Response to ABA FAQ

Txfeminist writes:

I like how you simply disqualify the American Bar Association FAQ as feminist propaganda. Do you do that with any information that you don't agree with? It's irrelevent? You haven't offered any insight or supporting facts into why you find it to be so.

See the world through whatever color glasses make you feel better, I guess.

I don't see how your CDC quote relates to domestic violence.

Further, I have already refuted Glenn Sacks' talking points here one by one.

For you to simply repeat the talking points, in defense of the talking points, is tautological in nature. The existence of the talking points do not defend arguments made therein. Posted by Txfeminist to The Angry Dad at 10/13/2006 01:29:50 PM

The ABA FAQ is not really an ABA FAQ. It is just an opinion column that was written by some lawyer for the newsletter of some ABA domestic violence committee. It is just a list of so-called "myths" and a list of references that supposedly rebut the myths. Most of the cited articles are not available online.

Myth 1 is about the incidence of domestic violence among custody litigants. However it does not distinguish between physical and emotional violence, or between true and false allegations. The numbers are therefore meaningless.

Myth 2 regards the effect of domestic violence on children. It cites the CDC study that I quoted. As you say, CDC study doesn't really show that the children are harmed, but that is why the study was cited.

The newsletter also cites this review of studies claiming that witnessing domestic violence is correlated with various problems. At least that article is honest enough to admit that the studies have serious methodological flaws, such as relying almost entirely on women living in shelters. Even if it is true that children of women in shelters have more problems, then you might can conclude that women should not move into shelters. That makes as much sense as any other conclusion from these studies.

Myth 3 is that "Mothers frequently invent allegations of child sexual abuse to win custody." The rebuttal is a study that says that the rate is only about 2%. I have no idea what the rate is, and the study is not online.

None of the remaining myth rebuttals cite any online data. The closest is Myth 7 that says that there is such a thing as Parental Alienation Syndrome, and there is a link to an APA statement saying that it has no official position on the matter.

Myth 10 is rebutted by Stockholm Syndrome, but I think that you'll find that the APA has no official position on that either.

John Doe writes:

The APA statement linked to by Myth 7 is carefully neutral on the issue of PAS but it is also used by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges to argue that PAS is "discredited" in a document which also explicitly acknowledges the possibility that an abusive parent can turn a child against the non-abusive one. The contradiction does not appear to occur to them. The National Leadership Council also uses the APA statement to argue against the existence of PAS, but their spokeman will admit, in private, to the existence of parental alienation. They are an oddly conflicted bunch. Perhaps Stockholm Syndrome is more prevalent than anyone ever thought.

Yes, the existence of PAS is a different question from whether the APA will include it in the DSM-IV. The APA dropped homosexuality from the book, but doesn't mean that they were denying the existence of homosexuality. The psychologists have various other issues.