By MITCHELL ROSEN
It is almost impossible to know if a child has truly been victimized by parental alienation syndrome (PAS). There is no test for it, no X-ray can be examined and lengthy psychological evaluations have a certain amount of subjectivity regardless of the clinician's efforts to be impartial.
Assuming a parent is able to convince the court his or her child has been manipulated into hating him or her, then what? If the child is 15, 16 or 17 years old, the chances of reversing the alienation are not great. Just hearing from a court-appointed psychologist that alienation has occurred would not take away the child's anger, mistrust and apprehension.
If the alienated parent is successful in educating the court that he or she has been unfairly separated from a child, he or she then faces the choice of either leaving the child with the parent responsible for the alienation or risking further estrangement by forcing the child to move.
Switching custody to the estranged parent, completely and suddenly, is referred to as immersion therapy. The child is immersed into the custody of the parent he or she has been taught to fear. Not only is the child in the care of a parent he or she may not have seen for years, but an essential part of the therapy is to either limit or stop any contact with the parent the child has known as the "good" parent.
For immersion therapy to be successful, the alienating parent must either be denied any contact or have all interactions with the child monitored and supervised so further alienation cannot take place.
A therapist skilled in working with alienated children monitors all discussions about the family. It may take months, maybe even close to a year, before the child exhales and relaxes into the care of the parent he or she used to loathe and fear.
The good news is that it is possible to reverse alienation. The child must also be given individual therapy to sort through the myriad of feelings he or she will experience when understanding how the once-trusted parent could have violated his or her trust so completely.
Each child responds differently. Some, especially younger children (younger than 10), may be able to adapt fairly quickly. Other children may need an inordinate amount of reassurance, patience and stability, with no outbursts of parental anger. Rages from the formerly estranged parent will only reinforce the notion that the child should fear the parent, that he or she really is emotionally out of control. The parent should remember this is a time when the child needs stability and consistency above all else.
No therapist who makes a recommendation for immersion therapy does so easily. The consequences are grave and the risks considerable. The only thing that could be worse would be to leave an innocent child with a parent so emotionally ill that the child will learn most of life's lessons backward.
Mitchell Rosen, M.A., is a licensed marriage and family therapist with practices in Corona and Temecula. Contact him at family@PE.com
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Sex abuse hints add to foster family custody nightmare
BY JESS WISLOSKI
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Thursday, November 8th 2007, 4:00 AM
Investigators are looking into charges that a 5-year-old Queens girl was sexually abused by her foster family even as her birth parents were frantically trying to regain custody.
The girl, who has been in protective custody since Aug. 24, was taken to Kings County Hospital by her foster family Oct. 22. They said she exhibited dangerous behavior.
An emergency room exam revealed swelling and redness of her genitals, as well as whip marks on her back and a gash on her chin, said Jill JonesSoderman, a licensed psychiatric social worker who has been hired by the girl's birth parents to look into the matter.
Jones-Soderman notified police, prompting an investigation.
"There are symptoms of sexual abuse," said Jones-Soderman, who is also a forensic counselor.
The foster family took the girl to the hospital after her foster parents said she had outbursts during which she was "flailing her arms, rocking, and banging her head against the wall," according to records obtained by Jones-Soderman.
That was the fourth court-appointed foster family the girl had stayed with since the city Administration for Children's Services took custody of her about two months ago.
The agency voiced concerns in court that the child's 40-year-old mother may be suffering from Munchausen syndrome by proxy - a rare mental illness in which a parent makes a child sick, or mistakenly believes the child is sick, to get attention.
The mom and her husband said they have been further distressed by an already bleak situation. They are allowed one supervised visit a week.
"It's so hard," the girl's father said. "You can't even believe what you're hearing."
The mother said she noticed bruises and scrapes on the girl's face and body shortly after she was taken into city custody. But she said she did not raise an objection earlier because of the suggestions of Munchausen.
On Monday, the girl was released from the hospital and returned to the foster family, but her mental state has deteriorated, Jones-Soderman said.
She urged the city to speed up its ruling on whether the child can return to her parents.
"A determination as to how dangerous the situation to the child was [at home] is supposed to happen within 72 hours," said Jones-Soderman, referring to what is called a 1028 proceeding.
"It's been nearly three months, and that still hasn't happened," she said.
ACS did not return calls for comment.
jwisloski@nydailynews.com
Original Article-
http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/queens/2007/11/08/2007-11-08_sex_abuse_hints_add_to_foster_family_cus.html
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Thursday, November 8th 2007, 4:00 AM
Investigators are looking into charges that a 5-year-old Queens girl was sexually abused by her foster family even as her birth parents were frantically trying to regain custody.
The girl, who has been in protective custody since Aug. 24, was taken to Kings County Hospital by her foster family Oct. 22. They said she exhibited dangerous behavior.
An emergency room exam revealed swelling and redness of her genitals, as well as whip marks on her back and a gash on her chin, said Jill JonesSoderman, a licensed psychiatric social worker who has been hired by the girl's birth parents to look into the matter.
Jones-Soderman notified police, prompting an investigation.
"There are symptoms of sexual abuse," said Jones-Soderman, who is also a forensic counselor.
The foster family took the girl to the hospital after her foster parents said she had outbursts during which she was "flailing her arms, rocking, and banging her head against the wall," according to records obtained by Jones-Soderman.
That was the fourth court-appointed foster family the girl had stayed with since the city Administration for Children's Services took custody of her about two months ago.
The agency voiced concerns in court that the child's 40-year-old mother may be suffering from Munchausen syndrome by proxy - a rare mental illness in which a parent makes a child sick, or mistakenly believes the child is sick, to get attention.
The mom and her husband said they have been further distressed by an already bleak situation. They are allowed one supervised visit a week.
"It's so hard," the girl's father said. "You can't even believe what you're hearing."
The mother said she noticed bruises and scrapes on the girl's face and body shortly after she was taken into city custody. But she said she did not raise an objection earlier because of the suggestions of Munchausen.
On Monday, the girl was released from the hospital and returned to the foster family, but her mental state has deteriorated, Jones-Soderman said.
She urged the city to speed up its ruling on whether the child can return to her parents.
"A determination as to how dangerous the situation to the child was [at home] is supposed to happen within 72 hours," said Jones-Soderman, referring to what is called a 1028 proceeding.
"It's been nearly three months, and that still hasn't happened," she said.
ACS did not return calls for comment.
jwisloski@nydailynews.com
Original Article-
http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/queens/2007/11/08/2007-11-08_sex_abuse_hints_add_to_foster_family_cus.html
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Ambiguous Loss- Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief
I came accross this article today on a web site titled Exiled Mothers.
Although the name sounds like the article is for women only it applies to all of us that have to deal with Ambiguous loss in our lives.
It is however written for a site that deals with mothers that lost their children to adoption, if we are able to read deeper into the whole meaning, it applies to all of us that have lost the loves of our lives [Our Children]. No matter what the cause.
Book Review: Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief
by Pauline Boss.
ISBN: 0-674-01738-2
Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1999
Book Review by Sandra Pace
Many people deal with unresolved and ambiguous losses in their lives. Ironically, these ambiguous losses are often more difficult to deal with than "definitive" losses such as death or divorce, where one has a period of grieving and then can move on in life. This slim volume describes ambiguous losses in a way that makes them comprehensible. The book also points to ways to deal with them.
Pauline Boss describes ambiguous losses as those where a family member is physically absent, but psychologically present because it’s unclear whether they are dead or alive. She gives examples of soldiers missing in action or kidnapped children, and those where children are lost to adoption.
The second type of ambiguous loss is where the person is physically present, but psychologically absent, such as with Alzheimer’s or other diseases, or in the grip of addictions or chronic mental illnesses. The results of both of these types of loss are the same, however, in that the grief is not resolved because the ambiguous loss is in the situation, outside the person. The outside force that freezes the grief is the uncertainty and ambiguity of the loss, she says.
Ambiguous loss is the most stressful loss people can face, Boss’s research shows. When people suffering these losses are evaluated in the traditional way, she argues they often look dysfunctional, exhibiting anxiety, depression and somatic illnesses. They feel incompetent, as it destroys one’s sense of mastery. Ambiguous losses can freeze people in place so that they can’t move on with their lives. These losses can traumatize, leading to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and ambiguous losses typically are a long-term situation that traumatize and immobilize, rather than a single event that has flashback effects. People feel helpless, and no longer act, because they cannot have their hopes raised and dashed so many times.
Though not the focus of the book, Boss makes specific reference to the losses in adoption, and the effects on the mother who loses her child to adoption. She indicates that for the mother and for many of the adopted people, knowing each other is necessary to resolve the loss, even if their search yields news that is less than ideal. She feels that adoptive families should recognize that their boundaries are fluid and include the children’s first parents, and that leaving unspoken ambiguity about the family structure is unhealthy for the children.
Pauline Boss indicates that with ambiguous losses, there is no right answer for resolving them. Each person must create the best possible answer for the moment, and understand that the answer will need to be revised in the face of changing circumstances. Complicated losses may seem hopeless and irresolvable, but the power to change can never be taken from us, she says. . The confusion we feel is due to the ambiguity rather than to anything we did or didn’t do. She describes denial as an adaptation that can be useful, but over time becomes less function. It is neither something to avoid nor to advocate. What assists the most is a combination of optimism and realistic thinking. People can manage this with support from their own community and the professional community. Of course, for those who have lost their children or their first parents to adoption, this understanding is sometimes more difficult to find.
It is in reunion that I personally can relate to Pauline Boss’ explanation that we must temper our hunger for mastery and learn to redefine our relationship to the person we’ve lost. The pain of losing my child and the joy of him finding me again led me to want to regain what had been lost: I wanted to be a mother to my son. However, as I came to know him, I realized that I had to constantly redefine what I hoped for in the situation. In the end, the relationship I have built with my son is deep and loving, but it is not entirely a mother/son relationship. There is ambiguity in it. This ambiguity is not my fault, and it is not his fault. It is inherent in the flawed institution of closed adoption. The situation is wrong; we are not. We are damaged by it, and learning to heal from it.
Boss recommends that seeking information is an initial step to resolving ambiguous loss, thus giving support to first parents and those adopted to search for and find each other. She recommends that therapists help people to understand what ambiguous loss is, and that it’s normal to feel ‘stuck’ in the grip of it. It is the situation, not the person, that is sick, she says. A strength of the book is Boss’ understanding that individuals are unique and that each person needs to find their own way to resolve the loss. She sees that people need time for respite as well as time to engage the loss.
Finally, Boss echoes Franklin “Man’s Search for Meaning,” saying we must make meaning of our losses. She has found four factors which affect how we find meaning in our losses:
Our family of origin and early social experiences affect what meaning we see in situations. This is where we develop rules, roles, and rituals for making sense out of loss.
One’s spirituality influences how we make sense of losses.
Our own optimism or pessimism affects our thinking about our losses.
