The Psycho Ex Wife

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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.

Ah, the great irony with a foundation of another husband’s lifeless body. Too bad Anthony Rankins didn’t have any of the help that is afforded female victims of domestic violence. Perhaps he would be alive today. The Violence Against Women’s Act is a scourge on society. Our Federal tax dollars, numbering into the multiple billions, are allocated to help one gender against domestic violence - women - to the exclusion of men and boys. While this should be unconstitutional, it continues to fester, sucking the life out of men and boys unable to obtain meaningful help from Federally funded DV shelters (because for all intents and purposes - they simply don’t exist). It also sucks billions in federal tax dollars that already being wasted on an industry that has been shown to be ineffective, has little to no oversight, and cannot even begin to justify their existence.

One of those fighting on Capitol Hill, or at least she was before being taken into custody for murdering her husband of only 5-days - Arelisha Bridges - a registered lobbyist with the group called National Declaration of Domestic Violence Order. Anthony Rankins, presumably extracting himself from a situation that was escalating at the hands of this murderous woman, was gunned down in the street, having been followed there by a nightgown-clad Arelisha Bridges. The same Arelisha Bridges who reportedly is a champion fighting to stop domestic violence against women (only).

From the article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Witnesses told police that Bridges was wearing a nightgown and a shower cap as she argued with Rankins on the sidewalk on North Avenue near West Peachtree Street around 10:45 p.m. Monday.

And moments later, witnesses said, they heard shots. They said she then “calmly walked away.”

A MARTA police officer stopped her as she was getting into her car, perhaps to return to her home nearby on Centennial Olympic Park Drive.

So, it would appear she traveled some distance in order to cold-bloodedly gun down her husband and “calmly walk away.”  A representative for the Georgia Commission on Family Violence, ironically enough named Kirsten Rambo, was quick to distance Bridges and her organization from the cause, claiming that she hadn’t previously heard of Bridges’ organization.

Too bad for Anthony Rankins.  How soon before we hear how oppressive and violent he was and that Arelisha Bridges had no choice but to dress in her finest nightgown and shower-cap, drive across town, and ambush Anthony Rankins right on the street in front of witnesses?  I’d say if Arelisha Bridges hasn’t already done it, she will be doing it shortly.  After all, dead men don’t make good witnesses.  When a husband or boyfriend has been gunned down in cold blood, the stories of untold violence come out of the wood work.  I’m sure the defense will spit on Anthony Rankins’ grave soon enough.

We’ve seen it countless times before and we’ll see it countless more times in the future until society begins to accept that women initiate domestic violence at least as often as men… and then actually do something about protecting men and boys equally with women who are actual victims.

Interesting information consistently comes to light and as much as I talk about it, I still feel as though I don’t talk about it enough, particularly when it comes to the ongoing societal propagation of myths surrounding information about “domestic violence against women“.

I happened upon another corner of the internet where I found this comment, regarding my site specifically, among a few others that were mentioned by another poster… It will be paraphrased for copyright reasons, but I’ll direct you to the thread which discusses domestic violence and you can see the exact content for yourselves (if you want to dig through the mess and find it)…

When I see videos like that and read websites like the ones you’ve mentioned, I see men who are used to asserting their dominance over others encountering for the first time ever, a system of power in family court that doesn’t automatically defer to their words or their command.  The family court system doesn’t defer to their own narrowminded view. Some may have legitimate problems and maybe they continue to work to solve them.  Still, their voices express rage at not being able to dominate the system or their exes anymore. Further, the animation is atrocious. You might not want to link to that outside of certain kool-aid drinking societies.

The topic is “Women Abusers On the Rise?” The particular writer in this instance belongs to one of those kool-aid drinking societies - the one that will find any excuse to shake a finger at the “male-dominated, patriarchal society” that radical feminists and their ilk so often like to dredge up as justification for their one-sided view of everything.  It is a common theme in his (assuming it’s a him) responses throughout the thread.  I guess it’s okay to blame a victim of such abusive behavior if the victim has a penis.

