Disgusted with the system

Fausat Ogunbayo Suing City For $900 Trillion For Placing Children In Foster Home

2012-02-07T20:53:00.012-05:00

The Huff Post reported that..

A Staten Island mother is suing the city for a staggering $900 trillion for allegedly wrongfully placing her two sons in foster care and claiming she was mentally unstable.

46-year old Fausat Ogunbayo, who is representing herself, says the Administration for Children's Services's decision to place her children in foster care infringed upon her civil rights and ultimately inflicted "over three years of terror, horror, grievous harm, time lost, substantial economic hardship and injuries."

The children, then 12 and 10-years old, have been out of their mother's custody since June 2008.

In court papers, the ACS references several peculiar incidents where Ogunbayo sought out medical treatment because she believed her children's skin color was becoming darker due to radiation. In a separate episode, the mother allegedly told school officials the FBI was after the boys.

While the city is contending Ogunbayo suffered from such hallucinations and in addition was an absent mother , a separate legal case last month ruled in favor of Ogunbayo with the court stating no substantial evidence indicating the children were ever in "imminent danger" while in their mother's care.

The Staten Island Advance reports that in fact, the two children had near-perfect school attendance and were "even thriving academically."

However, the mother claims that the ACS has yet to return her children to her care. As for Ogunbayo's $900 trillion demand, Forbes provides some perspective:

The largest City settlement to an individual is $18,278,000 to James McMillan who suffered paralyzing injuries in the 2003 Staten Island Ferry dock crash that killed 11 passengers...And the national debt is $15 trillion.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I LEFT A COMMENT, but I highly doubt that it'll make it past the guard dogs making sure any story about the 'family court' corruption gets BLACKED OUT! Fuck em!! Here's my comment right here...

This kind of HORROR STORY is happening all over the U.S.

I too have been wrongfully and corruptly, kept from my children's lives by their POLITICALLY CONNECTED STATEN ISLAND FATHER!

Who happens to have worked for JOSEPH PANEPINTO, Director of Catholic Charities CYO program for 20 years!

Who happens to be married to Acting S.I. SUPREME COURT JUDGE BARBARA PANEPINTO!
AND if that isn't enuff for A CORRUPT COCKTAIL..

My KIDNAPPING MISERABLE EX HUSBAND LOUIS M. ARGENZIANO is living with AGGIE PANEPINTO!

They got ACS in on the corruption to DO THE ILLEGAL KIDNAPPING, and so, I was FALSELY LABELED A dangerous drug addict, who should NEVER SEE MY CHILDREN AGAIN!!!
THAT INSANITY WAS IN 2001 - I HAD THE BOGAS CASE OVERTURNED SIX YEARS LATER when I found out about it!

I TOO AM SUING THE CITY, AND THOSE PUNKASS CORRUPT BASTARDS REFUSE TO DEPOSE ME!

During the 50H hearing they KNEW THEY HAD NO LEG TO STAND ON- SO THEY PUT IN ON ETERNAL HOLD!

PEOPLE, GO TO THE INTRA-AMERICAN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS AND FILE CIVIL RIGHTS COMPLAINTS AGAINST THE UNITED STATES! ((Here- http://www.cidh.org/what.htm ))

http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/02/staten_island_mom_hits_city_wi.html

People who are thinking this woman is crazy - hold your own kids tight tonight- you never know when they're coming after you!! She's sainer than you could ever hope to be! (is that a word? lol it is now) NO JOKE!!!

Take a look into the Title IV Federal Funding D & E, our government is giving the states money to "protect" our women and children - so basically the city's have turned this into a HUNT FOR OUR CHILDREN- because after all if I give you an incentive to find me rotten apples- tell me how many apples are you gonna LET ROT? Well that's Title IV (E)!

Check this out - [PDF]

Claims Paid Under the Title IV-E Foster ...

oig.hhs.gov/oas/reports/region3/30500550.pdf

IV-E foster care program for children in Castille contracted detention facilities. ....Title IV-E of the Social Security Act, as amended, authorizes Federal funds for ...

Another INCENTIVE!

[PPT]

1 Using Title IV-E in the Juvenile Justice System

www.njjn.org/uploads/digital_library/resource_427.ppt

Provides, among other things, federal matching funds for children in foster care and “special needs ... What is detention and what are detention facilities?

Title IV federal funding (D), covers the 'abused woman' and when a woman is ALLEGEDLY ABUSED she becomes a fucking pay check too! Oh and lets not forget CHILD SUPPORT OH NO... they then charge parents who's children have been kidnapped CHILD SUPPORT!!

Why? pftttttttt because our amazing protective government wants to make sure all the 'dead-beats' pay so they've created Title IV Federal funding for that too- what everyone is ignoring is the fact that since it's an INCENTIVE to produce $$$$$$$ so that the city will be paid dollar for dollar- guess how many 'child support' cases have been alleged to be THOUSANDS more than it would be if the incentive wasn't to fuck us parents into compliance so the states and cities can have play money to go out and enjoy life on the publics dollar!

MEANWHILE... women like me with a five inch scar across my back from my wonderful(yes that's sarcastic) ex, putting me through a dinning room table - A mother fucking LIFE TIME order of protection from another state which the police and the courts in any other state are MANDATED TO COMPLY WITH.. isn't worth the paper it's written on because mr. wonderful is fucking the right PANEPINTO!

Intra-American Commission is still pending... soon come!

Uccio, S. Uccio, Dawn Uccio, Louie Uccio, and my baby Nick Uccio! It's also written for Nyasha and Mark Gorden!

((The letter instead of a name is to respect that child, who asked me not to use their full name- can't blame the kid- I wouldn't want my friends to know this is who my father really is either))

AND all the other children that have been illegally kidnapped..

We NEED to start suing the Judges in the Intra-american Commission for CONFLICT OF INTEREST CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATIONS! What are YOU waiting for? WAKE UP- WAKE UP- WAKE UP AMERICA- BEFORE IT'S YOU AND YOURS!

What do you think happened in PA when those judges got caught BUYING INTO THE DETENTION CENTERS???

Former judge sentenced to prison for kids for cash scheme | ...

www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/11/us-crime-kidsforcash-idUSTRE77A6KG201108...

Aug 11, 2011... Pennsylvania juvenile court judge was sentenced on Thursday to 28 ... for accepting payment to send juveniles to a for-profit detention facility ...

Pennsylvania man gets jail for paying judges for ...

www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/05/us-crime-kids-idUSTRE7A42BT201111...

Nov 5, 2011 ... SCRANTON, Pa (Reuters) - A Pennsylvania man who owned ... in prison on Friday for paying judges to send youths to his facilities in a so-called.

'Kids for cash' judge sentenced to 28 years for racketeering ...

www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2011/0811/Kids-for-cash-judge-sentenced-to-28...

Aug 11, 2011 ... A Pennsylvania judge was sentenced Thursday for his part in what ... juvenile offenders to privately run detention facilities in return for kickbacks.

KNOW YOUR PARENT DID NOT LEAVE YOU- YOU WERE KIDNAPPED BY THE STATE!!!!!

Psych Drug Maker Nailed by Whistleblower – $158 Million

2012-01-21T12:37:00.000-05:00

New York Times

J. & J. to Pay $158 Million to End Suit Filed by Texas

January 19, 2012

Johnson & Johnson said on Thursday that it would pay $158 million to settle a Texas lawsuit accusing the drug maker of improperly marketing its Risperdal antipsychotic drug to state residents on the Medicaid health program for the poor, including children.

The lawsuit accuses the company of pushing Risperdal as “appropriate and safe to treat a broad range of symptoms in populations and disease states for which it had no F.D.A.-approved indication, including in the child and adolescent population.”

The settlement fully resolves all Risperdal-related claims in Texas, the company said. The agreement applies only to the state of Texas and does not involve other state or federal Risperdal litigation.

The deal settles claims brought by Texas in 2004 and involves allegations of Medicaid overpayments from 1994 to 2008, according to a statement from the company’s Janssen Pharmaceuticals unit.

“Johnson & Johnson’s scheme to profit from the Medicaid program by overstating the safety and effectiveness of an expensive drug and improperly influencing officials ended up costing taxpayers millions of dollars,” Texas’s attorney general, Greg Abbott, said in a statement.

The settlement will be paid to the original plaintiff, his lawyers, the State of Texas and the federal government, which provides Medicaid reimbursements, the company said.

The complaint against Johnson & Johnson and several of its units filed in federal court in Texas accused company representatives of targeting “every level of the Texas Medicaid Program with misrepresentations about the safety, superiority, efficacy, appropriate uses and cost effectiveness of Risperdal.”

Johnson & Johnson had previously said it was in discussions with the federal government over its Risperdal inquiries. The company is in various stages of litigation with several other states.

For the original story (with pictures & video) click the link below

http://www.psychsearch.net/psych_news/?p=2291

Court of Appeal Affirms Orange County Jury Finding Cps Liable to Mother for $ 4.9 Million in Damages.

2012-01-18T17:41:00.000-05:00

The California Court of Appeals has affirmed the damage award against Orange County and two of its social workers in what has been described as the largest civil rights verdict in the State of California, and possibly the nation.

San Diego, CA (PRWEB) June 17, 2010

Case No. 01CC02379 (Trial before Hon. Ronald L. Bauer, Dept. CX103)

California Court of Appeals, Fourth District, Division Three, Case No. G039045

On March 23, 2007, the Orange County Social Services Agency and two of its Social Workers, Marcie Vreeken and Helen Dwojak were found liable for violating the parental rights of Deanna Fogarty-Hardwick, as guaranteed under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The jury found in favor of Ms. Fogarty-Hardwick and awarded $4.9 million in economic and non-economic damages, and approximately $6,000 in punitive damages against the individual social workers.

At trial, Ms. Fogarty-Hardwick demonstrated that social workers Marcie Vreeken and Helen Dwojak caused Ms. Fogarty-Hardwick's children to be removed from her custody without cause, and continued to detain them without cause, violating Ms. Fogarty-Harwick's Constitutional right to familial association. Ms. Fogarty-Hardwick demonstrated that these defendants, while working as social workers for Orange County Social Services, intentionally fabricated evidence to obtain a court order to detain Ms. Fogarty-Hardwick's two young daughters on February 17, 2000. Ms. Fogarty-Hardwick also demonstrated that Orange County Social Services, Marcie Vreeken and Helen Dwojak maliciously failed to provide the court with exculpatory information, and filed false reports in furtherance of the effort to keep Ms. Fogarty-Hardwick separated from her children.

The lawsuit also alleged that the policies, practices, or procedures employed by Orange County Social Services and the County of Orange in the removal of Plaintiff's children from her care also violated Ms. Fogarty-Harwick's constitutional rights, under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The unlawful policies, practices or procedures pertained to the detention of children without a finding of imminent danger or serious physical injury; interviewing children without a parent present; continuing detention after learning there was no basis to do so; using trickery and fabricated evidence; and failing to adequately train employees regarding the Constitutional rights of parents.

In addition to the jury’s verdict, the trial court also awarded attorneys fees of $1,653,284.95.

The defendants Orange County, Marcie Vreeken and Helen Dwojak, all appealed the jury verdict, the court’s decision, and the attorney fee award. On June 14, 2010, after in depth review of extensive briefs and a complex record, Division Three of the Fourth District Court of Appeal for the State of California issued its opinion affirming the Orange County jury’s verdict awarding Deanna Fogarty-Hardwick approximately $4.9 million against the County of Orange, and two of its social workers, and affirming the trial court decision awarding attorney’s fees.

In its opinion, the Court of Appeal voiced its concerns over what happened to Ms. Fogarty-Hardwick: “Stated plainly, the outcome of this case cannot be dismissed as merely the unfortunate product of a runaway jury. The evidence adduced at trial obviously caused both the jury and the judge to conclude not only that something seriously wrong was done to Fogarty-Hardwick in this case, but also that the wrongful conduct was not an isolated incident. That conclusion is something the County should be taking very seriously.”

San Diego Lawyer Shawn A. McMillan, of the Law Offices of Shawn A. McMillan, was lead counsel in the case, both at trial and on appeal. Attorney Sondra S. Sutherland was co-counsel. The Law Offices of Donnie R. Cox (Dennis Atchley an Donnie R. Cox) assisted with the appeal.

For additional information, contact:

Shawn A. McMillan, Esq.

THE LAW OFFICES OF SHAWN A. McMILLAN, A.P.C.
4955 Via Lapiz
San Diego, California 92122
Telephone: (858) 646-0069
Facsimile: (206) 600-4582

In family law, a parent who has been denied custody of his child by a trial court may file a habeas corpus petition in Federal Court

2011-12-06T02:10:00.002-05:00

It's been a while my dear friends, new friends, fellow advocates and people I don't know- yet!

I know I've been slacking, however there is a fantastic reason for my absence! I decided that I had seen an undeniable pattern that needed to be investigated thoroughly.. and so off I went to investigate... What I found will surely cause chaos among those that are closed minded, in denial & are still living drama filled lives... for the rest of us... what I've found is old news with much more psychology behind it. But..... in addition to that, my dear friend Karlene, has a dear friend Donna... who found something I've been searching for since 2005!

WOW, both of the things I've come Back with are BRILLIANT Early Merry Christmas to ALL!

While I sat here Day after Day, Month after Month, Year after Year...reading what these Attorneys, Judges, Child (anything but) Protective Services Workers and the Domestic Violence Groups gave us to work with, I became more and more appalled!

The Corruption & the gang mentality is so blatant, the ignoring of the law is beyond pathetic, the way the system further abuses those of us who need their help obtaining access to our children. Instead of help... we get shit on... we get walked all over...we get lied to... we get sent on a wild goose chases, we get pit against one another... and git this- that's what we get from our own attorneys!

The Judges, just rubber stamp, some bogus, unfair bull-shit non law, or whatever they feel like stamping that day.. and off you go... never to see your kid again unless you're one of the dedicated, one of the relentless, one of the parents that will take the law into their own hands, learn it just as good as the 'dirty players' have figured it out... and if your not confident enough you'll spend thousands of dollars for what some think is a mouth piece (an attorney- who is usually working against his or her client-not for them)

Well, anyway, what I've come up with can be found on the right in the links titled: "Do you need a Strategic Intervention Holistic Life Coach helping you fight this fight?" Take a look at the web page... I'm sure after you've investigated what a Strategic Intervention, Holistic Life Coach is, you will see that each of us in this fight NEEDS ONE! So, I've partnered with a brilliant woman her name is Zoie (which means Life), who understands the dynamics behind all of the systematic abuse, including keeping our children away from us... whether or not you want to call it Parent Alienation, Parent Alienation Syndrome, Adult Child Syndrome, Child Hood Abandonment Issues, Attachment Disorder, Reactive Attachment Disorder... or whatever other name you'd like to 'label' what the courts are doing to our children and our lives.. besides straight up torture... go ahead call it what you will. But know that we now, and our children as soon as possible will need to either work with therapists or Life Coaches. (It's my opinion that working with a Life Coach is much more empowering.. they start at the here and now... and work with you to get you to the then and there (where you need to be) whereas therapy works on 'way back then'... then via all of your own work, gradually helps you connect the dots to how you ended up here.

So, as soon as you're done reading this I suggest... (1) look into the Strategic Intervention Life Coaching..in the links on the right of this page and (2) Start writing your own Writ of Habeas Corpus for Federal Court... (see below)

What Karlene's friend Donna found that I was unable to find back in 2005 & 2006 was the wording in Lect- Law (http://www.lectlaw.com/def/h001.htm) stating ...

THIS APPLIES TO FEDERAL COURTS!

*********** In family law, a parent who has been denied custody of his child by a trial court may file a habeas corpus petition. Also, a party may file a habeas corpus petition if a judge declares her in contempt of court and jails or threatens to jail her.***********

Habeas Corpus

Translates into

Lat. "you have the body" Prisoners often seek release by filing a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. A writ of habeas corpus is a judicial mandate to a prison official ordering that an inmate be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he should be released from custody. A habeas corpus petition is a petition filed with a court by a person who objects to his own or another's detention or imprisonment. The petition must show that the court ordering the detention or imprisonment made a legal or factual error. Habeas corpus petitions are usually filed by persons serving prison sentences.

In family law, a parent who has been denied custody of his child by a trial court may file a habeas corpus petition. Also, a party may file a habeas corpus petition if a judge declares her in contempt of court and jails or threatens to jail her.

In Brown v. Vasquez, 952 F.2d 1164, 1166 (9th Cir. 1991), cert. denied, 112 S.Ct. 1778 (1992), the court observed that the Supreme Court has "recognized the fact that`[t]he writ of habeas corpus is the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action.' Harris v. Nelson, 394 U.S. 286, 290-91 (1969). " Therefore, the writ must be "administered with the initiative and flexibility essential to insure that miscarriages of justice within its reach are surfaced and corrected." Harris, 394 U.S. at 291.

The writ of habeas corpus serves as an important check on the manner in which state courts pay respect to federal constitutional rights. The writ is "the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action." Harris v. Nelson, 394 U.S. 286, 290-91 (1969). Because the habeas process delays the finality of a criminal case, however, the Supreme Court in recent years has attempted to police the writ to ensure that the costs of the process do not exceed its manifest benefits. In McCleskey the Court raised barriers against successive and abusive petitions. The Court raised these barriers based on significant concerns about delay, cost, prejudice to the prosecution, frustration of the sovereign power of the States, and the "heavy burden" federal collateral litigation places on "scarce federal judicial resources," a burden that "threatens the capacity of the system to resolve primary disputes." McCleskey, 499 U.S. at 467.

The Court observed that"[t]he writ of habeas corpus is one of the centerpieces of our liberties. `But the writ has potentialities for evil as well as for good. Abuse of the writ may undermine the orderly administration of justice and therefore weaken the forces of authority that are essential for civilization.' " McCleskey, 499 U.S. at 496 (quoting Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, 512 (1952) (opinion of Frankfurter, J.))

The predominant inquiry on habeas is a legal one: whether the "petitioner's custody simpliciter" is valid as measured by the Constitution. Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 730 (1991). The purpose of the great writ is not to relitigate state trials.

Dismissal of habeas petition under the "total exhaustion" rule of Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 520 (1982) (each claim raised by petitioner must be exhausted before district court may reach the merits of any claim in habeas petition). Jury exposure to facts not in evidence deprives a defendant of the rights to confrontation, cross-examination and assistance of counsel embodied in the Sixth Amendment. Dickson v. Sullivan, 849 F.2d 403, 406 (9th Cir. 1988); see also Jeffries v. Blodgett, 5 F.3d 1180, 1191 (9th Cir. 1993) (introduction of extraneous prior bad acts evidence during deliberations constitutes error of constitutional proportions), cert. denied, 114 S.Ct. 1294 (1994). However, a petitioner is entitled to habeas relief only if it can be established that the constitutional error had "substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's verdict." Brecht v. Abrahamson, 113 S. Ct. 1710, 1722 & n.9 (1993). Whether the constitutional error was harmless is not a factual determination entitled to the statutory presumption of correctness under 28 U.S.C. S 2254(d). Dickson, 849 F.2d at 405; Marino v. Vasquez, 812 F.2d 499, 504 (9th Cir. 1987).
In a habeas corpus proceeding, a federal court generally "will not review a question of federal law decided by a state court if the decision of that court rests on a state law ground that is independent of the federal question and adequate to support the judgment." Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 111 S. Ct. 2546, 2553-54 (1991). This doctrine applies to bar federal habeas review when the state court has declined to address the petitioner's federal claims because he failed to meet state procedural requirements. Id. at 2254; see also Sochor v. Florida, 504 U.S. 527, 119 L. Ed. 2d 326, 337 (1992). Thus, the independent state grounds doctrine bars the federal courts from reconsidering the issue in the context of habeas corpus review as long as the state court explicitly invokes a state procedural bar rule as a separate basis for its decision. Harris v. Reed, 489 U.S. 255, 264 n.10 (1988).

Habeas petitioners are not entitled to habeas relief based on trial error unless they can establish that it resulted in actual prejudice. O'Neal v. McAninch, 115 S. Ct. 992, 994-95 (1995). It is the responsibility of the court, once it concludes there was error, to determine whether the error affected the judgment. If the court is left in grave doubt, the conviction cannot stand. Id. On a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, the standard of review for a claim of prosecutorial misconduct, like the standard of review for a claim of judicial misconduct, is " 'the narrow one of due process, and not the broad exercise of supervisory power.' " Darden v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 168, 181 (1986) (quoting Donnelly v. DeChristoforo, 416 U.S. 637, 642 (1974)). "The relevant question is whether the prosecutor['s] comments 'so infected the trial with unfairness as to make the resulting conviction a denial of due process.' " Id. (quoting Donnelly, 416 U.S. at 643).

A federal court has no supervisory authority over criminal proceedings in state courts. The only standards we can impose on the states are those dictated by the Constitution. Daye, 712 F.2d at 1571. Objectionable as some actions might be, when considered in the context of the trial as a whole they are not "of sufficient gravity to warrant the conclusion that fundamental fairness has been denied." Id. at 1572. See Gayle v. Scully, 779 F.2d at 807 (trial judge's caustic, sarcastic comments and offensive conduct, although perhaps inconsistent with institutional standards of federal courts, did not violate due process); Daye, 712 F.2d at 1572 (trial judge's skeptical attitude toward defendant's testimony, and his reinforcement of identification evidence by government witnesses, "approached but did not cross the line that permits [a ruling] that the Constitution has been violated").

The fact that a jury instruction is inadequate by Federal Court direct appeal standards does not mean a petitioner who relies on such an inadequacy will be entitled to habeas relief from a state court conviction. Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U.S. 62, 71-72 (1991). In habeas proceedings challenging state court convictions, relief is available only for constitutional violations. Whether a constitutional violation has occurred will depend upon the evidence in the case and the overall instructions given to the jury. See Cupp v. Naughten, 414 U.S. at 147 (constitutionality determined not by focusing on ailing instruction "in artificial isolation" but by considering effect of instruction "in the context of the overall charge."). See also Henderson v. Kibbe, 431 U.S. 145, 155 (1977) (recognizing that "[a]n omission, or an incomplete instruction, is less likely to be prejudicial than a misstatement of the law" and, therefore, a habeas petitioner whose claim of error involves the failure to give a particular instruction bears an "especially heavy" burden).

Shackling, except in extreme forms, is susceptible to harmless error analysis. Castillo v. Stainer, 997 F.2d at 669. In a habeas case dealing with a state court sentence, the question is whether the shackling "had substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's verdict." Id. (quoting Brecht v. Abrahamson, 113 S. Ct. 1710, 1714 (1993)). If we are in "grave doubt" whether the error affected the verdict, the error is not harmless. O'Neal v. McAninch, 115 S. Ct. 992, 994 (1995).

The risk of doubt, however, is on the state. Id. at 996 (rejecting language in Brecht v. Abrahamson which places on defendant burden of showing prejudice). See Castillo v. Stainer, 983 F.2d at 149 (finding shackling at trial harmless error because defendant only wore waist chain that could not be seen by jury).

http://www.lectlaw.com/def/h001.htm

Unable to pay child support poor parents land in jail

2011-09-13T08:24:00.002-04:00

Judges can jail alleged defaulters — who are not covered by the presumption of innocence — without a trial.

It may not be a crime to be poor, but it can land you behind bars if you also are behind on your child-support payments.

Thousands of so-called “deadbeat” parents are jailed each year in the U.S. after failing to pay court-ordered child support — the vast majority of them for withholding or hiding money out of spite or a feeling that they’ve been unfairly gouged by the courts.

But in what might seem like an un-American plot twist from a Charles Dickens’ novel, advocates for the poor say, some parents are wrongly being locked away without any regard for their ability to pay — sometimes without the benefit of legal representation.

Randy Miller, a 39-year-old Iraqi war vet, found himself in that situation in November, when a judge in Floyd County, Ga., sent him to jail for violating a court order to pay child support.

He said he was stunned when the judge rebuffed his argument that he had made regular payments for more than a decade before losing his job in July 2009 and had recently resumed working.

“I felt that with my payment history and that I had just started working, maybe I would be able to convince the judge to give me another month and a half to start making the payments again,” he told msnbc.com. “… But that didn’t sit too well with him because he went ahead and decided to lock me up.”

Miller, who spent three months in jail before being released, is one of six plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit filed in March that seeks to force the state of Georgia to provide lawyers for poor non-custodial parents facing the loss of their freedom for failing to pay child support.

‘Debtors’ prisons’?

“Languishing in jail for weeks, months, and sometimes over a year, these parents share one trait … besides their poverty: They went to jail without ever talking to an attorney,” according to the lawsuit filed by the nonprofit Southern Center of Human Rights in Atlanta.

While jailing non-paying parents — the vast majority of them men — does lead to payment in many cases, critics say that it unfairly penalizes poor and unemployed parents who have no ability to pay, even though federal law stipulates that they must have “willfully” violated a court order before being incarcerated.

They compare the plight of such parents to the poor people consigned to infamous “debtors’ prisons” before such institutions were outlawed in the early 1800s.

“I try very carefully not to exaggerate, but I do think that’s an apt comparison,” said Sarah Geraghty, the attorney handling the Georgia case for the Southern Center for Human Rights.

“And I think anyone who went down and watched one of these proceedings would agree with me. … You see a room full of indigent parents — most of them African-American — and you have a judge and attorney general, both of whom are white. The hearings often take only 15 seconds. The judge asks, ‘Do you have any money to pay?’ the person pleads and the judge says, ‘OK you’re going to jail,’” she added.

The threat of jailing delinquent parents is intended to coerce them to pay, but in rare cases it can have tragic results.

In June, a New Hampshire father and military veteran, Thomas Ball, died after dousing himself with gasoline and setting himself ablaze in front of the Cheshire County Court House.

In a long, rambling letter to the local Sentinel newspaper, the 58-year-old Ball stated that he did so to focus attention on what he considered unfair domestic violence laws and because he expected to be jailed at an upcoming hearing on his failure to pay up to $3,000 in delinquent child support, even though he had been out of work for two years.

The ability of judges to jail parents without a trial is possible because failure to pay child support is usually handled as a civil matter, meaning that the non-custodial parent — or the “contemnor” in legal terms — is found guilty of contempt of court and ordered to appear at a hearing.

He or she is not entitled to some constitutional protections that criminal defendants receive, including the presumption of innocence. And in five states — Florida, Georgia, Maine, South Carolina and Ohio — one of the omitted protections is the right to an attorney.

Randall Kessler, a family law attorney in Atlanta and chairman of the American Bar Association’s family law division, said states have a great deal of leeway in family law, which includes child support cases.

“The main reason states are patchwork is because family law is a local idea,” he said. “It’s very infrequent that the federal government gets into family law, except for international custody every now and then and violence against women. ... Each community’s laws are different in the way they treat child support collection, and the right to a lawyer and the right to a jury trial varies.”

He noted, however, that the ABA last year approved a resolution urging "federal, state, and territorial governments to provide legal counsel as a matter of right at public expense to low-income persons in ... adversarial proceedings where basic human needs are at stake, such as those involving shelter, sustenance, safety, health or child custody."

Supreme Court: No right to a lawyer

The child support program currently serves approximately 17 million U.S. children, or nearly a quarter of the nation’s minors, according to a recent study by Elaine Sorensen, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute.

Critics of incarceration without representation had hoped that the U.S. Supreme Court would end the practice in its ruling in Turner v. Rogers, a case involving a South Carolina man who was repeatedly jailed for up to a year after failing to pay child support.

But the court ruled 5-4 in June that poor parents are not entitled to a court-appointed lawyer when facing jail for non-payment of child support. Instead, the justices said, states should use “substantial procedural safeguards” to ensure that those who have no means to pay are not locked up.

That is likely to force the states that don’t guarantee the right to an attorney to tighten their policies, said Colleen Eubanks, executive director of the National Child Support Enforcement Association, which represents state agencies. “Obviously they’re going to have to look at changing the rules,” she said.

Ken Wolfe, a spokesman for the federal Administration for Children and Families, which imposes some rules on state child support enforcement agencies in exchange for funding, said the agency expects to issue guidance to the states next month regarding the Turner case. He declined to provide any details.

But Libba Patterson, a law professor at the University of South Carolina and a former director of the state Department of Social Services, said the Supreme Court ruling provides “very weak protections” for poor parents and is unlikely on its own to solve the problem of wrongful incarceration of poor parents.

“It depends on the extent to which the court is truly interested in making a full inquiry on the ability-to-pay issue and on the resources the court has and the amount of judicial time,” she said.

Even in states where the non-custodial parents do have the right to a lawyer, those without the financial resources to meet their child-support obligations still frequently land in jail.

A 2009 study by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan policy think tank in Washington, D.C., found that only half of the child support debtors in California prisons had reported income in the two preceding years. And the median net income of the others was a mere $2,881.

65 percent of paycheck taken

Geraghty, the Southern Center for Human Rights attorney, said part of the problem is that courts often order poor parents to pay too much for child support in the first place, increasing the likelihood that they will fall behind on payments.

“One of my former clients worked at the Piggly Wiggly (supermarket) and they were taking 65 percent of her paycheck,” she said. “It left her in a position where there was simply no way that she could survive on the amount that she had left.”

No one can say how many parents are jailed each year for failing to pay child support, because states typically do not track such cases.

But an analysis of U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics in 2002 by the Urban Institute’s Sorensen suggested that approximately 10,000 parents were jailed that year for non-payment of child support, representing 1.7 percent of the overall U.S. jail population.

Most observers believe that number has risen as a result of the troubled U.S. economy.

In fiscal 2009, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the Child Support Enforcement program saw child support collections decline for the first time in the history of the program, dipping 1.8 percent, the GAO reported in January.

At the same time, payments collected from unemployment insurance benefits nearly tripled, and the number of cases in which children were receiving public assistance also rose.

Military veterans, who often struggle to find work when they leave the service, appear to be particularly at risk.

Lance Hendrix of Adel, Ga., an Army veteran, said he fell behind on child support for his 4-year-old daughter after he left the service and couldn’t find work.

“I was arrested and I went to jail and they asked me all sorts of questions,” said Hendrix, who also is a plaintiff in the Georgia lawsuit. “I was never told I was under arrest. And I was never read my rights. So I did not know what rights I had. Of course, I’ve seen all these movies, but half that isn’t true.”

Not having a lawyer in a civil contempt hearing increases the likelihood that the parent will be jailed, even if he or she is not guilty of “willfully” defying the court’s order, say critics of the policy.

‘Wrongfully imprisoned’

“In the absence of counsel … it appears that the opportunity to raise the defense is often missed, and large numbers of indigent parents are wrongfully imprisoned for failure to meet child support obligations every year,” according to a friend-of-the-court brief filed in the Turner case by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups.

The deck is further stacked against the delinquent parent because the state often acts as the plaintiff, seeking to recover the cost of providing public assistance to the child, Geraghty said.

Officials of Georgia’s Child Support Services agency declined to comment on the state’s child support enforcement policies or the lawsuit.

But Seth Harp, a retired Georgia state senator and former member of the state’s Child Support Guidelines Commission, said the state’s judges use incarceration sparingly.

“The methodology to put someone in jail requires that the person be taken to court before a judge and there they have to be found in willful contempt — someone who actively refuses to seek work or is hiding assets, something like that,” he said. “Judges don’t want to put people in jail. … The whole purpose is to get these people to support their children.”

Harp said he’s seen the tactic work repeatedly in his long career as a family law attorney.

“You can’t get blood out of a turnip, but you can put the turnip in the cooler,” he said. “And in 34 years of doing this, it’s amazing, you put someone in the cooler and the money seems to come.”

Judge Janice M. Rosa, a supervising court judge in New York’s 8th Judicial District and a board member of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, said the system in her state adequately protects non-custodial parents by guaranteeing them a court-appointed lawyer if they cannot afford one and carefully determining that they have the ability to pay.

“No one here is going to jail when a factory closes down and you’re one of hundreds looking for a job,” she said. “… Every state has said that debtors’ prisons are illegal, and you have to give these people a way out. You can only put them in jail if they have money and won’t pay.”

Attempt to assist both parents

Eubanks, the National Child Support Enforcement Association official, said state programs in general are doing a better job in recent years of ensuring that the poor aren’t unfairly locked up by instituting programs to help non-custodial parents improve work, life and parenting skills.

