The "suspected" killer dad is identified as MARTIN GODIN.
What is not particularly well-identified in this article is that this a child custody-related set of murders. Notice that Daddy "allegedly" killed the girls in his own home (during what, I suspect, was court-ordered access), while his ex-wife, the mother of the girls, was killed elsewhere.
Once again, a crime that might have been preventable if this father had been denied access to his victims.
Wonder if Dad had a background of domestic violence (which was apparently ignored by the courts in granting him his custody/visitation "rights).
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Girl+taken+life+support+after+Isidore+family+tragedy/9471650/story.html
Girl taken off life-support after St-Isidore family tragedy Martin Godin, father, remains prime suspect
By Anne Sutherland, THE GAZETTE February 5, 2014 1:00 PM
Girl taken off life-support after St-Isidore family tragedy Martin Godin, father, remains prime suspect
Béatrice Godin, 11, was taken of life support on Tuesday, February 4, 2014 night and died. Her death brings to four the total of people allegedly killed by Martin Godin, her father. The tragedy unfolded Saturday, February 1.
MONTREAL — Béatrice Godin, 11, was taken of life support on Tuesday night and died.
Her death brings to four the total of people allegedly killed by Martin Godin, her father.
Godin remains in critical condition in hospital and Sûrété du Québec Sgt. Richard Gagné said that investigators have not been able to question him about the circumstances surrounding the events of last weekend in the Chaudière-Appalaches area south of Quebec City.
Godin, 54, was found unconscious in his home in Saint-Isidore at midnight Saturday. His two daughters were with him in the house at the time. The eldest, Medora Godin, 13, was declared dead on the scene.
SQ officers went to Godin’s home after a grisly discovery at the home of his former wife on Saturday night.
The bodies of Nancy Samson, 44, and her boyfriend Benoît Daigle, 39, were found at 8:45 p.m. outside a chalet in Ste-Croix-de-Lotbinière, about 70 kilometres away. Samson managed to call 911 before she died.
Sergeant Jean Tremblay with the SQ said that all the victims died a violent death, possibly from gunfire. Godin is the prime suspect in the killings.
Showing posts with label child custody. Show all posts
Showing posts with label child custody. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Sex offender dads should not have child custody rights (Talbot County, Maryland)
That CONVICTED sex offenders are even CONSIDERED for custody/visitation is proof as to how successful the fathers rights movement has been in destroying the rights of mothers and children to basic safety and security. Why does this even need to be debated?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/maryland-law-on-sex-offenders-and-child-custody-must-be-revisited/2013/09/28/a63ba60c-26f6-11e3-ad0d-b7c8d2a594b9_story.html
Maryland law on sex offenders and child custody must be revisited
By Editorial Board, Published: September 29
ANDREW MOJICA is a registered-for-life sex offender in Maryland. As such, he’s barred from knowingly entering a school or child-care facility without written permission. However, Mr. Mojica is allowed unsupervised visits, including overnight, with his 4-year-old son despite fierce objections from the boy’s mother. The anomaly — other words come to mind — is the result of cracks in state law and a court system seemingly so suspicious of any parent who seeks to limit another parent’s access to their child that it is willing to discount potential risks.
“The court has taken away my power to protect my son,” said Gloria Faulkner, the Talbot County woman who has been locked in a battle with her ex-husband over visitation. Less than two months after their son was born in 2009, Mr. Mojica was accused of sexually abusing a preteen girl related to Ms. Faulkner; he was convicted in 2010. The two divorced in 2012, following his release from jail. Neither was represented by an attorney in a decree that gave Ms. Faulkner sole legal and primary physical custody of the boy but that granted Mr. Mojica visitation rights.
Ms. Faulkner told us she didn’t know to object at the time and that subsequent efforts to amend the agreement have made matters worse. According to Ms. Faulkner, Mr. Mojica gets scheduled visits overnight every Wednesday and every other Friday and during the day every other Sunday. Her recent court efforts to curtail visits based on her allegations about changed behavior in her son and the fact another sex offender lives in the apartment building where her ex-husband resides have been unsuccessful; she told us she wants to require supervision, not banish the father from her son’s life.
“It is without question that the Defendant previously sexually assaulted the Plaintiff’s [relative]. Such behavior is reprehensible and without excuse,” Domestic Relations Master Jamie E. Adkins wrote on July 15. “However, there is no evidence currently before the Court that [the boy] is in need of protection from the Defendant.” The opinion by Ms. Adkins, who a court spokeswoman said would not comment on a pending case, concluded Ms. Faulkner did not meet “the threshold burden for the court to reconsider custody.” The master considered Ms. Faulkner’s claims of troubling and changed behavior by her son but found “minimal corroboration.”
Kevin M. Joyce, attorney for Mr. Mojica, said the father has “a constitutional right to raise the child.” He denied any suggestion that Mr. Mojica, who, Mr. Joyce stressed, was fully compliant with the law, was abusing or not properly caring for his son. He ascribed Ms. Faulkner’s efforts to redraw the custody agreement as “buyer’s remorse.”
Maryland law requires that in circumstances in which there has been a finding of child abuse or neglect, the court should determine whether future abuse or neglect is likely and, unless there is no likelihood, deny access or require supervision. The two parties disagree on how carefully this was weighed.
Child advocates pushed this year’s General Assembly to toughen the law. A bill sponsored by Del. Jeannie Haddaway-Riccio (R-Talbot) would have prohibited custody or visitation to child sexual offenders, except under certain circumstances where there was clear and convincing evidence that there was no danger to the child; supervised visits would have been allowed. It died in the House Judiciary Committee, a graveyard for similarly worthy bills that aim to better protect children and victims of domestic abuse.
What’s even more troubling than the weakness in state law — which we urge Maryland lawmakers to make haste in fixing — is the attitude by the professionals who run family courts that any parent is better than no parent. A corollary to that is the belief that a parent who warns of possible risks in wanting to limit contact has ulterior motives. The judge who will review this wrong-headed decision should apply common sense in deciding what interests are served in letting a 4-year-old sleep alone and overnight in a house with a registered sex offender.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/maryland-law-on-sex-offenders-and-child-custody-must-be-revisited/2013/09/28/a63ba60c-26f6-11e3-ad0d-b7c8d2a594b9_story.html
Maryland law on sex offenders and child custody must be revisited
By Editorial Board, Published: September 29
ANDREW MOJICA is a registered-for-life sex offender in Maryland. As such, he’s barred from knowingly entering a school or child-care facility without written permission. However, Mr. Mojica is allowed unsupervised visits, including overnight, with his 4-year-old son despite fierce objections from the boy’s mother. The anomaly — other words come to mind — is the result of cracks in state law and a court system seemingly so suspicious of any parent who seeks to limit another parent’s access to their child that it is willing to discount potential risks.
“The court has taken away my power to protect my son,” said Gloria Faulkner, the Talbot County woman who has been locked in a battle with her ex-husband over visitation. Less than two months after their son was born in 2009, Mr. Mojica was accused of sexually abusing a preteen girl related to Ms. Faulkner; he was convicted in 2010. The two divorced in 2012, following his release from jail. Neither was represented by an attorney in a decree that gave Ms. Faulkner sole legal and primary physical custody of the boy but that granted Mr. Mojica visitation rights.
Ms. Faulkner told us she didn’t know to object at the time and that subsequent efforts to amend the agreement have made matters worse. According to Ms. Faulkner, Mr. Mojica gets scheduled visits overnight every Wednesday and every other Friday and during the day every other Sunday. Her recent court efforts to curtail visits based on her allegations about changed behavior in her son and the fact another sex offender lives in the apartment building where her ex-husband resides have been unsuccessful; she told us she wants to require supervision, not banish the father from her son’s life.
“It is without question that the Defendant previously sexually assaulted the Plaintiff’s [relative]. Such behavior is reprehensible and without excuse,” Domestic Relations Master Jamie E. Adkins wrote on July 15. “However, there is no evidence currently before the Court that [the boy] is in need of protection from the Defendant.” The opinion by Ms. Adkins, who a court spokeswoman said would not comment on a pending case, concluded Ms. Faulkner did not meet “the threshold burden for the court to reconsider custody.” The master considered Ms. Faulkner’s claims of troubling and changed behavior by her son but found “minimal corroboration.”
Kevin M. Joyce, attorney for Mr. Mojica, said the father has “a constitutional right to raise the child.” He denied any suggestion that Mr. Mojica, who, Mr. Joyce stressed, was fully compliant with the law, was abusing or not properly caring for his son. He ascribed Ms. Faulkner’s efforts to redraw the custody agreement as “buyer’s remorse.”
Maryland law requires that in circumstances in which there has been a finding of child abuse or neglect, the court should determine whether future abuse or neglect is likely and, unless there is no likelihood, deny access or require supervision. The two parties disagree on how carefully this was weighed.
Child advocates pushed this year’s General Assembly to toughen the law. A bill sponsored by Del. Jeannie Haddaway-Riccio (R-Talbot) would have prohibited custody or visitation to child sexual offenders, except under certain circumstances where there was clear and convincing evidence that there was no danger to the child; supervised visits would have been allowed. It died in the House Judiciary Committee, a graveyard for similarly worthy bills that aim to better protect children and victims of domestic abuse.
What’s even more troubling than the weakness in state law — which we urge Maryland lawmakers to make haste in fixing — is the attitude by the professionals who run family courts that any parent is better than no parent. A corollary to that is the belief that a parent who warns of possible risks in wanting to limit contact has ulterior motives. The judge who will review this wrong-headed decision should apply common sense in deciding what interests are served in letting a 4-year-old sleep alone and overnight in a house with a registered sex offender.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Dad locked up for abusing 11-week-old daughter; dad blamed the "stress" of home decorating (United Kingdom)
God only knows that the stress of picking out just the right window treatment is simply overwhelming! The poor dear just could help abusing the baby after all that, yes?
Dad PAUL ROBERTS is one narcissistic @$$hole.
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/10584171.Father_locked_up_for_causing_brain_damage_to_his_baby_girl_after_shaking_her/?ref=nt
Father locked up for causing brain damage to his baby girl after shaking her .
6:30pm Wednesday 31st July 2013 in News
By Neil Hunter.
A BABY was left brain damaged after being shaken by her father - because he was "under stress" with work and decorating the family home.
Paul Roberts' pitiful excuse emerged during a court hearing yesterday when he was locked up for 21 months for harming his tiny daughter.
The 35-year-old's lawyer spoke at length about what impact the case has had on the former bus driver - and barely mentioned the injured child.
"It goes without saying that he is devastated at the prospect of a custodial sentence," Peter Wishlade, mitigating, told Teesside Crown Court.
"He has worked all his life. He lost his job as a result of this and retrained as a bus driver and lost that when they found out he was coming to court.
"He is going to be faced with difficulty for the rest of his life in relation to employment as a result of this.
"This is a tragedy not only for Mr Roberts and his wife, but also for his family who accompany him at court today. "He is never going to forget it or forgive himself for what happened at a time when he was under stress at work and decorating the house."
The court heard how the 11-week-old girl was floppy and pale with breathing problems when Roberts called an ambulance to their home.
Hospital scans revealed serious bleeding on the brain, said prosecutor Rachel Masters, and both Roberts and his wife were suspected.
Even though he had been left looking after their two children that night, the father denied deliberately causing any injuries in September 2011.
It was more than a year later when he confessed during a custody hearing with his now ex-wife, and police later charged him.
Roberts, of Whitley Road, Tornaby, near Stockton, admitted inflicting grievous bodily harm when he appeared in court.
Mr Wishlade said he was from an "exemplary" family and described the actions as "a momentary lapse of reason and loss of temper".
Judge Tony Briggs told Roberts that his initial denials and the knock-on effect for his wife and children made the matter worse.
"You lost control of yourself and shook her with sufficient violence to cause serious bleeding to the brain," the judge said.
"An attack by a man of your age and your background and your knowledge on a child like that is obviously a very serious matter.
"Children of this age must be protected, and it must be understood by everybody that shaking a very young child of only weeks of age is a matter which must attract custody save for in the most exceptional circumstances."
Dad PAUL ROBERTS is one narcissistic @$$hole.
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/10584171.Father_locked_up_for_causing_brain_damage_to_his_baby_girl_after_shaking_her/?ref=nt
Father locked up for causing brain damage to his baby girl after shaking her .
6:30pm Wednesday 31st July 2013 in News
By Neil Hunter.
A BABY was left brain damaged after being shaken by her father - because he was "under stress" with work and decorating the family home.
Paul Roberts' pitiful excuse emerged during a court hearing yesterday when he was locked up for 21 months for harming his tiny daughter.
The 35-year-old's lawyer spoke at length about what impact the case has had on the former bus driver - and barely mentioned the injured child.
"It goes without saying that he is devastated at the prospect of a custodial sentence," Peter Wishlade, mitigating, told Teesside Crown Court.
"He has worked all his life. He lost his job as a result of this and retrained as a bus driver and lost that when they found out he was coming to court.
"He is going to be faced with difficulty for the rest of his life in relation to employment as a result of this.
"This is a tragedy not only for Mr Roberts and his wife, but also for his family who accompany him at court today. "He is never going to forget it or forgive himself for what happened at a time when he was under stress at work and decorating the house."
The court heard how the 11-week-old girl was floppy and pale with breathing problems when Roberts called an ambulance to their home.
Hospital scans revealed serious bleeding on the brain, said prosecutor Rachel Masters, and both Roberts and his wife were suspected.
Even though he had been left looking after their two children that night, the father denied deliberately causing any injuries in September 2011.
It was more than a year later when he confessed during a custody hearing with his now ex-wife, and police later charged him.
Roberts, of Whitley Road, Tornaby, near Stockton, admitted inflicting grievous bodily harm when he appeared in court.
Mr Wishlade said he was from an "exemplary" family and described the actions as "a momentary lapse of reason and loss of temper".
Judge Tony Briggs told Roberts that his initial denials and the knock-on effect for his wife and children made the matter worse.
"You lost control of yourself and shook her with sufficient violence to cause serious bleeding to the brain," the judge said.
"An attack by a man of your age and your background and your knowledge on a child like that is obviously a very serious matter.
"Children of this age must be protected, and it must be understood by everybody that shaking a very young child of only weeks of age is a matter which must attract custody save for in the most exceptional circumstances."
Monday, May 20, 2013
Dad admits "causing" death of 4-year-old son during custody/visitation time; gets 5 years in prison (Magoffin County, Kentucky)
Protective moms know that this happens all the time. The father who just must must MUST have access to the kids merely dumps the caretaking tasks on the new girlfriend.
