More on Chicago religion order

I commented below about the Jewish mom who is trying the jail the dad for taking their daughter to church. I think that the mom is a control freak.

Here is the earlier statement from the mom's lawyer:

I think he was just trying to exert some power. We never knew him to be a particularly religious man and certainly not someone who was a devout Christian. ...

She just wanted to raise her little girl. I mean, she's not trying to accomplish anything. She's just trying to defend herself and protect her daughter, at this point. We thought we had things under control, she's been awarded custody of her daughter, so that's not even an issue anymore. It's really just an issue now of a few visitation questions and now, of course, Mr. Reyes bringing this religious aspect to it is something that he just created, recently. ...

I think her mother feels very strongly that it had always been their decision to raise this little girl as a Jewish girl. And Rebecca is the custodial parent, and we will be arguing in court next month that this little girl should be raised Jewish, at least for the next couple years till she's old enough to understand the differences between religions.

This is offensive for several reasons. First, he is basing his case on questioning the sincerity of the dad's religious beliefs. He should not have to prove that he is devout in order to attend church.

Second, look at how much the lawyer argues that the mom should have control. What really bugs the mom and her lawyer is that they thought that they had won nearly complete control over the daughter, and they are annoyed that the dad has now raised religion as a new issue. The lawyer says that the kid should be raised Jewish because the court has given her the control and she wants to be the one making the decision.

On Friday's ABC TV 20/20 show, the Jewish mom explained:

It made me kind of sick that he would do something like that because I am the custodial parent. ...
[It hurt me] because I am Jewish ...
This is about parenting. This is not about religion.

The dad compared himself to Rosa Parks, the black woman who refused to move to the back of the bus as part of a civil rights protest.

This looks like a case where the mom has unfairly manuevered the system to get 98% control over their girl, and now she is bitching about not getting 99% control. And she will do whatever she can to put him in jail, if that is what it takes to get the control that she wants. When she says "This is about parenting", she means that it is about her getting total control. The religion is just a means to her getting that control. Once getting that control, she is anxious to lock it in.

Both of these parents have now talked enough that it would be easy for a judge or someone else to argue that they have character flaws that have the potential to make them less than perfect parents. So a judge could apply his prejudices and take either side, and deny that he is making an unconstitutional preference of one religion over another.

This whole dispute seems so unnecessary. It was created by a meddlesome family court that issued overwhelmingly one-sided orders. If it had just let each parent share custody of the daughter and let them use their time as they see fit, there might be no dispute.

Comments on mediation op-ed

I commented before on a NY Times op-ed favoring divorce mediation. It generated a flurry of letters of varying quality. First the most idiotic letter:

Mediation in such cases typically leads to a perpetuation of the unequal dynamic that caused toxicity in the relationship in the first place.

What is needed is adequate financing for the judiciary and the required training of judges, whose mandate would be to provide prompt and thorough review of child-related issues on the motion of one parent or both.

Mediation, which lacks the “teeth” of enforceable judicial orders, is unlikely to have any meaningful effect. Unless parents can get prompt judicial rulings by properly trained and sensitive judges, the circumstances that led to the divorce are likely to persist.

What is this lawyer talking about? Does he really think that more money for judges is going to somehow enable them to solve "circumstances that led to the divorce"? That is crazy.

I believe that more training for family court judges would make them worse. Some of them are so bad, and issue orders that are so contrary to common sense, that it is hard to believe that they got that stupid by themselves. They have the kind of stupidity that comes with training.

At the other extreme is this brilliant letter from Steven Vogl:

Much of the conflict in divorces results from courts’ attempting to micromanage postdivorce families in ways that would clearly be unconstitutional if attempted with other families.

State legislatures and the courts need to recognize the privacy and due process rights of divorcing families to manage their own personal affairs. They should pass legislation that would establish a few models of equal parenting rights and responsibilities, for cases in which the parties cannot fashion one of their own.

Absent a substantial state interest, such as a finding of abuse or neglect, courts should not be dictating private parental choices.

He is 100% correct. We need judges to stop micromanaging, not to give them money to do more micromanaging.

The author Vogl is identified as a "former lawyer and mediator who handled divorce and family law". He probably realized that most of what divorce lawyers do is destructive, and had the good morals to quit. Not many divorce lawyers are willing to admit that.

The legislature could adopt a couple of simple boilerplate parenting plans, such as alternating child custody every a couple days, or every week, or every six months. Rear the kid would be each parent's responsibility when he or she has custody. The parents could negotiate their own plan, or if they do not agree, let the court assign a boilerplate plan. Decisions about school, diet, clothes, activities, etc. would not be the concern of the court. This change might put some court personnel out of work, but parents and kids would be a lot better off.

