angiEmedia

Melinda Stratton may escape jail for kidnapping Andrew Thompson

Would welcome your comments.

Her family court psychiatrist report showed she suffered from paranoia, after reading the report she skipped with the child.

Now they are considering using the case as a guinea pig test as shown in the above article.

So her paranoia, allegations of paedophilia against the husband wil just disappear and they will live together happily ever after? So she will get out of jail and start to plan her next abduction or even worse (if I can’t have him nobody will).

No jail for contempt of the Australia court.

No jail for thousands of man hours and wasting police time.

No jail for child abuse that will stay with the child for the rest of his life.

No example set to other abductors, gee just shake hands and go back home together.

End the patriatrchy! No mother is a criminal for raising her own child. Alienation is a bogus label to falsely stigmatize women and children who want to be free of a MALE guardian very similar to the false mental disorder of Drapetomania given to slaves who wanted to be free from their masters. Anyone who tries to take a child from their mother is a MONSTER. Nature made mothers the natural guardian, patriarchy enslaves the women and treats the children as property.

You slander women with every story-since when are men all “falsely accused”?

When will victims of violence and abuse have the same rights as the perpetrator? A Mother hunted down like a dog for protecting HER child– you all seem to forget- HER CHILD!!!

@ Iva Pregunta

Good for HER!! Mommy annihilation needs to be stopped daddy abusers need the death chair!
http://americanmotherspoliticalparty.org/ampp-article-library-family-court-custody-abuse-dv/8-news/43-run-mommy-run-help-me-mommy-help-me-daddy-hurts-me

All,

The extremist websites run by people like Claudine Dombrowski are linking to this article and complaining about how we support slavery of women as “evidenced” by reporting the woman’s name as “Melinda Thompson”.

Note in our story on this case in 2009, we reported it as “Melinda Stratton”. She seems to have used both names. Ken Thompson appears to emphasize the Thompson name for reasons that are not clear. He also talks about forgiving her and wanting to work things out.

Personally, I think he’s naive if he really thinks he can work out anything with Melinda given what she’s been doing for years. Perhaps he thinks he owes it to Andrew to give it one last try. Maybe that is why he keeps emphasizing the Thompson name.

Regardless, we are not the only ones reporting using that name and we have clearly identified her using both names.

Responding to some of the other trash being spread about us, we strongly support mothers who have been abused by the government or a malicious ex to keep them from their kids. Women don’t have an exclusive lock on being vindictive and malicious parents, we know of men who have been just as vindictive and malicious.

We are not a “father’s rights” website.

We have reported on stories in the past regarding mothers who have been unfairly treated by the government and courts. See our stories discussing Tonya Craft, Patricia Shope, and Eileen Lasher for examples of this.

This website is owned by a woman who has seen exactly what the government, courts, and malicious parents who are unwilling to share their children do to children and families.

The extremist emphasis on gender in family law detracts from solving the crisis that exists today. Mom extremists like Dombrowski and dad extremists alike both are contributing to the continuation of these problems by helping the government and courts marginalize opposition to their tyrannical behaviors that hurt children, mothers, fathers, and families as a routine matter of practice.

Chris

@ Claudine Dombrowski

Claudine is right, she is a good mom! Mothers cannot rest until dads are dead. Look what happens when they do… thoes dads hunt them and capture them!

Kill all men! Every man has a penis, every man is a child molester!

Children are only safe with there mothers!

Parental abduction is the worst form of parental alienation and you are correct to point out that mothers are victims as often as fathers. I recently wrote about the case of a mother who recently reunited with her children 30 years after receiving a phone call that they were dead.

Parental alienation is a mental health issue, not a gender issue.

Sincerely,

mike jeffries
Author, A Family’s Heartbreak: A Parent’s Introduction to Parental Alienation

What a grossly ill-informed article. A case of a little knowledge being dangerous. The allegations of domestic violence have never been competently and thoroughly investigated because Australian Family Courts do not have the expertise and resources to do so. (Statement by Chief Justice Diane Bryant).

PAS has been completely discredited worldwide as junk pseudo science presented by a psychologist who wrote about his sympathies for pedophiles and pedophile behaviour. PAS is not recognised by the relevant professional community and it is inadmissible in Australian Courts.

