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To the U.S. Congress, U.S. Executive Branch
and Major National Media 12/7/05 Dear Legislators, Executive Branch, Staff, and Media, If you truly care about "responsible fatherhood" and "healthy marriage", as key members of the U.S. Congress and Executive Branch purport to at every sound bite opportunity, then you will read the concise information below with an open mind and learn about the reality of what has caused the pandemic of fatherlessness and the demise of marriage across America. Despite the ease with which many have blamed, and continue to blame, the continued destruction of America's social fabric on irresponsible fathers who are predisposed to violence and abandonment of their children, the actuality on the ground of this country is far more instructive than such innuendo.
______________________________ So, you say the divorce lawyers around the country don't see dollar signs when they see the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)? With a wink and a nod, and now a predetermined sequence of questions choreographed and promulgated by the ABA itself to divorce lawyers around the country, you too can be a victim of domestic violence [if a mother] or a perpetrator [if you are a father]. ABA Domestic Violence Screening Download Tool Screening for Domestic Violence Tool, Compliments of the American Bar Association "In conjunction with Domestic Violence Awareness Month, the ABA Commission on Domestic Violence is proud to announce the release of our latest publication, "Tool for Attorneys to Screen for Domestic Violence." This wonderful resource is for use by ALL attorneys who provide individual representation to enable them to identify if their client is a victim of domestic violence. This 'wonderful' Tool contains suggested questions to integrate into interview questions, as well as guidance on how an attorney can provide support and resources to their clients who are victims of domestic violence." By the ABA Commission on Domestic Violence Link to ABA Download Tool The draconian provisions of the VAWA, which strip those accused of the most basic process of due rights and purported equal protections provided by the 14th amendment, are being wielded as a weapon by divorce attorneys nationwide who are paid to get the most they possibly can for their clients in the nation's family courts. If you don't directly know a father who has felt the sting of the VAWA sucker-punch during an ongoing child custody proceeding then rest assured one day your progeny or their progeny very likely will... "Domestic Violence does not necessarily involve physical violence." "Domestic Violence is an epidemic" -- The 'wonderful' ABA Domestic Violence Screening Tool Why does the American Bar Association proclaim far and wide that domestic violence is an epidemic and that domestic violence does not necessarily involve physical violence? Because radical anti-fatherhood lobbyists have infiltrated the halls of Congress and convinced America's federal elected officials that there is an epidemic of domestic violence when there isn't. The Congress has now passed laws unfit for a former Soviet-bloc state whereby fathers who are merely accused of causing fear for their spouse are immediately removed from their home and their children. Further, the Congress funds these radical ideologues with billions of dollars of taxpayer fuel so they can continue their lobbying for more draconian laws and ever-increasing funding. The divorce lawyers across the country are drowning in their own salivations as they use the VAWA time and time again to railroad fit and loving fathers into childless pariahs after divorce is forced on them by their wives and then a further divorce is forced between them and their children by the family courts. The so-called epidemic of domestic violence is a self-fulfilling prophecy that will NEVER abate so long as the magnetizing pull of its draconian provisions go unchecked in the family courts of America. Father after father after father is having a bogus domestic violence petition filed against him to keep him from remaining an integral part of his children's lives. And the Congress is providing the very fuel that drives this process every day in America.
