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	Rex Ballard - Director of Electronic Distribution
	http://cnj.digex.net/~rballard

> On Wed, 27 Mar 1996 BGreene174@aol.com wrote:
> > In a message dated 96-03-25 01:10:52 EST, fathers@SOHO.IOS.COM (fathers)
> > writes:
> > >
> > >Who is damaged the most?  11,824 hospitalized children who might have had
> > >a broken arm or 272 times as many who suffered the mental trauma of being
> > >separated from their parents, or the 180 times as many who suffered this
> > >trauma under *unsubstantiated* charges?
> >
> > First off, these children weren't hospitalized for a broken arm, that rarely
> > calls for in hopital stay - shaken baby syndrom, fractured skulls, and
> > damaged spleen and kidneys are what you get hospitalized for as a child.

You didn't answer the question asked!  11,824 children hospitalized for
such severe abuse is important, but more children are hospitalized for
playground incidents, automobile accidents, and other accidents.  I don't
hear a cry for the abolition of automobiles, the closing of public
playgrounds, or the removal of toxic chemicals from grocery store shelves.
Yet we have an entire branch of the federal, state, and local government
commited to destroying families at the first hint of abuse of mothers or
children by a father.  My ex-wife had 25 incident reports on file through
social services (against my wishes), four trips to psychiatric hospitals,
and she met her new husband in the lock-up ward of a psychiatric hospital.

I was told that if I would pay social services $20,000, they would conduct
a prelminary investigation.  They told me to remortgage my house, and told
me to forget it when I told them I didn't own a house.

To deprive me of my parental rights took nothing more than a warning that
if the children continued to misbehave after visitation, I would not be
allowed to see them.  Horrors, they had fun, and I was willing and able to
listen to everything they wanted to say for 16 hours.  For this I was
refused visitation.

> > Most CPS investigations do not involve removal of the child. Some states do
> > remove very early and that IS erring on the side of knee-jerk. Most do not
> > remove without investigation, and they sometimes err on the side of caution,
> > which also has consequences.

In many cases, the "Investigation" amounts to little more than a few phone
calls to teachers or councillors who have been "primed" by the mother.
The mother will spend months convincing certain influencial people of this
type, that the father is abusing the children.  A single call to the abuse
hot-line and the man is deprived of family, and up to 1/4 million
in property and income, on evidence that wouldn't be admissible in
small-claims court.

> > So where would you come down? Leave all
> > children at risk of serious injury during prolonged legal proceedings, or
> > removal?

I would expect at least the same level of investigation that a police
officer would make prior to aressting a suspected felon.  He would have to
provide enough court-admissible evidence to justify survellance, search
warrents, and seizure orders.  If they want to remove the father from the
home for domestic abuse, they should be prepared to charge him with felony
aggrevated assault at the moment they intervene.

> > If the child's life is in the balance (and some are, some aren't), I
> > will go with the mental anguish, which, if terribly painful, isn't
> > life-threatening, than death any day.

If someone reports repeated incedents of aggrevated assault (domestic
violence), a few simple examinations and the same type of survellance that
would be used in investigating a dope-dealer would yield definitive
results within a week.  Truly abusive men are usually alcoholics and/or
drug addicts and will probably be most abusive around 3:00 A.M. on
Saturday or Sunday night after a night of "partying".

There is an equally high probability that BOTH parents will be intoxicated
and than NEITHER parent should be taking care of children.  The mother
should not be warned that she will be under survellance.  It may even turn
out that she is the drunk and is afraid that he will leave her and take
the kids with him to protect the children from the abusive lush.

> This would be a valid point if:
> 1) Child deaths decreased. The didn't -- they increased.  So where are
> 'lives being saved'?  Where is the benefit?

In many cases, abusive mothers with drug and alchohol problems were able
to avoid losing their children by making a preemptive strike.  Often,
while drunk, they would get their husband's drunk (not their usual
pattern), pick a fight with him - using verbal abuse, and even scratching,
kicking or hitting in the groin, and abdomen (since men cover everything
but their hands and faces, all she has to do is pick her spots carefully.

