Hold Family Courts Accountable

…is a psychic injury, not a mental illness.

Legal Abuse Syndrome (LAS), a condition proposed by marriage and family therapist Karin P. Huffer, whose books on the subject of post-traumatic stress stemming from court-mediated violations are   Overcoming the Devastation of Legal Abuse Syndrome(1995) and Legal Abuse Syndrome: 8 Steps for Avoiding the Traumatic Stress Caused by the Justice System(2013).

“Develops in individuals assaulted by ethical violations, legal abuses, betrayals, and fraud” and that’s exacerbated by “abuse of power and authority and a profound lack of accountability in our courts.” ~  Karin P. Huffer

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Never doubt why so many are working so hard to ‪#‎fixfamilycourts‬ Every parent starts out equal but does not remain that way in the So-called family courts.

Once you enter that court you feel nothing but attacked. Your life and decisions are no longer your own. Your children are stripped from the life you thought you were protected to live. People in the family court process step in between you and your child regardless of whether you are for or not.

Some like Chris are left with no hope of ever recovering. What do you do when the court you thought would protect you and your child from vicious attacks on your fundamental rights fails you? Where do you turn when you cannot afford justice and when there is no hope for it?

Let’s make 2016 the year of ‪#‎noexcuses‬ and restore justice and protection in every parent and child’s life. Let’s make 2016 the year of no more lost lives and ‪#‎fizfamilycourts‬ once and for all! ‪#‎neverfear‬‪#‎neverforget‬

Thomas Fidler  —  December 29, 2015 at 10:36pm · Funny River, AK · 

Exactly two years ago today Chris Mackney took his own life after enduring the horrors of family court as long as he was able.  The ex-wife (Dina Mackney) of Ch… See More

Bullied to Death:  Chris Mackney’s Kafkaesque Divorce There is no one way or no best way to tell the story of a man driven by others to…Read More

How Do You Tell This Story?

There is no one way or no best way to tell the story of a man driven by others to take his life. I know, because I have been trying to explain to state leaders, media, and professionals how this is happening to good people who trust our legal system to work to protect them and their children. Challenging doesn’t even touch it. Author Mike Volpe…Read More

Where is the LOVE? …where on Earth.. ….not in Family Court or the hearts of those within the CPS, CYFS, SS. CAS or any other child…Read More

Gary Treistman explains how the Family Court System separated his daughter from him.

Listen to the TRUTH about Family Courts

“The Smoking Gun” …Read More

Public Revolt Against Child Abuse Inaction

76. Father’s Open Letter To The Family Courts.

Owen Lucas films his open letter to the court admitting that he is in contempt of court for doing so.

He tells us of his grief and impotence in the face of the family court system.

Owen speaks for so many fathers who find themselves in the palm of ex-partners colluding with a system that in many cases, strips fathers of their homes, their children and their dignity – and often their jobs and financial stability too.

Mothers are given legal aid and fathers are not unless there is already proven child abuse.

In cases where abuse is suspected or even confirmed, a father has no clout to impact the family court system in many cases.

NB. If you know a child is being abused, ensure that a. you take photographs b. you film them speaking of the events and c. you inform the police without delay. These three steps may well be the difference between whether you become alienated from, or the main caregiver to your child/children.

Open Letter to Family Courts  —   YOUTUBE.COM

Stand Up For Zoraya

The Cause “Stand Up For Zoraya” celebrates the love fathers have for their daughters, inspiring them to embrace the important role they hold in their daughters’ lives and to provide the love, nurture, and emotional support that only they can give. Every once in a while I feel like this blog was written by someone else, maybe a long lost friend,…Read More

Yesterday I gazed out the window watching fireworks and was really missing my angel but I cannot call her because I am scared of her mom’s false allegations and lies, she doesn’t call me and knowing she is…Read More

WLYB……I have tried to educate this board of 4 Florida Judges (Chief Judge Bertila Soto-11th Jud. Cir. FL, Judge Garber-3rd DCA FL,…Read More

 · Courts must work toward a shared parenting norm – Miami Herald  

While it is true our family courts must do more to move toward shared parenting whenever there is a divorce or separation in a family, an old saying…

CHILDRENSRIGHTSFLORIDA.WORDPRESS.COM

Family Courts Deny Fit Parent Visitation – Custody

July 16, 2015 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization This article isn’t new, but…Read More