______________________________ Ah, but our 'family values' oriented federal legislators in the Senate are leading the way to the restoration of 'responsible fatherhood' and 'healthy marriage' using hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds. They have recognized the critical pandemic of fatherlessness that faces the nation's children. The cavalry is on the way! S.667 PRIDE Act SEC. 118. RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD PROGRAM. (a) RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD PROGRAM- (1) FINDINGS- Congress makes the following findings: (A) Nearly 24,000,000 children in the United States, or 34 percent of all such children, live apart from their biological father. (B) Sixty percent of couples who divorce have at least 1 child. (C) The number of children living with only a mother increased from just over 5,000,000 in 1960 to 17,000,000 in 1999, and between 1981 and 1991 the percentage of children living with only 1 parent increased from 19 percent to 25 percent. (D) Forty percent of children who live in households without a father have not seen their father in at least 1 year and 50 percent of such children have never visited their father's home. (E) The most important factor in a child's upbringing is whether the child is brought up in a loving, healthy, supportive environment. (F) Children who live without contact with their biological father are, in comparison to children who have such contact-- (i) 5 times more likely to live in poverty; (ii) more likely to bring weapons and drugs into the classroom; (iii) twice as likely to commit crime; (iv) twice as likely to drop out of school; (v) more likely to commit suicide; (vi) more than twice as likely to abuse alcohol or drugs; and (vii) more likely to become pregnant as teenagers. (G) Violent criminals are overwhelmingly males who grew up without fathers. (H) Between 20 and 30 percent of families in poverty are headed by women who have suffered domestic violence during the past year, and between 40 and 60 percent of women with children receiving welfare were abused sometime during their life. (I) Responsible fatherhood includes active participation in financial support and child care, as well as the formation and maintenance of a positive, healthy, and nonviolent relationship between father and child and a cooperative relationship between parents. (J) States should be encouraged to implement programs that provide support for responsible fatherhood , promote marriage, and increase the incidence of marriage, and should not be restricted from implementing such programs. (K) Fatherhood programs should promote and provide support services for-- (i) loving and healthy relationships between parents and children; and (ii) cooperative parenting. (L) There is a social need to reconnect children and fathers. (M) The promotion of responsible fatherhood and encouragement of healthy 2-parent married families should not-- (i) denigrate the standing or parenting efforts of single mothers or other caregivers; (ii) lessen the protection of children from abusive parents; or (iii) compromise the safety or health of the custodial parent; but should increase the chance that children will have 2 caring parents to help them grow up healthy and secure. (N) The promotion of responsible fatherhood must always recognize and promote the values of nonviolence. (O) For the future of the United States and the future of our children, Congress, States, and local communities should assist parents to become more actively involved in their children's lives. (P) Child support is an important means by which a parent can take financial responsibility for a child and emotional support is an important means by which a parent can take social responsibility for a child. Oh, wait... As you might have been able to tell from the disclaimers above in (H), (M), and (N) that reiterate the tendency of fathers to be violent, it would appear that the domestic violence industry and its leadership of anti-fatherhood lobbyists were directly involved in influencing this legislation. Those ideological anti-fatherhood activists already know what the *real* problems are that have cultivated the current culture of American fatherlessness and have swept in under the radar to prevent the *real* problems from being addressed. Look at the restrictions that are overtly being placed on the granting of these funds: `SEC. 441. RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD GRANTS. `(3) RESTRICTION ON USE OF FUNDS- No funds provided under this subsection may be used for costs attributable to court proceedings regarding matters of child visitation or custody, or for legislative advocacy. `(4) REQUIREMENTS FOR RECEIPT OF FUNDS- A State may not be awarded a grant under this section unless the State, as a condition of receiving funds under such a grant-- `(A) consults with experts in domestic violence or with relevant community domestic violence coalitions in developing such programs or activities; and `(B) describes in the application for a grant under this section-- `(i) how the programs or activities proposed to be conducted will address, as appropriate, issues of domestic violence; and So, you see, the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in support of 'responsible fatherhood' and 'healthy marriage' will go toward educating fathers about how to be, and why they should be, responsible parents and how and why their children need them. Not a penny will be allowed to be spent on the real problems of fathers being ordered into visitorship with their children after being divorced by their wives who have decided the grass is greener on the other side of marriage [because the other side of marriage brings so much power and material gain]. Not a penny will be allowed to be spent on helping loving caring fathers remain an integral part of their children's lives at the time of child custody proceedings. Not a penny will be allowed to be spent on the enforcement of court ordered visitation/parenting time for loving fathers being denied such court ordered access to their children that the custodial mother has refused to allow. Not a penny will be allowed to be spent toward the reconciliation