It is not made clear here whether dad JAMES GARCIA had full custody, joint custody, or just visitation rights. For the murdered boy, it really didn't matter....
Dad gets only five years in prison. Most moms get much longer for "failing" to stop their violent boyfriend.
http://www.wkyt.com/home/headlines/207971501.html
Man says he 'failed' as a father when 4-year-old son died
MAGOFFIN COUNTY, Ky. (WKYT) - He says he failed as a father.
An eastern Kentucky man who admitted causing the death of his 4-year-old son spoke out from jail Friday.
It came a day after a Magoffin County judge sentenced James Garcia to five years in prison for reckless homicide.
Investigators say Garcia's son, Cameron, died of blunt force trauma in 2011.
Garcia says he was at work when the child was injured. He says his live-in girlfriend was watching Cameron at the time.
"I wasn't there for him (Cameron)," Garcia said. "I guess I should have sat there and watched him 24/7 but I put her trust in him."
Garcia says he pled guilty to reckless homicide because he felt he needed to take responsibility for his son's death.
During Thursday's sentencing, the child's mother lunged at Garcia.
Garcia says he wasn't surprised that happened. He says he understands she's in pain.
It is not made clear here whether dad JAMES GARCIA had full custody, joint custody, or just visitation rights. For the murdered boy, it really didn't matter....
Dad gets only five years in prison. Most moms get much longer for "failing" to stop their violent boyfriend.
http://www.wkyt.com/home/headlines/207971501.html
Man says he 'failed' as a father when 4-year-old son died
MAGOFFIN COUNTY, Ky. (WKYT) - He says he failed as a father.
An eastern Kentucky man who admitted causing the death of his 4-year-old son spoke out from jail Friday.
It came a day after a Magoffin County judge sentenced James Garcia to five years in prison for reckless homicide.
Investigators say Garcia's son, Cameron, died of blunt force trauma in 2011.
Garcia says he was at work when the child was injured. He says his live-in girlfriend was watching Cameron at the time.
"I wasn't there for him (Cameron)," Garcia said. "I guess I should have sat there and watched him 24/7 but I put her trust in him."
Garcia says he pled guilty to reckless homicide because he felt he needed to take responsibility for his son's death.
During Thursday's sentencing, the child's mother lunged at Garcia.
Garcia says he wasn't surprised that happened. He says he understands she's in pain.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Dad accused of leavingt 4-year-old home alone while he worked (Port St. Lucie, Florida)
Hmm. Is this a custody/visitation situation? Was dad CURTIS LEE LARMORE just granted shared custody this year?
Notice the following:
1) All this started in January, and happened EVERY OTHER WEEK.
2) During these weeks, Daddy left this little girl home every day between 11 AM and 7 PM.
2) There is no mention of a mother in the home. If there had been one, she no doubt would have been charged as well.
4) Notice that this little girl is now in the "custody of relatives."
So what happened to Mom? As usual, the reporting is incomplete and sketchy.
http://www.imperfectparent.com/topics/2013/03/26/father-accused-of-leaving-4-year-old-home-while-he-worked/
Father accused of leaving 4-year-old home while he worked
March 26th, 2013
by Stella Martin
A Port St. Lucie, Fla., man was arrested on Monday after a tipster notified the police that the man was leaving his 4-year-old daughter at home alone all day.
Port St. Lucie police say Curtis Lee Larmore, 26, was allegedly leaving his preschool daughter home alone to fend for herself, Monday through Friday, between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m..
The tipster told police that the father had been leaving the youngster by herself since January, every other week.
The police report also noted that when officers investigated the home, the house was filthy and had strong cat urine odor. Police say the family cat used the little girl’s closet as a litter box. The child also had access to dangerous items, including a knife, scissors, a small torch — all within reach of the girl. The home also had an outdoor pool which was full of water and was not secured and the doors weren’t locked.
The little girl has since been turned over to the custody of relatives while Larmore faces charges of child abuse and child endangerment.
Notice the following:
1) All this started in January, and happened EVERY OTHER WEEK.
2) During these weeks, Daddy left this little girl home every day between 11 AM and 7 PM.
2) There is no mention of a mother in the home. If there had been one, she no doubt would have been charged as well.
4) Notice that this little girl is now in the "custody of relatives."
So what happened to Mom? As usual, the reporting is incomplete and sketchy.
http://www.imperfectparent.com/topics/2013/03/26/father-accused-of-leaving-4-year-old-home-while-he-worked/
Father accused of leaving 4-year-old home while he worked
March 26th, 2013
by Stella Martin
A Port St. Lucie, Fla., man was arrested on Monday after a tipster notified the police that the man was leaving his 4-year-old daughter at home alone all day.
Port St. Lucie police say Curtis Lee Larmore, 26, was allegedly leaving his preschool daughter home alone to fend for herself, Monday through Friday, between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m..
The tipster told police that the father had been leaving the youngster by herself since January, every other week.
The police report also noted that when officers investigated the home, the house was filthy and had strong cat urine odor. Police say the family cat used the little girl’s closet as a litter box. The child also had access to dangerous items, including a knife, scissors, a small torch — all within reach of the girl. The home also had an outdoor pool which was full of water and was not secured and the doors weren’t locked.
The little girl has since been turned over to the custody of relatives while Larmore faces charges of child abuse and child endangerment.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Dad murders 2-year-old son during custody exchange, wounds mom (Petersburg, Pennsylvania)
I am so sick of these cases. Once again, the authorities allowed a dangerous dad to have visitation with a 2-year-old son--even though they granted he was dangerous enough to grant mom an order of protection. Then they refused to take his guns away. Predictable result: boy shot to death, mom seriously wounded.
What judge was behind this freaking move? Let's see names.
Killer dad was KENNETH AYERS.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/2013/03/24/police-man-kills-son-wounds-wife-kills-self/5wd9wozwh65kSOAKQ3RQWN/story.html
Police: Pa. man kills son, wounds wife; kills self
AP / March 24, 2013
PETERSBURG, Pa. (AP) — A central Pennsylvania father shot and killed his 2-year-old son and wounded his estranged wife during a custody exchange before killing himself, authorities said.
Police said Kenneth Ayers also shot at his mother during the altercation Saturday morning at her home in a rural area about 20 miles southwest of State College.
Huntingdon County District Attorney George Zanic said Ayers, 52, was subject to a protection from abuse order filed by his wife but was permitted visits with his son, Michael.
Saturday’s visit was to happen at his mother’s home in Barree Township. But once at the home, Ayers got into an altercation with his estranged wife, Hollie Jo, and shot her in the legs and arm with a .40 caliber handgun before intentionally shooting his son, police said.
Kenneth Ayers placed the child’s body in the back of his vehicle but the wounded woman retrieved the body before Ayers shot her again in the face, police said. He also fired at his mother but missed.
‘‘Words can’t describe the scene ... heartbreaking,’’ Zanic told The (Altoona) Mirror outside the home.
Kenneth Ayers’ body was found several hours later in his parked truck in a wooded area in Warriors Mark Township. Investigators said he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Hollie Jo Ayers was transported to a hospital and expected to survive, according to police.
State police Cpl. Daniel Sneath said investigators are trying to determine what led to the shooting and why Ayers was carrying a gun despite the protection order.
Police will also seek an autopsy to determine whether Kenneth Ayers was under the influence drugs or alcohol.
What judge was behind this freaking move? Let's see names.
Killer dad was KENNETH AYERS.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/2013/03/24/police-man-kills-son-wounds-wife-kills-self/5wd9wozwh65kSOAKQ3RQWN/story.html
Police: Pa. man kills son, wounds wife; kills self
AP / March 24, 2013
PETERSBURG, Pa. (AP) — A central Pennsylvania father shot and killed his 2-year-old son and wounded his estranged wife during a custody exchange before killing himself, authorities said.
Police said Kenneth Ayers also shot at his mother during the altercation Saturday morning at her home in a rural area about 20 miles southwest of State College.
Huntingdon County District Attorney George Zanic said Ayers, 52, was subject to a protection from abuse order filed by his wife but was permitted visits with his son, Michael.
Saturday’s visit was to happen at his mother’s home in Barree Township. But once at the home, Ayers got into an altercation with his estranged wife, Hollie Jo, and shot her in the legs and arm with a .40 caliber handgun before intentionally shooting his son, police said.
Kenneth Ayers placed the child’s body in the back of his vehicle but the wounded woman retrieved the body before Ayers shot her again in the face, police said. He also fired at his mother but missed.
‘‘Words can’t describe the scene ... heartbreaking,’’ Zanic told The (Altoona) Mirror outside the home.
Kenneth Ayers’ body was found several hours later in his parked truck in a wooded area in Warriors Mark Township. Investigators said he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Hollie Jo Ayers was transported to a hospital and expected to survive, according to police.
State police Cpl. Daniel Sneath said investigators are trying to determine what led to the shooting and why Ayers was carrying a gun despite the protection order.
Police will also seek an autopsy to determine whether Kenneth Ayers was under the influence drugs or alcohol.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Dad kills mom in front of three young sons during child visitation exchange (Kansas City, Kansas)
The killer daddy is identified as JEDIDIAH ALEXANDER. Once again, a mother was facilitating custody/visitation with a violent criminal father, and paid for it with her life. So much for daddies murdering moms because they are "frustrated" from lack of access. Not discussed here whether this visitation was court-ordered.
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/4b77210cb0d048ea8ccddf998a1a23a6/KS--Murder-Suicide-Survivors
Kansas woman raises 3 small grandsons left orphans after father killed mother in front of them
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS January 19, 2013 - 2:19 pm EST
KANSAS CITY, Kansas — Three young Kansas City, Kansas, boys who saw their father shoot their mother before killing himself are being cared for by their grandmother, who vows to keep them together despite the emotional and financial struggles she has faced since the deaths.
Bridget Mitchell, 40, said she's so busy adjusting to life with her grandsons — ages 2, 3 and 4 — that she hasn't had much time to grieve for her 24-year-old daughter, Alyshia Alexander, The Kansas City Star reported (http://bit.ly/XhvCfU ).
On March 13, 2012, Alexander drove to the home of her estranged husband's mother in Kansas City so the boys could visit their father, Jedidiah Alexander. When he got into the family's car and shot Alyshia before shooting himself, the boys cowered in the back seat and covered their ears to muffle the sound of gunshots.
Before that awful day, Mitchell worked full time and had only her 15-year-old daughter, the youngest of her four children, still at home. Since then, she lost her job because of the time she had to spend with the boys and had to raise money to pay for her daughter's funeral.
"It's been a tough nine months," she said.
She also has had to learn how to find resources to help her through the situation.
"I don't know how to be unemployed," she said.
Mitchell, who became a parent when she was a teenager, said being a caregiver for Jaedin, 2; Jeremiah, 3; and Jedidiah, 4, keeps her busy around the clock.
After buying furniture and other necessities for the boys to move into her three-bedroom duplex, Mitchell said her first priority was getting the boys counseling, and she said that has gone very well. The two older boys share a bedroom while the youngest has a bed in her room.
The boys know their mother won't be coming back, she said.
"I tell them that mommy is in God's house," she said.
Mitchell said the boys don't ask about their mommy as much as they used to, but random things sometimes trigger questions. Their therapist said that shows they feel safe and secure, she said.
She said the first Christmas without her daughter was difficult because Alyshia always decorated the tree. It took Mitchell awhile to put a tree up, but she did it because she "needed to be strong" for the boys. She tried to use lots of lavender and silver — her daughter's favorite colors — on the tree. One special ornament had Alyshia's picture on it.
Mitchell is seeking legal guardianship, using legal aid because she can't afford a lawyer. Family members provide her with periodic breaks, but most of the time her life is hectic.
But she said she feels blessed that she been able to pay her bills and have her grandsons in her life.
"It's full time, all the time, until they're grown up or until God decides to call me home," she said. "There's no question about that."
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/4b77210cb0d048ea8ccddf998a1a23a6/KS--Murder-Suicide-Survivors
Kansas woman raises 3 small grandsons left orphans after father killed mother in front of them
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS January 19, 2013 - 2:19 pm EST
KANSAS CITY, Kansas — Three young Kansas City, Kansas, boys who saw their father shoot their mother before killing himself are being cared for by their grandmother, who vows to keep them together despite the emotional and financial struggles she has faced since the deaths.
Bridget Mitchell, 40, said she's so busy adjusting to life with her grandsons — ages 2, 3 and 4 — that she hasn't had much time to grieve for her 24-year-old daughter, Alyshia Alexander, The Kansas City Star reported (http://bit.ly/XhvCfU ).
On March 13, 2012, Alexander drove to the home of her estranged husband's mother in Kansas City so the boys could visit their father, Jedidiah Alexander. When he got into the family's car and shot Alyshia before shooting himself, the boys cowered in the back seat and covered their ears to muffle the sound of gunshots.
Before that awful day, Mitchell worked full time and had only her 15-year-old daughter, the youngest of her four children, still at home. Since then, she lost her job because of the time she had to spend with the boys and had to raise money to pay for her daughter's funeral.
"It's been a tough nine months," she said.
She also has had to learn how to find resources to help her through the situation.
"I don't know how to be unemployed," she said.
Mitchell, who became a parent when she was a teenager, said being a caregiver for Jaedin, 2; Jeremiah, 3; and Jedidiah, 4, keeps her busy around the clock.
After buying furniture and other necessities for the boys to move into her three-bedroom duplex, Mitchell said her first priority was getting the boys counseling, and she said that has gone very well. The two older boys share a bedroom while the youngest has a bed in her room.
The boys know their mother won't be coming back, she said.
"I tell them that mommy is in God's house," she said.
Mitchell said the boys don't ask about their mommy as much as they used to, but random things sometimes trigger questions. Their therapist said that shows they feel safe and secure, she said.
She said the first Christmas without her daughter was difficult because Alyshia always decorated the tree. It took Mitchell awhile to put a tree up, but she did it because she "needed to be strong" for the boys. She tried to use lots of lavender and silver — her daughter's favorite colors — on the tree. One special ornament had Alyshia's picture on it.
Mitchell is seeking legal guardianship, using legal aid because she can't afford a lawyer. Family members provide her with periodic breaks, but most of the time her life is hectic.
But she said she feels blessed that she been able to pay her bills and have her grandsons in her life.
"It's full time, all the time, until they're grown up or until God decides to call me home," she said. "There's no question about that."
