The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was enacted in 1994 with the aim of providing resources and support to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. Despite its noble goals, VAWA has faced criticism over the years from various groups and individuals who argue that it goes too far or is not effective.
In this article, we showcase a selection of letters written to members of Congress and other government officials that are critical of VAWA. These letters provide a unique insight into the perspectives of those who believe that VAWA is flawed and in need of reform. They range from concerns about due process rights, to criticism of the funding and implementation of VAWA programs, to objections to the act’s expansion into immigration law.
Whether you support or oppose VAWA, these letters offer a valuable opportunity to understand the diverse opinions and concerns surrounding this critical piece of legislation. They provide a glimpse into the complex and often divisive debates surrounding the issue of violence against women and highlight the ongoing struggle to find effective solutions.
What is VAWA?
The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is a federal law in the United States that was enacted in 1994. It aims to provide resources and support to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. The law provides funding for shelters, hotlines, and legal assistance, and strengthens criminal penalties for these crimes.
VAWA has been reauthorized several times and expanded to include provisions that protect victims of domestic violence who are immigrants, Native American women, and LGBTQ individuals. It also includes the creation of the National Domestic Violence Hotline and provides funding for rape crisis centers.
Criticisms of VAWA
The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) has received heavy criticism since its enactment in 1994. Some of the main criticisms include the following.
- Due Process Infractions. VAWA violates the due process rights of accused individuals by giving too much discretion to law enforcement and allowing for the arrest of individuals without sufficient evidence.
- Lack of Evidence-Based Programs. VAWA funding is often directed towards programs that have not been proven to be effective in reducing violence against women.
- Exclusion of Men. VAWA focuses solely on violence against women and ignores the fact that men can also be victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.
- Expansion into Immigration Law. VAWA provisions that protect immigrant victims of domestic violence have been used to exploit the immigration system and grant immigration benefits to those who should not be eligible.
Letters Critiquing Aspects of the Act
Dear Congress, Executive Branch, Media, and Others,
1.) Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) funds are being misused nationwide to effect anti-fatherhood ideological policies in every state. The VAWA’s draconian provisions constitute an automatic injunction against a father seeing his children and result in him being ejected from the family home as soon as his female partner claims she is in fear. The result is the nastiest sucker punch a father [and child] could ever experience, thanks to the U.S. Congress, and a country-wide pandemic of fatherless children. VAWA funds are also being routed by state domestic violence coalitions illegally toward lobbying state legislatures in opposition to critically needed equal parenting protection reforms. Proof is here: https://nhcustody.org/NHCADSV/VAWA-lobbying-prohibition
2.) No federal presumption of equal parenting protection law, as such equality in parenting is supposedly guaranteed by the 14th amendment equal protection clause in addition to repeated U.S. Supreme Court precedent rulings affirming the inalienable right to be a parent to one’s children in the absence of a compelling state interest otherwise, means that millions of non-custodial fathers across the country (75%+) are being ordered into ‘visitorship’ with their children by the nation’s family courts after 75-85% of all divorces are initiated by mothers. The resulting national epidemic of fatherless children and their tendency toward dysfunctional development as a result of losing one of their parents is well known.
3.) The VAWA alongside the statistical and empirically understood entitlement to primary or sole custody of the children, as per family court orders nationwide, for mothers who divorce their husbands have conspired with ridiculously high child support awards to create an American social policy that tears families apart. The wisest men are recognizing daily in ever-increasing numbers that the risk of starting a family is too great. Far too many have already been devastated on the backside of no-fault divorce through the emotional and financial oppression heaped upon them by family courts nationwide when they are told they may only see their children a handful of days each month and must turn over a huge percentage of their earnings to support the lifestyle of the ex-spouse who divorced them and is alienating the children from them, that same father ordered into visitorship with his children and virtual indentured servitude by our Orwellian government.
You can establish all the marriage incentives that a Congress full of elected officials could conjure up in a lifetime, you can fund the NFI until the cows come home, and you can try to teach the next generation of would-be fathers that the right thing to do is pay deference to the tradition of starting a family. But, Pandora’s Box has opened and word is spreading fast throughout the country. Young men know that the danger to themselves and their as-yet-unborn progeny is too great to risk. In the event you have never experienced the horror of your biological child being kept away from you even as you both desire to be together I regret to inform that it is impossible for you to project yourself into such a situation. You should know that your children and/or grandchildren may not be so fortunate to evade such a sentence of tragedy from the nation’s family courts in the future. Once your tenure as an elected official is complete you will no longer be able to protect them.
In case you care, here is the most scathing indictment of the existing child support guidelines ever put to pen. It is applicable to virtually every state and was authored after a multi-year study by a New Hampshire Government-sponsored Commission that also recommended a rebuttal presumption of joint physical custody for both mother and father in family court proceedings when custody is at issue for the true best interests of the children of broken families.
In December 2004, the New Hampshire Commission to Study Child Support Issues and Related Custody Issues (known as the HB 310 Commission) issued a Final Report which included an assessment of New Hampshire’s then-existing Guidelines. This Report served as the required four-year guidelines review. The Report included a finding that the application of NH’s then-existing Guidelines could result in “unfair and inappropriate” child support amounts. The Commission suggested several remedies to address this perceived deficiency, including the need for an economic analysis as part of a review of the Guidelines.
Somewhere along the way you all started paying too much attention to the special interest groups and the almighty dollar while the health of the nation’s children, fathers, families, and very social foundation got lost in the noise. The Congress’ national social policy has been, and continues to be, an unadulterated bipartisan failure.
Please visit WWW.NHCUSTODY.ORG for an education on the reality of what U.S. Federal Government policy has done to the American family. Again, the story is exactly the same in virtually every state.
Senator Biden was just speaking of his concern about national security yesterday when he commented on the Iraq war. You should know that millions of non-custodial parents (overwhelmingly fathers, many of whom are military veterans and national heroes) don’t give a damn about the war or any other supposedly important national issue now that they have recognized the civil liberties and freedoms they always thought America stood for are just hollow lip service. Without due process, without any measure of protection for their supposed Constitutionally protected civil liberty to be a parent to their own children (and their children’s liberty to retain access to both of their parents), and without any regard for their ability to provide for their children financially or indeed even to survive independently after being served with a no-fault divorce, a nation full of fathers have recognized that the American emperor of freedom has no clothes.
What has happened to the American foundation of the family should be the real primary national security concern of the Congress. After all, if the fathers of this country are ever needed to help defend Old Glory then what freedoms for themselves and their children, and the next generation of fathers and children after them, would you purport to have them defend?
Below this message is a glimpse at a tiny fraction of the damage that has been done. The story is exactly the same as it is in Canada, except that here in the U.S. it is worse.
Sincerely,
Marc Snider (Merrimack, NH)
Page URL: http://www.nationalpost.com/news.asp?f=000325/242784&s2=national&s3=reporter
Saturday, March 25, 2000
Pilloried, broke, alone
Divorced fathers get a bad rap for not supporting their children. The truth is, many can’t. And, tragically, some are driven to desperate measures, including suicide
Donna Laframboise
National Post
In his suicide note, Jim, the father of four children, protests that “not all fathers are deadbeats.” Jim hanged himself because he couldn’t see any alternative. Even now, his children are unaware of the circumstances of their father’s death. |
Meeno Meijer, National Post George Roulier is fighting to regain money wrongfully taken from his wages by the Ontario child-support collection agency. |
Chris Bolin, National Post Alan Heinz, a Toronto firefighter, has gone bankrupt fighting for the return of his daughter, 3, from Germany. No one will help him, but German authorities are trying to collect child support from him. |
Whenever fathers and divorce are discussed, one image dominates: the ‘deadbeat dad,’ the schmuck who’d rather drive a sports car than support his kids. Because I write about family matters, I’m regularly inundated with phone calls, faxes, letters and e-mail from divorced men. It’s not news that divorced individuals have little good to say about their ex-spouses. What I’m interested in is whether the system assists people during this difficult time in their lives, or compounds their misery. From the aircraft engineer in British Columbia, to the postal worker on the prairies, to the fire fighter in Toronto, divorced fathers’ stories are of a piece: Though society stereotypes these men relentlessly, most divorced dads pay their child support. Among those who don’t, a small percentage willfully refuse to (the villains you always hear about).
What you haven’t been told is that the other men in arrears are too impoverished to pay, have been ordered to pay unreasonable amounts, have been paying for unreasonable lengths of time, or are the victims of bureaucratic foul-ups.
Today, and on Monday and Tuesday, the National Post will tell you the stories of fathers who have been driven to suicide by a system deaf to their pleas. We’ll introduce you to a man who is still paying child support for a 23-year-old employed daughter. We’ll tell you about an executive with take-home pay of $7,455 a month who is left with $302 after handing over child support and alimony to his ex-wife.
Their lives are being devastated by courts and governments who consider no measure too punitive in their war against “deadbeat dads.”
Last July, in a run-down part of Regina, a 39-year-old divorced father tied a rope around his neck and hanged himself in his basement.
His children, ages eight, nine and 11, and an older adopted child, have not yet been told how their father died, so his family has requested that his real name be withheld. We’ll call him Jim.
Jim was tall and thin, with dark eyes and hair. He worked as a mechanic at an auto dealership, specializing in transmission repair. In addition to four fatherless kids, he left behind grieving parents, two sisters and a brother.
And a neatly written, two-page suicide note: “The last five years has been very difficult emotionally and financially for me, since the separation I tried my best to support my children and make a living,” it reads. “The end result was that it forced me into bankruptcy … This is the only solution because I just see absolutely no light at the end of the tunnel.”
Jim is not the only divorced father driven to desperate measures. Last week, police recovered the body of Darrin White, 34, of Prince George, B.C. Mr. White hanged himself after being ordered to pay $2,070 a month in family support — even though he’d told the court he was on stress leave from work and had a take-home pay of about $1,000 a month. Despite doing everything in their power to live up to their obligations, many divorced men receive little sympathy.
In his letter, Jim protests that “not all fathers are deadbeats” and expresses his anguish at being stripped of “the right to parent” his children after his former wife was awarded sole custody.
“Twice in the past five years I wanted to take my own life but because of the love and the good times I had with my kids I could not go through with it,” he wrote. “I hope someday my kids will understand and forgive me for leaving them.”
In October, 1995, Andrew Renouf of Markham, Ont., left a similar suicide note. Describing how the Ontario government had seized all but 43 cents from his bank account on pay day three days earlier, he wrote: “I have no money for food or for gas for my car to enable me to work.” Although he had tried to explain his situation to the child-support enforcement office, he said, “their answer was: ‘we have a court order’ several times. I have tried talking to the welfare people in Markham, [but] since I earned over $520 in the last month I am not eligible for assistance.”
Mr. Renouf said in his note that he had no contact with his daughter in four years. “I do not even know if she is alive and well,” it reads. “There is no further point in continuing my life. It is my intention to drive to a secluded area near my home, feed the gas exhaust into the car, take some sleeping pills and use the remaining gas in the car to end my life. I would have preferred to die with more dignity.”
Hazel McBride, a Toronto suicide researcher and psychotherapist, says she has encountered a number of such cases since the early ’90s. One involved a small businessman who’d faithfully made his child-support payments until the recession hit. After the support-enforcement office seized money from his business bank account, his business went under, his house was repossessed and he suffered a heart attack. Eventually, he blew his head off with a shotgun.
“These are not unusual cases,” she says. “I had a man who came to see me, and he had cancer and had to leave his job as a long-distance truck driver. Being self-employed, he had no long-term disability. His wife had remarried and was living quite well, and she had the children. The only thing he had left was a house that he had inherited from his parents. Not a very big house. And once he made his support payments, he had no money for heat.
“It’s one of the reasons I stopped doing the clinical work,” says Dr. McBride, “because the stories were so terrible and there was so little you could do for people. This man said, ‘I want to go out and kill myself. It won’t get better.’ And he was right, it wasn’t going to get better.”
Fathers pushed close to the breaking point rarely attract media attention because everyone assumes they are deadbeat dads. Government fact sheets call men whose support payments are in arrears “delinquent parents” who “hide from their child support debts” and need to be “forced to live up to their obligations.”
The Ontario government claims that such parents owe $1.2-billion in outstanding support in that province alone, and that only 24% of registered support payers are in full compliance. A damning portrait of all divorced fathers has been painted.
But the issue is far more complicated. For starters, support-enforcement records are notoriously unreliable and out of date. Last year, Wayne Sagle of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., was told he owed $51,000 in arrears.
