123 Trapped in Chinese Coal Mine Flood; Men?
March 31, 2010
Recently I've written a couple of pieces pointing out the bizarre unwillingness of the press to print or speak the word "man" or "men" when reporting on deaths in war or natural or occupational disaster. I pointed it out in the international reporting of a political slaughter in the Philippines last year and in the New York Times reporting of student suicides at Cornell University.
Now the same is true here in this Associated Press story on a flood in a coal mine in China (Houston Chronicle, 3/28/10). We don't yet know if anyone was killed, but 123 miners are trapped. Another 138 were saved after the huge Wangjialing coal mine in Shanxi flooded. The story also reports that coal mining in China is a disgracefully dangerous occupation that killed 2,631 workers last year.
How many of those dead were men? How many of those who remain trapped in the current debacle are men? The simple answer is "we don't know." And we don't because the article, as is seemingly always the case, doesn't tell us. My guess is that the vast majority of Chinese miners are male and that the vast majority of the killed and injured in Chinese mining disasters are as well. After all, mining jobs are typically held by men and reporting on all types of disasters usually includes the phrase "many of whom were women" to refer to victims, if that is in fact the case. So since there's no such phrase, it's safe to say that most or all of those trapped in the current situation and killed last year are male. But don't rely on the article to just, you know, state the facts.
In the AP story, those trapped are either "miners" or "people." They are undeniably those things, but they also are men or women. If more than a very few were women, history tells us that the article would have said so.
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Followup: Rachel Yould to Plead Guilty to Multiple Fraud Charges
March 31, 2010
Back on January 6th, I reported on former Miss Anchorage and Rhodes and Fulbright Scholar, Rachel Yould. At the time, prosecutors had charged her with multiple counts of fraud connected to her obtaining student loans.
But the real revelation was that the Social Security Administration has a program under which a person can obtain a new identity, i.e. new name and social security number if she claims to be the victim of DV and that her abuser continues to stalk or harrass her or she's in danger of future injury. Apparently some 14,000 people have obtained new identities under the program, and one of them was Rachel Yould.
Prosecutors allege and, according to this article, Yould is now prepared to admit that she used her new name, Rachel Hall, to scam many different organizations that make student loans (Anchorage Daily News, 3/30/10). She apparently fleeced them of hundreds of thousands of dollars in all. Yould then used the money to fund a lavish lifestyle, purchase a condo, start a journal, several businesses and travel extensively. The list of her lies seems virtually endless, but here's a small taste:
At one point, one of her identities falsely claimed $1.7 million a year income to co-sign for a student loan to her other identity, prosecutors said in pre-trial filings.
To maintain her status as an Oxford University student so that she could continue to get loans, she forged documents from a Japanese university to say she was there conducting research for her Ph.D., prosecutors said.
Some of her student loans funded her business, set up through a complicated chain of offshore entities. Her employees thought the business was part of Oxford, when in fact it was being propped up by her loan proceeds, prosecutors said.
Now, since the origin of the whole scheme lies in her claim of DV victimization, it will surprise few readers to learn that, after her indictment, Yould has had a massive outpouring of support from DV advocates saying that she's an innocent victim who was victimized a second time by the federal indictments. In other words, the people who never suspect a woman of lying about DV didn't suspect Yould either, even though a U.S. Attorney thought she had enough evidence to indict her. Prosecutor Retta-Rae Randall summed up that mindset very neatly this way:
"Yould and her spin on events became the only source upon which people are drawing conclusions, making diagnoses, and taking actions. She is the sole historian," Randall wrote in a court document.
Gee, how many times could we have said those very words in the past? Doubtless we'll get a chance to use them again in the future.
Yould is charged with nine counts of mail fraud and one count of wire fraud. She was scheduled to go to trial on those charges on Monday, April 5th, but she's going to plead guilty tomorrow. Another five counts of mortgage fraud are currently set for trial in August.
What about her original claim of DV victimization? Given that she's going to plead guilty to the mail and wire fraud charges, we can safely conclude that she's guilty of those, but was she a victim of DV? Well, she apparently applied for a restraining order against someone named Robert Hall. But beyond that, U.S. Attorney Randall said,
the father was never charged with any crimes and Yould has never produced medical or police records, witness statements or other evidence that supports her story.
