Friday, October 30, 2009

Film criticizes California family court

I watch the film, Family Court Crisis: Our Children at Risk. It was billed as an "award-winning documentary".

The movie was about some disgruntled Marin County parents, just north of San Francisco. Their main poster girl was Jonea Rogers who first got joint custody in a divorce. She made some abuse allegations, but she had no substantial evidence. She kidnapped the daughter and they lived as a fugitive for 3 years. Rogers was caught, put on trial, and acquitted by a jury. She now has supervised visitation.

Rogers complains about the unfairness of the family court, and that her daughter lives with her alleged abuser. She argues that her jury acquittal vindicates her suspicions about her ex-husband.

The film was made by people who seemed to have no concept of being innocent until proven guilty. I am sure we all agree that child abusers should not get custody, but there was no proof that the dad had abused anyone. The mom was a kidnapper, and kidnappers should not get custody.

It doesn't take much to convince me that the family court is horrible. I know lots of examples. But I really wonder how people could make a film with such a weak case against the family court. What do they want, a system where kidnappers win custody?

The film was very pro-mother, but it was not backing mother custody. One of the complainers was a father.

The people who made this film obviously thought that they were making a very strong and persuasive statement for reform of the family court. But I couldn't figure out what reforms they wanted. All I got out of it was that there were some people in Marin County who are unhappy with the family court.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

And thats why it won an award. If the film showed true figures and stats and did real world investigating it would never get any air-time.

The only advice I could give people is that the only way to win this game is not to play it. Avoid marriage, avoid children, avoid any situation where the state can control your life and finances.

Anonymous said...

George,

What are we supposed to do, accept the mother's accusations, and ignore the reality ? The mother KIDNAPPED the child !!

It would be an entirely different matter had it been a film that told the story of the court ignoring proof that the father was actually an abuser.

I wish there were films based on the works of people like, Dr. Stephen Baskerville or Dr. Margaret Hagen. Hagen herself, began her work as a result of her own brother being falsely accused. There's a story worth producing a film on, huh ?

Again, the title of Hagen's book is, "WHORES OF THE COURT".