Only after the National Post contacted Mr. Sagle’s former wife did the government admit the $51,000 was an illusion. With the former wife acknowledging the children had lived with their father since 1990, it became clear the real problem was out-of-date paperwork.
In another instance, months after a support payer committed suicide, Ontario’s enforcement agency continues to send notices to one of his previous mailing addresses, and, no doubt, to count his arrears in the total tally of money owed. (One U.S. study found that up to 14% of the men listed as deadbeat dads in state records were, in fact, dead.)
In some Canadian provinces, men who religiously pay support every two weeks on pay day are classified as being in arrears for half of each month — because the enforcement agencies’ bookkeeping is based on a monthly cycle.
No research is available on Canadian child-support payers, but studies elsewhere indicate the vast majority of divorced men meet their obligations — and that those who don’t often have good reasons.
According to Roger Gay, an internationally recognized child-support expert based in Stockholm, the only meaningful child-support statistic is the percentage of support ordered by the courts that actually gets paid. In the U.S., he says, “fathers overall pay between 70% and 80% of what is due.”
What’s more, the highly publicized garnishments, suspension of drivers’ licences, revocation of passports and jail sentences have accomplished little. Despite the efforts of the 50,000 people employed by the U.S. child-support collection bureaucracy — which costs $4-billion a year — Mr. Gay says the percentage of child support paid hasn’t changed since the mid-’70s. “We’ve let too many years go by without admitting to the public that these measures have been a failure.”
The difficulty in collecting the remaining 20% to 30% is due largely to the fact that the war against deadbeats is really a war against the poor — against men who have always been economically marginal or have been impoverished by the divorce process itself.
According to the Institute on Poverty, half of non-paying fathers in Wisconsin earn less than $6,200 a year and only one in 10 earns more than $18,500 annually. Other research shows the unemployment rate is one of the most accurate predictors of child-support compliance. (Although even then, half the men who were out of work in one sample still managed to pay the full amount of support.)
In 1996, an Oklahoma child-enforcement officer, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, accused politicians “hungry for the perfect scapegoat,” of demonizing non-paying fathers. “Most deadbeat dads are frightened, angry and depressed men,” wrote the official, who admitted to putting hundreds of them behind bars.
“Not only are many deadbeat dads destitute, it is often their failure as providers which led their ex-wives to divorce them. I prosecuted one deadbeat dad who had been hospitalized for malnutrition and another who lived in the bed of a pick-up truck. Many times I prosecuted impoverished men on behalf of ex-wives who had remarried successful men and were living in comfortable conditions.”
Yet the stereotype of the divorced father with scads of money who mean-spiritedly refuses to hand it over persists — and negatively influences the courts.
In the words of Pauline Green, a Toronto family lawyer, “Some judges think men have gotten off much too easy in the past with things like child support. [Their position is:] ‘that’s it, I don’t care what anybody says, I don’t care what the excuses are.’ “
Adds Susan Baragar, a Winnipeg lawyer and feminist: “There isn’t equality within the family court. I mean, there’s a standard joke among us family lawyers. We say: ‘If you’re the guy, just put on your helmet and duck.’ There are injustices that go the other way, on a case by case basis. But generally speaking, I know if I represent the woman it’s going to go easier for me in court.”
While society insists that divorced fathers be “held accountable” some researchers are asking whether our desire for accountability results in persecution.
In Throwaway Dads, co-authors Ross Parke and Armin Brott present a litany of horror stories — including the case of a janitor wrongly accused of murder. After spending nearly a decade in Texas prisons, the man was released, only to be handed a $22,000 bill for child-support arrears that accrued while he was behind bars.
Support payers are also automatically assumed to be in the wrong. In late 1997, George Roulier’s former wife, Carol McIntosh, signed a sworn statement claiming he was in child-support arrears by $1,220. Five weeks later, the Ontario government instructed Mr. Roulier’s employer to begin garnisheeing his pay cheque.
Rather than conducting an investigation, the enforcement agency appears instead to take support claimants at their word. “They told me they tried to send me a letter,” says Mr. Roulier. “I said ‘Okay, please send me a copy of that letter.’ And they said, ‘No, we won’t do that.’ “
Seven months later, when Mr. Roulier presented a judge with his cancelled cheques for the period in question, the judge declared he had paid “everything owing up to 31 Jan. ’98 directly to Carol McIntosh” and that “there were no arrears of support.”
Mr. Roulier is still trying to get a full refund for the arrears collected that the judge said were not owed. In September, 1998, the enforcement agency sent him some of the money.
But in October, David Costen, acting director of the agency that had failed to verify information before acting on it, washed his hands of the matter. “The question of whether or not the recipient has misinformed the plan or failed to provide accurate information,” he wrote to Mr. Roulier, “is a legal matter between you and the recipient.”
At the same time that society is demanding divorced dads pay up, our courts, governments and social services fail to recognize the huge effect losing daily contact with one’s children has on men’s ability to earn a living.
“No government and no court should be allowed to take a child from a parent unless there is a very, very, very good reason,” says Dr. McBride. “Because to have a child ripped from you, it’s the same as a child dying. It’s absolutely uncivilized, barbaric and devastating for any parent. It’s not uncommon for these people to suffer depressive breakdowns.”
And while a large, expensive system exists to collect child support from divorced fathers, no parallel system helps ensure children’s and father’s rights to close and frequent contact.
After his marriage broke down in late 1997, Toronto firefighter Alan Heinz’s wife told a court three job offers awaited her in Germany. He reluctantly agreed to her relocation there with the couple’s daughter, who is now 3, but became disturbed when she went on welfare shortly afterward.
While no one in authority will help Mr. Heinz secure his daughter’s return, the Youth Welfare Office in Neuss, Germany, is trying to collect child support from him in an attempt to recoup the social-assistance costs.
Mr. Heinz has gone bankrupt trying to fight a legal battle that has spread to two continents. At 41, he now lives in his parents’ basement.
Edward Kruk, a professor of social work at the University of British Columbia who has studied divorced fathers for the past 15 years, says that despite the more active role many contemporary fathers take in their children’s lives, “fathers today are less likely to obtain custody if they contest it in court than they were in the ’70s.”
In other words, society’s message to divorced fathers is that the only thing required of them is money. It’s a message some of them find too difficult to bear.
Among Jim’s personal papers are documents indicating that, in the year prior to his death, his financial situation had worsened. In late 1998, he missed nearly three months of work due to a back injury. In mid-November of that year he received a letter from the Saskatchewan Worker’s Compensation Board advising him his compensation benefits were being garnisheed.
According to an affidavit Jim signed a few months before his death, between August, 1998, and January, 1999, his expenses consistently exceeded his earnings by more than $100 a month.
Paying a modest $460 plus utilities for accommodation, he had spent only $40 on clothes in the past year, and only $52 on tools — even though mechanics are expected to make regular tool purchases as a condition of their job.
George Seitz, a friend, says Jim lived in “a very rough neighbourhood, a place in Regina that I would not live, ever” because rents were cheap. When the two men got together with their children, Mr. Seitz rarely remembers Jim eating. “I think because of his financial position, he would buy his kids something and he wouldn’t have anything himself.”
As Jim’s affidavit notes, out of a monthly take-home pay of about $1,650, “My most significant monthly expense is the [$800] support payments I make in relation to my children.” But that wasn’t good enough.
Although Jim had owned the matrimonial home prior to his marriage, which lasted five years, a judge granted his ex-wife a half interest in it when the couple divorced. Based on a formula that valued the house higher than it actually sold for, Jim was ordered to pay his former wife more than $8,000 and was held responsible for a $3,400 credit-card bill.
Arguing that he had no conceivable way of raising these funds, Jim attempted to declare bankruptcy. In March, 1998, Judge Maurice J. Herauf ruled that the amount of money in question “is not large and should be paid in full.” He added, “It has to be made clear to the bankrupt that he will be held responsible for his actions.”
In June, 1999, the same judge denied Jim’s appeal, declaring that his “intransigence toward paying anything to his ex-wife on the property judgement is as apparent now as it was at the time of the discharge hearing.”
At both these hearings, an extra $500 — to cover the legal fees of his ex-wife, who vigorously opposed his bankruptcy — was added to Jim’s debt. The judge decreed that the now nearly $13,000 Jim owed would be deducted in $100 instalments from every pay cheque for the next six years, leaving him about $650 a month to live on.
Less than two weeks after he lost the appeal, Jim’s family buried him in a Regina cemetery. Neither his former wife nor his children attended his funeral.
Three years after Andrew Renouf asphyxiated himself in his car near Markham, Ont., because he, too, could see no way out, a small group of people held a memorial service outside the provincial support-enforcement office.
During his sermon, Rev. Alan Stewart, of Toronto’s Westview Presbyterian Church, made the following remarks: “The terrible reality of this story is that everyone lost. A daughter lost her father, a former wife lost her support, society lost a good and productive member and Andrew lost the most precious thing: his life. Surely a system that makes everyone a loser has got to be wrong.”
Copyright � Southam Inc. “National Post Online is a production of Southam Inc., Canada’s largest publisher of daily newspapers.”
October 11, 2005
Dear Congress and Executive Branch,
Below is a letter I wrote yesterday to a local newspaper reporter after she wrote a supportive article about a thoroughly misleading documentary being used as propaganda in the war against fathers. ‘Breaking the Silence’ attempts to paint all fathers who want shared access to their children (75-85% of whom have had divorce filed *against* them) as batterers. And the domestic violence coalitions are the power brokers and influence peddlers behind the effort.
This is what the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) has sewn and reaped on the streets of America. Please pay close attention to who is touting the ‘documentary’ and promulgating a message filled with inaccuracies to the public (just as they have done with the Congress).
Then even more taxpayer money is being improperly directed by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) to help spread the lies of these ideologues who want fatherless children to be the norm in this country (and they’ve been successful!).
Here is hoping that one day soon you actually start paying attention and get educated about the terrible damage the government is doing, even with the best intentions of preventing violence in relationships, when it rains so much money down on special interest groups just because a politically correct argument is made in the absence of factual need. The regressive nature of American relationships between partners, and the consequent effect of subversion on the children and families across the nation is a direct result of the irresponsible funding of radicals using taxpayer dollars.
And it is going to be too late to right this listing ship after another 5 years of the VAWA. Already the halls of Congress have turned into an Orwellian tower of glass where the citizens (including in this case, military heroes who have fought for their country) cannot even hope to be heard by our elected officials when they oppose the pinnacle of anti-family legislation.
Full disclosure is below. The American foundation of society is burning while you toil over meetings, television and radio appearances, and appease the very people who would destroy (and are destroying) the American family.
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
WWW.NHCUSTODY.ORG
________________________________________________
October 10, 2005
Dear Karen,
With respect to your article on ‘Breaking the Silence’, which is soon to air nationally on PBS:
I hope you will get educated about what the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic And Sexual Violence has been doing for years, and continues to do, to actively marginalize NH fathers from participating meaningfully in their children’s lives. What they are doing is destroying children, fathers, families, and the underlying foundation of society, point blank.
There are aberrant parents of both sexes who do terrible harm to their children and who should have access to their children prohibited for the safety of those kids. The problem is that ‘Breaking the Silence’, and Ms. Mattern, attempts to paint the average American father who longs to be a meaningful part of his child’s life as this type of heinous and atypical parent.
This type of propaganda (Breaking The Silence) is used by the NHCADSV and other domestic violence prevention coalitions around the country to disseminate inaccuracies about the tendency of fathers in general to be violent. The anti-domestic violence industry has morphed into an anti-fatherhood industry that is doing terrible harm to NH’s and the nation’s children of divorce.
If you’d like I can send you a long list of atrocities committed by mothers against their children along with references. The point is that the NHCADSV, of which Grace Mattern who you quoted in your article is the chief, has been lobbying against equal parenting reforms in NH for years and years using the argument that fathers who seek custody (even shared custody) of their children are batterers. That’s right. And I’ve included the facts below for you. Please find out the truth about this biased organization and know that the likes of Ms. Mattern, Ms. Griebsch, and Ms. Grady make it their life’s work to ensure that fathers will never be provided with a presumption of equality in parenting as long as the NHCADSV continues to disseminate lies about how fathers are predisposed to violence.
So, while they toil every day using public funding to paint fathers who desire equal access to their children as presumed batterers (the NHCADSV has testified as much to the NH legislature repeatedly), they argue and lobby at the same time that fathers should not be presumed to be equal parents to their children just because a no-fault divorce has been filed against them. This is not fiction.