Studies Show Judicial Bias Against Dads

I write about it because it’s too important not to. The subject is judicial bias in family courts. Now, we’re frequently told that there is no judicial bias on the part…

My opinion on the origin of mental illness is controversial to many in my profession. I maintain that emotional disturbances are…Read More

Preponderance of Evidence and Mental Health Disorders

If You Seek a Bio-chemical Cause for Mental Health Disorders, You will become the “Little Train that Couldn’t” By Linda J. Gottlieb, LMFT, LCSW-r My opinion on the origin of mental illness is controversial to many in my profession. I maintain that emotional disturbances are situationally and not bio-chemically caused. But this position did not…

Letter sent to David Inguanzo on December 24th, 2008. October 5th, 2008 – After spending a “family” day out (Mom, Dad, my son David, and…Read More

#StandupforZoraya

– October 5th, 2008 – 

Judge Tears Down House of God

NBC 6 South Florida

Overtown church and neighboring crack house to be destroyed. ~ By Todd Wright | Email …

Judge Valerie Manno Schurr appointed Mark Meland as a receiver for a company after finding it in “default” for failing to turn over…Read More

South Florida Lawyers: Can Someone Explain This?

Judge Valerie Manno Schurr appointed Mark Meland as a receiver for a company after finding it in “default” for failing to turn over financial records to South Florida power broker Chris Korge, who is represented by Kendall Coffey. Huh? Was the “default” a discovery sanction?  Did the Judge strike the defendant’s pleadings?  Is that what the…Read More

“Anyone who has ever worked in a legal aid office or law library has met people whose lives have come unhinged after a bad contact with the…Read More

Courthouse Violations and PTSD:

What Is “Legal Abuse Syndrome”?

This is the first post on this blog to introduce Legal Abuse Syndrome (LAS), a condition proposed by marriage and family therapist Karin P. Huffer, whose books on the subject of post-traumatic stress stemming from court-mediated violations are Overcoming the Devastation of Legal Abuse Syndrome (1995) and Legal Abuse Syndrome: 8 Steps for Avoiding…Read More

Across the country women, children, AND MEN are becoming the victims of judges and the court system. It is time that we take a stand, and…Read More

Re-abusing children in court |Stop Abuse Campaign

Judges re-abuse children worse than abusers

When someone hurts us and/or our children, our first reaction is to protect ourselves or to call the police.  We think that as victims that the authorities should be there to help us; that as innocent victims the police, and court system should there for the best interest of the…Read More

The death of Christopher Mackney and his suicide note: 

“First Amendment Rights from Beyond the Grave: Defense of a Suicide’s Publication of His Final Words by the Randazza Legal Group.”

The circumstances that conduced to Mr. Mackney’s taking his life are chronicled in a forthcoming book by investigative journalist Michael Volpe, which is titled, Bullied to Death: The Chris Mackney Story.

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No individual is completely free.

 

Both legally and socially, society imposes a multitude of restrictive “shoulds” on its individual members. The “shoulds”, developed over a long period of time, serve as a major vehicle for maintaining order. While they evolve and change, and sometimes allow for limited individual variation, they represent a powerful and ever-present influence on behavior.

One of the ways in which the “shoulds” function is by defining social roles — the what and the how of everyday but important behaviors, like being a spouse, parent, child, employee or neighbor. It has also been society’s practice, however, to further many roles by gender — a spouse is either a husband or wife; a parent, either a father or a mother; a child, either a son or a daughter — and to require particular and different kinds of behaviors, thoughts and feelings from the males and females occupying these roles.

We have heard in some detail from the women’s movement how such sex-stereotyping has limited the potential of women. More recently, men have become increasingly aware that they too are assigned limiting roles which they are expected to fulfill regardless of their individual abilities, interests, physical/emotional constitutions or needs. Men have few or no effective choices in many critical areas of life. They face injustices under the law. And typically they have been handicapped by socially defined “shoulds” in expressing themselves in other than stereotypical ways.

Society has taught us, for example, that a “real” man is strong… courageous… knowledgeable… disciplined… level headed… competitive… successful… in control …unemotional… heterosexual… sexually aggressive… sexually competent… and silent-suffering. A man is also dependent on women for satisfying relationships, for child rearing and for routine home and health maintenance like housekeeping and cooking. All of this and more, society has taught us, constitutes a man’s role privilege or burden as the case may be.

