Father and Sons Reunited After 10 Years

Mario Navarrete, left, laughs with his son Emilio, 15, for the first time in over a decade.

Emilio and Xavier Navarrete don't remember having a father.

He left his family -- which also included two older brothers -- in Florida for work in Indiana when Emilio, 15, was a baby. He came back, but divorce papers and burglary accusations prevented Mario Navarrete from returning to his family permanently. Ten years went by, during which scrapes with the law sent both Emilio and Xavier into foster care.

But on Sunday, Emilio and Xavier, 16, were reunited with the father they always believed abandoned them, the St. Petersburg Times reported.

Mario Navarrete was able to meet his sons thanks to caseworker Gabriela Naccarato and a federal effort to put kids with family members instead of with strangers. "My boys?" he screamed when she called. "You have my boys?" Naccarato was also able to locate older brother Gabriel, who had aged out of the foster care system.

After work on Friday, Navarrette left his home in Kentucky and drove all night, first picking up Gabriel and then to meet Emilio and Xavier.

Navarrete must pass a background check and home study in order to take the boys to Kentucky, and the mom who didn't want them is also a complication. But the boys hope to be with their dad by Christmas.

To read more, go to the St. Petersburg Times.

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This story is so typical now a days.. kids getting torn apart from their families-- then led to believe the parent or parents abandoned them! Truth be told 99.9% of these parents not only want their children but are doing whatever they can to fight the system to get their children back!!!

These families suffer life long ex-fuckin-excruciating pain from being torn apart!!

The parents are suffering just as bad as these children.. these families are heart broken- and kept apart from each other by "our wonderful fuckin system" then everyone involved is expected to go through life and function!

These mother fuckers (those that separate these families) may they have something precious be torn from them- so they know the pain first hand!

Thank God there is hope that these children will now know at least the partial truth-- as I pray one day my own children will know I NEVER ABANDONED THEM- But their wonderful-fuckin-father and his political cronies kept us apart all these years and they will know I did nothing but pray daily and fight these bastards to get my babies back!

Apology for Kids Shipped From Britain

Ten-year-old twins Brian Thomas, left, and Kevin James Sullivan carry their luggage as they leave London bound for Auckland, New Zealand, in October 1950.

Children As Young as 3 Were Sent to the Colonies.

CANBERRA, Australia (Nov. 15) - Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued a historic apology Monday to thousands of impoverished British children shipped to Australia with the promise of a better life, only to suffer abuse and neglect thousands of miles from home.

At a ceremony in the Australian capital of Canberra attended by tearful former child migrants, Rudd apologized for his country's role in the migration and extended condolences to the 7,000 survivors of the program who still live in Australia.

"We are sorry," Rudd said. "Sorry that as children you were taken from your families and placed in institutions where so often you were abused. Sorry for the physical suffering, the emotional starvation and the cold absence of love, of tenderness, of care. Sorry for the tragedy — the absolute tragedy — of childhoods lost."

The apology comes one day after the British government said Prime Minister Gordon Brown would apologize for child migrant programs that sent as many as 150,000 poor British children as young as 3 to Australia, Canada and other former colonies over three and a half centuries.

The programs, which ended 40 years ago, were intended to provide the children with a new start — and the Empire with a supply of sturdy white workers. But many children ended up in institutions where they were physically and sexually abused, or were sent to work as farm laborers.

Rudd also apologized to the "forgotten Australians" — children who suffered in state care during the last century. According to a 2004 Australian Senate report, more than 500,000 children were placed in foster homes, orphanages and other institutions during the 20th century. Many were emotionally, physically and sexually abused in state care.

Some in the audience wept openly and held each other as Rudd shared painful stories of children he'd spoken with — children who were beaten with belt buckles and bamboo, who grew up in places they called "utterly loveless."

"Let us resolve this day that this national apology becomes a turning point in our nation's story," Rudd said. "A turning point for shattered lives, a turning point for governments at all levels and of every political hue and color to do all in our power to never allow this to happen again."

At that, the audience erupted into loud cheers and applause.