Our view of the world also affects how we make meaning of our losses. Is we see the world logically, as a fair and just place, we find it hard to tolerate ambiguous loss, because we see it as what we deserve. On the other hand, if we see that bad things can happen to good people, and that an external force caused the loss, it is still tragic, but this frees the person to act again. Hence, understanding the greed of society for the children of unwed mothers, and the lack of protection and support for these mothers, means that they can stop seeing themselves as wholly to blame for losing their children.
I would highly recommend this book for all parents who have lost children to adoption, and those adopted also. Though the book deals with many types of ambiguous losses, and only in a small way specifically with adoption losses, the applicability of the information is clear and helpful to those of us who’ve lost by adoption.
____________________________________________
"Contrary to popular belief, mothers don't go on in this world after "giving up" a child, enjoying their lives and forgetting the child ever existed. Even though people would love to think this is true, its not the reality of the situation for most of us. Our lives are colored by the tramatic event and we are never the same afterwards. Most of us grieve for years .... Losing a child to adoption in many ways is worse than losing a child to death. With death we have closure to some degree, with adoption we know that we have a child out there in the world somewhere. ... and we know we love them sight unseen." - Jaymie Frederick, first mother, professional searcher and licensed PI
Although the name sounds like the article is for women only it applies to all of us that have to deal with Ambiguous loss in our lives.
It is however written for a site that deals with mothers that lost their children to adoption, if we are able to read deeper into the whole meaning, it applies to all of us that have lost the loves of our lives [Our Children]. No matter what the cause.
Book Review: Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief
by Pauline Boss.
ISBN: 0-674-01738-2
Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1999
Book Review by Sandra Pace
Many people deal with unresolved and ambiguous losses in their lives. Ironically, these ambiguous losses are often more difficult to deal with than "definitive" losses such as death or divorce, where one has a period of grieving and then can move on in life. This slim volume describes ambiguous losses in a way that makes them comprehensible. The book also points to ways to deal with them.
Pauline Boss describes ambiguous losses as those where a family member is physically absent, but psychologically present because it’s unclear whether they are dead or alive. She gives examples of soldiers missing in action or kidnapped children, and those where children are lost to adoption.
The second type of ambiguous loss is where the person is physically present, but psychologically absent, such as with Alzheimer’s or other diseases, or in the grip of addictions or chronic mental illnesses. The results of both of these types of loss are the same, however, in that the grief is not resolved because the ambiguous loss is in the situation, outside the person. The outside force that freezes the grief is the uncertainty and ambiguity of the loss, she says.
Ambiguous loss is the most stressful loss people can face, Boss’s research shows. When people suffering these losses are evaluated in the traditional way, she argues they often look dysfunctional, exhibiting anxiety, depression and somatic illnesses. They feel incompetent, as it destroys one’s sense of mastery. Ambiguous losses can freeze people in place so that they can’t move on with their lives. These losses can traumatize, leading to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and ambiguous losses typically are a long-term situation that traumatize and immobilize, rather than a single event that has flashback effects. People feel helpless, and no longer act, because they cannot have their hopes raised and dashed so many times.
Though not the focus of the book, Boss makes specific reference to the losses in adoption, and the effects on the mother who loses her child to adoption. She indicates that for the mother and for many of the adopted people, knowing each other is necessary to resolve the loss, even if their search yields news that is less than ideal. She feels that adoptive families should recognize that their boundaries are fluid and include the children’s first parents, and that leaving unspoken ambiguity about the family structure is unhealthy for the children.
Pauline Boss indicates that with ambiguous losses, there is no right answer for resolving them. Each person must create the best possible answer for the moment, and understand that the answer will need to be revised in the face of changing circumstances. Complicated losses may seem hopeless and irresolvable, but the power to change can never be taken from us, she says. . The confusion we feel is due to the ambiguity rather than to anything we did or didn’t do. She describes denial as an adaptation that can be useful, but over time becomes less function. It is neither something to avoid nor to advocate. What assists the most is a combination of optimism and realistic thinking. People can manage this with support from their own community and the professional community. Of course, for those who have lost their children or their first parents to adoption, this understanding is sometimes more difficult to find.
It is in reunion that I personally can relate to Pauline Boss’ explanation that we must temper our hunger for mastery and learn to redefine our relationship to the person we’ve lost. The pain of losing my child and the joy of him finding me again led me to want to regain what had been lost: I wanted to be a mother to my son. However, as I came to know him, I realized that I had to constantly redefine what I hoped for in the situation. In the end, the relationship I have built with my son is deep and loving, but it is not entirely a mother/son relationship. There is ambiguity in it. This ambiguity is not my fault, and it is not his fault. It is inherent in the flawed institution of closed adoption. The situation is wrong; we are not. We are damaged by it, and learning to heal from it.
Boss recommends that seeking information is an initial step to resolving ambiguous loss, thus giving support to first parents and those adopted to search for and find each other. She recommends that therapists help people to understand what ambiguous loss is, and that it’s normal to feel ‘stuck’ in the grip of it. It is the situation, not the person, that is sick, she says. A strength of the book is Boss’ understanding that individuals are unique and that each person needs to find their own way to resolve the loss. She sees that people need time for respite as well as time to engage the loss.
Finally, Boss echoes Franklin “Man’s Search for Meaning,” saying we must make meaning of our losses. She has found four factors which affect how we find meaning in our losses:
Our family of origin and early social experiences affect what meaning we see in situations. This is where we develop rules, roles, and rituals for making sense out of loss.
One’s spirituality influences how we make sense of losses.
Our own optimism or pessimism affects our thinking about our losses.
Our view of the world also affects how we make meaning of our losses. Is we see the world logically, as a fair and just place, we find it hard to tolerate ambiguous loss, because we see it as what we deserve. On the other hand, if we see that bad things can happen to good people, and that an external force caused the loss, it is still tragic, but this frees the person to act again. Hence, understanding the greed of society for the children of unwed mothers, and the lack of protection and support for these mothers, means that they can stop seeing themselves as wholly to blame for losing their children.
I would highly recommend this book for all parents who have lost children to adoption, and those adopted also. Though the book deals with many types of ambiguous losses, and only in a small way specifically with adoption losses, the applicability of the information is clear and helpful to those of us who’ve lost by adoption.
____________________________________________
"Contrary to popular belief, mothers don't go on in this world after "giving up" a child, enjoying their lives and forgetting the child ever existed. Even though people would love to think this is true, its not the reality of the situation for most of us. Our lives are colored by the tramatic event and we are never the same afterwards. Most of us grieve for years .... Losing a child to adoption in many ways is worse than losing a child to death. With death we have closure to some degree, with adoption we know that we have a child out there in the world somewhere. ... and we know we love them sight unseen." - Jaymie Frederick, first mother, professional searcher and licensed PI
Monday, November 5, 2007
BY MARTHA NEIL
Although this article is gender specific, we all know the problem is no longer a gender problem and women get screwed by this same system daily!
I can vouch for that personally- my children are being abused at the hands of our wonderful system and they have made it so that I am "LEGALLY" KEPT FROM THEM!
Must be great to live with an alleged child pornography photographer that shares the same last name as your boss who by the way happens to be married to a supreme court judge! Ask my estranged husband he has first hand knowlege of how great that must be!
God I hate them all and wish for them what they have given to me and my children, nothing more, nothing less, just equal.
Part 1 of 5
BY MARTHA NEIL
More than half of Americans are angry and disappointed with thenation's judiciary, a new survey done for the ABA Journal e Report shows.A majority of the survey respondents agreed with statements that"judicial activism" has reached the crisis stage, and that judges whoignore voters' values should be impeached. Nearly half agreed with a congressman who said judges are "arrogant, out-of-control and unaccountable."
American Legal System Is Corrupt Beyond Recognition, Judge Tells Harvard Law School By Geraldine Hawkins March 7, 2003 The American legal system has been corrupted almost beyond recognition, Judge Edith Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, told the Federalist Society of Harvard Law School on February 28. She said that the question of what is morally right is routinely sacrificed to what is politically expedient. The change has come because legal philosophy has descended to nihilism. Judge Edith H. Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit talks to members of Harvard Law School's Fed-eralist Society. Jones said that the question of what is mor-ally right is routinely sacrificed to what is politically expedient. "The integrity of law, its religious roots, its transcendent quality are disappearing. I saw the movie 'Chicago' with Richard Gere the other day. That's the way the public thinks about lawyers," she told the students. "The first 100 years of American lawyers were trained on Blackstone, who wrote that: 'The law of nature . dictated by God himself . is binding . in all counties and at all times; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all force and all their authority . from this original.' The Framers created a government of limited power with this understanding of the rule of law - that it was dependent on transcendent religious obligation," said Jones. She said that the business about all of the Founding Fathers being deists is "just wrong," or "way overblown." She says they believed in "faith and reason," and this did not lead to intolerance. "This is not a prescription for intolerance or narrow sectarianism," she continued, "for unalienable rights were given by God to all our fellow citizens. Having lost sight of the moral and religious foundations of the rule of law, we are vulnerable to the destruction of our freedom, our equality before the law and our self-respect. It is my fervent hope that this new century will experience a revival of the original understanding of the rule of law and its roots. "The answer is a recovery of moral principle, the sine qua non of an orderly society. Post 9/11, many events have been clarified. ,............." incomplete"
7 million Americans in justice systemOne in every 32 U.S. adults behind bars, on probation or on parole in 2005
The Associated Press
Updated: 6:13 a.m. CT Nov 30, 2006
WASHINGTON -
A record 7 million people -- or one in every 32 American adults -- were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of last year, according to the Justice Department. More then any other developed Nation by far.
Federal Judge Resigns, Calling Judicial System Unjust
By LARRY NEUMEISTERAssociated Press WriterJune 24, 2003, 5:10 PM EDT
NEW YORK -- A federal judge said Tuesday he is quitting what he called an unjust criminal justice system, fed up with Congress' quest to boost prison sentences and prevent judges from deciding how long someone is imprisoned.
"Congress is mandating things simply because they want to show how tough they are on crime with no sense of whether this makes sense or is meaningful," Judge John S. Martin said in an interview with The Associated Press.
"It is sad comment that the public is so uneducated, unconcerned and blinded to the TRUTH by the media, and that the Judiciary of our once great Nation has been allowed to sink to these depths. And while I say that the conditions that exist today can be laid at one doorstep, that of the Judiciary, I must ultimately say that the fault really lies at our feet, We the People, for it is We the People who have allowed the foxes to guard the henhouse." -- Robert H. Bork, Judge, Supreme Court Nominee & Professor of Law
AND YET IT CONTINUES UNINTERUPTED COSTING THOUSANDS OF GOOD AMERICANS THIER LIVES.