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Drug-crazed dad kidnaps, shoots mother for "keeping him away from child" (Tacoma, Washington)
Hmm. I'm thinking Mum was using good sense in keeping this drug-addled lunatic father away from the child. Wonder if he had court-ordered access? Wouldn't suprise me....
Dad is identified as MARK LINDQUIST.
http://mynorthwest.com/11/2169084/Drugcrazed-father-kidnaps-shoots-mother-of-child
Drug-crazed father kidnaps, shoots mother of child
BY Josh Kerns on January 7, 2013 @ 6:00 pm (Updated: 9:41 am - 1/8/13 )
A Tacoma man faces multiple charges for allegedly kidnapping and shooting the mother of his child.
Pierce County Prosecutor Mark Lindquist says 37-year-old Meko Jones confronted the 27-year-old victim on Friday, January 4 as she arrived at a local community college for class. She had been keeping him away from the child because he was on a long-term drug binge.
Lindquist says Jones forced the victim to go to her car at gunpoint, and shot her when she tried to grab the gun by the barrel. He then forced her into the car and fired a shot at her head, barely missing her as she ducked but shattering the window.
"The victim has been in contact with our office and she told one of our staff she felt lucky to be alive," Lindquist says.
Jones allegedly forced the woman to drive to his mother's house and held her at gunpoint for several hours. He threatened to kill her, her family and the child if they contacted police.
Jones also made the victim drive to an ATM and took money from her account.
Eventually, he let her go and she went to the hospital for treatment.
"This is another unfortunate example of how crazy domestic violence offenders can become. The defendant even gave the victim a pain killer to ease the pain he caused by shooting her," Lindquist says.
Police spotted Jones driving soon after and chased him. He tried to get away but lost control of the car and crashed into a fence. Officers were able to catch up with him and arrest him, Lindquist says.
Jones is charged with Assault, Kidnapping, Robbery, Unlawful Possession of a Firearm in the First Degree and Attempting to Elude a Pursuing Police Vehicle.
He's being held on $500,000 bail. He was previously convicted of Arson in the First Degree and is prohibited from possessing guns.
Dad is identified as MARK LINDQUIST.
http://mynorthwest.com/11/2169084/Drugcrazed-father-kidnaps-shoots-mother-of-child
Drug-crazed father kidnaps, shoots mother of child
BY Josh Kerns on January 7, 2013 @ 6:00 pm (Updated: 9:41 am - 1/8/13 )
A Tacoma man faces multiple charges for allegedly kidnapping and shooting the mother of his child.
Pierce County Prosecutor Mark Lindquist says 37-year-old Meko Jones confronted the 27-year-old victim on Friday, January 4 as she arrived at a local community college for class. She had been keeping him away from the child because he was on a long-term drug binge.
Lindquist says Jones forced the victim to go to her car at gunpoint, and shot her when she tried to grab the gun by the barrel. He then forced her into the car and fired a shot at her head, barely missing her as she ducked but shattering the window.
"The victim has been in contact with our office and she told one of our staff she felt lucky to be alive," Lindquist says.
Jones allegedly forced the woman to drive to his mother's house and held her at gunpoint for several hours. He threatened to kill her, her family and the child if they contacted police.
Jones also made the victim drive to an ATM and took money from her account.
Eventually, he let her go and she went to the hospital for treatment.
"This is another unfortunate example of how crazy domestic violence offenders can become. The defendant even gave the victim a pain killer to ease the pain he caused by shooting her," Lindquist says.
Police spotted Jones driving soon after and chased him. He tried to get away but lost control of the car and crashed into a fence. Officers were able to catch up with him and arrest him, Lindquist says.
Jones is charged with Assault, Kidnapping, Robbery, Unlawful Possession of a Firearm in the First Degree and Attempting to Elude a Pursuing Police Vehicle.
He's being held on $500,000 bail. He was previously convicted of Arson in the First Degree and is prohibited from possessing guns.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
DASTARDLY DADS FROM THE ARCHIVES (Clayton, North Carolina - 2007)
STEVEN HENRY--one of the many fathers who have killed the kids during a "custody dispute."
http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/1232075/
Posted: March 12, 2007 Updated: March 13, 2007
Custody Battle Ends in Double Murder-Suicide
CLAYTON, N.C. — A father and two children were found dead Monday afternoon at a Johnston County home in what authorities are calling a double murder and suicide.
Authorities said Steven Henry, 35, from Garner, shot his 6-year-old daughter, Ashley, and 4-year-old son, Gregory, before turning a gun on himself.
The slayings occurred outside the home of Dawn Henry -- Steven Henry's estranged wife and the children's mother -- on Vinson Road between Clayton and Wilson's Mills, authorities said.
The couple was engaged in a bitter custody battle, authorities said, and Dawn Henry contacted the Johnston County Sheriff's Office Monday morning after seeing her estranged husband's car in her driveway as she was returning home.
When deputies arrived at the house to see what Steven Henry wanted, they found all three bodies inside the car, authorities said.
Authorities spent Monday afternoon collecting evidence from the scene, and Dawn Henry was taken to the Johnston County Sheriff's Office late Monday afternoon to speak with investigators.
Dawn, Ashley and Gregory Henry had been living the house for about six months, and neighbors said Monday they were stunned by the slayings.
"It just disrupts the whole flow of life," neighbor John Benson said. "It's unbelievable. It's just unbelievable."
Authorities said Dawn Henry is an employee of the Johnston County School System. It is unknown what job, if any, Steven Henry held before his death.
According to Steven Henry's neighbors in Garner, he was rarely seen outside his home and didn't interact with anyone in the neighborhood.
http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/1232075/
Posted: March 12, 2007 Updated: March 13, 2007
Custody Battle Ends in Double Murder-Suicide
CLAYTON, N.C. — A father and two children were found dead Monday afternoon at a Johnston County home in what authorities are calling a double murder and suicide.
Authorities said Steven Henry, 35, from Garner, shot his 6-year-old daughter, Ashley, and 4-year-old son, Gregory, before turning a gun on himself.
The slayings occurred outside the home of Dawn Henry -- Steven Henry's estranged wife and the children's mother -- on Vinson Road between Clayton and Wilson's Mills, authorities said.
The couple was engaged in a bitter custody battle, authorities said, and Dawn Henry contacted the Johnston County Sheriff's Office Monday morning after seeing her estranged husband's car in her driveway as she was returning home.
When deputies arrived at the house to see what Steven Henry wanted, they found all three bodies inside the car, authorities said.
Authorities spent Monday afternoon collecting evidence from the scene, and Dawn Henry was taken to the Johnston County Sheriff's Office late Monday afternoon to speak with investigators.
Dawn, Ashley and Gregory Henry had been living the house for about six months, and neighbors said Monday they were stunned by the slayings.
"It just disrupts the whole flow of life," neighbor John Benson said. "It's unbelievable. It's just unbelievable."
Authorities said Dawn Henry is an employee of the Johnston County School System. It is unknown what job, if any, Steven Henry held before his death.
According to Steven Henry's neighbors in Garner, he was rarely seen outside his home and didn't interact with anyone in the neighborhood.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Judge criticizes DHS in child custody case involving sex offender father (Jackson, Mississippi)
So we have a registered sex offender UNNAMED DAD who sexually abused/raped the underaged mother, who "allegedly" had (unspecified) "mental problems." And yet DHS (CPS) refused to find him unfit as a father. What else do you need to know about DHS has been taken over by the fathers rights mentality....
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/a1ce159942d0408f99f659c0b99e8e5f/MS--DHS-Custody-Case
Judge criticizes DHS in child custody case involving child whose father is sex offender
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 12, 2012 - 10:33 am EST
JACKSON, Mississippi — A Lamar County judge has criticized the Department of Human Services related to the custody of a 3-year-old child whose biological father is a registered sex offender.
The Clarion-Ledger says (http://on.thec-l.com/T8juOU ) the biological father is 24 years older than the child's mother. He was convicted for having sex with the mother when she was a minor and pleaded guilty to fondling her daughter from a previous relationship.
The woman allegedly has mental problems.
Despite that, Chancery Judge Ronald Doleac said some DHS workers didn't view the biological parents as unfit.
The judge says DHS ignored or failed to investigate reports of abuse and neglect.
Doleac terminated parental rights last month and gave permanent custody to a couple who has cared for the girl since she was 18 months old.
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/a1ce159942d0408f99f659c0b99e8e5f/MS--DHS-Custody-Case
Judge criticizes DHS in child custody case involving child whose father is sex offender
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 12, 2012 - 10:33 am EST
JACKSON, Mississippi — A Lamar County judge has criticized the Department of Human Services related to the custody of a 3-year-old child whose biological father is a registered sex offender.
The Clarion-Ledger says (http://on.thec-l.com/T8juOU ) the biological father is 24 years older than the child's mother. He was convicted for having sex with the mother when she was a minor and pleaded guilty to fondling her daughter from a previous relationship.
The woman allegedly has mental problems.
Despite that, Chancery Judge Ronald Doleac said some DHS workers didn't view the biological parents as unfit.
The judge says DHS ignored or failed to investigate reports of abuse and neglect.
Doleac terminated parental rights last month and gave permanent custody to a couple who has cared for the girl since she was 18 months old.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Study: Vast majority of violent dads only want contact with kids to maintain power and control (Wales)
The findings in Wales are remarkably consistent with studies completed elsewhere in the world.
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/2012/11/01/report-highlights-ongoing-violence-91466-32143004/
Report highlights ongoing violence
Nov 1 2012
The family justice system is failing to protect women who are the victims of domestic violence, a report has said.
The study found that most women wanted their child or children to have a relationship with their father despite having suffered violence from them.
But the report, carried out by the charity Rights of Women and the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit (CWASU) at London Metropolitan University, found that although they wanted this contact to only be if they and their children were physically and emotionally safe, this was often not the case, with unsupervised contact routinely given to abusive fathers.
All of the women interviewed experienced ongoing violence and abuse post-separation from their partners, with nearly half (45%) experiencing violence after the making of a contact order, most commonly in the form of threats and harassment.
It found that judges are often not following law and procedure in child contact cases where domestic violence is an issue, with only one in 10 legal professionals saying judges fully comply with court practice in dealing with domestic violence.
The study found that just under three-quarters (74%) of women interviewed said they had concerns for their safety while attending court hearings, and more than half (52%) had represented themselves in court proceedings at some stage.
Despite histories of violence, children refusing contact and in some cases expressing terror and distress, unsupervised contact was found to be routinely ordered to abusive fathers.
The report also showed that nearly four out of five (79%) legal professionals reported that regaining power and control was a primary motivation behind applications for child contact by violent fathers.
And 90% of the women questioned identified some degree of impoverishment as a result of the legal proceedings, commonly because they were unable to work.
Emma Scott, director of Rights of Women, said: "Despite significant developments in the law and policy on domestic violence and child contact in the last 10 years, this research shows ongoing failures and missed opportunities within the family justice system."
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/2012/11/01/report-highlights-ongoing-violence-91466-32143004/
Report highlights ongoing violence
Nov 1 2012
The family justice system is failing to protect women who are the victims of domestic violence, a report has said.
The study found that most women wanted their child or children to have a relationship with their father despite having suffered violence from them.
But the report, carried out by the charity Rights of Women and the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit (CWASU) at London Metropolitan University, found that although they wanted this contact to only be if they and their children were physically and emotionally safe, this was often not the case, with unsupervised contact routinely given to abusive fathers.
All of the women interviewed experienced ongoing violence and abuse post-separation from their partners, with nearly half (45%) experiencing violence after the making of a contact order, most commonly in the form of threats and harassment.
It found that judges are often not following law and procedure in child contact cases where domestic violence is an issue, with only one in 10 legal professionals saying judges fully comply with court practice in dealing with domestic violence.
The study found that just under three-quarters (74%) of women interviewed said they had concerns for their safety while attending court hearings, and more than half (52%) had represented themselves in court proceedings at some stage.
Despite histories of violence, children refusing contact and in some cases expressing terror and distress, unsupervised contact was found to be routinely ordered to abusive fathers.
The report also showed that nearly four out of five (79%) legal professionals reported that regaining power and control was a primary motivation behind applications for child contact by violent fathers.
And 90% of the women questioned identified some degree of impoverishment as a result of the legal proceedings, commonly because they were unable to work.
Emma Scott, director of Rights of Women, said: "Despite significant developments in the law and policy on domestic violence and child contact in the last 10 years, this research shows ongoing failures and missed opportunities within the family justice system."
Monday, September 24, 2012
Dad "legally" abducts kids, takes them to Kuwait, divorces Mom, and gets full custody; mom had no say, but Canada recognizes divorce anyway (Ottawa, Canada)
The fathers' right crowd complains bitterly and unrelentlessly about Japan, one of the few countries that still favors mothers. But they are utterly silent about the countries of the mideast, where fathers rights are completely and totally institutionalized. Countries that are typically authoritarian regimes where mothers have virtually no rights. Countries where torturous abuse by violent, controlling custodial fathers is rampant.
My heart goes out to this mom. How horrible that so-called progressive countries in the west buy into and support this total lack of justice. In reality, we see that so-called progressive countries in the west are nearly as invested in fathers' rights as the middle eastern countries.
This is typical of how these things play out. Fathers of children "abducted" by their mothers get government officials and the media behind them. In the U.S., MARK GOLDMAN had his congressman and the State Department aggressively taking up his case. He had the U.S. media paying for a chartered plane trip to Brazil.
But mothers get squat. Just a lot of official hand-wringing and excuses.
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Ottawa+mother+fights+children+legally+abducted+husband/7287340/story.html
Ottawa mother fights for children legally ‘abducted’ by husband in Kuwait
BY KAREN CHEN, OTTAWA CITIZEN
SEPTEMBER 23, 2012
OTTAWA — Zinab Alfawzi had prepared the perfect party for her son’s eighth birthday on Aug. 16. She specially ordered a cake featuring her son’s favourite superhero, Spiderman. She strung up streamers and balloons, lit all the candles and gathered friends to sing Happy Birthday.
The only thing missing was her son, Ahmad, who was nearly 10,000 kilometres away in Kuwait with his father. He wasn’t answering the phone.
“Happy Birthday son. I wish next year we could be together. I love you,” she says in Arabic in a cellphone recording of the celebration, the phone in Kuwait ringing and ringing as the candles grow shorter and shorter. A few months ago, the same thing happened except with a Dora the Explorer themed cake for her nine-year-old daughter, Rawan.
Alfawzi hasn’t seen her children for three years. They live in Kuwait with her husband, Salem Khalef Rashid and his new wife. Kuwaiti courts granted him a divorce and awarded him full custody of the children without ever giving Alfawzi a say in the matter.
