The high price of family court

High costs of family courts

The I-Team found one example out of Northern California in which an 11-year-old boy, Coby, was the center of a custody dispute. His mother was ordered to pay $2,200 upfront to a custody evaluator. In the ruling, the judge wrote, “If mother does not pay the fees … primary custody shall be changed.”

 The mother did not come up with the money and she lost custody. She told the I-Team she didn’t have the money and the boy’s father had missed child support payments. 

 

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The I-Team confirmed that low income families, even those with documented conflict, are not ordered to get the custody evaluations because there is nobody to pay for it. The reports are only used for families with financial means.

 

 

“The church can be flexible, except with women.”

Interesting op-ed in the New York Times -

The Nuns’ Story

Nuns were second-class citizens then and — 40 years after feminism utterly changed America — they still are. The matter of women as priests is closed, a forbidden topic.

In 2004, the cardinal who would become Pope Benedict XVI wrote a Vatican document urging women to be submissive partners, resisting any adversarial roles with men and cultivating “feminine values” like “listening, welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise and waiting.”

The Global Gender Gap

The 2009 Global Gender Gap is now available online.

The US ranks 31. While Iceland ranks #1, no country has attained equality. We still have a lot of work ahead of us…

 

Where is the outrage?

Police determine teen missing since 1954 was slain

Apparently killing women is not a new passtime - not that I believed it was. Sadly, the awareness of violence against women just started in the 70s, and much of it occurred in the 90s. Not all countries even have laws against domestic violence, sexual assault, or human trafficking – we’re still living in the dark ages – as women, that is. An author once wrote that during the time of Englightenment as men were making advances, thousands of women were being killed as witches. Today, it hasn’t changed much. Violence against women prevents human potential, affecting the lives of women, young girls, families and entire communities. We cannot advance under these conditions.

“Now that I know, it isn’t so much that she died, but the horrible death,” she said.

Boulder County Sheriff’s Detective Steve Ainsworth, the lead investigator in the case, said Howard died of blunt-force trauma. She couldn’t be identified because her body was found a week after she was killed, and animals had gotten to her face and fingers.

At the time, the mystery made headlines across Colorado, and Boulder residents raised enough money to buy her a gravestone, which read “Jane Doe — April 1954 — Age About 20 Years.”

Boulder County sheriff’s officials have credited historian Silvia Pettem with encouraging them to renew efforts to identify Jane Doe. Pettem became interested in the woman and her story after visiting the cemetery in the 1990s and writing the book “Someone’s Daughter, In Search of Justice for Jane Doe.”

All these articles scattered about in newspapers across the globe paint an overall picture:  An estimated 1.5 to 3 million women are killed every year. That’s a Holocaust every 3 years. This is not the information age for women – this is the dark ages where brutal violence and harmful stereotypes are undermining our progress.

Where is the outrage? Where is the accountablity? the awareness? the concern? …

Where is the outrage?

Another gruesome killer preys on women – and is virtually ignored by the police…

Neighbor says police knew about rapist’s house

The police in Cleveland were notified repeatedly about violence in the house of a convicted rapist where the decomposed bodies of six women were found last week, a neighbor said Monday.

The neighbor of the man, who was arrested Saturday night after the bodies were found, said the police had done little, despite the calls.

Fawcett Bess, 57, the owner of Bess Chicken and Pizza, across the street from the house, said that about two weeks ago, he found the man, Anthony Sowell, in the bushes alongside Mr. Sowell’s house naked and standing over a woman who was bloodied, beaten and also naked. Mr. Bess called 911, he said, and an ambulance soon took the woman away. But the police showed up two hours later and never interviewed him, he said.

“Nobody did anything because she is a girl walking around the streets,” Mr. Bess said. He said he did not know what had happened to the woman, or if the police had followed up on the matter.

Mr. Bess said that a month earlier, he had been approached by another woman who showed him bruises and blood on her neck that she claimed were from an attack by Mr. Sowell. The woman told Mr. Bess that the police had taken a report but appeared to do little investigating, he said.

