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The recent release of Davis Guggenheim’s film Waiting for Superman has contributed to a flurry of discussion over how to fix failing American schools. I’ve read quite a bit on thoughts regarding school reform and find that there is a striking absence of discussion of American family policies and the abusive family law courts as major contributors to poor student performance. Yet studies show that divorce has a major negative impact on student performance.

(from More Studies Show Divorce Hurts Kids’ Education)

Adverse impact of divorce upon education has skyrocketed as divorce has been more common. Divorces in 1920 caused a 3.6 month loss of education, but since 1970 they have blown up to about a year in lost education. This timeframe roughly corresponds with the rise of “no fault divorce” in Western nations.

Multiple divorces had an even worse impact on high school graduation rates. While students who parents stay together average a 78.4% rate of graduation from high school by age 20, one divorce drops the graduation rate to 60%, about the same as for children whose mother or father died. Divorce and remarriage did not significantly change the graduation rates for children versus divorce with no remarriage. But with divorce-remarriage-divorce (two divorces), the graduation rate drops further to only about 40%, half of that for children whose parents remained married.

Parties as diverse as social scientists, economists, and national security experts point out that America’s under-performing educational system is a threat to the future of the nation. The United States has long maintained the economic and military superiority over its adversaries that lead to a secure and prosperous nation in large part due to the educational opportunities available to American children. Universal K-12 education means every child is supposed to have access to the knowledge and skills needed to get a start in life. American universities attract the best and brightest students from around the world. The inventiveness of these students is immense. They often become scientists, entrepreneurs, and other major contributors to the advancement of knowledge and wealth of the nation.

America’s academic performance has been on a steady downward slope for decades. This decline parallels the destruction of families via no-fault divorce that has made divorce far more common as well as the laws and court behaviors that create conflict and place children into traumatic and contentious custody battles. Often these children are stripped of most or all contact with one of their parents due to wrongful sole custody decisions and the courts enabling and encouraging parental alienation child abuse. The two phenomena of poor school performance and poor family life are directly related. While parents do make their own share of mistakes, failed government policies are the glue that binds together these interconnected disasters into a destructive spiral.
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Personality disorders are a growing problem in the United States. Recent NIH studies indicate that 20% or more of Americans suffer from one or more personality disorders. Author Bill Eddy points out that in his experience about half of “High Conflict Personalities” (or HCPs) involved in destructive divorce and child custody battles probably do have one or more full-blown personality disorders. The other half may not meet all the criteria for a full-blown personality disorder yet still show many traits consistent with troublesome personality disorders such as BPD and NPD.

(from Don’t Alienate the Kids! Raising Resilient Children While Avoiding High Conflict Divorce)

I believe that about half of HCPs have a personality disorder and about half have some of these traits, but not a full personality disorder. This means that they are still difficult, but may respond more easily to approaches designed for people with personality disorders.

It helps to understand some of these traits, but it is important to not tell someone you think they have a personality disorder. They may become very defensive and angry with you, as defensiveness is a common characteristic of those with personality disorders and those just with traits.

I fully agree with Eddy’s advice about not telling a person they may have a personality disorder. To be clear, this is not because it is better for them but primarily because hearing this news seems to turn them into even more destructive abusers than they were in the first place. Even if you are only trying to help, they will probably interpret your words as dire threats and redouble their efforts to destroy you. There is also a substantial risk that you will be ridiculed for your reasonable beliefs by divorce industry “professionals” who have an agenda that does not make room for unpleasant truths unless they are stated by an expensive paid expert.
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While the old research on BPD reflected in the DSM-IV indicates that females Borderlines far outnumber male Borderlines, newer research indicates that is not so. Yet there has still been a strong focus on BPD being an illness affecting primarily women. We’ve previously shared a video produced showing the emotionally manipulative conversations some Borderline females have in about a minute and a half. A year later, it’s still a popular article as it resonates with folks who have had relationships with Borderlines.

Recently I ran across a set of three videos about a Borderline male made with the XtraNormal animation tools that have been popular with many of those trying to explain what it is like interacting with personality disordered emotionally abusive people. After watching them, I’d say the conversations are quite plausible representations of how these people reason and speak. The guy in these videos, represented by a cuddly looking teddy bear, seems to engage in the “magical thinking” sometimes seen in Borderlines. In particular, he seems to believe that his girlfriend is inhabited by demons because she doesn’t do what he wants. This sort of twisted thinking is typical of Borderlines. If you don’t do what they want in every way, something must be wrong with you. And they are not afraid to tell you that and to make threats, such as the “withdrawal of affection” threat seen in these videos, to get you to comply with their demands.

Ben Vonderheide of Daddy Justice is well on the way to assembling a documentary film of his experiences dealing with the abusive courts and government in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. We summarized his story in our article Ben Vonderheide Exposes Pennsylvania’s Abusive Child Profiteering Racket last week. While Vonderheide particularly identifies with these abuses being done against fathers, he’s clearly aware of the state attacking and destroying mothers, too, as evidenced by various videos he’s produced and put on his website.