Is Our Family Court System Causing Blood in the Streets?
by Judy Parejko, M.S. © 2002 Judy Parejko
Robert Flores walked onto the campus of the University of Arizona at Tucson and opened fire on three of his female instructors, murdering them in cold blood. In his 22-page letter, discovered later by investigators, Flores sketches the story of his failed marriage, poor health and the slights he perceived from a nursing school he claimed treated male students as "tokens." In the Washington area, accused sniper, John Muhammad, targeted innocent people, shooting them down like prey. His 17-year-old accomplice, John Malvo, was also believed to have pulled the trigger. The story reveals at least three divorces — two were Muhammad's and one was Malvo's parents — as well as several child custody battles. It's not politically correct to connect the dots but it's time for someone to begin. Could it be that our family court system is causing blood in the streets? Somehow, these men came unhinged — turned into killers. Why? That's the question we all want answered. A common theme running through both cases is alienation from family. Could it be time to take a good hard look at how we handle cases in family court? Can we afford not to?
"Failed marriage" is code for "hopelessness" — the understanding that quick-and-expedient divorce is firmly in place. In fact, there's no way to stop a divorce or get help for a troubled marriage, including the anger that can be so corrosive to relationships no matter how hard someone begs for it. And "child custody" is code for the coveted spoils of divorce. The court's work is to sever family ties and the unforeseen consequences can sometimes be deadly.
A family court hearing is a grim event. While most who are forcefully divorced or shut out of their kids' lives somehow learn to cope, others begin to simmer, reaching a boiling point that can culminate in regrettable acts. Dismantling families — taking them apart and dividing up the pieces — is easier than providing needed help so that estranged spouses might restore their troubled marriages. And, by dealing with family distress in this way, we've unwittingly invited the grim reaper to play a larger role in our lives.
The carnage of family breakdown is spilling out of the courtrooms and into our daily lives. The victims are no longer simply family members — gunned down by their desperate loved ones — but increasingly include innocent bystanders. The divorce mill casts its victims aside, leaving men like Flores and Muhammad unmoored from their families and unhitched from society. Cut off, lost at sea, they send out distress signals through their aggressive acts when life starts closing in on them — but no one heeds them. And when the "system" told Muhammad — like so many other men — he could no longer be a father, even if he fought for it, battled for custody and went so far as to "steal" his kids, he snapped. The story of Muhammad's unraveling from a family man into a serial killer is not understood yet, but his story, like others, points to an alarming association between the loss of family connection and outlaw-behavior.
"Family court" is a euphemism. In reality it is an insidious monster that takes chopped-up pieces of families and packages them into neat and manageable little bundles called "custody" and "visitation." But, we reap what we sow, and blood spilled in court is leading to bloodshed in the streets.
What we have is the worst possible response to family distress. Instead of offering compassion and helping hands, family courts evict fathers from their children's lives, also cutting off contact with the ones who might — along with skilled assistance — calm such troubled men. The "medicine" for distressed relationships is available but we fail to offer it, either because we don't care enough or because we aren't ready to face the awful truth of what was created in the name of justice.
For those who face the family court system and hope for a humane response, no plea for mercy will be heard.
"One size fits all" is the current scheme called "no-fault divorce" — another euphemism, which really is code for "forced" divorce. Troubled marriages are snuffed out by officials in black robes who say they are given no other choice. This place called "court" was turned into a "Ministry of Divorce" since making "judgments" are no longer made there and divorces are "administered" as rubber-stamped foregone conclusions.
Divorce and family disputes are merely viewed as "legal" problems — business-deals brokered by the well-paid officials handling them.
No crisis-response is offered to the casualties that show up. No ambulance. No trauma team. No hospital. Only harsh and heavy-handed tactics used to finish off the job.
It's too sordid to look at things this way — that family court carnage might be responsible for the carnage on the streets — and most people will find every reason not to.
Judy Parejko is the author of Stolen Vows, The Illusion of No-Fault Divorce and the Rise of the American Divorce Industry -
Available at http://www.stolenvows.com/.
The Three above not enough, then read on.......
All these have been traced back to the original source and verified as throughly as possible.
The tip of the Iceberg
Trevor Goddard, 36, died at home last month, in an apparent suicide by prescription-drug overdose. Goddard and his wife were going through a divorce.
Besides his role as Mic Brundy on ``JAG,'' the Australian-born actor played a pirate in Disney's ``Pirates of the Caribbean.'' A tuition fund has been established for his two sons. Donations can be sent to Laurence School 13639 Victory Blvd., Van Nuys, CA 91401-1735.
There have been a rash of father suicides directly related to divorce and mistreatment by the family courts over the past several years.
Those Fathers that we know of: Alan Bates - Murdered Alan Creeton Alan Grantham - Suicide Alan Jones (U.K.) - Suicide Alex Nicholson (U.K.) - Suicide Allan Wells - Battered Husband - Divorce Suicide Andrew Pinch Andrew T. Renouf - Suicide Anthony Clemson (UK) - Suicide Anthony Tipper Antonio Merola - Shoots Father-In-Law Arthur Sampson - Murdered Aubrey Scott Brad Draper - Suicide - (In front of Planned Parenthood, Overland Park, KS) Brian Armstrong - Murdered, Jailed For Child Support, Beaten to Death in jail Brian Gorton Brian Smith - Suicide, overdose Clifford Peacock - Suicide Clive Cass (U.K.) - Suicide Christopher Mitchell Darrin White - Suicide (By hanging after being ordered to pay child support and alimony of more than twice his income -- he had just enough money left to buy a length of new rope.) David Bengert - Suicide David Clancy - Suicide David Dosdall - Suicide David Harmsworth (U.K.) - Suicide David Harris - Murdered - (Wife ran over him with her car while his daughter was in the car) David Piggott (U.K.) - Suicide Derek Atkin Derrick K. Miller Sr. - Suicide - San Diego Courthouse steps Frank Parker - Murdered by hit man Garrett Williams - Suicide Gary Ashton Goolam Hassen Graeme Lowe Graham Clay Gregory D. Seath - Suicide (This police officer shot himself in front of supermarket shoppers.) Iain Galbraith - Murdered (Scotland) J.D. Creason James Gritz - Found Shot James McKay Jason Game - Suicide Jim From Regina John Besner - John Johnson John Vincent Constable - Murdered John Rubben- Suicide Jonathan Mitchell Joshua Skerton Kelly McGinness Dr. Kent D. Leiby - Murder/Suicide Larry Cofield - Suicide Lloyd Mather Malcolm Taylor Mark Corkish (U.K.) - Suicide Mark Edward Dexel - Suicide Mark John Harrison Martin Romanchick - Suicide Marvin Davids - Suicide Michael Aston Michael Easton - Suicide Michael Horner (U.K.) - Suicide Michael Orwig - (U.S. - Oklahoma) Murdered Nigel Ryan - Suicide Peter Ayres (U.K.) - Suicide Philip Mitchell Peter Stafeeieri - Suicide Petruk - Murder - Suicide Ralph Hadley - Murder - Suicide Randy Couch - Suicide Reginald Sublet - Murder - Suicide Roger Sandsmark - Murder of Lawyer & Suicide & other attorneys who have been killed. Robert S. Flores Jr - Suicide Robert Hendry Robert McWhirter Scott Chester Stone - murder of ex-wife - suicide Sean Lyford-Smith Simon Gonzales - Murder of 3 daughters - Suicide Stephen Jackson - Suicide, overdose Stephen Paul Patience Steve Sanders - Former Oak Ridge Boy found dead, apparent Suicide Steven Cook - Suicide (After being jailed for two months for calling his three-year-old daughter on the wrong day of the week.) Stephen Jackson (U.K.) - Suicide Steve Sanders - Suicide Steve Willey Stuart Holloway Tony Cummings (U.K.) - Suicide Trevor Lane (U.K.) - Suicide Vincent Hand Warren Gilbert (Australia) - Suicide (Body discovered with letter of demand from the CS agency.) William Barnette - "Deadbeat Dad" sentenced to death William Pigg Edmonton Man - Found Hanging in Fire - Suicide Man Hangs Himself at concert - Suicide John Doe Szcerbakow Glenn Sacks Radio
A distraught father struggling with overdue child support obligations and adverse family court decisions committed suicide on the steps of the downtown San Diego courthouse Monday. Angrily waving court documents, 43 year-old Derrick Miller walked up to court personnel at the entrance, said "You did this to me," and shot himself in the head.
Miller is one of 300,000 Americans who have taken their own lives over the past decade--as many Americans as were killed in combat in World War II.
America is in the throes of a largely unrecognized suicide epidemic, as suicide has become the eighth leading cause of death in the United States today, and the third leading cause of death among adolescents.
All Americans recognize that our country is rife with violent crime, but few know that 50% more Americans kill themselves than are murdered.
Who is committing suicide? For the most part, men. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, males commit suicide four times as often as females do, and have higher suicide rates in every age group.
There are many risk factors for suicide, including substance abuse and mental illness, but the two situations in which men are most likely to kill themselves are after the loss of a job, and after a divorce.
For example, New York City Police Officer Martin Romanchick, a Medal of Honor recipient, hung himself after being denied access to his children and being arrested 15 times on charges brought by his ex-wife, charges the courts deemed frivolous.
Massachusetts father Steven Cook, prevented from seeing his daughter by a protection order based upon unfounded allegations, committed suicide after he was jailed for calling his four-year-old daughter on the wrong day of the week.
Darrin White, a Canadian father who was stripped of the right to see his children and was about to be jailed after failing to pay a child support award tantamount to twice his take home pay, hung himself.
His 14 year-old daughter Ashlee later wrote to her nation's Prime Minister, saying, "this country's justice system has robbed me of one of the most precious gifts in my life, my father.
" We'll never know exactly why Derrick Miller took his life and if his suicide could have been prevented. What we do know is that male suicide is one of America's most serious public health issues, and it is time to address it.
http://www.glennjsacks.com/ and the list goes on & on & on & on.
ASSOCIATED PRESS 4/6
Divorced fathers snap under pressure
One divorced father committed suicide on the steps of San Diego's courthouse, another set his car afire outside Alaska's child-support office. Others, in an all-too-common scenario, killed their ex-wives, their children, then themselves. Men who snap in such violent ways have few defenders. Yet fathers' rights groups, joined by a few academic experts, see a common denominator in these recent bursts of rage, and ask whether America's family court system could be partly at fault by deepening the despair of many divorced men. "None of these guys are poster children," said Lowell Jaks, president of the Alliance for Non-Custodial Parents Rights. "But when you cause this much pain to so many men, there are going to be repercussions. A certain percentage are going to crack." Mr. Jaks has even distributed newspaper articles to his organization's members noting the problems with child custody and child support that angered John Allen Muhammad, accused of being the Washington-area sniper, and Robert S. Flores Jr., who killed three University of Arizona nursing professors before killing himself. "Some guys kill themselves, some snap and go out and kill others," Mr. Jaks said. "You can dismiss them as crackpots, you can say we need more protection for women, but it's not going to take away the problem."