John Hennessey, 72, of Campbelltown, 40 miles (70 kilometers) southwest of Sydney, struggles to make himself understood through a stutter — a never-healing scar from a thrashing he received from an Australian orphanage headmaster 60 years ago.

Hennessey was only 6 when he was shipped from a British orphanage to an institute for boys in the country town of Bindoon in Western Australia state.

At 12, he was stripped naked and nearly beaten to death by the headmaster for eating grapes he had taken from a vineyard without permission because he was hungry.

"What terrified me most was that in my mind I thought: 'That's my father. What's he doing?' — I had nobody else and he was the one I'd looked up to," Hennessey said. "Before that I didn't have a stutter. I've sought medical advice since and they've said, 'John, you're going to take that to the grave with you.'"

After the apology, an emotional Hennessey approached Rudd with a photograph of his late mother May Mary Hennessey, whom he was reunited with in England in 1999 as a guest of the British government when she was 86.

"I can't believe it, mate, I'm still shaking," Hennessey told The Associated Press. "But the one I'm waiting for is the British apology. That's the icing on the cake."

The Forgotten Australians also welcomed the apology. Rod Braydon, 65, said he was raped at the age of six by a Salvation Army officer on his first night in a boys home in the city of Melbourne.

"When we reported this as kids, we were flogged to within an inch of our lives, locked up in dungeons and isolation cells," said Braydon, who has received a cash settlement from the Salvation Army for the abuse and is suing the Victoria state government for neglect.

British High Commissioner Valerie Amos said that while the Australian government had ruled out paying compensation, her government had not yet decided that issue.

She declined to say which government was more to blame for the children's suffering.

"This is a matter of us all acknowledging that we need to say 'sorry' for what was a terrible period in our history," Amos told reporters.

The British government has estimated that a total of 150,000 British children may have been shipped abroad between 1618 — when a group was sent to the Virginia Colony — and 1967, most of them from the late 19th century onwards.

After 1920, most of the children went to Australia through programs run by the government, religious groups and children's charities.

A 2001 Australian report said that between 6,000 and 30,000 children from Britain and Malta, often taken from unmarried mothers or impoverished families, were sent alone to Australia as migrants during the 20th century. Many of the children were told that they were orphans, though most had either been abandoned or taken from their families by the state. Siblings were commonly split up once they arrived in Australia.

Authorities believed they were acting in the children's best interests, but the migration also was intended to stop them from being a burden on the British state while supplying the receiving countries with potential workers. A 1998 British parliamentary inquiry noted that "a further motive was racist: the importation of 'good white stock' was seen as a desirable policy objective in the developing British Colonies."

Australia had an immigration policy that favored British and white immigrants until the 1970s.

"We were used as white fodder," Hennessey said. "The Archbishop met us at Fremantle (in Western Australia) and I can still remember his words. He said, 'Welcome to Australia. We want white stock because we're terrified of the yellow peril.'"

British Children's Secretary Ed Balls said the child migrant policy was "a stain on our society."
"The apology is symbolically very important," he told Sky News television.

"I think it is important that we say to the children who are now adults and older people and to their offspring that this is something that we look back on in shame," he said.

Britain has been trying to make amends since the late 1990s by funding trips to reunite migrants with their families in Britain.

Brown's office said officials would consult with representatives of the surviving children before making a formal apology next year.

Associated Press writer Jill Lawless reported from London.

Apology for Kids Shipped From Britain

My two cents-

Yaanno - I have so much to say about this article that I'd have to address each sentence and well- that would ruin the gist of the story. So I'll make this as short as possible.

THIS IS A FUCKING DISGRACE!!!! NOT JUST A DISGRACE- A FUCKING DISGRACE!

And... ya wanna know what makes it even worse?

THE CHILDREN IN OUR COUNTRY ARE GOING THROUGH THE SAME THING-
Only difference is our children are being kept IN our Country while they are being abused!!

OUR CHILDREN -how many years later? YEAH over 50 years later are being abused and ripped from loving families- at the hands of our own people in power!