The divorce is recognized by Canada, even though she never signed her name agreeing to it.
Cases like Alfawzi’s fall between the cracks of international customs and the courts of different countries, said Mona Pare, a civil law professor at the University of Ottawa with a background in human rights and child rights. There simply does not exist any agreement or legal process that could force the father to bring the children back to Canada, even though Alfawzi never had a say in their custody.
“In cases that are related to immigration and family and religion ... there are so many different combinations possible that make it really complex,” said Pare.
Weeks after her son’s birthday, Alfawzi sits in her east end apartment, deflated balloons scattered on the floor and tears in her eyes. Because the divorce and custody orders occurred under Islamic law in Kuwaiti courts, Alfawzi has no legal claim to her children in that country, and unless her Rashid decides to set foot in Canada, Alfawzi has no opportunity to argue for the custody of her children in Canada. She is stuck, without her children and without viable options.
Alfawzi arrived in Ottawa as an Iraqi refugee in 2002 and moved in with Rashid’s family. Their families were acquaintances in Iraq and the Rashids agreed to house her. She and Rashid fell in love and married under Islamic Sharia law and registered to have it recognized in Ontario. In the following years, she gave birth to her daughter and son, seldom leaving the house and never learning English.
In 2006, her husband announced they would visit Kuwait for a family vacation. When they arrived, he told her they were moving there permanently.
Rashid waited for Alfawzi’s Kuwaiti visa and Canadian permanent resident documents to expire and then kicked her out of the house in 2009, announcing he had divorced her and that he was keeping the kids.
It might sound like a case of international child abduction, but it wasn’t. It is completely legal. With Islamic law, the husband rarely needs the wife’s permission for a divorce and the divorce can be instant.
Shocked and eventually destitute, Alfawzi had no choice but to return to her native Iraq, leaving her children behind. The Canadian consulate could offer no help.
In Canada, those custody orders would never be recognized, Pare said, because Alfawzi had not participated in them. The divorce can be carried over legally, even though she could probably fight them. Custody, however, is a separate issue and undecided in Canada. But, even if she were to pursue justice here where courts would likely award different custody arrangements, she cannot get her children back unless her ex-husband and children, who are Canadian citizens, enter Canada.
That would seem unlikely. They can easily renew their passports at the Canadian consulate in Kuwait and notice of an Ontario custody proceeding may further discourage Rashid from coming back to Canada.
“Now she’s faced with, ‘Well there’s a legal system that can be used, but of course what she cares about are her kids, not just getting a paper from the courts that says ‘you’re right’,” Pare said.
Alfawzi could use the Canadian legal system, but it would not help her be reunited with her children. International agreements like The Hague Convention don’t apply because the case is not considered an abduction and even if it were, Kuwait hasn’t signed the agreement.
Pare said it can be difficult to generalize on trends or numbers for how common cases like Alfawzi’s are because each case is so different.
“Imagine how vulnerable you are as a woman refugee and you don’t speak the language and how somebody can just take advantage of you,” Pare said.
Alfawzi eventually was able to return to Canada. She had to learn English before she could ask for help.
She is now a permanent resident and has a file of spouse harassment with the Ottawa police. She also has a separate fraud case against Rashid, who allegedly forged her signature to take money from her account. Police connected with the Canadian consulate in Kuwait to arrange phone calls between Alfawzi and her children and once visited the children to write a report. The report noted the kids were healthy and treated well, but calls are often difficult, Alfawzi said.
“I say ‘Hi son,’ and he says ‘Hi Zinab,” she said. The children no longer call her ‘mom’ and often ask if she loves them, telling her their father said she hated them. “Of course I love them, I am the mother,” she said.
Alfawzi last spoke with her children on July 5. Alfawzi likes dates, memorizing each day, month and year she interacts with her children and using them as passwords. Alfawzi said she feels physically ill when she thinks about her children, seldom eating when she returns to her small apartment where she is surrounded by their pictures, but completely alone. A physician said her diet has caused stomach and nutrition problems, but Alfawzi remains energetic, running between the kitchen and the couch, making dolmah — stuffed grape seed leaves — for the first time in months while organizing stacks of court documents and police reports.
“I don’t want to stop my life: I grow up, I work, I speak English, I write English, I have a home. When my children come back to me I want them to see I have things for them,” she said.
Alfawzi worked at a restaurant for several months, but was forced to quit when her stomach condition worsened.
She loves Ottawa. She loves the Centennial Flame on Parliament Hill where she made a wish after copying others tossing coins.
After consulting with Pare, Alfawzi has been in touch with a human rights attorney in Kuwait who said he would start to work on her case there while she tried her best in Canada. No Ottawa attorneys have taken her case, but legal action is not what she needs. She needs her children back.
“My friends say I am strong woman, I don’t cry when I’m with people,” she said. “But when I go home and listen to (my children’s) call and look at their picture, I cry, cry, cry, cry.”
My heart goes out to this mom. How horrible that so-called progressive countries in the west buy into and support this total lack of justice. In reality, we see that so-called progressive countries in the west are nearly as invested in fathers' rights as the middle eastern countries.
This is typical of how these things play out. Fathers of children "abducted" by their mothers get government officials and the media behind them. In the U.S., MARK GOLDMAN had his congressman and the State Department aggressively taking up his case. He had the U.S. media paying for a chartered plane trip to Brazil.
But mothers get squat. Just a lot of official hand-wringing and excuses.
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Ottawa+mother+fights+children+legally+abducted+husband/7287340/story.html
Ottawa mother fights for children legally ‘abducted’ by husband in Kuwait
BY KAREN CHEN, OTTAWA CITIZEN
SEPTEMBER 23, 2012
OTTAWA — Zinab Alfawzi had prepared the perfect party for her son’s eighth birthday on Aug. 16. She specially ordered a cake featuring her son’s favourite superhero, Spiderman. She strung up streamers and balloons, lit all the candles and gathered friends to sing Happy Birthday.
The only thing missing was her son, Ahmad, who was nearly 10,000 kilometres away in Kuwait with his father. He wasn’t answering the phone.
“Happy Birthday son. I wish next year we could be together. I love you,” she says in Arabic in a cellphone recording of the celebration, the phone in Kuwait ringing and ringing as the candles grow shorter and shorter. A few months ago, the same thing happened except with a Dora the Explorer themed cake for her nine-year-old daughter, Rawan.
Alfawzi hasn’t seen her children for three years. They live in Kuwait with her husband, Salem Khalef Rashid and his new wife. Kuwaiti courts granted him a divorce and awarded him full custody of the children without ever giving Alfawzi a say in the matter.
The divorce is recognized by Canada, even though she never signed her name agreeing to it.
Cases like Alfawzi’s fall between the cracks of international customs and the courts of different countries, said Mona Pare, a civil law professor at the University of Ottawa with a background in human rights and child rights. There simply does not exist any agreement or legal process that could force the father to bring the children back to Canada, even though Alfawzi never had a say in their custody.
“In cases that are related to immigration and family and religion ... there are so many different combinations possible that make it really complex,” said Pare.
Weeks after her son’s birthday, Alfawzi sits in her east end apartment, deflated balloons scattered on the floor and tears in her eyes. Because the divorce and custody orders occurred under Islamic law in Kuwaiti courts, Alfawzi has no legal claim to her children in that country, and unless her Rashid decides to set foot in Canada, Alfawzi has no opportunity to argue for the custody of her children in Canada. She is stuck, without her children and without viable options.
Alfawzi arrived in Ottawa as an Iraqi refugee in 2002 and moved in with Rashid’s family. Their families were acquaintances in Iraq and the Rashids agreed to house her. She and Rashid fell in love and married under Islamic Sharia law and registered to have it recognized in Ontario. In the following years, she gave birth to her daughter and son, seldom leaving the house and never learning English.
In 2006, her husband announced they would visit Kuwait for a family vacation. When they arrived, he told her they were moving there permanently.
Rashid waited for Alfawzi’s Kuwaiti visa and Canadian permanent resident documents to expire and then kicked her out of the house in 2009, announcing he had divorced her and that he was keeping the kids.
It might sound like a case of international child abduction, but it wasn’t. It is completely legal. With Islamic law, the husband rarely needs the wife’s permission for a divorce and the divorce can be instant.
Shocked and eventually destitute, Alfawzi had no choice but to return to her native Iraq, leaving her children behind. The Canadian consulate could offer no help.
In Canada, those custody orders would never be recognized, Pare said, because Alfawzi had not participated in them. The divorce can be carried over legally, even though she could probably fight them. Custody, however, is a separate issue and undecided in Canada. But, even if she were to pursue justice here where courts would likely award different custody arrangements, she cannot get her children back unless her ex-husband and children, who are Canadian citizens, enter Canada.
That would seem unlikely. They can easily renew their passports at the Canadian consulate in Kuwait and notice of an Ontario custody proceeding may further discourage Rashid from coming back to Canada.
“Now she’s faced with, ‘Well there’s a legal system that can be used, but of course what she cares about are her kids, not just getting a paper from the courts that says ‘you’re right’,” Pare said.
Alfawzi could use the Canadian legal system, but it would not help her be reunited with her children. International agreements like The Hague Convention don’t apply because the case is not considered an abduction and even if it were, Kuwait hasn’t signed the agreement.
Pare said it can be difficult to generalize on trends or numbers for how common cases like Alfawzi’s are because each case is so different.
“Imagine how vulnerable you are as a woman refugee and you don’t speak the language and how somebody can just take advantage of you,” Pare said.
Alfawzi eventually was able to return to Canada. She had to learn English before she could ask for help.
She is now a permanent resident and has a file of spouse harassment with the Ottawa police. She also has a separate fraud case against Rashid, who allegedly forged her signature to take money from her account. Police connected with the Canadian consulate in Kuwait to arrange phone calls between Alfawzi and her children and once visited the children to write a report. The report noted the kids were healthy and treated well, but calls are often difficult, Alfawzi said.
“I say ‘Hi son,’ and he says ‘Hi Zinab,” she said. The children no longer call her ‘mom’ and often ask if she loves them, telling her their father said she hated them. “Of course I love them, I am the mother,” she said.
Alfawzi last spoke with her children on July 5. Alfawzi likes dates, memorizing each day, month and year she interacts with her children and using them as passwords. Alfawzi said she feels physically ill when she thinks about her children, seldom eating when she returns to her small apartment where she is surrounded by their pictures, but completely alone. A physician said her diet has caused stomach and nutrition problems, but Alfawzi remains energetic, running between the kitchen and the couch, making dolmah — stuffed grape seed leaves — for the first time in months while organizing stacks of court documents and police reports.
“I don’t want to stop my life: I grow up, I work, I speak English, I write English, I have a home. When my children come back to me I want them to see I have things for them,” she said.
Alfawzi worked at a restaurant for several months, but was forced to quit when her stomach condition worsened.
She loves Ottawa. She loves the Centennial Flame on Parliament Hill where she made a wish after copying others tossing coins.
After consulting with Pare, Alfawzi has been in touch with a human rights attorney in Kuwait who said he would start to work on her case there while she tried her best in Canada. No Ottawa attorneys have taken her case, but legal action is not what she needs. She needs her children back.
“My friends say I am strong woman, I don’t cry when I’m with people,” she said. “But when I go home and listen to (my children’s) call and look at their picture, I cry, cry, cry, cry.”
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Police: Dad left 3-year-old daughter home alone for 12 hours (Mesa, Arizona)
Notice the subtle clues here. "His apartment." "Nava's apartment." How dad GABRIEL NAVA presumably hired a babysitter to watch "his child." Obviously there was no mother in this home, or she would have been mentioned. And she probably would have been arrested as well, on some charge related to child neglect. But no. NOT ONE WORD.
So did this neglectful slob have custody? Did the abandonment take place during his visitation? Utter silence....Of course if we keep quiet, we then don't have to say WHO gave this neglectful slob custody/visitation rights, do we?
http://www.kpho.com/story/19517031/pd-3-year-old-left-home-alone-for-12-hours
PD: 3-year-old left home alone for 12 hours
Posted: Sep 11, 2012 5:09 PM CDT Updated: Sep 11, 2012 5:12 PM CDT
By Phil Benson
MESA, AZ (CBS5) - A Mesa father was arrested Sunday on suspicion of leaving his 3-year-old daughter alone and unattended in his apartment.
Gabriel Nava, 32, returned home after 12 hours smelling of alcohol, Mesa police said. Nava admitted to drinking six beers the night before, after leaving the child behind, officers said.
Police were alerted to the situation after a neighbor in the apartment complex found the child wandering in a courtyard Sunday morning.
Officers said when they arrived and entered Nava's apartment, they found it messy and dirty with clothes strewn on the floor of every room, dirty dishes in the kitchen and multiple sharp knives on the counter within reach of the child.
Police said Nava told them he had hired a babysitter to watch his child. When police tracked down the sitter, she told them no such arrangement had ever been made, officers said. The babysitter's story was confirmed by people she was with the previous evening, police said.
Nava was booked into jail on one count of child abuse.
So did this neglectful slob have custody? Did the abandonment take place during his visitation? Utter silence....Of course if we keep quiet, we then don't have to say WHO gave this neglectful slob custody/visitation rights, do we?
http://www.kpho.com/story/19517031/pd-3-year-old-left-home-alone-for-12-hours
PD: 3-year-old left home alone for 12 hours
Posted: Sep 11, 2012 5:09 PM CDT Updated: Sep 11, 2012 5:12 PM CDT
By Phil Benson
MESA, AZ (CBS5) - A Mesa father was arrested Sunday on suspicion of leaving his 3-year-old daughter alone and unattended in his apartment.
Gabriel Nava, 32, returned home after 12 hours smelling of alcohol, Mesa police said. Nava admitted to drinking six beers the night before, after leaving the child behind, officers said.
Police were alerted to the situation after a neighbor in the apartment complex found the child wandering in a courtyard Sunday morning.
Officers said when they arrived and entered Nava's apartment, they found it messy and dirty with clothes strewn on the floor of every room, dirty dishes in the kitchen and multiple sharp knives on the counter within reach of the child.
Police said Nava told them he had hired a babysitter to watch his child. When police tracked down the sitter, she told them no such arrangement had ever been made, officers said. The babysitter's story was confirmed by people she was with the previous evening, police said.
Nava was booked into jail on one count of child abuse.