And if she hasn't produced them for prosecutors, it's doubtful she produced them for the Social Security Adminstration either. That raises the obvious question "just how little does it take to get a new identity from the SSA?"
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TN Paper Supports the Status Quo in Divorce and Custody Without Explaining Why
March 31, 2010
Here we have yet another editorial in a Tennessee newspaper opposing the equally-shared parenting bill currently before a House subcommittee (Memphis Commercial Appeal, 3/29/10). From the title onward, the writer doesn't seem to have thought the matter through very clearly. Did he/she consult a single proponent of the bill? Did he/she read anything on the sociology or psychology of divorce and custody? What about the history of the "best interests of the child" standard? If so, it's not obvious.
The title of the piece is "Politicizing Child Custody." Fortunately, if oddly, the editorial has nothing to do with that, which is wise. After all, it would be a bit of a stretch to say that, when 84% of child custody is granted to mothers, it's "politicizing" for fathers to want an equal share. Was it "politicizing" for women to want to have an equal number of medical school admissions? So, having raised the point unwisely, I guess it's wise to then drop it.
I've said this before, and I'll do it again here. Opponents of fathers' rights have an obligation to explain why the current system is worth keeping. Every time equally-shared parenting comes up, opponents scream bloody murder and raise the entirely false claim that greater father access endangers the children. In the first place, it's mothers who do most of the abuse and neglect of children, so maybe greater father access would have a protective effect. But more to the point, the anti-dad crowd is arguing for a system that has failed. It's failed children, fathers and, I'd argue, mothers as well. Mountains of social science show this. Opponents of shared parenting are happy to ignore it.
And so it is with the editorial in the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Honestly, it's as if whoever wrote it has no idea of the realities of divorce court. Listen:
But putting time spent with the child at the top of the list of factors in a contested case can be a sign that divorcing parents are more concerned about settling scores than doing what's best for the child.
Does the writer imagine for an instant that that doesn't happen now? Do parents under the current system not put "time spent with the child at the top of the list?" Are they never "more concerned about settling scores?" You'd have to have just arrived from another galaxy to not know that those happen every day in custody cases. So why do they all of a sudden become a problem only when dads want to see their kids? If "time spent with the child" shouldn't be "at the top of the list," maybe it's mothers who should get less of it.
Or how about this?
And to force judges in typical, contested divorce cases to follow a prescribed formula on parental time that at least one of the parents doesn't agree with could result in negative consequences for the child.
Well, judges aren't now forced to make the standard orders, but they do make them in the vast majority of cases. Any divorce lawyer can recite them in his/her sleep - "mother gets primary custody, father gets visitation every other weekend and Wednesday nights." Does the writer truly believe that "at least one of the parents doesn't agree with" those orders? Does he/she truly believe that those orders don't "result in negative consequences for the child?" Here are two facts: plenty of fathers don't agree with those standard orders and they often harm children by denying them a relationship with their dads. But again, according to the editorial, those aren't problems; no, it's only a problem when dads want more.
How much research has to be done, how clear does it have to be before these people read something germane to the topic they're writing about?
Let me be as simple and straightforward as I can be. The current system of primary custody for the mother and visitation for the father is bad for all concerned. It's bad for children because they lose connection with their fathers and their paternal extended families. It's bad for fathers because they lose connection with their children. They become 'Disneyland Dads' - entertainers and walking wallets. It's bad for mothers because childcare after divorce falls almost exclusively on them at the cost of their earnings, savings and careers.
Those concepts are not hard to grasp. Each one is backed by huge amounts of social science. And anyone who defends the status quo needs to stand up and explain to the rest of us why it's worth preserving. It's not, and the Commercial Appeal editorial once again fails to make the case.
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My Appearance on the Single Parent Show, March 18th
March 30, 2010
I was happy to do a half-hour radio show on March 18th. The show is called The Single Parent Show and is broadcast from Aliston, Ontario on CFAO, 94.7 FM. It's hosted by Paulette MacDonald who is a long-time supporter of fathers' rights generally and GlennSacks.com specifically. The topic was Parental Alienation Syndrome and the decision whether to include it in the Fifth Diagnsotic and Statistical Manual. Here's the website for the Single Parent Show. Just scroll down to the March 18th entry and click on it to hear the whole show. I'm scheduled to be on again on June 10th.
Thanks to Paulette for her tireless and always cheerful support and for helping to get the word out.