Has anyone showed you these figures from the United States Government Adminstration for Children and Families (ACF) that show mothers are more than twice as likely to abuse, neglect, or maltreat their children as are fathers?
Child Maltreatment 2003: Reports from the States to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data Systems – National statistics on child abuse and neglect (2005)
Approximately 83.9 percent of victims were abused by at least one parent. An estimated 40.8 percent of child victims were maltreated by their mothers acting alone; another 18.8 percent were maltreated by their fathers acting alone; 16.9 percent were abused by both parents.
And have you seen this information relaying the facts about child custody decisions in New Hampshire (which also reflects national statistics) and how fathers are being unwillingly pushed out of their children’s lives after 75% – 85% of divorces are initiated by mothers?
Included below is a video of myself speaking in front of about 200 people at New Hampshire Consitution Day on Sunday, September 25th. Constitution Day was presented by the New Hampshire Center for Constitutional Studies: https://www.nhccs.org/
The video includes footage of myself speaking and then Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo. Also speaking, before me, were New Ispwich Chief of Police Garrett Chamberlain (who attempted to charge illegal aliens [that the feds refused to prosecute] under NH state unlawful trespass law) and Jim Gilchrist (founder of the Minuteman Project).
Please review this detailed information on lobbying violations committed by Ms. Mattern’s anti-fatherhood organization (the NHCADSV), including outright lies told to the NH legislature to stymie equal parenting legislative reforms:
The truth is that there is a pandemic of false allegations of domestic violence being used around the country by unscrupulous divorce attorneys and narcissistic mothers who have come to realize, thanks to organizations like the NHCADSV and people like Ms. Mattern, that the ‘silver bullet’ (a false allegation) is the fastest way to get an injunction from the courts keeping the children and their father apart.
Please have a look at another perspective on ‘Breaking the Silence’, wherein a daughter whose father was falsely accused of sexually abusing her comes clean about what really happened during those years. Instructively, her mother, the woman making up the lies, was a prominent player in the same anti-father industry where Ms. Mattern is a prominent figure.
Ms. Mattern is a radical anti-father ideologue and her organization’s actions over the years speak volumes about her ideology and social aims. The NHCADSV is undermining NH’s children and families by working non-stop using taxpayer funds (both federal and state) in the pursuit of continued discrimination against NH fathers.
Sincerely,
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
WWW.NHCUSTODY.ORG
October 5, 2005
Dear All,
Below this message is exactly what your Violence Against Women Act funds are fomenting. Heinous and ridiculous stereotypes about fathers that are tearing this country apart. The power and money you’ve given organizations like the Georgia Partnership Against Domestic Violence (PADV) to spew their anti-father propaganda is disgusting.
“You could even say that everyday is Halloween when Daddy is the monster, but that’s not a fun kind of scary at all.”
Have any of you even looked at the actual figures of who abuses children in this country, or are you too busy counting special interest votes to consider the facts?
Child Maltreatment 2003: Reports from the States to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data Systems – National statistics on child abuse and neglect (2005)
“Approximately 83.9 percent of victims were abused by at least one parent. An
estimated 40.8 percent of child victims were maltreated by their mothers acting alone; another 18.8 percent were maltreated by their fathers acting alone; 16.9 percent were abused by both parents.”
You don’t even give a damn, do you, about the violations of anti-lobbying provisions in the VAWA by state coalitions who use the funding to lobby against equal parenting reforms in the states so that children can’t retain meaningful access to their fathers after no-fault divorces (which are filed 75-85% of the time by mothers)?
And you don’t care to add a provision whereby the number of meritless allegations of domestic violence claimed to have been committed by fathers during the course of a divorce or child custody proceeding is investigated, do you? Because, despite all your family values lip service, you really don’t care at all about the stability of families and childrens’ ability (and right) to retain meaningful access to both of their fit parents after breakdown of a marriage
Kill the National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI), please, and stop pretending you care an iota about fatherhood and children in this country. Give yourselves a raise or something instead. Or build a monument to the attorneys, law enforcement, and radical idealogues you’re making rich with billions of taxpayer dollars used to steal fathers’ children and possessions around the country. A violent dad in the mold of Frankenstein’s monster outside the Capitol should do nicely.
You’re already stealing non-custodial parents’ children and stealing childrens’ parents by reauthorizing the VAWA. Why not make it a few more bucks on top. The icing on the cake, as it were…
Better yet, give the money slated for the NFI directly to the states’ Domestic Violence Coalitions. That will just expedite the collapse of our society, one which is fast coming anyway. None of you deserve another pandering term in office with the assault you have personally waged on American fathers and their children under the guise of protecting abused women (a goal we ALL share)…
Even though they don’t deserve it, your children or grandchildren will one day, karma-willing, feel the sting of the legacy you’ve left them when they are falsely accused and have their lives, and their children’s lives, ruined through the draconian and unconstitutional provisions of the VAWA.
Your personal responsibility as it relates to the demise of this once great country is now solidified. You should all be ashamed.
To those in the Executive Branch, please Veto the VAWA. It is unwise, unconstitutional, and both anti-fatherhood and anti-family legislation.
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
> From: “Rainie Jueschke” < Rainie@padv.org>
> Date: 2005/10/05 Wed AM 09:22:02 EDT
> To: “Rainie Jueschke” < Rainie@padv.org>
> Subject: Halloween help for shelter kids
First of all I want to say that you all have been so great. We’ve gotten a wonderful response to my requests for donations- it has been so heart warming – you blew us all away.
Today I have a new, fun request. We’d like to take the children sheltering with us to the “Boo at the Zoo” (see details below) and we’d like each of them to have a costume. You can probably imagine that celebrating Halloween has been pretty low on the list for kids in homes experiencing domestic violence. You could even say that everyday is Halloween when Daddy is the monster, but that’s not a fun kind of scary at all.
We’d like our kids to have the time of their lives on October 29th at the Zoo. What we need are costumes and stage make-up or things that can be costumes with a little imagination. We may have as many as 22 kids in the Fulton shelter – all ages and sizes.
Can you help us? Many of these children may not have had a chance to experience Halloween – controlling abusive fathers would not have allowed it. Many of them may not have ever worn a costume. Can you help us give them a Halloween they will never forget?
Donations can be brought to our Administrative Offices at 619 Edgewood Drive, Suite 101, Atlanta, GA. We’re open from 8:30 am – 5:00 pm, Monday – Friday, though we can may be able to make other arrangements if you need to. There is also free parking.
If you’d rather donate money to the cause, that’s OK too. You can mail a check to the same address or go to our web site www.padv.org or call my number below if you’d rather use a credit card.
Thank you for your help! Without friends like you we couldn’t be here for the battered women and their children. Because of you we’re helping them to live free from domestic violence.
Rainie
> Rainie Jueschke, CFRE, Director of Development
> Partnership Against Domestic Violence (PADV)
> 619 Edgewood Avenue, Suite 101
> Atlanta, GA 30312
> (404) 870-9761 www.padv.org
>
> Supporting Women and their children in their efforts to live violence free.
>
> Fax – (404) 870-9611
> Cell – (678) 591-8095
October 4, 2005
Dear All,
Please have a look at a short video segment showing the truth about the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) as presented on San Diego’s Fox6 Television.
“A life changing thing forever…” And this man didn’t even suffer as tragically as many falsely accused who have lost access to their children.
Sadly, the above quote from the falsely accused ex-police officer and military veteran is true for far too many fathers across the country (and their fatherless children as well). And make no mistake, the VAWA is being used primarily against fathers to gain advantage in child custody and divorce proceedings…
The VAWA renewal proponent appearing in the video states that “The VAWA has helped protect women and children…”
Though I’ve sent many of you the following information before, here are the statistics about who is really endangering the children of America, as represented by the United States Administration for Children and Families (ACF). Please note it is NOT fathers (and not men in general). But that is exactly who is targeted for denial of Constitutional protections and a presumption of violent tendencies by the VAWA.
Child Maltreatment 2003: Reports from the States to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data Systems – National statistics on child abuse and neglect (2005)
Approximately 83.9 percent of victims were abused by at least one parent. An estimated 40.8 percent of child victims were maltreated by their mothers acting alone; another 18.8 percent were maltreated by their fathers acting alone; 16.9 percent were abused by both parents.
You are being lied to by a greedy and power hungry special interest lobby that has been unwisely created through a decade’s worth of taxpayer funding to the tune of billions of dollars.
These idealogues and self-serving profiteers don’t care a lick about the wake of VAWA devastation in the form of dysfunctional fatherless children and ruined falsely-accused fathers as long as they continue to get their billions.
The VAWA is a plague upon this country and its social foundation of the family. America is very sick and by renewing the VAWA you are directly feeding the infection…
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
October 4, 2005
Dear All,
The truth be told by Carey Roberts. The American male is learning fast and self-protection measures are spreading rapidly. Please have a good look in the mirror tonight before bedtime and take a moment to pause and reflect on the role that government policies have played, and continue to play, in the demise of the American family and American society.
The day is coming soon when the ramifications of the policies you have all helped enact and support will not be able to be camouflaged with worthless window-dressing like the National Fatherhood Initiative. You likely sense it yourselves, but the greed and power of the special interests in coordination with your own selfish career goals conspire for you to leave the legacy of hideous problems you’ve created to the next generation of citizens and legislators. And what an ugly legacy it is…
The American family, and consequently American Society, is crumbling. And the responsibility lies with United States Congress, pure and simple.
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
———————————————
The Rise of Big Sister-ism
by Carey Roberts
I have seen their shell-shocked eyes and unbelieving expressions.
Men saddled with crushing child support obligations, forced to live on scraps or else fall into a desperate sea of mounting debt. A few of them are white-collar guys who once held respectable jobs and lived in comfortable houses.
Time marches forward, and the cases only become more bizarre.
Steve Barreras paid $20,000 to support his daughter, a girl he had never met. In fact, she didn’t even exist. His ex-wife Viola Trevino took another family’s daughter to court and claimed the child as hers. New Mexico governor Bill Richardson has now ordered an investigation.
In Michigan, Terrace Hale had $300 garnished from each paycheck for three years. The money went to support a woman he’s never met to raise a child he’s never fathered. Now, Marilyn Stephen, director of the Michigan Office of Child Support, refuses to give Mr. Hale’s money back.
Then there are those cases of adolescent boys who were victimized twice. First by their adult female rapists, and then by an inflexible child support system that came knocking [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2004/0310roberts.html].
The voice of justice and outrage asks, How could this happen in America?
The answer can be found in our nation’s 30-year crusade to extract child support payments from mostly minority, low-income fathers, men who now bear the contemptuous epithet, Deadbeat Dads.
Last year professor Stephen Baskerville of Howard University probed the allegations that have been leveled against these deadbeats. His must-read article, Is There Really a Fatherhood Crisis?, reached some surprising conclusions:
Charge #1: Most marriages break up because fathers have chosen to abandon their children, as president Bill Clinton once put it.
Not true. Margaret Brinig and Douglas Allen found that women file for divorce in 70% of cases.
Likewise, Arizona State University psychologist Sanford Braver reports in his book Divorced Dads that two out of three divorces are initiated by women.
Charge #2: When women do leave the marriage, it’s to escape domestic violence and abuse.
False. The number one reason cited by divorcing moms, according to Braver, is not feeling loved or appreciated, and not anything to do with violence.
Charge #3: Dads don’t pay their child support because they don’t care about their kids.
Absurd. A 1998 Rutgers and University of Texas study concluded: many of the absent fathers who state leaders want to track down and force to pay child support are so destitute that their lives focus on finding the next job, next meal, or next night’s shelter. The problem is not dads who are dead-beats, the problem is men who are dead-broke.
Charge #4: Kids don’t really need their dads, anyway.
Absolutely false. This is the most scurrilous myth of all, because the truth is the polar opposite, and the harmful effects on children are so great. Virtually every major social pathology has been linked to fatherless children: violent crime, drug and alcohol abuse, truancy, unwed pregnancy, suicide, and psychological disorders, notes Baskerville.
It is no coincidence that all four of these myths place fathers in a bad light. And that suits the Divorce Industry, that veritable army of lawyers, family court judges, custody evaluators, and child support enforcers — just fine.