There is always an excuse or justification for women’s violence.  If a man is complaining, it’s because he’s “lost control and dominance over his victim.”  He’s not the only person on this earth who believe that my blog is demonstrative of someone who has “lost control” over the poor, helpless victim of the PEW.  While granted, all you get here is my one-sided story and you only have my word that these experiences are the truth - if you reversed the sexes, I absolutely guarantee you this guy would be praising this site as an expose’ on the control and dominance that men try to exert over their wives throughout this country and the world! Numbnuts like him are just that transparent.

And jackasses like this lead the charge when people (informed men and women alike) point out why, as prevalent and public as domestic violence against men has become lately… it’s still an alarmingly under-reported crime by male victims.

On that note, please check out this timely report recently put forth by RADAR (Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting), which serves to dispel 50 of the Top Myths often reported as fact (either in the media or by organizations looking to pull more billions of taxpayer dollars to fund their “causes”).

Domestic Violence affects men, women, and children in profound ways.  However, I’ve had enough of the blame-men society in which we struggle to live and the wealth of resources that are (mis)directed to “violence against women’s” initiatives and not equally distributed to domestic violence committed against men and children (especially male children).

I would suggest that, in addition to forwarding the link to everyone you know so that they may educate themselves on the realities of domestic violence (or, at the very least, make them think twice about parroting such gross misinformation)… that you print it out and keep it handy for those face-to-face discussions that you may periodically encounter by someone you know who has had some of that “Kool-Aid” that the above referenced poster spoke about so erroneously.

It covers quite a bit of ground in a short and well-supported report, including:

• The DV Superbowl Hoax (which I’ve previously made fun of).
• The numbers comparison between deaths in the Viet Nam War and women’s deaths from DV.
• Marriage License = Hitting License.
• The overblown reports of total costs and medical costs associated with DV “against women.”
• The “1-in-4 women have been a victim of rape or attempted rape in their lifetimes” claim.
• False allegations of DV or rape are “almost non-existent.”
• The false reference to an alleged “March of Dimes” report about partner-battering being a leading cause of birth-defects.
• Women are just as likely to be “controlling” as men (contrary to popular belief, which has been changing as of late).

And many, many more.

For the first time ever, male survivors of domestic abuse will now be offered a peer led, 12-week support group online, making support available from the comforts of home!

Since 2000 the Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men and Women (DAHMW) has been offering support services to abuse survivors through its nationally available toll-free helpline. This year DAHMW will offer a virtual support group to male victims of abusive women. Participants will use virtual cameras to attend online meeting groups at a given time every week for 12 weeks.

“Over the years we have received numerous requests for this type of service from our male helpline callers,” said Jan Brown director and founder of DAHMW. “We are thrilled to be one of the first to offer this vital and needed service to male survivors of domestic abuse.”

This support group will give participants an opportunity to understand the effects of abuse on themselves and their children, explore what healthy intimate relationships look like, and help them to achieve personal growth in all areas of their life.

Currently, the virtual support group is designed for male victims who have been in an abusive relationship with a female partner. To participate in the online support group, victims must be removed from the abusive partner for at least a month. Participants must have access to a computer and high-speed Internet service. DAHMW will supply the camera.

To find out more about this program, please contact DAHMW via email at dahmwagency@gmail.com or call 207-683-5758.

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I wish I had available then… this program shows significant promise and is tailored specifically for men.  If you or someone you love is suffering or has suffered domestic abuse at the hands of their partner, please suggest that they give this program a try.  Get the help you need.  Get the help you deserve.

—————–

I’ve promoted some of DAHMW’s intiatives here on thepsychoexwife.com before, including:

• Public Awareness Campaign for Abused Men
• Men’s Experience with Partner Aggression Project

It’s taken a little bit to get back on track for my experience with custody evaluations.  There would be 3 of them.  To catch yourselves up on the events leading up to it, check out the post Heading Towards Custody Evaluation #1.

Hindsight is a very powerful thing.  As if things weren’t scary enough in this situation, I’m left wondering what I would have done “if I knew then what I know now.”  Let’s see what is offered by the County Evaluation Program (which I’ll call “Custody Evaluations, Inc.”  Let’s look at what is said versus what is meant… or what the words’ true meanings are.