“If people had come to tell us about this guy’s history, then maybe we would have paid more attention,” he said.

and

Ms. Anderson said the Sowell case raised questions that were also raised in the case of Jaycee Dugard, the young California girl who was kidnapped and held for 18 years. The man charged with kidnapping her, Phillip Garrido, was also a convicted sex offender. The police visited him regularly to confirm his whereabouts.

“As a society, we’re still debating where the acceptable line is between an offender’s rights and privacy versus public safety,” Ms. Anderson said.

I’m not really sure we’ve come to terms with victims’ rights. They still struggle for justice. Meanwhile, perps get custody rights, can wed (including women from overseas – and get them visas), work, get an education, etc. etc. etc.

“We have a lot of women of color who disappeared and who police just never even bothered to look for,” Ms. Martin said.

Women, and particularly women of color, have a human right – to safety, to protection, to dignity.

Until there is outrage, these injustices will continue.

Where is the outrage?

Source: AllAfrica.com

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Human Rights Watch (Washington, DC)

Guinea: September 28 Massacre Was Premeditated – in-Depth Investigation Also Documents Widespread Rape

27 October 2009

excerpt:

Human Rights Watch researchers interviewed 27 victims of sexual violence, the majority of whom were raped by more than one person. Witnesses described seeing at least four women murdered by members of the Presidential Guard after being raped, including women who were shot or bayoneted in the vagina. Some victims were penetrated with gun barrels, shoes, and wooden sticks.

WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?!  Jeez, this is disgusting. Evil would not even be sufficient to describe it. THEY’RE MUTILATING AND TORTURING WOMEN – IN THEIR VAGINAS – and nobody’s outraged?!? 

“Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out
the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon
them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either
words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by
the endurance of those whom they oppress.” — Frederick Douglass

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere –Martin Luther King

 

 

The Mismeasure of Woman

Great op-ed in the New York Times in regard to measuring the status of women in light of the recent Shriver Report. Here’s an excerpt on a topic that really riles me up:

The mismeasure of woman

…The Internet gave everyone a soapbox. The louder, the more offensive, the better.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that exactly at this moment, women began losing ground — and not just in measurable ways, like how many women make partner or get jobs as chief executives.

I’m referring to how we are perceived. The conversation online about women, as about so many other topics, degenerated from silly and snarky to just plain ugly — and it seeped into the mainstream.

Recently, before a TV appearance, I did an Internet search on one of the interviewers so I could learn more about her — and got a full page of results about her breasts.

This was hardly an isolated incident. Whether it’s Keith Olbermann of MSNBC calling Michelle Malkin, the conservative blogger, “a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it,” or Glenn Beck of Fox News suggesting that “ugly women” are probably “progressive as well,” women these days are portrayed as either witches or bimbos, with pretty much no alternatives in between.

I’ve been puzzled by these screeds, which are so at odds with the real achievements documented in the Shriver Report and elsewhere. And then it struck me: Part of the reason we’ve lost our way, part of the reason my generation became complacent, is that many of us have been defining progress for women too narrowly. We’ve focused primarily on numbers at the expense of attitudes.

I’ve “boycotted” radio stations for their lewd comments on breasts, been offended by commercials in their stereotypes of women, been outraged by movies for their sexual exploitation, and, more recently, been left incredulous at TV stations’ bashing of women.  It’s perfectly okay to call women hos, whores, skanks, baby mamas, bitches, etc. on TV. Why is this okay?! Moreover, it’s leeked into print media. My local paper recently referred to women as #@%#$#. WTF is up with that? It’s a newspaper, not a forum for female hatred. Attitudes need to change…and we all know how long that takes. So it’s time to get to work – for the sake of future generations if not our own.

BELIEVE WOMEN

When I attended John Jay College’s femicide conference last year, the presenters said we could prevent femicides by responding to women’s fear or threat levels. Great, I thought, now how do we get people to believe them?

Women’s claims of abuse and fear are often disbelieved or worse, perceived as acts of vengeance towards their partners.