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MRAs Ask Heads of Six Countries, ‘What About the Science on DV?’
March 30, 2010
When Barack Obama was elected president in November, 2008, part of his popularity stemmed from his frank promise to reinstate science to its rightful place in public policy and decision-making. Many cheered and I was one of them. For far too long I felt, we've tolerated the silliest anti-scientific notions that claim that the earth is 6,000 years old and that because evolution is a 'theory,' it should be taught alongside and coequally with something called "creation" science.
But I didn't stop there. After all, a presidential administration that so valued science would certainly take notice of the overwhelming body of scientific evidence on the value of fathers to children and begin to rectify the many policies that actively interfere with the father-child relationship.
Beyond that of course there's also the science on domestic violence that shows that, far from the mythology spouted by the DV industry, men and women perpetrate DV equally, with women being a little more likely than men to initiate violence against a partner. Since the Obama Administration would be such a supporter of science, at long last the facts about men's and women's use of violence in intimate relationships would become widely known.
And with that would come radical changes to the ways we "deal with" the issue. Not only would there be shelters for men and women's shelters would start accepting adolescent sons of DV victims, but acknowledgement of the science about DV would lead us to address the problem in ways that actually work. Since the science on DV shows that the single most effective way for women to avoid being victims of DV is for them to refrain from inititating violence, we'd miss no opportunity to teach exactly that. There'd probably even be T-Shirts and bumper stickers with some handy catchphrase like "If you don't want to be hit, don't hit." We'd start teaching that in primary school.
Before anything we'd drop the pretense that DV is something done only by men and only to women. We'd jettison the patently false notion that DV is patriarchal political oppression. Our veneration for science would lead us to adopt strategies that deal with DV as what it is - a psychological dynamic between two people. We'd recognize that those family dynamics are learned in childhood in families that participate in DV. We'd use couples counselling to deal with the problem far more than we use the criminal justice system, although police and courts would still be a necessary part of the solution.
And since we'd finally be taking an effective, constructive approach to DV, the problem would start to actually diminish. Government DV budgets would begin to shrink and shelters close. Fewer and fewer people would be jailed and, since DV allegations would send you to counselling instead of sending your partner to jail, they'd be used far less in divorce and custody matters. We'd demonstrate to ourselves how accepting the teachings of science - as opposed to the myths of entrenched, politicized special interests - could actually help us solve a serious problem.
Well, of course I was nowhere near naive enough to believe that all or much of the above would happen. President Obama's pronouncements about the proper role of science apparently weren't meant to be taken literally. It's beginning to look like science for this administration is very much what it was for the last - something to laud when it agrees with your cherished preconceptions and something to ignore when it doesn't.
So the president wants us to believe that the only thing standing between fathers and children is the irresponsibility of the dads. And when it comes to DV, we'll continue spending more and more to support a system that for over 30 years has proven beyond doubt to be incompetent to deal with the problem. To do that will require us to doggedly ignore science, but, you know, science can be so inconvenient.
But just to make sure Obama doesn't skate by on the issue of DV, men's and fathers' rights organizations from six countries, the U.S., the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Ireland have written a letter to the leaders of those countries asking them to acknowledge and deal with the science on DV. Go here to read the letter. It's signed by six of the most prominent men's and fathers' rights advocates in those countries.
Thanks to Earl for the heads-up.
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Letter to the Editor: TN Shared Parenting Bills ‘Must Be Passed’
March 30, 2010
This letter is in response to the blog post "SRO Crowds Hear Debate on TN Equally-Shared Parenting Bill."
http://www.facebook.com/pages/DADS-of-Tennessee/366276263080?v=wall&ref=nf
A universal shared equal parenting law would prevent scorned women from preventing fathers from equal parenting time. This is why laws like HB2916 & SB2881 must be passed. 50-50 must be the starting point...Women do not own the children. The problem is, most women are not reasonable, especially when they see their CS pay check go out the door to daddy's house. They want the money more than they want their children to have a father...it's sad, but true. Please join us in the this fight for equality, share your stories and let's work together to change the TN laws!
Tony, Franklin, Tennessee
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Letter to the Editor: ‘Gender Discrimination is Alive and Well in Massachusetts’
March 30, 2010
This letter is in response to the blog post "Holstein in Lawyers Weekly: 'Restraining Orders are Used to Keep Innocent Men from Their Kids."