These myths have become so ingrained in our thinking that basic Constitutional protections are being casually tossed aside. One brief on child support from the Left-leaning National Conference of State Legislatures made this stunning recommendation: The burden of proof may be shifted to the defendant, which of course means, Fathers can be assumed to be guilty until proven innocent.
Of course, it’s divorce that triggers the monstrous child support machinery to lurch into motion. The rise of no-fault, unilateral divorce does not trouble the Sisterhood. In fact, they welcome it.
Over the past 50 years, the National Association of Women Lawyers has spearheaded the adoption of no-fault divorce legislation throughout the country, laws that made marital dissolution that much easier. The NAWL now notes with satisfaction, the ideal of no-fault divorce became the guiding principle for reform of divorce laws in the majority of states.
A growing divorce rate. Disenfranchised dads. Children lacking paternal guidance and protection. An ever-expanding child support apparatus. Careless disregard of Constitutional protections. A growing totalitarian mindset.
That’s the Matriarchy at work.
October 2, 2005
Dear Esteemed Officials and Staffers,
Included below is a video of myself speaking in front of about 200 people at New Hampshire Consitution Day as recorded Sunday, September 25th, 2005. Constitution Day was presented by the New Hampshire Center for Constitutional Studies.
The video includes footage of myself speaking and then Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo. Speaking before me were New Ipswich, NH Chief of Police Garrett Chamberlain (who attempted to charge illegal aliens [that the federal government refused to prosecute] under NH’s state unlawful trespass law) and Jim Gilchrist (founder of the Minuteman Project).
The undermining of the American family, and more concisely the institution of American fatherhood, as encouraged and facilitated by the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is quickly gaining recognition now as a critical problem that is endangering our society on an uparalleled level. I hope you will take the time to view my Constitution Day address and to educate yourselves about the nature of the problem and the reality of how government pandering to special interest groups is tragically subverting the very foundation of American society (the American family).
Detailed information on VAWA lobbying violations is here (this is the information I allude to in my address that was provided to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and others).
Please do NOT renew the VAWA. It is a plague upon this country.
Sincerely,
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
WWW.NHCUSTODY.ORG
September 29, 2005
Below is more educational information that you’ll likely ignore since it wasn’t provided by a special interest group receiving Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) funds. What you people there at the Congress are doing with the VAWA renewal is truly disturbing.
If Tom Delay thinks he is being railroaded by a partisan fanatic then he should recognize that he’s getting off easy. If he were falsely accused under the provisions of the VAWA he could have expected to have been served with a restraining order [with no advance warning at all] ejecting him from his family home and denying him access to his own children (and vice versa). And, yes, just as Mr. Delay has complained he was unable to tell his side of the story to the Grand Jury that indicted him, he would not have been allowed to face his accuser as he was denied due process. Further, his accuser (and her attorney who may well have suborned perjury by influencing her to assert domestic violence) would never risk any accountability for her heinous assertions that resulted in Mr. Delay seeing his family home for the last time and severing the relationship between him and his kids, even if ironclad evidence showed she was lying.
So, remind him will you, that he is getting off very easy….
Please kill the National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI) and route those funds to the Gulf Coast instead. Burning the taxpayer funds directed at the NFI would be just as effective at mitigating the fatherhood crisis in America…
Looks like the *real* family values community needs to redirect its efforts from educating an uncaring, hypocritical, and pandering Congress to warning wholesale the next generation of would-be fathers of the danger to themselves and their as yet unborn progeny…
No thanks for the legacy you’ve left all of our children and grandchildren by supporting VAWA renewal…
The irony is that one day after you’ve long since disappeared from public life (and thus do not retain the power to keep your loved ones from being railroaded like the rest of falsely accused fathers [and their children]), your male descendents and their children (of either gender) will be directly endangered by the unconstitutional and incredibly unwise VAWA law that you renewed for selfish reasons of political correctness.
Et tu, Brute?,
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
September 23, 2005
By Trudy Schuett
“The fact of that bigotry and arrogance goes a long way toward explaining why VAWA is so damaging to today’s American society while doing so little to address whatever the actual need may be… We don’t know what that need is. That’s because those who stand to benefit financially from the proposed billions of federal dollars have seen to it that this is an issue not fully understood by anyone.”
September 28, 2005
Dear Congress, Staff, Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, and Others,
Below is a recently written article that is absolutely right on the money in its explanation of what is happening to the American family in the wake of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). The author provides specifics about how the VAWA has broken down the foundation of American society (the family), placed American fathers in an untenable situation with respect to protecting themselves against becoming the VAWA’s next victim, and the reality of what awaits those fathers (and commensurately their children who are often denied their fathers) in the nation’s courts.
This information is critical reading as relayed by an attorney who is an expert on these matters. The intended audience are fathers who may well face false allegations in the context of divorce and/or child custody dispute. Attorney Beaulier explains the way the system functions to prospective victims of false allegations, in addition to warning them to be prepared (though he admits there is no real preparation that works).
Please be educated about the truth of what is causing the breakdown of the American family before renewing the VAWA and perpetuating the misery for so many…
Fighting False Allegations of Domestic Abuse
September 26, 2005
Maury Beaulier, Esq.
“However, it is also a time to reflect on our laws, the inequities that they create and how you protect yourself against false allegations of abuse in a flawed legal system.”
Sincerely,
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
September 12, 2005
Dear Legislators, Staff, and others,
Please get educated as to what is really going on around this country in the context of divorce and level the playing field so that so many American children are not doomed to suffer the same fate as the Kaduce children. And please sunset the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). It is being used as a weapon in child custody disputes all over the country and the lies it is facilitating and encouraging, with no danger of accountability or sanction for the false accuser, are damaging the social fabric of America beyond repair.
Forest City man fights allegations of abuse
By BOB FENSKE, For The Globe Gazette
September 11, 2005
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
September 11, 2005
Dear Congressman Coble and Executive Staff,
Please take a few minutes to pay close attention to the information below. I’ve provided documented evidence about how the VAWA is undermining the American family, and consequently the very health of our society. I have pointed specific violations of federal law as well.
If you must renew the VAWA then please at least consider plugging the loophole whereby Domestic Violence Coalitions are using VAWA funds (in contravention of existing law) to influence family law in every state.
State domestic violence coalitions funded by the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) are breaking federal law all over the country. Please follow the link below and see the specific details of how it is being done in New Hampshire and has been for years. And please take action to stop the law-breaking. Surely, you must at least care about compliance with existing law if nothing else…
Doesn’t the Congress even care that the law is being ignored (and violated) by these monstrous coalitions as they go about their business undermining the American family using VAWA funds to fuel their misandrist rampage against fatherhood?
Other letters containing objective information about what the VAWA has done to the American institutions of fatherhood and family, to the nation’s children of divorce, and how it so endangers our very society are here:
If the VAWA is renewed the Senate Judiciary Committee’s July 19th hearing exclusion of those opposed to VAWA renewal will live on as amongst the lowest points ever in American ‘democracy’. The VAWA has created a taxpayer funded gang of rich radical constituents who are literally destroying this country’s fabric and have now even succeeded in destroying the opportunity for democracy to function such that those opposed to family destruction can be heard by the Congress.
It would seem that things are the same in the halls of the Congress as they are in the family courts across the nation. God help this country…
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
September 6, 2005
The National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI) will do nothing to reconcile the devastation wrought upon American fatherhood, families, and children in the wake of the VAWA.
The worst part is that this disaster is truly man-made…
Please kill the VAWA, stop the political pandering before it’s too late for our country, and start cleaning up the destruction in earnest.
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
September 2, 2005
Dear Congress, Staff, Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, and Others,
The story below should give you great pause. Why don’t you commission a study on how many of the pregnant teenagers at Timken Senior High School in Ohio have actually grown up with meaningful access to their own biological fathers?
Instead of wasting time and money on the National Fatherhood Initiative, which is just another government bandaid attempting to heal an open festering national wound, Congress would be far better served to sunset the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).
If not, then please consider renaming it the Anti-Fatherhood Act (AFA), because it’s draconian provisions and massive funding provided to radical ideologues is encouraging, facilitating, and realizing the undermining of Fatherhood and incremental demise of the American Family.
The sooner you realize that funds poured into the NFI will just be washed away by the funds provided through the VAWA the better. You’d be far better off just dropping both the NFI and the VAWA so as to allow American Fatherhood to return to a natural state where it is not under constant attack from the state domestic violence coalitions that Congress has turned into an anti-family monster of Frankenstonian proportions.
Please kill the VAWA.
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
___________________________________________
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/thrive/2005/sep/01/090104748.html
September 01, 2005
Ohio High School Has 64 Pregnant Students
By CONNIE MABIN
ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 30, 2005
Dear Congress, Staff, Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, and Others,
Please see the information I have provided below this letter.
I ask you why the King County Division of Child Support decided to retire their own visitation enforcement packet and adopt one created by the Northwest Women’s Law Center?
Particularly when the Northwest Women’s Law Center lobbies for the right of the 86% of primary residential parents who are women to move away from the non-custodial parent with their children?
If 86% of primary residential parents are women, the only constituents the NWLC supports the rights of, then what interest does the Northwest Women’s Law Center have in protecting the rights of non-custodial parents (86% of which are men according to the NWLC) to retain visitation access to their children?
This organization lobbies for the right of mothers to move their children away without regard for the children’s relationship with their father. This organization also lobbies against and has in its own words ‘repeatedly defeated’ legislation that would provide for a presumption of equality in parenting for both mother and father. Then it references fictional (non-existent) study data that supposedly agrees that fathers shouldn’t be considered equal parents.
So, why is this organization granted special access to the King County offices of Health and Human Services to inject its anti-father perspective and policies with respect to enforcement of visitation orders?
I’ll tell you why. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is why. The huge amount of funding provided through the VAWA is being used for anti-father purposes all over the country and allowing groups like the NWLC to infiltrate the entire family law infrastructure. Just like in King County, where the fox is watching the henhouse while children and their non-custodial parents (namely fathers) are kept apart and denied visitation enforcement because the NWLC visitation enforcement policies are put in place by the county government while the same NWLC lobbies constantly and ferociously against equal parenting protections for fathers (and also against equal access rights for children to their fathers).
This is ridiculous. Can’t you see what the VAWA has done to this country and how the funds are being abused?
The men of the country do see it, and recognize that it is not safe to start a family. The VAWA and family law in this country are one in the same, and the draconian provisions and massive funding provided by the VAWA are being used nationwide to marginalize fatherhood. The children of this nation are suffering terribly because of it, and the National Fatherhood Initiative will do nothing to stop that suffering.
I hope you recognize how hypocritical it is for some hollow national initiative to convince fathers to be active in their children’s lives while you rain down VAWA funds on the radical ideologues who are using that money at every turn to separate fathers and their children in America’s family courts. The unconstitutional abrogation of due process for those accused of committing domestic violence are doing wonders for the ideologues as well.
The continued incremental demise of the American family is imminent if you renew the VAWA. Please do NOT do so.
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
Modification of Child Support Orders; Enforcement of Visitation Rights; Customer Service (King County)
“We recently retired our own visitation enforcement packet and adopted one created by the Northwest Women’s Law Center. We continue to maintain and distribute our own packets for child support modification.”
“The anticipated demand for visitation enforcement packets never materialized. We conclude that although people complain frequently about visitation problems, they must not see court enforcement as a realistic solution, particularly if they have to do it themselves.”
____________________________________________
Northwest Women’s Law Center
Advancing legal rights for women
The Northwest Women’s Law Center Advances Women’s Rights in Family Law
Amongst the Northwest Women’s Law Center achievements:
Important Cases
– Working to ensure that primary residential parents may move with their children when necessary. (Stoneman v. Drollinger; Horner v. Horner; Wade v. Wade)
– Successfully arguing for the constitutionality of Washington state’s child support laws. (Marriage of Giovannone and Baze; P.O.P.S. v. Gardner)
Changing the Law Through the Legislative Process
– Successfully working for passage of Washington’s Relocation Act, which ensures that primary residential parents, 86% of whom are women, may relocate with their children after divorce when it best serves the needs of the family.
– Repeatedly defeating “friendly parent” legislation, which would put mothers at risk of being labeled with the unfounded “parental alienation syndrome” for raising legitimate concerns about the other parent in custody disputes. Lobbying to protect child support schedules.
– Successfully lobbying to protect children’s rights to adequate post-high school financial support.
– Repeatedly defeating legislation that would create a presumption that awarding joint physical and legal custody of children is in the child’s best interest. Recent studies have shown that the current system, which grants judges limited discretion to order joint custody, provides better protection to children.