Eventually, with enough intoxication and enough provocation, after enough repeat
episodes, he will respond physically.  He may grab her harm to keep her
from hitting him in the groin with the frying pan again.  He may hit her
back after she has hit im in the back of the head with a rolling pin or a
fire-iron.  He may even give her a black eye when she tickles him so
suddenly and with such unrelenting intensity that he just swings the wrong
way.  She might even apologize for tickling him so hard, but she will be
in the social worker's office the next morning.  Possibly after visiting a
minister, church, or tharapist.

> 2) The mental anguish of separating children from parents were not
> "terriby painful".  It is terribly painful -- to the child, to the
> parents, and to the taxpayer who evidently pays $285 Billion per year for
> that pleasure.  Where is the benefit?

The impact of being removed, especially from the wrong parent, through
divorce, is actually MORE traumatic than if the parent had actually died.
To make matters worse, visitation gives the child the opportunity to
expericence the joy of love, and the trauma of returning to the abusive
parent, on a weekly, semimonthly, or monthly basis.  After a saturday and
a sunday afternoon in heaven, they return to a fortnight of hell.

> 3) The amount of actual child abuse had decreased.  By all arguments put
> forth here 'substantiated' child abuse increased 2.65x since the Mondale
> Act.  Where is the benefit?

The Mondale act did improve the reporting.  More actual abuses that had
previously been tolerated were actually being reported.  More interesting
to note, however was the number of men prosecuted for aggrevated assault
against those removed from their homes without "due process".

If the assault charges were filed, and the judge could make complance with
the UDM guidelines a condition of probation, all child support orders
would be 100% enforcable.  Instead, the true woman-beaters are allowed to
roam unfettered, often to choose another victim, while honest,
responsible, loving fathers are punished for crimes they never committed
under divorce laws designed to circumvent the constitution.

> Would it have increased 3 fold instead
> WITHOUT the $285 Billion expenditure?  Even so where is the benefit?

In other words, after spending $285 Billion on a system designed to
circumvent the constitution, they are now asking the very victims of this
program (remember, most true "beaters" ultimately end up in jail, disabled
or dead within a short period anyway, what's left are the innocents).

> This is 152,000 children at the *outside* who were protected from
> 'abuse', which is $28.5 Million per protected child.  Where is the
> cost/benefit?

You forgot the 3 million children preemptively taken from their fathers
under restraining orders and other measures taken to support the intent of
the original Mondale act.  That averages to about $100,000/child.  About
the equivalent of child support for the child of a man EARNING
$36,000/year.

> > I know of no state or protectorate that does not require an emergency court
> > hearing within 72 hours of removal of a child from his/her custodian.
> > While a
> > removal is devastating to all involved, there is due process.

There are no prior warrents required, there are no rules of evidence for
"probable cause", and there are no public defenders to protect the rights
of the custodian, and there is no requirement to state the "exact nature
of the charges" (all evidence, witnesses, warrents, police reports...
available to the defence attorney PRIOR to the equivalent of arraignment.

In other words a drug pusher or a murderer have more rights than a man
accused of domestic violence by a woman who stands to gain as much as 1/4
million in child support over 20 years.  She will be aided by an attorney
provided at her husband's expense (self incrimination).

> And it was posted here that 94% of these orders are signed by the judge.
> That is called "rubber stamping".  How much scrutiny or protection is
> provided to the family if their effective "conviction rate" is 94%?

The judge is required to use higher standards of evidence to search the
house of a previously convicted felon, than is required to remove a father
from his own house.

> > >And if this program is protecting children, then why is the number
> > >hospitalized *increasing*?  If the number were decreasing you could claim
> > >some benefit from this $285 Billion expenditure -- but with it
> > >increasing, how can the benefit be quantified?