TV show on family court forcing religion

I have posted before (here and here) about the Chicago family court judge that tried to force his religion on a child.

The dad has gotten some publicity, and now the mom is going to tell her side of the
story on ABC TV 20/20 tonight. It is at 10pm in my time zone.

The Chicago mother who took legal action to keep her estranged husband from taking their 3-year-old daughter to church speaks out in an exclusive "20/20" interview with ABC News' Chris Cuomo airing Friday.

Last week, ABC News spoke exclusively with Joseph Reyes, the husband in a bitter divorce battle who faces up to six months in jail for marching his toddler into a Catholic Church, cameras in tow, in defiance of a temporary court order that forbade him from exposing his daughter to "any other religion other than the Jewish religion." ...

"This is about parenting, this is not about religion," Rebecca told Cuomo.

Rebecca said that Joseph is entitled to be Catholic and Ela can choose Catholicism when she is older, but they "had pledged in the marriage contract to raise Jewish children, and so we had a Jewish home." Joseph had converted to Judaism, complete with a ritualized circumcision.

I think that it is great that this case is getting publicity. It illustrates so clearly what is wrong with the Best Interest Of The CHild (BIOTCH) doctrine. It should be obvious that no good can come from a court order telling a dad not to take his daughter to church. It is just wrong -- morally, legally, constitutionally, religiously, psychologically, and any other way you want to look at it.

Of course I believe that nearly all family court interventions into parental child-rearing are harmful for similar reasons. A court order choosing a religion just happens to be particularly egregious because everyone agrees that there is no, and can be no, consensus on the best religion. There is no consensus in most other child-rearing practices either, but the legal issue is clearest in the case of religion as everyone realizes that their religious views are not necessarily shared by others.

Some of the comments are outstanding:

Obviously this was a guy who was willing to do quite a lot to make things work. What compromise did this women offer? For God's sake, the man is not even married to her and she's trying to control him!

This is just disgusting. If you can't choose what religious to practice in your own home without fear of jail then what is the meaning of liberty? People change religions. All the time. I don't think a contract forcing someone to maintain a certain religion would even be remotely legal. That poor kid. And what a selfish mother.

This issue shows the discrimination of fathers within the family court system. A mother would never be brought to court for showing her child a different religious view, but fathers, unfortunately, are still considered secondary parents to mothers. When court systems discriminate in any way against either parent, the child is the one who is directly discriminated against. Family courts across this country need to look at both parents as equals - not view parents based on old, outdated societal rules. Many child custody and child support laws were developed years ago, and based on views of a traditional family situation. These antiquated laws no longer apply in a society that puts much emphasis on equality. The courts words "In the best interest of the child" is a feigned attempt at keeping their system from looking at both parents as equals. A child is not conceived without both sperm and egg - one as important as the other. Family courts need to recognize the incredible damage they do by discriminatory practices against fathers. Once again, it is the child who suffers most from the continued discrimination of fathers within court systems, from lawyers, and from judges.

I read in the article where Ms. Reyes is relying on an agreement made in the marriage that the child would be raised Jewish. However, since that agreement was dissolved (divorce), I would think that under contractual law she would have no recourse (since again this is her "angle" for her side of this argument). I think that the judge acted inappropriately in siding with this lunatic and I am in agreement with the majority of the people posting here, this woman is a control freak that needs to get taken down a peg or two. Men in these situations definitely get the fuzzy end of the popsicle stick...

Wow. This mom might not really be getting the sympathy that she is expecting. I hope that the TV show includes some comments like the ones on its web site.

Update: I saw the show, and Ms. Reyes was a nightmare. Her argument was that she had gotten the upper hand in the court custody battle, and therefore her husband should be jailed for making religious choices without her approval.

I heard a radio talk show discuss this, and all the callers favored the dad, except for one or two that argued that an unlawful court order should be obeyed.

The blind is teaching the blind

A LA Calif law school is offering this course June 10-12, 2010 in Malibu:

Faculty: The Honorable Irwin Joseph and Dr. Donald Saposnek
**Approved for 16 hours of Continuing Education Units for Psychologists. Pepperdine University is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Pepperdine maintains responsibility for the program and its content.