Since parental access and other divorce related issues are usually surrounded by a high degree of emotionality, Custody Evaluations, Inc. combines a conciliation and evaluation approach. Incorporated within the Custody Evaluations, Inc. model are elements of parenting education and co-parenting counseling, conciliation efforts, and evaluation methods. The combination of these elements in one procedure has both time-saving and cost-saving benefits.

I can tell you that we received no parenting education.  We received little-to-no conciliation efforts with the exception of the evaluator’s desire to listen to all of PEW’s unfounded, unsupported false accusations of every conceivable sort.  The “evaluation method” - a misnomer - left a lot to be desired.

As for the notion that it offers both time-savings and cost-savings benefits - it offers neither.  It extends the litigation for at least another 2 months and at a cost of a couple thousand dollars.  It’s laughable that Custody Evaluations, Inc. believes that they do either in any but the minimum of cases.  They make things worse by interjecting their own beliefs and biases into the mix, giving one side or the other (usually the high-conflict ex-spouse) more ammunition to prolong the agony for the parent who just wants equal time with the children they love.

Most parents sincerely believe they know what is in their child’s “best interests.” What they may not fully realize is that the “best interests of the child” constitutes a legal standard that only a judge will decide. To assist the court in the adjudication process, Custody Evaluations, Inc. provides either an Agreed-Upon Parenting Plan or a Recommended Parenting Plan as well as a full clinical report.

This quote really gets to me.  Clearly, parents do not know what is in the best interests of their own children.  The courts and evaluators do… after a mere 6-hours of only the most rudimentary of interactions.  So, you’ll either come to an agreement, which is impossible with the disordered, high-conflict person in the mix; or they’ll make a recommended parenting plan, which almost always favors the mother.  Good luck fathers!

By asking parents to meet together to outline their issues and concerns and by promoting the importance of co-parenting skills in sustaining the final arrangement, Custody Evaluations, Inc. seeks to define parents not as “adversaries,” but as parenting partners who will continue to have an important relationship with each other long after a divorce decree ends the marriage.

That’s not what our evaluator did. PEW went on crying jags and read through 2 handwritten pages of every fabricated accusation under the sun. I was made to answer for them, which I did not except to say that none of them were true and ask direct questions requiring PEW to support her contentions. She could not. I, on the other hand, expressed genuine concerns about her stability and decision-making, supported by documentation and legal proceedings which the evaluator dismissed outright as irrelevant. This flies directly in the face of what they claim to be doing “for” you.

One cannot underestimate the benefit to children when parents can agree on a custody arrangement rather than engaging in protracted legal proceedings. For that reason, we believe that the Custody Evaluations, Inc. process is helpful to parents and children and encourages the emotional healing necessary when families are forced to restructure.

They made no such effort. Period.

Procedures (some, not all):The Custody Evaluations, Inc. evaluation will focus on the following: a) a history of the present custody arrangement; b) the concerns of both parties about the present and future custody arrangement; c) a brief history of the relationship of the parties; d) a social history for each party and for the child(ren); e) the findings regarding the parties’ fitness to parent [mental health and addiction issues]; f) the parties’ personality strengths and weaknesses; g) the parties’ parenting and co-parenting strengths and weaknesses; h) a Recommended or an Agreed-Upon Parenting Plan; i) a rationale for the Plan; j) any other findings that the evaluator considers germane to the court’s determination of what is in the child’s best interests. Psychological testing is not a necessary part of the conciliation/evaluation effort, but it may be employed at the discretion of the evaluator and/or the director in certain limited circumstances. A Home Study may be employed at the discretion of the evaluator’s and/or the director’s discretion.

Pretty straightforward.

More on Procedure:

First, each parent meets individually with the evaluator to discuss his and her concerns and to provide extensive background information. Then a joint meeting is held with both parents to review and evaluate the disputed issues and to discuss the development of co-parenting skills and the impact of co-parenting on the post-separation or post-divorce adjustment of the children. Next, the child (or children) meets with the evaluator individually and/or with siblings and/or with the parents. Each child of appropriate age will have individual interview time with the evaluator. Then, the parents have a second joint meeting to review the evaluator’s findings regarding the children and perhaps help the evaluator better understand the clinical material that has unfolded. The next meeting is reserved for collateral parties if it is deemed that their participation is necessary. At the last joint meeting between the parents, the evaluator summarizes his/her findings to date and a Parenting Plan is developed. If there is no agreement on a Parenting Plan at this last meeting, after the evaluator has had the opportunity to review all of the data, his/her final recommendations for resolving the dispute become part of the report to the court.