Prior to the Mondale act, a woman had to plan her divorce very carefully.
She had to plan out where she would live until the logistics were settled.
She would be advised by her attorney to wait until the most opportune
time.  Her parents paid for the attorney and often provided temporary
housing, child-care, and support.  The church or synogogue would provide
various levels of financial, emotional, spiritual, and social support.

After the Mondale act, addicted mothers who didn't want to lose the old
man's money would turn him in and have the shariff throw him out.  Within
hours, her new man, waiting in the wings for a few weeks, moves in to
rent-free housing in exchange for drugs and baby-sitting.  His experience
in babysitting?  He took care of his little brother...even helped him get
into the local street-gang.

> > First off, all murder rates have risen. Child abuse numbers increase for
> > several reasons, the first and most impactful to my mind is uncovering the
> > secrecy which has surrounded the problem for centuries - until we looked, of
> > course we didn't find. The second is our rising expectations of what children
> > have a right to. If we draw the line at bruises, that is a much stricter
> > standard than we have endorsed in the past.

The "flower children" are now almost 50, the SDS and Weathermen are 45,
the speed-freaks of the 1970s are 40, the Coke-Heads of the 1980's are 35,
the Crack-heads are 30, the ICE & XTC generation is 25, and the latest
generation of parents are into "meth" and "poppers".  The current teens
are into "Dip" (cigarettes dipped in formaldahyde or terpentine).

Sone of side effects of unsupervised parenting combined with actions
without consequences (divorce), and rewards for irresponsibility
(child-support for mom and boyfriend).

> Of course all murder rates have risen.  As all crime rates, and as the
> incarceration rate has quadrupled.

Of course, now we put men in jail for drinking while driving (but rarely
do we incarcerate mothers for the same crime).  We put men in jail for
non-payment of child-support.  We put men in jail for changing their
children's diapers and giving their children baths.  We train men to
fight, protect, defend, and go to war, and don't bother teaching the basic
dynamics of relationships.

We have glamorized violence with Rambo, Power Rangers, James Bond, Chuck
Norris, and an entire genre' of "good killers" while asexualizing romance,
love, and inimacy and promoting sexuality and love as mutually exclusive
(name one XXX rated movie since "Last Tango in Paris" that included love,
sex, inimacy, relationship, and commitment.

Through censorship, we have created a society based on violence,
prostitution, selfishness, and irresponsibility.  Eventually, to preserve
the integrety of feminism, we will have to kill male children at birth, or
castrate them shortly after milking them for their sperm prior to the
final stages of puberty.  There will be no male culture to pass on the
values of honor, valor, integrety, ethics, the Golden Rule, or even value
of self-discipline.

Even the most philosophical martial arts forms, with foundations in
fundamentalist Buhddism, have been prostituted by American Males, as "kill
with your hands", get drugs by and babes being a ninja.

> Nothing less would be expected to result from the wholesale removal of
> children from their fathers, who can and do protect them. With 3.2 million
> child abuse reports per year, how many result in the removal from parents
> who care for their children, and who thus rightly discipline them, but are
> called 'abused' by a non-caring bureaucrat or judge?

We have a system that promotes the existence and maintenence of
single-parent families.  We have gone from the workable "extended family"
to the "Nuclear" two parent family invented in 1950, to the "Gay 90's"
single parent family, with optional recreational lover (male or female).

Raising children reqires an entire support network.  It requires two
committed parents - whose entire lives are on the line (not a
live-in-lover who gets free rent for babysitting a few hours/day).  They
could be Gay, Streight, Lesbian, lovers or platonic, but they need to make
the same level of commitment that was made by the patriarchs of the
1900's.  In other words, the original parents should be encouraged to stay
together and do whatever it takes to make that work.  This would be a
radical departure from traditional therapy, couple's counciling, and
divorce law.

If there is truly an unresolvable breakdown, it should be based on the
assumtion that BOTH parents are at FAULT (don't call it no-fault).  The
couple should bring all of their grievances to the public record (creating
a major incentive for avoiding divorce at all possible costs).

