Some emotional abusers are particularly adept at using a technique called “gaslighting” (from a movie starring Ingrid Berman and Charles Boyer
In The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life
Gaslighting is when someone wants you to do what you know you shouldn’t and to believe the unbelieveable. It can happen to you and it probably already has.
Foster children are often at higher risk for child abuse than kids who live with their biological parents. Today, there is yet another dead foster child with the foster parents on the run from police.
On July 18, 2010, a 3-year-old girl named Serenity Julia Gandara was found dead with signs of trauma to her head and torso in the home of her foster parents in Bakersfield, California. Her 4-year-old brother Isaiah was still in the home.
The foster parents, Carla Torres Garcia and Alberto Garcia, fled with three other children reportedly born to Carla. Their names and ages are Carlos Joe Solvalvarro, 10, Crystal Garcia, 4, and Alberto Garcia Jr., 4.
The children left behind, Alberto’s dead niece and still-living nephew, had been removed by the courts from their mother’s home reportedly due to drug use.
Police are looking to find the Garcias who are reported to have fled the home in a white SUV with the following description:
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In 2008, a 14-year-old boy was flying by himself on a Southwest Airlines flight from Chicago to Orlando. The boy and his family claim that Southwest Airlines refused to change his seat even though he was being sexually harassed and offered illegal drugs by an intoxicated woman sitting next to him. They have filed a $50,000 lawsuit against the airline in Cook County Circuit Court, alleging the airline is negligent because the woman was obviously harassing the boy and was drunk or on drugs yet the airline refused to protect the child despite repeated requests for help.
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We’ve recently heard that San Diego family court Judge Edward Allard III, department F9 at the Sixth Avenue courthouse, has been racking up a growing pile of complaints. While this is no different than many of the abusive and corrupt family law judges in San Diego, there are reports that he’s about to be moved out of department F9 over his unwillingness to be a reasonable judge. Rumors are that he will shortly be removed from the family law bench and possibly moved to some form of “purgatory for judges.” Video criminal arraignments were mentioned as one possibility.
We’re a bit skeptical of the rationale for Judge Lorna Alksne removing him from family law courts. If she were to apply the same reasoning to other judges in her oversight, she and many others would be joining Allard in purgatory. Perhaps it is simply a way for Alksne to play sleight of hand and blame others for the abusive, corrupt, and destructive practices of many of the judges under her supervision.
We don’t have details on particular cases of misconduct, but note that Allard’s RateTheCourts.com ratings look poor. Out of 29 surveys completed, he’s earned an F (0.29) rating. A representative comment is this one:
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The San Diego District Attorney’s office including DA Bonnie Dumanis and DDA Laura Gunn do not have immunity for their misconduct, ruled a Federal court in a $20 million lawsuit against them and other parties involved in the wrongful prosecution of Cynthia Sommer.
(from Bonnie Dumanis Embattled San Diego District Attorney has new Major Loss to Cynthia Sommer)
Sommer spent two years in jail awaiting trial, being tried and was found guilty of the murder of her husband, twenty-three year old Marine Sgt. Todd Sommer. Sommer was arrested on November 30, 2005 and convicted of the murder of her husband on January 30, 2007. However she was freed by a Judge in San Diego County on November 30, 2007 when her conviction was overturned and she was granted a new trial after new lab testing showed no arsenic whatsoever in Sgt. Todd Sommer’s tissues.
The federal court ruled there was enough evidence against San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and Laura Gunn, Deputy District Attorney for the County of San Diego, that the two women per the Federal Court’s rulings; “Dumanis and Gunn fabricated evidence and continued their investigation after they knew or should have known that Plaintiff was innocent.”
Speculation is that the initial tests that showed very high levels of arsenic were due to contamination. A defense expert witness testified that the initial tests showing arsenic levels 1020 times normal were physiologically improbable and inconsistent. Given the alarming track record of misconduct of the district attorney’s office under Dumanis, there are obvious questions about the source and reason for the contamination.
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Nursing infants should be able to spend quality time, including overnights, with their fathers. Yet some mothers try to use nursing as an excuse to block contact between infants and their dads. Courts should be fully aware that there are plentiful means to ensure a good supply of breast milk for use by fathers caring for infants.