Well, except when they openly dismiss documented evidence of erratic, irrational, and downright criminal behavior, a history of mental health issues and supporting evidence of same provided by one party (the father) while entertaining the hysterical rantings of someone who failed to support a single accusation made. THEN the above would apply.

Obtaining and reviewing documents:

The parties should bring to their first meeting, or otherwise forward to the evaluator in advance of the first meeting, copies of any documents that they wish the evaluator to review. The evaluator will keep these documents as part of the clinical file. They will not be returned. In accordance with the ex parte restrictions listed below, the parties must make available copies of these documents to both attorneys (or directly to a pro selitigant).

Important records include the children’s school reports for the last three years, school evaluations, and previous psychological/psychiatric evaluations of children, parents, guardians, etc. Less helpful are personal diaries, e-mail correspondence, and police reports. Audio tapes and videotapes generally shall not be reviewed.

Does anyone else find anything wrong with the fact that police reports, restraining orders, audio tapes, video tapes are not reviewed? I mean, what would be more important for an evaluation than actual demonstrations of how a particular party acts in “real life” and not with weeks of preparation to play-act for a custody evaluation? As for reviewing important documents - well, that just doesn’t happen.

The Consent and Waiver Form stipulates that:

* The clinician shall report all findings to the court.
* The respective attorneys, but not the parties, shall receive copies of the report.
* The parties waive their right to call the clinician for testimony in court.
* The parties shall also waive payment and report filing deadlines.
* Each party shall pay the Application Fee within fourteen (14) days of the custody conference or hearing.
* All fees shall be paid in a timely manner in accord with Custody Evaluations, Inc. policy.
* The parties will cooperate in scheduling so that all necessary appointments can be completed within 4-6 weeks.

I bolded the most problematic of the things that the client “waives.” Given the problems and lack of justification for the ultimate recommendation, the failure to follow their own rules and procedures - they are absolved from any accountability for the reports and recommendations that they make.

Read it again, folks. They have no accountability. They do not have to justify or otherwise support why they make the recommendations that they do. That means, they don’t have to listen. They don’t have to follow the rules. They could sleep through every single session, make a recommendations, and there is nothing you can do about it. If you go to court and explain that they slept through the recommendation or that their report is incorrect - you have no way to show it. You are at the complete and utter mercy of the custody evaluator. When you waive your right to call them in for questions, clarifications, explanations - you have no recourse.

And that’s the beauty of the “system.” You pay your attorneys. The judges are paid. Everyone who works within the system are paid. You are automatically ordered to go to the county’s Custody Evaluations, Inc. at considerable expense. You have no choice. You pay. Then you pay some more. Then you pay and pay and pay and pay until you have nothing left to pay. You pay until you have less than nothing left to pay.

And yes… had things gone entirely my way from the get-go, I would never have had cause to look deeper than the surface and I would be just that much more ignorant of just how sweet a set-up the system has.

Only as I was preparing my post did I find this out about “conflict of interest” policies:

Custody Evaluations, Inc. evaluators shall not have dual relationships with Custody Evaluations, Inc. clients, (e.g., serving as a therapist to one member of the family and then as an evaluator in the custody dispute). A evaluator shall disqualify himself/herself as an evaluator:

* where she/he has had prior professional or personal contact with that Custody Evaluations, Inc. client, or with members of her/his family, or with significant others of the client;
* when that evaluator has been a client of the attorney, or vice versa.

The new Custody Evaluations, Inc. client should report any prior or current association with an evaluator at the time of the custody conference.

Of course, there are conflicts which may not be known to the client who is responsible for reporting this. I only just discovered that in a later evaluation, a member of the group of evaluators in Custody Evaluations, Inc. served as our psychological tester. A clear conflict of interest based on the fact that she couldn’t be independent and unbiased with access to the recommendations of her colleagues. After all, the tester wouldn’t want her “findings” to conflict with the evaluation and recommendations of a colleague now, would she?

Next up… How Things Went Down…