angiEmedia

Swedish mother Ann-Louise Valette is wanted on child abduction charges for the parental kidnapping of her sons Frank and Andre. She is believed to have been hiding them in Sweden, but it is not certain if they are still there as Swedish police have been unable to locate them. Valette violated court orders to put the boys on an October 9, 2008, airplane flight to return them to their father in Melbourne, Australia.

Andre Nicholas Valette age 9 (left) and Frank Oliver Valette age 11 (center) have been missing since they visited their mother Ann-Louise Valette (right) in Sweden.

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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.

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A friend once said “marriage is grand, divorce is one hundred grand”. In a high-conflict divorce, he might have been underestimating. High-conflict divorces generally involve extended litigation, potentially crossing over from the family law arena into civil and criminal cases involving parties besides the unhappy couple. Expenses mount quickly, $100,000+ in legal fees can be expended even by warring couples with relatively modest income and assets. Financial ruin and even bankruptcy is not unusual.

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(Click here to see more stories involving Tim Emerson.)

Tim Emerson, M.D., is a doctor. Or more accurately, was, until the Texas and US governments destroyed his life on behalf of his adulterous lying wife Sacha. She had an affair with her hairdresser and wanted to keep their 4 year old daughter to herself, so in 1998 as part of her divorce tactics to get what she wanted, she falsely accused him of domestic violence. The government was pleased to be able to help her destroy her ex-husband.

Texas and US Federal governments went after him in court on varying charges. The Texas state cases were dismissed. So was the first Federal case. But Janet Reno (of Waco infamy) decided the Clinton Administration should make an example out Dr. Emerson, so they appealed and got a conviction, throwing Dr. Emerson into federal prison for 2.5 years.

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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.

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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.

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Ron Lasorsa was a victim of a false restraining order. He fought the divorce system and founded the Kids Come First Coalition to help other fathers fight false restraining orders and false abuse allegations. He’s offering a free e-book, a blog, informative videos, and other information at his website Restraining Order 911.

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(Click here for more coverage of Borderline Personality Disorder.)

I’d like to encourage people who are aware of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) to start spreading the news about how devastating this illness is not just for those who have it and their family members, but for the entire United States economy.

I wrote this post to explain to people who may not have the ability to understand how horrific BPD is from personal experience dealing with an afflicted person. Such people can still likely understand the economic impact of this illness and how it would be far more cost-effective for US mental health care policies to be overhauled to raise awareness and get most of the victims into treatment. The increased government spending appears that it would be entirely offset by savings in government expenses (in such areas of courts and law enforcement) and increases in tax revenues due to a significant improvement in worsened productivity harming families affected by BPD.

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a devastating but very common mental illness that until recently has been believed based upon DSM-IV (Diagnostics and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition — a widely used reference book in the mental health field) to affect about 2% of the US population or about 6 million people in the US. Common belief is that it afflicts women about 3 times more often than men.

Recent research published in April 2008 suggests that 6% of the population may be affected and the difference between rates for males and females may be little. If this research is accurate, the United States with its population of about 300 million people has 18 million victims of BPD.

The result of BPD is a catastrophic cycle of child abuse and mental illness that runs for generations. The economic impact of this illness is worse than a 9/11/2001 terror attack each and every year. US mental health care policies are badly in need of an overhaul to deal with BPD and similar personality disorders and the drastic economic impact they have on any tens of millions of US citizens.

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Domestic Abuse Assessment in Child Custody Disputes:
Beware the Domestic Violence Research Paradigm 

by Donald G. Button
Department of Psychology
University of British Columbia

Abstract:

In some states custody assessors are now required to become familiar with the dynamics of prevalence of domestic abuse since the presence of one or more abusive parents in the house has impact on the “best interests of the child”. The domestic abuse literature is misleading in setting a framework for abuse incidence and threat source for children. Males are represented as primary perpetrators of physical abuse although data from meta-analytic studies show otherwise. Indirect aggression is scarcely mentioned in the literature, although prevalent in research on aggression. Physical violence directed towards children is actually more likely to be mother–perpetrated. Child safety may be compromised if attention is focused solely on the possibility of abuse from a male perpetrator.

[click here to see full text of paper]

One of the classic behaviors of a person suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder is the vilification campaign. The target is the person against whom the perpetrator Borderline conducts the vilification.  The intent is to destroy the target’s reputation and thereby destroy the target’s relationships with family and friends, employers, co-workers, doctors, teachers, therapists, and others. The intent may even be to force the target to leave the community, put the target in prison, or even kill the target.  As with so many things involving Borderlines and their typical inability to understand or respect boundaries, there really are no limits. They will use basically any means available to them to cause damage to their target, including denigration, endless disparaging remarks, fabrication, false accusations, and even teaching others (including their children!) to lie on their behalf as part of their vilification campaign.

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