Melinda Stratton has not been assessed by a competent psychiatrist as mentally ill or dangerous to her child. He appears well looked after and in good health after 6 years in her care, and the last 3 years in her sole care.

Melinda Stratton has not broken any criminal laws (Family Law proceedings are civil matters) and she is merely in contravention of an Order of a civil court.

I would suggest to the writer that s/he should refrain from writing with such authority on matters on which s/he so very clearly has such little knowledge.

Rob…shut up!!!You dont even know how our Australian justice system works…PAS IS NOT RECOGNISED HERE IN AUSTRALIA..Its creator killed himself so he didnt have to face the music in court. and we all know why sick bastard..Melinda has never been diagnosed with a mental illness by anyone except Ken Thompson and a dubious BIASED court assessor/psychologist
Ken Thompson is/ was deputy Fire Chief in NSW …All community services employees watch each others backs..How do you know he never abused his son? How do you know he never abused Melinda?? Were you in there home watching?
he is deranged and mentally ill ..why do I say this ?? as we say in Australia the proof is in the pudding MELINDA LEFT HIM SHE IS NOT HIS WIFE but HE KEEPS REFERRING TO HER AS HIS WIFE..HE is DELUSIONAL and Controlling…he has controlled the media thru his journalist pals..why do you think he is getting all this coverage more so than anyone else even before they were found????
And as far as Claudine is concerned shut up you low life…you have no idea what she and her daughter have been enduring for years!!! and you wouldnt know because you wouldnt bother to find out & form an unbiased opinion because it does not agree with your sick pathetic misinformed dogma…GET OVER IT !!! and to everyone else Melinda is not going to be punished if the women, the mothers of Australia will have anything to do with it….we are all here behind you Melinda ,and Claudine and all the mothers and children who have been victimised by this modern witch hunt and inquisition

@ fightingfor kids rights

I didn’t claim Andrew suffers from PAS. I explained the distinction between PAS and parental alienation. PAS, or Parental Alienation Syndrome, refers to parental alienation that has been so severe that it causes the child to align with the alienating parent and take on similar denigrating and disrespectful behaviors. At the time the article was written, there was no indication of how son Andrew would respond to father Ken because they hadn’t seen each other in more than two years.

As it turns out, it appears they did finally get to see each other and got along fine.

Just because a nation doesn’t recognize a phenomenon doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

The Catholic Church heavily influenced, some may say dominated, Europe for centuries and insisted the Earth was the center of the universe. It was so vehemently opposed to any other opinion that it persecuted scientists like Galileo who believed otherwise. Was Galileo an evil man who spoke lies he “invented” claiming obvious heresies because the church said so? No, he wasn’t. The Catholic Church wasn’t even remotely close to being correct. Galileo wasn’t exactly right, either, as the sun isn’t at the center of the universe. But that idea was much closer to the truth than the Church’s geocentric view. Further, he was actually willing to entertain a reasoned debate and consider the viewpoints of others rather than labeling them as “evil” and “heretics” simply because they did not agree with him.

Copernicus, an earlier scientist, is named by some as the originator of Galileo’s ideas on the sun, not the Earth, being at the center. But Copernicus probably was more like Richard Gardner in that he came up with a good explanation but wasn’t the first to observe, speculate, or theorize about the sun being at the center of the solar system. But he wasn’t entirely correct, either — he thought the sun was at the center of the universe, obviously not true based upon the last few hundred years of astronomical observations.

That example is just like the dogmatic stupidity that the “parental alienation doesn’t exist” extremists promulgate.

Your “logic” about PAS and Richard Gardner is similar to the Catholic Church’s geocentric dogma and refusal to discuss observations that don’t match your thinking.

Gardner didn’t “invent” PAS. He came up with a theory to explain and a name to label what many other people have observed previously and since. His original theory might have some holes, just like heliocentrism had some holes in it, but that doesn’t mean there is no truth at all to it. Besides, many other people have done further research on PAS and parental alienation since Gardner’s day and have further refined the data and theories involved.

Gardner did commit suicide, but that doesn’t have any relevance to whether his ideas are accurate or not. Van Gogh was mentally ill and committed suicide. By your reasoning that means he was a poor painter and never did anything of value. If you have any of his artwork, I’ll pay you a $1 for it to unclutter your home, OK? Great deal for you!

