their cases.

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Biological parents are not likely to sexually abuse their own children. But in recent decades, there has been an epidemic of false sexual abuse claims against biological parents. This epidemic started in earnest along with changes in laws and policies to allow fathers to have partial or full custody of children after a divorce.

The false claims of sexual abuse may be made by either parent. However, they are more common coming from mothers trying any method they can to prevent the children’s fathers from having contact, custody, and/or visitation with the children. This is a despicable strategy related to parental alienation. It is also particularly effective because of societal taboos and the difficulty of proving innocence of a crime which according to the false accuser was seen by nobody but the alleged perpetrator and a small child (who may not even be able to talk!) and of which there is frequently no physical evidence because the false reports are made about false incidents which supposedly occurred weeks or months earlier.

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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.

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PC Kidnappers
by K. L. Billingsley

originally published in Heterodoxy: Articles and Animadversions on Political Correctness and Other Follies, Volume 1, No. 8, January 1993

[click here to see original newsletter version]

On the morning of May 9, 1989, eight-year-old Alicia Wade awoke complaining of pain deep in her midsection. Her father, 37-year-old Navy enlisted man James Wade, and her mother Denise, took the girl to the NAVCARE facility in San Diego, where initially she either couldn’t or wouldn’t explain what happened. The doctor found that the child’s anal and vaginal regions had been torn in a sexual attack and would need to be surgically repaired. When informed of this, both parents showed great distress and began to weep uncontrollably. The NAVCARE doctor immediately called the local Child Protection Services.

CPS immediately suspected family involvement for two reasons: the rapist, they believed, had not removed the child from her room, and Alicia did not immediately complain of pain. The CPS worker interpreted the hours the Wades had spent at NAVCARE as a delay in reporting the crime, and thus an additional sign of guilt.

Though shaken by what had happened to their daughter and also by the hints of accusation they felt coming from authorities, the Wades cooperated fully in an interview with CPS. They could not hide the fact that they were overweight, which child welfare authorities often take as evidence of general neglect. They did not hide the fact that Denise Wade had been molested as a child and that James was a recovering alcoholic who twice blacked out while drinking in foreign ports. They did not know that they were waving “red flags” that further substantiated suspicions toward family involvement in the crime. They had no idea that authorities were already beginning to build a case against them and were taking particular aim at James Wade, who was a walking bull’s-eye because he was a white middle-aged male and a serviceman in addition to his other defects.

The Wades were more interested in the facts. During an evidentiary exam at the Center for Child Protection, their daughter Alicia calmly told the physician that a man came through the window, claimed to be her “uncle”, took her out in a green car and “hurt” her. They would have had a better notion of the ordeal ahead of them if they had known that on the space on the medical form for “chief complaint in the child’s own words”, the examining doctor ignored Alicia’s testimony and wrote only that the child showed “total denial”.

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In San Joaquin County, California, CPS social worker Charlotta Royal removed the children of the Rogers family from their home without a warrant. She cited “medical exigency” as the reason as there was evidence of bottle rot and malnutrition. However, neither of these are emergency conditions that necessitate bypassing the courts to determine appropriate action.

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.