Monday, July 16, 2012
Dad wanted on rape and kidnapping charges a suspect in "suspicious" drowning death of 4-year-old son; where is the mother? (Reynoldsburg, Ohio)
Where to even start with this mess. Dad ALFRED E. HILL is apparently suspected in the "suspicious" drowning death of his 4-year-old son. Police investigators then find out that Daddy is already wanted on "unrelated" kidnapping and rape charges from the previous year. Then, in a rather confusing way, it is revealed that this father does NOT live with the mother of this child, but has been staying one step ahead of the law by "staying with various girlfriends." Or living with his sisters and a younger brother. Whatever.
SO WHERE IS THE MOTHER? The reporter didn't even bother to find out. Did Daddy have full custody? Joint custody? Visitation? Was it Mom's idea that a father bopping around from house to house, trying to dodge the cops on a rape and kidnapping charge, should have the care of a pre-Kindergartener? Or was this some nitwit judge's idea of quality fathering?
But never fear! The idiots are here! A moronic neighbor tells us that Hill was a "family oriented" guy! Yes he was! Suspected rapists on the lam are the very best of fathers, don't you know!
This is how low we have set the bar these days for good fathers....Horrifying.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/07/12/police-investigating-death-of-4-year-old.html
Police investigating child's death arrest dad on year-old rape charges
By Jim Woods The Columbus Dispatch Thursday July 12, 2012 11:07 PM
Police who went to a Reynoldsburg home this morning to investigate the death of a 4-year-old boy ended up arresting his father, after they found he was wanted on unrelated kidnapping and rape charges from a year ago.
Alfred A. Hill, 26, was in the Franklin County jail tonight after police found him near the apartment he shared with three siblings.
The incident began about 9:30 a.m., when Truro Township firefighters were called to 1229 Baytree Court on the report of a child not breathing.
There they found Hill’s son, Alfred Hill, 4, not breathing, said Reynoldsburg acting police chief Jim O’Neill.
The boy was taken to Nationwide Children’s Hospital, where he later died. An autopsy will be performed on Friday, said Franklin County Coroner Jan Gorniak.
Police are calling the death suspicious.
Family members at the apartment told police that Alfred had been in the bathtub and might have choked or drowned. It was unclear tonight who had called 911 and whether the boy was found in the tub.
When police detectives investigating the death returned to the apartment around 1:30 p.m., they had found out that the child’s father was wanted by Columbus police on rape and kidnapping charges from a 2011 incident.
Police searched the Eden at Reynoldsburg apartment complex for about 10 minutes. A maintenance worker alerted police to Hill in a courtyard area.
Columbus police SWAT officers and U.S. marshals had been looking for Hill for months, said Columbus police Sgt. Terry McConnell. A warrant was filed on July 7, 2011, accusing Hill of kidnapping a 19-year-old woman from her Oakwood Avenue house on the South Side during the early morning hours of July 6, 2011. The 6-foot-3, 285-pound Hill forced her to have sex, court records say.
McConnell said that during the past year, Hill had managed to stay one step ahead of law-enforcement officers by staying with different girlfriends. Kevin Veal, 28, said Hill had been living next door for the past couple of months with two of his sisters, a younger brother and about four children.
Veal said the Hill he knew was a “family oriented” guy.
Veal said he knew that something was wrong quickly this morning when he said hello to one of Hill’s sisters.
“I seen a look on her face that I’ve never seen before,” he said. Moments later, paramedics arrived.
Dispatch reporters Lydia Coutre and Allison Manning contributed to this report.
SO WHERE IS THE MOTHER? The reporter didn't even bother to find out. Did Daddy have full custody? Joint custody? Visitation? Was it Mom's idea that a father bopping around from house to house, trying to dodge the cops on a rape and kidnapping charge, should have the care of a pre-Kindergartener? Or was this some nitwit judge's idea of quality fathering?
But never fear! The idiots are here! A moronic neighbor tells us that Hill was a "family oriented" guy! Yes he was! Suspected rapists on the lam are the very best of fathers, don't you know!
This is how low we have set the bar these days for good fathers....Horrifying.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/07/12/police-investigating-death-of-4-year-old.html
Police investigating child's death arrest dad on year-old rape charges
By Jim Woods The Columbus Dispatch Thursday July 12, 2012 11:07 PM
Police who went to a Reynoldsburg home this morning to investigate the death of a 4-year-old boy ended up arresting his father, after they found he was wanted on unrelated kidnapping and rape charges from a year ago.
Alfred A. Hill, 26, was in the Franklin County jail tonight after police found him near the apartment he shared with three siblings.
The incident began about 9:30 a.m., when Truro Township firefighters were called to 1229 Baytree Court on the report of a child not breathing.
There they found Hill’s son, Alfred Hill, 4, not breathing, said Reynoldsburg acting police chief Jim O’Neill.
The boy was taken to Nationwide Children’s Hospital, where he later died. An autopsy will be performed on Friday, said Franklin County Coroner Jan Gorniak.
Police are calling the death suspicious.
Family members at the apartment told police that Alfred had been in the bathtub and might have choked or drowned. It was unclear tonight who had called 911 and whether the boy was found in the tub.
When police detectives investigating the death returned to the apartment around 1:30 p.m., they had found out that the child’s father was wanted by Columbus police on rape and kidnapping charges from a 2011 incident.
Police searched the Eden at Reynoldsburg apartment complex for about 10 minutes. A maintenance worker alerted police to Hill in a courtyard area.
Columbus police SWAT officers and U.S. marshals had been looking for Hill for months, said Columbus police Sgt. Terry McConnell. A warrant was filed on July 7, 2011, accusing Hill of kidnapping a 19-year-old woman from her Oakwood Avenue house on the South Side during the early morning hours of July 6, 2011. The 6-foot-3, 285-pound Hill forced her to have sex, court records say.
McConnell said that during the past year, Hill had managed to stay one step ahead of law-enforcement officers by staying with different girlfriends. Kevin Veal, 28, said Hill had been living next door for the past couple of months with two of his sisters, a younger brother and about four children.
Veal said the Hill he knew was a “family oriented” guy.
Veal said he knew that something was wrong quickly this morning when he said hello to one of Hill’s sisters.
“I seen a look on her face that I’ve never seen before,” he said. Moments later, paramedics arrived.
Dispatch reporters Lydia Coutre and Allison Manning contributed to this report.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Dad murders 11-year-old daughter, 16-year-old son; had just separated from their mother (San Diego, California)
Once again, we see how dangerous it can be to leave one of these abusive/controlling fathers; if he doesn't kill his former partner, he lashes out at the kids and kills them instead. All in an effort to "punish" and inflict endless grief on the mother for leaving his sorry @$$.
We need to stop providing these kinds of men any access to the kids after separation and divorce. It's time to value the lives of women and children over the property rights of men.
Dad is identified as MAURILLO JAIMES.
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Suicide-Note-National-City-Motel-Room-Murder-Suicide-Maurillo-Jaimes-160778285.html
Suicide Note Found in Father's Car Following Motel Murder-Suicide
Maurillo Jaimes,38, allegedly killed his two children and himself inside a National City motel room Tuesday morning
By Monica Garske | Friday, Jun 29, 2012 | Updated 6:56 AM PDTView
One adult and two children were found dead in National City in what police believe is a murder suicide. Brandi Powell spoke to authorities on the scene just after they responded for more information.
Detectives confirmed Thursday that they found a suicide note written by 38-year-old Maurillo Jaimes, a father who allegedly killed his two children before killing himself inside a National City motel room.
Upon searching Jaimes’ vehicle on Wednesday, detectives said they found a suicide note inside the car. The contents of the note were not released.
Jaimes, a National City resident, was found dead Tuesday morning along with his children, 11-year-old Maria Angelica Jaimes and 16-year-old Marco Antonio Jaimes, inside room #404 at The Paradise Motel on National City Blvd.
After receiving a call about a welfare check at their motel room, police entered the room and found the lifeless bodies of the two children on top of a bed with their father’s body nearby.
The children had fatal gunshot wounds, while the father was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to Sgt. Julian Villagomez.
An employee at The Paradise Motel said a woman claiming to be the children's mother had knocked on the door of the room Tuesday where the bodies were found. The woman told the employee that the father had called her saying he was going to commit suicide. She then called police, who walked into the gruesome scene inside the room.
According to neighbors of the family, the mother and father of the children were in the process of separating at the time of the alleged murder-suicide.
On Thursday, officials said they are still investigating the incident as a murder-suicide.
Detectives also said they’ve been in contact with the family of the murder victims and a memorial fund has been established at Bank of America in honor of Marco Antonio and Maria Angelica.
For those who want to donate to the memorial fund, the account number is 164102931887. Any Bank of America branch will accept donations, which will go toward helping the family with funeral expenses.
Authorities said a viewing for the young victims will take place on Monday at El Camino Memorial at 607 National City Blvd. A mass for the children will be held Tuesday at 10 a.m. at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church and the burial will follow that same day at Cypress Hill Cemetery.
We need to stop providing these kinds of men any access to the kids after separation and divorce. It's time to value the lives of women and children over the property rights of men.
Dad is identified as MAURILLO JAIMES.
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Suicide-Note-National-City-Motel-Room-Murder-Suicide-Maurillo-Jaimes-160778285.html
Suicide Note Found in Father's Car Following Motel Murder-Suicide
Maurillo Jaimes,38, allegedly killed his two children and himself inside a National City motel room Tuesday morning
By Monica Garske | Friday, Jun 29, 2012 | Updated 6:56 AM PDTView
One adult and two children were found dead in National City in what police believe is a murder suicide. Brandi Powell spoke to authorities on the scene just after they responded for more information.
Detectives confirmed Thursday that they found a suicide note written by 38-year-old Maurillo Jaimes, a father who allegedly killed his two children before killing himself inside a National City motel room.
Upon searching Jaimes’ vehicle on Wednesday, detectives said they found a suicide note inside the car. The contents of the note were not released.
Jaimes, a National City resident, was found dead Tuesday morning along with his children, 11-year-old Maria Angelica Jaimes and 16-year-old Marco Antonio Jaimes, inside room #404 at The Paradise Motel on National City Blvd.
After receiving a call about a welfare check at their motel room, police entered the room and found the lifeless bodies of the two children on top of a bed with their father’s body nearby.
The children had fatal gunshot wounds, while the father was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to Sgt. Julian Villagomez.
An employee at The Paradise Motel said a woman claiming to be the children's mother had knocked on the door of the room Tuesday where the bodies were found. The woman told the employee that the father had called her saying he was going to commit suicide. She then called police, who walked into the gruesome scene inside the room.
According to neighbors of the family, the mother and father of the children were in the process of separating at the time of the alleged murder-suicide.
On Thursday, officials said they are still investigating the incident as a murder-suicide.
Detectives also said they’ve been in contact with the family of the murder victims and a memorial fund has been established at Bank of America in honor of Marco Antonio and Maria Angelica.
For those who want to donate to the memorial fund, the account number is 164102931887. Any Bank of America branch will accept donations, which will go toward helping the family with funeral expenses.
Authorities said a viewing for the young victims will take place on Monday at El Camino Memorial at 607 National City Blvd. A mass for the children will be held Tuesday at 10 a.m. at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church and the burial will follow that same day at Cypress Hill Cemetery.
Monday, June 18, 2012
Dad with visitation rights stalks mom, murders her and new partner, abducts 5-year-old daughter, then kills her too (Queensland, Australia)
Australia has been under the control of the fathers' rights crowd for years now--and this is the result.
Dad PAUL ROGERS gets shared custody/visitation rights despite a history of domestic violence, including assaulting an unnamed woman. Mom actually gets physically ill from the stress very time he picks up the kids. Mom gets worried when he starts following her and living in his car outside her home. The freaking cops blow her off, saying it's not harassment. He ends up killing her and her new partner, and abducting their 5-year-old daughter. Unbelievably, the cops delay the issuing of a child abduction alert. (Because even dads who commit double homicides deserve their rights?) Then Daddy Dearest gasses the child to death, before doing in his own sorry self.
When will mothers and children have the rights to basic health and safety? When will the courts stop considering moms and kids mere "collateral damage" to The Daddy's Rights?
http://www.northernstar.com.au/story/2012/06/19/father-stalked-then-killed/
Father stalked, then killed ex
19th June 2012 12:00 AM
A FATHER of two stalked his ex-girlfriend before he murdered her and her new partner, kidnapped his own daughter then gassed himself and the daughter.
Chilling evidence has surfaced during the coronial inquest into the triple murder and suicide by Paul Rogers of Kyla Rogers (his five-year-old daughter), Tania Simpson (mother of Kyla and ex-girlfriend of Rogers) and Tania's partner Antony Way.
Rogers killed Ms Simpson and Mr Way in a Robina apartment on May 15, 2011, before snatching Kyla from her bed, driving to a remote spot on the Bruxner Hwy west of Casino and gassing himself and Kyla.
Tania Simpson's father, John Simpson, told the coronial inquest yesterday that Rogers had stalked Tania before the murders.
Ms Simpson and Rogers had an arrangement where Rogers would see their two children each Saturday.
Mr Simpson said Tania would be stressed, feel sick and even vomit before Rogers came to pick the kids up.
"But she never thought he would do anything to the kids," Mr Simpson said.
Ms Simpson and Rogers had been engaged but Ms Simpson called off the wedding in October, 2010 when they were living at a caravan park they were managing in Inverell.
Mr Simpson and his wife Julie Simpson lived in Inverell also.
Mr Simpson said Rogers took to cutting himself after the break-up.
The actions of the Queensland police service, including a delay in issuing a child abduction alert, are the main focus of the coronial inquest.
Broadbeach Police Sergeant Robert Smithson told the inquest on Monday he received a phone call for advice from Ms Simpson about Rogers' behaviour.
Ms Simpson told him how Rogers was following her in his car and was living in his car outside her home in Nobbys Beach.
Counsel assisting the coroner Peter Johns asked Sgt Smithson why that did not amount to harassment, a form of domestic violence.
Sgt Smithson outlined he did not believe the situation had got as far as warranting domestic violence in his mind, based on what he had been told.
The court heard that in Rogers's criminal history was a charge of assaulting a woman.
Dad PAUL ROGERS gets shared custody/visitation rights despite a history of domestic violence, including assaulting an unnamed woman. Mom actually gets physically ill from the stress very time he picks up the kids. Mom gets worried when he starts following her and living in his car outside her home. The freaking cops blow her off, saying it's not harassment. He ends up killing her and her new partner, and abducting their 5-year-old daughter. Unbelievably, the cops delay the issuing of a child abduction alert. (Because even dads who commit double homicides deserve their rights?) Then Daddy Dearest gasses the child to death, before doing in his own sorry self.