Below is what he has been calling a “trailer” for his movie. At over 21 minutes, it’s much longer than the typical trailer. It features Vonderheide, his son Quinta, and many of the dirty players in the Lancaster County courts and government, and his ex Wendy Flanders and her new boyfriend, Ted Yoder, both of whom were convicted for filing false police reports to get Vonderheide falsely arrested. Video that Ben recorded was important evidence for obtaining the convictions. Flanders then was given probation, rather than jail time, and sole custody of their son. The message is that false accusations pay in Lancaster.
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Melinda and Andrew Thompson

On September 9, 2010, law enforcement finally caught up with parental child abductor Melinda Thompson, formerly Melinda Stratton. On April 24, 2008, she had disappeared with son Andrew Thompson after leaving Australia to go to Germany on a Singapore Airlines flight from Sydney to Frankfurt. Her professed intent was to keep the boy away from his father, Ken Thompson of New South Wales, Australia. After more than a year searching for his son, in mid-2010 he traveled to Europe to do a bike tour across the continent in search for his son. He biked over 3000 miles across nine countries raising awareness of his missing son. He wore clothes covered with pictures of Andrew.

Ken discussed in an interview with BBC news about how he discovered Andrew had been found. He had stopped cycling in Germany between Nuremberg and Stuttgart to check his email. There was an anonymous message stating that Andrew had been found and Australian authorities would contact him.
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Parental alienation child abuse is a worldwide problem. As most of our news-oriented coverage is focused on the United States and Canada, some may not realize that parental alienation and destructive family law courts are plentiful outside of North America, too. This story highlights one troubling alienation case in Singapore.

Parental Alienation in Singapore

Wee Cheng of Singapore, one of our many readers worldwide, is a divorced father of a young boy named Adriel Cheng. His limited 8 hours of contact per week hasn’t been honored in two years. The courts will do nothing but reward the mother’s contempt for their orders. Adriel hasn’t seen his father almost half a year because of interference being enabled and enforced by human rights violators in the Singapore schools and family courts.

While Singapore has a fine reputation in many areas, Mr. Cheng’s experience shows that the government of Singapore is engaged in human rights violations and is intent on enabling parental alienators to abuse their children. In Cheng’s case, the courts and schools are directly involved in access blocking and interfering with the parent/child relationship. They have even threatened police action against him for attempting to spend time with his son at a school carnival.
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A few weeks back, we published an announcement about the Canadian Symposium for Parental Alienation Syndrome. The regular registration fee is $195 per person. However, ACFC (American Coalition for Fathers and Children) supporters can get a discounted rate of $150 and bring along a second person (new spouse, friend, grandparent, etc.) to the conference for free. Here’s the full announcement from ACFC:
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We recently received notice that the American Coalition for Fathers and Children is working on putting together graphics and slogans for signs, banner, brochures, flyers, and other literature to support its goals of enacting shared parenting legislation and reform of child support and domestic violence laws across the United States. They are putting together working groups to create this content and have some people with professional backgrounds in graphic design already on board. They would like to get more skilled volunteers involved. They are also seeking ideas to develop into signs and other materials to help parental rights and family law reform groups get their messages out to the general public.

We’ve seen some of the signs and banners similar groups have created (California Coalition for Families and Children comes to mind) and would like to encourage them to share their work and ideas with ACFC. ACFC aims to build a library of such content and share it with like-minded groups and individuals.
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Rob’s recent comment pointing out the Ben Vonderheide case in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania made me curious. After all, it’s not often that you see the government actually prosecute somebody for making malicious false reports to the police to terrorize a father and block access to a child. On the surface, it looks like the government got it right in this case. Dig deeper, however, and you find that Ben Vonderheide is a poster case for government-backed terrorism against a parent who has been repeatedly abused by the government. The government is now using his son, Quinta Xavier Vonderheide, as a pawn in its vindictive battle to hide its crimes against the state’s children and families and attack those who attempt to expose them.

Alienating Ex Convicted of Lying to Police Gets Sole Custody

Quinta’s mother is Vonderheide’s ex-girlfriend Wendy Flanders. She has systematically alienated her son from his father and engaged in access blocking, denigration, defamation, and false police reports to destroy the child’s relationship with his father. She is unable to accept that their son should have time with both his parents and is willing to break the law, scheme, manipulate, and conspire to ensure that he will never see his father again. As is typical, family law courts reward such behaviors unless a parent can afford to bring contempt of court charges against the abuser.

She even attempted to change his name to Quinta Xavier Flanders, a common stunt for alienating parents who alter their children’s names to remove all mention of the hated ex.

This is nothing new for Flanders as she is a serial parental alienator. She has engaged in this child abuse not only involving Quinta, but also regarding her daughter Bryna Elizabeth Flanders-Harris and that girl’s father John Harris. In that case, she used false allegations of child sexual abuse among other methods. There are also reports that she attempted similar family terrorism against another previous ex, a Mr. Caruso who is no longer alive to defend himself and his child Emily from the sociopathic Flanders.
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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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