The laws should determine custody by mandatory hearing (no "if you want
them you have to fight for them") based on written evidence alone (let's
avoid the farce of having parents, friends, siblings, ministers, neighors,
friends, employers... all testifying how WONDERFUL each parent is.   The
only evidence that is relevant is evidence AGAINST each parent.  The
fights in high school, the trips to psych wards, the medical, legal, and
scholastic records - all easily provided by social services without the
need of a lawyer.  Yhis is also when the courts "unseal" the records of
offenses committed by the parents while they were minors.  Each parent
could prepare a written statement of grevances and concerns which would
ether be subtanitated or refuted by the other records.

Finally, after reviewing the evidence, the arbitrator would reccomend
that one parent be named the custodial guardian and the other would be
secondary guardian.  The custodial guardian would be expected to make
whatever arrangements necessary within short time (1-2 years) to be fully
self-sufficient.  The Secondary would take custody if the primary was not
able to be fully self-sufficent within that time.  For the short duration,
basic support - equal to the benefits paid by welfare or the amount
allowed by the "standard deduction" (whichever is less) would be required
from the secondary parent.  All support beyond this amount would be
considered voluntary contributions, tax deductible, and not subject to
any form of legal enforcement.

At the end of the transition period, the court would review the primary
custodian's situation, and the secondary custodian's situation.  If the
primary custodian is not self-sufficient, the secondary custodian would
become the primary and the primary would become the secondary.

If, by the end of the third period, neither parent had successfully
created an environment that was self-supporting, the parents would be
given the choice of reconciliation, or loss of the children to adoptive
parents.

Any step-parent, live-in, or "lover" would have to make a legally binding
commitment to the continuing support of the children.  If they do so, this
would be considered a legitimate for of self-supporting structure.

Once the Primary custodian established a self-supporting structure, the
secondary custodian would no longer be obligated to pay child-support.  At
this point, all support contributions would be voluntary.

Barring criminal conviction for a felony, Visitation would be assured for
as long as necessary and as often as possible.  The custodial parent would
have the incentive of voluntary contributions of cash, clothing, food, or
other benefits, to encourage generous visitation.  Eventually however,
it is predictable that "separation grief" will ultimately result if
vistation is less often than biweekly.

Finally, any decision made by the arbitrator is only enforcible by mutual
consent.  If either party choose not to abide by the arbitrator's
dicision, the contesting party can request a full hearing by a jury
consisting of an equal number of men and women.  The ruling, made by the
jury would have the full force of law, and would be subject to contempt of
court.

> > And lastly, the "industry" covers services to children and their families.
> > The new emphasis on permancey planning requires services to parents who are
> > identified as abusive, whether their children are in their custody or
> > not.

> > If
> > a child moves into foster care, services to the family to correct the
> > problem
> > are required, and required to be delivered without regard to income.

In other words, the father is required to enter therapy and discuss
matters of child abuse and felony activity which MUST BE REPORTED by
licenced tharapists, and CAN BE USED AGAINST YOU IN A COURT OF LAW.

I would like to point out that these tharapists are trained in a
theraputic technology based on deliberately antagonizing and agitating the
client and monitoring reactions of violence, agression, and intimidation.

In other words, this "tharapy" is the equivalant to the "rubber hose" and
"grilling under the hot lights" that has been ruled unconstitutional in
criminal law.  In some cases, tharapists are even allowed to require urine
screenings, allowed to use drugs or hypnosis, and are REQUIRED to violate
the privacy of the Doctor/Patient relationship.

> > >Would you aruge that the number of children hospitalized would have
> > >increased even more had it not been for this $285 Billion expenditure?  If
> > >so, then why?  And by how much?  Another 10,000?
> >
> > No, I would argue that more children would have lived in abusive situations
> > without help until they began acting out their pain in the criminal, juvenile
> > justice and mental health systems. Those that lived.