When will mothers and children have the rights to basic health and safety? When will the courts stop considering moms and kids mere "collateral damage" to The Daddy's Rights?
http://www.northernstar.com.au/story/2012/06/19/father-stalked-then-killed/
Father stalked, then killed ex
19th June 2012 12:00 AM
A FATHER of two stalked his ex-girlfriend before he murdered her and her new partner, kidnapped his own daughter then gassed himself and the daughter.
Chilling evidence has surfaced during the coronial inquest into the triple murder and suicide by Paul Rogers of Kyla Rogers (his five-year-old daughter), Tania Simpson (mother of Kyla and ex-girlfriend of Rogers) and Tania's partner Antony Way.
Rogers killed Ms Simpson and Mr Way in a Robina apartment on May 15, 2011, before snatching Kyla from her bed, driving to a remote spot on the Bruxner Hwy west of Casino and gassing himself and Kyla.
Tania Simpson's father, John Simpson, told the coronial inquest yesterday that Rogers had stalked Tania before the murders.
Ms Simpson and Rogers had an arrangement where Rogers would see their two children each Saturday.
Mr Simpson said Tania would be stressed, feel sick and even vomit before Rogers came to pick the kids up.
"But she never thought he would do anything to the kids," Mr Simpson said.
Ms Simpson and Rogers had been engaged but Ms Simpson called off the wedding in October, 2010 when they were living at a caravan park they were managing in Inverell.
Mr Simpson and his wife Julie Simpson lived in Inverell also.
Mr Simpson said Rogers took to cutting himself after the break-up.
The actions of the Queensland police service, including a delay in issuing a child abduction alert, are the main focus of the coronial inquest.
Broadbeach Police Sergeant Robert Smithson told the inquest on Monday he received a phone call for advice from Ms Simpson about Rogers' behaviour.
Ms Simpson told him how Rogers was following her in his car and was living in his car outside her home in Nobbys Beach.
Counsel assisting the coroner Peter Johns asked Sgt Smithson why that did not amount to harassment, a form of domestic violence.
Sgt Smithson outlined he did not believe the situation had got as far as warranting domestic violence in his mind, based on what he had been told.
The court heard that in Rogers's criminal history was a charge of assaulting a woman.
Monday, June 4, 2012
Dad charged with assaulting 2-year-old son during court-ordered visitation (Billings, Montana)
This case has "court whore" written all over it. Some dingbat "parenting coordinator" who no doubtely insisted that some trigger-happy sperm donor be kept "involved" in the child's life because, well, because. Because the father's rights people have insisted that this be so, regardless of the who or what the father is as a human being.
Dad is identified TROY ROBIN ANTHONY VILLA.
This is why we need to get the court idiots out of the lives of parents, and stop insisting on shared custody as some sort of magic panacea. Sole custody with Mom can work out just fine.
http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/billings-man-charged-with-felony-for-spanking-injuring--year/article_c145c328-aca5-11e1-a7bb-001a4bcf887a.html
Billings man charged with felony for spanking, injuring 2-year-old son
June 02, 2012 10:45 am • Billings Gazette
BILLINGS - A Billings man has been charged with felony assault on a minor for spanking his 2-year-old son and causing what prosecutors called serious injury.
Troy Robin Anthony Villa, 25, appeared Thursday in Justice Court by video from the county jail. Judge Pro Tem Brandon Hartford set bond at $15,000 after a prosecutor said the man is accused of "inflicting serious injury" to the child.
According to court records, the boy's mother reported to Billings police last Oct. 15 that she found significant bruising on her son's buttocks after picking up the child from his father's house. The boy said his father hit him, but Villa allegedly told the woman their son had fallen off a horse during his five-day visit.
The woman said she and Villa have a parenting plan, and she should have been asked to allow her son to participate in horseback riding.
A doctor who examined the boy at Billings Clinic told police the bruise appeared to be from a strike with a hand and not from a fall from a horse. The injury also appeared to be "consistent with a pinch" and "characteristic of a hand print," court records said the doctor reported.
Villa is scheduled to be arraigned in District Court on June 8.
Dad is identified TROY ROBIN ANTHONY VILLA.
This is why we need to get the court idiots out of the lives of parents, and stop insisting on shared custody as some sort of magic panacea. Sole custody with Mom can work out just fine.
http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/billings-man-charged-with-felony-for-spanking-injuring--year/article_c145c328-aca5-11e1-a7bb-001a4bcf887a.html
Billings man charged with felony for spanking, injuring 2-year-old son
June 02, 2012 10:45 am • Billings Gazette
BILLINGS - A Billings man has been charged with felony assault on a minor for spanking his 2-year-old son and causing what prosecutors called serious injury.
Troy Robin Anthony Villa, 25, appeared Thursday in Justice Court by video from the county jail. Judge Pro Tem Brandon Hartford set bond at $15,000 after a prosecutor said the man is accused of "inflicting serious injury" to the child.
According to court records, the boy's mother reported to Billings police last Oct. 15 that she found significant bruising on her son's buttocks after picking up the child from his father's house. The boy said his father hit him, but Villa allegedly told the woman their son had fallen off a horse during his five-day visit.
The woman said she and Villa have a parenting plan, and she should have been asked to allow her son to participate in horseback riding.
A doctor who examined the boy at Billings Clinic told police the bruise appeared to be from a strike with a hand and not from a fall from a horse. The injury also appeared to be "consistent with a pinch" and "characteristic of a hand print," court records said the doctor reported.
Villa is scheduled to be arraigned in District Court on June 8.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
2-year-old killed during dad's visitation; stepmom charged while dad acts clueless (Canby, Indiana)
Disgusting. It appears that this 2-year-old had repeated signs of abuse everytime he came home from weekend visitation with dad ALLEN DUNN and the step. Mom called CPS. She was ignored. In fact, knowing how CPS works, especially in a fathers rights-dominated state like Indiana, they probably dismissed her as a lying alienator without further inquiry at all. Meanwhile, the step is getting nailed for the toddler's death while Daddy is apparently getting off scott-free. I see a "clueless daddy" defense coming on--he had NO IDEA that Evil Woman was abusing HIS child.
Bullsh**. Mothers are routinely charged with failure to protect or worse, when they "fail" to stop their 250 pound boyfriend from beating their kid. Doesn' t matter if he was beating or threatening her as well. But these fathers are virtually NEVER charged when his new female partner abuses (remember Zahra Baker's custodial dad?). And if by chance Dad really IS clueless, because he's never around, having dumped all the child care on the new step or girlfriend, then WHY ARE DADS LIKE HIM GETTING VISITATION AT ALL? If you don't want to take any role in raising your child, then DON'T GET JOINT CUSTODY and/or VISITATION. Oh, but the fathers rights people have practically made joint custody a mandatory thing, even for dads who apparently don't give a sh**. Reduces or eliminates child support you know.
http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/crime/toddlers-family-sounded-alarm-before-his-death
Toddler's family sounded alarm before his death
Updated: Tuesday, 29 May 2012, 9:20 PM EDT
Published : Tuesday, 29 May 2012, 9:19 PM EDT
Deanna Dewberry
CAMBY, Ind. (WISH) - A Camby woman faces multiple charges in connection with the death of her 2-year-old stepson . Now, family friends say the tragedy could have been prevented.
Skyler Dunn, 2, died Sunday after suffering skull fractures earlier this month. His stepmother, Autumn Dunn, 29, was arrested a week earlier , when he was taken to Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health.
Skyler visited his dad and stepmom on weekends at the home the couple shared with Autumn Dunn's parents, Vicky and William Patterson, in a quiet community in Camby.
But according to a probable cause affidavit , those visits sometimes left the toddler badly bruised. His stepsister told police that her mother, Autumn Dunn, "hits him in the face."
During questioning, Autumn admitted hitting the child "a couple of times" on the face hard enough to cause bruising, according to the court document.
Family friends said the toddler's mother, Jean Seal, was concerned.
"She said she was worried because he come home with bruises," close family friend Sharon Spurlock said.
Spurlock insists Skyler's mom tried to protect her son.
"She called Child Protective Services. I guess they didn't do much," said Spurlock.
But Autumn's father tells a different story. He insists his daughter and son-in-law, Allen, took good care of Skyler.
"I never seen no evidence. I never seen Autumn or Allen discipline the child or spank the child," William Patterson said.
But during her interview with police, Autumn admitted she dropped the toddler on his head, court documents said. She then picked up the child, and when he started crying she said, "I just lost my temper," the PC says.
She admits telling the little boy, "Fine if you want down so bad," just before opening her arms,
causing Skyler to fall onto the floor again, the court documents say
She told police she'd hurt the boy, but she put him to bed - only calling 911 hours later when the baby was unresponsive.
"I just can't see my daughter doing what they allege that she has done," Patterson said.
But friends believe Skyler showed the classic signs of abuse after returning from visits with his father and stepmother.
"I think this could have been prevented if Child Protective Services had stepped in," said Spurlock.
24-Hour News 8 contacted the Department of Child Services, and a spokeswoman told us that laws mandating confidentiality prohibit the agency from discussing Skyler's case.
Amanda Dunn remains jailed and currently faces charges aggravated battery and neglect charges filed when Skyler was hospitalized. The Marion County prosecutor said he may file new charges because Skyler has died.
In the mean time, family friends are collecting donations to help pay for Skyler's funeral.
Bullsh**. Mothers are routinely charged with failure to protect or worse, when they "fail" to stop their 250 pound boyfriend from beating their kid. Doesn' t matter if he was beating or threatening her as well. But these fathers are virtually NEVER charged when his new female partner abuses (remember Zahra Baker's custodial dad?). And if by chance Dad really IS clueless, because he's never around, having dumped all the child care on the new step or girlfriend, then WHY ARE DADS LIKE HIM GETTING VISITATION AT ALL? If you don't want to take any role in raising your child, then DON'T GET JOINT CUSTODY and/or VISITATION. Oh, but the fathers rights people have practically made joint custody a mandatory thing, even for dads who apparently don't give a sh**. Reduces or eliminates child support you know.
http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/crime/toddlers-family-sounded-alarm-before-his-death
Toddler's family sounded alarm before his death
Updated: Tuesday, 29 May 2012, 9:20 PM EDT
Published : Tuesday, 29 May 2012, 9:19 PM EDT
Deanna Dewberry
CAMBY, Ind. (WISH) - A Camby woman faces multiple charges in connection with the death of her 2-year-old stepson . Now, family friends say the tragedy could have been prevented.
Skyler Dunn, 2, died Sunday after suffering skull fractures earlier this month. His stepmother, Autumn Dunn, 29, was arrested a week earlier , when he was taken to Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health.
Skyler visited his dad and stepmom on weekends at the home the couple shared with Autumn Dunn's parents, Vicky and William Patterson, in a quiet community in Camby.
But according to a probable cause affidavit , those visits sometimes left the toddler badly bruised. His stepsister told police that her mother, Autumn Dunn, "hits him in the face."
During questioning, Autumn admitted hitting the child "a couple of times" on the face hard enough to cause bruising, according to the court document.
Family friends said the toddler's mother, Jean Seal, was concerned.
"She said she was worried because he come home with bruises," close family friend Sharon Spurlock said.
Spurlock insists Skyler's mom tried to protect her son.
"She called Child Protective Services. I guess they didn't do much," said Spurlock.
But Autumn's father tells a different story. He insists his daughter and son-in-law, Allen, took good care of Skyler.
"I never seen no evidence. I never seen Autumn or Allen discipline the child or spank the child," William Patterson said.
But during her interview with police, Autumn admitted she dropped the toddler on his head, court documents said. She then picked up the child, and when he started crying she said, "I just lost my temper," the PC says.
She admits telling the little boy, "Fine if you want down so bad," just before opening her arms,
causing Skyler to fall onto the floor again, the court documents say
She told police she'd hurt the boy, but she put him to bed - only calling 911 hours later when the baby was unresponsive.
"I just can't see my daughter doing what they allege that she has done," Patterson said.
But friends believe Skyler showed the classic signs of abuse after returning from visits with his father and stepmother.
"I think this could have been prevented if Child Protective Services had stepped in," said Spurlock.
24-Hour News 8 contacted the Department of Child Services, and a spokeswoman told us that laws mandating confidentiality prohibit the agency from discussing Skyler's case.
Amanda Dunn remains jailed and currently faces charges aggravated battery and neglect charges filed when Skyler was hospitalized. The Marion County prosecutor said he may file new charges because Skyler has died.
In the mean time, family friends are collecting donations to help pay for Skyler's funeral.
Monday, May 7, 2012
Dad arrested for hitting son with belt (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma)
Dad is identified as OSCAR WAYNE NAVARRO. Notice that there is NO MENTION of a mother in this home, and that CPS now has custody of both of Navarro's children. Custodial dad? Just wondering.
INVISIBLE MOTHER ALERT
http://www.news9.com/story/18148598/oklahoma-city-father-arrested-for-child-abuse
OKC Father Arrested, Accused Of Hitting Son With Belt
Posted: May 04, 2012 12:53 PM CDT
Updated: May 04, 2012 12:55 PM CDT
By Xin Xin Liu, News9.com
OKLAHOMA CITY - An Oklahoma City father was arrested on one count of child abuse on Monday, April 30. Oscar Wayne Navarro, 35, was taken into custody after his two children accused him of hitting his son with a belt, according to police.
Officers responded to a call of child abuse from a Department of Human Services worker at a daycare in the 2100 block of S. Bryant Avenue in Oklahoma City. The DHS worker stated she discovered bruises on the boy's left side neck and right shoulder blade area.
The DHS worker said she had spoken to the children before officers arrived. The children both said their father had hit the boy with a belt on Saturday, April 28.
When officers arrived, they said they also saw red bruising in the boy's neck and shoulder area.
Officers made contact with Navarro when he showed up at the daycare to pick up the children. Navarro explained to police that the children were in trouble for breaking his windshield and throwing things into the apartment pool.
Navarro said he grabbed his belt to scare the kids. He stated he did not see his son behind him and accidentally hit him with the belt, causing his injuries, according to the police report.
Navarro was then taken into custody and transported to Oklahoma County Jail.
According to the DHS worker, the Child Protective Services in Texas was also going to place the children in custody, because Navarro had slapped the other child in the face.
The children have been placed in protective custody.