of the hugely biased family courts across the country which are churning out fatherless children on the backside of no-fault divorces at a staggering rate [while the judges are, not coincidentally, being trained by the same anti-fatherhood ideologues who have infiltrated the Congress]. In short, not a penny will be allowed to address ANY of the real problems facing the existing fatherless children of America, nor the imminent next generation of fatherless children and their soon-to-be sucker-punched fathers who want to be loving parents just as so many sucker-punched fathers do today. Does the U.S. Congress really care about what paragraph 'O' states ??? (O) For the future of the United States and the future of our children, Congress, States, and local communities should assist parents to become more actively involved in their children's lives. Apparently more important it would seem is (J) States should be encouraged to implement programs that provide support for responsible fatherhood , promote marriage, and increase the incidence of marriage, whereby it appears that these programs will be used to encourage and dupe men into fatherhood and marriage despite the untenable risks associated with starting a family as a man in today's America due to federal social anti-fatherhood policy. I hope you see the shortsightedness of this approach. Word is spreading on the streets of America and the real problems have become common knowledge as millions of non-custodial fathers have been forcibly reduced to nothing more than wallets by the nation's family courts after being divorced by their children's mother. Mothers nationwide are being taught by the lawyers and the courts they are entitled to request their children's father be ordered in visitorship and indentured servitude by the family courts after they (the mothers) initiate a no-fault divorce. This problem is only going to get worse until you stop pretending and get serious about reconciling the root causes. And now we all KNOW that you know the root causes, for you have allowed an explicit prohibition to be included in the "responsible fatherhood" and "healthy marriage" bill that prevents fatherhood program funds from being directed toward the *actual* root causes of the fatherlessness problem. At the same time the Senate Judiciary Committee rubber stamps the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) renewal bill by refusing to allow ANY of the voluminous anti-VAWA voices across the country from testifying at the VAWA renewal hearing in July about how the VAWA has directly undermined the American family, the Senate leadership is actually allowing those same zealots to write anti-fatherhood riders into the legislation that claims it will salvage the country's social foundation of the family. It would actually be unbelievable if it wasn't transpiring in reality.
A couple of final points are worth noting. It is clear from the following paragraph (I) that you all place a higher premium on fathers paying child support than you do on fathers being directly involved in their children's lives through the providing of love, nurturing, wisdom, protection, education, association and any other number of ways that a parent helps a child to develop in a healthy manner. (I) Responsible fatherhood includes active participation in financial support and child care, as well as the formation and maintenance of a positive, healthy, and nonviolent relationship between father and child and a cooperative relationship between parents. It is very difficult to understand, however, how you think you can teach fathers who have zero leverage and no bargaining power whatsoever in today's marital relationships to be cooperative as parents any more than you could teach a serf how to be cooperative with his plantation master. Everyone knows the children's mother will get custody of the children, the father will be ordered into visitorship with the children, and the father will get an invoice requiring him to support the mother's standard of living far above his own under penalty of jail if the marriage breaks down. Everyone also knows that mothers initiate over 75% of all divorces in American families with children. God only knows what cooperation you are planning on teaching fathers about... The most important point related to paragraph (I), though, is the following. The spending of a single federal dollar on the formation of a positive, healthy, and nonviolent relationship between father and child is akin to the total wasting of that dollar. Fathers are the people least likely on this earth to hurt their children. That statement in paragraph (I) serves as no more than the same inaccurate propaganda the anti-fatherhood ideologues have been feeding the Congress for over a decade now about how fathers should be presumed to be violent and dangerous, except that it is now government sponsored propaganda in legislative form, just as the VAWA is. Here are the most recent actual statistics about the danger to America's children, complements of our own federal government. And the danger is not presented by fathers: This national 2003 Child Maltreatment [released in 2005] report from the U.S. Federal Government Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is by far the most accurate and comprehensive source anywhere for child maltreatment/abuse data. Here is what the 2003 ACF Child Maltreatment report shows: Child fatalities are the most tragic consequence of maltreatment. For 2003, an estimated 1,500 children died due to child abuse or neglect. Figure 4–2 Fatalities by Perpetrator Relationship, 2003 § PARENTAL STATUS OF VICTIM'S PERPETRATOR(S) PERCENT
§
Mother
Only
§
Father
Only
§
Mother and
Father
§
Mother and
Other § Father and Other 0.9
§
Nonparental
Perpetrator
§
Unknown or
Missing
Child maltreatment perpetrators. Table 3–13 Distribution of Victims by Perpetrator Status, 2003 PARENTAL STATUS OF VICTIM'S PERPETRATOR(S) VICTIMS PERCENT
§
Mother
Only
§
Father
Only
§
Mother and
Father
§
Mother and
Other
§
Father and
Other
§
Nonparental
Perpetrator
§
Unknown
§
Total
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth and Families. Child Maltreatment (Washington , DC : U.S. Government Printing Office).