Frustrations over child support and visitation figured in several recent violent incidents across the country.
Among them: . In San Diego, a man upset by a court ruling on overdue child support fatally shot himself in January on the courthouse steps. Witnesses said Derrick K. Miller Sr., 43, who was carrying court documents, told a guard, "You did this to me," before killing himself. . In Anchorage, Alaska Jed Magby, 43, set his Mercedes afire in October outside the offices of the state's Child Support Enforcement Division, apparently because of claims that he owed $55,000 for out-of-state child support orders. He faces charges of arson and criminal mischief. . In Erie, Pa., Stephen Trieber, 33, was sentenced to death in October for killing his 2-year-old daughter by setting his house on fire in order to get out of paying $250 a month in child support. . In February, James D. Smallwood Jr. killed his three children, who lived with his estranged wife in Throckmorton, Texas, but were visiting him for one night. Smallwood drove back to Throckmorton with the dead children in his car, then killed himself when he heard sirens approaching. A judge ruled earlier that Smallwood, who had been accused of making threats, could have the children on "quasi-supervised" visitations. Augustine Kposowa, a sociologist at the University of California-Riverside, has conducted studies concluding suicide rates among divorced men are much higher than for divorced women or married men. He attributes the difference to what happens in family courts. "The man loses his marriage, then he loses a second time when child custody is granted to the woman," he said.
"Unless something is done, by examining family laws and having new policies to aid men, the situation is bound to get worse."
Extrapolating from Mr. Kposowa's research, fathers' rights activist David Roberts contends that child-support orders - part of what he calls "the war on fathers" - contribute to the suicides of more than 5,000 divorced fathers each year. Outside the fathers' rights ranks, others acknowledge that divorce and custody procedures are often imperfect.
IF NOT MORE CLEARLY CRIMINALLY NEGLIGENT & CORRUPT .
NO AMERICAN should be forced to go before a bias Court, Civil, Criminal or any court of corrupted law alone and without council only to be persecuted for perhaps decade's .This is not simply Un- American it is in fact In- Humane. If there is no respect for the Law in our Courts then how long can we the people deny our responsibility to act and restore that law as is our responsibility. "Declaration of Independence"
Yet, despite all the above there is no reply or action taken, by the Justice Department, The FBI. The Attorney General or the State and Local Legislators when formal complaints are filed and almost no Redress in our Courts.
No one is being held Accountable, No One. As our government shuts down and runs rough shod over it's citizens then clearly more bloodshed is to come and our Nation will cease to exist as we know it.
Continue to Ignore this and see what happens.
PLEASE CIRCULATE WIDELY
I can vouch for that personally- my children are being abused at the hands of our wonderful system and they have made it so that I am "LEGALLY" KEPT FROM THEM!
Must be great to live with an alleged child pornography photographer that shares the same last name as your boss who by the way happens to be married to a supreme court judge! Ask my estranged husband he has first hand knowlege of how great that must be!
God I hate them all and wish for them what they have given to me and my children, nothing more, nothing less, just equal.
Part 1 of 5
BY MARTHA NEIL
More than half of Americans are angry and disappointed with thenation's judiciary, a new survey done for the ABA Journal e Report shows.A majority of the survey respondents agreed with statements that"judicial activism" has reached the crisis stage, and that judges whoignore voters' values should be impeached. Nearly half agreed with a congressman who said judges are "arrogant, out-of-control and unaccountable."
American Legal System Is Corrupt Beyond Recognition, Judge Tells Harvard Law School By Geraldine Hawkins March 7, 2003 The American legal system has been corrupted almost beyond recognition, Judge Edith Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, told the Federalist Society of Harvard Law School on February 28. She said that the question of what is morally right is routinely sacrificed to what is politically expedient. The change has come because legal philosophy has descended to nihilism. Judge Edith H. Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit talks to members of Harvard Law School's Fed-eralist Society. Jones said that the question of what is mor-ally right is routinely sacrificed to what is politically expedient. "The integrity of law, its religious roots, its transcendent quality are disappearing. I saw the movie 'Chicago' with Richard Gere the other day. That's the way the public thinks about lawyers," she told the students. "The first 100 years of American lawyers were trained on Blackstone, who wrote that: 'The law of nature . dictated by God himself . is binding . in all counties and at all times; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all force and all their authority . from this original.' The Framers created a government of limited power with this understanding of the rule of law - that it was dependent on transcendent religious obligation," said Jones. She said that the business about all of the Founding Fathers being deists is "just wrong," or "way overblown." She says they believed in "faith and reason," and this did not lead to intolerance. "This is not a prescription for intolerance or narrow sectarianism," she continued, "for unalienable rights were given by God to all our fellow citizens. Having lost sight of the moral and religious foundations of the rule of law, we are vulnerable to the destruction of our freedom, our equality before the law and our self-respect. It is my fervent hope that this new century will experience a revival of the original understanding of the rule of law and its roots. "The answer is a recovery of moral principle, the sine qua non of an orderly society. Post 9/11, many events have been clarified. ,............." incomplete"
7 million Americans in justice systemOne in every 32 U.S. adults behind bars, on probation or on parole in 2005
The Associated Press
Updated: 6:13 a.m. CT Nov 30, 2006
WASHINGTON -
A record 7 million people -- or one in every 32 American adults -- were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of last year, according to the Justice Department. More then any other developed Nation by far.
Federal Judge Resigns, Calling Judicial System Unjust
By LARRY NEUMEISTERAssociated Press WriterJune 24, 2003, 5:10 PM EDT
NEW YORK -- A federal judge said Tuesday he is quitting what he called an unjust criminal justice system, fed up with Congress' quest to boost prison sentences and prevent judges from deciding how long someone is imprisoned.
"Congress is mandating things simply because they want to show how tough they are on crime with no sense of whether this makes sense or is meaningful," Judge John S. Martin said in an interview with The Associated Press.
"It is sad comment that the public is so uneducated, unconcerned and blinded to the TRUTH by the media, and that the Judiciary of our once great Nation has been allowed to sink to these depths. And while I say that the conditions that exist today can be laid at one doorstep, that of the Judiciary, I must ultimately say that the fault really lies at our feet, We the People, for it is We the People who have allowed the foxes to guard the henhouse." -- Robert H. Bork, Judge, Supreme Court Nominee & Professor of Law
AND YET IT CONTINUES UNINTERUPTED COSTING THOUSANDS OF GOOD AMERICANS THIER LIVES.
Is Our Family Court System Causing Blood in the Streets?
by Judy Parejko, M.S. © 2002 Judy Parejko
Robert Flores walked onto the campus of the University of Arizona at Tucson and opened fire on three of his female instructors, murdering them in cold blood. In his 22-page letter, discovered later by investigators, Flores sketches the story of his failed marriage, poor health and the slights he perceived from a nursing school he claimed treated male students as "tokens." In the Washington area, accused sniper, John Muhammad, targeted innocent people, shooting them down like prey. His 17-year-old accomplice, John Malvo, was also believed to have pulled the trigger. The story reveals at least three divorces — two were Muhammad's and one was Malvo's parents — as well as several child custody battles. It's not politically correct to connect the dots but it's time for someone to begin. Could it be that our family court system is causing blood in the streets? Somehow, these men came unhinged — turned into killers. Why? That's the question we all want answered. A common theme running through both cases is alienation from family. Could it be time to take a good hard look at how we handle cases in family court? Can we afford not to?
"Failed marriage" is code for "hopelessness" — the understanding that quick-and-expedient divorce is firmly in place. In fact, there's no way to stop a divorce or get help for a troubled marriage, including the anger that can be so corrosive to relationships no matter how hard someone begs for it. And "child custody" is code for the coveted spoils of divorce. The court's work is to sever family ties and the unforeseen consequences can sometimes be deadly.
A family court hearing is a grim event. While most who are forcefully divorced or shut out of their kids' lives somehow learn to cope, others begin to simmer, reaching a boiling point that can culminate in regrettable acts. Dismantling families — taking them apart and dividing up the pieces — is easier than providing needed help so that estranged spouses might restore their troubled marriages. And, by dealing with family distress in this way, we've unwittingly invited the grim reaper to play a larger role in our lives.
The carnage of family breakdown is spilling out of the courtrooms and into our daily lives. The victims are no longer simply family members — gunned down by their desperate loved ones — but increasingly include innocent bystanders. The divorce mill casts its victims aside, leaving men like Flores and Muhammad unmoored from their families and unhitched from society. Cut off, lost at sea, they send out distress signals through their aggressive acts when life starts closing in on them — but no one heeds them. And when the "system" told Muhammad — like so many other men — he could no longer be a father, even if he fought for it, battled for custody and went so far as to "steal" his kids, he snapped. The story of Muhammad's unraveling from a family man into a serial killer is not understood yet, but his story, like others, points to an alarming association between the loss of family connection and outlaw-behavior.
"Family court" is a euphemism. In reality it is an insidious monster that takes chopped-up pieces of families and packages them into neat and manageable little bundles called "custody" and "visitation." But, we reap what we sow, and blood spilled in court is leading to bloodshed in the streets.
What we have is the worst possible response to family distress. Instead of offering compassion and helping hands, family courts evict fathers from their children's lives, also cutting off contact with the ones who might — along with skilled assistance — calm such troubled men. The "medicine" for distressed relationships is available but we fail to offer it, either because we don't care enough or because we aren't ready to face the awful truth of what was created in the name of justice.
For those who face the family court system and hope for a humane response, no plea for mercy will be heard.
"One size fits all" is the current scheme called "no-fault divorce" — another euphemism, which really is code for "forced" divorce. Troubled marriages are snuffed out by officials in black robes who say they are given no other choice. This place called "court" was turned into a "Ministry of Divorce" since making "judgments" are no longer made there and divorces are "administered" as rubber-stamped foregone conclusions.
Divorce and family disputes are merely viewed as "legal" problems — business-deals brokered by the well-paid officials handling them.
No crisis-response is offered to the casualties that show up. No ambulance. No trauma team. No hospital. Only harsh and heavy-handed tactics used to finish off the job.
It's too sordid to look at things this way — that family court carnage might be responsible for the carnage on the streets — and most people will find every reason not to.
Judy Parejko is the author of Stolen Vows, The Illusion of No-Fault Divorce and the Rise of the American Divorce Industry -
Available at http://www.stolenvows.com/.
The Three above not enough, then read on.......
All these have been traced back to the original source and verified as throughly as possible.
The tip of the Iceberg
Trevor Goddard, 36, died at home last month, in an apparent suicide by prescription-drug overdose. Goddard and his wife were going through a divorce.
Besides his role as Mic Brundy on ``JAG,'' the Australian-born actor played a pirate in Disney's ``Pirates of the Caribbean.'' A tuition fund has been established for his two sons. Donations can be sent to Laurence School 13639 Victory Blvd., Van Nuys, CA 91401-1735.