This course is designed for judicial officers, family law facilitators, staff in self-help centers, custody investigators, and others working in or with the courts who wish to improve their skills in mediating family court matters. After an overview of mediation principles and techniques, participants will engage in assessing actual cases and learning practical information and a range of solutions available through mediating. Interspersed within discussion and role-plays will be critical child development information, essential information on the psychology and dynamics of divorce, and the ways in which high levels of conflict and emotions in family law cases present special problems, as well as unique opportunities for dispute resolution. ...

The Honorable Irwin Joseph recently completed four years in the Family Law Department in Santa Cruz County, hearing dissolution, custody, support, paternity and domestic violence matters.

Whatever Commissioner Joseph recommends, I'd suggest doing the opposite.

Just to give one example of how incompetent this guy is, two years ago he ordered my ex-wife and me to get a psychological evaluation. But for two years, he could not find a psychologist to do it. My ex-wife and I interviewed 50 psychologists, but none of them could make any sense out of his court order. We went back to Cmr. Joseph several times, and he was unable or unwilling to clarify his order. We eventually found a psychologist who had done hundreds of evaluations and was willing to do ours, but it still took a court motion and a teleconference with Cmr. Joseph to get it sufficiently clarified for him to start. And I still don't think that the psychologist understands what he is expected to do.

Cmr. Joseph seems to have no grasp at all of what the evaluators do. When asked the simplest questions, like whether the evaluation is supposed to be a psychological evaluation or a child custody evaluation, he appears to not even understand the question. He just says to read the boilerplate form where he has checked some checkboxes.

I hate to think what people might be learning from him in this short course. You would be much better off listening to Rod Blagojevich lecture on ethics.

Bad lawyer ethics

Here is advice from the NY Times ethicist:

A friend was caught by police radar going 51 in a 35-miles-per-hour zone. In front of his children, he admitted that he was speeding but asked if I knew a lawyer to help him fight the ticket. I think he should accept the consequences, learn from the experience and give his children a lesson in ethics. He looked at me as if I were from Mars. Shouldn’t he just pay the ticket?

The so-called ethicist justifies fighting the ticket, and says:

James Boswell, himself a lawyer, once asked his great mentor about the propriety of a lawyer’s “supporting a cause which you know to be bad.” Dr. Johnson replied: “Sir, you do not know it to be good or bad till the Judge determines it. ... An argument which does not convince yourself, may convince the Judge to whom you urge it: and if it does convince him, why, then, Sir, you are wrong, and he is right.”

This is a good example of how lawyers have ethics that no parent would ever teach to his kids. Law schools teach lawyers to make whatever bogus arguments that they can get away with, and to become righteous about it if some silly judge is duped.

My ex-wife is a lawyer, and she will make any bogus argument she can to win in court.

But if a parent caught a child misbehaving, he would never let the off the hook because of legal technicalities, such as inadmissible evidence. He would tell the kid to own to what he had done, and to face the consequences.

Campaign to include PAS in DSM-5

A joint parenting blogger writes:

a campaign to include Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) in the fifth edition of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,” or DSM-5 ...

The Parental Alienation Syndrome or PAS is a mental disorder that appears during divorce/separation and/or child-custody disputes, and its primary symptom is the child’s unjustified rejection against the non-custodial parent. It grows out of the brainwashing performed by the custodial parent, who turns his or her children against the other parent, destroying this way the attachment between the children and the target parent. PAS is a very common and well-documented phenomenon. Estimates of children with PAS are close to 200,000 children in the U.S., the same amount as children with autism.

I think that it is good that these folks are raising awareness about PAS.

I am less sure that it is useful to call PAS a psychological disorder. Do psychologists know how to treat it? Is the plan to get the courts to order treatment? I would think that it would be more effective to just deny child custody to those who persist with PAS, on the theory that they are subverting a joint custody order. It would be up to the PAS parent to learn to cooperate somehow.

The DSM-5 editors have other motives that are not necessarily consistent with the needs and rights of kids and parents. So I am skeptical. But I guess that it would not hurt to publicize PAS.

No-fault custody disputes

Ruth Bettelheim is a marriage and family therapist, writes this NY Times op-ed:

Given that reducing family conflict is good for children, the best way to protect them during divorce would be to minimize the acrimony of the proceedings. No-fault divorce, now practiced in every state except New York, has been one step toward this goal. But issues relating to children in divorce cases are still very often decided by long, heated contests between the parents. Custody disagreements are settled by a judge’s determination of what is in “the best interests of the child.” In practical terms, this means that both parents do their utmost to demonstrate that they are the better parent — and that the other one is worse, unfit or even abusive.