Helping Women Help Themselves
– Providing free self help packets on specific areas of family law to domestic violence victims and shelters statewide, on request.
August 27, 2005
Dear Congress, Staff, Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, and Others,
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The organizations receiving VAWA grant funds make money finding “violence” under every rock and bush. If you don’t think this is an *industry*, think again. Please see below how this industry is no different than any other and how the domestic-violence seekers are undermining this country by using the Violence Against Women Act funding both directly and indirectly to increase their numbers and to increase the number of domestic violence incidences, so they can yet again try and get more money from the Congress.
VAWA is a plague upon this country and is incrementally destroying American society. It is the Violence Against Women Act, not the propensity of men to commit violence against women that is responsible for the continuing demise of the American family.
When the Congress passed the VAWA in 1994 due to political correctness in the face of skewed statistics they fixed a problem that did not exist. Now the massive amount of taxpayer dollars the VAWA provides to radical anti-male and anti-father idealogues has become an anti-family, anti-society, monster of Frankenstonian proportions. This is a problem that *does* exist. And this is why the breakdown of the American family continues and the consequent demise of American society is imminent if the VAWA is not reconciled.
I ask again when the Congress will mandate a national investigation to determine how often domestic violence allegations are made against fathers, as opposed to childless men, and how often these allegations are made without basis? The provisions of the VAWA are being used as a weapon to gain advantage in child custody cases from coast to coast. That is the truth about the VAWA.
Please do not renew the VAWA. It is a plague upon this country.
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
August 22, 2005
Dear Congress, Staffers, Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, and Others,
Below is more reality on what is happening in the nation’s family courts during child custody proceedings. Men are recognizing the truth more so every day as the devastated fathers who have suffered through the bias of the country’s family courts along with their children after 75%+ of divorces are initiated by mothers inform them about the reality that awaits them in America’s ‘family justice’ system.
It will take years to roll back the effects caused by the VAWA which the radical ideologues have connived the Congress into supporting in order to appear politically correct. If you don’t start the reversal now, though, we will soon have a society where the majority of men refuse to start families. And they are wise to believe that starting a family is far too risky with the bias that exists against fathers in the nation’s courts.
A man can risk his life overseas to defend this country’s purported civil liberties and freedoms. But he can’t protect his own children on American soil and continue to meaningfully retain his natural right to be a father to them after his spouse decides she no longer wants to be married.
Thanks to the Congress’ political correctness and pandering to radical feminist anti-father ideologues our country is now full of singly parented fatherless children, boasts of a 50%+ divorce rate, and the institutions of marriage and family are clinging to their last breaths.
Child Custody: Where Men Hit a Glass Ceiling
www.ancpr.org
August 22, 2005
The VAWA is a tool of the anti-father and anti-family ideologues who are enroute to destroying this nation. Please fix the devastation the Congress has facilitated and encouraged through the VAWA over the last decade. This nation cannot bear another 5 years of the VAWA.
This is a critical time in American history. The freedoms this country so often lays claim to are little more than hollow propaganda when fathers across the country are removed unwillingly from their children’s lives through false allegations of domestic violence. It is a pandemic that has left a generation of the nation’s children dysfunctional after forcing them into being raised largely (or wholly) fatherless.
Do you even realize how many of these kids are clinging to Daddy’s leg at the end of ‘visitation’ time? Or how many of them are crying for their fathers while being told that Dad doesn’t care about them and isn’t interested in being involved in their lives by the same people who’ve falsely accused Dad of being dangerous and had him removed by the police from the family residence after claiming to be in ‘fear’? Please admit the mistake you have made by funding the VAWA and directly encouraging and facilitating the crisis of the American family.
And please stop the political doublespeak and lip service to family values and FIX the problem. DO NOT RENEW THE VAWA.
Soon the Congress will need to institute a draft because the men of this once great country will no longer fight to defend the rights that we now know do not exist. Please pay attention…
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
August 21, 2005
Dear Congress, Staff, Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, and Others,
The data just keeps on coming. For the first time in our history the most common living arrangement in America is that of single-adult households. The United States’ government policies as they relate to social policy surrounding the family ARE NOT WORKING.
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
August 21, 2005
“By 2000, however, the nuclear household fell 1.7 percent to 24.6 million households while the single-adult homes rose 21.4 percent, from 22.4 million to 27.2 million. The single-family home includes those living alone for any reason, as well as the single-parent home.”
Men now recognize it is not safe to start a family and women recognize that they have much to gain and nothing to lose by abandoning their husbands, and driving a wedge between the children and their father through claims of ‘fear’ (read: domestic violence, for they are one in the same according to the VAWA).
The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) has been, and continues to be, a plague upon this country. Our children are growing up fatherless, and our fathers are being made childless all because the ideologues like those who stacked the Senate Judiciary Committee’s July 19th VAWA hearing are being given billions of dollars of taxpayer funds under the guise of preventing violence toward women, but in reality those funds are being used to destroy the American family through the draconian denial of due process for falsely accused fathers.
1) The VAWA is based on a lie. Men (and particularly fathers) are NOT predisposed to violence against women. That is why human civilization had incrementally progressed in the direction of a stable family unit for thousands upon thousands of years prior to enactment of the VAWA.
2) The numbers of domestic violence allegations across the nation continues to skyrocket. Why? Because the VAWA is a self-fulfilling prophecy, just like any government program that involves so much money being handed to so many special interest groups who then recycle the money they’ve been handed in the pursuit of more government bureacracy and consequently more money for their cause.
3) More men than ever are choosing not to start families, and also recognizing that the rights of fathers are akin to the rights of African Americans prior to emancipation.
This country is going straight down the sinkhole and the VAWA is the largest reason why. You are the people that can fix this. I hope you are all having a long look in the mirror on occasion even as you contemplate your future political careers. The country’s life blood (our children and our families) is being sucked dry by the parasites who have connived the Congress into believing their vile misandrist bunk.
These are the same EXACT people who are rallying all over the country (in virtually every state) and using those VAWA taxpayer funds to oppose equal parenting rights for fathers after more than 3/4 of all divorces are initiated by mothers (who often make false allegations of domestic violence to gain advantage because they know they *can* without any chance of accountability).
Here is the latest NH Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Abuse (NHCADSV) anti-fatherhood contribution. They’ve been lobbying the NH legislature for years using VAWA funds in opposition to equal parenting rights for fathers. The story is the same all over the country:
Please wake up and look at the facts.
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
August 18, 2005
Dear Congress, Staff, Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, and Others,
Just in case any of you are actually reading mail that opposes VAWA, I include below a just released article that is absolutely accurate with respect to how the Violence Against Women Act has been affecting our country’s families, the institution of fatherhood, the nation’s children of divorce, and the commensurate health of our society.
The implications of VAWA renewal for the America of today and tomorrow should not be underestimated. American men are recognizing more so every day that the values and freedoms they are being asked to fight for overseas are indeed NOT to be found here on our own American soil.
Once again, I hope and pray that you are paying close attention. Political expediency may yet cost this country more than can be imagined. Our social fabric is crumbling and if you renew VAWA you may well put the nail in the coffin of the American family. Fathers are not nearly as foolish as they have been made out to be. There IS a way they can protect themselves, and that is by refusing to start families. The U.S. Congress and its political pandering to the ideologues is leaving them with little choice…
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
Violence Against Families
Fathers fall victim to domestic-abuse laws
Dr. Stephen Baskerville
The American Conservative, vol. 4, no 16 (August 29, 2005), pp. 23-25
Violence Against Families. Fathers fall victim to domestic-abuse laws
August 18, 2005
Dear Legislators, Staff, Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, and Others,
The ‘Psychologist’ referenced below is exactly the type of radical feminist ideologue the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is empowering to spew her society-weakening bunk. I hope you recognize that present government policies (primarily the VAWA and a lack of equal parenting protections for fathers as well as mothers) are both emboldening and encouraging people like Dr. Peggy Drexler to pursue the elimination of fatherhood entirely.
The assistance provided to her in the form of the VAWA is the pot of gold that her and her ilk have successfully used to undermine the American family and, consequently, American society. Please be aware that American men are realizing that radicals like Dr. Wexler are provided a forum to spew their hatred of fatherhood and disdain for the needs of children to be raised by both parents when the United States Congress sets up a rubber stamp hearing as the Senate Judiciary Committee did on July 19th relating to the VAWA renewal.
This country is falling fast and the Congress is the power broker providing the radical ideologues the sledgehammer whereby they are destroying the American family and American children through the imposition of dysfunctional single parent upbringing.
These people do not believe that children need fathers and they are using the VAWA as the most powerful tool ever known to implement their agenda. The weakening of our country is continuing at breakneck speed thanks to the VAWA and those who use it to gain advantage in divorce and child custody proceedings.
Please see Dr. Wexler’s radical and absolutely inaccurate diatribe here. These are the type of people that the Congress is soliciting and receiving testimony from, while the Congress at the same time refuses to hear American war veterans who are also fathers testify about how the VAWA was used against them to keep them from their children.
“In “Raising Boys Without Men,” research psychologist Dr. Peggy Drexler says that boys raised in households headed by just mothers can grow up emotionally stronger, more empathetic and independent than boys raised in traditional two-parent households. “
I hope the responsibility of your decisions and their direct impact on the health of this country, as well as the health of millions of American children of divorce, is not lost on you…
Do you know why the number of Domestic Violence restraining orders are continuing to increase across the country? Because of the VAWA and its use to gain advantage in child custody and divorce proceedings.
If you believe that the American father is, in general, more and more violent toward women as the years go by then I think you need to answer why society is spiraling downhill so fast (due to the increasingly violent American man?) after so many millennia of human progress toward stability in the family unit. I also urge you to conduct a study as to how often domestic violence is alleged against fathers as opposed to men who have no children. I suspect strongly that you will find the overwhelming number of domestic violence allegations are made against fathers, and not against childless men. The reason is clear: the VAWA is a tool being used by the likes of Dr. Wexler and her ilk to render the American father extinct.
And thanks to the inattentiveness and political pandering being exercised by the U.S. Congress, the plan is working…
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
WWW.NHCUSTODY.ORG
August 16, 2005
Dear Senator Santorum, Legislators, Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, Staff, and Others,
I heard Senator Santorum interviewed today at length on the Laura Ingraham radio program. I wanted to both compliment and chastise the good Senator, in light of what he had to say.
While it is about time that a prominent elected official stood up and proclaimed the need to change the way the government does business so as to stop undermining the American family, Senator Santorum missed the most obvious and overt problems with national family law policy which are directly responsible for the weakening of the American family, and consequently American society.
He spoke at length about the need to provide financial incentives for married couples. He spoke at length about the need to protect traditional marriage between a man and a woman. He spoke at length about counseling fathers on how to stay involved with their children. And he spoke at length about how ‘children need both a mommy and a daddy’.
None of the above suggestions will result in any meaningful change in American culture with respect to the insitutions of marriage and family until the *real* underlying problems are resolved.
What Senator Santorum failed to mention, and I suspect fails to recognize, are the following critical problems with American family law, nationally, that are directly undermining the American family in every state:
1) The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) has made it law that men are presumed to be violent toward women and that a woman’s mere assertion of ‘fear’ must result in a man being removed from his home and his children. This assertion of ‘fear’ is being wielded as a weapon, in pandemic fashion, in divorce proceedings from coast to coast by mothers who want out of marriage.
2) Family courts all over the country are relegating fathers to second-class parents when they are made non-custodial parents who are ordered to serve as wallets, and little else, for their children after they have initiated less than one quarter (25%) of all divorces.
3) Children’s and fathers’ rights advocates across the country are fighting in virtually every state, unsuccessfully, for legislative reforms which would explicitly provide for statutory presumption of parenting equality for both mother and father when child custody is at issue. VAWA funds are being further used, by the way, to oppose these reforms nationally.
These are the primary problems that are encouraging and facilitating the breakdown of the American family. Bandaids will not fix these problems. The roots of the problem must be addressed.
The bottom line is that fathers across this country are being removed from their children’s lives, with the exception of being ordered to provide the entirety of their children’s financial support, and relegated to visitors who are allowed access to their children only a handful of days each month by the state family courts. These orders are occurring after 75% plus of divorces (in families with children) are initiated by mothers who know that they have much to gain and nothing to lose by getting divorced.