In closing I'll say it once again- WHAT HAPPENED TO THESE CHILDREN IN THIS STORY IS A MOTHERFUCKIN DISGRACE!

THE SAME MOTHERFUCKIN DIGRACE THAT IS DESTROYING OUR CHILDREN TODAY!

Now before anyone accuses me of hating my Country- fuck you! I love my Country- it's the people that are in power within this wonderful Country, and are abusing that power- that I question!

No! "Sorry" just doesn't motherfuckin- cut it!

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Jordan McFarland, 14, Gets Guillain-Barre Syndrome After Swine Flu Shot

(Nov. 12) -- Jordan McFarland, 14, at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Va., where he was treated for Guillain-Barre Syndrome after getting an H1N1 flu shot

A Virginia high school student was released from the hospital Tuesday after developing a rare disease within hours of being vaccinated against swine flu, MSNBC reported.

Jordan McFarland, 14, of Alexandria, Va., experienced severe headaches, muscle spasms and leg weakness after getting the H1N1 vaccine. His parents told MSNBC that doctors diagnosed him with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a muscle disorder. Only a handful of cases of the syndrome have been reported in relation to the vaccine.

"The doctor said I'll recover fully, but it's going to take some time," said Jordan, who will need physical therapy and might have to move around with the aid of a walker for a few weeks.
An official from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there was no clear link between the vaccine and the syndrome, the television network reported.

Read the full story at MSNBC.

Jordan McFarland, 14, Gets Guillain-Barre Syndrome After Swine Flu Shot

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Judge refuses to dismiss torture charges against two suspects in Tracy child torture case

UPDATE on the Tracy Case

Earlier Links-

Couple Arrested in Chained Teen Case

Photo Gallery

4 adults indicted in torture of teen in Tracy

Teen in Tracy torture case was burned by lighter fluid, bleach, doctor testifies - San Jose Mercury News

Tracy Press - Tracy torture victim s disappearance long unknown to police


By Sophia Kazmi
Contra Costa Times
Posted: 11/10/2009 12:00:00 AM PST

STOCKTON — A San Joaquin County judge has refused to drop torture charges against two of the suspects accused of torturing a 16-year-old boy who said he was beaten, burned and denied food at a Tracy home before escaping last year.

Attorneys for Michael Schumacher, 35, and Anthony Waiters, 30, asked Judge Terrence Van Oss on Monday to throw out the torture count among others in the 17-count grand jury indictment against their clients.

Schumacher, Waiters, Schumacher's neighbor; Schumacher's wife, 31-year-old Kelly Lau; and CarenRamirez, 44, who said she was the aunt of the boy, publicly known as Kyle R., face a series of charges of torture, false imprisonment, criminal threats, aggravated mayhem and corporal injury to a child.

All have pleaded not guilty. If convicted they could spend the rest of their lives in prison.

John Casenave, Schumacher's attorney argued that torture requires a motive such as revenge, persuasion, extortion or sadistic purposes and the grand jury testimony — taken in secret without the defendants or their attorneys present — does not reflect a motive.

"I'm not saying the allegations are not horrific," Casenave said, adding that he doesn't believe the grand jury transcripts show that his client committed torture.

Waiters attorney, Alan Jose, said without such motives the charge should be child abuse, not torture.

Van Oss said the grand jury could reasonably assume that Waiters and the others committed the abuse, which allegedly went on for more than a year, for sadistic purposes.

"He deliberately sliced the boy's arm then poured salt on the wounds," Van Oss said of one of many acts of abuse Waiters is accused of committing.

As for Schumacher, Van Oss said there is enough evidence to show that he aided and abetted the incidents because he allowed them to occur in his Tennis Lane home.

In addition to torture charges, Van Oss also let stand charges of aggravated mayhem and assault with a caustic chemical against Schumacher, which his attorney wanted tossed out. The criminal threats and great bodily injury clause against Waiters also stood.

A great bodily injury clause in one of the counts was dismissed against Schumacher and use of a dangerous weapon clause in the same count was dismissed against Waiters, but the charge as a whole stood.

