angiEmedia

We’ve added Google Translate as a feature on our site. Now readers who read better in a language other than English can easily have Google translate the page for them. Simply look down at the new control bar at the bottom of the web page and pick the desired language from the pop up menu on the right side. A control bar will appear on the top of the page showing you that the page has been translated to another language and giving you the option to go back to the original view.
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California billionaire Donald Bren had two children with former girlfriend Jennifer McKay Gold. They had a 13 year long affair, but they never married and he had little involvement with the children. Gold claims that Bren promised he would be involved in the children’s lives and that his failure to do so is a violation of agreements between them. Therefore Gold and the children, David Bren, age 18, and Christie Bren, age 22, decided to sue Donald Bren for $134 million in back child support.

Donald Bren is Rich

Bren is very secretive and media-shy about his life, income, and assets. Estimates are that his assets may be worth around $12 billion, largely derived from real estate development in Southern California. Forbes Magazines has placed him 16th on its list of the 400 richest Americans.

He and his attorney claim he paid about $10 million in child support, vacations, cars, and other payments and gifts to Gold and the children during their childhood. He felt obligated to ensure they would receive advanced education through graduate school if they wished, received luxury German cars when they started to drive, and live in an upper middle class standard of living well beyond that of most of the US population. Clearly these children were not in need of more money.

Is Gold a Golddigger?

Gold disagrees on the amounts. She and the children also claim that he owes far more because he didn’t stay involved in their lives.
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(Originally published January 15, 2009. Updated August 27, 2010.)

So you’re getting a divorce, or have already gotten one. Have any kids in the picture? You can bet they are confused about what you and your ex-spouse (or soon-to-be-ex-spouse) have done by breaking up the family. Kids need to understand what is going on from such a big family change as a divorce, and it’s not a simple thing for them. Why? Well, for starters:

• Children often blame themselves for the divorce.

• They need to know that divorce is an adult problem, not one caused by children.

• Child self-blame for divorce creates psychological problems, some of which can be long-term and severe.

• Children need to know that it’s OK to love both parents.

• They are often put in the middle and made to “pick sides” by one or both parents and don’t like this at all.

• They need to know that parents who try to make them “pick sides” and bad-mouth the other parent are doing the wrong thing so they won’t participate and may possibly help their misguided parent(s) control themselves.

Even in an amicable divorce involving children, there are going to be questions and worries. All of the books discussed in this posting can help with those, especially for the intended audience which is generally late toddler-hood to early grade school, about ages 2 to 9.

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Serenity Gandara

Renee Maese, grandmother of deceased foster child Serenity Gandara, has decided what she can best do to honor her granddaughter’s memory is to fight against the abusive CPS and foster care system in California. Each year, dozens of children die in California foster care homes from child abuse. Serenity was one of these children. Her foster parents, Albert and Carla Garcia, are more than a month later still missing and wanted by police for murder and child endangerment.

Maese explains that the 3 year old girl’s death on July 18, 2010, has motivated her to work to change the system to protect children and families:

I will be the first to admit, if it wasn’t for Serenity dying, I probably would be doing my everyday life things, but now I’m advocating for Serenity. Deceased children no longer have a voice, but being her Grandmother, I will speak for her and fight for her justice.

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Until you’ve been through a divorce in a child abusing nation like the United States or United Kingdom, you likely have no clue of the extortion and abuse families are put through by the courts and governments of such nations. But that may change as more and more fathers with ties to the entertainment and mass media industries start to open up about their experiences, particularly how their children and they are blocked from contact with each other with the full cooperation of the courts in what amounts to state-sponsored parental alienation child abuse.

Noted writer Louis de Bernieres, author of Corelli’s Mandolin which was later turned into the movie Captain Corelli’s Mandolin starring Nicolas Cage and Penelope Cruz, has recently experienced state-sponsored parental alienation himself. He seldom gets to see his children Robin and Sophie, all of five and two years old respectively, as the courts engaged in the usual sexist practice of marginalizing the father. He’s now joined UK’s shared parenting group Families Need Fathers to fight against the ongoing abuse by UK courts and government against children and families.
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In my previous article Extreme BPD / NPD Behaviors Are Internally Triggered, I discussed the puzzling ways in which normal circumstances seem to trigger abusive behaviors from Borderlines, Narcissists, and other personality disordered abusers. My advice to those who can do so is to get away and stay away from these people as they are a serious danger to your own mental health, even your freedom and your life, if you continue to have anything to do with them.

Unfortunately, not everybody can easily extricate themselves from the abuse without severe consequences. This is particularly true for parents of children whose other parent is a Borderline or Narcissist. Staying in the children’s lives means staying in the line of fire of the abuser. Leaving is likely to subject the children to even more abuse. Often the abuser has focused most of her or his rage against their former partner or spouse. But if that parent leaves, the rages, abuses, and emotional manipulations are not going to stop. They will probably be redirected at somebody else close to the abuser as loved-ones are the tops targets for these sick people. The children are a likely target for even more abuse than they have already received. This chronic abuse with no escape (as the healthy parent has disappeared) is likely to create severe psychological damage, even personality disorders, in these children as they have even less means to defend themselves against one of these sociopaths than an adult does.
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Recently a reader of our site wrote a comment about our article Talking With A Borderline citing how it didn’t show how non-Borderlines trigger the negative behaviors associated with Borderline Personality Disorder. The comment seemed to be intended to place some of the blame for Borderline behaviors on the people around them, particularly people who are essentially the targets of Borderlines who do not suffer from a personality disorder or engage in abusive behaviors themselves. This is mostly a mistake in my view. It also makes me wonder if the comment came from somebody with a Borderline son or daughter or who is personally suffering from BPD and therefore may be prone to blame-shifting as a means of coping with his or her own guilt or shame.