At stake are not only the participants’ self-esteem and their relationships with their children but also their financial security. As child support is often linked to the proportion of time the children spend with each parent, the days and hours of their future lives become tools for one parent to extract payment from the other. This is a recipe for warfare, with the children’s well-being both the disputed turf and the likely casualty.

What children need instead are no-fault custody proceedings — which could be accomplished with two changes to state family law. First, take the money out of the picture by establishing fixed formulas for child support that ensure the children are well taken care of in both homes, regardless of the number of days they spend in each. Second, defuse tension by requiring parents to enter mediation to find a custody solution that best meets the needs of all concerned.

The so-called no-fault divorce is a big hoax when kids are involved. Yes, you can get divorced unilaterally, but the child custody disputes are more contentious than ever.

Money drives a lot of disputes. There is a huge financial payoff in California for winning a child custody dispute. It can be worth a million dollars, tax-free.

Being a therapist, Bettelheim is a little naive about what can be accomplished by mediation. There still has to be some law to apply if the parents do not agree.

She is essentially saying that we would not need laws if everyone settled their disputes out of court. I am all in favor of settling out of court, but we still need laws.

Man faces contempt charges for taking daughter to church

Following up on an earlier story, the Chicago Tribune reports:

Rebecca Reyes opened an e-mail from her estranged husband last November to learn to her shock that he had their three-year-old daughter baptized in the Catholic Church even though she said the couple, in happier times, had agreed to raise her in the Jewish faith.

What happened over the next few months brought the couple's private battles into the open and raises questions about how far the court system can -- or should -- go in dictating what faith separated parents teach their children.

Following the unannounced baptism, a Cook County Circuit Court judge took the unusual step of temporarily barring Reyes' husband, Joseph, from exposing their child to any religion other than Judaism. But Joseph Reyes then allegedly defied the order by taking his daughter to mass at Holy Name Cathedral -- with a television news crew in tow.

The wife's lawyers blasted Joseph Reyes' defiance and demanded he be held in criminal contempt - a charge that carries a maximum punishment of 6 months in prison if convicted.

A new judge brought into the case Tuesday at the father's request said she will set a date later for a trial on the contempt allegations.

The judge who ordered the Jewish upbringing was Jewish himself.

The newspaper quotes a lawyer reciting the usual fiction:

Carlton R. Marcyan, a senior partner with the divorce specialty firm Schiller, DuCanto & Fleck, said that courts don't normally "like to get immersed in religious issues, but the ultimate test is what's in the best interest of the child."

It is completely ridiculous to claim that the court is deciding the best interest of the child. The judge was just applying his personal religious prejudices.

Ohio issues false arrest warrants

The Cincinnati paper reports:

Police in Hamilton County have arrested hundreds of people in the past year because of a criminal complaint system that the county's top prosecutor says is bad public policy and some judges say violates Ohio law.

The system has allowed court clerks - rather than prosecutors or judges - to approve and issue arrest warrants based on complaints from private citizens.

Those complaints have sent people to jail for domestic violence, theft and other misdemeanor offenses despite a 2006 Ohio law that requires a judge or prosecutor to review complaints before someone is arrested.

A fellow angry dad wrote to me and said that he got arrested under this procedure:

I was one of them. My ex-wife told me not to contact her anymore. When I called to talk to the kids, she had me arrested for telecommunications harassment.

I do not think that any man should ever be arrested for placing a phone call to the mother of his kids. Not ever. Restraining orders limiting phone calls should never issue.

If she does not want to take the call, she can hang up. Or not answer the phone. Or change her phone number. Or use an answering machine to screen calls. The solutions are trivial.

It is hard to imagine a more trivial complaint. If I made the rules, I would declare any mom to be unfit if she made such a trivial complaint.

New psychology diagnosis manual

The bible for psychologists is the DSM-IV. It describes all the accepted psychological disorders, and the criteria for diagnosing them. A psychologist's main expertise is in diagnosing and treating these disorders.

Courts appoint psychologist to evaluate families for custody disputes, but a flaw in the system is that most of these cases do not involve DSM-IV disorders. I could see where a psychologist might have a useful opinion if one of the parents has a DSM-IV disorder, but he may not have any relevant expertise otherwise.

Now the psychiatrists are revising the DSM-IV. They are dropping some old disorders, and creating some new one. They just published their first public draft at dsm5.org, and invited public comment. It is scheduled to be published in 2013.

The only disorder I am worried about is the newly-created binge eating disorder. One of the symptoms is:

1. eating, in a discrete period of time (e.g., within any 2-hour period), an amount of food that is definitely larger than most people would eat in a similar period of time under similar circumstances

Wow, I do that every time I eat a big meal! In fact, every meal I eat is either larger than average, or smaller.