Van Oss commented the case is strange, especially due to do the number of suspects and the length of the alleged abuse.

"Everyone taking part in this, it's just bizarre," Van Oss said.

Kyle R. stumbled into a Tracy fitness center on Dec. 1, 2008. He was bloody, filthy, emaciated, in rags and wore a three-foot chain on his ankle. He told police he was kept in a house where he was chained to a fireplace, regularly beaten and denied food.

All four are being held without bail at San Joaquin County Jail in French Camp. They will return to court Nov. 17 to change their trial date, which was scheduled for Feb. 1.

Judge refuses to dismiss torture charges against two suspects in Tracy child torture case - Inside Bay Area

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Report: Family Court System in Crisis

Report: Family Court System In Crisis

Posted on Tuesday, 10 of November , 2009 at 7:33 pm

New York’s Family Court system is reaching a state of crisis, the State Senate Judiciary Committee finds in “Kids & Families Still Can’t Wait: The Urgent Case for New Family Court Judgeships”. With just 153 Family Court judges statewide to handle 728,000 cases and projected appearances exceeding 2.5 million this year alone, a system meant to protect children and families is leaving many of them without the full measure of guidance they need to navigate a complex legal process, avoid repeat appearances, and ensure family safety and stability. And as a result of the current state of the economy, the system is at a breaking point.

In a good economy, some Family Court judges can carry daunting dockets of 8,000 cases. Caseloads have since ballooned in all parts of the state — placing the quality of justice for children and families in jeopardy. The Senate’s report — the most comprehensive report of its kind in legislative history — traces the development of the Family Court’s docket crunch from the court’s creation in the early 1960’s until the present day, and makes recommendations for the Legislature to act on immediately.

These recommendations include:·

Phasing in a total of 39 new Family Court judgeships on the basis of need over the next several years;·

Establishing a process by which all three branches of government work together to objectively assess the Family Court system to ensure it remains equal to growing needs; and·

Eliminating outdated legal barriers that prohibit judges of other trial courts from presiding in Family Court when appropriate. “Family Court cases typically involve children, and the protecting their best interests is something we must all support, especially when difficult economic conditions put already at-risk children and families in harm’s way,” said Senate Majority Conference Leader John L. Sampson, lead sponsor of S.5968, which would immediately establish 21 new Family Court judgeships across the state.

The Senate passed this bill in September, and it awaits final action in the Assembly. “It has been fully 20 years since even a single Family Court judgeship was created for New York City, and in many upstate counties Family Court also is reaching a breaking point,” Sen. Sampson continued. “It is long past time to make this critical investment in the lives and wellbeing of children and families who often have nowhere else to turn.” Sen. Sampson added, “This report draws necessary attention to a Family Court system that is crying out for assistance.

We have a duty to give at-risk New Yorkers the help they need by immediately expanding the number of Family Court judges, which would reduce caseloads and speed the resolution of time-sensitive cases. This legislation and other reforms proposed in our report are long-overdue and would provide relief to families and children in need.

Children and families simply cannot wait anymore.” Full Report Available Online:www.nysenate.gov/report/familycourt 11-10-09

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North Country Gazette » Report: Family Court System In Crisis

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Great blog post on Non Custodial Moms and Parent Alienation

I came accross this blog this morning- and quite frankly I couldn't have said it better so without any further delay here is it...

What do you think of when you meet a non-custodial mother? In most cases, a person’s opinion or idea of a non-custodial mother is far from the truth. If you were to ask non-custodial mothers why they lost custody, you would receive a wide array of answers. Very few of these responses would be because the mother was “unfit.” In fact, many mothers lose custody due to manipulative, controlling ex-spouses or partners.

Many mothers lose custody to their abusers. First, you may doubt this statement. Some studies have shown that batterers are able to convince authorities that the victim is unfit or undeserving of sole custody in approximately 70% of challenged cases. Fathers who batter mothers are two times more likely to seek sole physical custody of their children, than non-violent fathers.

Non Custodial Mothers and Parental Alienation


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Parental Alienation: A Mental Diagnosis?