INVISIBLE MOTHER ALERT
http://www.news9.com/story/18148598/oklahoma-city-father-arrested-for-child-abuse
OKC Father Arrested, Accused Of Hitting Son With Belt
Posted: May 04, 2012 12:53 PM CDT
Updated: May 04, 2012 12:55 PM CDT
By Xin Xin Liu, News9.com
OKLAHOMA CITY - An Oklahoma City father was arrested on one count of child abuse on Monday, April 30. Oscar Wayne Navarro, 35, was taken into custody after his two children accused him of hitting his son with a belt, according to police.
Officers responded to a call of child abuse from a Department of Human Services worker at a daycare in the 2100 block of S. Bryant Avenue in Oklahoma City. The DHS worker stated she discovered bruises on the boy's left side neck and right shoulder blade area.
The DHS worker said she had spoken to the children before officers arrived. The children both said their father had hit the boy with a belt on Saturday, April 28.
When officers arrived, they said they also saw red bruising in the boy's neck and shoulder area.
Officers made contact with Navarro when he showed up at the daycare to pick up the children. Navarro explained to police that the children were in trouble for breaking his windshield and throwing things into the apartment pool.
Navarro said he grabbed his belt to scare the kids. He stated he did not see his son behind him and accidentally hit him with the belt, causing his injuries, according to the police report.
Navarro was then taken into custody and transported to Oklahoma County Jail.
According to the DHS worker, the Child Protective Services in Texas was also going to place the children in custody, because Navarro had slapped the other child in the face.
The children have been placed in protective custody.
Friday, March 9, 2012
The Southern Poverty Law Center on the Fathers Rights Movement (USA)
A must read.
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/spring/a-war-on-women
Intelligence Report, Spring 2012, Issue Number: 145
Leader’s Suicide Brings Attention to Men’s Rights Movement
By Arthur Goldwag
After 10 years of custody battles, court-ordered counseling and imminent imprisonment for non-payment of child support, Thomas James Ball, a leader of the Worcester branch of the Massachusetts-based Fatherhood Coalition, had reached his limit. On June 15, 2011, he doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire just outside the Cheshire County, N.H., Courthouse. He was dead within minutes.
In a lengthy “Last Statement,” which arrived posthumously at the Keene Sentinel, Tom Ball told his story. All he had done, he said, was smack his 4-year-old daughter and bloody her mouth after she licked his hand as he was putting her to bed. Feminist-crafted anti-domestic violence legislation did the rest. “Twenty-five years ago,” he wrote, “the federal government declared war on men. It is time to see how committed they are to their cause. It is time, boys, to give them a taste of war.” Calling for all-out insurrection, he offered tips on making Molotov cocktails and urged his readers to use them against courthouses and police stations. “There will be some casualties in this war,” he predicted. “Some killed, some wounded, some captured. Some of them will be theirs. Some of the casualties will be ours.”
For people who associate the men’s and fathers’ rights movements with New Age drum circles in the woods, the ferocity of Ball’s rhetoric, the horror of his act, and, in particular, the widespread and blatantly misogynistic reaction to it may come as something of a revelation. When the feminist Amanda Marcotte, a bête noire of the men’s rights movement, remarked that “setting yourself on fire is an extremely effective tool if your goal is to make your ex-wife’s life a living hell,” a poster at the blog Misandry.com went ballistic. “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black,” he raged. “She is evil and such a vile evil that she is a disease that needs to be cut out of the human [consciousness] just like the rest of the femanazi ass harpies.”
It’s not much of a surprise that significant numbers of men in Western societies feel threatened by dramatic changes in their roles and that of the family in recent decades. Similar backlashes, after all, came in response to the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement, and other major societal revolutions. What is something of a shock is the verbal and physical violence of that reaction.
Ball’s suicide brought attention to an underworld of misogynists, woman-haters whose fury goes well beyond criticism of the family court system, domestic violence laws, and false rape accusations. There are literally hundreds of websites, blogs and forums devoted to attacking virtually all women (or, at least, Westernized ones) — the so-called “manosphere,” which now also includes a tribute page for Tom Ball (“He Died For Our Children”). While some of them voice legitimate and sometimes disturbing complaints about the treatment of men, what is most remarkable is the misogynistic tone that pervades so many. Women are routinely maligned as sluts, gold-diggers, temptresses and worse; overly sympathetic men are dubbed “manginas”; and police and other officials are called their armed enablers. Even Ball — who did not directly blame his ex-wife for his troubles, but instead depicted her and their three children as co-victims of the authorities — vilified “man-hating feminists” as evil destroyers of all that is good.
This kind of woman-hatred is increasingly visible in most Western societies, and it tends to be allied with other anti-modern emotions — opposition to same-sex marriage, to non-Christian immigration, to women in the workplace, and even, in some cases, to the advancement of African Americans. Just a few weeks after Ball’s death, while scorch marks were still visible on the sidewalk in Keene, N.H., that was made clear once more by a Norwegian named Anders Behring Breivik.
On July 22, Breivik slaughtered 77 of his countrymen, most of them teenagers, in Oslo and at a summer camp on the island of Utøya, because he thought they or their parents were the kinds of “politically correct” liberals who were enabling Muslim immigration. But Breivik was almost as voluble on the subjects of feminism, the family, and fathers’ rights as he was on Islam. “The most direct threat to the family is ‘divorce on demand,’” he wrote in the manifesto he posted just before he began his deadly spree. “The system must be reformed so that the father will be awarded custody rights by default.”
The manosphere lit up. Said one approving poster at The Spearhead, an online men’s rights magazine for the “defense of ourselves, our families and our fellow men”: “What could be more ‘an eye for an eye’ than to kill the children of those who were so willing to destroy men’s families and destroy the homeland of men?”
‘The Homeland of Men’
The men’s rights movement, also referred to as the fathers’ rights movement, is made up of a number of disparate, often overlapping, types of groups and individuals. Some most certainly do have legitimate grievances, having endured prison, impoverishment or heartrending separations from genuinely loved children.
Jocelyn Crowley, a Rutgers political scientist and the author of Defiant Dads: Fathers’ Rights Activists in America, says that most men who join real (as opposed to virtual) men’s rights groups aren’t seeking to attack the family court system so much as they are simply struggling to navigate it. What they talk most about when they meet face to face, she says, are strategies to deal with their ex-partners and have better relationships with their children.
But Molly Dragiewicz, a criminologist at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology and the author of Equality With a Vengeance: Men’s Rights Groups, Battered Women, and Antifeminist Backlash, argues that cases in which fathers are badly treated by courts and other officials are not remotely the norm. The small percentage of divorces that end up in litigation are disproportionately those where abuse and other issues make joint custody a dubious proposition. Even when a woman can satisfactorily document her ex-husband’s abuse, Dragiewicz says, she is no more likely to receive full custody of her children than if she couldn’t.
The men’s movement also includes mail-order-bride shoppers, unregenerate batterers, and wannabe pickup artists who are eager to learn the secrets of “game”—the psychological tricks that supposedly make it easy to seduce women. George Sodini, who confided his seething rage at women to his blog before shooting 12 women, three of them fatally, was one of the latter. Before his 2009 murder spree at a Pittsburgh-area gym, he was a student — though clearly not a very apt one — of R. Don Steele, the author of How to Date Young Women: For Men Over 35. “I dress good, am clean-shaven, bathe, touch of cologne — yet 30 million women rejected me over an 18 or 25-year period,” Sodini wrote with the kind of pathos presumably typical of Steele’s readers.
Other movement adherents have forsworn sex altogether, or at least romantic relationships and marriage; the acronym they use for themselves is MGTOW, for “Men Going Their Own Way.” “If you are willing to marry a woman — any woman — in the West then you must also be willing to become the next murder-suicide story when she threatens to file for divorce, steal your kids out of your life and extort you for every current and future dollar you will ever earn,” wrote one commenter at The Spearhead. “If a man kidnapped your children, stole your home, your wallet and your bank account, you’d be more than willing to kill him in self defense. Why is it any different when ex-wives do it with the full force of the law behind them?”
Some take an inordinate interest in extremely young women, or fetishize what they see as the ultra-feminine (read: docile) characteristics of South American and Asian women. Others, who have internalized Christian “headship” doctrine, are desperately seeking the “submissive” women such doctrine celebrates. Still others are simply sexually awkward, and nonplussed and befuddled by society’s changing mores. The common denominator is their resentment of feminism and of females in general.
“It’s ironic,” the feminist writer Amanda Marcotte observes. “These [misogynist Web] sites owe their existence to feminism’s successes. At some point in the last couple of years, the zeitgeist hit a tipping point where female power — Hillary Clinton’s, Rachel Maddow’s, even Sarah Palin’s — stopped being questioned. Being sexist has become less acceptable than it used to be. This makes some men particularly anxious.” At the same time, of course, domestic violence and sex crimes are much more likely to be prosecuted than they were even a decade ago. Shelters, social services and legal aid are more available to most battered women than in the past.
But some experts argue that men’s rights groups have been remarkably successful. The groups, says Rita Smith, director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, “have taken over the way courts deal with custody issues, particularly when there are allegations of abuse,” largely by convincing them that there is such a thing as “Parental Alienation Syndrome” (PAS). (PAS is a supposed clinical disorder in which a child compulsively belittles one parent due to indoctrination by the other — frequently leveling false allegations of abuse. It is not recognized as a clinical disorder by either the American Psychiatric Association or the World Health Organization.) Citing studies that show that false domestic abuse accusations against men are far less common than men’s groups and PAS enthusiasts claim, Smith says the groups nevertheless have “been able to get custody evaluators, mediators, guardians ad litem and child protective service workers to believe that women and children lie about abuse.”
Threats and Abuse
One kind of abuse that is undeniable is the vilification of individual women on certain men’s group websites. The best example of that may be Register-Her, a registry of women who “have caused significant harm to innocent individuals either by the direct action of crimes like rape, assault, child molestation and murder, or by the false accusation of crimes against others.” The site was set up by Paul Elam, the blogger behind A Voice for Men, less than two weeks after Ball’s suicide. “If Mary Jane Rottencrotch decides to falsely accuse her husband of domestic violence in order to get the upper hand in a divorce,” Elam boasted on his Internet radio show, “we can publish all her personal information on the website, including her name, address, phone number … even her routes to and from work.”
Under a headline reading, “Why are these women not in prison?” the site features photos and information about some 250 alleged malefactors, including notorious women like Lorena Bobbitt and Tonya Harding, although Elam hasn’t made good on his threat to publish home addresses or phone numbers. Many of those listed received prison sentences for various crimes, but large numbers were acquitted in court, while others were never accused of any lawbreaking. A well-known feminist, for example, is listed for “anti-male bigotry,” which is compared to racism.
Elam’s site can be frightening to its targets. In one case, he offered a cash reward to the first reader to ferret out a pseudonymous feminist blogger’s real name. In another, Elam singled out a part-time blogger at ChicagoNow who describes herself as a “vegetarian park activist with two baby girls.” The woman’s mistake was to write about her discomfort with male adults helping female toddlers in the bathroom at her daughter’s preschool. The blogger conceded that she was being sexist, but wrote that “I’d rather be wrong than find out if I’m right.”
After the woman was listed, she was widely attacked on men’s movement sites. “I don’t always use the word ‘cunt’ to describe a woman,” one poster raged, “but when I do it’s because of reasons like these.” Shocked, the “Mommy blogger” took down her original post and apologized for her “demonization of men.”
It wasn’t enough. “You targeted fathers, and just fathers,” Elam rebuked her. “It strikes me that you have never really been held to account for any of your actions in life. It is quite likely that the concept of complete, selfless accountability is just completely foreign to you.” Over at the Reddit Mens Rights forum, another poster fumed: “This entire episode should be a warning to all those male hating feminists out there who believe that they are safe screaming their hate messages on the web. Finally, they are held accountable for their hate messages and finally the rest of the world will find out exactly what type of depraved people they really are.”
Amanda Marcotte, who is a prime Register-Her target, writes about men’s rights activists less than she used to. That’s not because she doesn’t take them seriously — they introduce too many “anti-woman, anti-child, pro-abuse, pro-rape ideas into the public discourse” not to — but because “they’re so doggedly mean. It becomes frightening after a while.” Marcotte says the registry may incite violence against its targets, especially because many angry male activists are active abusers. “They interact with their ideological adversaries online,” she says, “much as they do with their spouses and children: ‘I’ll give you something to cry about!’”
“I don’t know if Thomas James Ball ever visited this site,” Elam wrote on his blog when he started Register-Her. “What I do believe is, though, that he, if convinced to stay alive, would have been a hell of a soldier in this war.”
Soldiers in the War
The first shots in this so-called war on feminism were fired 22 years before Tom Ball’s suicide. On Dec. 6, 1989, Marc Lépine, a troubled 25-year-old computer student, strolled into the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, Canada, carrying a Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic rifle and a hunting knife. He walked into a classroom, ordered the men to leave, and lined the women up against a wall.
“I am fighting feminism,” he announced before opening fire. “You’re women, you’re going to be engineers. You’re all a bunch of feminists. I hate feminists.”
By the time he turned the gun on himself, 14 women were dead and 10 were wounded; four men were hurt as well. The suicide note in Lépine’s pocket contained a list of 19 “radical feminists” he hoped to kill, and this: “I have decided to send the feminists, who have always ruined my life, to their Maker. … They want to keep the advantages of women … while seizing for themselves those of men.”
Today, that kind of rage is often directed at all women, not only perceived feminists. “Women don’t need the powers-that-be to get them to hate and use men,” the blogger Alcuin wrote recently. “They have always used men; maybe they have always hated us too.” Added another blogger, Angry Harry: “There are now, literally, billions of dollars, numerous empires, and millions of jobs that depend on the public swallowing the idea that women need to be defended from men.”
“A word to the wise,” offered the blogger known as Rebuking Feminism. “The animals women have become want one thing, resources and genes. … See them as the animals they have become and plan … accordingly.”
And many are quick to endorse violence against women. “There are women, and plenty of them, for which [sic] a solid ass kicking would be the least they deserve,” Paul Elam wrote in an essay with the provocative title, “When is it OK to Punch Your Wife?” “The real question here is not whether these women deserve the business end of a right hook, they obviously do, and some of them deserve one hard enough to leave them in an unconscious, innocuous pile on the ground if it serves to protect the innocent from imminent harm. The real question is whether men deserve to be able to physically defend themselves from assault … from a woman.”
For some, it’s more than just talk. In 2006, Darren Mack, a member of a fathers’ rights group in Reno, Nev., stabbed his estranged wife to death and then shot and wounded the family court judge who was handling his divorce.
That kind of violence continues right up to the present.