The ‘deadbeat American dad’ pandemic has been created by the family courts, U.S. government policies, and the VAWA. If you believe that American fathers are predisposed to be deadbeats who abandon their children then you must believe that our society is in very serious danger. The truth is that the danger is very real, but it is instead being *caused* by federal government policies as opposed to being rectified by such policies.
The reality in the American family home of today is that fathers are presumed to be violent toward women (as specified by VAWA) and treated worse than common criminals (because they are denied due process) when a spouse proclaims she is in ‘fear’ as a means of gaining advantage in divorce or child custody proceedings. The same fathers are fighting with everything they have to get laws passed in the states that would merely emphasize the 14th amendment equal protection clause with regard to their right to be presumed an equal parent to their children during family court proceedings.
Presumed to be violent toward women, and unable to be presumed an equal parent, the American father of 2005 is facing a conspiracy of political correctness and political expediency that panders to the special interest feminist ideologue lobby. The American father of 2005 can no more be blamed for the 50%+ divorce rate in America and the unconscionably huge number of singly-parented American children than can a beaver who is relocated from his den because he is no longer a desirable resident of the pond that was long his home.
The real sufferers are the children of America who, for all of the political doublespeak about deadbeat American dads and our government’s dedication to ‘family values’, are being *made* fatherless by the VAWA and the American family courts.
The trend toward self-protection is already beginning, and the most intelligent stocks of American men are learning that starting a family is an extremely risky proposition. Prepare for the incremental weakening of American society as the most worthy men amongst our people recognize it isn’t safe to begin a family with the reality of the VAWA and national lack of parenting equality.
Senator Santorum is right that ‘It Takes a Family’. Unfortunately, the statistical likelihood that a given American father will be allowed to retain meaningful access to his family (if only his children) after his wife decides she’s had enough of marriage is very slim indeed.
Natural urges are strong. The American male is adaptable though. And he is learning quickly…
Dejectedly, but with most sincerity,
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
August 10, 2005
Dear Congress, Staffers, and Others,
Please see the article below explaining how the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) makes a great tool for getting a restraining order against a Grandma on Daddy’s side of the family who wants to share in the youth of her grandchild.
VAWA is destroying this country, plain and simple, and the Congress has been tricked into supporting it through a lack of understanding about how it is being used on the streets of America. If our elected officials don’t start paying real attention to the demise of the American family unit and how they have directly contributed through the VAWA and its absolutely draconian operational provisions then they will bear direct responsibility when this country reaches the point of no return as a consequence of our nation’s crumbling social fabric. That time is not as far off as our politically expedient elected officials might kid themselves into believing.
Please put aside the shallow political correctness and political expediency and pay close attention to the truth about the VAWA and how its supporters are using its funding and provisions in selfish pursuit of their radical ideology by wiping out fatherhood and dooming our nation’s children to dysfunctional single-parent upbringings.
This is not a sound-bite issue that centers on preventing violence against women. We ALL want to prevent violence against women, and against men, and most importantly against children (which by the way is overwhelmingly perpetrated by mothers, as reported by the ACF). The VAWA is instead an issue the centers around the destruction of the American family unit by facilitating and encouraging the most devastating sucker punch (an invented and bogus domestic violence allegation) ever felt in a father and child’s lifetime.
Millions of grandmothers are being removed from children’s lives as well, in addition to aunts, uncles, cousins, and entire paternal sides of the family.
Restraining Orders for Abusive Grandmas?
Carey Roberts
August 10, 2005
RenewAmerica.us
More educational and accurate information on the problem from Carey Roberts
A Government Program is No Substitute For a Bear-Hug.
Carey Roberts
June 16, 2005
NewsWithViews.com
Sincerely,
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
August 6, 2005
Dear Congress, Staff, and Others,
Please have a look at the just released (8/5/05) report below made available by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration.
———————
The NSDUH Report: Substance abuse and dependence among women based on SAMHSA’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). This reports shows the rates of abuse and dependence among various groups of women in the genera l population
“Based on SAMHSA’s 2003 National Survey on Drug Use & Health, an estimated 5.9% of women aged 18 or older met criteria for abuse of or dependence on alcohol or an illicit drug in the past year.”
At: http://oas.samhsa.gov/2k5/women/women.cfm
———————-
You will not hear these scientifically gathered statistics relayed by the special interest groups who support VAWA because such groups are not interested in propagating the truth. And the truth is that there is NO pandemic of violence against women by men. Additionally, if there IS a pandemic of violence against children then it is being perpetrated by mothers against their own children. I have previously sent you the ACF data showing as much (that 40.8% of abused or neglected children are maltreated by their mothers acting alone, while 18.8% are maltreated by their fathers acting alone).
These same special interests who were the only witnesses allowed to testify at the Senate Judiciary Committee’s July 19th rubber stamp hearing on VAWA, while those opposed to this law that undermines fathers and children and families across the nation, are using inflated domestic violence statistics to get the VAWA renewed.
Now that they’ve gotten the law (VAWA) enacted to provide for the expression of ‘fear’ as constituting another instance of domestic violence the numbers on paper will only continue to rise. Such numbers are bogus and are being used to obfuscate the true purpose of the VAWA and the underlying agenda of the radical idealogues. Their true purpose is to undermine fatherhood and that is how the VAWA is being used nationally as a weapon by unethical attorneys (who only care about financial profits), radical anti-male coalitions directly funded by the VAWA, and whimsical mothers who no longer want to be married.
You are giving the radical idealogues the tools to destroy the foundation of the American family unit, and they have used it masterfully and will continue to do so. VAWA is the sledgehammer of despair for millions of children of divorce and falsely accused fathers, and the Congress is providing that sledgehammer to the idealogues without paying attention to the reality of what this law means to America’s present and future health where it is being applied on the nation’s streets.
The point is that mothers are NOT better parents generally, and the statistics on child maltreatment by mothers along with the statistics on drug/alcohol abuse by adult women should make anyone think twice about generalizing. If you want to make a generalization then use scientific facts to do so: for example the ACF facts and the SAMHSA facts to generalize that children are no better off with their moms than their dads.
In the end, children need both parents and NEITHER is better suited for a worthless stereotype to be broadly applied to them (as in men/fathers should be presumed to be violent). In light of the statistics available from our own U.S. Government, it is more likely that women/mothers should be presumed to be drug/alcohol abusers and child abusers, as opposed to men/fathers being presumed to be violent towards women…
The truth about women and substance abuse should be a revelation to you. Between these statistics and the ACF statistics on the maltreatment of children, would it not be wise to remove the VAWA sledgehammer whereby children of divorce around the country are being exposed to unnecessary danger when their falsely accused fathers are railroaded out of the family home and issued an injunction against seeing their kids???
Sincerely,
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
August 1, 2005
Dear U.S. Congress, Staffers, and Others,
The Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, has just released a study on the sexual violence that took place in the nation’s prisons during 2004.
The report states that:
‘In State prisons 69% of victims of staff sexual misconduct were male, while 67% of perpetrators were female‘.
The statistic above explaining that 67% of the prison staff perpetrators of sexual misconduct were female comes directly from the U.S. Department of Justice and was discerned from a comprehensive study conducted within a controlled system (namely, the U.S. prison system).
The special interest VAWA lobby, which is using the financial and operational provisions of the VAWA to undermine American fatherhood and the American family unit has been feeding you stories to obscure the truth about the reality of domestic violence.
Sexual Violence Reported by Correctional Authorities, 2004
U.S. Department of Justice
Bureau of Justice Statistics
SUNDAY, JULY 31, 2005
Here is the an audio link to the National Public Radio (NPR) trailer on the study that aired today.
Please don’t let them continue to fool you this way. Violence by men against women was NOT a pandemic, as the special interest anti-family ideologues convinced the Congress, back in 1994 and it is NOT now. The real pandemic is the one involving false allegations of domestic violence used by these same ideologues, unethical divorce attorneys, and less-than-dedicated mothers around the country that provide an easy exit from marriage by railroading non-violent fathers into the gutter, sans due process, through the draconian provisions of the VAWA.
Men, and fathers in particular, are not inherently violent toward women as you’ve been continually told. They are not predisposed to violence any more than they are predisposed to abandon their children, yet these same ideologues also argue that fatherlessness is caused overwhelmingly through abandonment. There is a very bad cycle in place now where the humongous amount of funding behind the VAWA is being used to cause fatherlessness across the country. It is the self-fulfilling prophecy of the ideologues as facilitated and encouraged by the draconian provisions and bottomless funding of the VAWA…
VAWA has turned the mere assertion (false or not) of ‘fear’ into the trigger that instantaneously turns non-violent American fathers into homeless and childless outcasts from society. And it is doing things just as terrible to the children of these fathers who are being made fatherless. The American family unit, and the development of America’s children, is doomed to regress further and further if the VAWA is renewed.
Here again, are the most recent U.S. Government ACF statistics on the maltreatment, abuse, and neglect of American children, along with a comprehensive annotated bibliography of studies showing the truth about violence in relationships perpetrated by men and women:
Child Maltreatment 2003: Reports from the States to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data Systems – National statistics on child abuse and neglect (2005)
Approximately 83.9 percent of victims were abused by at least one parent. An estimated 40.8 percent of child victims were maltreated by their mothers acting alone; another 18.8 percent were maltreated by their fathers acting alone; 16.9 percent were abused by both parents.
********************************************
REFERENCES EXAMINING ASSAULTS BY WOMEN ON THEIR SPOUSES OR MALE PARTNERS: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Martin S. Fiebert
Department of Psychology
California State University, Long Beach
SUMMARY: This bibliography examines 172 scholarly investigations: 136 empirical studies and 36 reviews and/or analyses, which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 162,500.
********************************************
Below please find a comprehensive, rational, and informative list of accurate recent national articles written on the deep problems created by the VAWA:
VAWA is as big a danger to this country’s future health as the radical fanatics who would destroy our country if given the chance. VAWA, however, with the blessing of our elected officials, is even more insidious as it is destroying the country from within… Truly.
Please do NOT renew the VAWA. It is the precisely the fuel by which the foundation of American social fabric, the family, is being undermined and it is directly endangering the future health of our country.
Here is a letter I wrote to many Senators and several Representatives:
Very Sincerely,
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
———————————————————————————-
Ending Bias In Domestic Assault Law
By Cathy Young
July 25, 2005
Time to Dispose of Radical Feminist Pork (VAWA)
By Phyllis Schlafly
July 18, 2005
https://townhall.com/columnists/phyllisschlafly/
Scream Queens Fuel Nightmarish VAWA System
By Lisa Scott
July 12, 2005
Family’s Feud With a Fascist Future
By Kathleen Parker
July 1, 2005
Congress Should Kill Discriminatory Domestic Violence Act
By Wendy McElroy
June 28, 2005
VAWA: MAKING DIVORCE EASY, PROFITABLE, AND FUN
By Carey Roberts
August 1, 2005
Dear NH Legislators,
I very much hope you will take the time to read the study statistics and recent national articles below and become familiar, if you aren’t already, with the adverse impact the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is having on fatherhood, child development, and the stability of the American family across the country. I recognize this letter is long and contains a large amount of information, but I hope you will find the time and desire to read through it and learn the truth about what is occurring in NH, and across the country. On a related note, I have also made a specific suggestion (and request) for legislation to be introduced during the upcoming session toward the true ‘best interests’ of NH’s children.
The truth is that across the country there is a virtual pandemic of false allegations and invented domestic violence incidents being wielded upon non-violent fathers and their children (essentially having their fathers taken away) by mothers who see an easy way out of marriages they no longer want. With no risk of redress, as it is a fact the courts unequivocally refuse to prosecute or even sanction those proven to have made fraudulent allegations, on the advice of unethical divorce attorneys and radical idealogue domestic-violence coalition representatives, mothers have learned to take great advantage of the system.
The ‘silver bullet’ is a legal sucker punch which provides an instant injunction against fathers without due process, and often finds a man who hours before was an upstanding member of society and dedicated father to his children out on the street with nothing but the clothes on his back after being confronted by the police with a restraining order.
The unjust cycle continues with accused fathers frequently being unable to obtain equal custody of their children because the judges have been trained by the same idealogue domestic violence coalitions (like the NHCADSV) that fathers should be presumed to be violent. As stipulated by the VAWA, it is simple enough that a woman’s expressed ‘fear’ is enough to remove a father from his children and thus begin for him and his children a nightmare of forced separation that you cannot possibly imagine if you haven’t experienced it. The Constitution is apparently alive and healthy when it comes to the debate over the treatment of terrorists, but the treatment of American fathers falsely accused of domestic violence (and the numbers are huge) clearly is not consistent with the same Constitution.