Many children endure incredible hardships and thrive.  Hundreds of those
children who survived the Nazi Death-Camps went on to become leaders and
extraordinary people.  Theodore Roosevelt had asthma and had to endure
incredibly traumatic medical treatments.  Many survivors of Polio,
Leukemia, Diabetes, and other related medical conditions must endure hours
of torture that is incredibly traumatic.  I have been through many medical
procedures myself.  Rather than being so terrible that they leave one
irresponsible and abusive felons, they leave these people with a much
higher sense of responsibility and serenity.

Conversely, children who grew up in suburbia, raised by mothers receiving
generous alamony payments, were often so hungry for love and acceptance
that they were the first to start smoking, the first to use drugs and
alcohol, and the first to have sex, often as young as 12 to 14 years old.
They were so desparate for the love of a man they would seduce their own
step-fathers.  Later, they would be made to feel such shame and guilt (by
their mothers - who would call their daughters whores) that they would
see that they were manipulated by both parents.  Young boys often
experience the their mother's hatred of men long after the father was
gone, or would lose a supportive committed father for an abusive
intimidating father.  The real acid-test, who meny children were legally
adopted by the men who married, or lived with, their mothers.

Being the child of divorced parents puts "Love and Marriage" in the same
category as the "tooth fairy", "Santa Clause", and "the Easter Bunny".
Being raised by an abusive step-parent after losing your original parent
to a divorce gives you a reality like "I'm Cinderella and there ain't no
prince charming".  For women, "Love and Sex" become things to be traded
for rent, cars, jewelry, clothes, and, if he's really rich, child-support.

For men, sex becomes the substitute for the love that was denied.  The
heart that was hardened to protect itself from a mother who hated his
natural father (and subconsiously the man-child of that father), cannot be
opened up to that kind of pain again.  The trust is only available on the
other side of sexual intimacy, when the daughter of a fatherless home is
feeling the maximum amount of guilt and shame.

Often, the jaded hearts of children of divorce now grown into men and
women who never learned unconditional love, unilateral commitment, or
total forgiveness, spend a few years triying to meet each other's needs
for love by having sex, making babies, and making each other wrong.
Eventually, the guilt, shame, distrust, fear, and anger result in another
broken home.

The woman will move on to another man, probably more abusive than the
first (it's easier to hate someone who is obviously abusive, you also get
more support from friends, family, and community).

> And would more children living in what you call "abusive situations" have
> put them in the care of parents who would have had the ability and the
> *desire* to discipline them, avoiding the collapse of the US educational
> system, the 77 point drop in SAT scores,

Our educational system is collapsing because we no longer have the
"science clubs", "rocket clubs", "radio clubs", boy-scouts, cub-scouts,
and all of the other youth oriented activities that happened after school,
with the support of committed fathers and mothers.  We have forced busing,
the top 10% of the population has put their children into private schools,
with private schools offering scholarships to the top students who can't
afford the tuition.  The superachievers and vundakinder are sucked out of
the public school system as fast as they can be identified.  The ones that
don't make it out are beaten into submission, seduced into conformity, or
become sociopaths.

> the quadrupling of the prison
> population, the tripling of the murder rate, the doubling of drug abuse?

Things that used to be "slap on the wrist" offenses are now felonies.  You
can be thrown in jail for getting 3 traffic tickets in less than 2 years.
Let's face it, prison is big business these days.  In Texas, they are
building jails to house prisoners from other states.  Texas builds their
prisons for "wetbacks" and has lower standards of quality of life.  In
most states, a Texas prison is considered "Cruel and unusual punisment".

> Where is the quantifiable benefit?

> > >If this program DID prevent an additional 10,000 children from being
> > >hospitalized **a big iffff**, then the cost/benefit is $285
> > >Billion/10,000 which is $28.5 Million per hospitalization prevented.
> > >
> > >Not a very effective use of tax dollars, huh?
> >
> > If it is your child, what would you pay to prevent a beating or rape? We
> > spend plenty of dollars on things that I would glady give up.