There have been a rash of father suicides directly related to divorce and mistreatment by the family courts over the past several years.
Those Fathers that we know of: Alan Bates - Murdered Alan Creeton Alan Grantham - Suicide Alan Jones (U.K.) - Suicide Alex Nicholson (U.K.) - Suicide Allan Wells - Battered Husband - Divorce Suicide Andrew Pinch Andrew T. Renouf - Suicide Anthony Clemson (UK) - Suicide Anthony Tipper Antonio Merola - Shoots Father-In-Law Arthur Sampson - Murdered Aubrey Scott Brad Draper - Suicide - (In front of Planned Parenthood, Overland Park, KS) Brian Armstrong - Murdered, Jailed For Child Support, Beaten to Death in jail Brian Gorton Brian Smith - Suicide, overdose Clifford Peacock - Suicide Clive Cass (U.K.) - Suicide Christopher Mitchell Darrin White - Suicide (By hanging after being ordered to pay child support and alimony of more than twice his income -- he had just enough money left to buy a length of new rope.) David Bengert - Suicide David Clancy - Suicide David Dosdall - Suicide David Harmsworth (U.K.) - Suicide David Harris - Murdered - (Wife ran over him with her car while his daughter was in the car) David Piggott (U.K.) - Suicide Derek Atkin Derrick K. Miller Sr. - Suicide - San Diego Courthouse steps Frank Parker - Murdered by hit man Garrett Williams - Suicide Gary Ashton Goolam Hassen Graeme Lowe Graham Clay Gregory D. Seath - Suicide (This police officer shot himself in front of supermarket shoppers.) Iain Galbraith - Murdered (Scotland) J.D. Creason James Gritz - Found Shot James McKay Jason Game - Suicide Jim From Regina John Besner - John Johnson John Vincent Constable - Murdered John Rubben- Suicide Jonathan Mitchell Joshua Skerton Kelly McGinness Dr. Kent D. Leiby - Murder/Suicide Larry Cofield - Suicide Lloyd Mather Malcolm Taylor Mark Corkish (U.K.) - Suicide Mark Edward Dexel - Suicide Mark John Harrison Martin Romanchick - Suicide Marvin Davids - Suicide Michael Aston Michael Easton - Suicide Michael Horner (U.K.) - Suicide Michael Orwig - (U.S. - Oklahoma) Murdered Nigel Ryan - Suicide Peter Ayres (U.K.) - Suicide Philip Mitchell Peter Stafeeieri - Suicide Petruk - Murder - Suicide Ralph Hadley - Murder - Suicide Randy Couch - Suicide Reginald Sublet - Murder - Suicide Roger Sandsmark - Murder of Lawyer & Suicide & other attorneys who have been killed. Robert S. Flores Jr - Suicide Robert Hendry Robert McWhirter Scott Chester Stone - murder of ex-wife - suicide Sean Lyford-Smith Simon Gonzales - Murder of 3 daughters - Suicide Stephen Jackson - Suicide, overdose Stephen Paul Patience Steve Sanders - Former Oak Ridge Boy found dead, apparent Suicide Steven Cook - Suicide (After being jailed for two months for calling his three-year-old daughter on the wrong day of the week.) Stephen Jackson (U.K.) - Suicide Steve Sanders - Suicide Steve Willey Stuart Holloway Tony Cummings (U.K.) - Suicide Trevor Lane (U.K.) - Suicide Vincent Hand Warren Gilbert (Australia) - Suicide (Body discovered with letter of demand from the CS agency.) William Barnette - "Deadbeat Dad" sentenced to death William Pigg Edmonton Man - Found Hanging in Fire - Suicide Man Hangs Himself at concert - Suicide John Doe Szcerbakow Glenn Sacks Radio
A distraught father struggling with overdue child support obligations and adverse family court decisions committed suicide on the steps of the downtown San Diego courthouse Monday. Angrily waving court documents, 43 year-old Derrick Miller walked up to court personnel at the entrance, said "You did this to me," and shot himself in the head.
Miller is one of 300,000 Americans who have taken their own lives over the past decade--as many Americans as were killed in combat in World War II.
America is in the throes of a largely unrecognized suicide epidemic, as suicide has become the eighth leading cause of death in the United States today, and the third leading cause of death among adolescents.
All Americans recognize that our country is rife with violent crime, but few know that 50% more Americans kill themselves than are murdered.
Who is committing suicide? For the most part, men. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, males commit suicide four times as often as females do, and have higher suicide rates in every age group.
There are many risk factors for suicide, including substance abuse and mental illness, but the two situations in which men are most likely to kill themselves are after the loss of a job, and after a divorce.
Because our society strongly defines manhood as the ability to work and provide for one's loved ones, unemployed men often see themselves as failures and as burdens to their families.
Thus it is not surprising that while there is no difference in the suicide rate of employed and unemployed women, the suicide rate of unemployed men is twice that of employed men. It is for this reason that economic crises generally lead to male suicide epidemics.
During the Midwest farm crisis of the 1980s, for example, the suicide rate of male farmers tripled. A sharp increase in male suicide occurred after the destruction of Flint, Michigan's 70 year-old auto industry, as documented in the disturbing 1989 film "Roger and Me." Some suicide experts fear a rise in suicide related to our current economic downturn.
The other most common suicide victims are divorced and/or estranged fathers like Derrick Miller.
The other most common suicide victims are divorced and/or estranged fathers like Derrick Miller. In fact, a divorced father is ten times more likely to commit suicide than a divorced mother, and three times more likely to commit suicide than a married father.
According to Los Angeles divorce consultant Jayne Major: "Divorced men are often devastated by the loss of their children.
It's a little known fact that in the United States men initiate only a small number of the divorces involving children.
Most of the men I deal with never saw their divorces coming, and they are often treated very unfairly by the family courts." According to Sociology Professor Augustine Kposow of the University of California at Riverside,
"The link between men and their children is often severed because the woman is usually awarded custody. A man may not get to see his children, even with visitation rights. As far as the man is concerned, he has lost his marriage and lost his children and that can lead to depression and suicide."
There have been a rash of father suicides directly related to divorce and mistreatment by the family courts over the past few years.For example, New York City Police Officer Martin Romanchick, a Medal of Honor recipient, hung himself after being denied access to his children and being arrested 15 times on charges brought by his ex-wife, charges the courts deemed frivolous.
Massachusetts father Steven Cook, prevented from seeing his daughter by a protection order based upon unfounded allegations, committed suicide after he was jailed for calling his four-year-old daughter on the wrong day of the week.
Darrin White, a Canadian father who was stripped of the right to see his children and was about to be jailed after failing to pay a child support award tantamount to twice his take home pay, hung himself.
His 14 year-old daughter Ashlee later wrote to her nation's Prime Minister, saying, "this country's justice system has robbed me of one of the most precious gifts in my life, my father.
" We'll never know exactly why Derrick Miller took his life and if his suicide could have been prevented. What we do know is that male suicide is one of America's most serious public health issues, and it is time to address it.
http://www.glennjsacks.com/ and the list goes on & on & on & on.
ASSOCIATED PRESS 4/6
Divorced fathers snap under pressure
One divorced father committed suicide on the steps of San Diego's courthouse, another set his car afire outside Alaska's child-support office. Others, in an all-too-common scenario, killed their ex-wives, their children, then themselves. Men who snap in such violent ways have few defenders. Yet fathers' rights groups, joined by a few academic experts, see a common denominator in these recent bursts of rage, and ask whether America's family court system could be partly at fault by deepening the despair of many divorced men. "None of these guys are poster children," said Lowell Jaks, president of the Alliance for Non-Custodial Parents Rights. "But when you cause this much pain to so many men, there are going to be repercussions. A certain percentage are going to crack." Mr. Jaks has even distributed newspaper articles to his organization's members noting the problems with child custody and child support that angered John Allen Muhammad, accused of being the Washington-area sniper, and Robert S. Flores Jr., who killed three University of Arizona nursing professors before killing himself. "Some guys kill themselves, some snap and go out and kill others," Mr. Jaks said. "You can dismiss them as crackpots, you can say we need more protection for women, but it's not going to take away the problem."
Frustrations over child support and visitation figured in several recent violent incidents across the country.
Among them: . In San Diego, a man upset by a court ruling on overdue child support fatally shot himself in January on the courthouse steps. Witnesses said Derrick K. Miller Sr., 43, who was carrying court documents, told a guard, "You did this to me," before killing himself. . In Anchorage, Alaska Jed Magby, 43, set his Mercedes afire in October outside the offices of the state's Child Support Enforcement Division, apparently because of claims that he owed $55,000 for out-of-state child support orders. He faces charges of arson and criminal mischief. . In Erie, Pa., Stephen Trieber, 33, was sentenced to death in October for killing his 2-year-old daughter by setting his house on fire in order to get out of paying $250 a month in child support. . In February, James D. Smallwood Jr. killed his three children, who lived with his estranged wife in Throckmorton, Texas, but were visiting him for one night. Smallwood drove back to Throckmorton with the dead children in his car, then killed himself when he heard sirens approaching. A judge ruled earlier that Smallwood, who had been accused of making threats, could have the children on "quasi-supervised" visitations. Augustine Kposowa, a sociologist at the University of California-Riverside, has conducted studies concluding suicide rates among divorced men are much higher than for divorced women or married men. He attributes the difference to what happens in family courts. "The man loses his marriage, then he loses a second time when child custody is granted to the woman," he said.
"Unless something is done, by examining family laws and having new policies to aid men, the situation is bound to get worse."
Extrapolating from Mr. Kposowa's research, fathers' rights activist David Roberts contends that child-support orders - part of what he calls "the war on fathers" - contribute to the suicides of more than 5,000 divorced fathers each year. Outside the fathers' rights ranks, others acknowledge that divorce and custody procedures are often imperfect.
IF NOT MORE CLEARLY CRIMINALLY NEGLIGENT & CORRUPT .
NO AMERICAN should be forced to go before a bias Court, Civil, Criminal or any court of corrupted law alone and without council only to be persecuted for perhaps decade's .This is not simply Un- American it is in fact In- Humane. If there is no respect for the Law in our Courts then how long can we the people deny our responsibility to act and restore that law as is our responsibility. "Declaration of Independence"
Yet, despite all the above there is no reply or action taken, by the Justice Department, The FBI. The Attorney General or the State and Local Legislators when formal complaints are filed and almost no Redress in our Courts.
No one is being held Accountable, No One. As our government shuts down and runs rough shod over it's citizens then clearly more bloodshed is to come and our Nation will cease to exist as we know it.
Continue to Ignore this and see what happens.
PLEASE CIRCULATE WIDELY
Too-caring mother loses girl to ACS
Knock Knock, People are you listening?
This is out of control!
BY JESS WISLOSKI
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
"If I knew this would happen, I never would've taken my daughter to the doctor,"
Queens mom Vanessa James has learned the hard way that you can indeed be too concerned about your child's health.