“Five to 10 years ago, the program was pretty much about enforcing support. But now it’s moving to the understanding that if parents are going to support their children, they need assistance,” she said. “Our philosophy is to provide whatever tools we can to both parents to support their children.”

She also said the recent Supreme Court decision prompted the association to conduct training and outreach to ensure that state agencies are aware of the issue and have adequate safeguards in place to prevent indigent parents from being wrongly jailed.

That is no comfort to Miller, the Iraq war veteran who was jailed for three months. He said jailing parents who fall behind on their payments is counterproductive and should be reserved for only the most egregious violators.

“I feel like it’s more unfair to the kids, because now not only do the kids not get any money, nor do they even get to spend time with their fathers once they get locked up,” he said. “The closest you can get is visitation, and who wants their kids to see them behind bars or behind glass.”

See video link and original story below...

Unable to pay child support, poor parents jailed - US news - Crime & courts - msnbc.com

Everything Happens For A Reason

2011-08-20T20:51:00.005-04:00

This evening I finally returned a phone call from a long distance friend who has been kind enough to wait till I worked through my accident & figure out my recovery in my head before receiving a call from me. I truly appreciate her being so kind!

It's been a struggle for the last few months.. I have been on serious medication which has basically kicked my ass.. my head injury has played a major role in my day to day life.. I'm lucky I can remember what I said yesterday most days.

Anywho, thank you Jules!

Now, as for why I am beginning today's blog with a thanks to Jules...

Well, Throughout the years, I've had to accept that everything happens for a reason.

Today, I received a post from Kaleah's Website "the Narcissism Free Website", and it covered exactly what I was telling Jules about an hour earlier...

I've spent the last 10 years desperately trying to figure out how I managed to be taken out of my children's lives. During my search I've had to learn about Parent alienation, Stockholm Syndrome & most importantly..
Cognitive Dissonance and Conversatinal Hypnosis.

I had to learn how Cognitive Dissonance occurs & how Conversational Hypnosis worked before I would be able to figure out how my children went from cherishing me and our relationship to tossing it and me in the garbage. I'd have to learn how someone that adores another could suddenly hate that same person.

I also needed to figure out what Neuro Linguistic Programing (NLP) was..

I've had to understand what kind of people would be evil enough to create Cognitive Dissonance in another person, or who would intentionally manipulate anothers mind for their own benefit.

I've had to go to the depths of ugly within myself and revisit my abandoned abused inner child. I've had to learn all about her and how she responds to the world she lives in.

I think it's fair to say.. I've had to go through hell and back before "I'd get it!"

Knowing what "it" is... was the hardest part of all..

One part of the "it" is being ok enuff with myself and my inner child so that she/I don't respond to every perceived hurt,or to every perceived attack, or perceived abandonment.

The other part of the "it" is knowing my inner child and calming her down enuff to know when there are people around me who are operating off their own perceived hurts, perceived attacks, or perceived abandonment issues.

The latter part is a little harder, because when 'others' are acting off their perceived hurts, perceived attacks, or perceived abandonment issues. They are then operating off their inner child's hurts and their own self preservation. And in doing so, they are "in reality" hurting, attacking and abandoning us.

Whewwwwww say that fast three times! Ok, ok, ok all joking aside...

Those of us who have been alienated from our children can get them back into our lives once we are able to focus on our inner abused/abandoned children.

Once we 'go there' and come out the other side.. we can take whatever their inner scared children give us...

However, before taking on such a huge job, I suggest you learn all you can about Cognitive Dissonance... and take an in print into your conscious of the blog below... (Her blog helped me enormously to get where I am today)

http://www.narcissismfree.com/blog/?p=361

The Path Back To Self | Recovery from Narcissistic Abuse

Here are one of the better definitions of Cognitive Dissonance that I have found, but do your own homework...

Cognitive Dissonance and learning

Covert hypnosis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Why I've been MIA

2011-08-11T21:38:00.004-04:00

I'm not sure how many of my readers also know me in the real world, but I'm thinkin.. not to many.

So with that in mind summ'a yawl mite be wudnerin where I've been.

I was in a pretty bad motorcycle accident, which left me in ICU for a lil over a week, then I was healing in "Kindred Hospital"

In case you, like I, don't or didn't know what kind of hospital "Kindred" is... it's a long term acute care hospital.

Well, it kinda went something like this... One minuite I was riding my bike with 25ish other people (see pic above- that was an hour or so before my accident), which I don't remember.. then the next thing I'm aware of is someone or something cutting threw my jeans... (see pic below)

I found out days later, that was them cutting my cloths off in or before or when, (shrug) I was put into the helecopter.

I arrived at Cumiunity Medical Center in P.A. (the closest trauma hospital) via helecopter, with a smashed femur, a cracked skull & a broken eye socket..

En if that wuzzent enuff, I also had a head injury.

There was blood on my brain, what wasn't known was if the blood was from my skull fracture or if my brain was bleeding!

As it turned out... the blood was from my skull fracture-which I rcieved dispite my wearing a DOT helmet.

The first responders at the sceen told my riding buddies that the only reason they were having me airlifted to a hosp. with some chance of survival was due to my wearing my helmet!

I have a google alert for any of the phrases that would bring me the article about my crash from the news paper and today I recieved the article below..

He also survived cuz he was wearing his helmet. I'm not a die hard "wear your helmet freak".. I've actually argued on the other side- if you don't want to wear it why should you have too! As it turned out I was in PA when I went down. PA is a no helmet law state- I didn't have to wear it. But after this past month.. you can bet your last dollar that I WILL!

Please enjoy the rest of this riding season a lil more for me, and always no matter what- Ride Safe!

Louise

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's been 40 years and 250,000 miles of motorcycling for me -- scarcely "dropping" my bike in the driveway. Until last Tuesday evening, when the ER trauma surgeon told my wife I'd not have survived the afternoon's traumatic brain injury without my helmet.

Awakening as if from a bad dream in a hospital bed at Mayo in Mankato with a mild concussion, my most recent memory was playing under a tree with my granddaughter at lunch nine hours earlier.

My confused eyes spotting the slightly abraded motorcycle helmet atop the hospital cabinet nearby, I learned I'd been in a minor accident with my motorcycle.

Witnesses said I stopped quickly to avoid rear-ending cars stopping suddenly ahead of me, ultimately going over with my bike sideways and hitting my head on the street. (A macho biker would say, "Just had to lay it down.")

Retrograde amnesia may prevent my ever remembering jumping on the smaller of my two BMW motorcycles that afternoon -- apparently quickly donning only the helmet and half-gloves to return some DVDs to the public library downtown.

It's scary; the woman who saw it all happen told me, to my astonishment, that I got to my feet conscious, amiably chatty, with only a scraped elbow. The other witness helped me upright and park my motorcycle, and called the police.

Thankfully, the Mankato police officer who lost a brother to motorcycling recognized my condition and called for an ambulance. Visiting with them days later -- my brain healing after losing two hours of memory before the accident and six hours afterward -- it's as if we've never met or talked before!
Though I'm mostly back to normal, my plans for Sturgis 2011 are canceled. If yours are on, use your helmet this week as you head to western South Dakota!

And do enjoy the gorgeous Black Hills vicariously for this recovering veteran motorcyclist.

JOHN BIPES, MANKATO, MINN.

Victory! Peter Spitz Reunited With Son After Outrageous Family Court Injustice

2011-08-04T22:09:00.000-04:00

Victory! Peter Spitz Reunited With Son After Outrageous Family Court Injustice

August 2, 2011

In one of the most outrageous injustices of our time, Peter Spitz (pictured right) was separated from his son and almost lost custody of him after his ex-wife shot him in the face and murdered his mother.

Fathers and Families advised Peter, helped him get legal counsel, and also publicized his case, and we are pleased to announce that Peter has now won full custody of his seven-year-old son.

Special credit and thanks goes to talented Colorado family law attorney Brett Martin (pictured below), who took on Spitz’s case and won a decisive victory–the court decision is here.

We also thank Fathers and Families Board Member Robert Franklin, Esq., who covered this case extensively and helped to advise Peter–his write-up of the new decision is below.

Together with you in the love of our children,

Glenn Sacks, MA

Executive Director,

Fathers and Families

From Fathers and Families Board Member Robert Franklin, Esq.:

Original link-

http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/?p=17985

Thomas James Ball

2011-06-22T16:50:00.001-04:00

According to research approximately 330 people commit suicide monthly in the U.S. in response to the way family courts and CPS handle divorce, domestic violence and child support.

http://freekeene.com/2011/06/16/thomas-james-ball-self-immolated-in-protest-of-the-justice-system/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_James_Ball

Click links above for full story

My 2 cents- People can we say beyond abuse on the citizens due directly to
Title IV (D) & (E) Federal funding?

Turner v, Price (10-10)

2011-06-20T22:52:00.004-04:00

To all family rights advocates:

Supreme Court issues big win in Turner v. Price (10-10).

http://www.supremecourt.gov/

For the entire case, click the link above..

Dosed in juvie jail: Triubled doctors hired to treat kids in state custody

2011-06-20T17:20:00.001-04:00

Palm Beach PostBy Michael LaForgia

Sunday, June 19, 2011

By the time Florida started paying Dr. Gold Smith Dorval to counsel and medicate jailed children, the Pembroke Pines psychiatrist already had experience with kids in state custody.

He had used them, authorities said, to bilk the government out of money for the poor.

When Dorval pleaded no contest to a felony grand theft charge, it should have barred him, by law, from working for Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice.
It didn't.

And, like Dorval, other doctors have emerged from past troubles and gotten jobs at DJJ - with authority to prescribe drugs to kids in state jails, a Palm Beach Post investigation has found.

Some psychiatrists took DJJ jobs after they were cited for breaking the law, making grave medical missteps or violating state rules. Others were hired after they were accused of overmedicating patients, sometimes fatally.

All were empowered to prescribe drugs to jailed kids as powerful antipsychotic pills flowed freely into Florida's homes for wayward children.

"It's appalling. A psychiatrist is a psychiatrist. They're licensed, they've been to medical school, and there is a certain trust placed in that person's judgment when they tell you that this child needs to be medicated," said John Walsh, an attorney with the Palm Beach County Legal Aid Society who has represented children in juvenile court. "This just illustrates that we always have to be on guard with children."

In two years, Florida bought hundreds of thousands of tablets of Seroquel, Abilify, Risperdal and other antipsychotic drugs for children housed in state-run jails and programs. The meds were administered in a juvenile justice system that doesn't track prescriptions and has no way of telling whether doctors are prescribing to make kids easier to control.

In some jails and homes, pills were prescribed by psychiatrists who took huge speaker fees from companies that make antipsychotic drugs, The Post found. In others, the task fell to doctors with troubled pasts.

In response to the newspaper's first reports, published last month, DJJ Secretary Wansley Walters launched an investigation into the department's use of antipsychotic drugs. DJJ officials declined to discuss The Post's latest findings, citing the probe.

Spokesman C.J. Drake acknowledged, though, that the department has struggled to find psychiatrists willing to work in jails and programs. He also said DJJ sometimes has relied on companies that employ a stable of doctors, rather than signing a contract with a single physician.

As a result, Dorval went to work in a Broward County jail for children - even though he would have failed a state-mandated background check required by the contract.

Doctor's bogus billings

In the late 1990s, Dorval claimed he was providing juvenile delinquents and other vulnerable children with needed therapy. Instead, state investigators said, he used bogus counselors to bill Medicaid for more than $350,000 in fraudulent claims.

He charged the government for offering more than 24 hours' worth of children's therapy in a single day, investigators said, and structured the scheme around kids who were homeless or in DJJ custody or foster care.
He tended to bill "for those children that the system 'lost,' " according to an affidavit for his arrest.

Originally charged with four felonies in Broward, Dorval pleaded no contest to one count of grand theft in 2004.

Later, to keep his medical license, he agreed to pay $10,000 and was suspended, reprimanded and put on four years' probation.

Although a judge withheld a formal finding of guilt, the plea disqualified Dorval from seeing patients in a juvenile jail. Even so, his employer, Miami-based Compass Health Systems, sent him to work at the Broward Juvenile Detention Center between August and December 2007.

No one screened his background beforehand.

In written responses to questions, Dorval said he was doing as he was told when Compass sent him to work in the Broward juvenile jail.

"At that period you cited, the psychiatrist that was seeing patients at the DJJ was out. Therefore I was designated by the management office to go and cover for that psychiatrist, until they switched me again to another place. I was not aware of any wrongdoing," wrote Dorval, who stressed that he never signed a contract with DJJ. "I am only an employee. Wherever they send me to work I have to go."

As for the criminal charges, he offered this explanation: "This case was a simple matter that became complicated, because my first lawyer messed me up." After wrangling over the facts, "they decided to offer me a plea that would allow me to get a chance to fight for my license to practice medicine," he wrote. "It was a real nightmare that generated in me a post-traumatic syndrome that I will never forget."

DJJ officials declined to comment on Dorval's hiring, again citing the investigation.

Compass officials didn't respond to questions about Dorval.

DJJ had no contract with Compass as of May, records show.

Patient's death missed in screening

In state-operated jails and programs, the rules say DJJ must screen doctors' backgrounds and verify that physicians' hold valid medical licenses. In privately run programs, which house the majority of children in the department's custody, that responsibility falls to contracted companies.

Such screenings don't catch everything: Doctors who kept their licenses after the state accused them of serious lapses have gone on to work in juvenile jails and homes.

Dr. Charles J. Dack is an example. For six years, Dack, a Lakeland-based physician who is board-certified in addiction and child psychiatry, prescribed a cocktail of antidepressants and powerful painkillers, including methadone and morphine, to a patient named Mary Tuxbury.

Eventually, Dack ramped up the doses of pills Tuxbury was taking, keeping her "at a toxic level of morphine for approximately two and a half years," regulators from the state health department said. In March 2002, Tuxbury was found dead. She was 42.

An autopsy showed she died of "multiple drug intoxication, namely opiates and tricyclic antidepressants."

Regulators charged Dack with failing to meet care standards and inappropriate prescribing. Dack settled the allegations in August 2007. He admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to pay a $7,000 fine and complete a course on "misprescribing" drugs.

A year later, he was hired to care for children at three privately run programs in Central Florida: Wilson Youth Academy, Peace River Youth Academy and New Beginnings Youth Academy. He worked in the homes until April.

Dack didn't respond to messages seeking comment.

Doctor hired after child's death

Other DJJ doctors weren't cited by regulators, but they were accused in court of fatal neglect. Roughly one in eight of the psychiatrists who have worked for DJJ in the past five years has settled a malpractice lawsuit in Florida, records show.
Among these was Dr. Samuel McClure. As a psychiatrist in Orlando, McClure diagnosed an 11-year-old boy named David Morganthal with attention deficit disorder. He prescribed powerful, mind-altering drugs for David - even though the child was much smaller than other kids his age, according to court documents.

One morning in November 2001, David's mother woke to find her son dead on the floor of her double-wide mobile home. When they laid David out at the morgue, he measured less than 4-foot-2 and weighed 49 pounds.

Lab tests showed his blood contained an unusually high concentration of an antidepressant: about 60 percent more of the medication than doctors had expected.

The drug, mirtazapine, still hasn't been approved as safe for children. David was taking the drug along with another antidepressant that hasn't been approved for kids, citalopram.

The autopsy concluded the boy probably died from a seizure and heart problems caused by "reaction to prescription medication."

In 2004, Patty Morganthal sued McClure, the health care company he worked for and others over the death of her son, alleging medical negligence.
While the civil suit still was pending, McClure was hired in January 2006 to care for kids in DJJ's Frances Walker Halfway House and Brevard Group Treatment Home.

A year later, records show, McClure's insurance company paid $500,000 to settle Morganthal's case.

McClure worked in DJJ programs until June 2009. He couldn't be reached for comment.

Overmedicated patients.

Still another DJJ doctor got hired after he accidentally overmedicated kids with an antipsychotic drug during a clinical trial.

In summer 2006, Dr. Sohail Punjwani of Lauderhill tested the Pfizer drug on seven children between the ages of 10 and 16. Six of those kids were overdosed, according to a 2010 warning letter to Punjwani from the federal Food and Drug
Administration.

One 13-year-old "was overdosed on study medication for 20 consecutive days," the FDA said, and he emerged experiencing "sedation and dizziness."
Eighteen months later, Punjwani, who is board-certified in adult and child psychiatry, went to work in the Broward Juvenile Detention Center, placed there by his employer, Compass. He evaluated kids in the jail until June 2008, records show.

Soon after, while working for the state foster care system, he began seeing a difficult patient, 7-year-old Gabriel Myers. Punjwani prescribed mind-altering drugs for the boy, including a combination of an antipsychotic and an antidepressant. In April 2009, Gabriel hanged himself in the shower of his Margate foster home.

A work group formed to study the death never assigned blame to Punjwani, and he was not disciplined by state regulators in the widely publicized case.

A 2010 report by the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, which consulted with a forensic psychiatrist on staff at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, concluded "the medications that were prescribed for Gabriel may have contributed to his actions directly prior to and during" his death.

Drug error blamed on nurse

In an interview, Punjwani said Pfizer's 2006 study was flawed, citing a 2010 FDA warning letter to the drug company, and added that his medication errors stemmed from a mistake by a nurse. He acknowledged, though, that he failed to build in a control that would have prevented overdosing.

Punjwani said he saw "very few" children at the DJJ jail who were taking mind-altering drugs. For these kids, he simply reviewed their files and maintained them on their meds, he said.

And in Gabriel's case, Punjwani said he feels he was a scapegoat.

"My care was totally appropriate and, according to some psychiatrists, went above and beyond the standard of care in the clinical community. Because I saw the patient on time, I had appropriate follow up, I had documentation," he said.

The way his critics portray him, "I look like a child killer," he added. "It's sad. I've been in practice in psychiatry for 25 years, a double board-certified child psychiatrist. Of course there are some bad outcomes. But that does not mean malpractice. That does not mean I've been hurting people."

Two-hour consultations adequate?

At a minimum, state contracts required these and other doctors to spend two hours a week evaluating jailed children.

Every week, in jails and homes that can hold a combined 6,000 boys and girls statewide, children line up to see the psychiatrist.

Paul DeMuro, a former head of Pennsylvania's child welfare system, questioned whether two hours was enough to evaluate each child, assess progress and write prescriptions.

"If you're looking at two hours of consultation a week, and there are 100 kids, and 20 or 25 are on psychotropic medications, how much attention can they give those kids?" said DeMuro, who works as a consultant for juvenile justice policy-makers nationwide. "What else are they going to do other than push pills?"

http://tinyurl.com/Psych-Investigation-Florida

Southerland v. City of New York, 07-4449-cv (L)

2011-06-16T18:15:00.003-04:00

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Due Process Protection May Be Returning to 2nd Circuit
Caseworker Denied Immunity for Removing Child From Home

The New York Law Journal - June 14, 2011
Southerland v. City of New York, 07-4449-cv (L)
Before: Kearse, Sack, and Hall, C.J.

07-4449-cv (L) - 06-14-2011 - Cite as: Southerland v. City of New York, 07-4449-cv (L), NYLJ 1202497024019, at *1 (2d CIR, Decided June 10, 2011) Before: Kearse, Sack, and Hall, C.J. - Decided: June 10, 2011 - ADDITIONAL INDEX NUMBERS: 07-4449-cv (L), 07-4450-cv (CON)

ATTORNEYS - Michael G. O'Neill, New York, N.Y., For Plaintiffs-Appellants Venus S., Sonny B.S. Jr., Nathaniel S., Emmanuel F., Kiam F., And Elizabeth F. - Sonny B. Southerland, Brooklyn, N.Y., Plaintiff-Appellant, Pro Se. - Julian L. Kalkstein, City of New York (Michael A. Cardozo, Corporation Counsel; Larry A. Sonnenshein, of Counsel), New York, N.Y., For Defendants-Appellees.

Consolidated appeals from a summary judgment entered by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Charles P. Sifton, Judge) in favor of, inter alios, the defendant Woo. The plaintiffs—a father and his children—bring various claims under 42 U.S.C. §1983 asserting that Woo, a children's services caseworker employed by the defendant City of New York, entered their home unlawfully and effected an unconstitutional removal of the children into state custody. The district court concluded that Woo was entitled to qualified immunity with respect to all of the claims against him. We disagree. As to each claim that has been preserved for appeal:

Vacated and remanded. ROBERT D. SACK, C.J:

This lawsuit involves a man and a woman—the plaintiff Sonny B. Southerland Sr. ("Southerland") and non-party Diane Manning—two groups of children, and a caseworker's apparent confusion between the two groups. Plaintiff Ciara Manning is the daughter of Southerland and Diane Manning. Ciara was supposed to be living with Southerland at the time in question, but in fact had left to live with a friend. In addition to Ciara, plaintiff Southerland fathered, by one or more women other than Diane Manning, six other children: the plaintiffs Venus Southerland, Sonny B. Southerland Jr., Nathaniel Southerland, Emmanuel Felix, Kiam Felix, and Elizabeth Felix (together, the "Southerland Children"). At the time of the principal events in question, the Southerland Children, unlike Ciara, were living with their father. Diane Manning also allegedly bore, by one or more men other than Southerland, six children other than Ciara: Eric Anderson, Richy Anderson, Felicia Anderson, Erica Anderson, Michael Manning, and Miracle Manning (together, the "Manning Children"). They lived with Diane and, like her, are not parties to this lawsuit. In May 1997, the defendant Timothy Woo, a caseworker in the Brooklyn Field Office of the New York City Administration for Children's Services ("ACS"), was assigned to investigate a report by a school counselor about then-sixteen-year-old Ciara Manning. School staff had thought Ciara to be acting strangely at school. After being unable, despite repeated attempts, to gain entry to the Southerland home to investigate the report, Woo sought and obtained from the Kings County Family Court an order authorizing entry into the apartment. Woo's application to obtain that order contained several misstatements of fact, which suggested Woo's possible confusion about which of the children resided with Southerland. Under the authority of the Family Court's order, Woo then entered the Southerland apartment. Ciara was not there; some of Southerland's other children who lived with him were. Based on what Woo perceived to be the poor condition of the home and of the Southerland Children, and his other observations from the investigation undertaken to that date, Woo and his supervisor decided to carry out an immediate removal of the children into ACS custody. Southerland and the Southerland Children brought this action based on Woo's entry into the apartment and removal of the children. They claim that Woo violated their Fourth Amendment 1 rights to be free from unreasonable searches of their home, and that the manner in which the Southerland Children were removed violated their procedural due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Southerland also claims that the removal of the Southerland Children from his home violated his substantive due process rights under the

Fourteenth Amendment. Finally, the Southerland Children claim that their removal violated their Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unreasonable seizure. The district court (Charles P. Sifton, Judge) 2 concluded, inter alia, that Woo was entitled to qualified immunity with respect to all of the claims against him and granted summary judgment in his favor. We disagree with those conclusions and therefore vacate the district court's judgment as to those claims that have been pursued on appeal and remand the matter for further proceedings.

BACKGROUND

The relevant facts are rehearsed in detail in the district court's opinion. See Southerland v. City of N.Y., 521 F. Supp. 2d 218 (E.D.N.Y. 2007) ("Southerland II"). They are set forth here only insofar as we think it necessary for the reader to understand our resolution of these appeals. Where the facts are disputed, we construe the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, who are the nonmoving parties. See, e.g., SCR Joint Venture L.P. v. Warshawsky, 559 F.3d 133, 137 (2d Cir. 2009). We also draw all reasonable factual inferences in the plaintiffs' favor. See, e.g., id.

The ACS Investigation

On May 29, 1997, a school guidance counselor reported to the New York State Central Registry Child Abuse Hotline that one of the school's students, Ciara Manning, the then-sixteen, year-old daughter of Diane Manning and plaintiff Southerland, was "emotionally unstable." The counselor further reported:
Fa[ther] fails to follow through w[ith] mental health referrals. On 5/12/97 the ch[ild] swallowed a can of paint. F[ather] failed to take the ch[ild] for medical attention. Fa[ther] is unable to control or supervise the ch[ild]. She may be staying out of the home in an i[m]proper enviro[n]ment. Intake Report at 3, Office of Children and Family Services, Child Protective Services, May 29, 1997 ("Intake Report"), Ex. A to the Declaration of Janice Casey Silverberg (Dkt. No. 168) ("Silverberg Decl."), Southerland v. City of N.Y., No. 99-cv-3329 (E.D.N.Y. Sept. 18, 2006). The Intake Report was transmitted to the Brooklyn Field Office of the ACS. There, Fritz Balan, a supervisor, assigned the case to defendant Timothy Woo, an ACS caseworker, for investigation. Woo, who was required by New York law to begin his investigation within 24 hours, did so that day. He first examined the files of a case pending in that ACS office regarding Ciara's mother, Diane Manning. Material in those files disclosed that Ciara had several younger half-also indicated that Ciara lived with her father, Southerland, at a Brooklyn address, although the plaintiffs correctly note the absence of any evidence as to the source of that information and the time it was received. It is not clear from the record whether Woo was aware that the children referenced in Diane Manning's case file were not related to Southerland and that they did not live with him. See Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 222, 224 & n.8.

Woo also contacted the school guidance counselor who had called the child-abuse hotline. According to Woo, the counselor told him that while at school, Ciara had swallowed non-toxic paint, expressed thoughts of suicide, and was generally behaving aggressively and "acting out." Declaration of Timothy Woo ¶10 (Dkt. No. 169) ("Woo Decl."), Southerland v. City of N.Y., No. 99-cv-3329 (E.D.N.Y. Sept. 18, 2006). Woo's handwritten notes from the conversation indicate that the counselor told Woo that "father [i.e., Southerland] doesn't approve of the place [where Ciara] is staying." Notes of Timothy Woo at 1, Ex. A to the Declaration of Michael G. O'Neill (Dkt. No. 182) ("O'Neill Decl."), Southerland v. City of N.Y., No. 99- cv-3329 (E.D.N.Y. Dec. 28, 2006). It is disputed whether the counselor also told Woo that Southerland had been unresponsive to the school's stated concerns about Ciara's behavior. Later that day, Woo attempted to visit Southerland's apartment in Brooklyn where, for reasons that are not clear from the record, Woo thought Ciara was staying. When no one answered the door, Woo left a note containing his contact information. The following day, May 30, Southerland telephoned Woo. During the course of their conversation, Southerland described Ciara as a runaway who would not obey him. Southerland suggested that he visit the ACS office to discuss the matter with Woo further. The plaintiffs dispute Woo's assertion that during the phone conversation, Southerland indicated that he would not permit Woo to visit Southerland's apartment. Southerland contends that, although he did question why Woo needed to visit the apartment since Ciara did not live there, Southerland nonetheless indicated that he would be willing to make an appointment for Woo to conduct a home visit if Woo insisted. Southerland visited the ACS office and met with Woo later that day. According to Southerland's deposition testimony, he told Woo that Ciara had run away and that he had obtained several "Persons in Need of Supervision" ("PINS") warrants against her. Woo's case notes indicate that Woo asked Southerland why he had not sought medical attention for Ciara after the paint-swallowing incident. Southerland did not answer the question.3 See Progress Notes of T. Woo at 1 ("Progress Notes"), Ex. B to O'Neill Decl. Southerland told Woo and Balan, Woo's supervisor, that Ciara did not need psychiatric help, and that she "'was only acting the way she did to get attention.'" Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 223 (quoting Woo Decl. ¶10); see also Declaration of Fritz Balan ¶7 (Dkt. No. 170) ("Balan Decl."), Southerland v. City of N.Y., No. 99-cv-3329 (E.D.N.Y. Sept. 18, 2006). According to Woo, he explained to Southerland that various services were available through ACS to assist him and his children, including counseling and help with obtaining food, furniture, and clothing. Southerland declined. According to Southerland, however, no such assistance was ever offered. When Woo said he would need to make a home visit, Southerland replied that it would be "no problem" as long as he was notified in advance. Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 223; see also Deposition of Sonny B. Southerland at 207 ("Southerland Dep."), Ex. F to O'Neill Decl. Southerland asserts that Woo stated he would call him to arrange the visit, but that Woo never made such a call. On June 2, 1997, Woo made a second attempt to examine the Southerland apartment. A woman whose identity was unknown to Woo answered the door. She said that Southerland was not at home. Woo left. The following day, June 3, Woo again went to the apartment. He heard noises inside, but no one answered the door. Again, he left. The next day, June 4, Woo went to the apartment for a fourth time. He waited in the hallway for several minutes. Southerland emerged accompanied by five school-aged children: Sonny Jr., Venus, Emmanuel, Nathaniel, and Kiam. Woo wrote down their names in his case notes. Southerland told Woo that he did not have time to talk because he was taking the children to school. Woo gave Southerland an ACS business card and told him that if he continued to be uncooperative, ACS would seek court action. Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 223-24 & n.6; see also Progress Notes at 2.

The Removal of the Southerland Children

On June 6, 1997, at the direction of supervisor Balan, Woo applied to the Kings County Family Court for an order to enter the Southerland apartment pursuant to section 1034(2) of the New York Family Court Act. It is ACS policy to investigate not only the status of the child named in a report of suspected abuse or maltreatment of the type referred to in section 1034(2), but also that of any other children residing in the same home. Woo listed Ciara on the application. Instead of including the names of the children he had met leaving Southerland's home on June 4, however, he listed the other children of Ciara's mother Diane—the Manning Children: Eric Anderson, Richy Anderson, Felicia Anderson, Michael Manning, Miracle Manning, and Erica Anderson—whose names he apparently had obtained from the Diane Manning case files he had reviewed at ACS's Brooklyn Field Office. 4 The Family Court issued an "Order Authorizing Entry" into the Southerland apartment the same day, June 6. See Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 224. Three days later, on the evening of June 9, 1997, pursuant to the Order Authorizing Entry, Woo and another caseworker entered the Southerland apartment with the assistance of officers from the New York City Police Department. Southerland and the Southerland Children were present inside the home. Woo Decl. ¶¶13-15, 19. The district court described what happened next, from Woo's perspective:

Woo determined that there were six children between the ages of three and nine residing in the apartment. He listed their names [correctly] as Venus, Sonny Jr., Nathaniel, Emmanuel, Kiam, and Elizabeth Felix. Soon after beginning his evaluation of the home, Woo called his supervisor [Balan] on his cell phone, described his observations, and answered his supervisor's questions. Woo reported that the four boys slept on the floor in one bedroom and the two girls slept on a cot in another bedroom. The children appeared as though they had not been bathed in days and their clothing was malodorous. In the refrigerator, Woo found only beer, a fruit drink, and English muffins. Woo did not examine the contents of the kitchen cupboards. The other caseworker observed that one child, Venus, was limping because of a foot injury. The child stated that she had stepped on a nail. The caseworker concluded that Southerland had not sought medical attention for her. Woo reported that the only light source in the bedroom area was from a blank television screen. Woo observed an electric lamp on the floor, without a shade, connected to an outlet in the living room by means of several extension cords along the floor. Woo reported that another room contained stacks of electronic equipment. Woo and his supervisor concluded that the children's safety was threatened, and Balan directed Woo to remove the children from the home. Id. at 224-25 (footnotes omitted).5

As the district court also observed, the plaintiffs—relying primarily on later deposition testimony by Southerland—offer a starkly different description of the conditions in the Southerland home at the time. According to Southerland's testimony, the apartment did not lack proper bedding; the boys had a bunk bed in their room, although they preferred to sleep on yellow foam sleeping pads on the floor. Id. at 225 n.10. The children were not dirty; Southerland testified that he laundered the children's clothing about once a week and bathed the children daily. Id. at 225 n.11. There was food in the refrigerator, and it is also a reasonable inference from Southerland's testimony that there was food in the cupboards (which Woo did not examine), because Southerland testified that groceries for the household were purchased on a regular basis. Id. at 225 n.12. The household did not lack lighting; Southerland testified that he had a lamp plugged into a wall in each room. Id. at 225 n.14. Finally, although Southerland does not dispute that Venus had a foot injury, the plaintiffs stress Woo's concession that he did not personally observe the injury during his assessment of the home.6 Id. at 225 n.13.