Robert Franklin of Fathers & Families recently penned the posting Expert: No Conflict Between Breastfeeding and Shared Parenting about an article from a breastfeeding advocate who claims fathers are trying to assert in court that breastfeeding is inappropriate behavior:
(Breastfeeding Court Letter, by Katherine A Dettwyler, Ph.D., Anthropology)
In addition, my research has been used to counter charges of child abuse and “inappropriate parenting behaviors” in many court cases, especially involving divorce and custody disputes, where fathers may accuse the mother of “inappropriate parenting by virtue of extended breastfeeding” as a strategy to gain custody of children, or may simply claim that ‘continued breastfeeding’ is not relevant to shared custody arrangements.
At this point (2005), all of the research that has been conducted on the health and cognitive consequences of different lengths of breastfeeding shows steadily increasing benefits the longer a child is breastfed up to the age of 2 years, and no negative consequences. No research has been conducted on the physical, emotional, or psychological health of children breastfed longer than 2 years. Thus, while there is no research-based proof that breastfeeding a child for 3 years provides statistically significant health or cognitive benefits compared to breastfeeding a child for only two years, there is no research to show that breastfeeding a child for 3 years (or 4-5-6-7-8-9 years) causes any sort of physical, psychological or emotional harm to the child. This has recently been confirmed in the 2005 American Academy of Pediatrics “Recommendations for breastfeeding the healthy term infant” (see below).
Some of the most emotionally abusive relationships and traumatic divorces involve the mentally ill. One of the most difficult of these mental illnesses is Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) because it is not easily diagnosed. Behaviors can range from extreme violence to subtle patterns of emotional blackmail and projection. On top of that, many Borderlines tend to live in denial, constantly avoiding their own feelings of emptiness, insecurity, anger, disappointment and fear that more often than not stems from an abusive childhood. It is hard to treat and help someone if they don’t want to face their own abuse — abuse that they themselves suffered or the abuse that they themselves do.
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Tamworth, New Hampshire, resident Scott Finman was upset with a local law banning citizens from carrying guns on town property. In the “Live Free or Die” state, it was an offensive law. Rather than just being upset, he took action. He blogged against the firearm restrictions that violated New Hampshire state law. He even drew cartoons and posted them on the Live Free and Comply website to poke fun at the illegal law at the tyrannical behaviors of the town government. The town’s volunteer firefighters and other residents joined him in his criticisms.
This was too much for town tyrants John Roberts, Willie Farnum, and Cassandra Pearce to tolerate. Recently, the Tamworth Selectmen (the local government council) decided to get even with Finman. They reassessed his home for $4 million and issued him a $70,000 tax bill, reasoning that since he didn’t let an assessor enter the home to inspect it that they could apply whatever valuation they wanted. This is at least the second time this year they have reassessed a property to punish a critical local resident. They did this earlier to former Selectman Tom Abugelis for writing a letter-to-the-editor criticizing the attitudes and actions of the town government.
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I ran across the article 6 Completely Legal Ways The Cops Can Screw You while writing another article today and found it quite alarming. It makes it clear that the United States we live in today is by the government, for the government, and against the citizens and US Constitution.
A quick summary:
Recently, we heard from a reliable source that embattled San Diego Judge Lorna Alksne spoke at yet another family law seminar in June 2010. She speaks at many of these events to rally her friends and associates in the family law profession to keep the courts humming with the profitable business of financially victimizing and violating the rights of children and families. There was talk both of her being furious over her home being picketed by an increasingly angry public and a job change she is planning. She anticipates being out of the San Diego family law system by the end of 2011.
Apparently the bad reputation Alksne has earned and the increasing public animosity towards her has finally had some effect on her career plans. She reportedly mentioned that she plans to stay in control over the San Diego family law courts for another year before she moves to another position.
There have allegedly been death threats made against her. There is public chatter about law enforcement investigations of the threats on web sites of those upset at Alksne’s abusive and biased conduct.
Picketing of her courthouse on Sixth Avenue has become routine as more and more parents understand that she aids and abets the ongoing abuse, corruption, and misconduct of family law courts and “professionals” in the county.
Hundreds of parents and concerned community members have signed a petition calling for the recall of Judge Lorna Alksne.
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