http://www.acf.dhhs.gov
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs Mothers are over 50% more likely to perpetrate child homicide than are fathers, and they are more than twice as likely to maltreat or abuse children than are fathers. The point of this is not to stereotype or to denigrate mothers. There exist aberrant parents, unfortunately, of both genders. The point is to put the spotlight on the very obvious anti-fatherhood agenda of those radical ideologue lobbyists that the Congress has unwisely allowed to directly influence supposed 'family values' legislation. If you are not seeing it, then you are not looking very hard. We know the following facts straight from U.S. Federal Government statistics: "Father-deprivation is a more reliable predictor of criminal activity than race, environment or poverty." Father-deprived children are: 1. 72% of all teenage murderers. 2. 60% of rapists. 3. 70% of kids incarcerated. 4. Twice as likely to quit school. 5. 11 times more likely to be violent. 6. 3 of 4 teen suicides. 7. 80% of the adolescents in psychiatric hospitals. 8. 90% of runaways Sources: National Fatherhood Initiative, US Bureau of Census, FBI "Father-deprivation is a serious form of child abuse that is institutionalized and entrenched within our legal system. Powerful sexist people have a vested interest in diminishing the role of men, especially their role as fathers. Research proves that children thrive with the active and meaningful participation of both biological parents, and is true for post-divorce families." (Dick Feeman, Joseph Maiello, Mike Jebbet, "Child Custody or Child Abuse", Victoria Times-Colonist, Jan 8, 1998). IF YOU ALL REALLY CARED, TRULY CARED, ABOUT RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD, HEALTHY MARRIAGE, AND THE FUTURE OF THE NATION'S CHILDREN (AND PERHAPS THE VERY HEALTH OF THE NATION ITSELF) YOU WOULD TAKE THE LIPSTICK OFF THIS UGLY "RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD" PIG OF A BILL AND GET SERIOUS ABOUT FIXING THE FATHERLESSNESS PROBLEM IN AMERICA THAT FEDERAL POLICIES HAVE DIRECTLY CAUSED. LIPSTICK ON A PIG WILL NOT HELP THE CHILDREN OF AMERICA. The Senate 'authors' of S.667 have overtly admitted the crisis of fatherlessness this country has sewn (even if they have yet to admit the direct responsibility of federal government policies) and now faces, yet at the same time they have explicitly built in restrictions against the actual addressing of the real problems of biased family courts influenced by state domestic violence coalitions [using public VAWA funds], far too much judicial discretion in the law whereby judges abrogate parenting rights using only opinion as a basis [in contravention of the 14th amendment equal protection clause and numerous Supreme Court case-law precedent], ridiculously high child support awards [that remove all financial discretion from the non-custodial parent], and nothing less than the forced parentectomies being prescribed American children of divorce nationwide. What the federal government is doing in its promotion of "responsible fatherhood" and "healthy marriage" on the heels of the V.A.W.A., lack of federal parenting protections, and child support collection incentive funding, is analogous to an arsonist who sets fire to the house of the American family (and fatherhood) and then returns a half hour later when the structure is totally engulfed in flames to fight the inferno with a garden hose.
http://www.nhcustody.org
http://www.nhcustody.org
http://www.nhcustody.org/VAWA Sincerely, Marc Snider Merrimack, NH
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