In the early hours of June 10, 1997, at Balan's direction, Woo removed the Southerland Children from the Southerland home. Woo took them to the ACS pre-placement emergency shelter and arranged for emergency foster care. Id. at 226. At some point—it is not clear exactly when—Woo interviewed Ciara Manning, whom he had found living at the home of her friend. Ciara told Woo that her father had sexually abused her and threatened to kill her if she told anyone about it—allegations she later recanted. 7 The Southerland Children also complained of various kinds of abuse and mistreatment at the hands of Southerland and his companion, Vendetta Jones. These allegations concerning Ciara and the Southerland Children were included in a verified petition filed by ACS with the Family Court on June 13, 1997, and amended on June 27, 1997. The petitions commenced child-protective proceedings under Article 10 of the New York Family Court Act, §§1011 et seq., through which ACS sought to have the Southerland Children adjudicated as abused and neglected. On July 1, 1998, more than a year after the children were removed from the Southerland home, the Kings County Family Court concluded after a five-day trial that Southerland had engaged in excessive corporal punishment of the Southerland Children and that he had abused and neglected them. The court also concluded that he had sexually abused his daughter Ciara. The court ordered that the Southerland Children remain in foster care, where they had resided since the June 1997 removal. The New York Appellate Division, Second Department, affirmed these orders, see In re Ciara M., 273 A.D.2d 312, 708 N.Y.S.2d 717 (2d Dep't 2000), and the New York Court of Appeals denied leave to appeal, see In re Ciara M., 95 N.Y.2d 767, 740 N.E.2d 653, 717 N.Y.S.2d 547 (2000). In March 2004, nearly seven years after their removal from the Southerland home, Sonny Jr. and Venus were permitted to return to live with Southerland. Some seven months thereafter, Nathaniel and Emmanuel were discharged from the juvenile justice system by the Office of Children and Family Services and also returned to the Southerland home. As far as we can determine from the record, neither Kiam nor Elizabeth ever returned to live with Southerland.

However strongly the facts of mistreatment found by the Family Court at trial may indicate that Woo's perceptions about the dangers to the Southerland Children of their remaining with Southerland were correct, virtually none of this information was in Woo's possession when he effected the June 9, 1997, entry and removal, as the district court correctly observed. See Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 226 n.19. These subsequently determined facts therefore do not bear upon our consideration of whether Woo's actions in effecting the removal were constitutional. See id.

Prior Federal Court Proceedings

In June 1999, some two years after the removal and while the Southerland Children remained in foster care, Southerland, on behalf of himself and his children, filed a pro se complaint in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York against more than forty defendants for the allegedly wrongful removal of the Southerland Children from his home. On February 1, 2000, the district court (Charles P. Sifton, Judge) granted the defendants' motion to dismiss on grounds that included failure to state a claim, failure to plead certain matters with particularity, lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, and Eleventh Amendment immunity. See Opinion & Order (Dkt. No. 43), Southerland v. City of N.Y., No. 99-cv-3329 (E.D.N.Y. Feb. 2, 2000). Southerland appealed. We affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded the action. We ruled, inter alia, that the district court had erred in dismissing Southerland's claims under 42 U.S.C. §1983 relating to the seizure and removal of the Southerland Children. See Southerland v. Giuliani, 4 F. App'x 33, 36 (2d Cir. 2001) (summary order) ("Southerland I"). We concluded that the pro se complaint stated valid claims for violations of both the substantive and procedural components of the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. See id. at 36-37. We "emphasize[d] that our holding [wa]s limited to the claims made directly by Sonny Southerland," noting that "[a]lthough the children probably have similar claims, we have held that a non-attorney parent must be represented by counsel in bringing an action on behalf of his or her child." Id. at 37 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). We therefore "le[ft] it to the district court upon remand to determine whether Southerland should be given a chance to hire a lawyer for his children or to seek to have one appointed for them." Id. On remand, the district court appointed counsel to represent both Southerland and the Southerland Children.8 Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 227. In November 2002, through counsel, Southerland and the Southerland Children jointly filed an amended complaint, id. at 221 & n.1, asserting nine claims under 42 U.S.C. §1983 against Woo and the City of New York, id. at 221 n.2.9

In the amended complaint, Southerland asserts four separate claims against Woo.10 First, Southerland alleges an unlawful-search claim, asserting that Woo's entry into his home "without privilege, cause or justification" violated the Fourth Amendment. Am. Compl. ¶¶40-41 (Dkt. No. 75), Southerland v. City of N.Y., No. 99-cv-3329 (E.D.N.Y. Nov. 22, 2002). Southerland asserts a second Fourth Amendment unlawful-search claim for Woo's remaining in his home even after discovering that the children listed on the Order Authorizing Entry were not there. Third, Southerland asserts a Fourteenth Amendment procedural due process claim for removal of the Southerland Children from his home without a court order and in the absence of an immediate threat of harm to their lives or health. Finally, Southerland alleges a substantive due process claim, also under the Fourteenth Amendment, for Woo's removal of the Southerland Children absent a reasonable basis for doing so. The amended complaint also interposes various claims on behalf of the Southerland Children. First, the Children assert the same procedural due process claim under the Fourteenth Amendment as does Southerland. Second, they assert a substantive due process claim under the Fourteenth Amendment. The district court recharacterized the latter claim as arising under the Fourth Amendment's guarantee of protection against unlawful seizure. 11 See Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 230 n.24. Finally, the district court construed the amended complaint as asserting on behalf of the Children the same two Fourth Amendment unlawful-search claims as were asserted by Southerland. Southerland and the Southerland Children also bring several claims against the City of New York. Southerland asserts that the City is liable under 42 U.S.C. §1983 for the removal of the Southerland Children insofar as that removal was conducted pursuant to two alleged official City policies: to remove children without a reasonable basis, and to remove children without a court order despite the absence of any immediate threat of harm to their lives or health. Southerland and the Southerland Children also allege that high-ranking policymakers within the City's police department knew or should have known that the City's failure to train police officers accompanying ACS employees on home visits and investigations would deprive New York City residents of their constitutional rights.12

On the defendants' motion for summary judgment, the district court concluded that Woo was entitled to qualified immunity as to all of the claims against him. With respect to the Fourth Amendment unlawful-search claims, the court concluded that the false and misleading statements made by Woo in his application for the Order Authorizing Entry did not strip him of qualified immunity because the plaintiffs could not show that these statements were necessary to the finding of probable cause to enter the home. Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 230-31. The court decided that qualified immunity was warranted because "a corrected affidavit specifying all of the information known to Woo establishes an objective basis that would have supported a reasonable caseworker's belief that probable cause existed." Id. at 231 (brackets, citation, and internal quotation marks omitted). With respect to the Southerland Children's Fourth Amendment unlawful-seizure claim, and the procedural due process claims brought by both sets of plaintiffs, the district court decided that qualified immunity shielded Woo from liability because his actions pre-dated the clear establishment of law in this context, which in its view did not occur until this Court's decision in Tenenbaum v. Williams, 193 F.3d 581, 593 (2d Cir. 1999), cert. denied, 529 U.S. 1098 (2000). See Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 231-32. Lastly, with regard to Southerland's substantive due process claim, the district court concluded that Woo was entitled to qualified immunity because "it was objectively reasonable for [him] to conclude that Southerland's substantive due process rights were not violated" when Woo removed the Southerland Children from the home, because "[b]rief removals of children from their parents generally do not rise to the level of a substantive due process violation, at least where the purpose of the removal is to keep the child safe during investigation and court confirmation of the basis for removal." Id. at 32

(brackets and internal quotation marks omitted).

Notwithstanding the district court's conclusion that Woo was entitled to qualified immunity as to every claim asserted against him, the court proceeded to consider, in the alternative, the underlying merits of the plaintiffs' various claims. The court decided that even in the absence of immunity, Woo would be entitled to summary judgment with respect to the plaintiffs' Fourth Amendment unlawful-search claims and Southerland's substantive due process claim. Specifically, with respect to the Fourth Amendment unlawful-search claims, the district court decided that "no reasonable juror could infer that Woo knowingly and intentionally made false and misleading statements to the family court in order to receive an order authorizing his entry into the Southerland home." Id. at 233. With respect to Southerland's substantive due process claim, the court concluded that "no reasonable juror could find that the removal of the children from their home in order to verify that they had not been neglected or abused was so 'shocking, arbitrary, and egregious' that Southerland's substantive due process rights were violated." Id. at 234-35 (citation omitted). The district court concluded that the City was also entitled to summary judgment on all of the claims against it. See Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 235-39. The plaintiffs do not appeal from that portion of the judgment and therefore have abandoned their claims against the City. See LoSacco v. City of Middletown, 71 F.3d 88, 92-93 (2d Cir. 1995). The district court determined, however, that without qualified immunity protection, summary judgment would not be appropriate on the merits of the procedural due process claims brought by both Southerland and the Southerland Children because, "[a]lthough defendants argue that the 'totality of the circumstances' Woo encountered in the Southerland home required an ex parte removal, they fail to explain why there was not sufficient time for Woo to seek a court order removing the children." See Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 235 n.31. Nor would summary judgment be appropriate on the merits of the Southerland Children's Fourth Amendment unlawful-seizure claim, the district court said, because the defendants could not explain "why the particular circumstances that Woo encountered in the Southerland home established that there was imminent danger to the children's life or limb requiring removal in the absence of a court order." Id. at 234 n.29. Both Southerland and the Southerland Children now appeal from the dismissal of each of their claims against Woo, except for one Fourth Amendment claim brought by all plaintiffs. The plaintiffs have not appealed the district court's adverse ruling as to their claim that Woo violated the Fourth Amendment by remaining in their home even after determining that the children listed on the Order Authorizing Entry were not present. We vacate and remand with respect to each of the plaintiffs' claims that have been preserved for appeal.

DISCUSSION - I. Standard of Review

We review a district court's grant of summary judgment de novo, construing the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving part[ies] and drawing all reasonable inferences in [their] favor." Allianz Ins. Co. v. Lerner, 416 F.3d 109, 113 (2d Cir. 2005). "[S]ummary judgment is appropriate where there exists no genuine issue of material fact and, based on the undisputed facts, the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." D'Amico v. City of N.Y., 132 F.3d 145, 149 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 524 U.S. 911 (1998); see Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a).

II. Qualified Immunity - Qualified immunity shields public officials from liability "insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). "In general, public officials are entitled to qualified immunity if (1) their conduct does not violate clearly established constitutional rights, or (2) it was objectively reasonable for them to believe their acts did not violate those rights." Holcomb v. Lykens, 337 F.3d 217, 220 (2d Cir. 2003) (internal quotation marks omitted). An officer is also entitled to qualified immunity "if officers of reasonable competence could disagree on the legality of the action at issue in its particular factual context." Manganiello v. City of N.Y., 612 F.3d 149, 165 (2d Cir. 2010) (internal quotation marks omitted).

III. Overview of Constitutional Law in the Context of the State's Removal of Children from Their Home - As we observed in a decision post-dating the events at issue in these appeals, "[p]arents…have a constitutionally protected liberty interest in the care, custody and management of their children." Tenenbaum, 193 F.3d at 593; see also Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57, 65-66 (2000) (collecting cases concerning the "fundamental right of parents to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children"). "[C]hildren have a parallel constitutionally protected liberty interest in not being dislocated from the emotional attachments that derive from the intimacy of daily family association." Kia P. v. McIntyre, 235 F.3d 749, 759 (2d Cir. 2000) (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted), cert. denied, 534 U.S. 820 (2001); see also Duchesne v. Sugarman, 566 F.2d 817, 825 (2d Cir. 1977) ("Th[e] right to the preservation of family integrity encompasses the reciprocal rights of both parent and children."). The state's removal of a child from his or her parent may give rise to a variety of cognizable constitutional claims. First, both the parents and the children may have a cause of action for violation of the Fourteenth Amendment under a theory of denial of procedural due process. The Fourteenth Amendment imposes a requirement that except in emergency circumstances, judicial process must be accorded both parent and child before removal of the child from his or her parent's custody may be effected. See, e.g., Kia P., 235 F.3d at 759-60; Tenenbaum, 193 F.3d at 593-94; Duchesne, 566 F.2d at 825-26. Both Southerland and the Southerland Children have asserted such a procedural due process claim against Woo in this case. Second, a parent may also bring suit under a theory of violation of his or her right to substantive due process. Southerland does so here. Parents have a "substantive right under the Due Process Clause to remain together [with their children] without the coercive interference of the awesome power of the state." Tenenbaum, 193 F.3d at 600 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also, e.g., Anthony v. City of N.Y., 339 F.3d 129, 142-43 (2d Cir. 2003); Kia P., 235 F.3d at 757-58. Such a claim can only be sustained if the removal of the child "would have been prohibited by the Constitution even had the [parents] been given all the procedural protections to which they were entitled." Tenenbaum, 193 F.3d at 600 (emphasis in original). In other words, while a procedural due process claim challenges the procedure by which a removal is effected, a substantive due process claim challenges the "fact of [the] removal" itself. Bruker v. City of N.Y., 92 F. Supp. 2d 257, 266-67 (S.D.N.Y. 2000). For such claims brought by children, however, we have concluded that the Constitution provides an alternative, more specific source of protection.13 When a child is taken into state custody, his or her person is "seized" for Fourth Amendment purposes. The child may therefore assert a claim under the Fourth Amendment that the seizure of his or her person was unreasonable. See Tenenbaum, 193 F.3d at 602. Such a claim belongs only to the child, not to the parent, although a parent has standing to assert it on the child's behalf. Id. at 601 n.13. In accordance with our order in Southerland I, 4 F. App'x at 37 n.2, the district court determined that the Southerland Children's substantive due process claim should be construed instead as a Fourth Amendment unlawful-seizure claim. See Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 230 n.24. Finally, depending on the circumstances in which a removal occurs, other Fourth Amendment claims might also be viable. Here, Southerland and the Southerland Children asserted two Fourth Amendment claims for unlawful search: one claim relating to Woo's entry into the Southerland home, and one (now abandoned) claim relating to Woo's remaining in the home even after determining that the Manning Children were not present. Both claims were based on an allegation that Woo made false statements to the Family Court in order to obtain the Order Authorizing Entry, and therefore that there was no probable cause to carry out a search of the Southerland apartment.

IV. The Fourth Amendment Unlawful-Search Claims - The district court determined that summary judgment was warranted on the plaintiffs' Fourth Amendment unlawful-search claims on two separate grounds. First, the district court concluded that Woo was entitled to qualified immunity under the "corrected affidavit" doctrine. See Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 230-31. Second, the district court decided that Woo was entitled to summary judgment on the merits because no reasonable juror could find that Woo had knowingly made false or misleading statements in seeking to obtain the Order Authorizing Entry. Id. at 233.

We disagree with both conclusions.

A. The Corrected-Affidavit Doctrine - We begin with the plaintiffs' argument that the district court erred in its application of the corrected-affidavit doctrine, under which a defendant who makes erroneous statements of fact in a search-warrant affidavit is nonetheless entitled to qualified immunity unless the false statements in the affidavit were "necessary to the finding of probable cause." Martinez v. City of Schenectady, 115 F.3d 111, 115 (2d Cir. 1997) (internal quotation marks omitted). In order to determine whether false statements were "necessary to the finding of probable cause," the court must "put aside allegedly false material, supply any omitted information, and then determine whether the contents of the 'corrected affidavit' would have supported a finding of probable cause." Id. (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). In applying the corrected-affidavit doctrine, qualified immunity is warranted only if, after correcting for the false or misleading statements, the affidavit accompanying the warrant was sufficient "to support a reasonable officer's belief that probable cause existed." Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). The district court, which "assum[ed] for purposes of the qualified immunity defense that Woo made false and misleading statements" in applying for the Order Authorizing Entry, Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 230, correctly noted that the plaintiffs "would still have to demonstrate that those statements were necessary to the finding of probable cause for qualified immunity not to attach to Woo's actions," id. at 230-31 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). The court determined that Woo was entitled to qualified immunity based on its conclusion that a corrected affidavit, containing all of the information available to Woo at the time the affidavit was made, would have supported a finding of probable cause to enter the home. Id. at 231.

We disagree. Section 1034(2) of the New York State Family Court Act, which provides the evidentiary standard for a showing of probable cause sufficient for the issuance of an investigative order, governed Woo's application to obtain the Order Authorizing Entry. The district court, in its September 2007 decision, cited the statute as it had been amended in January 2007. See id. at 224 n.7. But the version that governed at the time of Woo's application was materially different. Under the version of the statute that applied at the time of Woo's actions, the affiant was required to demonstrate "probable cause to believe that an abused or neglected child may be found on premises," N.Y. Fam. Ct. Act §1034(2) (McKinney's 1997) (emphasis added), presumably meaning the "premises" identified in the application submitted to the Family Court. The district court should have engaged in its corrected-affidavit analysis with reference to the earlier law. The children that Woo listed on his application for the Order Authorizing Entry—the Manning Children and Ciara—were children who did not reside "on premises" in the Southerland home. The district court concluded that "a properly made application would still list Ciara Manning on the application because Southerland is her father and was the parent legally responsible for her care, even if she had run away." Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 231. That may be relevant to an inquiry under the statute as amended in 2007, but it is not relevant to the appropriate question under the applicable version of the law: whether there existed probable cause for Woo to believe that Ciara Manning could be found "on premises" at the Southerland home. In fact, she, like the Manning Children, was not "on premises." And Woo had reason to know that she was not—from the information in the initial Intake Report transmitted to Woo; from the guidance counselor's statement to Woo that Southerland did not approve of the place where Ciara was staying; and from Southerland's own statements during his May 30 telephone conversation with Woo that Ciara was a runaway and did not live at his home.14 The plaintiff children point out that there were other deficiencies in the district court's corrected-affidavit analysis that undermine the court's conclusion that the information known to Woo at the time he applied for the Order Authorizing Entry would have supported a finding of probable cause. For example, Woo's application stated that Ciara "tried to kill herself by swallowing non-toxic paint," and that Southerland "did not take [Ciara] to a medical doctor and refused to take [Ciara] for psychiatric evaluation." Application for Authorization to Enter Premises dated June 6, 1997, at 1 ("June 6 Application"), Ex. C to Silverberg Decl. The plaintiff children argue that the application omitted several relevant facts that, according to Southerland's version of events, were known to Woo at that time: that the paint-swallowing incident took place at school, not at home; that Southerland was willing to obtain treatment for his daughter, but had trouble doing so, precisely because she was not living in his home; and that Southerland had attempted to assert control over his daughter by applying for PINS warrants. Southerland Children's Br. at 30-31; see also id. at 28-36 (disputing additional assertions of fact, such as whether the swallowing of paint indeed was a suicide attempt). As the plaintiff children put it: Woo's omission of the fact that the incident took place at school allowed the court to assume that the suicide attempt took place in Southerland's residence. The overall picture painted by Woo is that Southerland's daughter attempted to kill herself, that Southerland did nothing about it, and refused to let others do something about it as well. By omitting the fact that the daughter was not even living at the Southerland apartment, Woo gave the family court the impression that it was necessary to allow Woo to enter the apartment in order to render assistance to a suicidal teenager in the home of a parent who could not be bothered to help her and who prevented the efforts of ACS to provide help to her. Id. at 31-32. The district court included much of this information in its recitation of facts, Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 222-23 & nn.4 & 5, but it did not factor these considerations into its application of the corrected-affidavit doctrine. We have observed that the materiality of a misrepresentation or omission in an application for a search warrant is a mixed question of law and fact.15 Velardi v. Walsh, 40 F.3d 569, 574 (2d Cir. 1994). "The legal component depends on whether the information is relevant to the probable cause determination under controlling substantive law." Id. "[T]he weight that a neutral magistrate would likely have given such information," however, is a question for the factfinder. Id. In such circumstances, a court may grant summary judgment to a defendant based on qualified immunity only where "the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, discloses no genuine dispute that a magistrate would have issued the warrant on the basis of the corrected affidavits." Walczyk v. Rio, 496 F.3d 139, 158 (2d Cir. 2007) (emphasis, citation, and internal quotation marks omitted). We cannot conclude as a matter of law—although a trier of fact might so conclude after an evidentiary hearing—that the Family Court, in deciding whether there was "probable cause to believe that an abused or neglected child may [have] be[en] found [in the Southerland home]," N.Y. Fam. Ct. Act §1034(2), would have issued the order had a corrected affidavit been presented to it.

B. Knowing or Reckless Misstatements of Fact - The district court also concluded that even if the corrected-affidavit doctrine did not apply, summary judgment was appropriate because, on the merits, "no reasonable juror could infer that Woo knowingly and intentionally made false and misleading statements to the family court in order to receive an order authorizing his entry into the Southerland home." Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 233. Based on that premise, the district court concluded that "the [O]rder [Authorizing Entry] was issued with probable cause and Woo's entry into and search of Southerland's home did not violate plaintiffs' Fourth Amendment rights." Id. We disagree. If the district court were correct that Woo did not knowingly make false and misleading statements, that would entitle Woo to qualified immunity, but would not necessarily render his underlying conduct lawful. When a person alleges a Fourth Amendment violation arising from a search executed by a state official, "the issuance of a search warrant…creates a presumption that it was objectively reasonable for the [defendant] to believe that the search was supported by probable cause" so as to render the defendant qualifiedly immune from liability. Martinez, 115 F.3d at 115. To defeat the presumption of reasonableness, a plaintiff must make "a substantial preliminary showing that the affiant knowingly and intentionally, or with reckless disregard for the truth, made a false statement in his affidavit and that the allegedly false statement was necessary to the finding of probable cause" for which the warrant was issued. Golino v. City of New Haven, 950 F.2d 864, 870 (2d Cir. 1991) (internal quotation marks omitted), cert. denied, 505 U.S. 1221 (1992). We need not consider further whether the district court erred by confusing the qualified immunity and merits analyses, however, because we also do not agree with the district court's premise that no reasonable juror could find that Woo did not knowingly or recklessly make false statements. We think that several disputed facts, taken together and viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, would permit—though not require—a reasonable factfinder to find otherwise.

First, substantial evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, suggests that Woo had reason to know that Ciara was not residing at the Southerland home when he applied for the Order Authorizing Entry. For example, the May 29 Intake Report informed ACS that Ciara "may be staying out of the home in an i[m]proper enviro[n]ment." Intake Report at 3. And Southerland told Woo on May 30 that Ciara was a runaway and that he had taken out PINS warrants against her. Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 223. A reasonable juror could find that Woo's application to the Family Court on June 6 was knowingly or recklessly misleading in stating: "I have reasonable cause to believe that the above named children [including Ciara] may be found at the above premises [the Southerland home]." June 6 Application at 1. Second, evidence in the record, again viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, would permit a reasonable juror to conclude that Woo had knowingly or recklessly misrepresented the nature of the paint-swallowing incident in his application. About one week before June 6, Woo learned from a school counselor that Ciara had "swallowed non-toxic paint at school" and had been "acting out and expressing thoughts of suicide." Woo Decl. ¶6. Although the counselor informed Woo that Southerland had failed to seek medical treatment for Ciara, see id., Southerland later explained to Woo that the reason he had not taken Ciara for treatment was that she did not reside with Southerland and did not listen to him, id. ¶8. Yet Woo's application represented to the Family Court that Ciara "tried to kill herself by swallowing non-toxic paint" and that Southerland "did not take [her] to a medical doctor and refused to take [her] for psychiatric evaluation." June 6 Application at 1. A reasonable trier of fact might find the foregoing statements to be materially misleading insofar as they characterize Ciara's paint-swallowing as a suicide attempt; fail to note that the incident occurred at school rather than in Southerland's home; and omit the fact that Ciara may have been living outside the home and free from Southerland's control. Finally, the district court overlooked the parties' dispute concerning Woo's knowledge about which children resided in the Southerland apartment. The district court stated that Woo "had reason to believe that the Manning children would be found in the Southerland apartment because of a separate investigation of the Manning children and his personal observation that there were other children in the Southerland home who had not yet been positively identified." Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 233. But, as the district court opinion elsewhere observes, on June 4, 1997—two days before he applied for the Order Authorizing Entry—Woo met the Southerland Children emerging from the Southerland apartment and wrote down their names. See id. at 223-24 & n.6. We think that there is a triable issue of fact as to whether Woo in fact believed, as he wrote in his application to the Family Court, that it was the Manning Children and not the Southerland Children who were in the Southerland home, or whether he recklessly confused or knowingly conflated the two.

Although these alleged misrepresentations may turn out to be no more than accidental misstatements made in haste, the plaintiffs have nonetheless made a "substantial preliminary showing" that Woo knowingly or recklessly made false statements in his application for the Order Authorizing Entry. Golino, 950 F.2d at 870 (internal quotation marks omitted). This showing rebuts the presumption of reasonableness that would otherwise apply to shield Woo with qualified immunity at the summary judgment stage. In sum, because we conclude that genuine issues of material fact exist, both as to whether Woo knowingly or recklessly made false statements in his affidavit to the Family Court and as to whether such false statements were necessary to the court's finding of probable cause, we vacate the district court's grant of summary judgment on the plaintiffs' Fourth Amendment unlawful-search claims. Once again, we note that a trier of fact might, after review of the evidence, conclude that the errors in the June 6 Application were either accidental or immaterial. We vacate the grant of summary judgment because we cannot reach that conclusion ourselves on the current record as a matter of law.

V. The Plaintiffs' Procedural Due Process Claims - Southerland and the Southerland Children each assert a procedural due process claim against Woo. The district court held that Woo was entitled to qualified immunity on these claims. We disagree.

A. Procedural Due Process in the Child-Removal Context - "'As a general rule…before parents may be deprived of the care, custody, or management of their children without their consent, due process—ordinarily a court proceeding resulting in an order permitting removal—must be accorded to them.'" Nicholson v. Scoppetta, 344 F.3d 154, 171 (2d Cir. 2003) (quoting Tenenbaum, 193 F.3d at 593). "However, 'in emergency circumstances, a child may be taken into custody by a responsible State official without court authorization or parental consent.'" Id. (quoting Tenenbaum, 193 F.3d at 594). "'If the danger to the child is not so imminent that there is reasonably sufficient time to seek prior judicial authorization, ex parte or otherwise, for the child's removal, then the circumstances are not emergent.'" Id. (quoting Tenenbaum, 193 F.3d at 594). To prevail, "[t]he government must offer 'objectively reasonable' evidence that harm is imminent." Id. Although we have not exhaustively set forth the types of factual circumstances that constitute imminent danger justifying emergency removal as a matter of federal constitutional law, we have concluded that these circumstances include "the peril of sexual abuse," id., the "risk that children will be 'left bereft of care and supervision,'" id. (quoting Hurlman v. Rice, 927 F.2d 74, 80 (2d Cir. 1991)), and "immediate threat[s] to the safety of the child," Hurlman, 927 F.2d at 80 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also N.Y. Fam. Ct. Act §1024(a) (defining emergency circumstances, for the purposes of state law, as "circumstance[s]" wherein a child's remaining in the parent's care and custody "presents an imminent danger to the child's life or health").

B. Analysis - The district court correctly concluded that summary judgment was not appropriate on the underlying merits of the plaintiffs' procedural due process claims because Woo did not demonstrate, as a matter of law, that he did not have time to obtain a court order authorizing the removal of the Southerland Children before taking that act. See Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 235 n.31 (citing Nicholson, 344 F.3d at 171). The court nonetheless granted summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds, concluding that "the law concerning procedural due process rights in the context of child removals was not clearly defined at the time of the events in question." Id. at 232. But in Hurlman, we recognized that officials may remove a child from the custody of the parent without consent or a prior court order only in "emergency" circumstances. Emergency circumstances mean circumstances in which the child is immediately threatened with harm, for example, where there exists an immediate threat to the safety of the child, or where the child is left bereft of care and supervision, or where there is evidence of serious ongoing abuse and the officials have reason to fear imminent recurrence. Hurlman, 927 F.2d at 80 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted); see also Robison v. Via, 821 F.2d 913, 921-22 (2d Cir. 1987) (describing the "'emergency' circumstances" exception and collecting cases).16 It thus was clearly established at the time of the Southerland Children's removal that state officials could not remove a child from the custody of a parent without either consent or a prior court order unless "'emergency' circumstances" existed. Hurlman, 927 F.2d at 80; see also Cecere v. City of N.Y., 967 F.2d 826, 829-30 (2d Cir. 1992) (setting forth "clearly established" procedural due process principles); see also Velez v. Reynolds, 325 F. Supp. 2d 293, 314-15 (S.D.N.Y. 2004) (explaining the principles). In concluding that the law of procedural due process was not clearly established in the child-removal context in 1997, the district court in the case at bar relied primarily on our decision in Tenenbaum. There we held as a matter of first impression that "where there is reasonable time consistent with the safety of the child to obtain a judicial order, the 'emergency' removal of a child is unwarranted." Tenenbaum, 193 F.3d at 596. Because this principle was not clearly established in 1990—the year the underlying conduct at issue in Tenenbaum took place—we affirmed the district court's decision in that case that the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity. We also made clear, however, that even in 1990, "it was established as a general matter…that 'except where emergency circumstances exist' a parent can 'not be deprived' of the custody of his or her child 'without due process, generally in the form of a predeprivation hearing.'" Id. at 596 (quoting Hurlman, 927 F.2d at 79). In the present case, the plaintiffs assert "not solely that defendants had sufficient time to obtain a court order, but that the circumstances in which Woo found the children did not warrant their removal at all, whether evaluated by pre—or post—Tenenbaum standards." Southerland Children's Br. at 39.17 We understand the plaintiffs' contention to be that "emergency circumstances" warranting removal simply did not exist. The district court did not decide as a matter of law that emergency circumstances existed in the Southerland home. To the contrary, the district court concluded that "[v]iewing the facts in the light most favorable to plaintiffs, a reasonable juror could determine that the circumstances Woo encountered did not demonstrate an imminent danger to the children's life or limb." Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 234 n.29. The court further decided that "a reasonable juror could find that there was sufficient time to acquire a court order prior to the removal." Id. at 235 n.31. In light of those determinations, with which we agree, and our assessment that the relevant law was clearly established in 1997, we cannot conclude as a matter of law that "it was objectively reasonable for [Woo] to believe [that his] acts did not violate those [clearly established] rights." Holcomb, 337 F.3d at 220. Qualified immunity therefore is not available to Woo on the plaintiffs' procedural due process claims at the summary judgment stage. Because summary judgment also cannot be granted to the defendants on the underlying merits of these claims,18 we vacate the grant of summary judgment to Woo as to the procedural due process claims.

VI. Southerland's Substantive Due Process Claim

Southerland asserts a substantive due process claim against Woo under the Fourteenth Amendment. The district court held not only that qualified immunity attached to Woo's actions, but also that summary judgment would be warranted on the merits even in the absence of qualified immunity. We disagree with both conclusions.