The NHCADSV is anti-father, period. The coalition refuses to recognize the importance of fathers in their children’s lives as shown by a voluminous number of studies, and lobbies at every opportunity (improperly, in my view) in Concord in opposition to child custody reform, child support reform, and any number of other gender-centric legislative matters to prevent the reform of laws which have been mistreated fathers and their children for far too long. The Coalition also encourages mothers to maintain they are in fear of their husbands as a means of gaining advantage in divorce, just as many NH divorce attorneys do with a wink and a nod to mothers who want primary custody of their children. In addition, the Coalition refuses to take a stand against fraudulent allegations of domestic violence and does everything in their power to keep the laws and courts from holding perjurers to account (even when such fraudulent allegations result in the separation of children and father).
As arguably the most powerful and influential woman in New Hampshire, the Policy Director of the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence (NHCADSV), Linda Griebsch maintains an extremely close relationship with both the NH Legislature and Judiciary. The Coalition’s constant lobbying of the legislature and training of judges in the state, training which is predicated on the same false premise [that men are predisposed to violence against women and children, and that women never make up fraudulent allegations] as the VAWA is based upon, has resulted in a situation where fathers frequently find themselves fighting for sanity amidst the emotional and financial devastation wrought upon them even while they fight at the same time to retain access to their own children.
The relationship that Ms. Griebsch enjoys with the Executive branch is clearly also one of great deference. In addition to directing public policy at the NHCADSV I’ve come to learn that Ms. Griebsch has just had her appointment as the Chair of the New Hampshire Guardian Ad Litem (GAL) Board extended until 2008. As you know, the Chair of the GAL board also has a tremendous amount of power and influence as relates to how GALs conduct their investigations into the ‘best interests’ of NH’s children when custody is at issue.
The laws in the state have changed with respect to child custody (HB640) and will hopefully change again soon for the better (HB529). The GALs in the state need to be held accountable for the critical decisions they are making on behalf of the state’s children of divorce and legal separation. The present GAL board, with Ms. Griebsch as the Chair, is incapable of holding the GALs in the state responsible in any measure when they make poor, lazy, or inaccurate findings in child custody cases. Further, the amount of time the current GAL Board has been in place without implementing constructive procedures for redress by the public makes one wonder what exactly the Board *is* actually doing at all…?
The fact that Ms. Griebsch, who wrote the following letter in opposition to HB529 (for equal parenting reform) this past fall on behalf of the NHCADSV, has actually been serving, and will now continue to serve until 2008, as the NH GAL board Chair is truly unconscionable:
A bigger conflict of interest (that is incidentally terribly impacting the children of the state while the GALs have so much influence over what happens to these children’s lives, yet are never held accountable for lazy or disengenuous investigations) is hard to imagine.
To rectify this situation in New Hampshire, I urge you to introduce legislation, prior to the fall deadline for introductions, to sack the present Guardian Ad Litem (GAL) Board and replace it with a Citizen’s GAL Oversight Board. Such an objectively constructed Citizen’s Board would have none of the conflict the current Board does, and if it were given the tools to sanction GALs who act inappropriately then the newly restored checks and balances of such an entity would do a great service to NH’s children of divorce.
Further comprehensive information on VAWA, which directly funds the NHCADSV and provides the foundation for its agenda, including national articles, statistics, and an opposition letter I’ve recently written the U.S . Congress follows after this letter (the letter above this one addressed to the U.S. Congress, dated August 1, was included along with this letter)…
Thank you sincerely for your consideration of this critical matter,
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
July 31, 2005
Dear Congress, Staffers, and Others,
Charley Reese doesn’t explicitly reference the Violence Against Women Act in his recent article below, but he should have. The VAWA is the tool whereby the collapse of society as Reese alludes to will be actualized.
The natural evolution of human civilization and American society has been engendered by a basic human urge for stability, and toward ever-increasing stability of the family unit. It is not men in general who have undermined the American family, the American institution of marriage, and doomed a generation of children to dysfunctional singly parented upbringings.
It is the VAWA that has done this. And it is the VAWA that is truly endangering the country’s social health. Truly…
Men are not predisposed in general to violence against women, nor are they predisposed to abandon their children (another false assertion that derives directly from the VAWA and the radical groups of ideologues that support it). Indeed, children have more to fear, in general, from mothers who are more than twice as likely to abuse their own children than are fathers according to ACF statistics.
The special interest groups that benefit so from VAWA funds have convinced the Congress of untruths and have themselves, via the VAWA, endangered our country’s health in pursuit of their own selfish interests and idealogical anti-father agenda.
The VAWA is the most powerful anti-family tool the free world has ever seen. In a pinch its humongous amount of unscrutinized funding and draconian provisions provide unethical divorce attorneys, radical state domestic violence coalitions, and mothers who want out of marriage the ‘silver bullet’ of doom for American fathers and their children.
It seems the Congress is the only group that doesn’t understand what this act really means to the nation’s family structure and society’s future health. Even single men, as yet unaffected, are learning and are thus more likely to avoid starting families because the risk is too great.
If you do nothing else to the VAWA then at least change the name, please, to the ‘Violence Against Fathers and Children Act’ because that is exactly what the VAWA facilitates, encourages, and is being used to great effect for across the country. To separate fathers from their children…
This country cannot endure another 5 years of VAWA.
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
—————————————————–
Feminist bunk will cause society’s collapse
By CHARLEY REESE
Columbia Daily Tribune
Saturday, July 23, 2005
July 29, 2005
Dear Senators, Staffers, and Others,
Please pay close attention to the scientific *facts* relating to domestic violence and to the maltreatment of children. That men are predisposed to become violent and abusive toward women and children is a falsehood invented by the idealogues who have become the most powerful special interest group in the country with the benefit of VAWA funds.
Please learn about the real data I have provided below and fix the VAWA properly or do not renew the legislation at all. The VAWA has tremendously undermined this country’s social fabric and will continue to do so unless you do something about it.
The draconian provisions of VAWA are being wielded like a weapon by state domestic violence coalitions, unethical divorce attorneys, and vengeful mothers who are sick of their husbands and/or family life all over this country. And the Congress is giving them all the biggest stick imaginable in the form of VAWA to assault the father/child relationship and doom the country’s children of divorce to being largely fatherless. The fatherlessness crisis in America today is because of VAWA, not because fathers are generally predisposed to abandon their children (just as they are not generally predisposed to violence).
The unequal application of family court ‘justice’ across this country must be reconciled if the stability of our nation is to be ensured. And the unequal application of family court ‘justice’ is indeed largely predicated on the draconian provisions of VAWA and the lack of accountability for accusers. A mother’s expressed ‘fear’, as elicited or suggested by an unethical divorce attorney or radical ‘victim’s advocate’, is enough to get her husband ejected without due process from the family home instantaneously and also enough to prevent any contact between the children and their father. Meanwhile an abused man finds it almost impossible to get any measure of protection from the courts or support from organizations receiving VAWA funds.
The provisions of the VAWA, divorce, and child custody are all insidiously intertwined in reality in the family courts around the country, just as intended by the special interest groups that benefit so greatly from VAWA funds.
Please stop believing the lies and fueling the destruction of the American family with the VAWA.
Most Sincerely,
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
**************************************************
A Measure of Court Response to Requests for Protection
Journal of Family Violence
Publisher: Springer Science+Business Media B.V., Formerly Kluwer Academic Publishers B.V.
ISSN: 0885-7482 (Paper) 1573-2851 (Online)
DOI: 10.1007/s10896-005-3653-x
Issue: Volume 20, Number 3
Date: June 2005
Pages: 171 – 179
Study link: http://www.springerlink.com/link.asp?id=h4r072303320355j
Milford, July 11, 2005 – A study of how one court in Massachusetts applies the abuse prevention statute (MGL ch.209A) as measured by the issuance of “209A restraining orders” has just been published in the June issue of Journal of Family Violence, an academic journal on domestic violence issues.
“A Measure of Court Response to Requests for Protection,” by the Fatherhood Coalition’s Steve Basile, examined the 209A restraining orders issued in Gardner District Court in 1997. The study reveals a clear double standard in the court response to alleged victims of domestic abuse/violence. In each of the benchmarks, women plaintiffs (victims) were treated more favorably than men, and likewise, male defendants were treated more harshly than their female counterparts.
——————————————————————————–
“The message couldn’t be clearer. If you are a father suffering domestic violence, using the legal system to gain protection for yourself is a high risk proposition that may result in you losing custody and even contact with your children.”
─ Steve Basile, study author
——————————————————————————–
Among the study’s findings:
When compared with other attributes of the litigants, sex was by far the greatest predictor of whether or not a restraining order would be issued and of the severity of the restrictions imposed on the defendant.
At ex parte hearings, where only the victim is present and the defendant is unaware of the proceedings, men were 240% more likely than women to be denied the immediate protection of an emergency restraining order.
Women were 38% more likely than men to be granted an emergency protection order at an ex parte hearing.
At follow-up 10-day hearings, when victims seek an extended or new restraining order, men were 383% more likely to be denied protection.
Women were 32% more likely than men to be granted a new restraining order when protection was pursued at the follow-up10-day hearing.
Overall, with and without children in common, men were 29% more likely to be evicted than women and 110% more likely to be evicted if they shared a common child.
The Fatherhood Coalition is especially concerned about the use of 209A restraining orders as “first strike” weapons in divorce/custody battles. The study also analyzed court response with respect to granting of custody of minor children when the litigants are parents.
Mothers were 288% more likely than fathers to receive custody of children as a direct provision of the 209A order. However, in the few cases where fathers received custody, which was only at ex parte hearings, none of the fathers secured long-term custody of their children at the 10-day hearing.
According to Basile, “The message couldn’t be clearer. If you are a father suffering domestic violence, using the legal system to gain protection for yourself is a high risk proposition that may result in you losing custody and even contact with your children.”
The first phase of the study was published in the Journal in February, 2004. That report provided a qualitative analysis of all of 382 non-impounded 209A restraining orders issued in the courthouse, examining the type and degree of abuses categorized by the sex and relationship of the litigants. For both phases, every available restraining order docket from 1997 was examined, to mitigate against any seasonal abnormalities or any accusations of selective sampling. Typically, domestic violence research explicitly excludes male victims of female domestic violence.
While the results of the first phase confirmed that women disproportionately seek legal protection from domestic violence, the qualitative examination of the data in the dockets, which includes
the victim’s affidavit, showed that the nature of the abuse claimed was roughly similar between men and women.
However, the second phase reveals a disturbingly high correlation between the court decisions and the sex of the litigants.
The study analyzed the response of the court to requests for protection at ex parte hearings, where only the victim is present, and at the follow-up 10-day hearing.
209A abuse protection orders grant the “victim” enormous power over their alleged abusers. Provisions include removal from one’s own home, granting of immediate custody of minor children to the alleged victim with a consequent assignment of child support.
According to Coalition Spokesman Mark Charalambous, “It’s important to understand that a 209A order taken against a father, besides removing all legal and physical custodial rights to his children, also extends the no-contact provisions to those children.”
Since a violation of any of the provisions of a 209A order is a criminal offense subject to 2 ½ years in jail and $10,000 fine, any contact a father may have with his children, direct or third-party or even unintentional, holds him criminally accountable. This is done without the criminal protections afforded defendants in criminal cases because the issuance of 209A order is civil, requiring only the minimal standard of evidence (“preponderance”).
“This is why a 209A restraining order is often referred to as the nuclear first-strike in the commencement of a divorce action,” Charalambous emphasizes.
The Fatherhood Coalition is supporting the “209A Reform Bill” (S965, H833), presently in committee, that addresses many of the law’s most serious flaws.
*************************************************************
REFERENCES EXAMINING ASSAULTS BY WOMEN ON THEIR SPOUSES OR MALE PARTNERS: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Martin S. Fiebert
Department of Psychology
California State University, Long Beach
SUMMARY: This bibliography examines 172 scholarly investigations: 136 empirical studies and 36 reviews and/or analyses, which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 162,500.
****************************************************
Administration for Children and Families (ACF)
Child Maltreatment 2003: Reports from the States to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data Systems – National statistics on child abuse and neglect (2005)
Approximately 83.9 percent of victims were abused by at least one parent. An estimated 40.8 percent of child victims were maltreated by their mothers acting alone; another 18.8 percent were maltreated by their fathers acting alone; 16.9 percent were abused by both parents.”