In Seal Beach, Calif. last Oct. 12, a day after Scott Evans Dekraai and his ex-wife had been in court to fight over custody of their 8-year-old son (Dekraai had 56% custody but wanted full custody and “final decision making authority” on matters of the child’s education and medical treatment), Dekraai walked into the hair salon where his ex-wife worked armed with three handguns. There, he allegedly shot seven women, six of them fatally; he also is accused of killing two men — the salon’s owner, as he attempted to flee, and a man in a car outside.
Michelle Fournier, Dekraai’s ex-wife, had testified that Dekraai was not taking his bipolar medicine and that he was suicidal and dangerous. If she had survived his rampage, she might have enjoyed having the last word about his propensity for violence. But she did not, becoming instead the latest in a long, sad line of victims of women-hating men.
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/spring/a-war-on-women
Intelligence Report, Spring 2012, Issue Number: 145
Leader’s Suicide Brings Attention to Men’s Rights Movement
By Arthur Goldwag
After 10 years of custody battles, court-ordered counseling and imminent imprisonment for non-payment of child support, Thomas James Ball, a leader of the Worcester branch of the Massachusetts-based Fatherhood Coalition, had reached his limit. On June 15, 2011, he doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire just outside the Cheshire County, N.H., Courthouse. He was dead within minutes.
In a lengthy “Last Statement,” which arrived posthumously at the Keene Sentinel, Tom Ball told his story. All he had done, he said, was smack his 4-year-old daughter and bloody her mouth after she licked his hand as he was putting her to bed. Feminist-crafted anti-domestic violence legislation did the rest. “Twenty-five years ago,” he wrote, “the federal government declared war on men. It is time to see how committed they are to their cause. It is time, boys, to give them a taste of war.” Calling for all-out insurrection, he offered tips on making Molotov cocktails and urged his readers to use them against courthouses and police stations. “There will be some casualties in this war,” he predicted. “Some killed, some wounded, some captured. Some of them will be theirs. Some of the casualties will be ours.”
For people who associate the men’s and fathers’ rights movements with New Age drum circles in the woods, the ferocity of Ball’s rhetoric, the horror of his act, and, in particular, the widespread and blatantly misogynistic reaction to it may come as something of a revelation. When the feminist Amanda Marcotte, a bête noire of the men’s rights movement, remarked that “setting yourself on fire is an extremely effective tool if your goal is to make your ex-wife’s life a living hell,” a poster at the blog Misandry.com went ballistic. “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black,” he raged. “She is evil and such a vile evil that she is a disease that needs to be cut out of the human [consciousness] just like the rest of the femanazi ass harpies.”
It’s not much of a surprise that significant numbers of men in Western societies feel threatened by dramatic changes in their roles and that of the family in recent decades. Similar backlashes, after all, came in response to the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement, and other major societal revolutions. What is something of a shock is the verbal and physical violence of that reaction.
Ball’s suicide brought attention to an underworld of misogynists, woman-haters whose fury goes well beyond criticism of the family court system, domestic violence laws, and false rape accusations. There are literally hundreds of websites, blogs and forums devoted to attacking virtually all women (or, at least, Westernized ones) — the so-called “manosphere,” which now also includes a tribute page for Tom Ball (“He Died For Our Children”). While some of them voice legitimate and sometimes disturbing complaints about the treatment of men, what is most remarkable is the misogynistic tone that pervades so many. Women are routinely maligned as sluts, gold-diggers, temptresses and worse; overly sympathetic men are dubbed “manginas”; and police and other officials are called their armed enablers. Even Ball — who did not directly blame his ex-wife for his troubles, but instead depicted her and their three children as co-victims of the authorities — vilified “man-hating feminists” as evil destroyers of all that is good.
This kind of woman-hatred is increasingly visible in most Western societies, and it tends to be allied with other anti-modern emotions — opposition to same-sex marriage, to non-Christian immigration, to women in the workplace, and even, in some cases, to the advancement of African Americans. Just a few weeks after Ball’s death, while scorch marks were still visible on the sidewalk in Keene, N.H., that was made clear once more by a Norwegian named Anders Behring Breivik.
On July 22, Breivik slaughtered 77 of his countrymen, most of them teenagers, in Oslo and at a summer camp on the island of Utøya, because he thought they or their parents were the kinds of “politically correct” liberals who were enabling Muslim immigration. But Breivik was almost as voluble on the subjects of feminism, the family, and fathers’ rights as he was on Islam. “The most direct threat to the family is ‘divorce on demand,’” he wrote in the manifesto he posted just before he began his deadly spree. “The system must be reformed so that the father will be awarded custody rights by default.”
The manosphere lit up. Said one approving poster at The Spearhead, an online men’s rights magazine for the “defense of ourselves, our families and our fellow men”: “What could be more ‘an eye for an eye’ than to kill the children of those who were so willing to destroy men’s families and destroy the homeland of men?”
‘The Homeland of Men’
The men’s rights movement, also referred to as the fathers’ rights movement, is made up of a number of disparate, often overlapping, types of groups and individuals. Some most certainly do have legitimate grievances, having endured prison, impoverishment or heartrending separations from genuinely loved children.
Jocelyn Crowley, a Rutgers political scientist and the author of Defiant Dads: Fathers’ Rights Activists in America, says that most men who join real (as opposed to virtual) men’s rights groups aren’t seeking to attack the family court system so much as they are simply struggling to navigate it. What they talk most about when they meet face to face, she says, are strategies to deal with their ex-partners and have better relationships with their children.
But Molly Dragiewicz, a criminologist at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology and the author of Equality With a Vengeance: Men’s Rights Groups, Battered Women, and Antifeminist Backlash, argues that cases in which fathers are badly treated by courts and other officials are not remotely the norm. The small percentage of divorces that end up in litigation are disproportionately those where abuse and other issues make joint custody a dubious proposition. Even when a woman can satisfactorily document her ex-husband’s abuse, Dragiewicz says, she is no more likely to receive full custody of her children than if she couldn’t.
The men’s movement also includes mail-order-bride shoppers, unregenerate batterers, and wannabe pickup artists who are eager to learn the secrets of “game”—the psychological tricks that supposedly make it easy to seduce women. George Sodini, who confided his seething rage at women to his blog before shooting 12 women, three of them fatally, was one of the latter. Before his 2009 murder spree at a Pittsburgh-area gym, he was a student — though clearly not a very apt one — of R. Don Steele, the author of How to Date Young Women: For Men Over 35. “I dress good, am clean-shaven, bathe, touch of cologne — yet 30 million women rejected me over an 18 or 25-year period,” Sodini wrote with the kind of pathos presumably typical of Steele’s readers.
Other movement adherents have forsworn sex altogether, or at least romantic relationships and marriage; the acronym they use for themselves is MGTOW, for “Men Going Their Own Way.” “If you are willing to marry a woman — any woman — in the West then you must also be willing to become the next murder-suicide story when she threatens to file for divorce, steal your kids out of your life and extort you for every current and future dollar you will ever earn,” wrote one commenter at The Spearhead. “If a man kidnapped your children, stole your home, your wallet and your bank account, you’d be more than willing to kill him in self defense. Why is it any different when ex-wives do it with the full force of the law behind them?”
Some take an inordinate interest in extremely young women, or fetishize what they see as the ultra-feminine (read: docile) characteristics of South American and Asian women. Others, who have internalized Christian “headship” doctrine, are desperately seeking the “submissive” women such doctrine celebrates. Still others are simply sexually awkward, and nonplussed and befuddled by society’s changing mores. The common denominator is their resentment of feminism and of females in general.
“It’s ironic,” the feminist writer Amanda Marcotte observes. “These [misogynist Web] sites owe their existence to feminism’s successes. At some point in the last couple of years, the zeitgeist hit a tipping point where female power — Hillary Clinton’s, Rachel Maddow’s, even Sarah Palin’s — stopped being questioned. Being sexist has become less acceptable than it used to be. This makes some men particularly anxious.” At the same time, of course, domestic violence and sex crimes are much more likely to be prosecuted than they were even a decade ago. Shelters, social services and legal aid are more available to most battered women than in the past.
But some experts argue that men’s rights groups have been remarkably successful. The groups, says Rita Smith, director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, “have taken over the way courts deal with custody issues, particularly when there are allegations of abuse,” largely by convincing them that there is such a thing as “Parental Alienation Syndrome” (PAS). (PAS is a supposed clinical disorder in which a child compulsively belittles one parent due to indoctrination by the other — frequently leveling false allegations of abuse. It is not recognized as a clinical disorder by either the American Psychiatric Association or the World Health Organization.) Citing studies that show that false domestic abuse accusations against men are far less common than men’s groups and PAS enthusiasts claim, Smith says the groups nevertheless have “been able to get custody evaluators, mediators, guardians ad litem and child protective service workers to believe that women and children lie about abuse.”
Threats and Abuse
One kind of abuse that is undeniable is the vilification of individual women on certain men’s group websites. The best example of that may be Register-Her, a registry of women who “have caused significant harm to innocent individuals either by the direct action of crimes like rape, assault, child molestation and murder, or by the false accusation of crimes against others.” The site was set up by Paul Elam, the blogger behind A Voice for Men, less than two weeks after Ball’s suicide. “If Mary Jane Rottencrotch decides to falsely accuse her husband of domestic violence in order to get the upper hand in a divorce,” Elam boasted on his Internet radio show, “we can publish all her personal information on the website, including her name, address, phone number … even her routes to and from work.”
Under a headline reading, “Why are these women not in prison?” the site features photos and information about some 250 alleged malefactors, including notorious women like Lorena Bobbitt and Tonya Harding, although Elam hasn’t made good on his threat to publish home addresses or phone numbers. Many of those listed received prison sentences for various crimes, but large numbers were acquitted in court, while others were never accused of any lawbreaking. A well-known feminist, for example, is listed for “anti-male bigotry,” which is compared to racism.
Elam’s site can be frightening to its targets. In one case, he offered a cash reward to the first reader to ferret out a pseudonymous feminist blogger’s real name. In another, Elam singled out a part-time blogger at ChicagoNow who describes herself as a “vegetarian park activist with two baby girls.” The woman’s mistake was to write about her discomfort with male adults helping female toddlers in the bathroom at her daughter’s preschool. The blogger conceded that she was being sexist, but wrote that “I’d rather be wrong than find out if I’m right.”
After the woman was listed, she was widely attacked on men’s movement sites. “I don’t always use the word ‘cunt’ to describe a woman,” one poster raged, “but when I do it’s because of reasons like these.” Shocked, the “Mommy blogger” took down her original post and apologized for her “demonization of men.”
It wasn’t enough. “You targeted fathers, and just fathers,” Elam rebuked her. “It strikes me that you have never really been held to account for any of your actions in life. It is quite likely that the concept of complete, selfless accountability is just completely foreign to you.” Over at the Reddit Mens Rights forum, another poster fumed: “This entire episode should be a warning to all those male hating feminists out there who believe that they are safe screaming their hate messages on the web. Finally, they are held accountable for their hate messages and finally the rest of the world will find out exactly what type of depraved people they really are.”
Amanda Marcotte, who is a prime Register-Her target, writes about men’s rights activists less than she used to. That’s not because she doesn’t take them seriously — they introduce too many “anti-woman, anti-child, pro-abuse, pro-rape ideas into the public discourse” not to — but because “they’re so doggedly mean. It becomes frightening after a while.” Marcotte says the registry may incite violence against its targets, especially because many angry male activists are active abusers. “They interact with their ideological adversaries online,” she says, “much as they do with their spouses and children: ‘I’ll give you something to cry about!’”
“I don’t know if Thomas James Ball ever visited this site,” Elam wrote on his blog when he started Register-Her. “What I do believe is, though, that he, if convinced to stay alive, would have been a hell of a soldier in this war.”
Soldiers in the War
The first shots in this so-called war on feminism were fired 22 years before Tom Ball’s suicide. On Dec. 6, 1989, Marc Lépine, a troubled 25-year-old computer student, strolled into the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, Canada, carrying a Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic rifle and a hunting knife. He walked into a classroom, ordered the men to leave, and lined the women up against a wall.
“I am fighting feminism,” he announced before opening fire. “You’re women, you’re going to be engineers. You’re all a bunch of feminists. I hate feminists.”
By the time he turned the gun on himself, 14 women were dead and 10 were wounded; four men were hurt as well. The suicide note in Lépine’s pocket contained a list of 19 “radical feminists” he hoped to kill, and this: “I have decided to send the feminists, who have always ruined my life, to their Maker. … They want to keep the advantages of women … while seizing for themselves those of men.”
Today, that kind of rage is often directed at all women, not only perceived feminists. “Women don’t need the powers-that-be to get them to hate and use men,” the blogger Alcuin wrote recently. “They have always used men; maybe they have always hated us too.” Added another blogger, Angry Harry: “There are now, literally, billions of dollars, numerous empires, and millions of jobs that depend on the public swallowing the idea that women need to be defended from men.”
“A word to the wise,” offered the blogger known as Rebuking Feminism. “The animals women have become want one thing, resources and genes. … See them as the animals they have become and plan … accordingly.”
And many are quick to endorse violence against women. “There are women, and plenty of them, for which [sic] a solid ass kicking would be the least they deserve,” Paul Elam wrote in an essay with the provocative title, “When is it OK to Punch Your Wife?” “The real question here is not whether these women deserve the business end of a right hook, they obviously do, and some of them deserve one hard enough to leave them in an unconscious, innocuous pile on the ground if it serves to protect the innocent from imminent harm. The real question is whether men deserve to be able to physically defend themselves from assault … from a woman.”
For some, it’s more than just talk. In 2006, Darren Mack, a member of a fathers’ rights group in Reno, Nev., stabbed his estranged wife to death and then shot and wounded the family court judge who was handling his divorce.
That kind of violence continues right up to the present.
In Seal Beach, Calif. last Oct. 12, a day after Scott Evans Dekraai and his ex-wife had been in court to fight over custody of their 8-year-old son (Dekraai had 56% custody but wanted full custody and “final decision making authority” on matters of the child’s education and medical treatment), Dekraai walked into the hair salon where his ex-wife worked armed with three handguns. There, he allegedly shot seven women, six of them fatally; he also is accused of killing two men — the salon’s owner, as he attempted to flee, and a man in a car outside.
Michelle Fournier, Dekraai’s ex-wife, had testified that Dekraai was not taking his bipolar medicine and that he was suicidal and dangerous. If she had survived his rampage, she might have enjoyed having the last word about his propensity for violence. But she did not, becoming instead the latest in a long, sad line of victims of women-hating men.
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