A. Substantive Due Process in the Child-Removal Context - Substantive due process guards a person's rights "against the government's 'exercise of power without any reasonable justification in the service of a legitimate governmental objective.'" Tenenbaum, 193 F.3d at 600 (quoting County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 846 (1998)). "To establish a violation of substantive due process rights, a plaintiff must demonstrate that the state action was 'so egregious, so outrageous, that it may fairly be said to shock the contemporary conscience.'" Okin v. Vill. of Cornwall-on-Hudson Police Dep't, 577 F.3d 415, 431 (2d Cir. 2009) (quoting Lewis, 523 U.S. at 847 n.8). The interference with the plaintiff's protected right must be "'so shocking, arbitrary, and egregious that the Due Process Clause would not countenance it even were it accompanied by full procedural protection.'" Anthony, 339 F.3d at 143 (quoting Tenenbaum, 193 F.3d at 600); see also Lewis, 523 U.S. at 840 (doctrine of substantive due process "bar[s] certain government actions regardless of the fairness of the procedures used to implement them" (internal quotation marks omitted)). Thus, in the child-removal context, we ask whether "the removal…would have been prohibited by the Constitution even had the [plaintiffs] been given all the procedural protections to which they were entitled." Tenenbaum, 193 F.3d at 600 (emphasis omitted). We have long recognized that parents have a "constitutionally protected liberty interest in the care, custody and management of their children," id. at 593, and that the deprivation of this interest is actionable under a theory of substantive due process, see id. at 600 (recognizing a "substantive right under the Due Process Clause 'to remain together without the coercive interference of the awesome power of the state'" (quoting Duchesne, 566 F.2d at 825)). We have also observed, however, that "[a]lthough parents enjoy a constitutionally protected interest in their family integrity, this interest is counterbalanced by the compelling governmental interest in the protection of minor children, particularly in circumstances where the protection is considered necessary as against the parents themselves." Wilkinson ex rel. Wilkinson v. Russell, 182 F.3d 89, 104 (2d Cir. 1999) (internal quotation marks omitted), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 1155 (2000). We have explained that, in part because the law contemplates a careful balancing of interests, a parent's substantive constitutional rights are not infringed if a caseworker, in effecting a removal of a child from the parent's home, has a reasonable basis for thinking that a child is abused or neglected. See id. "This Circuit has adopted a standard governing case workers which reflects the recognized need for unusual deference in the abuse investigation context. An investigation passes constitutional muster provided simply that case workers have a 'reasonable basis' for their findings of abuse." Id.; see also id. at 108 (concluding that the "reasonable basis test" requires that caseworkers' decisions to substantiate an allegation of child abuse "be consistent with some significant portion of the evidence before them"). We have applied this "reasonable basis" standard from time to time in recent years. See, e.g., Nicholson, 344 F.3d at 174; Phifer v. City of N.Y., 289 F.3d 49, 60 (2d Cir. 2002); Kia P., 235 F.3d at 758-59. We have also recognized that substantive due process claims in the child-removal context have a temporal dimension. Because state interference with a plaintiff's liberty interest must be severe before it rises to the level of a substantive constitutional violation, see, e.g., Anthony, 339 F.3d at 143, "brief removals [of a child from a parent's home] generally do not rise to the level of a substantive due process violation, at least where the purpose of the removal is to keep the child safe during investigation and court confirmation of the basis for removal," Nicholson, 344 F.3d at 172 (citing Tenenbaum, 193 F.3d at 600-01 & n.12); see also Cecere, 967 F.2d at 830 (ruling that plaintiff's due process claim failed because a "brief" four-day removal, executed "in the face of a reasonably perceived emergency," did not violate due process); Joyner ex rel. Lowry v. Dumpson, 712 F.2d 770, 779 (2d Cir. 1983) (no substantive violation where temporary transfer of custody to foster-care system did not "result in parents' wholesale relinquishment of their right to rear their children").

B. Analysis - The district court, in deciding that qualified immunity protection prevailed, concluded that it was objectively reasonable for Woo to think that Southerland's substantive due process rights were not being violated because "[b]rief removals of children from their parents generally do not rise to the level of a substantive due process violation," Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 232 (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted), and because the Southerland Children "were removed in the context of a child protective investigation [in which] removal would be subject to court confirmation," id.; see also id. at 234 (suggesting that "a family court judge confirmed the removal" at a "timely post-deprivation hearing"). We agree in principle. The removal of a child from his or her parent does not violate the parent's substantive due process rights if a post-removal judicial proceeding is promptly held to confirm that there exists a reasonable basis for the removal. The period of time in which the child and parent are separated at the sole instruction of the defendant is, in such a case, not severe enough to constitute a substantive due process violation by the defendant. See Nicholson, 344 F.3d at 172; Tenenbaum, 193 F.3d at 600-01. If it were clear in the record that the removal of the Southerland Children was confirmed by a prompt and adequate judicial confirmation proceeding, we would agree with the district court that summary judgment would be appropriate on that basis. But the record is not sufficiently clear for us to determine whether such a post-removal judicial proceeding occurred, and if so, the nature of it. The district court stated that the Southerland Children were removed and held in ACS custody "pending a timely post-deprivation hearing where a family court judge confirmed the removal." Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 234. And the court had previously observed that the Southerland Children "remained in custody without a court order until the morning of June 12, 1997"—about forty-eight hours—"at which time Woo obtained a court order confirming the removal." Southerland v. City of N.Y., No. 99-cv-3329, 2006 WL 2224432, at *1, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 53582, at *4 (E.D.N.Y. Aug. 2, 2006). Although the parties do not appear to dispute that a post-removal judicial confirmation proceeding was held, nor do they dispute that this proceeding took place within several days after removal, they provide no further detail upon which we can assess the nature of the proceeding in terms of its timeliness and adequacy.19

We are also unable to determine from the present record on what factual basis the Family Court decided that the continued removal of the Southerland Children was warranted. We do not know, for example, whether its decision to confirm the removal was based solely on written submissions by Woo to the same effect and containing the same errors as Woo's application for the Order Authorizing Entry. Apparently relying on the understanding that the Family Court had promptly confirmed the Southerland Children's removal, the district court concluded that no reasonable trier of fact could find that the removal of the Children was "so 'shocking, arbitrary, and egregious' that Southerland's substantive due process rights were violated." Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 235 (citation omitted). For much the same reason that we conclude that material questions of fact preclude summary judgment on the merits of the plaintiffs' procedural due process claims, however, we conclude that summary judgment was inappropriate on the merits of Southerland's substantive due process claim. A plaintiff's substantive due process claim fails if "there is an objectively reasonable basis for believing that parental custody constitutes a threat to the child's health or safety." Gottlieb v. County of Orange, 84 F.3d 511, 518 (2d Cir. 1996). Although this "reasonable basis" standard appears to impose a lesser burden on a defendant than the "emergency circumstances" standard applicable to procedural due process claims, summary judgment is nevertheless not appropriate unless "there exists no genuine issue of material fact and, based on the undisputed facts, the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." D'Amico, 132 F.3d at 149. The facts concerning the nature of Southerland's behavior during Woo's investigation and the conditions in the Southerland apartment at the time that Woo effected the removal remain hotly contested by the parties. For example, while Woo contends that the apartment lacked enough food, lighting, and bedding; that the Children were malodorous; and that various safety hazards were present, Southerland has tendered admissible evidence (albeit largely in the form of his own testimony) that each of those factual assertions is false. If the trier of fact were to credit Southerland's account, we cannot say that it would be unreasonable for it to then conclude that a reasonable caseworker in Woo's position lacked an "objectively reasonable basis" for removing the Children, Gottlieb, 84 F.3d at 518, and thus that Woo's actions were "shocking, arbitrary, and egregious," Anthony, 339 F.3d at 143 (internal quotation marks omitted). Moreover, in the absence of record evidence as to the substance of the post-removal judicial confirmation proceeding, we cannot conclude that the fact that the Family Court confirmed the removal of the Southerland Children suffices to show that Woo's conduct had an objectively reasonable basis. Cf. Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 234-35.

Finally, we consider whether Woo is nonetheless entitled to summary judgment on the basis of qualified immunity. As noted, qualified immunity is available to defendants "insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." Harlow, 457 U.S. at 818; see also Cornejo v. Bell, 592 F.3d 121, 128 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 131 S. Ct. 158 (2010). When a defendant official invokes qualified immunity as a basis for summary judgment, a court must consider not only whether evidence in the record suggests a violation of a statutory or constitutional right, but also "whether that right was clearly established at the time of the alleged violation." Tracy v. Freshwater, 623 F.3d 90, 96 (2d Cir. 2010). Thus, if it could be shown that, at the time of the events in question, Woo lacked a legal basis upon which he could conclude that his actions would violate Southerland's substantive due process rights, Woo would be entitled to qualified immunity. "The relevant, dispositive inquiry in determining whether a right is clearly established is whether it would be clear to a reasonable officer [in the position of the defendant] that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted." Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 202 (2001), overruled on other grounds by Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223 (2009). In answering that question, we consider: "(1) whether the right was defined with reasonable specificity; (2) whether Supreme Court or court of appeals case law supports the existence of the right in question, and (3) whether under preexisting law a reasonable defendant would have understood that his or her acts were unlawful." Scott v. Fischer, 616 F.3d 100, 105 (2d Cir. 2010). "The task of framing the right at issue with some precision is critical in determining whether that particular right was clearly established at the time of the defendants' alleged violation." Redd v. Wright, 597 F.3d 532, 536 (2d Cir. 2010); see also Wilson v. Layne, 526 U.S. 603, 609 (1999). Although the matter of whether a right at issue is clearly established is a question of law, Higazy v. Templeton, 505 F.3d 161, 170 (2d Cir. 2007), that question is "tied to the specific facts and context of the case," Gilles v. Repicky, 511 F.3d 239, 244 (2d Cir. 2007). In 1997, when Woo effected the removal, it was well established as a general matter that parents possess a substantive right under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to exercise care, custody, and control over their children. See, e.g., Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745, 753 (1982); Gottlieb, 84 F.3d at 518; Joyner ex rel. Lowry, 712 F.2d at 777. It was also the law, however, that where "parental custody constitutes a threat to the child's health or safety, government officials may remove a child from his or her parents' custody at least pending investigation." Gottlieb, 84 F.3d at 518; see also Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645, 649-53 (1972); Croft v. Westmoreland County Children & Youth Servs., 103 F.3d 1123, 1125 (3d Cir. 1997). We therefore determined prior to 1997 that where the state has an "objectively reasonable basis" for removing a child from his or her parent, the parent's substantive constitutional rights are not infringed. Gottlieb, 84 F.3d at 518; see generally id. at 520; van Emrik v. Chemung County Dep't of Soc. Servs., 911 F.2d 863, 866 (2d Cir. 1990). We also repeatedly assured potential defendants that qualified immunity would be available to "protect state officials in choosing between [difficult] alternatives, provided that there is an objectively reasonable basis for their decision, whichever way they make it." van Emrik, 911 F.2d at 866; see also Defore v. Premore, 86 F.3d 48, 50 (2d Cir. 1996) (per curiam) (qualified immunity exists to "insure that publicly employed caseworkers have adequate latitude to exercise their professional judgment in matters of child welfare"). In 1999, two years after the events in question here, we summarized the state of the law in Wilkinson: "Although parents enjoy a constitutionally protected interest in their family integrity, this interest is counterbalanced by the 'compelling governmental interest in the protection of minor children, particularly in circumstances where the protection is considered necessary as against the parents themselves.'" Wilkinson, 182 F.3d at 104 (quoting Manzano v. S.D. Dep't of Soc. Servs., 60 F.3d 505, 510 (8th Cir. 1995) (internal quotation marks omitted)). We observed that "[t]he difficulty of balancing the weighty interests apparent in the [child] abuse context…has prompted courts to impose few concrete restrictions on case workers, in exercising their discretion, short of [certain] obvious extremes." Id. We described those "extremes" as including circumstances where a caseworker "ignor[es] overwhelming exculpatory information" or "manufactur[es] false evidence." Id. We concluded in dicta that our decisions to that date had left the defendants at bar "with little or no indication that their alleged misconduct, as near as it was to the constitutional borderline, would have even implicated serious constitutional concerns." Id. at 107; see also Patel v. Searles, 305 F.3d 130, 139 (2d Cir. 2002), cert. denied, 538 U.S. 907 (2003). Our discussion in Wilkinson would seem to suggest that perhaps there was a lack of clearly established law available to guide Woo's conduct. We nonetheless cannot conclude as a matter of law that, in 1997, Woo lacked sufficient legal guidance by which to discern the lawfulness of his actions. Assuming, as we must at the summary judgment stage, that the factual circumstances are as Southerland, not Woo, describes them, and resolving all credibility questions and drawing all reasonable inferences in Southerland's favor, we are not able to say that Woo would then have lacked a legal basis for understanding that removing the children from their home would be unlawful. Indeed, the district court here was also of the view that "Southerland's substantive due process rights were clearly established at the time of the removal of the children." Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 232. We therefore cannot conclude on this record that the principles of law applicable to the facts as we must view them on appeal from a grant of summary judgment were not clearly established in 1997. Woo is thus not entitled at this stage to qualified immunity on Southerland's substantive due process claim, although, again, once the relevant disputes of material fact are resolved, the district court might eventually conclude that Woo is entitled to such immunity.

VII. The Southerland Children's Fourth Amendment Unlawful-Seizure Claim - Finally, the Southerland Children assert a claim for violation of their own substantive due process rights, which the district court recharacterized as a claim of unlawful seizure under the Fourth Amendment. See Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 227 n.22, 230 n.24. The district court concluded that Woo was entitled to qualified immunity because "prior to the Court of Appeals' decision in Tenenbaum [in 1999], there was no clear application of Fourth Amendment standards in the child removal context." Id. at 231. Although we agree with the district court's observation that this Circuit had not yet applied Fourth Amendment unlawful-seizure principles in the child-removal context by 1997, we think that the district court erred by conducting its inquiry solely by reference to the Fourth Amendment. Our decision in Tenenbaum effected a change in the legal framework applicable to a child's claim for substantive constitutional violations arising out of the child's removal from his or her parent's home. There, the plaintiffs contended that "[their daughter's] temporary removal for the purpose of subjecting her to a medical examination violated their and [the daughter's] substantive due-process rights." Tenenbaum, 193 F.3d at 599. Relying on Albright v. Oliver, 510 U.S. 266, 273 (1994) (plurality opinion of Rehnquist, C.J.), we observed thatvwhere a particular Amendment provides an explicit textual source of constitutional protection against a particular sort of government behavior, that Amendment, not the more generalized notion of substantive due process, must be the guide for analyzing these claims. Tenenbaum, 193 F.3d at 599 (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted). We said that "'[s]ubstantive due process analysis is…inappropriate…if [the] claim is covered by the Fourth Amendment.'" Id. at 600 (quoting Lewis, 523 U.S. at 843) (second brackets in original; other internal quotation marks omitted). We then concluded that the daughter's "removal and her examination constituted a seizure and search, respectively, under the Fourth Amendment," id., and that her claim "therefore 'must be analyzed under the standard appropriate to [the Fourth Amendment], not under the rubric of substantive due process.'"20 Id. (quoting United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 272 n.7 (1997)). The fact that Tenenbaum changed the legal "rubric" applicable to the Southerland Children's constitutional claims, however, is not determinative of whether their rights were clearly established in 1997. It would be inappropriate, we think, to afford Woo qualified immunity on the Southerland Children's claims solely because, two years after the events in question, we shifted the constitutional framework for evaluating those claims from the Fourteenth to the Fourth Amendment.

We reached a similar conclusion in Russo v. City of Bridgeport, 479 F.3d 196 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 552 U.S. 818 (2007). There we made clear that the constitutional "right to be free from prolonged detention caused by law enforcement officials' mishandling or suppression of exculpatory evidence," id. at 211, was a species of the right to be free from unlawful seizure under the Fourth Amendment, not a substantive due process right under the Fourteenth Amendment, see id. at 208-09. In then proceeding to undertake a qualified immunity inquiry, we cautioned that our "clarification [of the law was] of no consequence to the question of whether the right was clearly established [at the time of the relevant events], because the proper inquiry is whether the right itself—rather than its source—is clearly established." Id. at 212 (collecting cases; emphasis in original). Here, as in Russo, in inquiring whether there was clearly established law to govern the Southerland Children's claims in 1997, we look not only to authorities interpreting the Fourth Amendment, but to all decisions concerning the same substantive right. At the time of the events in question in this case, a child's claim for violation of his or her right to "preservation of family integrity," Duchesne, 566 F.2d at 825, would likely have been understood to arise under the substantive due process guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment. This right had been recognized in our case law by 1997, see Joyner ex rel. Lowry, 712 F.2d at 777-78; Rivera v. Marcus, 696 F.2d 1016, 1026 (2d Cir. 1982); Leonhard v. United States, 633 F.2d 599, 618 (2d Cir. 1980) (collecting cases); Duchesne, 566 F.2d at 825, although it had been less frequently litigated than the corresponding substantive parental right. As with the corresponding parental right, however, the law in 1997 also recognized the countervailing principle that the state may remove children from the custody of their parents without violating the children's constitutional rights where there is a reasonable basis for concluding that the children are abused or neglected. See, e.g., Rivera, 696 F.2d at 1017.

For much the same reason that we determined that Woo is not entitled to qualified immunity as a matter of law on the current record as to Southerland's substantive due process claim, resolving all disputed facts in the plaintiffs' favor for these purposes, we conclude that a reasonable caseworker in Woo's position would not have lacked a sufficient legal basis for knowing that his conduct under those circumstances would infringe upon the substantive constitutional rights of the Southerland Children. As with the other claims addressed in these appeals, though, the district court may yet conclude on remand and after further development of the facts that Woo is entitled to qualified immunity in this context.

Finally, we note that the district court concluded that, in the absence of qualified immunity protection, Woo would not be entitled to summary judgment on the merits of the Southerland Children's Fourth Amendment unlawful-seizure claim. See Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 234 n.29. We have no reason to disturb that ruling on appeal.

CONCLUSION - For the foregoing reasons, we vacate the district court's grant of summary judgment on each of the plaintiffs' claims that have been preserved for appeal: (1) Southerland's and the Southerland Children's claims for Fourth Amendment violations arising out of the allegedly unlawful search of the Southerland home; (2) Southerland's and the Southerland Children's claims for violations of procedural due process under the Fourteenth Amendment; (3) Southerland's claim for violation of substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment; and (4) the Southerland Children's claim for unlawful seizure under the Fourth Amendment. We remand for further proceedings. *. The Clerk of Court is directed to amend the official caption in accordance with the foregoing.

--------------------Footnotes:

1. We refer throughout this opinion to asserted Fourth Amendment rights of the plaintiffs. Inasmuch as the defendants are state and not federal actors, of course, whatever rights the plaintiffs have are "under the Fourth Amendment, as applied to the States under the Fourteenth Amendment['s]" Due Process Clause. Kia P. v. McIntyre, 235 F.3d 749, 761 (2d Cir. 2000); see Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 655 (1961).

2. Judge Sifton passed away while these appeals were pending.

3. Southerland later testified that the school contacted him with a medical referral after the paint-swallowing incident, and that he had tried to get Ciara to go to the appointment that was scheduled for her, but that she refused to go.

4. Woo listed the Manning Children's names at the top of the application, along with Southerland's name and the address of the Southerland apartment. The body of the application states in its entirety: I, Timothy Woo, Caseworker for ACS, am a person conducting a child protective investigation pursuant to the Social Services Law. I have reasonable cause to believe that the above named children may be found at the above premises. I have reason to believe that the children are abused or neglected children. The reasons and the sources of information are as follows: That on May 12, 1997, Sierra [sic] Manning, age 16 tried to kill herself by swallowing non-toxic paint. Mr. Sutherland [sic] did not take Sierra [sic] to a medical doctor and refused to take Sierra [sic] for psychiatric evaluation. Mr. Sutherland [sic] has refused to allow the Administration for Children's Services into his home to speak to the above named children. WHEREFORE, the applicant moves for an order authorizing the Administration for Children's Services accompanied by police to enter the premises to determine whether the above named children are present and to proceed thereafter with its child protective investigation. Application for Authorization to Enter Premises dated June 6, 1997, Ex. C to Silverberg Decl.

5.The district court summarized Woo's and Balan's stated reasons for removing the Children as including: the seriousness of the initial allegation in the Intake Report—that Ciara had attempted suicide; that Southerland had failed to seek medical assistance for Ciara or for Venus; that he had resisted allowing ACS to visit his home; that he had refused to accept ACS services or assistance; that the home lacked food and adequate light; that the use of multiple extension cords for the electronic equipment was dangerous; and that the children were dirty. This combination of factors, according to Woo and Balan, "established in [their] minds that Southerland could not parent the children responsibly." Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 225.

6. After the Southerland Children's removal, Woo brought Venus "to a hospital based on the instructions of a nurse at the agency that first examined the children. At the hospital, the wound was dressed and the child received a tetanus shot." Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 225 n.13.

7. On March 14, 2007, Southerland made a pro se submission to the district court requesting that the court take judicial notice of a number of documents, including a declaration by Ciara Manning that had been sworn on April 20, 2002. In that declaration, Ciara stated that Southerland had never molested or abused her in any way and that the statements she made previously to Woo and to the Family Court to that effect were false. See Pro Se Submission of Sonny B. Southerland at 26-27 (Dkt. No. 192), Southerland v. City of N.Y., No. 99-cv-3329 (E.D.N.Y. Mar. 14, 2007). 13

8. Michael G. O'Neill was appointed as counsel for both Southerland and the Southerland Children. In April 2004, Southerland resumed proceeding pro se before the district court, while Mr. O'Neill continued to represent the Southerland Children (including Venus and Sonny Jr., even after they were no longer minors). In April 2004, the district court also appointed a guardian ad litem to represent the Southerland Children's interests. Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 221 n.1. In the instant appeals, Southerland represents himself pro se, while Mr. O'Neill continues to represent the Southerland Children.

9. The amended complaint did not name as defendants or assert any claims against any of the other thirty-nine defendants that had been named by Southerland in his original pro se complaint. Additionally, although Ciara was identified as a plaintiff in the original complaint, she was dropped from the suit when the amended complaint was filed.

10. The amended complaint also joins nine John Doe defendants, including all persons who "supervis[ed], monitor[ed] and assist[ed] Woo in his actions with respect to the [Southerland] Children." Am. Compl. ¶39 (Dkt. No. 75), Southerland v. City of N.Y., No. 99-cv-3329 (E.D.N.Y. Nov. 22, 2002). The complaint asserts that "said Does are individually liable to [Southerland] for the deprivation of his constitutional rights and the constitutional rights of the [Southerland] Children as alleged herein." Id. In their briefing on appeal, the plaintiffs do not address these John Doe defendants. We conclude that the plaintiffs have abandoned their claims against the John Does. We note that even if the plaintiffs now sought to amend their complaint to identify the John Doe defendants, the claims against the newly named defendants would be time-barred. See Tapia-Ortiz v. Doe, 171 F.3d 150, 151-52 (2d Cir. 1999) (per curiam); Barrow v. Wethersfield Police Dep't, 66 F.3d 466, 468-70 (2d Cir. 1995), modified, 74 F.3d 1366 (2d Cir. 1996).

11. In so doing, the district court relied upon our statement, when the case was previously on appeal, that "[t]he children's claims for unreasonable seizure would proceed under the Fourth Amendment rather than the substantive component of the Due Process Clause." Southerland I, 4 F. App'x at 37 n.2 (citing Kia P. v. McIntyre, 235 F.3d 749, 757-58 (2d Cir. 2000)).

12. The district court later permitted the Southerland Children to assert their failure-to-train claim against the City not only with respect to the police, but also with respect to ACS. See Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 235 n.34.

13. "Where another provision of the Constitution provides an explicit textual source of constitutional protection, a court must assess a plaintiff's claims under that explicit provision and not the more generalized notion of substantive due process." Kia P., 235 F.3d at 757-58 (quoting Conn v. Gabbert, 526 U.S. 286, 293 (1999)) (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted).

14. The defendants also argue, with respect to the probable cause determination, that irrespective of the requirements of New York Family Court Act §1034(2), Woo was required to visit the Southerland home under a provision of the New York Social Services Law that requires that, within twenty-four hours of receipt of a "report[] of suspected child abuse or maltreatment" as provided for under New York Social Services Law §424(1), ACS must undertake an investigation that includes "an evaluation of the environment of the child named in the report and any other children in the same home," id. §424(6)(a). However, considering that Woo had reason to know that Ciara, the child identified in the report, was not living at the Southerland home—and, indeed, reason to know that none of the children named in his application to the Family Court were living there—his reliance on this provision of the Social Services Law fails. If Ciara was not living "on premises" at the Southerland home, Woo was not entitled to enter the home to evaluate this "environment," nor to evaluate the other children living there.

15. In child-abuse investigations, a Family Court order is equivalent to a search warrant for Fourth Amendment purposes. See Nicholson v. Scoppetta, 344 F.3d 154, 176 (2d Cir. 2003); Tenenbaum, 193 F.3d at 602.

16. We disagree with the defendants' assertion that Hurlman and Robison are not controlling here because the state officers in those cases were unlawfully on the premises, whereas Woo had a court order (albeit a disputed one) to enter the Southerland 16 We disagree with the defendants' assertion that Hurlman and Robison are not controlling here because the state officers in those cases were unlawfully on the premises, whereas Woo had a court order (albeit a disputed one) to enter the Southerland

17. In Tenenbaum, a removal was carried out because the child had reported—albeit under questionable circumstances—that her father had sexually abused her. See Tenenbaum, 193 F.3d at 594. There was no doubt at the time that the possibility of sexual abuse was, as it always is, a serious concern. At issue was whether there was nonetheless time under the circumstances to secure a court order prior to effecting the removal without risking imminent danger to the child. See id. at 608 (Jacobs, J., dissenting) (describing majority opinion as holding that, while there was "exigency," there was still no "emergency," because there was time to obtain a court order). Tenenbaum represented a novel application of procedural due process law because of the majority's holding that regardless of the seriousness of the allegations, it was still necessary to obtain a court order if time permitted. Here, by contrast, we understand the plaintiffs to assert that the circumstances presented did not necessitate an inquiry into whether there was time to obtain a court order, because the conditions in the Southerland home were not grave enough to trigger that inquiry.

18. The district court correctly noted that there are material factual disputes concerning whether emergency circumstances existed warranting the immediate removal of the Southerland Children from their home. See Southerland II, 521 F. Supp. 2d at 234 n.29 & 235 n.31. But even where emergency circumstances warranting removal exist, "'the constitutional requirements of notice and opportunity to be heard are not eliminated but merely postponed.'" Kia P., 235 F.3d at 760 (quoting Duchesne, 566 F.2d at 826). Therefore, a plaintiff may have a viable claim for violation of procedural due process even where emergency circumstances existed at the time of removal, if the plaintiff does not receive a timely and adequate postdeprivation hearing. See id. at 760-61. In this case, as will be explained below, important factual questions remain concerning the post-removal judicial confirmation proceedings, if any, that took place in the days after the Southerland Children's removal from their home.

19. See Southerland Children's Br. at 23 ("The children were held by the defendants without court order from June 9 until June 13, 1997. ACS filed a petition in the Family Court on June 13, 1997, and apparently some kind of proceeding was held on that day, although there is no evidence of it in the record."); Appellees' Br. at 19 ("Plaintiff Southerland's children, the Court found, were removed from the home and held in ACS custody pending a timely post-deprivation hearing where a family court judge confirmed the removal."). The parties have failed to brief the issue despite our prior instruction that Southerland "be given an opportunity to prove…that the subsequent family court proceedings were insufficiently prompt to pass constitutional muster." Southerland I, 4 F. App'x at 36.

20. We reaffirmed this approach in Kia P., 235 F.3d at 757-58, where we also construed a child's claimed violation of substantive due process as instead arising under the Fourth Amendment. In Southerland I, we relied on Kia P. in stating that "[t]he [Southerland] children's claims for unreasonable seizure would proceed under the Fourth Amendment rather than the substantive component of the Due Process Clause." Southerland I, 4 F. App'x at 37 n.2..

Original Resourse;

Thank you Expose Corrupt Courts

FBI: NC Woman Who Raised Kidnapped NY Child in Custody

2011-01-23T20:40:00.000-05:00

HARTFORD, Conn. -- A North Carolina woman who raised a child stolen 23 years ago from a New York hospital surrendered to authorities on a probation violation charge Sunday, and she was to appear in federal court to face kidnapping charges, the U.S. attorney's office said.

Ann Pettway surrendered Sunday morning to the FBI and Bridgeport police on a warrant from North Carolina, where she's on probation because of a conviction for attempted embezzlement, FBI supervisory special agent William Reiner said. She turned herself in days after a widely publicized reunion between the child she raised, now an adult, and her biological mother.

Pettway received two years of probation last June after she took items from a store where she worked, which is considered embezzlement under North Carolina law, state correction spokeswoman Pamela Walker said. Under terms of her probation, she wasn't allowed to leave the state.

Department of Correction officials there tried repeatedly to contact her after finding out investigators wanted to question her in the 1987 abduction of Carlina White.

North Carolina officials said Friday they believed Pettway was on the run from authorities. They said Sunday they would seek her extradition.

Carlina was just 19 days old when her parents took her to Harlem Hospital in the middle of the night with a high fever. Joy White and Carl Tyson said a woman who looked like a nurse had comforted them. The couple left the hospital to rest, but their baby was missing when they went back. No suspects were identified.

Carlina is now 23 and has been living under the name Nejdra Nance in Connecticut and in the Atlanta area. She said she had long suspected Pettway wasn't her biological mother because she could never provide her with a birth certificate and because she didn't look like anyone else in Pettway's family.

She periodically checked the website of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and while looking through New York photos early this month found one that looked nearly identical to her own baby picture. She contacted Joy White through the center.

White and Nance met in New York before DNA tests were complete, confident they were mother and daughter. After the test results confirmed it Wednesday, Nance returned from Atlanta to be with White again.

Pettway remained in custody Sunday and couldn't be reached for comment. She was to appear in federal court in New York on Monday to face kidnapping charges, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said.

Nobody answered when a reporter on Friday knocked on the door of a house where Pettway lived in Raleigh, N.C. A woman who answered the phone at a Pettway relative's home in Bridgeport on Sunday refused to comment on her surrender.

Nance told the New York Post in an interview posted Thursday that reuniting with her family was like a dream.

"I'm so happy," she said. "At the same time, it's a funny feeling because everything's brand new. It's like being born again."

Members of her biological family didn't return telephone messages seeking comment Sunday.

Original Link with Video & Pictures:

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/01/23/ann-pettway-suspect-in-carlina-whites-1987-kidnapping-turns-h/?icid=main%7Chtmlws-main-w%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk3%7C196915

Related Articles:

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/01/20/kidnapped-baby-carlina-white-reunited-with-parents-23-years-late/

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/01/23/carlina-white-found-identity-but-now-has-to-find-self/

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/01/20/carlina-white-finds-her-family-what-motivates-baby-snatchers/

My Two Cents: Baby or Child Snatchers are motivated by a sense of entitlement which comes along with a personality disorder = Psychopaths and or the "newer, kinder, gentler name = Sociopath. As proven by her additional legal problems!

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Sentencing delayed for neighbor convicted in Tracy torture case

2011-01-20T10:33:00.000-05:00

STOCKTON --

Sentencing for the Tracy man convicted of torturing a teenage boy at his neighbor's home two years ago has been delayed until next month.

Anthony Waiters, 31, was originally scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday by San Joaquin County Superior Court Judge Terrence Van Oss, but Waiters' attorney asked for the delay to file additional paperwork with the court, including a motion for a new trial. The new sentencing date is set for Feb. 28 in the Stockton courthouse. Waiters is facing a life sentence.
Allan Jose, Waiters' attorney, said he expects his motion for a new trial to also be heard Feb. 28. If Van Oss denies that request, the court will then proceed with sentencing, Jose said outside the courtroom.

In November, a San Joaquin County jury convicted Waiters of torture, aggravated mayhem and several other charges for physically abusing Kyle Ramirez, who was 16 when he escaped the Tennis Lane house Dec. 1, 2008, and ran into a nearby gym, begging for help. He wore only boxer shorts and was emaciated, dirty, bloody and had a chain around his ankle.

He said he had been beaten, cut, burned, chained to a coffee table and forced to sleep in a fireplace.

The three adults who lived in the home from which Kyle escaped -- Michael Schumacher and Kelly Lau, who are husband and wife, and Caren Ramirez, who was Kyle's caretaker -- were each sentenced Dec. 6 to three decades or more in prison.

They each took plea deals in the case, avoiding the possibility of life sentences had they been convicted by a jury.

Waiters, a youth football coach, was their next-door neighbor. Kyle testified in court that Waiters would come over and take part in the abuse, including hitting Kyle with an aluminum baseball bat and cutting his arm with a knife.

Contact Sophia Kazmi at 925-847-2122. Follow her at Twitter.com/sophiakazmi.

Original Article- http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/nationalbreaking/ci_17127641

Earlier Articles:

http://disgustedwiththesystem.blogspot.com/2009/06/teen-in-tracy-torture-case-was-burned.html

http://articles.cnn.com/2008-12-04/justice/shackled.teen.trio_1_fitness-center-group-home-court-documents?_s=PM:CRIME

http://articles.cnn.com/2008-12-10/justice/shackled.teen.arrest_1_boxer-shorts-teen-case-fitness-center?_s=PM:CRIME

http://articles.cnn.com/2009-04-01/justice/shackled.teen_1_teen-tortured-shackled?_s=PM:CRIME

http://www.examiner.com/headlines-in-stockton/sentences-handed-down-tracy-teen-torture-case-video

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Do You Want Your Parenting & Civil Rights Back?

2011-01-12T14:38:00.000-05:00

Below there is a link to an amazing U-Tube video by Leon Koziol.