I have read your article about fathers being victimized by false charges in restraining orders.
I have been victimized by this tactic recently. Despite lack of any true motive on my part and my spouse's stated desire to change the terms of our court-approved separation agreement, the court found cause to issue the restraining order, or more likely lacked the courage to not issue it. The court-employed psychologist expressed strong doubt about the veracity of my spouse's story and I have never been previously accused of any violent action.
Gender discrimination is alive and well in Massachusetts. It seems that there is a small group of lawyers who promote the use of this action as a tactic to achieve better divorce settlements. Maybe this unethical litigation can be addressed in a different way.
- Don, Newton, Massachusetts
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BBC: Roots of ‘Broken Britain’ Lie in Broken Homes
March 30, 2010
I don't know which of these is the more excellent, this article or the three-part BBC series it reports on (Telegraph, 3/27/10). The series is set to begin airing this Wednesday, so if you're able, tune in.
The writer of the piece, Cassandra Jardine, does strike one false chord when she refers to Fathers4Justice demonstrators as "extremists in Batman costumes." As anyone who's ever read about those men or heard what they've had to say, they are anything but extremists. They've just run out of alternatives. Family courts and ex-wives have stymied them at every turn in their attempts to do that humblest of things - see their own children. So they're trying what we used to call "guerilla theater" in order to bring public attention to the radical anti-father bias of family courts that daily denies children their right to a relationship with their fathers.
But beyond that, Jardine spells out pretty accurately the many problems divorced and separated fathers have in trying to simply maintain a real relationship with their children. She sees that overwhelmingly, fathers are good for children, but that family courts tend to be stuck somewhere in the 1950s when mothers mothered and fathers earned, and rarely divorced.
The prospects for children who don’t see their fathers are bleak, according to a Unicef report in 2007. Educationally, they do less well. They are more likely to get in trouble with the police, and to abuse drugs and alcohol. They also find it more difficult to form relationships. If Broken Britain – that over-used moral call to arms – has roots, they lie in broken homes.
She sees that what's standing between fathers and children are usually mothers and courts, not fathers' indifference.
[A]t every turn, it seemed, vengeful, short-sighted women were selfishly trying to thwart them (fathers).
These mothers cancelled contact arrangements, scuppered telephone calls, made false allegations of abuse, and prevented the men taking their children on holiday...
Not only did these women want total control of the children – believing their love was enough – they also expected their exes to keep them in the style to which they had become accustomed, while the men lived in cramped bedsits.
As to family courts,
“Henry” (not his real name), who is seen in the second programme, tells me he blames a court system that is biased against fathers, as well as being expensive, slow and ineffectual. When his daughter was born, Henry wanted to be involved, even though he had subsequently married. In return for maintenance, he saw his daughter alternate weekends and took her on holiday. “She was a massive part of my life,” he says. “Then her mother decided to live abroad.”
He fought the move but, as in 99 per cent of cases, the mother won in court. “All a woman has to say is that refusal will psychologically damage her. There’s a view that whatever is in the mother’s interests is also in the child’s interests, even though nine out of 10 non-resident parents then lose touch.”
As one father memorably put it,
“In order to be considered equal, you have to be twice as good,” says Simon Ramet, who has fought for half his child’s time.
The piece touches on move-away orders, false allegations of abuse and how they're used to separate fathers and children. It mentions the fact that there's a move afoot in the UK Parliament to once again make secret all the doings of family courts. A more insidious notion could scarcely be imagined. Why not just announce that it's a lot easier to make outrageous and patently biased orders if the public doesn't - and can't - know about them.
Finally, there's this:
Both the Labour and Conservative parties have reviewed the family-law system. Henry Bellingham, shadow justice minister, talks of introducing automatic shared contact, if the Conservatives are elected, and using Sue Start centres for counselling. Looking at the worried eyes of children caught up in disputes that they don’t understand, change can’t come too soon.
To which, the only response can be (fist pump) "Yes!"
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Action Alert: Support CA. AB 2416–Child Custody Reform to Help Parents Who Serve
March 29, 2010
California AB 2416 will help protect the loving bonds that servicemembers share with their children--to email and fax a letter in support of the bill, click here. Please send your letter whether you are a California resident or not.