July 28, 2005
Dear Congress, Staffers, and Others,
Here is another update from the father I referenced below in a recent message to you. He cannot see his son because of the mere allegation of domestic violence against him which has been used as a weapon to keep him from his son.
There was no due process, the allegations are very likely false, they don’t even involve him personally having committing any act (violent or otherwise), yet his son remains fatherless.
This is the truth about VAWA. And the consequences on American children, fathers, and families are playing out daily in huge numbers.
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
On 7/28/05, k9doctor2b <k9doctor2b@yahoo.com> wrote:
I just found out we won’t have a show cause hearing until August 12!
My ex-wife was able to get a hearing to request taking a 10 day
vacation in just two days! At that hearing, my attorney discussed with the judge what would happen if my ex refused to give me parenting time again. The judge said that if she violated the order again, he would throw her in jail. Now he says he doesn’t want to have hearings every other week and I can just wait to see my son. So it will be three weeks minimum before my son and I have time together and the judge has essentially told my ex it is ok for her to violate his orders. What a crock!
July 27, 2005
Dear Congress, Staffers, and Others,
Please learn about the truth below. This is happening every day on a huge scale in this country. That is the truth about VAWA and what it is being used for around the country.
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: k9doctor2b < k9doctor2b@yahoo.com>
Date: Jul 27, 2005 4:42 PM
Subject: Ex-wife immune to the law
I got arrested Monday night when I went to pick up my son for
parenting time. She didn’t even show up, violating the custody
order. That was the eigth time she has violated a custody order, with no consequences for her! I was charge with aggravated stalking, a five-year felony and spent the night in the Clinton county jail with a $20,000 bond. I found out she had accused me of getting a friend to call and leave her threatening messages, so it’s not even my voice on these tapes they have. The magistrate left the previous order regarding custody in place and I was released when I put up the $20,000. My attorney went to the first day of my referee hearing today and her attorney, on the record, said that they were not going to allow me parenting time. My attorney faxed her a copy of the bond, showing that I still have parenting time. I left my attorney’s
office an hour after the referee hearing was done for the day and went to the FOC office to request a copy of the transcripts from the hearing (at my attorney’s request). When I pulled into the parking lot, I saw my ex’s car parked there. I turned around immediately and was pulling out of the lot when I saw my ex and her attorney outside the court house. I turned in the opposite direction so I would not even pass in front of them. I just found out they accused me of stalking her by being at the court house! So now there is a good chance the police will be by tonight to pick me up for violating the bond. Meanwhile, she violated the custody order again today and said I will not have any time at all. My attorney is filing for a show
cause hearing, but that will be several weeks away. So my poor 16 month old son goes without seeing his dad and my ex gets away with it again and again and again. Any suggestions on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated.
July 28, 2005
Dear NH Elected Officials and Others,
Below please find a recent message I’ve sent the U.S. Congress related to VAWA.
I hope you are interested in the facts I have represented, as they relate directly to New Hampshire.
Most Sincerely,
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
WWW.NHCUSTODY.ORG
July 28, 2005
Dear Congress and Other Interested Parties,
I think (and hope) you will be interested in the following exchange as it relates to VAWA and the terrible harm it is causing to the foundation of America. This is no joke, and the facts should be very clear to you. Please read from the bottom up…
Most Sincerely,
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
—————————————–
This is certainly a germane point. The Judiciary, and particularly the family court, has been tainted nationwide by VAWA as these huge state-based coalitions have grown rich with the backing of VAWA funds. In NH the NHCADSV (New Hampshire’s state coalition) has just set up a new position to ‘train’ DHHS (along with the Judiciary) about the danger that men present to women and children.
Of course they will never mention the true Administration for Children and Families (ACF) statistics wherein the facts show that mothers are more than twice as likely (40.8% vs 18.8%) to abuse, neglect, or maltreat children than are fathers.
The propaganda spread by these state coalitions knows no boundaries and the federal funds backing them have turned them into the most powerful lobbying, advertising, and ‘training’ organizations in the country. It’s no wonder that fatherhood and the American family unit have fallen so far, with disastrous consequences for the nation’s children of divorce.
Here is the most egregious example of conflict of interest and political insidiousness as encouraged by the VAWA that I have ever seen (though there are many egregious examples nationally): In New Hampshire, the woman who is arguably the most powerful legislative lobbyist, judicial trainer, and anti-fatherhood advocate in the state in her capacity as the Policy Director for the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence (NHCADSV) is also the Chair of the New Hampshire Guardian Ad Litem (GAL) Board, and is thus also the most powerful person in the state as regards NH’s Guardians Ad Litem who are ostensibly supposed to be representing the best interests of NH’s children of divorce in custody proceedings.
Is it any wonder that these GALs, who need no evidence at all in court to back up their subjective opinions about what access children should have to their own fathers overwhelmingly recommend the path of primary physical custody for the children’s mother instead of joint physical custody? After all, they would have to answer to the chief anti-fatherhood advocate in the state should they not recommend wisely. Could do a number on their GAL revenues, couldn’t it?
The infiltration of American social fabric has been completed by the state domestic violence coalitions and they continue to undermine the family unit through the vast tools provided them in the form of the VAWA. The future does not look good if VAWA remains as it is…
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
On 7/28/05, tarelasi <tarelasi@yahoo.com> wrote:
If we get VAWA fully exposed (I have been faxing legislators too), this paragraph in particular from Baskerville’s recent article inspired me to consider redress for past harms incited by VAWA as worthy a mention:
Especially questionable is federal funding of lobbying by judges, who are professionally obligated to be apolitical. The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) – consisting of judges who sit on actual cases and are required to be impartial – receives federal support to attack fathers’ groups and fathers themselves for being “at odds with the safety needs of the rest of the family.” Can fathers summoned before these judges expect equal justice? NCJFCJ advocates administrative termination of paternal rights, termination of fathers’ rights to their see their children with no evidence of violence, ignoring officials who question abuse allegations, ignoring visitation orders, re-education of judges, and labeling law-abiding American citizens who criticize the government as “dangerous .”
In other words, fathers separated from their children due to VAWA-induced impartiality by judges should have a means for redress. That to me personally would be the ideal amendment to VAWA.
July 28, 2005
Dear Congress, Staffers, and Other Interested Parties,
Please see the commentary below from yet another woman who knows the truth about VAWA. More and more fathers, and men in general, are recognizing that the rights purported to be upheld by this country are nothing but smoke and mirrors. VAWA is the great lie and it is polarizing and dividing the country at a dangerous rate.
So many fathers, and many of them military veterans, have seen the inside of the nation’s family courts now and lost their parenting rights, their ability to pursue happiness after the emotional and financial devastation visited upon them and their children, and all without the due process that the aged and no longer used Constitution claims to protect that the Congress is truly endangering the future health of our country. No longer can our elected officials claim to be upholding the civil rights of fathers in America even as they pander to the ideologues who are destroying fatherhood, children, and the family unit all over the country.
Do any of you ever wonder why 75%+ of the nation’s divorces in families with children are initiated by mothers? I’ll tell you why: Because of VAWA. The state coalitions are special interest groups who are bent on eliminating fatherhood, not preventing domestic violence. And the divorce attorneys around the country know the truth and tell every client that walks in the door the reality. It is sickening.
Who is going to defend this country and fight for the rights of the state domestic violence coalitions to continue to attack fatherhood and empower the pandemic of fraudulent domestic violence allegations without redress for perjurers that is so rampant nationally? Fewer and fewer men, that’s who… Before you know it you will need to be authorizing a draft. Volunteers are already becoming more and more scarce…
It would seem time for the nation’s fathers and other supporters of equality in parenting and equality in civil rights to begin the search for a 3rd party candidate in earnest. With no other option to ensure the stability of the nation’s family structure, the rights of children to retain access to both parents at the time of divorce, and the ragged refuse that the Constitution has become this is apparently the only plausible course of action.
I hope the Congress proves me wrong and either truly fixes VAWA or kills the bill entirely. Hope does not spring eternal, however…
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
Comments from ‘New York’ Class, Ms. Deborah Fellows, regarding
the “AS IS” of VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) …
To all. My name is Deborah Fellows and I am the founder of New York Civil Rights Council.
I am here to register my opinion about VAWA. I just finished writing an affidavit for a plaintiff in the Schenectady County Supreme Court. The first line was:
Because of the abuse I have suffered with the relationship between the defendant and myself I suffer from a version of posttraumatic stress disorder, battered women’s syndrome and memory loss.
The first page was one of 10. In this situation the plaintiff asked for an order of protection over a month ago. It still hasn’t been issued. The application for the order stated that the defendant is using excessive litigation, slander and libel, and harassment. It went on to contain letters from the plaintiff’s insurance company stating how the defendant has been calling there threatening and harassing them because the plaintiff changed the car insurance with the defendant’s permission. They have lived apart for 3 years and there is an order stating that they are entitled to do such things.
It also contained a letter from the plaintiff’s psychologist stating how the defendant has been calling him and threatening and harassing him. The defendant states that the plaintiff didn’t have permission to introduce their 2 teenaged children to the doctor.
What is the importance of this affidavit I sent out? The plaintiff is a male. He has been abused most of his adult life by his wife. It’s documented by the 6 doctor’s involved in this case including the defendant’s psychologist of 18
years.
I find VAWA offensive, unconstitutional and just plain wrong. Why is it OK in the United States of America to abuse one part of their population just because of its gender?
While thousands of our troops are giving their lives to defend the freedom of “3rd World Nations”, to free women from their Burka’s and circumcision, right here on our own soil I am defending our men.
Violence is violence is violence and VAWA MUST become gender neutral. If it doesn’t maybe someday another country will have to step onto our soil and free our men.
Deborah Fellows
The New York Civil Rights Council
Schenectady County Coor. FaFNY.org
Debby Fellows
August 13, 2005
Unbelievable. So, this guy was separated from his wife in 2004, and then not allowed to date while the separation persisted? The story linked below doesn’t give all the details, but the action taken by the military seems ludicrous on its very face…
You’re damn right, Mark, that it will be a wonder if this country is able to keep recruiting men to fight for it. Why anyone would defend this country’s right to curtail the civil liberties of men in Orwellian fashion strictly because of gender is a very reasonable question. Our current social policy nationally is incredibly shortsighted from a national security standpoint.
As more and more young men recognize the truth about the inherent dangers of starting a family, or even of entering into a relationship that is sanctioned by the state, we’ll have fewer and fewer men willing to engage in personal risk to themselves for a country that pays only lip service to freedom.
Sadly, in the United States of today, to be a father is to tempt fate in a statistical dance with the likelihood of disaster. Worse, that same disaster is very likely to end as your children’s disaster, as well. The Constitution and the liberties it supposedly ensures are nothing but smoke and mirrors.
The emperor has no clothes.
Those who have enacted, and/or continued to defend, the family law policies that predominate nationwide are the TRUE dangers to American national security. No lie. The expensive suits and hollywood-style media fame heaped upon our elected officials shouldn’t fool anyone. Our present elected officials are not only trodding on the rights of non-custodial parents (overwhelmingly fathers, through VAWA, title 42, and no presumption of parenting equality) and children of divorce, they are also endangering the health of our country at a very dangerous time in modern history.
The threat from abroad grows stronger and stronger, whether from Muslim fundamentalists, from a strengthening and mobilizing China, from a world likely to generate new nations capable of delivering nuclear weapons in short order, etc… And all the while, our nation grows weaker and weaker, and more divided than ever…
What rights have we, the devastated non-custodial parents of America and our devastated children, to defend? I know the answer… very few.
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH
On 8/13/05, MARK KLEIN, M.D. <markklein1000@yahoo.com> wrote:
In today’s America men are ALWAYS the losers. With the general’s divorce goes half his pension which might even be reduced further should he lose rank over the issue. How in God’s name will we be able to recruit and RETAIN top flight officers and noncoms when the military handles such a delicate matter so poorly? Were I in command I give the general an Article 15 (non-judicial punishment which doesn’t go on his record) and QUIETLY retire him will full retirement benefits. We’ve put bulls-eyes on the backs of military personnel for blackmailing mistresses and sex workers to shoot at!
WASHINGTON | August 13, 2005
General Disobeyed Orders to End Affair, Officials Say
By DAVID S. CLOUD
A four-star general relieved of his command for adultery was ordered last January to break off the affair, two senior Army officials said.