angiEmedia

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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The USA PATRIOT Act has yielded a new class of terrorists — disruptive airline passengers. Since the passage of that law after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, more than 200 airline passengers have been convicted of felony terrorism by such dangerous means as yelling or swearing at airline employees and swatting disobedient children. While it was previously in theory possible to prosecute some of these acts as violent behaviors on airlines, the USA PATRIOT Act has made it vastly easier and the climate it has created has encouraged prosecutions of even disruptive behaviors that do not appear to be threatening to safety.

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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.

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Parental alienation is the systematic denigration committed by an alienating parent against a target parent in order to influence their children to dislike and mistreat the target parent. It typically also involves blocking of access to the target parent, often in violation of court orders regarding custody, exchanges, and visitation.

J. Michael Bone, Ph.D. is an eminent authority on parental alienation. [See Wikipedia: Parental Alienation] Dr. Bone’s website offers pre-recorded teleseminars on how targeted parents can overcome Parental Alienation. Available titles include:

Dr. Bone has also written a number of journal articles on parental alienation. One of these is available for electronic purchase and download here: Parental alienation syndrome: how to detect it and what to do about it.: An article from: Florida Bar Journal.

Books

If you’re involved in a court case and seem to be getting shafted with injustice repeatedly, here are some things to watch out for in opposing counsel.  In high-conflict litigation, it appears to be more common for the plaintiff’s lawyer to be “ethically challenged”, although certainly not all are.  (It is certainly possible for the defendant’s attorney to be unethical, also.)  If you are represented by counsel, point out behaviors like those below to your attorney as you may be able to better recognize them with your one case (or few cases, for some unlucky folks) than an attorney who may be handling dozens of cases for dozens of clients at the same time.

If you are self-represented (Pro Se or Pro Per), you have to be particularly on the lookout for these behaviors and bring the judge’s attention to them if you are to have any chance of getting them to stop.

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

If you are in the unenviable position of being forced into the abomination that is the US “legal” or “justice” system by a hostile divorce, baseless or harassing lawsuit, or false criminal allegations, perhaps you might wonder why a lawyer would take such a case in the first place.  Some people may be first inclined to believe that only money-grubbing scum lawyers would take such cases.

However, just because a lawyer took a case for a legally abusive client doesn’t mean the lawyer is unethical or is simply willing to work as a hired mercenary, attacking whomever the client pays to attack.  It could be the lawyer believes the client.  Some clients are liars and manipulators and are so very good at it that they can confuse a even a well-intentioned competent lawyer who really does want to do good. 

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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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