There is no serious dispute about parental alienation being real, the folks deny it exists are like the Flat Earth Society. You’re trying to deceive people by bringing up controversies over PAS to deny the legitimacy of parental alienation. Odds are you don’t even have an inkling of understanding of that controversy, either, given how you have so thoroughly confused the two and seem to believe that mentally ill or troubled people can’t make legitimate observations or contribute anything of value.

Given that you and your friends seem so intent on entirely discounting that parental alienation and PAS even occur, you destroy your own credibility. There is far too much documented evidence and far too many cases involving target parents of both genders to dismiss either as “not real” or to claim that courts should legitimately not recognize the problems can happen.

There are many courts that recognize that PAS and parental alienation are legitimate theories that are generally accepted. See RECENT HIGHER COURT DECISIONS RE: PARENTAL ALIENATION AND PARENTAL ALIENATION SYNDROME for more information if you can stand reading something that doesn’t agree with your narrow-minded view of the world.

Whether either parental alienation or PAS is happening in a particular case is another matter entirely. Figuring out anything about family dynamics and problems is difficult at best. But extremist reactions like yours and your friends’ cast major doubt on your position.

As to your other questions, I’ll split them back at you. Were you there in the home? Did you see Ken Thompson harm Melinda or Andrew? If not, how do you know what happened?

I looked a several reports on this case before writing my article and considered my own experiences and those of people I know, mothers and fathers and children, plus other reading in the field before I arrived at my opinions on this case. Am I 100% sure I’m right? No. But if that was required before anybody were to write anything, writing would have long since gone out of style.

If you consider your opinion “unbiased” then you’re a very deluded person. Everybody has some bias due to their life experiences and you seem to be far more biased than you realize given your poorly reasoned blanket denials.

Claudine is probably her own worst enemy. Her moronic rhetoric about “slave names” sounds like she’s quite nutty. I know plenty of women who for whatever reason decided to take their husband’s family names after marriage and they are not slaves by any means. Some of them are the dominant partners in their relationships. Different cultures handle family names differently. There are examples of cultures that don’t use her so-called “slave names” yet are or have been even more repressive against women in the last century than anything seen in Australia or the US.

I don’t know what Claudine has experienced and doubt you do, either. After all, were you there? Did you see it? And would you know the truth in any event even if you did see something? Given your expressed positions, I doubt you would.

Interesting debate–though few would recognize the vitriol of the more forceful here as legitimate “debate.” Unfortunately I’ve encountered quite a few of the more rabid “women’s rights” proponents and have often been personally attacked rather than engaged in legitimate discussion. I’d suggest that each of us focus on issues rather than gender stereotypes. Otherwise you become a poster child for the prejudices/biases of the opposite sex. Trust me ladies–you’re not doing yourselves any favors here.

One point: There is much debate about whether PAS is truly a “syndrome.” It is not recognized in the DSM IV and not accepted as a “scientifically accepted” “syndrome” by many governments. And for good reason.

A “syndrome” implies a mental condition within the child–an illness or mental deficiency. I tend to agree that in most cases children who are victims of parental “coaching” or have been exposed to consistent stream of negative comments about the “target parent” do not experience a “syndrome.” It’s not their own mental illness or deficiency. Most kids exposed to such behaviors are likely perfectly normal, but just influenced by harmful parental behaviors. These parental behaviors often cause children to adopt their parent’s perspective of the other parent–often negative opinions, etc. It’s extremely unfair to the target parent and harmful to the child.

But a “syndrome”? In most cases it probably rarely rises to the level of causing some mental incapacity or disorder. A parent who is making bad choices to influence the child to favor him/her and dislike the target parent is certainly making a mistake as the child’s opinion of the target parent will eventually inevitably reflect back onto the child’s own perspective of him/her self. Thus, a parent speaking negatively about an ex is effectively harming the child. That’s abuse. That’s irresponsible. That’s morally wrong. But probably not a “syndrome.”

The discussion shouldn’t be focussed on whether or not PAS is a “syndrome” or belongs in the DSM IV etc., but on educating parents about how negative comments and interference harms their own child. If necessary, alienating parents should receive education about why and how to separate their own (perhaps justifiable, perhaps not–doesn’t really matter) negative attitudes and emotions toward an ex-spouse from their own relationship with their child. Resistance to acknowledging the need to separate one’s emotions towards an ex from the child’s relationship demonstrates a psychological dysfunction.