Here’s one of many articles on a woman’s plea for protection. They were ignored. The result? She was trapped inside a geographical prison, disbelieved, forced to go into counseling with her aggressor, killed (along with her mother)…

Three people are now dead. The ex-husband killed himself and left their 2-year-old orphaned.

These senseless deaths could have been prevented.

Woman wanted to flee with son before apparent murder-suicide

A Peoria mother whose body was found Friday had recently tried to leave Arizona after receiving threats from her apparent slayer, but a judge denied her request, court records show. Two weeks before she was killed, Dawn Axsom pleaded with Judge Jose Padilla of Maricopa County Superior Court to let her leave Arizona with her son because she feared Gabriel Schwartz, the toddler’s father, would harm her or their boy. Padilla denied the 26-year-old’s request and ordered the pair to attend parental counseling together. Axsom’s body was found in her Peoria residence Friday. Police also found the bodies of Schwartz, 28, and Lisa Braden, 56, Axsom’s mother. Schwartz is suspected of shooting and killing both women before turning the gun on himself, Peoria police spokesman Mike Tellef said Monday. Tellef said the violence likely began in the downstairs kitchen, where Schwartz shot Braden. Then, Schwartz went upstairs, shooting Axsom in the master bathroom and killing himself in a bedroom. Police discovered the grisly scene at about 10 a.m. Friday after Axsom didn’t show up for work and a friend and the friend’s mother went to the home, located in the 7400 block of West Sierra Street, to check on her. When the friend knocked on the door, she heard Axsom and Schwartz’s nearly 2-year-old boy crying upstairs. The woman called police, who arrived and found the child unharmed inside his crib. “When the officer took the baby outside, he covered (the child’s) eyes so he couldn’t see anything,” Tellef said, recounting the scene. Friends and co-workers who gathered outside Axsom’s residence Friday said she was having ongoing custody problems with Schwartz and expressed frustration that the court system wouldn’t let her leave Arizona when she knew Schwartz might harm her. Court records show Padilla granted Axsom a protective order against Schwartz four days before the Oct. 6 hearing where he ordered her to attend parental counseling with him and denied her request to relocate to Maryland with the pair’s son. Axsom’s son was placed into the custody of state Child Protective Services.

Most states fail to protect children’s rights

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, approximately 900,000 children are determined to have been abused and neglected each year. Most of them will go through court proceedings that will determine their lives and futures. Yet while the state and the allegedly abusive or neglectful parent stands in court with an attorney by their side, the child often stands alone and silent, or is excluded entirely from these critical hearings.

This Second Edition of our groundbreaking report evaluates whether and how each state’s laws provide for the legal representation of abused and neglected children. 

Since the First Edition was published in 2007, 33% of states have adopted new legislation in the right to counsel arena.

In addition, many states have engaged in valiant efforts towards legislative reform, litigation, and other advocacy to ensure that these children’s voices are heard and their rights protected in court. The report also indicates that there are many states who have earned failing or near-failing grades that have a long distance to go in improving their representation of children. 

This report aims to help present a snapshot of where we are as a nation in the fight to provide counsel to these most vulnerable of our citizens at one of the most frightening and threatening moments in their lives. We hope to promote public awareness of the movement towards right to counsel in this country, and to catalyze state and national legislative reform. 

Source: First Star

Read the Report here: A Children’s Right to Counsel

“Nice guy” kills wife

Jeez, they just never stop, do they?

‘Well-liked Palm Beach County employee kills wife:  “She was cheating on me. I caught her and now it’s done.”

This article begins with the headline “well-liked” county employee shoots cheating wife. Well-liked? How many murderers get such nice treatment from the media? Only if they’re white, middle class and male (am I missing any other characteristics?) The wife, who was just shot dead by this killer in front of their 9-year-old daughter, is branded a cheater. Do they have proof of that? 

And custody of the child? Yeah, she goes to the killer’s parents. They did such a good job raising him, didn’t they? Killer’s determine custody. Jailed convicts determine custody. They kill their wives and get custody of their children. Where is the justice?