The city took custody of James' daughter Amber last month, accusing the 5-year-old girl's parents of neglect.
"They appear to be suffering from an unknown mental illness which causes them to act in a bizarre manner," according to papers filed in Queens Family Court by the Administration for Children's Services.
But James, 40, and her husband, Marvin James, 48, contend that the neglect that they have been accused of stems from concerns about their daughter's health.
"They said we took her to the doctor too much," said Marvin James, who said Amber suffered a stroke and seizures at birth and continues to have chest pains and skin rashes.
The Jameses feel they are living every parent's nightmare. They are to argue for Amber's return at a hearing today.
"I still don't know what I did wrong," said Vanessa James, whose actions prompted a young pediatrician to call ACS.
The doctor feared James was "doctor shopping" and suffered from Munchausen syndrome by proxy - a disorder in which someone becomes convinced a loved one is sick or even makes them ill to get treatment or attention - or some other mental illness that endangered Amber.
After tests at the Queens Medical Center on July 20 showed Amber was healthy, both parents became "enraged, hostile and paranoid," the doctor told ACS.
The couple told the Daily News they had been upset by a six-hour wait in the clinic that day, and said other doctors refused to get to the bottom of Amber's illness because she was uninsured.
"If I knew this would happen, I never would've taken my daughter to the doctor," Vanessa James said between sobs.
"Vanessa was just being overconcerned," said Marvin James. In checkups that followed the seizures, "she never got a real answer from the doctors."
When ACS caseworkers visited the family's Rockaway home, the mother showed a suitcase full of Amber's medical records and said, "It's all a conspiracy; they are all out to get me," the report stated. James denied she said that.
On Aug. 24, Amber was ordered into foster care. Her parents are allowed two weekly visits.
ACS spokeswoman Sheila Stainback said the agency cannot comment on the case because of confidentiality rules.
But advocates questioned the agency's judgment.
"The trauma to this child is enormous," said Richard Wexler, a proponent of children's welfare reform who advocates for mediation, not removal, in most cases.
He said the city Department of Investigation issued a scathing report of ACS in early August.
"This sounds like a classic case of defensive social work," Wexler said.
jwisloski@nydailynews.com
Original Article-
Too-caring mother loses girl to ACS
This is out of control!
BY JESS WISLOSKI
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
"If I knew this would happen, I never would've taken my daughter to the doctor,"
Queens mom Vanessa James has learned the hard way that you can indeed be too concerned about your child's health.
The city took custody of James' daughter Amber last month, accusing the 5-year-old girl's parents of neglect.
"They appear to be suffering from an unknown mental illness which causes them to act in a bizarre manner," according to papers filed in Queens Family Court by the Administration for Children's Services.
But James, 40, and her husband, Marvin James, 48, contend that the neglect that they have been accused of stems from concerns about their daughter's health.
"They said we took her to the doctor too much," said Marvin James, who said Amber suffered a stroke and seizures at birth and continues to have chest pains and skin rashes.
The Jameses feel they are living every parent's nightmare. They are to argue for Amber's return at a hearing today.
"I still don't know what I did wrong," said Vanessa James, whose actions prompted a young pediatrician to call ACS.
The doctor feared James was "doctor shopping" and suffered from Munchausen syndrome by proxy - a disorder in which someone becomes convinced a loved one is sick or even makes them ill to get treatment or attention - or some other mental illness that endangered Amber.
After tests at the Queens Medical Center on July 20 showed Amber was healthy, both parents became "enraged, hostile and paranoid," the doctor told ACS.
The couple told the Daily News they had been upset by a six-hour wait in the clinic that day, and said other doctors refused to get to the bottom of Amber's illness because she was uninsured.
"If I knew this would happen, I never would've taken my daughter to the doctor," Vanessa James said between sobs.
"Vanessa was just being overconcerned," said Marvin James. In checkups that followed the seizures, "she never got a real answer from the doctors."
When ACS caseworkers visited the family's Rockaway home, the mother showed a suitcase full of Amber's medical records and said, "It's all a conspiracy; they are all out to get me," the report stated. James denied she said that.
On Aug. 24, Amber was ordered into foster care. Her parents are allowed two weekly visits.
ACS spokeswoman Sheila Stainback said the agency cannot comment on the case because of confidentiality rules.
But advocates questioned the agency's judgment.
"The trauma to this child is enormous," said Richard Wexler, a proponent of children's welfare reform who advocates for mediation, not removal, in most cases.
He said the city Department of Investigation issued a scathing report of ACS in early August.
"This sounds like a classic case of defensive social work," Wexler said.
jwisloski@nydailynews.com
Original Article-
Too-caring mother loses girl to ACS
A mother's battle to be believed
Wake up people!!
After diagnosis, woman fights doctors and DSS for daughter
Diana Owen had not slept in days when the hospital staff summoned her to a meeting down the hall from her baby's room.
Four-month-old Bryanna-Rose had spent more than a week in Hasbro Children's Hospital in Providence for tests and observation. Owen had told doctors her daughter's projectile vomiting was getting worse, the contents of her stomach drenching her mother's clothes. While sleeping, the mother had said, the child sometimes skipped breaths. Owen worried that her only child might die of an undiagnosed condition.
But some doctors and nurses had dismissed her as a jittery first-time mother, she recalled. One nurse had rolled her eyes when Owen worried aloud, she said. Owen had responded angrily, telling some staff she used to work as a health aide and was not overreacting.
"I do not have New Mom Syndrome!" she once snapped.
As the 38-year-old mother from Fall River walked into the meeting room on June 26, 2006, Owen noticed all eyes on her.
A half-dozen people, seated in a lounge area, announced their conclusions: Bryanna-Rose had no symptoms if her mother was out of the room. The child would remain in the hospital without Owen present. The baby would be placed into the protective custody of the Massachusetts Department of Social Services.
Owen came to the chilling realization that she was being accused of making up - or even intentionally causing - her daughter's ailments. From her healthcare background, she had heard of the diagnosis the doctors pinned on her: Munchausen by Proxy, a rare mental disorder in which caretakers fabricate or induce illnesses in their children to gain attention from doctors.
She could not believe it. She knew some medical staff had seen her daughter's symptoms - and taken notes. Through sobs, she pleaded, "You can't take my baby!"
Owen was escorted by security out of the hospital. As she left, she kept telling herself: I will get my baby back.
This marked the start of one mother's odyssey to prove her sanity, a task that would require painstaking persistence as authorities clung to their original judgment of her. It is a case where hunches about Owen's mental state rapidly escalated into near-certain conclusions, and contradictory evidence was ignored, medical records show. On multiple occasions, hospital staff recorded seeing the very symptoms that Owen was accused of fabricating, yet they continued to disbelieve her.
In the coming months, even when three mental health specialists would question the agency's assumptions about her, DSS would maintain its view that Owen was unfit to be alone with her child.
Hasbro and DSS officials defended their actions against Owen, saying they had a duty to protect a baby from a mother whose repeated false reporting about symptoms triggered unnecessary testing.
At the center is a loosely defined and disputed disorder. Some psychologists say Munchausen by Proxy is an underdiagnosed condition with serious, sometimes deadly, consequences. Typically, mothers are accused, their drive for attention so intense that some even poison their children. Many of these mothers have backgrounds in medicine, helping them fool doctors
Other psychologists say the disorder - named after an 18th-century German baron who exaggerated his military exploits - is overdiagnosed and applied to mothers who simply clash with their doctors over the seriousness of their child's condition.
Eric Mart, a New Hampshire psychologist, has testified nationwide in defense of mothers accused of this disorder: "All you have sometimes is an overanxious Mom," he said.
A happy addition
Owen calls Bryanna-Rose her "miracle baby," conceived after she and her husband, Robert, assumed they would be childless. Owen suffered from polycystic ovarian syndrome, which often causes infertility. But after ovarian surgery a few years ago, Owen happily learned she was pregnant. On Feb. 16, 2006, she delivered a healthy baby in Orlando, Fla.
Owen had yearned for her own happy family. The youngest of 10 children, she has many bitter memories of growing up in a working-class family in Fall River. She remembers being sexually abused by a relative. In her 20s and having barely graduated high school, she supported herself through low-wage jobs. Her first marriage ended in divorce, and she was twice treated for depression. Marrying Robert, and having a baby with him, seemed too good to be true.
The euphoria over Bryanna-Rose's birth soon gave way to alarm over her frequent vomiting, with the baby's lips sometimes turning blue. She also seemed to skip breaths while sleeping. But doctors ruled out anything serious. In May 2006, with her husband busy finishing school to become a marine technician, Owen left him in Orlando to show off their daughter to relatives.
In Fall River, Owen's concerns about her baby grew. Twice, Owen and family members took the baby to the emergency room of nearby hospitals. Doctors said the baby had gastroesophageal reflux, a relatively harmless condition that she probably would outgrow. They suggested nonmilk formulas to reduce the vomiting and ordered follow-up tests, which came back normal.
On June 16, after Bryanna-Rose had an intense bout of vomiting, Owen's older sister suggested they drive to Hasbro's emergency room. Bryanna-Rose was admitted for yet more tests.
Early on, staff at least once witnessed projectile vomiting, and on another occasion blueness, or cyanosis, around the lips, according to medical records that Owen provided to the Globe.
On June 22, a nursing student also observed an episode of the baby "not breathing with eyes becoming red and becoming blue around the lips," though the student noted no troubling drop in blood oxygen levels.
Despite those notations, the medical staff on that same day began to raise concerns about Owen's mental state. Owen had reported that her daughter's eyes had become fixed for about a minute, prompting a neurological examination that found no serious problem. The three-page report on the exam ended with the suggestion that the problem might be with Owen: "(?) Munchausen by Proxy," it said.
The next day, Owen was asked to undergo a psychological evaluation. The staff member who questioned her said the mother presented an "inconsistent and fantastic history," including recounting heroic roles in aiding foster children and giving conflicting dates for past events.
Over the next few days, Owen was alternately open, then suspicious. At times, she angrily demanded to know why staff questioned her credibility, once telling a nurse she thought a skeptical doctor was an "ass." She initially concealed her past treatment for depression.
"Everyone is asking me a lot of weird questions," Owen told a nurse, according to the records.
Allegations of abuse
In fact, the hospital's child-protection program had opened a file on Owen, and on June 26, just hours before Owen would be escorted away, the staff filed a suspected case of "medical child abuse" with DSS. Of the 700 cases the hospital refers to state authorities each year, about 10 are related to Munchausen by Proxy.
Dr. Carole Jenny, director of Hasbro's child-protection program, said hospital staff treated Owen with respect, but over time, "we had reasons to believe we couldn't trust her."
Owen came under scrutiny when, on numerous occasions, she reported her baby having symptoms that "no one else" observed, said Jenny, who agreed to a Globe interview with Owen's consent. When told about records confirming some of the baby's symptoms, Jenny said they were considered "clinically insignificant."