Leon has been a Civil Rights Attorney for nearly a quarter of a century..

He gets it and he's doing something about it!

He's is leading parents in the Right Direction toward getting back that which our wonderful "System" has taken from us... our Constitutional, Family, and Civil Rights

Please watch the video and join us!

Koziol Oultines Plans for Upcoming Tele-Conferences and Seminars « Leon Koziol

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Murdered ex-Pentagon official, John Wheeler, 'confused' on video before death: cops

2011-01-10T16:28:00.002-05:00

Yanno, I freely admit that many people out there would love to label me a 'Conspiracy Theorist."

Am I? Pftttttttttt I'm living proof that there ARE CONSPIRACIES! Forget being a theorist!

Anywho, for those of you that follow this blog, I know that your cases can be explained by the Conspiracy behind the Title IV Federal Funding.. and the need to 'CREATE" abused women and children.. as well as to 'CREATE teen aged thugs that belong in "Detention Centers" all for the love of money [The Federal Funds the Government gives the States to 'Protect' the needy].

Now before you flip out on me.. I KNOW there are REAL abused women and children! I'm a survivor of D.V. and my children are being emotionally abused by their kidnapping Father Mr. Wonderful aka Mr. Louis M. Agrenziano who is being aided and abetted by his political connections to the Panepinto's via his live in girlfriend Aggie Panepinto, and his superior for well over 20 years in the CYO, Mr. Joseph Panepinto who just happens to be married to Acting Supreme Court Judge Barbara I. Panepinto, all of Richmond County in New York.

So, with all that said.. when I came across these articles this morning, coupled with what happened in
Arizona where there just 'happened' to be a child at a political event who happened to have been born on 9/11... I couldn't help wondering are they turning on each other now- or if the whole idea of them turning on each other- is old, or wished away by screaming "Conspiracy Theorist!"

I have no Fu*&^%g idea!

You decide:

News Updates from Citizens For Legitimate Government

10 Jan 2011

http://www.legitgov.org

All links are here:

http://www.legitgov.org/#breaking_news

Breaking: Ex-Congressional aide found dead in burning car near W.H. official's home

10 Jan 2011 A veteran Congressional aide who worked most recently as a lobbyist [Progress Energy Inc.] and was married to White House legislative affairs senior official was found dead in her car Monday behind the couple’s Capitol Hill home following a low-speed car crash and subsequent fire. Ashley Turton, whose husband, Dan, is the White House’s deputy director of legislative affairs for the U.S. House, died in the early-morning incident in the garage behind 800 A Street, NE, friends, her employer and Congressional leadership aides said. City fire and police units responded to the vicinity of the home at about 5 A.M. Monday, according to fire department spokesman Pete Piringer.

Murdered ex-Pentagon official, John Wheeler, 'confused' on video before death: cops --

The state medical examiner says Wheeler was murdered. Police won't say how. 05 Jan 2011 The probe into how a former Pentagon official ended up in a Delaware landfill took a strange, sad turn Wednesday when video surfaced of him stumbling around in a daze days before he died. Dressed in a dark suit with no tie or overcoat, carrying his left shoe in his right hand, John Wheeler looked lost and confused as he wandered in a Wilmington parking garage on Dec. 29. Police said they have other surveillance video showing him inside a historic Wilmington building that houses the headquarters of chemical giant DuPont on the evening of Dec. 30, hours before he was found dead.

Don't miss the comments from Don‘t miss the comment from, sisterofpeace...

“ Interesting the week of Mr. Wheeler's death and I might be a little obsessed with the world lately but this is what is going on:

(Dec 30) 100,000 fish dead in Arkansas,

(Dec 30) 100 tons of fish wash up dead in Brazil,

(Dec 31) 5000 birds drop dead in Arkansas,

(Jan 3) 500 birds drop dead in Louisiana,

(Jan 4) A "carpet" of red snapper wash up dead in New Zealand,

(Jan 4) A hundred birds drop dead in Kentucky,

(Jan 5) 2 million fish wash up dead in Maryland,

(Jan 5) 40,000 crabs washed up dead in England,

(Jan 5) 50 birds drop dead in Sweden.

Just saying alot of weird stuff happening in a week, could chemicals in the air/water have anything to do it with it. Could John Wheeler been aware of anything going on, he did know a little about biochemistry warfare.”

