It begins with what I suspected from the moment I saw the preview on the topic. The lead-in features two horrendous situations. Any guesses as to the feature stories?
Here is the April 14th, 2010 show summary from the Dr. Phil Show website:
No one wants to wind up in family court, but with over 50 percent of marriages ending in divorce, it’s a familiar place for thousands of parents. Dr. Phil shines a light on the American family court system and how often it fails its citizens.
Story 1: Horrible dad who harasses and threatens mom and child, ultimately killing himself and their 9-month old child during his visitation with the child.
Story 2: The perspective of a 17-year old girl who allegedly grew up with an abusive father who sexually molested her and who worries now about the fate of her little sister.
Now, let’s be real, I’m far from a huge fan of Dr. Phil and my presumption was that this episode would be exactly what I suspected - a sensational show, highlighting horrifying tales of death and familial destruction, and the ultimate culprit would be a biological father.
As is usually the case, Dr. Phil failed to impress me with his coverage of what is a national (and worldwide crisis). However, rather than dig deep and really look into the greatest problem in family court today, which is not biological fathers killing children or ex-spouses, but custodial interference and the gross imbalance of custodial arrangements - Dr. Phil went sensational, worst-case, rare-case scenario. Worse than that, he can’t even balance his sensational effort with a similar story involving custodial interference, kidnapping, and murder of children by their biological mothers.
What a gross abuse of the power he has inside the media. Here’s an opportunity for him to use his reach to really broadcast the real horrors of the family court cartels, and he goes least common denominator.
That’s not to say that the stories he chose to feature on this program aren’t serious and very compelling. However, he grossly misrepresents what his show was purported to be about - the crisis in our family court system. In fact, this effort couldn’t be further from doing that. It was a show about two isolated cases with terrifying, tragic consequences and I truly feel very sorry for those involved. Nothing more, nothing less.
The true crisis in our family court system is as follows:
- Mothers still obtain custody of children in over 80% of all cases.
- Biological mothers still kill, neglect, malnourish children (alone or in tandem with a new love interest) at a much higher rate than do biological fathers.
- Custodial interference is not taken seriously by the courts and is primarily committed by biological mothers.
- Enforcement of child support is funded into the billions of dollars by government agencies. Enforcement of custodial interference is non-existent.
- Restraining order abuse is rampant and is often used to separate fathers from their children and household on a mere accusation and without proof of any abuse being evident.
- There are few, if any, services for men who are abused by women, while services and aid for women who are abused by men is funded into the billions of dollars. There is literally no governmental funding for male victims of abuse.
- Family court is loaded with high-conflict personalities who are encouraged to battle it out in court due to the adversarial set up. Once the family finances have been drained, they’re cast aside when they’ve been shaken-down completely so that they can move on to the next victim-family.
Now, the cases highlighted on this show are absolutely grotesque breakdown in specific family courts with horrifying outcomes. In each case, something should have and could have been done before the tragedies took place. Make no mistake about this, these horrible stories are the exception and not the rule.
The audience is loaded with angry women who may have personal grudges against awful fathers or ex-husbands. The guests disavow the reality of PAS, are foot soldiers for the domestic violence industry, believe that mere accusations without proof should be enough. They also parroted the same unsupportable contention that abusive “fathers” are being awarded custody in the majority of contested cases. The bottom line was that this show was little more than a vilifying of all ready, willing, loving and perfectly capable fathers on the foundation of awful, highly sensational isolated incidents.
If you watched this show, you would believe that women don’t kill, abuse, and neglect their children. They don’t file false allegations of abuse. They don’t abuse children or husbands/partners. They don’t regularly interfere with custody, including kidnapping children and whisking them away to foreign countries. They don’t put infants up for adoption without ever notifying the biological father of the child’s existence, resulting in him never having any parental rights except in the rarest of cases. They don’t commit paternity fraud which ultimately leaves fathers financially supporting children that aren’t theirs, in too many cases… while the mother has moved on with the child to be with the actual biological parent!
Dr. Phil - you didn’t get a sniff of what issues are the greatest in terms of covering the true crisis that is our family court system. Worse, it really was little more than a man-bashing, father-hating event. Truly a shame for excellent parents of both genders everywhere. Way to do a huge disservice to the entire country.
Maybe the next episode where he is trying to push his agenda of addressing various “silent epidemics” he can arrange and audience full of angry men who have been abused by the family court system. Maybe he can feature stories of grieving fathers whose ex-partners murdered their children.
Or maybe, he can address any number of the items I listed above that actually are the true crisis in family courts today and address them without making it appear like he is a tool of the Domestic Violence (Against Women Only) Industry, too.