Hospital staff also examined the baby's prior medical records, and concluded that a healthy baby was becoming the victim of many unnecessary tests.
After Owen left the hospital, however, Bryanna-Rose remained for 10 more days and continued to have symptoms, according to records. Hasbro staff recorded vomiting or mouthfuls of spit-up about a dozen times, as well as several occasions when they noticed the girl's lips were blue.
Yet the hospital's discharge summary for the baby said that, apart from what the mother reported, "no other episodes of apnea or vomiting were documented during her stay in the hospital.
On July 6, 2006, Bryanna-Rose was released from the hospital into the home of a foster mother.
Foster care stay
Staying with her sister, Owen was inconsolable. She kept replaying the day when she left the hospital without her daughter.
"It was the emptiest feeling I've ever had," she recalled.
The baby's stay in foster care, however, would prove a pivotal event. Days after being with Bryanna-Rose, the foster mother called DSS: "It's not the mother! This baby does have projectile vomiting!" she said, according to a psychiatrist's report.
Owen hoped the foster mother's observation would mean DSS would drop the case. Instead, two weeks after placing Bryanna-Rose in foster care, DSS released the baby into the joint physical custody of the father, who had abruptly quit his schooling in Florida to return to Fall River, and Owen's sister. The agency insisted that, at all times, one of them had to supervise Owen if she was with the baby.
Humiliating as this was to Owen, she was ecstatic to be living with Bryanna-Rose again. Still, with the family needing income, Owen assumed the role of breadwinner, piecing together part-time jobs as a health aide and a retail clerk while her husband cared for their daughter. Her sister's two-bedroom condominium became their cramped home.
DSS required Owen to undergo a psychological examination to gauge whether she was a fit mother, and in late summer, a psychologist interviewed her and found no basis to conclude she had Munchausen by Proxy. He noted, among other reasons, that most mothers with this disorder seek the medical staff's approval for their conscientiousness, while Owen had "alienated" many of them. Still, he advised DSS to get another opinion.
As the autumn leaves fell, the couple traveled with Bryanna-Rose to Arlington to see Dr. Lee Birk, a psychiatrist and associate professor at Harvard Medical School. Owen wore her best pair of black slacks and a brown shirt, hoping to impress Birk, who had warned her by phone that if he believed she abused her child, he would be her worst enemy in court.
Not long after entering Birk's corner office, the couple found themselves in a familiar scene: Bryanna-Rose threw up on the office floor. Birk watched the couple clean up after their daughter, impressed at how they "did not panic" and seemed to lovingly care for her, he recalled. After the visit, Birk interviewed Owen alone, talked to relatives, and reviewed DSS documents. The more he learned, he said in an interview, the more he thought the child abuse allegation "was ridiculous."
He concluded that Owen's belligerence was triggered when she felt disrespected but that she did not have Munchausen by Proxy. He noted that a Boston sleep specialist this year confirmed that Bryanna-Rose skipped breaths in her sleep, and though it was not serious, that her parents were right to be concerned.
Birk said authorities got an idea about Owen, and refused to let go.
"They weren't interested in finding the truth," he said.
Psychological testing
Last November, Owen saw a neuropsychologist, who concluded that her reasoning and communication skills fell in the "lower half of the average range" but that she had no significant limitations. Owen and her husband were hopeful that DSS would finally accept that she was a fit parent. But instead, the agency ordered Owen to sit through another psychological exam, by a Harvard specialist on Munchausen by Proxy
On April 26, 2007, Owen's lawyer, James Harrington, fired off an angry letter to DSS.
He called its actions "truly shameful," and urged officials to get out of Owen's life instead of requesting "repeated evaluations until it gets an opinion that meets its interpretation of the facts."
The letter appears to have swayed DSS. On May 25, the agency dropped the supervision requirement, allowing Owen to be alone with Bryanna-Rose for the first time in 11 months, though DSS waited another four months to ask a judge to dismiss the case.
Although DSS believed its involvement with Owen's family had been appropriate, the agency "doesn't want to stay in people's lives forever," a spokesman said in an interview last month.
On Sept. 24, a juvenile court judge restored full custody of Bryanna-Rose to her parents. Sitting on a bench, Owen wept in relief.
The family plans to return to Florida, where Owen's husband hopes to resume his schooling and find a job in the boating industry. They have dozens of bills to pay, including thousands of dollars in medical costs not picked up by Medicaid.
As Owen watches over Bryanna-Rose, now an energetic and thriving 20-month-old, she remains bitter.
"It is myself and my family that will face the consequences of this nightmare," she said. "They did not treat my child or myself with dignity."
Patricia Wen can be reached at wen@globe.com.
After diagnosis, woman fights doctors and DSS for daughter
Diana Owen had not slept in days when the hospital staff summoned her to a meeting down the hall from her baby's room.
Four-month-old Bryanna-Rose had spent more than a week in Hasbro Children's Hospital in Providence for tests and observation. Owen had told doctors her daughter's projectile vomiting was getting worse, the contents of her stomach drenching her mother's clothes. While sleeping, the mother had said, the child sometimes skipped breaths. Owen worried that her only child might die of an undiagnosed condition.
But some doctors and nurses had dismissed her as a jittery first-time mother, she recalled. One nurse had rolled her eyes when Owen worried aloud, she said. Owen had responded angrily, telling some staff she used to work as a health aide and was not overreacting.
"I do not have New Mom Syndrome!" she once snapped.
As the 38-year-old mother from Fall River walked into the meeting room on June 26, 2006, Owen noticed all eyes on her.
A half-dozen people, seated in a lounge area, announced their conclusions: Bryanna-Rose had no symptoms if her mother was out of the room. The child would remain in the hospital without Owen present. The baby would be placed into the protective custody of the Massachusetts Department of Social Services.
Owen came to the chilling realization that she was being accused of making up - or even intentionally causing - her daughter's ailments. From her healthcare background, she had heard of the diagnosis the doctors pinned on her: Munchausen by Proxy, a rare mental disorder in which caretakers fabricate or induce illnesses in their children to gain attention from doctors.
She could not believe it. She knew some medical staff had seen her daughter's symptoms - and taken notes. Through sobs, she pleaded, "You can't take my baby!"
Owen was escorted by security out of the hospital. As she left, she kept telling herself: I will get my baby back.
This marked the start of one mother's odyssey to prove her sanity, a task that would require painstaking persistence as authorities clung to their original judgment of her. It is a case where hunches about Owen's mental state rapidly escalated into near-certain conclusions, and contradictory evidence was ignored, medical records show. On multiple occasions, hospital staff recorded seeing the very symptoms that Owen was accused of fabricating, yet they continued to disbelieve her.
In the coming months, even when three mental health specialists would question the agency's assumptions about her, DSS would maintain its view that Owen was unfit to be alone with her child.
Hasbro and DSS officials defended their actions against Owen, saying they had a duty to protect a baby from a mother whose repeated false reporting about symptoms triggered unnecessary testing.
At the center is a loosely defined and disputed disorder. Some psychologists say Munchausen by Proxy is an underdiagnosed condition with serious, sometimes deadly, consequences. Typically, mothers are accused, their drive for attention so intense that some even poison their children. Many of these mothers have backgrounds in medicine, helping them fool doctors
Other psychologists say the disorder - named after an 18th-century German baron who exaggerated his military exploits - is overdiagnosed and applied to mothers who simply clash with their doctors over the seriousness of their child's condition.
Eric Mart, a New Hampshire psychologist, has testified nationwide in defense of mothers accused of this disorder: "All you have sometimes is an overanxious Mom," he said.
A happy addition
Owen calls Bryanna-Rose her "miracle baby," conceived after she and her husband, Robert, assumed they would be childless. Owen suffered from polycystic ovarian syndrome, which often causes infertility. But after ovarian surgery a few years ago, Owen happily learned she was pregnant. On Feb. 16, 2006, she delivered a healthy baby in Orlando, Fla.
Owen had yearned for her own happy family. The youngest of 10 children, she has many bitter memories of growing up in a working-class family in Fall River. She remembers being sexually abused by a relative. In her 20s and having barely graduated high school, she supported herself through low-wage jobs. Her first marriage ended in divorce, and she was twice treated for depression. Marrying Robert, and having a baby with him, seemed too good to be true.
The euphoria over Bryanna-Rose's birth soon gave way to alarm over her frequent vomiting, with the baby's lips sometimes turning blue. She also seemed to skip breaths while sleeping. But doctors ruled out anything serious. In May 2006, with her husband busy finishing school to become a marine technician, Owen left him in Orlando to show off their daughter to relatives.
In Fall River, Owen's concerns about her baby grew. Twice, Owen and family members took the baby to the emergency room of nearby hospitals. Doctors said the baby had gastroesophageal reflux, a relatively harmless condition that she probably would outgrow. They suggested nonmilk formulas to reduce the vomiting and ordered follow-up tests, which came back normal.
On June 16, after Bryanna-Rose had an intense bout of vomiting, Owen's older sister suggested they drive to Hasbro's emergency room. Bryanna-Rose was admitted for yet more tests.
Early on, staff at least once witnessed projectile vomiting, and on another occasion blueness, or cyanosis, around the lips, according to medical records that Owen provided to the Globe.
On June 22, a nursing student also observed an episode of the baby "not breathing with eyes becoming red and becoming blue around the lips," though the student noted no troubling drop in blood oxygen levels.
Despite those notations, the medical staff on that same day began to raise concerns about Owen's mental state. Owen had reported that her daughter's eyes had become fixed for about a minute, prompting a neurological examination that found no serious problem. The three-page report on the exam ended with the suggestion that the problem might be with Owen: "(?) Munchausen by Proxy," it said.
The next day, Owen was asked to undergo a psychological evaluation. The staff member who questioned her said the mother presented an "inconsistent and fantastic history," including recounting heroic roles in aiding foster children and giving conflicting dates for past events.
Over the next few days, Owen was alternately open, then suspicious. At times, she angrily demanded to know why staff questioned her credibility, once telling a nurse she thought a skeptical doctor was an "ass." She initially concealed her past treatment for depression.
"Everyone is asking me a lot of weird questions," Owen told a nurse, according to the records.
Allegations of abuse
In fact, the hospital's child-protection program had opened a file on Owen, and on June 26, just hours before Owen would be escorted away, the staff filed a suspected case of "medical child abuse" with DSS. Of the 700 cases the hospital refers to state authorities each year, about 10 are related to Munchausen by Proxy.
Dr. Carole Jenny, director of Hasbro's child-protection program, said hospital staff treated Owen with respect, but over time, "we had reasons to believe we couldn't trust her."
Owen came under scrutiny when, on numerous occasions, she reported her baby having symptoms that "no one else" observed, said Jenny, who agreed to a Globe interview with Owen's consent. When told about records confirming some of the baby's symptoms, Jenny said they were considered "clinically insignificant."