Or her other comment

“We live in such a fast paced world, this will all be forgotten in a few days. My prayers are for his family that won't soon forget this incident. I hope he as was not drugged and murdered by people we think we can trust. I hope I am just feeling the conspiracy feeling and it will pass. God bless his family and keep them safe’

~~~~~~~

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Parent Alienation Syndrome ‐ By Dr Andre PhD DAPA PDF Ebook

2011-01-02T19:29:00.000-05:00

I came accross this E-Book by accident today.. thought it was worth sharing..

http://khup.com/download/14_keyword-creating-public-alienation/parent-alienation-syndrome-by-dr-andre-phd-dapa.pdf

Abstract

Historically, Parent Alienation Syndrome (PAS) has been fairly and unfairly criticized in both judicial and mental health communities. It has been used appropriately and inappropriately by the legal system, and is hotly debated by social movements. Proponents applaud it as a distinctly diagnosable phenomenon and appreciate the clarity it brings to diagnosis and treatment of intra and interfamily dynamics. Critics sometimes go so far as to deny it exists. Some courts have recognized it, while other courts have barred testimony on it. For psychologists, therapists, mediators, custody evaluators, and forensic psychologists who have dealt with the truly stunning behavior of an alienated child, or the sorrow and confusion of a rejected parent, or the characterlogical pathology of a hateful alienating parent, its existence is not in question. Given the large number of children of divorce who are likely to be vulnerable to this problem, there is widespread potential for far‐reaching and tragic circumstances for individuals, fam¬ilies, and society. It is plainly apparent that empirical data is much needed and long overdue.

Click the link up top for more...

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Having my 'Birth Card Report' could have changed my life..

Happy Holidays

2010-12-31T14:09:00.000-05:00

I want to take a minute to wish all my regular readers a Happy and Healthy New Year! Hope your Holiday Season has been a great one!

Ok, now that the New Year is here, most of us are making Resolutions that we probably won't keep past January!

I've Resolved to Make this a better planet.. yeah, yeah, yeah I know a zillion other people want the same thing.. and world peace while we're at it (smile).

However, in order to get my wish, I know I have to be part of the solution.. so with that in mind. I've decided to Help others help themselves out of whatever rut they happen to be in.

If you find you're ending this year sick and tired of the same ole, same ole.. take a look at what I've proposed.. click the link below.

If not.. that's ok too.. either way I hope all of your dreams for this New Year come true!

Are You Sick N Tired...

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Breaking News and Commentary from Citizens for Legitimate Government

2010-12-23T19:29:00.003-05:00

UN torture rep to investigate treatment of jailed leaks suspect Bradley Manning -- Office of rapporteur on torture confirms it is looking into complaint made by Manning supporter 23 Dec 2010 The United Nations is investigating a complaint on behalf of Bradley Manning that he is being mistreated while held since May in US Marine Corps custody pending trial. The army private is charged with the unauthorised use and disclosure of classified information, material related to the WikiLeaks, and faces a court martial sometime in 2011. The office of Manfred Nowak, special rapporteur on torture based in Geneva, received the complaint from a Manning supporter; his office confirmed that it was being looked into. Manning's supporters say that he is in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day; this could be construed as a form of torture.

CIA launches task force to assess impact of U.S. cables' exposure by WikiLeaks 22 Dec 2010 The CIA has launched a task force to assess the impact of the exposure of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables and military files by WikiLeaks. Officially, the panel is called the WikiLeaks Task Force. But at CIA headquarters, it's mainly known by its all-too-apt acronym: W.T.F. The irreverence is perhaps understandable for an agency that has been relatively unscathed by WikiLeaks. Only a handful of CIA files have surfaced on the WikiLeaks Web site, and records from other agencies posted online reveal remarkably little about CIA employees or operations.

WTF? OMG, LOL! CIA gives WikiLeaks taskforce naughty name
US spy agency forms taskforce to assess fallout from 250,000 leaked US cables 22 Dec 2010 The CIA has launched a taskforce to assess the impact of 250,000 leaked US diplomatic cables. Its name? WikiLeaks Task Force, or WTF for short. The group will scour the released documents to survey damage caused by the disclosures. One of the most embarrassing revelations was that the US state department had drawn up a list of information it would like on key UN figures - it later emerged the CIA had asked for the information.

Angry Assange insists: I am not a sexual predator, I just really like women 22 Dec 2010 Julian Assange has claimed the two women he is accused of sexually assaulting merely 'got into a tizzy' after sleeping with him. The WikiLeaks founder angrily denied being a sexual predator, adding: 'I’m not promiscuous. I just really like women.' The whistleblower - who is fighting extradition to Sweden – went on the attack after graphic details emerged of allegations made by Miss A and Miss W, both of whom he is accused of molesting. Assange said the decision by The Guardian - ironically, his partner in releasing hundreds of confidential US cables – to publish leaked Swedish police files about him was 'disgusting'.

Norwegian Newspaper gets its hands on WikiLeaks cables 23 Dec 2010 A Norwegian newspaper confirmed today that it had gotten hold of the entire file of more than 250,000 secret US embassy cables first leaked to WikiLeaks. Norway's main business newspaper Dagens Naerings reported that Oslo-based Aftenposten became the only media organization in the world to gain direct access to all the documents. It allows them to dodge WikiLeaks' current strategy of drip-feeding the cables to preferred partners The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel and El Pais.

WikiLeaks: Halliburton complained of prices in Iraq 23 Dec 2010 Oil companies working in Iraq complained of a "mafia" type atmosphere [LOL! They should know] that drove the price of security up considerably, leaked U.S. diplomatic cables reveal. Officials at oil services company Halliburton complained the price of security in Iraq was "unwarranted" during a modestly secure environment in 2008, confidential U.S. diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks and published by London's Guardian newspaper reveal.

Rome Bombs: Embassies Face 'Serious Threat' 23 Dec 2010 Police are searching all foreign embassies in Rome following two bomb blasts in the Chilean and Swiss buildings that injured two employees. The Italian foreign minister said there was a "serious threat" against embassies in city. The mayor of Rome Gianni Alemanno claimed the explosions were part of a "wave of terrorism".

Bombs explode at Switzerland and Chile embassies in Italy  --Rome police say city on high alert after Swiss national suffers serious hand injury 23 Dec 2010 Bombs exploded at the Chilean and Swiss embassies in Rome today, injuring two employees, at least one of whom risked losing a hand. The first blast came late morning at the Swiss embassy. A member of the staff was opening mail when a package exploded in his hands... Just over two hours later, a second device went off at the Chilean embassy.

Two Parcel Bombs Hit Embassies in Rome  23 Dec 2010 Parcel bombs exploded at the Swiss and Chilean embassies to Italy in the capital on Thursday, injuring two people and raising concerns of possible terrorist attacks in the country's shopper-packed streets ahead of the Christmas holidays. The first package was opened at the Swiss embassy around 12 p.m. local time by a staff worker, Bernardino Regazzoni, the Swiss ambassador said in a television interview. The second parcel bomb exploded at the Chilean embassy around 3 p.m.

Al Qaeda threat involving hotels buffets 'credible,' report says  --CEO: Hospitality employers to include 'See something, say something' cards - developed in conjunction with Homeland Security - in employees' payroll stubs 21 Dec 2010 According to a Monday CBS report receiving much attention today, al Qaeda [al-CIAduh] terrorists have talked about poisoning salad bars and hotel buffets at various U.S. hotels and restaurants over a single weekend. Department of Homeland Security officials have deemed the threat as a "credible" one.

North Korea threatens 'sacred' nuclear war  23 Dec 2010 North Korea today threatened to launch a "sacred" nuclear war against South Korea if it is attacked. The warning came as Seoul staged military exercises that have raised already high tensions on the peninsula. Defence chief Kim Yong Chun said North Korea is "fully prepared to launch a sacred war" - and would use its nuclear capabilities - if attacked and warned the South against intruding onto even the smallest amount on its territory, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

S Korea stages huge show of military force near border 24 Dec 2010 South Korea has staged its largest military exercise of the year in a huge show of force against North Korea... The drills, conducted just south of the heavily armed border, came a month after a North Korean artillery bombardment against a South Korean island killed four, dramatically raising tensions on the peninsula. About 800 soldiers took part in the exercise - the largest so far this year - which included 30 tanks, armoured personnel carriers, F-15 fighter-jets, artillery pieces, multiple long-range rockets and Cobra helicopter gunships.

South Korea to Stage Military Exercise With Jets, Artillery North of Seoul  --Defense Minister Kim Kwan: Military will remain on alert 22 Dec 2010 South Korea said its military will hold a one-day exercise tomorrow involving jet fighters and mobile artillery in an area between Seoul and the Demilitarized Zone that separates the nation from its neighbor. About 800 military personnel will take part in the drill near Pocheon, approximately 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the border with North Korea, said a spokesman at the Joint Chiefs of Staff who declined to be named, citing military policy.

Pakistan opposes US military raids  22 Dec 2010 Pakistan has opposed any ground military operations in its territory by US troops amid reports of the US expansion of ground war into the Asian country. Following a New York Times report on Monday about the US expanding of ground operations across the border into Pakistan's tribal areas, a spokesman for Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday Pakistan is capable of confronting militants in its tribal regions.

'US-led forces cause terrorism in region'  23 Dec 2010 Iran's Deputy Ambassador to the UN Eshaq Al-e-Habib has said that the spread of terrorism in the region is the result of the presence of US-led foreign forces in Afghanistan. The foreign forces in Afghanistan have failed to uproot terrorism in the country and terrorism has spread to other countries such as Iran, Al-e-Habib said in a UN Security Council meeting on Afghanistan on Thursday. "We believe the recent terrorist attack in Chabahar, which led to the death and injury of scores of people, was due to the wrong policy of foreign forces present in our region," Mehr News Agency quoted him as saying. [Every region.]

25K soldiers headed to Afghanistan in 2011 22 Dec 2010 Nearly 25,000 troops will board planes for a yearlong deployment to Afghanistan starting soon after New Year's, the Defense Department has announced. About 18,000 soldiers in five infantry brigade combat teams as well as two combat aviation brigades and a headquarters element will deploy to Afghanistan as part of the regular troop rotations.

US-led strike kills two in Afghanistan 23 Dec 2010 A police officer and a civilian have been killed when a helicopter under the command of US-led forces opened fire on a car in northern Afghanistan. Faryab province police chief Khalil Andarabi and the governor's spokesman, Ahmad Jawed Bedar, said the vehicle was heading to the provincial capital of Maimana when it was struck. The civilian killed in the incident has been identified as Mohammad Aminuddin, the brother of former Afghan parliament member Sarajuddin Mozafari.

Afghan bomb blast kills 2, injures 4  23 Dec 2010 A massive explosion has rocked the northern province of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan, killing two people and injuring four others. The huge blast rocked the capital city of Kunduz province at 8 a.m. local time, eyewitnesses told a Press TV correspondent on Thursday. Four other people were also injured after a bomber blew himself up near a police checkpoint in Konduz province.

US-led forces kill 5 Afghan civilians  22 Dec 2010 At least five civilians have been killed by US-led foreign troops in southern Afghanistan, amid growing discontent over the rising number of civilian fatalities in the war-wracked country. The civilians lost their lives on Tuesday in the province of Helmand's Sangin district, which is a flashpoint for foreign forces in their nine-year war against Taliban militants.

British soldier killed in Afghanistan 22 Dec 2010 A British soldier has been killed by an explosive device in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan, bringing the number of deaths among the UK troops to 347. The soldier was killed while patrolling the Nahr-e Saraj district of the troubled province on Tuesday. He was struck by an improvised explosive device (IED).

New U.S. Sanctions Hit Iran Guard, Shipper  22 Dec 2010 The Obama administration enacted new financial sanctions on Iran's elite military unit and its largest shipping company, as the U.S. intensifies efforts to choke Tehran off from the global financial system. The Treasury Department's announcement Tuesday comes just weeks ahead of a scheduled second round of negotiations in Turkey between Iran and the international community focused on containing Tehran's nuclear program, which Iran says is peaceful in nature.

Ratification of START nuclear treaty hailed 23 Dec 2010 Nations on Thursday hailed the US ratification of a key treaty slashing US and Russian nuclear arsenals as a boost to international security in a new age of cooperation between the Cold War foes. The START treaty restricts the two nations to a maximum of 1,550 deployed warheads each, a cut of about 30 percent from a limit set in 2002, and 800 launchers and bombers. The Russian parliament could ratify it this week.

Senate ratifies new U.S.-Russia nuclear weapons treaty 22 Dec 2010 The U.S. Senate on Wednesday approved a new nuclear arms-reduction treaty with Russia, the broadest such pact between the former Cold War foes in nearly two decades. The Senate ratified the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, known as New START, by a vote of 71 to 26, easily clearing the threshold of two-thirds of senators present as required by the Constitution for treaty ratification. The final vote came after Senate Democrats accepted two amendments designed to placate Republicans who had qualms about the treaty work 24/7 to ensure Obusha doesn't win re-election].

Senate Passes Health-Care Bill for Sept. 11 First Responders 22 Dec 2010 The U.S. Senate approved legislation to help those who responded to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City. The path for approval on a voice vote was secured earlier today when Senate Republicans agreed to drop their opposition to the legislation. The bill provides for $4.3 billion in additional aid over five years, with $1.5 billion for health benefits and $2.7 billion for compensation, said Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican who had been opposing the bill because of cost concerns [but "forgot" about such concerns when pushing for tax cuts for the rich and his corpora-terrorist overlords].

Obama signs historic bill ending 'don't ask, don't tell' 22 Dec 2010 President Obama signed historic legislation repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that compelled gay and lesbian servicemembers to hide their sexual orientation. At a ceremony at the Interior Department, Obama thanked "all the patriots...       who were forced to hang up their uniforms" because of the policy, which dates to early in the Clinton administration.

Polar bear status pits environmentalists vs. administration [Um, I'll take the polar bear.] --Advocates for the animals want the status listed as 'endangered,' but such a move is opposed by powerful industry groups. 23 Dec 2010 A dispute about how much the government should protect polar bears has turned into a battleground for environmentalists and some of the country's most powerful business organizations over the larger question of global warming. On Wednesday, the Interior Department filed arguments in federal court defending its decision to classify polar bears as "threatened" rather than "endangered" despite widespread shrinkage of the sea ice that forms the bears' natural habitat.

W.H.: Polar bears not 'endangered' 22 Dec 2010 The Obama regime is sticking with a George W. Bush-era decision to deny polar bears endangered species status. In a court filing Wednesday, the Fish and Wildlife Service defended the previous administration’s decision to give the polar bear the less-protective "threatened" species designation, a move that will frustrate environmentalists who hoped for stronger protections under the Endangered Species Act. [No Merry Christmas for polar bears: Under cover of his 'Holiday Bad News Dump,' sycophantic sell-out, Barack Obama, has decided that the polar bear doesn't need protection from his oil overlords.]

Scrubbed up for Christmas: Spike, the orphaned hedgehog gets a festive make-over 23 Dec 2010 This is a baby hedgehog receiving a good old fashioned rub-a-dub after he was found wandering in a garden, unable to roll into a ball. Named Spike, the tiny creature has to be scrubbed clean with a toothbrush because of his delicate skin... Secret World Wildlife Rescue is the only 24/7 wildlife rescue centre in the South West, annually caring for over 4000 sick, injured and orphaned animals.

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US government builds vast domestic spying network: report 20 Dec 2010 The US government is building a vast domestic spying network to collect information on Americans as part of expanding counter-terrorism efforts, the Washington Post reported Monday. The unprecedented network involves local police, state and military authorities feeding a growing database on thousands of US citizens and residents, even though many have never been charged with breaking the law, the Post reported, citing numerous interviews and 1,000 documents.

Anti-terror raids lead to 12 arrests over multiple bomb attack fears --Sources: Suspected targets included sites in Whitehall, including around Houses of Parliament 20 Dec 2010 Counter-terrorism officials launched a major operation over fears of multiple bomb attacks in Whitehall, central London, and on Christmas shoppers and revellers in the West Midlands, the Guardian has learned. In a series of co-ordinated pre-dawn raids in Stoke, Birmingham, Cardiff and east London, police arrested 12 men aged 17 to 28 and began extensive searches of a number of properties. Sources with knowledge of the operation said the arrests followed intelligence that targets including "public spaces" and shopping areas in the West Midlands were part of a suspected plot.

U.S. Military Seeks to Expand Raids in Pakistan --The decision to expand American military activity in Pakistan would amount to the opening of a new front in the nine-year-old war. 21 Dec 2010 Senior American military commanders in Afghanistan are pushing for an expanded campaign of Special Operations ground raids across the border into Pakistan’s tribal areas, a risky strategy reflecting the growing frustration with Pakistan’s efforts to root out militants there. The proposal, described by American officials in Washington and Afghanistan, would escalate military activities inside Pakistan, where the movement of American forces has been largely prohibited because of fears of provoking a backlash.

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FEDERAL COURT CIVIL RIGHTS LAWSUIT FILED AGAINST NYS CHIEF JUSTICE , STATE COURT SYSTEM AND OTHERS CHALLENGING PARENTING LAWS AND LIBERTY DEPRIVATIONS

2010-12-18T17:10:00.002-05:00

Leon Koziol (A Civil Rights Attorney)

1518 Genesee Street
Utica, New York 13502

(315) 796-4000

www.leonkoziol.com

TO: ALL MEDIA AND INTERESTED PARTIES

DATE: November 17, 2010

FROM: CIVIL RIGHTS ADVOCATE LEON R. KOZIOL

RE: FEDERAL COURT CIVIL RIGHTS LAWSUIT FILED AGAINST NYS CHIEF JUSTICE , STATE COURT SYSTEM AND OTHERS CHALLENGING PARENTING LAWS AND LIBERTY DEPRIVATIONS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
           In what may be described as the most sweeping challenge to date upon our nation’s draconian child control laws surrounding Title IV-D of the Social Security Act, New York Civil Rights Advocate Leon R. Koziol, J.D. has filed a comprehensive test case in United States District Court in Albany, New York. Named in the action are judicial and law enforcement officials, including New York’s Chief Justice and Unified Court System. The lawsuit, served upon select parties this week, takes aim at “custody” and “child support” laws which alienate children from their parents as part of a government money generating scheme. A 39 page, 24 count civil complaint sets forth the manner in which lawyers and forensic agents feed off of manufactured controversies in domestic relations courts to harm parent-child relations and the financial stability of mainstream households. According to Koziol, it is a process which is harming the productivity of an entire nation.

         Until his public stance against the legal profession in recent years, Mr. Koziol enjoyed an unblemished 23 year career as a constitutional rights attorney. His accomplishments include six figure jury verdicts on behalf of race, gender and free speech victims. In 2004, he secured a final judgment in New York Supreme Court declaring unconstitutional the operation of the largest casino in that state. He has appeared on the CBS Program “60 Minutes”, New York Times and CNN, among other national mediums. The current action provides a startling look at the manner in which government actors are suppressing free speech, due process and the People’s liberty interests in childrearing. Mr. Koziol is seeking similar victims of courtroom abuses to join this action and transform it to class action status. Support is needed behind his sacrificial cause on behalf of “parents similarly situated”. As the holiday season approaches, Mr. Koziol hopes to target family preservation issues and the scheduling of a national parenting rights convention.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/42942978/Koziol-Files-Federal-Court-Civil-Rights-Lawsuit-NYS-Chief-Justice-Others-Named

           Thank you Dear God!

Below is my email to him-

Good afternoon Leon Koziol,

I am very interested in getting in on a class action.

I have attached my pro se Federal Lawsuit that was dismissed immediately to which I then filed a Notice of Appeal. That was also shot down and dismissed immediately!

I have since filed a Petition with (sorry ladies and gents I omitted here on this blog- where I've filed due to my stalking estranged husband and his politically connected cronies- however, I did tell Mr. Koziol where I've filed). I am awaiting their decision.

My story is very long and full of corruption but the short version is my ex is living with Aggie Panepinto, he has been working with Joseph Panepinto (the Executive Director of the CYO [ A division of Catholic Charities] ) who happens to be married to acting Supreme Court Justice- Barbara I. Panepinto.

In 2003, I was maliciously labeled a dangerous drug addict by ACS unbeknown to me until 2006. Once I found out about it I immediately had the wrongful case over turned and sealed. I had an attorney file a Malicious Prosecution Negligent Misrepresentation lawsuit. However, he refused to put it in Federal Court and it's been sitting in State Court ignored ever since my 50h hearing wherein I proved the political connections my estranged husband has then I linked the connections of title IV federal funding and the CYO and ACS!

Not one word of this Malicious labeling me a drug addict came out in the three years I had been in court before I figured it all out. Additionally they precluded my 100% NEGATIVE HAIR DRUG TEST from the record and have not allowed me ANY CONTACT with my children in 9 years!

I've attached my Federal Lawsuit if you have time or interest in reading it, I would love to know if we can somehow work together!

Additionally, one of my best friends is also getting destroyed by the system- her problem is that her husband is an Assistant D.A. and they did the same exact thing to her as they did to me.

Another one of my dear friends who is an attorney also went through hell and was separated from her children for well over 10 years because of the corruption in our court system.
Together the three of us have advocated and met with hundreds of others who's human rights have been eradicated, whose children were sold to the highest bidder and all of this has been due to money and corruption!

I've added your blog to my Blog - http://disgustedwiththesystem.blogspot.com/

Please contact me and lets all work together!

Louise Uccio

P.S. I haven't posted my Federal Lawsuit on this blog yet, due to my scanner not playing nice- however, if anyone would like to see it, or to use it as a template- just email me and ask I'll send it via email!

Holistic Healing for Victims of Parent Alienation, Narcissists and or Psychopaths

2010-12-06T19:33:00.007-05:00

Most of my regular readers know I'm intrigued by Personality Disorders.

Why is that important?

Well, any of us that have been alienated from our children.. whether you label it Parent Alienation, or Maternal Alienation.. there is one common theme that runs through both...

ABUSE!! End of Story, generations of abuse.. that keeps on going and going and going!

So, some of you might be saying "yeah and?" From past experience on these kinds of posts, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of you may want to write me some nasty email saying that your abusive husband alleged Parent Alienation, blah blah blah..

I don't buy your twisted version of Parent Alienation or Maternal Alienation. just cuz your selling it.. so, don't waste your time. As far as I’m concerned a rose is a rose,, is a rose, no matter what color it is, or what you want to call it.

As far as I’m concerned again, everyone needs to stop crying foul.. because our children are being destroyed from the very core of their bodies while grown adults argue what “label” should be put on the abuse our children are going through.

Now before I get into the reason for today’s post.. I'm gonna say that this post may be hard to swallow!

In order to heal our children, first we have to heal ourselves. Alienators, abusers, liars, dominating manipulators.. whatever you want to call them.. can't alienate, abuse, lie, dominate or manipulate someone who isn't a willing participant. Albeit an unconscious participant.. a participant nonetheless.

That statement reminds me of an issue I have with those women's groups- they scream from the roof tops: DON'T BLAME THE VICTIM!

I'm NOT blaming the victim! I’m a survivor of abuse and I'm saying the victim needs to learn to take accountability for their role in getting into an abusive relationship to begin with.

Abuse breeds abuse, period!

Anywho, back to my original thought…

When children are abused emotionally or physically, neglected, over protected or traumatized in some other way.. many children dissociate in order to survive. Studies show that not all children who have been abused dissociate however, all adults that dissociate have been abused.

The rest of us are fully aware of the abuse, but don’t realize how horribly it’s effected our lives.

We don’t put 1 & 1 together to = 2.

(1) Childhood abuse of one kind or another. +

(1) Domestic Violence of one kind or another.. being either the perpetrator or the victim.. =

(2) People pleasers, or adults that are “Do Gooders” or “Peace-Makers” “Rescuers” “Don’t Rock The Boat People” or the flip side of the Drama Triangle you can have someone with all those qualities above, who can switch when their buttons are pushed or take on as a primary role.. the “Rebels” the “Rock The Boat People” “The Outcasts, and even the Abusers! You get the idea right?

Anyway, the laid back ‘Do Gooders’ are the ones that end up in court with the Psychopaths we’ve married or have had children with. Then we spend years witnessing how the Abuser has set themselves on destroy.. and guess who’s the Target?

Yep, you got it, the Peace Makers, the Do Gooders, the laid back easy going type, the Don't Rock the Boat people, etc, etc, etc!

Some of you may be thinking.. “yeah ok- and, that’s not breaking news, so what’s your point”

My point is- that us ‘Do Gooders’ need to accept that we played a role in our demise then immediately do something about it.

Here’s where these Youtube videos below come in..

I’m a firm believer in holistic medicine and when I saw these sets of videos on how to self heal using acupressure points, I spent at least a week reviewing them all..

I have to say, these are amazing.. and I believe if you put the effort in, it will help many alienated parent out there to heal in order to be healthy enuff to fight from an aware state of mind, not from a victim mindset.

Happy Viewing!

Tapping Points

Why Does Tapping Work?

Outsmart Stress

Anger Release

Relationships, Memories & Life Patterns

Why We Have Problems AND The Solution

Release the Past & Memories Aren't Real

Self Image & Love Yourself

Meet Cathryn Taylor- Author of "The Inner Child Workbook"

How to work with your Soul's Purpose

Who Is Your Inner Child?

#1a EFT/Inner Child Meditation - Overview

#1b EFT/Inner Child Meditation- 7 Layer Healing Process layer 1

#2 EFT/Inner Child Meditation - 7 Layer Process - Layer 2

#3 EFT/Inner Child Meditation- 7 Layer Healing Process - Layer 3

#4 EFT/Inner Child Meditation- 7 Layer Healing Process - Layer 4

#5 EFT/Inner Child Meditation- 7 Layer Healing Process - Later 5

#6 EFT/Inner Child Meditation- Layer 6 Reprogramming the Body

#7 EFT/Inner Child Meditation- Layer 7 - Passing It On to the World

In the event that you're not sure your partner was or is a Malignant Narcissist, Borderline Personality, Histrionic Personality or even beyond that: A Psychopath.. aka Antisocial Personality Disorder.. then take a look at these videos below!

Cluster B Disorders

Narcissism, NPD & Aggression : Sam Vaknin takes the NPA test

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Antisocial-Personality-Disorder

Borderline Personality Disorder

Narcissist in Court and Litigation

Narcissist or Psychopath? What Are the Differences?

Narcissistic Rage and Narcissistic Injury

More for the 'victims' of those with Personality Disorders..

Effects of Abuse on Victims and Survivors

Good People Ignore Abuse and Torture: Why?

Top-10 Ways to Identify Co-Dependency

Top-10 Actions to Break Co-Dependency

Government Workers Ordered Not to Read Cables

2010-12-05T10:23:00.001-05:00

WASHINGTON — In a classic case of shutting the barn door after the horse has left, the Obama administration and the Department of Defense have ordered the hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors not to view the secret cables and other classified documents published by Wikileaks and news organizations around the world unless the workers have the required security clearance or authorization.

“Classified information, whether or not already posted on public websites or disclosed to the media, remains classified, and must be treated as such by federal employees and contractors, until it is declassified by an appropriate U.S. Government authority,” said the notice sent on Friday afternoon by the Office of Management and Budget, which is part of the White House, to agency and department heads, urging them to distribute it to their staff.

The directive applies to both government computers and private devices that employees or contractors might have, as long as they are accessing the documents on nonclassified government networks. It does not advise agencies to block WikiLeaks or other websites on government computer systems, a White House official said Saturday. And it does not prohibit federal employees from reading news stories about the topic. But if they have “accidentially” already downloaded any of these documents, they are being told to notify their “information security offices.”

The Department of Defense, in its own directive to military personnel and icontractors, says that simply viewing these documents, without proper authorization, will violate long-standing rules even though they are accessible to the public at large on Internet sites.

"Viewing or downloading still classified documents from unclassified government computers creates a security violation," a spokeswoman said in a statement on Saturday.

The effort, while understandable, seems entirely futile, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington nonprofit group that has combated government efforts to keep certain government documents secret.

“It just may be a little too late for the government to push these documents down the memory hole,” Mr. Rotenberg said, adding that his center did not support the initial public release of the material. “This is Orwell thought police in the age of the Internet, as these are already so widely accessible on servers around the world.”The Library of Congress has joined in the push, blocked visitors to its reading rooms, or anyone else using its computer system, from accessing the WikiLeaks site, noting that “unauthorized disclosures of classified documents do not alter the documents’ classified status or automatically result in declassification of the documents.”

The moves have not apparently discouraged staff at WikiLeaks, as the organization continues to post Twitter feeds mocking the efforts to limit access to the documents, including one note on Saturday reading: “Digital McCarthyism: U.S. Military Tries to Intimidate Soldiers Into Not Reading Wikileaks”.

Published by Eric Lipton

Original Link-
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/world/05restrict.html?_r=1

Where in the World Is Julian Assange?

2010-12-01T11:57:00.000-05:00

(Nov. 30) -- Seemingly everyone wants a piece of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange this week, with Interpol, Sweden, the United States, Australia, Sarah Palin, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bill O'Reilly joining the posse.

Palin says he should be hunted down "like al-Qaida." O'Reilly calls him a "sleazebag." Government officials want him tried for espionage, and Interpol is after him for alleged sex crimes. Others want him banned from the Internet.

Good luck with all of that. The 39-year-old recluse and self-described misfit -- whose latest secret-documents dump comprises more than 250,000 diplomatic memos -- has been on the lam for months. So where is he? This month he's apparently been in London, where he gave an interview to Forbes magazine, posted online this week after the chat was recorded at an undisclosed London apartment. The Australian native has cut and dyed his hair again to avoid detection, and promised that his site's rage-inspiring and ongoing upload of U.S. State Department documents was only the beginning -- of his latest controversy.

Up next is the disclosure of thousands of damning internal documents showing corruption by a major American bank, he told Forbes. But Assange won't say which bank or give specifics of what it did wrong. That's not unusual for a man who is both revered and reviled.

Assange has been laying low for several weeks now, staying with friends, using credit cards owned by others or paying in cash, canceling public appearances at the last minute or sending others in his stead. He is dogged by rape allegations in Sweden and is now under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department and his native Australia.

On Monday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Assange was under criminal investigation by federal agents. "This is not saber-rattling," he told reporters at a news conference, The Associated Press reported. Saying the Obama administration condemns the publication of classified State Department documents, Holder said the posts endangered national security and the safety of diplomats abroad.

Secretary of State Clinton said much the same. "Some mistakenly applaud those responsible," Clinton said in Washington this week. "There is nothing laudable about endangering innocent people."

Not true, Assange shot back in a series of e-mails to ABC News from a clandestine hideout. "U.S. officials have for 50 years trotted out this line when they are afraid the public is going to see how they really behave," he wrote.

Apparently, only one country welcomes him -- Ecuador, which offered him residency, Reuters reported today. The South American country is highly critical of U.S. doctrines and policies.

Earlier this month, Sweden issued an international sex crimes warrant against Assange in connection with two incidents in which women claimed rape and molestation. Assange said both interludes were consensual sex. This week, he was placed on Interpol's wanted list, according the agency's website.

Assange fled to Sweden in August, seeking protection for WikiLeaks under the country's whistle-blowing laws after he posted nearly 400,000 classified documents pertaining to the Iraq war. Weeks before, he had posted some 77,000 classified Pentagon documents on the Afghan conflict.

Then the rape allegations surfaced, and Assange was on the run again.

In October, he sat for an interview in London with The New York Times, sporting a beanie cap and a wispy beard and speaking just above a whisper lest he be overheard. The former computer hacker said, essentially, that he was doing the Lord's work in publishing leaked secret and classified documents.

"By being determined to be on this path, and not to compromise, I've wound up in an extraordinary situation," he said.

Original Llink-
http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/where-in-the-world-is-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange/19738196?icid=main%7Chtmlws-main-w%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk3%7C187410

Leaking of Secret U.S. Cables Sparks Diplomacy Crisis

2010-11-29T19:20:00.002-05:00

NEW YORK -- A large batch of secret American diplomatic cables over the past three years offers an unusual look at back-channel discussions by embassies around the world, unflattering views of world leaders and stark evaluations of nuclear and terrorist threats, The New York Times reported Sunday.

The disclosures in the Times and four other major world news organizations could fuel a worldwide diplomacy crisis with the United States at its center. "It is nothing short of a political meltdown for U.S. foreign policy," said Der Spiegel, the German publication that, like The Times, obtained the secret cables.

The White House condemned the disclosure of classified documents and released a statement Sunday saying, in part: "We anticipate release of what are claimed to be several hundred thousand classified State Department cables on Sunday night that detail diplomatic discussions with foreign governments. By its very nature, field reporting to Washington is candid and often incomplete information. It is not an expression of policy, nor does it shape final policy decisions." The statement acknowledged that the cables could "compromise private discussions with foreign governments and opposition leaders,'' and warned that the disclosures put diplomats and intelligence and other officials at risk.

The cables were initially obtained by WikiLeaks, a website dedicated to obtaining and disseminating government secrets. Late Sunday, WikiLeaks issued a statement saying the leaked cables are the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain. The website said that the cables, which date from

1966 until the end of February this year, will be released in stages over the next few months. WikiLeaks claimed that the documents show the extent of United States spying on its allies and the United Nations; overlooking or accepting corruption and human rights abuse in friendly states; doing backroom deals with supposedly neutral countries; and lobbying for American corporations.

"Every American schoolchild is taught that George Washington – the country's first president – could not tell a lie," WikiLeaks said. "If the administrations of his successors lived up to the same principle, today's document flood would be a mere embarrassment. Instead, the U.S. government has been warning governments -- even the most corrupt -- around the world about the coming leaks and is bracing itself for the exposures."

The cache of a quarter-million U.S. diplomatic cables were obtained in turn by the Times, Der Spiegel in Germany, The Guardian in Britain, Le Monde in France and El País in Spain. The cables constitute the third bundle of classified material involving the United States released by WikiLeaks to selected news media in the past six months.

The cables, most of them from the past three years, reportedly reveal the Obama administration's communications and discussions over foreign crises. Among startling revelations, The Guardian disclosed that Arab leaders privately urged an air strike on Iran and that American officials have been ordered to spy on the United Nations leadership.

Such revelations have thrown Washington into a worldwide diplomatic crisis. The expected disclosure of the cables had reportedly alarmed the diplomatic establishment in Washington and other world capitals in the past days.

Anticipating an uproar, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and American ambassadors around the world have been contacting foreign officials in recent days to alert them to the expected disclosures, The Times said Sunday.

The cables are part of the daily traffic between the State Department and some 270 embassies and consulates and, according to the Times, amount to a secret account of Washington's relations with the world in an era of global terrorism.

Among disclosures that could potentially cause a problem for Washington, according to The Guardian, are fears in Washington and London over Pakistan's nuclear program; suspected links between the Russian government and organized crime; criticism of British military operations in Afghanistan; and claims of inappropriate behavior by a British royal family member.

The Times cited "gaming out an eventual collapse of North Korea: American and South Korean officials have discussed the prospects for a unified Korea, should the North's economic troubles and political transition lead the state to implode. The South Koreans even considered commercial inducements to China, according to the American ambassador to Seoul. She told Washington in February that South Korean officials believe that the right business deals would 'help salve' China's 'concerns about living with a reunified Korea' that is in a 'benign alliance' with the United States.''

The Times also cited "suspicions of corruption in the Afghan government: When Afghanistan's vice president visited the United Arab Emirates last year, local authorities working with the Drug Enforcement Administration discovered that he was carrying $52 million in cash. With wry understatement, a cable from the American Embassy in Kabul called the money 'a significant amount' that the official, Ahmed Zia Massoud, 'was ultimately allowed to keep without revealing the money's origin or destination.' (Mr. Massoud denies taking any money out of Afghanistan.)"

The Times said that more than 251,287 cables, first obtained by WikiLeaks, were obtained by the newspaper from an intermediary to whom the newspaper promised anonymity. Many of the documents, the Times said, were unclassified and none were marked "top secret." But some 11,000 are classified "secret."

The Times concluded that the cables demonstrated that "the dark shadow of terrorism still dominates the United States' relations with the world." The Times said it planned to publish details of the revelations in the coming days.
In a critical article Sunday, Der Spiegel concluded: "Never before in history has a superpower lost control of such vast amounts of such sensitive information -- data that can help paint a picture of the foundation upon which U.S. foreign policy is built. Never before has the trust America's partners have in the country been as badly shaken. Now, their own personal views and policy recommendations have been made public -- as have America's true view of them."

As for WikiLeaks, the U.S. Justice Department and other agencies have been investigating the website for potential violation of national security laws. In the meantime, the controversial founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, is under investigation in Sweden on allegations that he sexually abused two women while visiting that country last summer. Assange, an Australian master hacker, is believed to be living in London.

Original Link- http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/11/28/leaking-of-secret-u-s-cables-sparks-diplomacy-crisis/?icid=main%7Chtmlws-main-w%7Cdl2%7Csec1_lnk3%7C186900

More-

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/hillary-rodham-clinton-promises-aggressive-response-to-wikileaks/1973694

http://www.aolnews.com/surge-desk/article/is-wikileaks-a-terrorist-organization-rep-peter-king-thinks-so/19736963

http://www.aolnews.com/surge-desk/article/wikileaks-3-diplomatic-disaster-or-snoozefest/19736391

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/11/29/hillary-clinton-u-s-deeply-regrets-release-of-diplomatic-cab/

My two cents- (tongue in cheek) No! Say it aint so!!

I wonder how many of these "Officials" are wishing they knew this before hand?

I guess they didn't get their 'Birth Card Reports,' I won't begin a new year without one!

Having my 'Birth Card Report' could have changed my life..

Marine to face charges he threatened judge

2010-11-19T09:29:00.000-05:00

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A U.S. Marine charged with threatening an Allegheny County Family Court judge on Facebook will have to face the counts against him.

Seth Miller, 20, is charged with retaliation against a judicial officer, after posting threats in June against Judge David N. Wecht in a Facebook conversation with his brother.

At the time, Mr. Miller was deployed to Afghanistan. He was angry because Judge Wecht signed off on an order granting Mr. Miller's wife support, and the courts seized $5,000 from his bank account.

Mr. Miller is stationed in Fort Lejeune, N.C.

Judge Wecht testified at a hearing on Wednesday that he learned about the threat when it was brought to his attention by a sheriff's office commander.

Mr. Miller's defense attorney, James DePasquale, asked Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey A. Manning to dismiss the charges against his client, saying he never had personal contact with the judge and that there wasn't enough evidence to support them.

Judge Manning disagreed.

Original Article- http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10322/1104205-455.stm

State inspector general pushes for government watchdog

2010-11-12T08:27:00.000-05:00

Corrupt Albany politicians may have finally met their match.

State Inspector General Joseph Fisch yesterday proposed the creation of a crimebusting office with sweeping powers to investigate all branches of state and local governments -- including members of the scandal-scarred Legislature.

"These are drastic times that require unorthodox solutions," Fisch told The Post.

He said he wanted a watchdog "with the authority and power and jurisdiction to look at the whole ball of wax."

TEAM ANDY INCLUDES EL-RAZER

NO KHALID TRIAL IN NYC: CUOMO

Fisch noted that, under the law, the state inspector general only has authority to probe wrongdoing in the state executive branch or officers who fall under the employ of the governor -- not state lawmakers.

And he said there was no credible, independent agency to police the Legislature.

A beefed-up corruption-fighting agency would require approval of the governor and Legislature. Fisch said the appointment of the agency should be made by Gov.-elect Andrew Cuomo.

"He has demonstrated his commitment to reform," Fisch said during a meeting with The Post editorial board.

Asked if the state's legislative leaders are committed to ethics reform, Fisch said, "I think the facts speak for themselves."

His bold plan comes on the heels of a devastating report he issued about the Aqueduct casino bid-rigging scandal.

The probe accused Albany players -- particularly Senate Democratic leader John Sampson and other key Senate officials -- of cavorting with lobbyists to steer the contract to a favored bidder, AEG.

A rogues' gallery of lawmakers from both parties has ended up in handcuffs for various crimes in recent years, largely thanks to federal prosecutors -- not state ethics probers.

They include former Queens Assemblyman and labor leader Brian McLaughlin, Queens Assemblyman Tony Seminerio, ex-Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and Bronx Sen. Guy Velella, among others.

Fisch said a new watchdog agency could be modeled after the defunct State Investigations Commission.

"I was saddened by the elimination of an entity which had all the authority and power to look at every aspect of government -- city, local, state, legislature, judiciary, executive -- everything," Fisch said.

Fisch said he intends to meet with Cuomo to discuss corruption fighting and ethics reform.

A Cuomo spokesman, asked about Fisch's proposal, referred to the incoming governor's "Clean Up Albany" campaign policy book.

In it, Cuomo proposed setting up an "independent" state ethics commission with enforcement powers to probe and punish ethics violations and law-breaking by members of the executive and legislative branches.

Government watchdogs consider the Legislative Ethics Commission, which should police lawmakers but rarely does, a joke.

Original Link- http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/albany_slimebuster_5Yym5mc7blpDIW0SQwwfrK

Woman: Poppy Seeds, Not Drugs, Led to Losing Child

2010-11-10T22:26:00.000-05:00

The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania filed a federal lawsuit on Oct. 28 on behalf of Elizabeth Mort and Alex Rodriguez, whose newborn daughter, Isabella, was seized and held for five days by Lawrence County Children and Youth Services after Mort says she failed a hospital drug test because she had recently eaten a bagel with poppy seeds.

(Nov. 10) -- The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of a Pennsylvania couple whose baby was taken away from them after the mother failed a drug test. The ACLU says the mom is drug free and blames the failed test on a poppy-seed bagel.

"This was devastating on our whole family," Elizabeth Mort, 21, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "I held her for a few minutes, and they took her and left. I was devastated. I just cried and cried and cried."