Fathers & Families has worked closely with the American Retirees Association, Assemblyman Paul Cook, and others on AB 2416, which will be heard in committee on Tuesday, April 6.
At Fathers & Families we receive many letters from divorced or separated military servicemembers with painful but preventable family law problems.
Many parents serving in Afghanistan, Iraq, or other distant locales are anguished that custodial parents have impeded or completely eliminated their contact with their children. When the deployed soldier calls his children at the court-specified time, nobody answers. Letters are written, but they never reach the children. Needless to say, it is extremely difficult for a deployed servicemember to effectively overcome this visitation interference. Given the length and frequency of current deployments, many soldiers lose all contact and sometimes even their relationships with their children, particularly if the children are young.
Other servicemembers return from serving to find that while they once had a custody arrangement which allowed them to play a meaningful role in their children’s lives, the new custody arrangement allows them only a marginal role, if any role at all. To regain their previous custody arrangement they must engage in costly, time-consuming litigation, which increases conflict and dissipates much of the time and money that they would otherwise be spending on their children.
AB 2416 will address these problems in several ways:
AB 2416 authorizes courts to issue orders granting grandparents, stepparents and extended families the ability to exercise a deployed soldier’s normal parenting time. By encouraging courts to issue such orders, we allow children to preserve their loving bonds with their deployed parents, and also protect the important relationships children share with their grandparents, stepparents, and other extended family. AB 2416 will substantially reduce the current problem of deployed servicemembers being unable to enforce visitation/contact orders.
AB 2416 creates a rebuttable presumption that when a military parent is deployed, upon his or her return, child custody and visitation orders will revert to the original order. This protects the crucial role these parents play in their children's lives, and helps prevent a military parent from having to re-litigate their case.
To send a letter to Sacramento in support of AB 2416 , please click here.
America was greatly moved by deployed sailor Bill Hawes' tearful reunion with his little son and little Siri Jordan's reunion with her divorced father Dan Jordan. AB 2416 will help protect precious relationships like these.
Fathers & Families' legislative representative Michael Robinson and assistant legislative representative Nicole Silverman have spent months lobbying legislators and gathering support for AB 2416. F & F is creating real, tangible family court reform today, but our deep, professional involvement in Sacramento requires money--contribute to the organization which fights for you by clicking here.
Together with you in the love of our children,
Glenn Sacks, MA
Executive Director, Fathers & Families
Ned Holstein, M.D., M.S.
Founder, Chairman of the Board, Fathers & Families
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Fathers & Families Supporter in Sacramento’s Capitol Weekly ‘Children who have been alienated need help’
March 29, 2010
Fathers & Families supporter Michael Hunter recently published a letter in Sacramento's Capitol Weekly (3/11/10) concerning parental alienation. The letter comes on the heels of a debate between Fathers & Families and California battered women's advocate Preston Thymes over parental alienation, AB 612, and how family courts handle domestic violence accusations.
Thymes' article criticizing Fathers & Families is Parental Alienation must be excluded from all custody hearings, (Capitol Weekly, 2/18/10). Our response is Preventing courts from considering parental alienation will harm kids (Capitol Weekly, 2/25/10).
Hunter writes:
Some people contend that legislatures should not adopt a rebuttable presumption of shared parenting because they assert that it would “tie the hands” of family court judges. These advocates do not honor the fact that a rebuttable presumption for shared parenting is rebuttable.
It is illogical for these same advocates to “tie the hands” of family court judges by limiting the testimony that family court judges are allowed to hear. The presumption for shared parenting is rebuttable, and testimony about Parental Alienation is not taken as true without evidence.
I disagree with Mr. Preston Thymes who asserts that recognizing Parental Alienation as a legitimate issue in custody cases would endanger abused children. Not only would abused children continue to be protected by family courts, but recognizing Parental Alienation as a legitimate issue in custody cases would help children who have been alienated.
In genuine cases of domestic violence or child abuse, all sides agree that courts need to protect children from abusive parents. We do not limit testimony about domestic violence or child abuse simply because there is a large body of evidence which shows that false accusations of domestic violence are a major problem in child custody cases.
There are children who have been alienated from one parent as a result of the actions of the other parent. These children need help.
Read Hunter's full letter here.
To learn more about Parental Alienation, as well as Fathers & Families' Campaign to Ask DSM to Include Parental Alienation in Upcoming Edition, click here.
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