Hospital staff also examined the baby's prior medical records, and concluded that a healthy baby was becoming the victim of many unnecessary tests.
After Owen left the hospital, however, Bryanna-Rose remained for 10 more days and continued to have symptoms, according to records. Hasbro staff recorded vomiting or mouthfuls of spit-up about a dozen times, as well as several occasions when they noticed the girl's lips were blue.
Yet the hospital's discharge summary for the baby said that, apart from what the mother reported, "no other episodes of apnea or vomiting were documented during her stay in the hospital.
On July 6, 2006, Bryanna-Rose was released from the hospital into the home of a foster mother.
Foster care stay
Staying with her sister, Owen was inconsolable. She kept replaying the day when she left the hospital without her daughter.
"It was the emptiest feeling I've ever had," she recalled.
The baby's stay in foster care, however, would prove a pivotal event. Days after being with Bryanna-Rose, the foster mother called DSS: "It's not the mother! This baby does have projectile vomiting!" she said, according to a psychiatrist's report.
Owen hoped the foster mother's observation would mean DSS would drop the case. Instead, two weeks after placing Bryanna-Rose in foster care, DSS released the baby into the joint physical custody of the father, who had abruptly quit his schooling in Florida to return to Fall River, and Owen's sister. The agency insisted that, at all times, one of them had to supervise Owen if she was with the baby.
Humiliating as this was to Owen, she was ecstatic to be living with Bryanna-Rose again. Still, with the family needing income, Owen assumed the role of breadwinner, piecing together part-time jobs as a health aide and a retail clerk while her husband cared for their daughter. Her sister's two-bedroom condominium became their cramped home.
DSS required Owen to undergo a psychological examination to gauge whether she was a fit mother, and in late summer, a psychologist interviewed her and found no basis to conclude she had Munchausen by Proxy. He noted, among other reasons, that most mothers with this disorder seek the medical staff's approval for their conscientiousness, while Owen had "alienated" many of them. Still, he advised DSS to get another opinion.
As the autumn leaves fell, the couple traveled with Bryanna-Rose to Arlington to see Dr. Lee Birk, a psychiatrist and associate professor at Harvard Medical School. Owen wore her best pair of black slacks and a brown shirt, hoping to impress Birk, who had warned her by phone that if he believed she abused her child, he would be her worst enemy in court.
Not long after entering Birk's corner office, the couple found themselves in a familiar scene: Bryanna-Rose threw up on the office floor. Birk watched the couple clean up after their daughter, impressed at how they "did not panic" and seemed to lovingly care for her, he recalled. After the visit, Birk interviewed Owen alone, talked to relatives, and reviewed DSS documents. The more he learned, he said in an interview, the more he thought the child abuse allegation "was ridiculous."
He concluded that Owen's belligerence was triggered when she felt disrespected but that she did not have Munchausen by Proxy. He noted that a Boston sleep specialist this year confirmed that Bryanna-Rose skipped breaths in her sleep, and though it was not serious, that her parents were right to be concerned.
Birk said authorities got an idea about Owen, and refused to let go.
"They weren't interested in finding the truth," he said.
Psychological testing
Last November, Owen saw a neuropsychologist, who concluded that her reasoning and communication skills fell in the "lower half of the average range" but that she had no significant limitations. Owen and her husband were hopeful that DSS would finally accept that she was a fit parent. But instead, the agency ordered Owen to sit through another psychological exam, by a Harvard specialist on Munchausen by Proxy
On April 26, 2007, Owen's lawyer, James Harrington, fired off an angry letter to DSS.
He called its actions "truly shameful," and urged officials to get out of Owen's life instead of requesting "repeated evaluations until it gets an opinion that meets its interpretation of the facts."
The letter appears to have swayed DSS. On May 25, the agency dropped the supervision requirement, allowing Owen to be alone with Bryanna-Rose for the first time in 11 months, though DSS waited another four months to ask a judge to dismiss the case.
Although DSS believed its involvement with Owen's family had been appropriate, the agency "doesn't want to stay in people's lives forever," a spokesman said in an interview last month.
On Sept. 24, a juvenile court judge restored full custody of Bryanna-Rose to her parents. Sitting on a bench, Owen wept in relief.
The family plans to return to Florida, where Owen's husband hopes to resume his schooling and find a job in the boating industry. They have dozens of bills to pay, including thousands of dollars in medical costs not picked up by Medicaid.
As Owen watches over Bryanna-Rose, now an energetic and thriving 20-month-old, she remains bitter.
"It is myself and my family that will face the consequences of this nightmare," she said. "They did not treat my child or myself with dignity."
Patricia Wen can be reached at wen@globe.com.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
TOOTH AND NAIL
My opinions [In red] before I give you the "news papers" version..
Custody battles and all those involved i.e. forensic evaluators, ACS, judges and so on...
"CLAIM" to be doing what is in the best interest of the child, when that is not the way it plays out more often than not, perhaps now you will see for yourselves what really happens behind closed court room doors.
However, IN THIS CASE- I PERSONALLY FEEL SHE IS GUILTY AS THEY COME- in reference to her involvement and this poor man's death being a result of this custody battle. IF I am wrong I will bow my head and apoligize. Till then, like the rest of you I'll sit and read, what the papers tell us.
Sadly custody battles can be detrimental to one's mental health, and some little birdie in the back of my mind is saying the publilc is about to get a glimpse of the how and why.
CITY FIGHTS EX-WIFE OF SLAIN DENTIST FOR TOT
November 1, 2007 -- Child-welfare officials have filed an unusual petition of neglect against the estranged wife of a murdered Queens orthodontist to keep her from getting her daughter back - in part because of the bizarre circumstances surrounding his murder.
The surprising development surfaced as new details emerged about the warring pair's struggle over 4-year-old Michelle Malakov - including a physical tug-of-war, with each yanking the girl.
Family court therapist Jolie Rothschild testified at a hearing in Queens yesterday about the day that Dr. Mazoltuv Borukhova had to hand over Michelle after losing custody to her ex, Dr. Daniel Malakov.
"She was not supportive in the transfer of custody," said Rothschild, who was called to the stand by the Administration for Children's services.
The child was screaming, crying and clinging to her mother, she said.
At one point, the parents literally were engaged in a tug-of-war over Michelle.
"Dr. Malakov had the top of the body and Ms. Borukhova had the bottom," said Rothschild.
But once the girl got in her father's house, she calmed down while her father played piano and danced for her, said Rothschild.
Borukhova's alleged behavior during the prolonged court fight against her husband is also at issue in the preliminary neglect proceedings.
At one point, she lobbed sex-abuse charges against her husband, but they were never substantiated. [my note- Interesting how once again custody battles involve abuse allegations that are unfounded-maybe they should start punishing those that falsely accuse]
"Normally, the mother would be the next of kin [when the father dies]," said David Schnall, a lawyer appointed to represent the child during the custody hearings.
"She's truly focused on her daughter right now," said Fass outside the courtroom. "She lost her husband and daughter in the last week."
Michelle has been temporarily placed with a paternal relative, Fass said.
[My note again- I'm impressed they allowed a relative to take the baby in]
The internist at North Shore University Hospital had full custody of her daughter until October.
That's when a family court judge gave Michelle to her father, because she was not following visitation orders, according to Malakov's lawyer.
The hearings continue today.
Police had questioned Borukhova after the brazen slaying on Sunday.
A killer with a crude, homemade silencer walked up to the esteemed orthodontist and pumped three bullets into his chest.
The grisly crime took place right in front of his daughter and estranged wife.
No arrests have been made.
Original Article -TOOTH AND NAIL
Custody battles and all those involved i.e. forensic evaluators, ACS, judges and so on...
"CLAIM" to be doing what is in the best interest of the child, when that is not the way it plays out more often than not, perhaps now you will see for yourselves what really happens behind closed court room doors.
However, IN THIS CASE- I PERSONALLY FEEL SHE IS GUILTY AS THEY COME- in reference to her involvement and this poor man's death being a result of this custody battle. IF I am wrong I will bow my head and apoligize. Till then, like the rest of you I'll sit and read, what the papers tell us.
Sadly custody battles can be detrimental to one's mental health, and some little birdie in the back of my mind is saying the publilc is about to get a glimpse of the how and why.
CITY FIGHTS EX-WIFE OF SLAIN DENTIST FOR TOT
November 1, 2007 -- Child-welfare officials have filed an unusual petition of neglect against the estranged wife of a murdered Queens orthodontist to keep her from getting her daughter back - in part because of the bizarre circumstances surrounding his murder.
The surprising development surfaced as new details emerged about the warring pair's struggle over 4-year-old Michelle Malakov - including a physical tug-of-war, with each yanking the girl.
Family court therapist Jolie Rothschild testified at a hearing in Queens yesterday about the day that Dr. Mazoltuv Borukhova had to hand over Michelle after losing custody to her ex, Dr. Daniel Malakov.
"She was not supportive in the transfer of custody," said Rothschild, who was called to the stand by the Administration for Children's services.
The child was screaming, crying and clinging to her mother, she said.
At one point, the parents literally were engaged in a tug-of-war over Michelle.
"Dr. Malakov had the top of the body and Ms. Borukhova had the bottom," said Rothschild.
But once the girl got in her father's house, she calmed down while her father played piano and danced for her, said Rothschild.
Borukhova's alleged behavior during the prolonged court fight against her husband is also at issue in the preliminary neglect proceedings.
At one point, she lobbed sex-abuse charges against her husband, but they were never substantiated. [my note- Interesting how once again custody battles involve abuse allegations that are unfounded-maybe they should start punishing those that falsely accuse]
"Normally, the mother would be the next of kin [when the father dies]," said David Schnall, a lawyer appointed to represent the child during the custody hearings.
A resolute Borukhova attended the hearing and declared, "I want my child back.
Her lawyer, Florence Fass, maintains that her client is being unfairly targeted.
"We now have a child appearing to be placed with people publicly accusing the mother with murder without foundation. Speculation, yes. Foundation, no," said Fass.
Borukhova hoped to convince the judge to return Michelle to her care.
"But because of ACS intervention, the child was not immediately reunited with the mother.""She's truly focused on her daughter right now," said Fass outside the courtroom. "She lost her husband and daughter in the last week."
Michelle has been temporarily placed with a paternal relative, Fass said.
[My note again- I'm impressed they allowed a relative to take the baby in]
The internist at North Shore University Hospital had full custody of her daughter until October.
That's when a family court judge gave Michelle to her father, because she was not following visitation orders, according to Malakov's lawyer.
The hearings continue today.
Police had questioned Borukhova after the brazen slaying on Sunday.
A killer with a crude, homemade silencer walked up to the esteemed orthodontist and pumped three bullets into his chest.
The grisly crime took place right in front of his daughter and estranged wife.
No arrests have been made.
Original Article -TOOTH AND NAIL
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