If parents are told “beating your child is bad” yet continued to beat their children, everyone would agree that parent has a problem that must be addressed. Yet even though virtually every psychologist agrees that criticizing the other parent in front of the child harms the child, many parents continue to alienate. I find that extraordinarily bizarre.

Whether you call it a “syndrome” or just “behavior that harms your child” is irrelevant. The most important point is that we all recognize that children do not belong at the center of a propaganda war between parents, and that parents who continue such behavior with full knowledge of this fact are abusers who need help. Plain and simple.

Good luck parents–love your children, and let them love both parents.

I am relieved.

I was under the impression that the U.S.A had the whackiest women on earth.

From a few of the extremist comments by angry, hateful women on this thread, it appears the U.S.A. may be #2.

Looks like our Aussie Friends have to deal with even angrier, more hateful women.

It’s a shame. Hate does not heal anything. It just makes you go to Hell.

@ one of thousands
One of Thousands,

Thanks for further discussing the debate on the use of the term “syndrome”.

I’d characterize it as simply a debate over where the dividing line that denotes “syndrome” level parental alienation should be. The Rick Lohstroh case in which his alienated son shot and killed him with a gun supplied by his mother in my mind is a clear case where “syndrome” applies.

While the extremists go on about how Australia doesn’t recognize PAS, we would do well to recognize that PAS bears a strong resemblance to the “Lost Generation” of government-backed destruction of aboriginal families in which the Australian government took children from their families in what appears to be a plan to eradicate the culture and to commit genocide. There is no doubt in my mind that this was systematic child abuse conducted by a government. It also appears to be a form of child slavery. This practice only ended in 1969. But apparently many of these nutty moms think that taking children from a parent is still a good practice.

It is clear that many countries consider parental alienation a serious abuse against children. For instance, Brazil has recently outlawed parental alienation.

Rob

Rights for Mothers – saying mothers are natural caretakers is sexist. You’re attributing one characteristic to all members of a sex. I don’t care if you were trying to be complementary; it’s still sexism.

The original post was that she had been arrested for parental abduction. That is not strictly correct. Their case was before the Family Court. She did not like her court appointed shrink report she was provided. She took the child out of Australia without the court nor the father’s consent. Read the Law – it is quite clear. She would have been apprehended for contempt of court in breach of this law.
FAMILY LAW ACT 1975 – SECT 65Z
Obligations if proceedings for the making of certain parenting orders are pending
(1) If proceedings (the Part VII proceedings ) for the making of a parenting order to which this Subdivision applies are pending, a person who is a party to the proceedings, or who is acting on behalf of, or at the request of, a party, must not take or send the child concerned from Australia to a place outside Australia except as mentioned in subsection (2).
Penalty: Imprisonment for 3 years.
Note: The ancillary offence provisions of the Criminal Code , including section 11.1 (attempts), apply in relation to the offence created by subsection (1).
(2) Subsection (1) does not prohibit taking or sending the child from Australia to a place outside Australia if:
(a) it is done with the consent in writing (authenticated as prescribed) of each other party to the Part VII proceedings; or
(b) it is done in accordance with an order of a court made, under this Part or under a law of a State or Territory, after the institution of the Part VII proceedings.
Note: A defendant bears an evidential burden in relation to the matter in subsection (2) (see subsection 13.3(3) of the Criminal Code ).

Who’s telling the truth in this case? Melinda’s referred to as being “paranoid” yet those who know her know she isn’t, wasn’t and never has been. Is it possible that a story was fabricated by her husband and that he was aided and abetted by the court psychiatrist? Let’s hope the truth comes out in court. Many statements have been made about Melinda by people who have never met her and have no idea that integrity is one of her most impressive characteristics. That she would have attempted to influence her son by telling him his father was evil – without any evidence – would not be in character at all. She discovered what had happened to her child because she and those around him at that time noticed his extremely abnormal behaviour. By writing a manipulative blog, her husband managed to win over thousands of people around the globe. We’d be better off questioning to what extent he fed the masses with truth – or lies.