Some experts say the extreme hatred some kids feel toward a parent in a divorce is a mental illness.

By Lindsay Lyon
Posted October 29, 2009

From an early age, Anne was taught by her mother to fear her father. Behind his back, her mom warned that he was an unpredictable and dangerous; any time he'd invite her to do anything—a walk in the woods, a trip to the art store—she would craft an excuse not to go.
"I was under the impression that he was crazy, that at any moment he could just pop and do something violent to hurt me," says Anne, who prefers that only her middle name be used to guard her family's privacy. Typical of a phenomenon some mental-health experts now label "parental alienation," her view of him became so negative, she says, that her mother persuaded her to lie during a custody hearing when the couple divorced. Then 14, she told the judge that her dad was physically abusive. Was he? "No," she says. "But I was convinced that he would [be]." After her mother won custody, Anne all but severed contact with her father for years.

If a growing faction of the mental-health community has its way, Anne's experience will one day soon be an actual diagnosis. The concept of parental alienation, which is highly controversial, is being described as one in which children strongly attach to one parent and reject the other in the false belief that he or she is bad or dangerous. "It's heartbreaking," says William Bernet, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, "to have your 10-year-old suddenly, in a matter of weeks, go from loving you and hiking with you...to saying you're a horrible, ugly person." These aren't kids who simply prefer one parent over the other, he says. That's normal. These kids doggedly resist contact with a parent, sometimes permanently, out of an irrational hate or fear.

Bernet is leading an effort to add "parental alienation" to the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the American Psychiatric Association's "bible" of diagnoses, scheduled for 2012. He and some 50 contributing authors from 10 countries will make their case in the American Journal of Family Therapy early next year. Inclusion, says Bernet, would spur insurance coverage, stimulate more systematic research, lend credence to a charge of parental alienation in court, and raise the odds that children would get timely treatment.

But many experts balk at labeling the phenomenon an official disorder. "I really get concerned about spreading the definition of mental illness too wide," says Elissa Benedek, a child and adolescent psychiatrist in Ann Arbor, Mich., and a past president of the APA. There's no question in her mind that kids become alienated from a loving parent in many divorces with little or no justification, and she's seen plenty of kids kick and scream all the way to the car when visitation is enforced. But, she says, "this is not a mentally ill child."

The phenomenon has been described for many decades, but it became a cause célèbre in 1985, when Richard Gardner, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, coined the term "parental alienation syndrome." As more dads fought fiercely for joint custody, he observed a surge in the number of children suffering from a distinct cluster of symptoms, including a "campaign of denigration" against one parent that sometimes included a false sex-abuse accusation and automatic parroting of the other parent's views.

But sound research supporting a medical label is scant, critics say. The American Psychological Association has issued a statement that "there is no evidence within the psychological literature of a diagnosable parental alienation syndrome." What's more, concern has grown that "PAS" could be invoked by an abusive parent to gain rights to a child who has good reason to refuse contact, says Janet Johnston, a clinical sociologist and justice studies professor at San Jose State University who has studied parental alienation. In teens, she notes, parental rejection might be a developmentally normal response. Anecdotal reports have surfaced that some kids labeled as "alienated" have become suicidal when courts have ordered a change of custody to the "hated" parent, she says.

In any case, divorcing parents should be aware that hostilities may seriously harm the kids. Sometimes manipulation is blatant, as with parents who conceal phone calls, gifts, or letters, then use the "lack of contact" as proof that the other parent doesn't love the child. Sometimes the influence is more subtle ("I'm sure nothing bad will happen to you at Mommy's house") or even unintentional ("I've put a cellphone in your suitcase. Call when everyone's asleep to tell me you're OK"). It's important to shield kids from harmful communication, says Richard Warshak, a clinical professor of psychology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and author of Divorce Poison. If something potentially upsetting about an ex must be conveyed, he advises imagining how you would have handled the conversation while happily married; how would you have explained Mom's depression, say?

More- Parental Alienation: A Mental Diagnosis? - US News and World Report