I pay $12,000/year to have my children beaten and abused by their mother
and her husband.  Unless I can come up with felony evidence, or $50,000
cash-in-hand (for openers) the state of Colorado would't even let me speak
in my own behalf.  I was asked if the settlement was onconiounable.  I had
been advised by my lawyer to not say anything detrimental about my wife
(it would bias the judge against me).

My son's grades have already started dropping, he's evasive on the
telephone, and openly defiant toward both parents.  He openly admits that
he hates his step-father (has since he started dating my wife).  He dated
a girl who left him for his best-friend (who took her to nicer places).

> After hearing the opinons of those CPS employees on this forum, the LAST
> thing we want for our children is somebody ELSE telling us what to do with
> them.

To a man who has spent 25 years preparing himself to be a responsible
husband and father only to have his wife emotionally castrate him then
turn him over to CPS as a child-abuser, and then have a social worker
demanding that he "confess his sins and repent" so that they can take away
his children legally, a CPS worker is similar to the Inquisitioner of the
Dark Ages.  Today we can do with chemistry what used to take thumbscrews
and iron-maidens.  Instead of burning the victim at the stake, we let him
suffer for 20-30 years before he dies of the AIDS he got from a hooker
after 10 years of living in a platonic marriage.  If he doesn't get "the
virus", he can go through drug withdrawals 20-30 times/year, or he can
just learn to enjoy the thought that his wife's husband is refusing to
have sex with her, beating her and the kids, and will die of a terminal
disease like Multiple Sclerosis.

> Particularly them, and particularly government.  We would not
> accept help from this government if offered, and would refuse to allow any
> of them to come close to our children.
>
> There is nothing they can do for children that a responsile father can't
> do much better.

Actually, they are better at teaching them how to drink, drug, shoot dope,
play three card monte, and hustle tricks.  All skills that are part of the
"core cirriculum" in the foster home system, the public education system,
and the juevenile detention centers.  The predicible future for most
of the children "Protected" by CPS.

> That might be a personal opinion -- but it is an opinion from fathers who
> care, who pay the taxes which fund this $285 Billion folly, and who are
> going to fix the problem.

To the government, Republicans and Democrats, we are just "Wallets".  We
pay twice the taxes, receive none of the benefits, and face the highest
risk of any segment of the population.

> > >Do you have specific information on this?  Only 2 states are known to us
> > >to have done this and they just implemented the laws in January of this
> > year.
> >
> > The William and Mary Law Review (1991, sorry, don't know what issue) has a
> > summary. The most frequent penalty is a misdemeanor similiar to harrassment
> > charges. In the southeast, the mean penalty is 500.00 and 30 days.
>
> Thank you for this quantification. If this is the mean, let's just assume
> for simplicity that the average, which is probably much higher, is also
> the same.  "30 days" might not sound expensive, but for most men (who are
> 93% of the jail population and thus who are the most likely to be affected
> by this) "30 days" spells destruction of a business, loss of a job,
> damaged reputation and lost self esteem.  A low number would be a total
> of $10,000.  That is a cost by itself of $32 Billion for the 3.2 million
> reports filed each year.

Don't forget loss of credit, loss of automobile, loss of living quarters
and it's contents, loss of virginity (anal rape common in prisons) and
loss of insurability (Risk of HIV).  I would estimate the loss at closer
to $100,000 in processing charges, legal fees, lost income, and related
damages.  Then we have the loss of tax revenue because these men often go
into the "Underground economy".  Also, jails cost $300/day/man.

> Where is the quantifiable benefit of losing $32 Billion per year?

What is the quantifiable benifit of spending $320 Billion to lose $320
Billion/year.  Couldn't we find something more useful to do with $1/2
trillion?

	Rex



From rballard@cnj.digex.net Fri Apr  5 18:52:30 1996