Many men, however, are no longer comfortable with the traditional male role. Emotionally adrift, they are searching for a new identity; yet they find few viable alternatives to traditional masculine behavior (and even these few are narrow and limiting).

The Crisis of Fatherhood | Psychology Today

Some would argue that America is rapidly becoming a fatherless society, or perhaps more accurately, an absentee father society. The importance and influence of fathers in families has been in significant decline since the Industrial Revolution and is now reaching critical proportions. The near-total absence of male role models has ripped a hole the size of half the population in many urban areas. For example, in Baltimore, only 38 percent of families have two parents, and in St. Louis the portion is 40 percent.

Across time and cultures, fathers have always been considered essential—and not just for their sperm. Indeed, no known society ever thought of fathers as potentially unnecessary.Marriage and the nuclear family—mother, father, and children—are the most universal social institutions in existence. In no society has the birth of children out of wedlock been the cultural norm. To the contrary, concern for the legitimacy of children is nearly universal.

As Alexander Mitscherlich argues in Society Without A Father(link is external), there has been a “progressive loss of the father’s authority and diminution of his power in the family and over the family.”

“If present trends continue, writes David Popenoe (link is external), a professor of sociology at Rutgers University, “the percentage of American children living apart from their biological fathers will reach 50% by the next century.” He argues “this massive erosion of fatherhood contributes mightily to many of the major social problems of our time…Fatherless children have a risk factor of two to three times that of fathered children for a wide range of negative outcomes, including dropping out of high school, giving birth as a teenager and becoming a juvenile delinquent.”

According to David Blankenhorn, author of Fatherless America,(link is external) chair of the National Fatherhood Initiative and founder/president of the Institute for American Values, organization, and research conducted by Popenoe and scores of other researchers:

• Approximately 30% of all American children are born into single-parent homes, and for the black community, that figure is 68%;
• Fatherless children are at a dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness, suicide, poor educational performance, teen pregnancy, and criminality, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics.
• Over half of all children living with a single mother are living in poverty, a rate 5 to 6 times that of kids living with both parents;
• Child abuse is significantly more likely to occur in single parent homes than in intact families;
• 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census;
• 72% of adolescent murderers grew up without fathers. 60% of America’s rapists grew up the same way according to a study by D. Cornell (et al.), in Behavioral Sciences and the Law;
• 63% of 1500 CEOs and human resource directors said it was not reasonable for a father to take a leave after the birth of a child;
• 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes according to the National Principals Association Report on the State of High Schools;
• 80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes according to a report in Criminal Justice & Behavior;
• In single-mother families in the U.S. about 66% of young children live in poverty;
• 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes;
• Children from low-income, two-parent families outperform students from high-income, single-parent homes. Almost twice as many high achievers come from two-parent homes as one-parent homes according to a study by the Charles F. Kettering Foundation.
• 85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes according to a study by the Center for Disease Control;
• Of all violent crimes against women committed by intimates about 65% were committed by either boy-friends or ex-husbands, compared with 9 % by husbands;
• Girls living with non-natal fathers (boyfriends and stepfathers) are at higher risk for sexual abuse than girls living with natal fathers;
• Daughters of single mothers are 53% more likely to marry as teenagers, 111% more likely to have children as teenagers, 164% more likely to have a premarital birth and 92% more likely to dissolve their own marriages.
• A large survey conducted in the late 1980s found that about 20% of divorced fathers had not seen his children in the past year, and that fewer than 50% saw their children more than a few times a year.
• Juvenile crime, the majority of which is committed by males, has increased six-fold since 1992;
• In a longitudinal study of 1,197 fourth-grade students, researchers observed “greater levels of aggression in boys from mother-only households than from boys in mother-father households,” according to a study published in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology.
• The Scholastic Aptitude Test scores have declined more than 70 points in the past two decades; children in single-parent families tend to score lower on standardized tests and to receive lower grades in school according to a Congressional Research Service Report.

Blankenhorn argues that America is facing not just the loss of fathers, but also the erosion of the ideal of fatherhood. Few people doubt the fundamental importance of mothers, Popenoe comments, but increasingly the question of whether fathers are really necessary is being raised and said by many to be a merely a social role that others-mothers, partners, stepfathers, uncles and aunts, and grandparents can play.