Mort's daughter, Isabella Rodriguez, was born on April 27 at Jameson Hospital's North Campus in Lawrence County. Before the birth, per hospital policy, Mort was required to submit a urine sample for drug testing. She agreed to the test but reportedly was not told the results.

On April 30, the day after Mort was discharged from the hospital, a caseworker with Lawrence County Children and Youth Services obtained an emergency order and removed the baby from Mort's New Castle, Pa., home because she had allegedly tested positive for opiates.

According to the lawsuit, the level of opiates in Mort's system was well below federal workplace drug testing standards and was caused by Mort ingesting a bagel containing poppy seeds before giving birth. The lawsuit also alleges that Mort passed a subsequent drug test and that Children and Youth Services admitted the mistake, but kept her daughter in foster care for five days before finally returning her to her parents.

The lawsuit, filed by the ACLU in Oakland, Pa., seeks policy changes, damages and attorney fees, the Gazette reported.

"I'm hoping that they'll either change their policies so it doesn't happen to another family or they'll investigate it better before they take babies from their homes," Mort told the newspaper.

Officials with Jameson Hospital's North Campus have not yet commented on the case. According to the Gazette, county representatives said they acted appropriately.

Original Link- http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/pennsylvania-woman-poppy-seeds-not-drugs-led-to-losing-child/19711181?icid=main%7Chtmlws-main-w%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk3%7C183489

Sixty Nine Children Rescued During Operation Cross Country V

2010-11-10T11:19:00.000-05:00

Washington, D.C. November 08, 2010

Over the past 72 hours, the FBI, its local and state law enforcement partners, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) concluded Operation Cross Country V, a three-day national enforcement action as part of the Innocence Lost National Initiative. The operation included enforcement actions in 40 cities across 34 FBI divisions around the country and led to the recovery of 69 children who were being victimized through prostitution. Additionally, nearly 885 others, including 99 pimps, were arrested on state and local charges.

“Child prostitution continues to be a significant problem in our country, as evidenced by the number of children rescued through the continued efforts of our crimes against children task forces,” said Shawn Henry, executive assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch. “There is no work more important than protecting America’s children and freeing them from the cycle of victimization. Through our strategic partnerships with state and local law enforcement agencies, we are able to make a difference.”

Task Force operations usually begin as local actions, targeting such places as truck stops, casinos, street “tracks,” and Internet websites, based on intelligence gathered by officers working in their respective jurisdictions. Initial arrests are often violations of local and state laws relating to prostitution or solicitation. Information gleaned from those arrested often uncovers organized efforts to prostitute women and children across many states. FBI agents further develop this information in partnership with U.S. Attorney’s Offices and the U.S. Department of Justice’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) and file federal charges where appropriate.

To date, the 39 Innocence Lost Task Forces and Working Groups have recovered over 1,200 children from the streets. The investigations and subsequent 625 convictions have resulted in lengthy sentences, including multiple 25-years-to-life sentences and the seizure of more than $3.1 million in assets.

In the spring of 2003, the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, in partnership with the Department of Justice’s CEOS and NCMEC, formed the Innocence Lost National Initiative to address the growing problem of children forced into prostitution.

“The leadership of the FBI and the Justice Department in attacking domestic child trafficking and prostitution is historic,” said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. “Once again, Operation Cross Country has awakened the nation to the fact that today, American children are being marketed and sold for sex in American cities. These kids are victims. This is 21st century slavery. We are proud to be a part of this extraordinary partnership to rescue children, save lives, and bring the pimps and operators to justice.”

This program brings state and federal law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, and social service providers all from around the country to NCMEC, where the groups are trained together. In addition, CEOS has reinforced the training by assigning prosecutors to help bring cases in those cities plagued by child prostitution.

The FBI thanks the over 2,100 local, state, and federal law enforcement officers representing 186 separate agencies who participated in Operation Cross Country and ongoing enforcement efforts.

The charges announced today are merely accusations, and all defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty in a court of law.

For more information on Operation Cross Country and the Innocence Lost National Initiative, visit www.fbi.gov, www.justice.gov, or www.ncmec.org.

Original Link-

http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/occv_110810

D.C. settles for $10 million in foster care abuse case

2010-11-10T09:06:00.001-05:00

By Henri E. Cauvin

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, November 8, 2010; 11:43 PM

An abusive foster mother nearly cost Rafael Pearson his life, and now the District has agreed to pay $10 million for placing him with the troubled woman, whose beatings left the boy with massive brain damage.

Rafael was just a few days old when he was taken from his drug-addicted mother and placed in the foster home in fall 2005. Beaten and shaken by his foster mother, the baby suffered catastrophic brain damage. He was on life support for days, not expected to survive. More than five years later, he remains profoundly disabled. He can sense light and shadows and movement but otherwise his vision is extremely limited.

The settlement, to be paid out in three installments, beginning with a $5 million payment this month, is one of the largest the District has ever agreed to.

But with a lifetime of round-the-clock care ahead of Rafael, the settlement is hardly a windfall, his attorneys say - the agreement is structured to ensure that Rafael's needs are funded for as long as he lives.

The lawsuit, filed in 2007 after the foster mother, Tanya Jenkins, was tried and sentenced to 12 years for cruelty to children, sought $50 million from the District. The suit was about to go to trial in early August in D.C. Superior Court when the parties indicated that they were closing in on a settlement.

Over the next three months, the agreement took shape, and late Friday, after a few final tweaks, the judge in the case, Judith N. Macaluso, approved the pact.

Sitting in the first row of Courtroom 415, in his tiny white Nikes and his black reclining wheelchair, was Rafael. He occasionally uttered sounds, but he cannot speak. Next to him was his grandmother, Sylvia Pearson, 57, who filed the lawsuit on his behalf and who has been his champion since the day in late October 2005 when it looked like Rafael would not survive.

"You can't replace what would have been a great, normal life," Pearson said after the hearing, "but I have faith in him and his ability to progress more rapidly than people expect."

Already, Raffy, as his grandmother calls him, has defied expectations. He made it out of Children's Hospital. He made it out of the Hospital for Sick Children. And by early next year, he is expected to leave the nursing home in Dunn Loring where he has lived for the past five years.

If all goes according to plan, Raffy will move into his grandmother's Fairfax Station home, which is being fitted with an elevator and other accommodations, and where he will have a home health aide around the clock.

It could, of course, have been worse. But it also could have been altogether different for Raffy, born Sept. 9, 2005, in a motel in Northern Virginia.

When his mother, Renee Pearson, brought him to Virginia Hospital Center later that day, he was 5 pounds 14 ounces and had traces of cocaine in his system. Concerned, the hospital called child welfare officials in the District, where Renee Pearson said she lived. The social worker couldn't verify the the mother's address in Northwest Washington and called the baby's grandmother.

Sylvia Pearson, who had watched her daughter succumb to drugs and the streets, told the social worker to take the baby. Pearson had already adopted one of her daughter's children, and her son had adopted the other. Now, they would have to find a way to help Raffy, who was going to stay in foster care while everything was sorted out.

He ended up with Tanya Jenkins, a new foster parent who was unemployed and lived in Southeast Washington with her 2-year-old son and her boyfriend. Earlier that year, another infant had been placed with Jenkins, but she had sent the child back after five weeks, saying she had health problems that made it difficult to care for the small child.

Despite the red flag, the Child and Family Services Agency came to Jenkins five months later when they needed a home for Raffy. Jenkins agreed but said she didn't have the money to care for the child and would need CFSA to rush the assistance that is routinely provided to help with costs such as additional food.

But even without the additional child, she was struggling, according to testimony at her trial. She told a neighbor that the financial assistance from the District would keep her from being evicted.

Once Raffy arrived, the stress mounted for Jenkins, according to the neighbor, who testified that Jenkins was complaining about never sleeping. Meanwhile, the city's long-troubled child welfare agency wasn't keeping tabs on Jenkins or the baby who had been entrusted to her. A social worker should have visited every week for the first eight weeks. The agency made one visit during the 43 days Raffy was in the home.

It was another harrowing episode in the annals of the District's beleaguered child welfare system, and when they filed suit, Pearson's attorneys, Sidney Schupak and Michelle A. Parfitt of Ashcraft & Gerel, planned to put the entire system on trial.

Instead, the District agreed to pay one of the largest settlements in its history, as well as $2 million in attorneys' fees.

Robert J. Spagnoletti, who was the District's attorney general under Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D), said a settlement as large as the one in this case had never crossed his desk. "It's a very big settlement," but not necessarily unreasonable, said Spagnoletti, now a partner at Schertler & Onorato.

Patrick M. Regan, a leading plaintiffs attorney in the District, called the settlement a "significant" sum of money, but said the amount had to be viewed in the context of the needs the child and his family will face over a lifetime. "It's fair," Regan said.

D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles, who was involved in the settlement negotiations, did not return a call today seeking comment.

Original Link-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/08/AR2010110805565_2.html?sid=ST2010110806347

Personality Disordered Abusers in Family Law Courts

2010-11-08T08:57:00.000-05:00

I found this article this morning and had to share..

William Eddy is an attorney and licensed clinical social worker who has written many excellent books on personality disorders and how they manifest in family law battles. In his recent books, he has taken to calling people with personality disorders who engage in extensive and unreasonable litigation as High Conflict Personalities (HCP). He’s stated that a large part, possibly as much as 40%, of the litigation in family courts involves HCPs.

Yet despite the prevalence of these psychological problems in family law courts, judges often fail to understand the problems and are prone to reward the abusers for their conduct. This is likely to intensify the abuses because they have been positively reinforced with rewards such as sole physical and/or legal custody, financial awards, or simply emotional satisfaction of seeing the hated target being berated by a judge the abuser manipulated.

While HCP is a great term in many ways, it does not convey how abusively many of these people act particularly towards others in their families or former families. I’ve taken to using the term Personality Disordered Abuser, PDA for short, to refer to these people. Like many personality disorder victims, they are generally victims of child abuse. More importantly, they are abusers themselves. They often abuse children, spouses, ex-spouses, and other current or former family members.

Please keep in mind that not all Axis II personality disorder victims are PDAs. For instance, there is a large subset of people with Borderline Personality Disorder who engage in “acting in” behaviors which primarily hurt themselves. These people are the ones who cut and mutilate themselves, abuse drugs, engage in reckless and dangerous behaviors that primarily risk their own well-being, and often attempt suicide. While this may cause a substantial amount of emotional harm to the people around them, they are often not intending or plotting to harm others.

This is significantly different from the PDAs who generally have goals to cause harm to others. They use manipulation and abuse to control people and situations to get what they want. PDAs as a group engage in systematic “acting out” behaviors targeted against others.

Note that it is entirely possible for a person to engage in both acting in and acting out behaviors. However, usually if you look at the whole scope and pattern of behaviors you will see they primarily engage in one or the other. A person who primarily engages in unprotected sex, abuses alcohol and drugs, and has repeatedly attempted suicide but is known to infrequently hit another person while intoxicated is probably not a PDA. PDAs are much more intensively focused on causing harm to others than this example.

PDAs Hurt Targets for Own Benefits

A Borderline who “acts in” may succeed at killing herself or himself by many means, including accidental drug overdoses, car accidents due to reckless driving, or intentional suicide. PDAs “acting out”, on the other hand, are far less likely to hurt themselves this way as they avoid self-harm and are instead intent on severely damaging a select group of people around them. Those people often include their children, siblings, and current or former spouses, significant others, or close friends.

PDAs often benefit from their abusive behaviors. This is particularly the case if they are highly intelligent and skilled at manipulation.

PDAs are often able to “push the buttons” of their abuse targets, provoking them by using repeated threats, crimes, and other attacks. When the abuse targets finally respond to the continuing and possibly escalating attacks, they often do so out of desperation to make them stop. They are often in fear for their own safety or well-being or that of their children and loved ones. Then the PDAs are often able to deceive others into thinking that they are merely victims of some hostile crazy abusive person when in fact they are the abusers. They thereby further intensify their control and escalate the damage they are able to inflict upon their targets.

Personality Disordered Abuser Behavior Patterns

Many of us who have endured the ravages of a marriage and family law battle with a PDA can recite example after example of their abusive and bizarre behaviors going back many years, even decades. Sometimes we are even aware of their similar conduct with their birth families, but may have learned of it far too late to prevent major damage to our children and ourselves.

We have experienced their rages, screaming, and berating for no apparent reason, only to see them change their mood moments later acting as if they had done nothing hostile. Then they act as if we are the problems when we are not friendly towards them after being repeatedly attacked.

We have endured their constant threats, provocations, and refusal to cooperate with reason, fairness, common sense, and court orders that typify the unrelenting efforts of the PDA to control everybody and everything around them. At times we may be in fear for our lives from these people, but because they are very good at controlling their own behaviors to appear reasonable around most people, few can understand how truly dangerous they are.

We have suffered their vilification and distortion campaigns that spread into our children’s schools, doctor’s offices, workplaces, and to friends and family. Often only years after it started, we find that we have been described as vile, hateful, dangerous people to hundreds or thousands of people around us who have never even met us but believe all these lies because they have heard them unchallenged for so long. We have been overwhelmed by how dozens or even hundreds of people hate and malign us because they are too uneducated in psychology and easily duped and controlled by the PDA.

Gathering Minions for Attacking the Target

One of the methods PDAs use is to build a support system they can use to attack their targets. This is easiest to do with ex-spouses or former boyfriends or girlfriends, but sometimes can be used to attack children, siblings, parents, and others.

PDAs learn to identify weak-minded people as potential recruits for their distortion campaigns. These people are often very gullible do-gooders poorly educated in psychology. Occasionally they may be mentally impaired themselves, but even when that is the case it is only sometimes severe. They may be thinking they are somehow doing good by helping to attack the target. In fact they have been subverted into destructive behaviors by a masterfully manipulative abuser who deceives them and prevents them from discovering the facts.

PDAs sometimes are able to find other PDAs to ally with them. For instance, a PDA who had an affair with another PDA may recruit the person to assist them with attacking a spouse or former spouse. Elevated levels of criminality can be achieved while maintaining plausible deniability for the instigating PDA. She may be able to convince her personality disordered lover to stalk her ex-spouse, hack his email, and even physically attack him. While she is the instigator and it is a conspiracy of harassment, the broken family law courts will probably let her off with no consequences for the crimes she caused.

Building False Reality from Partial Truths and Lies

PDAs are especially good at sprinkling in enough plausible or partial truths amidst the outright lies and twisted distortions to convince the uneducated and ignorant people around them to accept their version of reality. They will often produce “proof” of their overall story in the form of other people repeating their claims, writings or notes that look hostile or unreasonable, or altered or abridged documents that may be very official-looking and convince the majority of people who have never seen a police report, court declaration, court transcript, or other such government document. That these documents are not complete nor accurate is often entirely outside the awareness of the people being manipulated in this fashion.

When one is being defamed and attacked relentlessly, it is only natural to want to defend one’s reputation. However, even this can be twisted by the PDA to cause more damage to the target. The attempts by the targets to defend from the PDA’s onslaught, hold her or him accountable for the abuse, and to get her or him the help needed to learn to stop these behaviors often backfire. This is especially the case in family law courts as judges are woefully untrained in psychology and rely upon custody evaluators who are usually incapable or unwilling to do what is needed to protect the victims from the abusers. They are also often highly unwilling to consider testimony of people who witnessed events and saw and/or heard what the PDA said. Such accounts often sound bizarre and therefore are dismissed as hearsay or incredible, even though they are objectively accurate.

Legal Self-Defense Is “Criminalized” By Family Law Courts

It is natural to want to defend one’s freedom and reputation from these assaults by a PDA. Some may also want to help people understand what has gone wrong, stop the spread of defamation, and help the family get needed help, all of which in theory should be easier to accomplish if people could name and discuss what has gone wrong with the out of control false accuser.

If the victim of false accusations responds by disclosing the false accuser’s behaviors and applies a personality disorder name to explain why she or he is behaving this way, that is often regarded as a very serious offense by the courts.

Blatant disregard for freedom of speech is commonly shown by family law judges. PDAs are routinely given free reign to defame their victims and to recruit allies to attack them. If the victim of this defamation writes about what the PDA has done in a blog, discussion group, or email to get help or defend against the defamation, incompetent or corrupt family law judges will use that as reason to reduce child custody, denigrate the victim, and make financially punitive rulings.

Family law judges do not like freedom of speech. Perhaps that is because they realize that if the public truly knew the crimes and offenses they routinely commit against children and good parents that they would be removed from office or prosecuted. So it appears that one of the foremost goals of many poor family law judges is to shut up the litigants by use of intimidation, threats, and illegal orders. For a PDA, this is no problem because the PDA is used to spreading defamation without being discovered. Targets, however, are not used to this and may find that they have just been told by an idiot judge that they should just sit back and watch their reputations be trashed and if they do anything to stop if that they will never see their children again.

The courts often rule that defending one’s freedom and reputation from the PDA by writing, speaking, or other public disclosure, or even such disclosure just to family members, is a form of harassment and it will be punished. But these same courts will do nothing to punish the PDA for engaging in false criminal allegations, defamation, and harassment in the first place. This destructive double standard is precisely what is being practiced by many judges in many family law cases all across the United States.

Courts also often side against a party who has been abused by the court when that party publicly points out the abuses committed by the court. Personality disordered abusers are often very successful at getting what they want because they build armies army of minions to attack the ex by various legal and illegal means. These parties too often include the judge in the case.

While it is clear the interests of justice are not being served by such judges and they should recuse or even resign their office given an obvious lack of objectivity, criticizing the judicial bias and misconduct risks even more judicial harassment in response. But saying nothing simply lets such judges continue their misconduct.

It is a common observation from people in cases involving a PDA that many family law judges are against free speech and will punish a parent and harm their children in retaliation. This willingness to persecute people and abuse their children for speaking up about the conduct of family law judges appears to be intended to forcibly suppress any negative publicity about bad judges and how they reward false allegations and other tactics that PDAs use with great frequency.

Gender Does Affect Risk from PDAs

The people at most risk of permanently life-altering harm are male targets of female PDAs. That is partly because of the gross misconceptions popular with the public about men being abusers and women being victims and partly because of sexist judges and laws.

While gender inequality is a huge problem in this area and men are more often than not the victims, female targets can easily have their lives ruined by male PDAs, too. This is especially the case when the male PDA is viewed as having special credibility such as working as a doctor, lawyer, minister, or other occupation which the public mistakenly believes is highly unlikely to allow abusers into its ranks.

Don’t Depend Upon Any Protection from Courts

The bottom line is that if you are a target of a PDA, you cannot count on any protection whatsoever from today’s family law courts. If you try to protect yourself, you will probably be persecuted for it. You are in a lose-lose situation because the abuser is likely to be assisted and rewarded by incompetent and/or sexist judges and foolishly destructive and/or sexist laws.

Possibly your only sure means to safety when being abused by a PDA is to disappear. The PDA may continue to attack you for some time, but if you are nowhere to be found and nobody who hears the defamation against you sees you again, it may have little if any lasting effect upon you.

While disappearing is feasible for people with no children, those who have children usually do not have such an option. They are stuck between only a few legal choices, all of which are horrible. These include abandoning their children for their own safety, staying and living with the ongoing abuse of the PDA against the children and themselves and possibly their extended families, trying to defend themselves in court which is virtually a guarantee of financial devastation, or trying to defend themselves outside of court which will almost certainly be spun by the PDA to get them into trouble with police, CPS, and courts. Meanwhile, the PDA keeps right on with the abuse.

Family Law Courts Perpetuate Child and Spousal Abuse by PDAs

Far too many of today’s family law judges lack any significant training or education in psychology and further lack personal experience being abused by a person afflicted with a personality disorder. Such judges are very likely to do exactly the wrong thing in many cases. These judges get bad data and act on it as if it is true. Even when it is pointed out to them exactly how it is wrong by a psychological evaluator or a party citing objective and accurate evidence, they often will not believe it because they cannot comprehend how powerfully effective the manipulations of the PDA are and therefore believe the PDA’s target is mistaken or dishonest and the evaluator was too easy on him or her.

William Eddy and others like him have been trying to educate judges and others in the legal profession about these problems. Sadly, these efforts are far too little to fix the problems even in areas where Eddy has done many presentations and training sessions.

One of these areas is San Diego County, California, where Eddy lives and works much of the time. A psychological evaluator from that region with whom I’ve spoken has stated that the family law courts there are “the most broken they have been in [the evaluator's] three decades” of involvement with the courts and CPS on behalf of children. The region’s courts are direct contributors to serious harm against children and families. This is especially alarming when well-intentioned activitists such as Eddy have spent years trying to educate the county’s judges on personality disorders and how they affect family law cases. It calls into serious question whether family law courts can ever be repaired to function effectively and justly.

Given their dereliction of duty, egregious incompetence, and frequent bias, many family law courts have no business being involved in family disputes involving allegations of abuse or mental illness. They only intensity conflicts, increase abuses, and worsen the harm done to all parties except for possibly the abusers they assist and reward. However, even the abusers are suffering because these broken courts enable them to continue their abuses rather than get on the road the psychological recovery.

I strongly believe that family law courts in the United States today as a general rule are incapable of effectively, fairly, and timely hearing cases involving PDAs.

The judges who are assigned family law duties are often newbies with zero experience in family law courts and no training in psychology. Yet they are being asked to figure out the truth in matters with people who are expert liars and are fully capable of making many other people believe their lies and repeat them. The methods they are using includes very weak evidentiary standards and allowing family law courts to be used as kangaroo courts for criminal prosecutions that would obviously fail for lack of evidence in a real criminal court. They are also willing to drag out no-contact and supervised visitation periods against falsely accused people for months or years with little to no evidence to support such actions. Sometime the evidence that supports there being no basis for a safety concern is even hidden by CPS and the children’s attorney, if there is one, for years until it is finally “discovered”.

The result of these broken courts is that children and families are frequently harmed. It is extremely easy for a skilled manipulator to lie and deceive, stage attacks to generate “evidence” that the victim is the abuser, cause the courts to become allies in the abuse, and to jerk around the evaluators, courts, and entire system to delay cases for years while they build their armies of hate and establish a “parenting track record” that the idiot judges in the broken family law courts will interpret as meaning they are capable parents (when in fact they are often highly abusive to the children, frequently by parental alienation and other forms of emotional abuse) and the target parents are irrelevant because they have had little contact with their children for years.

Reforming Broken Family Law Courts Proves Difficult

Many target parents end up with little or no contact with their children for years, are financially ruined, have difficulty working or functioning well after the abuses they have endured, and are sometimes even incarcerated for crimes they did not commit or “fake crimes” caused by temporary restraining orders that turned normal things like calling one’s children into crimes that can result in jail time. These are not isolated miscarriages of justice, they are common and are occurring to likely millions of parents, many of whom are so beaten up and devastated that they simply leave. Many of them end up being derided as “absent fathers” or “deadbeat dads” who lost their children, livelihoods, freedom, and health at the hands of abusive personality disordered females and broken family law courts.

Resolving these problems is very difficult because the public has little to no understanding of how many innocent good parents are being caught up in and ruined by this broken system until it happens to them. Then these fresh victims are usually stigmatized as child abusers, spousal beaters, convicted criminals, and/or deadbeats who don’t pay child support. (Note that “deadbeat” can apply to both genders of parents and that some statistics show a slightly higher percentage of mothers than fathers fail to pay child support.) Almost nobody who has not been similarly abused will listen to them. They and their children are the victims of the family law courts even more than they are the victims of the personality disordered abusers in their lives. The PDA could cause great harm, but the courts made that harm more or less permanent.

While I have emphasized how men are at increased risk from personality disordered abusers and their manipulations of family law systems, these abuses are happening to many women, too. This is not a gender issue so much as it is an issue of violation of civil and constitution rights, broken courts, and public apathy about a major crisis afflicting millions of Americans. The people who gain advantage from this broken system who consider their own financial security paramount over the well-being of children and families don’t want it fixed and often try to portray the problem as a gender issue to balkanize the public and impede reform attempts. There are certainly judges, attorneys, and psychologists who are disgusted with the system the way it is today, but they seem to be few and far between. Most of them are apathetic, as if they forgot the ideas of public service and helping people that might have once motivated them at the beginning of their careers.

Original Article-
http://angiemedia.com/2010/03/29/personality-disorder-abusers-in-family-law-courts/

Psychiatric Detention of Foster Kids Is Focus of Lawsuit

2010-11-08T00:43:00.000-05:00

May 2010--A federal lawsuit alleges that New York City’s child welfare agency commits wayward foster children to psychiatric hospitals and leaves them there long after they are declared fit for release.

The Administration for Children’s Services apparently sends the children to city hospitals for “disciplinary reasons,” rather than medical reasons. Pretexts for being sent to the looney bin including staying out too late, fighting, or “running away.”

As reported in The New York Times on Thursday, May 13, the Legal Aid Society filed its suit Wednesday, May 12, in the United States District Court in Brooklyn, objecting to the practices of committing foster children to psych wards for behavioral reasons, and keeping them inside beyond their recommended discharge dates. The terms of their confinement are apparently unnecessarily restrictive.

While seeking a preliminary injunction releasing three named children and a court order barring placement in hospitals unless medically indicated, Legal Aid is requesting class-action status for the suit. The Times said the lawyers handling the case have identified 24 more questionable detentions.

The Times notes: “There is a high incidence of mental illness among foster-care children, who have been separated from their families, many after suffering physical or sexual abuse.” This is according to Marcia Lowry, executive director of a group called Children’s Rights.

Thank you Rolando, for sharing this..

Original Link - http://www.askdeblasiowhy.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=112:psychiatric-detention&catid=46:news-updates

A Quote To Remind Us Of Our Not So Distant Past

2010-10-31T19:28:00.000-04:00

"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation."

Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, Publ. Houghton Miflin, 1943, Page 403

http://disgustedwiththesystem.blogspot.com/

http://dontletdestinycatchyousleeping.blogspot.com/

WIFE JAILED FOR VISITATION ABUSE & PARENTAL ALIENATION

2010-10-27T09:15:00.011-04:00

"Accordingly, and after careful consideration of the circumstances of the nature and extent of the multiple instances of violation of the court order, the plaintiff is sentenced to a period of incarceration for six weekends, to be served on the first and third weekends of each month for the months of June, July and August, 2010. Prior to these weekends of the plaintiff's incarceration, she shall transport the children to the defendant's home to assure their continued care and well being."

Lauren R. v. Ted R., New York State Supreme Ct., October 27, 2010 (below- first link)*

http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=15593161527073954729&q=++Lauren+R.+v.+Ted+R.&hl=en&as_sdt=20000000002

Original Link- http://njdivorceblog.typepad.com/new_jersey_divorce_law_me/2010/10/wife-jailed-for-visitation-abuse-parental-alienation.html

Here is the case in it's entirity-

LAUREN R. v. TED R., 2010 NY Slip Op 50931 - NY: Supreme Court 20102010 NY Slip Op 50931(U)

LAUREN R., Plaintiff,

                       v.

TED R., Defendant.

203699-02

Supreme Court, Nassau County.

Decided May 25, 2010.

ROBERT A. ROSS, J.

The continuing jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to modify or annul its custody and visitation judgments and orders, is set forth in Domestic Relations Law §240. Such authority is similarly provided to the Family Court pursuant to Family Court Act §467. In post judgment proceedings regarding a modification of custody and visitation, the standard is the "best interest of the child," when all of the applicable factors are considered. See, Friederwitzer v. Friederwitzer, 55 NY2d 89.

Parental access, commonly referred to as "visitation," is an important right of the non-custodial parent and the child. See, Weiss v. Weiss, 52 NY2d 170. In a scenario where one parent is demonstrated to have interfered with the custodial rights of a parent, a number of mechanisms exist [see, Scheinkman, New York Law of Domestic Relations, Second Edition, §23.14] to aid in the enforcement of custody orders and judgments, including:

1. Criminal Sanctions, pursuant to Penal Law §135.45 and 135.50;

2. Suspension of alimony or maintenance, pursuant to Judiciary Law §750,753;

3. Tort action for custodial interference;

4. Orders of Protection, pursuant to Domestic Relations Law §240
While the most factually apparent ground to change existing custody arrangements involves physical danger, the act of alienating a child against a parent presents a nefarious form of conduct that must be met with careful consideration and immediate, comprehensive remediation by a Court (see, Zafran v. Zafran, 306 AD2d 468; Lew v. Sobel, 46 AD3d 893). A change in custody should not be permitted solely as a means for punishing a recalcitrant parent (see, Lew v. Sobel, supra), but always requires due consideration of all of the other custodial factors. See, Robert T.F. v. Rosemary F., 148 AD2d 449.

While mindful of the consequential future effect of this determination (see, Lauer v. City of New York, 95 NY2d 95, 100), inasmuch as a Court's finding of willful interference "per se raises a strong probability that the custodial parent is unfit" (see, Young v. Young, supra; Glenn v. Glenn, supra), when a pattern of alienation by the custodial parent is proven in any prior proceeding, that alienating conduct must [emphasis added] be considered and addressed by the Court in any subsequent proceeding involving custody/parental access. See, Audobon v. Audobon, 138 AD2d 658; Martin R.G. v. Ofelio G.O., 24 AD3d 305. Also, see CPLR §4213[b]; Robert T.F. v. Rosemarie F., 148 AD2d 449.

The doctrine of res judicata bars the issue of whether alienation occurred in the subsequent change of custody hearing ordered herein. See, O'Brian v. City of Syracuse, 54 NY2d 353, 357; Matter of Waldman v. Waldman, 47 AD3d 638; Braunstein v. Braunstein, 114 AD2d 46, 53; Town of New Windsor v. New Windsor Volunteer Ambulance Corps, Inc., 16 AD3d 403. Considering that parental alienation of a child from the other parent has been determined to be "an act inconsistent with the best interest of the child (Bobinson v. Bobinson, 9 AD3d 441; Stern v. Stern, 304 AD2d 649; Zafran v. Zafran, 28 AD3d 753; Zeis v. Slater, 57 AD3d 793), and that it has been proven in this contempt proceeding — the "strong likelihood of unfitness" becomes a "factor" that must be considered in the change of custody hearing ordered herein.

Protraction or delay in parental alienation cases often serve to reinforce the offending conduct and potentially undermine any remediation that a court could fashion with appropriate therapy, parent coordination, and/or, a change in custody. See, Steinberger, Father? What Father? Parental Alienation And Its Effect on Children, NYSBA Family Law Review, Spring 2006; Johnston, J.R., Children of Divorce Who Reject a Parent And Refuse Visitation: Recent Research & Social Policy Implications for the Alienated Child, 38 Fam. L.Q. 757, 768-769.Under the circumstances of this case, this Court's finding of a willful violation of an existing order of custody in the form of parental alienation requires a prompt evidentiary hearing to determine whether the children's best interests, under the totality of the circumstances, warrant modification of the previously entered custody order. See, Friederwitzer v. Friederwitzer, 55 NY2d 89; Corigliano v. Corigliano, 297 AD2d 328; Martin R.G. v. Ofelio G.O., 24 AD3d 305; Carlin v. Carlin, 52 AD3d 559.

PROCEDURAL HISTORY

By Order to Show Cause dated December 14, 2007, defendant sought an order to have the plaintiff held in contempt for her willful and deliberate failure to comply with the Stipulation of Settlement, dated October 30, 2003, in that she allegedly interfered with his right to frequent and regular visitation with and telephone access to the parties' children, D. and N.; and by alienating the children from the defendant through numerous acts of disparaging the defendant to the children. The Court granted defendant's motion by its Amended Decision and Order dated September 9, 2008, to the extent that a hearing was ordered. This contempt hearing was held before me on May 15, 21, July 13, 15, 16, August 3, 4, 5, 6, 17, 18, 19, September 17, 2009, January 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 19, February 3, and 22, 2010.

The parties' Stipulation of Settlement was incorporated but not merged into the parties' Judgment of Divorce (Stack, J.). Pursuant to the unequivocal terms of the Stipulation, she was prohibited from "alienating the children from the defendant, plac[ing] any obstacle in the way of the maintenance, love and affection of the children for the defendant," or to "hinder, impair or prevent the growth of a close relationship between the children and their parents, respectively, or cause others to do so." Moreover, in sharing joint legal custody of the children, she was specifically required to consult with the defendant regarding decisions affecting the children's education, health and religion. That Stipulation also clearly provided that each of the parties was to "exert every effort to maintain free access and unhampered contact," "to foster a feeling of affection," and not to "do anything which may estrange the children from [the defendant] or injure the children's opinion as to the Father which may hamper the free and natural development of the children's love and affection for the [Defendant]." To sustain the defendant's application regarding contempt, he must demonstrate that the plaintiff has violated a clear and unequivocal court order which actually defeated, impaired, impeded or prejudiced the other party's rights (see, Great Neck v. Central, 65 AD2d 616) or were calculated to affect those rights (Stempler v. Stempler, 200 AD2d 733). The movant must meet this burden by clear and convincing evidence (Bulow v. Bulow, 121 AD2d 423). The Court may not hold a party in contempt where payment may be enforced by other enforcement procedures (Wiggins v. Wiggins, 121 Ad2d 534), unless such remedies would be an exercise in futility or ineffectual (Farkas v. Farkas, 209 AD2d 316). Upon a finding of contempt, the Court may impose a period of commitment to jail (Powers v. Powers, 86 NY2d 63) or fine, or both. In this instance, a lawful court order, in the form of a Judgment of Divorce incorporating the parties' stipulation of settlement, was in effect. The plaintiff was shown to have actual knowledge of its terms. Ottomanelli v. Ottomanelli, 17 AD3d 647; Freihofner v. Freihofner, 39 AD3d 465; Kawar v. Kawar, 231 AD2d 681, 682. This order of parental access was not only in effect before and during the hearing, but unsuccessful efforts were made during the course of the hearing to utilize counseling and parenting coordination to remediate the alienating conduct of the plaintiff. See, Lew v. Sobel, 46 AD3d 893. See, also, Judiciary Law §753; Massimi v. Massimi, 56 AD3d 624.

CONTEMPT

The Court's findings here were based, in part, upon an assessment of the credibility of the witnesses and their character, temperament and sincerity. Matter of Carl J.B. v. Dorothy T., 186 AD2d 736; see, also, Klat v. Klat, 176 AD2d 922; Leistner v. Leistner, 137 AD2d 499. I have also considered the extensive post-hearing submissions of each of the parties and the attorney for the children. Here, the defendant's burden of proof in this matter was met so overwhelmingly, as to exceed the burden of proof required (see, Bulow, supra). Instead, it was proven "beyond a reasonable doubt" [cf., Rubackin v. Rubackin, 62 AD3d 11]. The acts perpetrated by the plaintiff were not only in willful violation of the Stipulation of Settlement, as incorporated into the Judgment of Divorce, but such as to demonstrate a continuing and calculated effort to violate the parental access of the defendant to the infant issue. The movant here demonstrated that the plaintiff violated a clear and unequivocal Court order, thereby prejudicing his rights. See, Judiciary Law §753[A][3]; Vujovic v. Vujovic, 16 AD3d 490. The specific findings of fact are detailed herein, and considering the extent, nature, and continuing pattern of alienation perpetrated by the plaintiff, it is clear that plaintiff's conduct was calculated to and did, in fact, impair, impede or prejudice the rights and remedies of the defendant herein. See, Silverman v. Silverman, N.Y.L.J., 11-22-95, p. 26, col. 1; McCain v. Dinkins, 84 NY2d 216; Hoglund v. Hoglund, 234 AD2d 794.
FACTUAL FINDINGS

AND INSTANCES OF ALIENATION

Plaintiff intentionally scheduled their child's (N.'s) birthday party on a Sunday afternoon during defendant's weekend visitation, and then refused to permit defendant to attend. She demanded that N. be returned home early, in order to "prepare" for her party, but D., the other child, was enjoying the time with her father and wished to remain with him until the party began. Plaintiff castigated N. for "daring" to invite her father to take a picture of her outside her party. According to the plaintiff, "this doesn't work for me!" Plaintiff threatened to cancel N.'s party, and warned her that her sister, too, would be punished "big time" for wanting to spend time with her father. Plaintiff's taped temper tantrum, offered into evidence, vividly detailed one instance of how D. and N. have been made to understand that enjoying time with their father will be met with their mother's wrath and threat of punishment. Plaintiff conceded that when she completed N.'s registration card for XXX., she wrote that defendant is "not authorized to take them. I have custody. Please call me." At trial, she claimed to fear that defendant would retrieve the girls directly from school. However, she later admitted that defendant had never even attempted to pick them up at school. Her testimony at trial sharply contradicted her sworn affidavit dated January 23, 2008, in which she stated that "the defendant consistently attempts to pick up the girls unannounced from their schools and activities, which disrupts not only the girls, but those in charge of the aforementioned." In her sworn affidavit, plaintiff claimed that she completed the registration card because defendant sought to attend the end of D.'s art class and then had the audacity to drive his daughter home. The art class "incident" occurred well after the registration card was completed by the plaintiff. Moreover, nothing in the parties' agreement prohibits the defendant from visiting the children at extra-curricular events or from driving them to or from such events. In point of fact, there was no dispute that D.'s Friday art class in Huntington ended as defendant's alternate weekend visitation commenced. Plaintiff wrote to Dr. L.[1] (then the XXX. principal) and Ms. T. (N.'s fifth grade teacher), demanding that they restrict their conversations with the defendant to N.'s academics, as plaintiff is "solely responsible for her academic progress and emotional well being. Notwithstanding the nature of their joint legal custody plaintiff insisted before me that, "I have custody, he has visitation." The plaintiff made/completed an application for admission to XXX on behalf of N. in October, 2007. On the application, she checked the box "Mother has custody," rather than the box directly below which says "Joint custody." She identified her new husband, R. L., as N.'s "parent/guardian," and she failed to mention the defendant. During cross examination, plaintiff insisted that she only omitted reference to the defendant for fear that his financial circumstances would adversely impact N.'s chances for acceptance. However, no financial information was requested anywhere on the application. Moreover, plaintiff acknowledged that none was required until after an applicant was invited to attend. By applying to XXX without defendant's knowledge — but with N. completely involved in the process, plaintiff orchestrated the decision to be made, as well as alienating the child. Had the defendant not consented to N.'s attendance at XXX, after the fact, N. would be angry with him for purportedly interfering with the enrollment, even if defendant's objections to a private school placement were sound. In no event was he consulted as to this educational decision. When asked how she might handle things differently now, plaintiff did not indicate that she would first discuss the possibility of a private school with the defendant, as she is obligated to do pursuant to the Stipulation. In a similar pattern of being advised "after the fact," defendant testified that there were countless times when plaintiff deliberately scheduled theater tickets, family events and social activities for the girls during his visitation, and he was compelled to consent or risk disappointing the girls. These occurrences continued even during the time span of proceedings before me. Plaintiff was forced to concede at trial that the defendant was prevented from enjoying his visitation rights after he returned with the girls from his niece's Bat Mitzvah until this Court granted defendant's emergency application to compel the plaintiff to allow the defendant to take D. and N. for the ski trip he had scheduled for his half of the Christmas recess. Plaintiff insisted that it was D. and N. who refused to see their father, because they were angry with the "choices" he had made on their behalf, including his objection to N. attending XXX. Defendant was made aware of the children's position because they parroted their mother's demands on several occasions. D. even read from a script during the brief dinners he was permitted. As plaintiff wrote in one e-mail when she was describing her role with respect to the children: "I am in charge here, not them. What I [sic] say goes. They may bring their shoes. You are responsible for the rest. End of story."