Most of the people around a Borderline are not abusive, yet they may trigger reactions in Borderline akin to an actual abuser even when they aren’t displaying an iota of aggression or hostility. In most of these situations, the Borderline perceives aggression or abuse in their own minds, even when a neutral disinterested person would say none is present, and then launches into a reaction that is similar to what they might do if there actually was an abuser trying to harm them. The trigger is much more internal, in the mind of the Borderline, than external. This is what makes is so difficult for others to understand why the sociopathically inclined individuals, be they Borderlines, Narcissists, or something else, behave as they do.

Extreme Reactions Product of Child Abuse

Borderlines are sometimes said to suffer from “emotional dysregulation” because they react in extreme ways to normal stimuli. This extreme reaction in many cases developed from their experience as child abuse victims, an experience most of them share, and trying to find ways to avoid being abused again. Many of them have found that extreme reactions including false blaming, projection, lying, and other behaviors associated with Borderlines and Narcissists alike are reasonably effective at either drawing fire away from them and making somebody else the target of their abuser. Other times, their extreme behaviors may somehow justify in their own minds why they are deserving of abuse, perhaps giving them some delusional feeling of control over the abuse. Over time, many of them may generalize these maladaptive behaviors by applying them to people who are not abusing them but by whom they are reminded of what it feels like to be abused.
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We’re looking for feedback on your experiences with exchanges and visitations, particularly those involving those either professionally or informally supervised. We hope to write some articles over the next couple of months on what works, what doesn’t, and to include comments on particular service providers. If you’d like to be anonymous or to include your name, either is OK with us.

Many parents end up suffering the high expenses and interference of supervised visitations because of false allegations made by a malicious ex and how abusive courts regard parents as guilty until proven innocent, even when there is no evidence to substantiate the allegations. Yet despite the hassle and expense, sometimes these court ordered services actually do end up helping to clear up the false allegations. That’s because some of the providers are competent and honest enough to write accurate reports of how the children behave around both the falsely accused parent and the accusing or alienating parent and are not afraid to give examples of why it appears there are false allegations and parental alienation at work.

We’d like to help guide our readers to use facilities that are competent, fair, and honest and that use exchange and visitation monitoring techniques that are not overly intrusive yet can head off a lot of problems. If you’ve got recommendations for or against particular providers and techniques, it would be terrific if you would take a few minutes to write them down and forward them so others can benefit from your thoughts.
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On July 29, 2010, the British Medical Journal published a flawed study of the usage of calcium supplements and associated risk of heart attack. The study misleadingly concluded that use of calcium supplements increases the risk of heart attacks by 27% and has no significant effect on overall mortality. The authors advise that the use of calcium supplements in treating or preventing osteoporosis should be reconsidered. Some in the media are broadcasting this study as a reason to stop using calcium supplements.

Please don’t stop your calcium supplements before reading more about the serious flaws in this study!

A major problem with this study is that it excluded people taking vitamin D, magnesium, and other common ingredients in bone protection products. As a result, the study participants generally had low levels of nutrients that are associated with lower risk of diseases such as atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease and are directly tied how calcium is used in the body. These nutrients all work together to keep calcium in the bones where it belongs, rather than building up calcium deposits in the vascular system and heart that can contribute to cardiovascular disease and heart attacks.
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Cindy Dumas is the San Diego mother who has been flooding the media for years with claims of child sexual abuse against her son Damon Moelter. On July 15, 2010, Judge Lorna Alksne gave full custody of Damon Moelter to his father, the person Dumas continues to insist sexually abused him, with minimal contact with his mother. You might think the title of this article implies we’ll be joining in the woe-is-me chanting of her supporters. Perhaps refreshingly, we won’t waste your time with that — you’ve read enough of it already if you have followed this case. Instead, I’m going to explain to you why Damon Moelter and his entire family are victims of the corrupt San Diego courts and that Damon in particular is experiencing court-ordered parental alienation child abuse. The primary driver of the corrupt and abusive decisions in this case is a biased and incompetent Judge Lorna Alksne. The type of corruption and bias that are occurring in her court are little different from that in many other family law courts. As a result, many children are being seriously harmed. Damon Moelter is just one of these many.

Perhaps ironically, this child abuse that is truly occurring is the parental alienation emotional abuse that Damon’s mother staunchly denies exists. But the chief motives and methods involved in the abuse occurring now are not the usual malicious mischief of a parent who can’t separate her or his own needs from those of the children. Instead, they involve the collusion of Judge Lorna Alksne and her friends pursuing their own purposes by violating the law and harming a child and a family.
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