If so, you’re in quite a bit of company. 86% of parents swear in front of children according to a recent poll of 3,000 kids aged 11 years. And they do it on average 6 times per week.
Two Pennsylvania juvenile court judges are being prosecuted for corruption in a shocking scandal involving corruption, abuse of law, and what amounts to government-sponsored child abuse. Since December 2002, they allegedly sentenced children who were denied legal representation and fair trials to detention in private jails from which the judges received kickbacks.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
Being A Good Parent
As parents, we are responsible for caring for our helpless little newborns from birth through growingly capable toddler years all the way up to teenagers and young adults. For some of us, that care extends into adult years as our children encounter severe accidents and illnesses and possibly formerly unimaginable crises.
Sometimes we may sugar-coat an injury or illness to a child, trying to help him or her recover from feeling so badly a little more quickly. We hope the tears might stop a little sooner if we say “that bump doesn’t hurt so much!” when they fall down on the sidewalk and get a little scrape. Amazingly, it often works. Kids learn from their parents to brush off the small injuries, so long as we avoid teaching them that every little malady is a earth-shaking crisis and instead show them that yes, it might hurt, but it will go away faster if we don’t dwell on it.
Some of us have the misfortune of going through divorces or separations. To look out for our kids’ interests, we share custody of our children. Good parents put the children first. Suzy might get sick with the flu, and we share the temperature, medications, and other medical advice with our co-parent. Johnny might break an arm on the playground, and we share the news promptly along with care directions with our co-parent. Or at least most of us would do that, if we truly care about our children.
But Some Parents Can’t Or Won’t Be Good
But not all co-parents do this. Some simply lie about medical care, trying to hide any little problem the children may have. They go so far as to refuse to answer questions about injuries and illnesses, make doctor’s appointments to “prove” the other parent was wrong about an illness, and refuse to pass along medications. When confronted with proof of their egregious behaviors, then they lie even more in the ongoing attempt to over it all up.
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.
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