In vivid testimony, the defendant recalled how the plaintiff willfully prevented him from exercising his rights to visitation with the children from November 4, 2007 through December 21, 2007. I observed the plaintiff smirk in the courtroom as defendant emotionally related how he was deprived of spending Hanukkah with his children, and was relegated to lighting a menorah and watching his daughters open their grandparents' presents in the back of his truck at the base of plaintiff's driveway on a December evening. The fact that the children were as angry as they were with the defendant in November and December, 2007, demonstrates, in my view, that efforts to alienate the children and their father were seemingly effective. The children demanded that defendant meet "their" demands before they would permit him to visit with them again. They demanded that defendant permit N. to attend F. A., that he withdraw his objection to their participation in therapy with their mother's therapist, and that he pay for 75% of D.'s Bat Mitzvah but limit his invitations to a handful of guests and have no role in the planning of the event. Plaintiff's contention that she had no involvement in these children's "demands" was belied by the very fact that the children had intimate knowledge of their mother's position on all of these issues. The children, in effect, were evolved into plaintiff's sub-agents and negotiators, having specific details of the financial demands of the plaintiff, and information as to the marital agreement. The mother alluded to the ambivalence of the children in seeing the defendant. But such abrogation to the children's wishes, under these circumstances, was in violation of the agreement. It was wholly improper for the mother to adhere to the children's wishes to forego visitation with their father (see, Matter of Hughes v. Wiegman, 150 AD2d 449). Plaintiff half-heartedly testified that she wants the children to have a relationship with the defendant. Her view of the defendant's role was a numbing, desired nominality, evident by her actions that were without any semblance of involvement by the defendant — notwithstanding the clear joint custodial provisions. At critical points in the cross-examination, plaintiff was noticeably off balance — hesitating and defensive — with answers that dovetailed to either narcissism, or, a poor grasp of the affects of her conduct. The plaintiff was dispassionate, sullen, and passively resistant to the alienating efforts of the plaintiff. The continued litany of instances of alienating conduct, turned repression of the defendant's joint custodial arrangement into farce. The endurance in recounting instance upon instance of alienating conduct herein, was as daunting as it was indefensible. Plaintiff relegated the defendant to waiting endlessly at the bottom of her long driveway. When defendant drove up her driveway on October 26, 2007, so that the children would not have to walk down with their heavy bags in a torrential rain, plaintiff ran down the driveway where she had left her car, drove up the driveway and blocked defendant's vehicle. The children watched as the police listened to their mother angrily demand that their father be arrested and, when the police refused, heard their mother scream that she is a taxpayer and the police work for her. She frequently disparaged the defendant in the presence of the children, calling him a "deadbeat," "loser," "scumbag" and "f____g asshole." On one particular occasion, while holding N. and D. in her arms, plaintiff said to the defendant, "We all hope you die from cancer." Just this past summer, when defendant insisted that D. retrieve her clothes from plaintiff's home in preparation for their visit to N. on her camp visiting day, plaintiff urged to defendant that "Judge Ross will not be around forever, d____." Before the beginning of each of defendant's vacations with the children, the plaintiff staged prolonged and tearful farewells at the base of the driveway, during which plaintiff assured the children that they will return to "their family soon," and if "things get too bad, they can always tell Daddy to bring them home." The crescendo of the plaintiff's conduct involved accusations of sexual abuse. Plaintiff falsely accused defendant of sexual misconduct in June, 2008, shortly after defendant moved to Huntington and the children's friends were enjoying play dates at defendant's home. Plaintiff testified that D. shared that she was uncomfortable when the defendant tickles her, and conceded that she knew there was nothing "sexual" involved. Undaunted by the lack of any genuine concern for D.'s safety, plaintiff pursued a campaign to report the defendant to Child Protective Services. To facilitate this, she spoke with W. M, the psychologist at the school D. attended. Plaintiff also "encouraged" D. to advise Dr. C. (the chidren's pediatrician) that defendant inappropriately touched her — but he saw no signs of abuse. Plaintiff also advised Dr. A., Ms. M., Dr. R. (the children's prior psychologist) and family friends of the allegations and, ultimately, the Suffolk County Department of Social Services opened a file on June 3, 2008, and began an investigation. According to the Case Narrative contained in the New York State Case Registry, a complaint was made that "On a regular basis, father inappropriately fondles 13 year old D.'s breasts. This makes D. feel very uncomfortable. Last Sunday, Father hit D. on the breast for unknown reason . . ." When the caseworker and Suffolk County detectives interviewed D. on June 3, 2008, she reported only that her father tickles her on her neck and under her arms, and she categorically denied her father ever fondled her breasts. She admitted that her father was not attempting to make her uncomfortable, but that he still regards her to be a tomboy. The detectives closed their investigation. Thereafter, and significantly, when the CPS caseworker met with plaintiff on August 19, 2008, plaintiff was quick to state that her ex-husband "did it again." Plaintiff claimed that the defendant hugged D. too hard. According to the caseworker's notes, the caseworker repeatedly cautioned the plaintiff not to bring the children into her disputes with the defendant. This warning was contained in CPS records. Although unfounded child abuse reports are required to be sealed (see, Social Services Law §422[5]), such reports may be introduced into evidence "by the subject of the report where such subject ... is a plaintiff or petitioner in a civil action or proceeding alleging the false reporting of child abuse or maltreatment" (Social Services Law §422[5][b][1]). Allegations that defendant had injured the child were found to be baseless and, by making such allegations, plaintiff needlessly subjected the child to an investigation by Child Protective Services, placing her own interests above those of the child. This report was not made in "good faith" — rather, the investigating agency warned the mother not to re-utilize the allegations and her children in her custodial litigation with the defendant. The concern of a pending contempt proceeding did not affect the plaintiff's conduct. For example, knowing that defendant had parenting access with D. on July 3, 2009, plaintiff invited D.'s close friend, C. C., to a country club for a fireworks display and advised D. of this invitation. She then instructed D. to tell her father she was invited to a friend's party on that date. Another example occurred on June 13, 2009, when plaintiff quietly escorted D. from Alice Tulley Hall during the intermission, ignoring the instructions from the G. Y. Orchestra staff that everyone remain until the conclusion of the entire program. Plaintiff purported she was unaware that defendant attended this special program in Lincoln Center. Defendant, who was in attendance at the concert, was left waiting at the stage door with flowers for D. Plaintiff ignored his text messages questioning where his daughter was. The plaintiff, when confronted with the notion that she may have precipitously ushered her daughter away before her father was able to give her flowers, retorted to the Court that "it was not her responsibility to make plans for T." The evidence before me demonstrates a pattern of willful and calculated violations of the clear and express dictates of the parties' Stipulation of Settlement, incorporated but not merged into their Judgment of Divorce. The extensive record is replete with instances of attempts to undermine the relationship between the children and their father and replace him with her new husband, manipulation of defendant's parenting access, utter and unfettered vilification of the defendant to the children, false reporting of sexual misconduct without any semblance of "good faith," and her imposition upon the children to fear her tirades and punishment if they embrace the relationship they want to have with their father. The unfortunate history here also reflects the plaintiff's hiring and firing of three different counsel, expressed disdain towards the children's attorney, and utter disregard for the authority of the Court.

CHANGE OF CUSTODY PROCEEDING TO BE HELD

There was no request in the moving papers for a change of custody. During the course of the extensive hearing held before me, application was made by the defendant for an immediate change of custody. It is improper for a trial court to take action and grant relief without appropriate notice to one of the parties affected. Such notice during the course of the proceeding for undemanded relief does not constitute adequate notice, and could serve to prejudice the plaintiff. Siegel Practice Commentary, McKinney's Consol. Law of New York, Book 7B, CPLR 3017.6. The Court did not grant the relief for a change in custody in the course of the hearing for contempt. However, Domestic Relations Law §240 provides that upon an application, the Court may modify a previous direction with respect to the right of visitation "after such notice to the other party....and given in such manner as the Court shall direct." See, Domestic Relations Law §240. The request for a change in custody during the course of the contempt hearing clearly has provided adequate notice by which to schedule a hearing. The request during the hearing to amend the motion to conform to the evidence presented at this hearing, is now granted, to the extent of ordering a prompt hearing on a modification of custody. Heintz v. Heintz, 28 AD3d 1154; cf. Sipos v. Kelly, 66 AD2d 1022. See, also, Fisk v. Fisk, 274 AD2d 691. The parties are to appear before me on June 4, 2010 to be heard on selection of a forensic examiner and to be heard on allocation of fees. See, Uniform Rules §202.7; also see,

Ragone v. Ragone, 62 AD3d 772; Domestic Relations Law §237(d)(4). The scheduling of the modification of custody hearing will be facilitated at that time.

THE COURT'S ROLE IN ADDRESSING ALIENATION

Differing "alienation" theories promoted by many public advocacy groups, as well as psychological and legal communities, have differing scientific and empirical foundations. However, interference with the non-custodial parent's relationship with a child has always been considered in the context of a "parent's ability to encourage the relationship between the non-custodial parent and a child," a factor to be considered by the Court in custody and visitation/parental access determinations. See, Eschbach v. Eschbach, supra. Our Appellate Courts recognize such factor, as they have determined that the "interference with the non-custodial parent and child's relationship is an act so inconsistent with the best interests of a child, as to, per se, raise a strong probability that the offending party is unfit to act as a custodial parent." See, Leistner v. Leistner, 137 AD2d 499; Finn v. Finn, 176 AD2d 1132, 1133, quoting Entwistle v. Entwistle, 61 AD2d 380, 384-385, appeal dismissed 44 NY2d 851; Matter of Krebsbach v. Gallagher, 181 AD2d 363, 366; Gago v. Acevedo, 214 AD2d 565; Matter of Turner v. Turner, 260 AD2d 953, 954; Zeiz v. Slater, 57 AD2d 793. Where, as in the instant case, there is a finding of a willful violation of a court order demonstrated by a deliberate interference with a non-custodial parent's right to visitation/parental access, the IAS Court, as a general rule, must schedule an evidentiary hearing before making any modification of custody. See, Glenn v. Glenn, 262 AD2d 885. See, also, Entwistle v. Entwistle, 61 AD2d 380; Young v. Young, 212 AD2d 114; Matter of LeBlanc v. Morrison, 288 AD2d 768, 770, quoting Matter of Markey v. Bederian, 274 AD2d 816; Matter of David WW v. Lauren QQ, 42 AD3d 685; Goldstein v. Goldstein, 2009 NY Slip Op. 08995 [Dec. 1, 2009].

SENTENCE

An imposition of sentence upon a finding of contempt should contain a language permitting the contemnor an opportunity to purge. See, Heyn v. Burr, 19 AD3d 896; Stempler v. Stempler, 200 AD2d 733; Cooper v. Cooper, 21 AD3d 869. Under the circumstances here, where determination is made of a past violation of an order of parental access/joint custody, there can be no purge since it is no longer within the plaintiff's power to perform the act. See, Kruszczynski v. Charlap, 124 AD2d 1073; Young v. Young, 129 AD2d 794. Moreover, the use of remedial intervention — parenting coordination/counseling — during the course of the trial was unsuccessful, and even if re-utilized here, the Court cannot condition release from imprisonment upon future compliance. See, Martinez v. D.S.S., 44 AD3d 945.

Accordingly, and after careful consideration of the circumstances of the nature and extent of the multiple instances of violation of the court order, the plaintiff is sentenced to a period of incarceration for six weekends, to be served on the first and third weekends of each month for the months of June, July and August, 2010. Prior to these weekends of the plaintiff's incarceration, she shall transport the children to the defendant's home to assure their continued care and well being. See, Marallo v. Marallo, 128 AD2d 710; Gordon v. Janover, 238 AD2d 545; Munz v. Munz, 242 AD2d 789; Kruszczynski v. Charlap, supra; Barcham-Reichman v. Reichman, 250 AD2d 609.

COUNSEL FEES

Given the finding of a willful violation of the Judgment of this Court (Stack, J.) Dated March 26, 2004 [erroneously dated as 2003], and given the fees requested ($134,352.92 for defendant's counsel, $11,287.50 for Attorney for the Children's fees, and $19,833.32 for Parenting Coordinator fees, shall be the object of a hearing to be held before me on June 4, 2010. While the parties consented to such determination on submission, the issues presented lend themselves to the Court's assessment of the parties' finances. To facilitate a complete record, a hearing is ordered herewith. See, Judiciary Law §773; Gordon v. Janover, supra. On the Court's own motion, this decision and order will be stayed until June 4, 2010 to afford the plaintiff an opportunity to seek Appellate Review, if so advised, and it is

ORDERED, that the plaintiff, L. R., is adjudged to be in civil contempt of the Judgment of Divorce dated March 26, 2004; and it is further

ORDERED, that the parties and their counsel shall appear before me for sentencing on June 4, 2010 at 9:30 a.m., which date may not be adjourned without written order of this Court; and it is further

ORDERED, that the plaintiff, L. R., is sentenced to a period of six weekends imprisonment in the Nassau County Correctional Facility, pursuant to the schedule set forth herein; and it is further

ORDERED, that this order and execution of this sentence shall be stayed until June 4, 2010; and it is further

ORDERED, that this decision shall be deemed an order and/or warrant of commitment pursuant to and in accordance with Judiciary Law §772; and it is further

ORDERED, that a copy of this Decision and Order shall be served upon the Sheriff of Nassau County and/or the Warden of the Nassau County Correctional Facility to facilitate the schedule of weekend incarceration, to be imposed as follows: Friday, June 11, 2010 at 6:00 p.m. to Sunday, June 13, 2010 at 6:00 p.m.; Friday, June 25, 2010 at 6:00 p.m. to Sunday, June 27, 2010 at 6:00 p.m.; Friday, July 9, 2010 at 6:00 p.m. to Sunday, July 11, 2010 at 6:00 p.m.; Friday, July 23, 2010 at 6:00 p.m. to Sunday, July 25, 2010 at 6:00 p.m.; Friday, August 6, 2010 at 6:00 p.m. to Sunday, August 8, 2010 at 6:00 p.m.; Friday, August 20, 2010 at 6:00 p.m. to Sunday, August 22, 2010 at 6:00 p.m; and it is further

ORDERED, that this Court finds that the conduct of the plaintiff was calculated to, or actually did, defeat, impair or prejudice the defendant's rights or remedies.

This constitutes the decision and order of this Court.

My two cents- It's about time, I love stories like this.. I presonally want to see more. more more- put 'em all in jail!!! Lets keep the pressure on 'em, Parent Alienation and it's result Parent Alienation Syndrome IS CHILD ABUSE!

P.S. For those of you that want to take an active role in your cases, do you know that you can use google scholar to find any kind of law as it applied to a real life case?

Check it out @ http://scholar.google.com/ make sure to mark "legal opinions" then narrow it down to your state or federal cases in the drop down menu when you get there! It's our own personal law library!

Control Your Destiny

2010-10-26T12:59:00.001-04:00

This post isn't my "usual" type of post, it may not even be related.. or is it..

I started a new blog Don't Let Destiny Catch You Sleeping @ http://dontletdestinycatchyousleeping.blogspot.com/

The reason for that blog.. is explained in my first post..

"A year or so ago, when a fairly new friend of mine told me she was "reading cards" and asked me if it was ok for her to "read my cards" for practice, I said sure why not.

Did I believe in "The Cards?" Nah, no way!

But it wasn't costing me a dime and if nothing else I thought it would be entertaining.

So off she went to do a reading/report for me...

WOW! That's all I can say.. wow, wow, wow! Was I in for a shock! Probably the shock of my life.

She came back and said.. "Now it all makes sense!" Ok, so I was thinking.. "WHAT makes sense?"

My life has been filled with trauma. However, I've always managed to keep my head above water. To rise above so to speak. To make it through it all.. and come out on the other side, better than when I went in.

Ok, so was that what made sense? Hmm, ohhh yes, yes, yes!

I've decided to create this blog and add it to my other blogs in the hopes of helping others see what lies ahead so they can make it through their own 'personal challanges.'

To give them the insight. The insight I wish I had back then...

Back then, when it mattered most. Before I got sucked up into a world I knew nothing of.. a world I would have never ever believed existed, behind the doors of Family Court!

But, here's the kicker! If I had known anything about my "Birth Card" I would have not only understood my life much better.. I would have never 'gone into court with a man' the year my life was destroyed.. by going into court with a man! It was all there in my Cards. The warning was like a flashing red light.. Do NOT go into court with a man!

Additionally, a year later, I would have known that "life as I once knew it, was about to end" and I would have done things much differently!

Ehhh, I could go on and on.. about what I found out to late. But I'll tell you one thing...

Looking at my past yearly spreads, has made a believer out of me! Everything that went either right or wrong.. was right there for me to use to my advantage.. if I only knew!

Don't let destiny catch you sleeping.

Email me @ HaveUmistakenMe@aol.com and let me do a Birth Card Reading/Report for you.. find out what's in your future so that you can let it work for, not against you!

Don't believe me! Do what I did, look into your past cards and see how much truth is in those.. then you tell me if you want a yearly report or not. I'll put my kidneys on the line, that you will!

Don't wait another day. Email or Call me @ (917) 651-6974 and ask for your reading today!

I'll post and explain my "Birth Card" in a follow up post.. it will all then make sense to you too...

I'm telling ya, it all came into place in that one report!"

Mental Health Experts Publish New Book Urging DSM to Include Parent Alienation in Upcoming Edition

2010-10-20T21:28:00.002-04:00

A group of 70 mental health experts from 12 countries are part of an effort to add Parental Alienation to the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

(DSM V), the American Psychiatric Association’s “bible” of diagnoses. The group is led by William Bernet, M.D., Professor, Department of Psychiatry of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

More- Click here: Mental Health Experts Publish New Book Urging DSM to Include Parental Alienation in Upcoming Edition « Fathers & F

Follow The Money- Drug Company Payments to Doctors

2010-10-20T21:21:00.001-04:00

Dollars for Docs

What Drug Companies are Paying Your Doctor

You can search by doctor and state here: http://projects.propublica.org/docdollars/

"Drug companies have long kept secret details of the payments they make to doctors for promoting their drugs. But seven companies have begun posting names and compensation on the Web, some as the result of legal settlements. ProPublica compiled these disclosures, totaling $258 million, into a single database that allows patients to search for their doctor."

Canadian Symposium on Parental Alienation in New York City

2010-10-04T15:11:00.005-04:00

“Approximately one percent of all children in the United States experience some form of parental alienation.”

I borrowed this from Mike Jeffries..

Mike is the author of " A Family’s Heartbreak: A Parent’s Introduction to Parental Alienation"

Thanks Mike for all you do!

That statement from Dr. William Bernet, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, was one of the many eye-opening insights from the recent Canadian Symposium on Parental Alienation in New York City. Bernet was the symposium’s keynote speaker.

Approximately 2oo parents, legal and mental health professionals attended the conference to learn more about parental alienation and how to address the family dynamic both legally and therapeutically.

More- Blog « A Family's Heartbreak: A Parent's Introduction to Parental Alienation

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Share your Meetup Group's web presence! - The Official Meetup HQ Blog

2010-10-03T21:16:00.000-04:00

When I'm not blogging.. or MIA for to long, you can find me here..

Share your Meetup Group's web presence! - The Official Meetup HQ Blog

Hot topic: psychiatry experts grapple with whether to classify parental alienation as disorder

2010-10-02T08:39:00.003-04:00

NEW YORK - The American Psychiatric Association has a hot potato on its hands as it updates its catalog of mental disorders — whether to include parental alienation, a disputed term conveying how a child's relationship with one estranged parent can be poisoned by the other.

There's broad agreement that this sometimes occurs, usually triggered by a divorce and child-custody dispute. But there's bitter debate over whether the phenomenon should be formally classified as a mental health syndrome — a question now before the psychiatric association as it prepares the first complete revision since 1994 of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

"We're gotten an enormous amount of mail — more than any other issue," said Dr. Darrel Regier, vice chair of the task force drafting the manual. "The passions on both sides of this are exceptional."

On one side of the debate, which has raged since the 1980s, are feminists, advocates for battered women and others who consider "parental alienation syndrome" to be an unproven and potentially dangerous concept useful to men trying to deflect attention from their abusive behavior.

"This is a fabricated notion — there's no science to support it," said Joan Meier, a professor at the George Washington University Law School who has written extensively on domestic violence and child custody.

On the other side are legions of firm believers in the existence of a syndrome, including hundreds gathering for a conference on the topic this weekend in New York. They say that recognition of parental alienation in the psychiatrists' manual would lead to fairer outcomes in family courts and enable more children of divorce to get treatment so they could reconcile with an estranged parent.

"This is a problem that causes horrible outcomes for children. ... All the arguments I've heard against it are trivial," said Dr. William Bernet, a psychiatry professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

Bernet is among the speakers at this weekend's conference, which organizers bill as the largest ever on parental alienation. He will be describing his efforts as lead author of the proposal submitted to the psychiatric association to recognize parental alienation either as a "mental disorder" or a "relational problem."

The psychiatric association first published its manual of diagnostic disorders, known as the DSM, in 1952. The last major revision was published in 1994 and updated in 2000, and the fifth edition — DSM-5 — is due for publication in May 2013.

Work groups in various fields have been reviewing numerous proposals for additions to the 283 disorders in the current edition. Parental alienation remains on a list of proposals that are subject to further review, though it did not pass muster with the work group dealing with childhood and adolescent disorders.

"There is not sufficient scientific evidence to warrant its inclusion in the DSM," Regier said in a statement.

In an interview, Regier — who directs the APA's research division — said the proposal technically remains alive pending final presentations by the end of 2011. But he described chances for inclusion of parental alienation as "slim" — given that it has not been selected for field trials that normally would be a prerequisite for official recognition.

Bernet said it was "flatly ridiculous" for the APA to contend there is not enough information available to warrant including parental alienation in the DSM. He cited legal developments and new research in numerous foreign countries.

His proposal defines parental alienation disorder as "a mental condition in which a child, usually one whose parents are engaged in a high conflict divorce, allies himself or herself strongly with one parent, and rejects a relationship with the other parent, without legitimate justification."

The weekend conference at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine is the brainchild of Joseph Goldberg, who is based near Toronto and in 2008 founded an organization called the Canadian Symposium for Parental Alienation Syndrome.

Goldberg runs a consulting service for lawyers and parents litigating issues related to parental alienation. In his online biography, he says he "fought one of the most brutal case of parental alienation in Palm Beach County history" during a child-custody dispute with his ex-wife in Florida that extended from 2003 to 2006.

"This touches lives of more people than anyone imagines," Goldberg said by telephone from Canada. "It's not just about a child turned against a parent, through hatred. This affects grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, friends — all of them thrown out when a child rejects a parent."

Some of Goldberg's allies doubt the psychiatric association is ready to include parental alienation in its manual. New York-based psychologist Amy Baker, who has written a book about parental alienation, suggested the association might "play it safe" and decline to recognize it for fear of provoking feminist groups.

However, Goldberg is hopeful.

"There's a long way to go over the next few years before they make a final decision," he said. "There will be enormous pressure. ...I think it will be difficult for the APA not to include it."

Parental alienation surged onto the pop-culture radar screen a few years ago as a consequence of the bitter divorce and child custody battle involving actors Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger. Baldwin was harshly criticized by some feminist groups for citing parental alienation syndrome as a source of his estrangement with his daughter.

The concept is a source of confusion and division in the legal profession, as some lawyers try to evoke parental alienation and others challenge that tactic.

Texas Supreme Court Justice Debra Lerhmann, chair of the American Bar Association's family law section, said the issue of possible alienation can be raised in child custody proceedings whether or not any such phenomenon is classified as a disorder by health professionals.

"Anyone who's in this business knows there are situations where that in fact is happening — and sometimes it's alleged but is not happening," she said. "Even if it's not in the manual, relevant evidence can still be brought in."

Meier, the George Washington law professor, has urged judges to be cautious in how they allow the topic to be raised in cases where one estranged parent is accused by the other of abuse.

"You've got to assess the abuse first, without poisoning it with a claim of alienation," Meier said. "Only after abuse is ruled out do you then move on to the question of alienation."

Elizabeth Kates, a Pompano Beach, Fla., lawyer who deals often with child custody cases, is skeptical of the role parental alienation can play in such disputes: "It's a very easy claim to make ... but the problem arises when it's used in court to obscure the investigation of whether there's been abuse."

She said the initial impetus for recognition of parental alienation syndrome came in large part from the fathers' rights movement, but suggested much of the momentum now comes from psychologists, consultants and others who could profit if the concept had a more formal status in family court disputes.

"It's monetary," Kates said. "These psychologists and therapists make huge money doing the evaluations and therapies."

Original Article- Hot topic: psychiatry experts grapple with whether to classify parental alienation as disorder StarTribune.com

Symposium on Parental Alienation Syndrome: http://www.cspas.ca/

Critique of PAS: http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/pas/faq.htm

American Psychiatric Assn.: http://www.psych.org/MainMenu/Research/DSMIV.aspx

My two cents- As most of my regular readers know I am 150% for inclusion of Parent Alientation and Parent Alienation Syndrome into the D.S.M. however, some of my newer readers might not know why. Well here goes..

I was a child of abuse. Children of abuse only know abuse, so therefore we attract abusers- PERIOD!

I happen to be a female, but there isn't a gender for abusers nor is there a gender for those that are abused.

Abusers male or female take over where the abusive parent left off.. the sad thing is that the abused have no idea they are actually inviting abusers to abuse them.

How so? We learned early in like to do whatever it took to appease the abuser!

We learned to dote on their every whim. To satisfy their every need. To bow down, give in, and do whatever it took to keep them from abusing us.

Often times sacrificing our own needs. We weren't allowed to have needs. If we had needs that meant that the abusers needs would have to take a back seat.

Well that isn't gonna happen!

So when we were growing up we were actually being conditioned to serve the evil bastards that raised us. (yeah, yeah I know~ your parent isn't an evil bastard.)

YES they were- and dealing with that fact is the only way to stop being abused as an adult! PERIOD!!

Ya see, this is how it works. As a child of one of these abusers (emotional or physical) we believed "that was normal" Normal doesn't necessarily equate to healthy- PERIOD!

Here's where my favorite quote comes in "How would you know you were limited if you couldn't see past your limitations" ~ me.

Answer~ You wouldn't! PERIOD!

So here we are, busted, broken and alienated.. and all we can think is- why are 'they' doing this to us. Why won't 'they' stop! Why, why, why- all I want is peace. I just want to raise my kids without the drama.. blah blah blah blah WAKE UP!

As long as we need to keep the peace.. cuz that is what we learned to do to stay alive as children. KEEP THE MOTHER-FUKIN-PEACE.. avoid the next beating, avoid the wrath of emotional terror abusers can reign on an innocent child... Don't rock the abusers boat, hope they appreciate our passivity.. more blah blah bullshit!

Then we (the abused) become the persecutors! We yell, scream, storm out..' blah blah.. we use one of a dozen or more defenses.. what-the-fuck-ever we learned to do as children to 'get away' from our original abusers..

But guess what? We didn't walk away.. we didn't put a stop to the abuse. No, we were conditioned as abused children to be the peace makers, the laid back.. the don't rock the boat- ABUSED! Or we learned to lash out! Show them just how pissed of they got us. Teach them a lesson. Yeah, OK!

The only lesson we taught them was that we would 'allow' them to do this to us OVER AND OVER AGAIN!

How so?

WE FUCKIN STAY! PERIOD!

So, in short (short my ass- well, it is what it is.. this story can't be taught in short anything) But, anywho.. our learned behavior, invites abusers to abuse. Part of the abusers make up is -- entitlement! They were conditioned by one of us.. a parent that put up with our spouses abuse! It was then that the future abuser learned to feel entitled, like the abuser they were raised by. They decided as children to not get abused.. to instead ABUSE!

Parent Alienation is nothing short of an abuser feeling 'entitled' to hurt the other, using any means possible.. what better way to hurt your partner than to get whomever it is on YOUR side? To tell your lies to.. to sell your delusions to.. to align with? Whom better to destroy your partner with, than your children?

There is no-one better! The children are the perfect tool to abuse with.

So believing that parent alienation is not an abusers tool.. a way of life for the 'entitled' is in fact lying to yourself. Or in the case of those women's groups.. it is to keep your/their head in the sand and do whatever it is, to take the heat off you/them- THE ABUSER! (depending on who's reading this)

Bottom line? Women abuse just as much, if not more than men. The difference is often (not always) between emotional and physical abuse. But, remember.. abuse is abuse.. PERIOD! Abusers have no boundaries! Abusers (parents that will and do alienate) play victim- that's their M.O! Poor me!!

Then the world- including their own children (the future alienated children who suffer from Parent Alienation Syndrome- aka Stockholm Syndrome) feel so bad.. they do whatever it takes to make mommy or daddy feel better.
EVEN IF- it means turning on their other parent (the Alienated). These poor kids (and or weak minded adults) are brainwashed (for lack of a better and or much longer explanation)!

Viola! There you have it.. someone that use to love another- now believes it's their opinion to hate the one they originally loved! They have no idea they were brainwashed..

With these facts in mind..

(1) Abusers play victim to manipulate..

(2) An abusers make up, is to feel entitled..

(3) Abusers keep their victim[s] under their control..

(4) Abusers are relentless in getting the world to see their side..

(5) The abused is feed lie after lie..

(6) The lies contradict what the abused knows..

(7) The abused becomes stressed out listening to the abuser day in and day out.. bad mouth the future alienated parent (lover-neighbor-sister-stranger- whomever is the target)..

(8) Those conflicting messages overwhelm the future brainwashed..

(9) Those lies include telling the future alienated how lucky they are that the abuser is there to 'protect' the abused from the perceived enemy!

(10) Instead of the abused having a breakdown by their own minds conflicting messages/beliefs.. they must align with the abuser.. it becomes survival!

So, is it possible for only men to act like this?

HELL-MOTHER-FUCKIN--- NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

With our culture of wanting to 'protect' the abused woman..

Of needing to 'protect' the victim..

How easy would it be for an abuser who feels entitled, to use our 'learned protectiveness' to abuse?

How easy? Ask those women's groups!

Ok, ok, ok.. hold on- don't get your panties in an uproar!

I'm NOT saying that abused women abuse! No, I'm not even hinting at that!!

I know abused women.. are abused period!

But what I AM saying is.. that unless you know the M.O.(profile) of an abuser and the M.O. (profile) of 'the abused' along with knowing the politics of those women's groups.. and then you factor in the millions of dollars given by our federal government in funding.. to 'save the abused!' You are willing to believe the lie!

What lie?

Pfttttttttttt they lie that parent alienation is an abusers excuse to abuse!

Truth is parent alienation aka Stockholm Syndrome is VERY REAL! And used BY abusers to align the innocent/or in some cases the stupid public WITH the abuser aka the alienator!

Then they cry abuse play the victim, to hide the truth.. that THEY are the abuser not the abused!

And they 'professionals' that disagree with this very real truth.. must somehow be involved with the politics of it all! Follow the money!

This is MY OPINION, after years of research..I KNOW the truth. Don't be an asshole and just blindly believe me! Stop being abused! Learn the real truth for yourself!!

Please see the links below for earlier posts which explain the psychological science of how this happens.

It's a cycle! The abuse cycle.. and it will go on for generations to come.. until someone says NO, ENOUGH- PERIOD!

Personality Disorder Glosary - Alienated

A post for someone very special, a dear friend of mine

By George.. I think I've got it! PA/PAS

The Long History of PAS

Parent Alienation Leaves bruises deep inside

Domestic violence: Male entitlement mentality a factor

Stop the Gender Wars

My Personal Debate over Maternal Alienation and Parent Alienation

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Breaking News- Man shot 3 sons, 2 killed

2010-10-01T13:46:00.002-04:00

When I saw thsi on CNN as a blib on the bottom of the screen, I got a knot in my stomach and thought 'OMG I pray this had nothing to do with child custody'- then looked it up.

This is all I can find so far- Man shot 3 sons, 2 killed

However, when I pulled up the title- 'Man Shot 3 sons, 2 killed' I also came up with this story (below)!

I want to know- when the hell are these fucktards gona get it? Unless the laws and the INCENTIVES from the Government (Title IV Federal Funding- to "protect" victims) change insofar as Child Custody, Child Support, Domestic Violence and Child Abuse go.. these kinds of stories will continue to make head lines!

Wake up people- these incentives and laws DO EFFECT YOU AND YOURS!

Battle over kids ends with their deaths in north Harris Houston & Texas News Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

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Judge Judy Exposes Woman's False Acusation of Domestic Violence

2010-09-28T11:06:00.003-04:00

In these videos Judge Judy berates a young woman for obtaining a protective order against her ex-fiance' after she caught him with another woman. The young woman trespassed upon his property and kicked in his door at 3:00am. Later that week she filed for the protective order and two days following that took their child to see the father. Although Judge Judy found that the woman made a false allegation of DV, by her own admission, the woman proclaimed “I don't know what I did wrong” “I did everything right” and actually called Judge Judy “crazy”.

Video and original link - Judge Judy Exposes Woman's False Accusation of Domestic Violence

False allegations destroy lives- and should be a felony! I know this first hand. Mr wonderful [ex-husband] (said tongue in cheek) and his cronies (politial connections) FRAUDULENTLY removed my children in 2001 based on false allegations WITHOUT ONE OUNCE OF PROOF- DESPITE PROOF OF THE CONTRARY!

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N.Y. Bar: Lawyers may comb social media for dirt..

2010-09-26T13:55:00.003-04:00

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — The New York Bar Association said Friday it's ethical for lawyers to comb social networking websites to collect damaging information on opposing parties in lawsuits.

The 77,000-member association said the explosion in the use of networks like Facebook and MySpace raises new legal questions about privacy rights. This is the first interpretation of how New York's Rules of Professional Conduct for lawyers applies.

The group's Committee on Professional Ethics concluded that attorneys in litigation can access the public pages of another party's site to get information about that person, as long as it's accessible to all members of the network.

"Obtaining information about a party available on the Facebook or MySpace profile is similar to obtaining information that is available in publicly accessible online or print media, or through a subscription research service such as Nexis or Factiva, and that is plainly permitted," the committee said.

The panel cited a related 2009 Philadelphia Bar Association opinion that lawyers can't use deception to get accepted onto someone's private contact list — known as "friending" — in order to get otherwise private information.

"As long as the lawyer does not 'friend' the other party or direct a third person to do so, accessing the social network pages of the party will not violate" rules against deceptive or misleading conduct, the committee concluded.
The Philadelphia opinion involved Pennsylvania's rules of conduct in a case about contacting an adverse witness.

The New York committee noted its ruling did not specifically address friending scenarios, but pointed out that they would be subject to conduct rules.
James Walker, a lawyer and panel member, said Friday that's a likely topic for a future case.

"These things are always the subject to vigorous debate on the committee," Walker said. "It will be interesting to see where we end up."

Attorneys who violate conduct rules in New York can face court grievance committee discipline, ranging from admonishment to losing their law licenses.

Original Article- NY Bar: Lawyers may comb social media for dirt LoHud.com The Journal News

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Caseworkers Suspended for Dropping Ball

2010-09-25T00:10:00.002-04:00

NBC NewYork has learned that two Brooklyn ACS workers have been suspended without pay for failing to follow standard policies and procedures.

They're accused of dropping the ball while assigned to monitor the home of Marchella Pierce, a 4 year old who died on September 2, after allegedly being tied to her bed with twine.

More- Caseworkers Suspended for Dropping Ball NBC New York

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Parental Alienation Disorder Leaps into Mental Health History with the American Psychiatric Association

2010-09-15T09:12:00.003-04:00

Parental Alienation Conference - Mt. Sinai School of Medicine Canadian Symposium for Parental Alienation SyndromeOctober 2nd and October 3rd.

(PRWEB) September 14, 2010 -- Psychological research and studies have been investigating the phenomenon known as Parental Alienation for the last 60 years. Today, most mental health professionals regard it as a form of child abuse. During the year parental alienation also leaped into mental health history, as the American Psychiatric Association announced it is now considering - Parental Alienation Disorder for inclusion in DSM-5. There are 3 possible ways for P.A.D. to get into DSM-5: in the main body of Appendix A as a mental dis-order, in Appendix B as a relational problem or in Appendix A in one of the appendices of DSM-5 under Criteria Sets and Axes for further study.

The inclusion of Parental Alienation Disorder could help 200,000 children in American every year who suffer from this condition. It could also help abate this form of child abuse and bring families better treatment solutions along the way. In one of the American Journal's of Family Therapy, Dr. William Bernet defined parental alienation as a mental condition in which a child - usually one whose parents are engaged in a high conflict divorce- allies himself or herself strongly with one parent and rejects a relationship with the other parent without legitimate justification. "

In NYC an international conference on parental alienation will be taking place at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine - October 2nd and October 3rd in the Stern Auditorium. Joseph Goldberg, Founder of the CSPAS conference said, " The conference is important to every mental health professional involved in helping children and families. It also presents an opportunity for many family lawyers to educate themselves in ways that can help their clients obtain court interventions that are appropriate to helping these children."

If you are interested in attending the conference please visit and register online at http://www.CSPAS.ca/nyc or call 647-476-3170. For all media list inquiries about and for the event please contact 646.370.3458.

About C.S.P.A.S
Founded in 2008 by Joseph Goldberg, The Canadian Symposium for Parental Alienation Syndrome is an educational organization assisting mental health professionals, family law lawyers, family mediators and other professionals to better understand parental alienation and parental alienation syndrome / disorder. Their goal is to assist children and families in need of educational information and referrals to professionals with a specialized expertise for counseling, psychological or psycho-educational services. Parents and professionals in both the family law and mental health communities will be able to locate a number of experts in parental alienation by simply visiting their website. C.S.P.A.S also disseminates information and literature to professionals and to parents. They maintain a strictly educational position and have no political affiliations. The C.S.P.A.S. does not accept funding from any organization affiliated with parental rights, nor do they take a position in favor of or in opposition to equal parenting. For more information visit Canadian Symposium for Parental Alienation Syndrome

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Thank you Bob for sharing this with me!!

Kampusch Reveals Austrian Dungeon Ordeal

2010-09-07T10:14:00.002-04:00

(Sept. 6) -- Natascha Kampusch, who was imprisoned in an Austrian cellar for eight years after being abducted at the age of 10, has for the first time revealed the full extent of the abuse she suffered at the hands of her deranged kidnapper.

Her traumatic autobiography "3,096 Days" -- a reference to the amount of time she spent in captivity -- tells of how she was beaten up to 200 times a week, slept manacled next to her kidnapper, and repeatedly attempted to take her own life to escape her hellish existence.

In extracts from her memoir, published today in the Daily Mail, she recalls the first time she saw her kidnapper, communications engineer Wolfgang Priklopil, as she walked to school in Vienna's Donaustadt district in March 1998. "He had blue eyes, and his gaze was strangely empty; he seemed lost and very vulnerable," she writes. Kampusch, now 22, describes her capture as a "choreography of terror" -- Priklopil grabbed her around the waist and threw her into his white delivery van -- and details how she was instantly aware of the grim fate likely awaiting her.

"The moment the van door closed behind me, I was well aware of the fact that I'd just been kidnapped -- and would probably die," she writes. "Did I scream? I don't think so. Yet everything inside me was one single scream ... Did I fight back? I must have, because the next day I had a black eye. I remember only a feeling of paralyzing helplessness."

After her capture, Priklopil -- who demanded she refer to him as "My Lord" or "Maestro" -- initially acted with awkward hospitality, asking his young prisoner if there was anything she needed, "as if I were staying the night in a hotel." The 10-year-old Kampusch in turn attempted to preserve an "illusion of normality" by asking Priklopil to read her a bedtime story.

However, Priklopil became steadily more sexually abusive and violent, beating her so heavily that her bones snapped. "He hated it when the pain made me cry. Then he'd grab me by the throat, drag me to the sink, push my head underwater and squeeze my windpipe until I almost lost consciousness," she says. "I also vividly remember the snapping sound in my vertebrae when Priklopil struck my head repeatedly with his fist." She wrote down those daily acts of extreme violence in notebooks that she still keeps today.

Kampusch's despair led her to attempt suicide several times. "I knew I couldn't spend my whole life this way. There was only one way out: taking my own life," she writes. "At 14, I'd tried several times to strangle myself with articles of clothing. At 15, I tried to slit my wrists with a large sewing needle. This time, I piled paper and toilet rolls onto my hotplate. The dungeon would fill with smoke and I'd gently drift away, out of a life that was no longer my own."

However, she found she was unable to go through with the act. "When the acrid smoke reached my lungs, I inhaled deeply. But then I began to cough and the will to survive kicked in," Kampusch says. "I held my pillow in front of my mouth and threw wet clothes on top of the blistering paper. The next morning, the dungeon still smelled like a smokehouse. When Priklopil came in, he yanked me out of bed. How dare I try to escape him! His face revealed a mixture of anger and fear. Fear that I could ruin everything."

An 18-year-old Kampusch eventually escaped her windowless cell in August 2006. She distracted her kidnapper with the noise of a vacuum cleaner as he took a phone call, and ran to a nearby house to get help. A week later, Priklopil, 44, killed himself by jumping in front of a train.

Kampusch has attempted to move on with her life -- even launching her own TV talk show in Austria -- but still suffers from the deep psychological scars inflicted during her years in captivity. She has, for instance, bought Priklopil's old home and car, evidence perhaps of her conflicted feelings toward the kidnapper who destroyed her childhood, but was also her only human contact for eight years. However, she is also consulting lawyers about suing Austrian authorities over claims they failed to thoroughly investigate her disappearance.

Original Article- For pictures and more-- Natascha Kampusch Reveals Details of Her Austrian Dungeon Ordeal

Earlier Articles I've posted on Natascia and other historical kidnappings..

Disgusted with the system: The comparison of parental alienation to "Stockholm syndrome

Disgusted with the system: Why are child abuse scandals happening in Austria?

Disgusted with the system: Fellow Austrian captive Natascha Kampusch offers her help

Disgusted with the system: Kampusch: Time and silence will heal Amstetten wounds

Disgusted with the system: Ten Worst Child Kidnappings in History

Disgusted with the system: Police: Austrian father warned captives they would be gassed

Disgusted with the system: Fritzl family to receive charity and state aid

Disgusted with the system: Can Austria's Cellar Children Recover?

Disgusted with the system: Austrian Kidnap Victim Buys "House Of Horrors"

Disgusted with the system: Natascha Kampusch says her captor and Josef Fritzl idolised their mothers

Disgusted with the system: Austria neglected early leads to Kampusch kidnapper

Disgusted with the system: Austria neglected early leads to Kampusch kidnapper

Disgusted with the system: Another Imprisoned Woman Is Found, This Time in Italy

Disgusted with the system: Natascha Kampusch case may be reopened

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Filmmaker, author and Child Protective Services reform advocate Bill Bowen dies of heart attack

2010-09-04T20:08:00.001-04:00

'One of the brightest, articulate and assertive advocates of Child Protective Services reform, Bill Bowen, has died of a heart attack.

Before his death, Bowen was trying to raise money to produce a full length version of his 30 minute documentary film, Innocence Destroyed. Innocence Destroyed exposes the deaths of thousands of children while in the care of Child Protective Services.'

More...

Filmmaker, author and Child Protective Services reform advocate Bill Bowen dies of heart attack - Albany CPS and Family Court...

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