I am currently undergoing a psychological evaluation. I am hoping that it is completed before 2013 so I don't have to face this diagnosis.

State may remove judges

A legal blog reports:

Three separate efforts to remove New Hampshire judges and judicial officers via bills of address are currently pending in that state. ...

The first such effort (HA 1) is against marital master Michael Garner. Garner, according to the bill of address, “recommended to the presiding justice an order removing a child from an educational setting on the basis of religious prejudice.”

They should remove the judge for accepting the prejudiced recommendation. But then if they removed all the prejudiced judges from the family court, who would be left?

The father's chronic role-modeling

I credited the Wash. state appeals court decision below for its decision in the case of In re Marriage of V.I. Balashov. It gave the parents joint responsibility to make decisions, and struck down restrictions on religion.

Nevertheless, I do object to some of the language in the decision. It claims to be deciding in the children's best interests, but it doesn't do that at all. It just uses these buzzwords to justify what is otherwise unjustified. It does not consider any particular interests of the kids, or decide what is best, or anything like that.

The decision does blame the dad for "the father's chronic role-modeling during the marriage". What does this even mean? That the father tried to be a role-model for his kids? That he tried to do what is best for his family? Why is the court considering this a bad thing? Apparently the mom did not feel properly respected, but how is this relevant now that they are divorced?

A lot of divorced men and women feel that their ex-spouses did not properly respect them. Probably most of them. The court should have ignored irrelevant claims like this.

Jewish family court judge forces Jewish religion

I commented before about the Jewish family court judge in Chicago who ordered a divorced dad to keep his daughter out of Christian church. Now the dad has his own angry dad web site at www.christianfatherdefensefund.com, and he has commented on this blog:

Joseph’s wife is Rebecca Reyes (Shapiro), and her father is Howard Shapiro, who is an Executive Vice President and General Counsel for Playboy. That’s right, the man who doesn’t want his granddaughter exposed to Christianity, makes his money from pornography!! (Does the word hypocrite come to mind?)

I don't think that is hypocritical. A rich Jewish porno lawyer might well want his granddaughter to stay away from Christianity.

The man was interviewed on TV, and here is another story. He appears to be willing to violate the court order by taking his child to church.

My guess is that he is going to get punished for it, but the judge will never admit
that he is punishing the dad for being a Christian. If the Chicago family courts are anything like the ones here in California, the judge will just keeping sending the case out for evaluations until he gets one that recommends sole custody for the mom. Then he will just declare that mom custody is in the best interest of the child (BIOTCh). Usually the corrupt evaluators are smart enough to figure out what the judge wants, and to recommend that outcome without including the unconstitutional reasoning.

A Washington state appeals court just reversed this clause in a court-ordered parenting plan:

As to the mother’s ability to make sole decisions regarding religious upbringing, the court finds that the father does not have a religion, and the mother has brought the children up in the Orthodox Christian religion without objection from the father.

No judge has any business making such decisions.

US study shows drop in child abuse

AP reports:

NEW YORK — A massive new federal study documents an unprecedented and dramatic decrease in incidents of serious child abuse, especially sexual abuse. Experts hailed the findings as proof that crackdowns and public awareness campaigns had made headway.

An estimated 553,000 children suffered physical, sexual or emotional abuse in 2005-06, down 26 percent from the estimated 743,200 abuse victims in 1993, the study found.

"It's the first time since we started collecting data about these things that we've seen substantial declines over a long period, and that's tremendously encouraging," said professor David Finkelhor of the University of New Hampshire, a leading researcher in the field of child abuse.

Maybe there is less abuse, but I think that it is more likely that there are fewer false accusations of abuse. Or maybe it is just being reported differently.

I gave a link to this report last week, but the reporter doesn't read my blog! The article complains:

One curious aspect of the study was the manner of its release. Although HHS had launched the study in 2004 and invested several million dollars, it was posted a few days ago on the Internet with no fanfare — neither a press release nor a news conference. Finkelhor, noting that experts in the field had been impatiently awaiting the study, described this low-profile approach as "shocking."

The findings might be disconcerting to some in the child-welfare field who base their funding pitches on the specter of ever-rising abuse rates, said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.

That explains the lack of publicity. If the report does not have scare stories to justify increases in welfare funding, then what good is it? The agencies should have their funding cut, if there is less abuse to investigate.

I am amused by these people who somehow have appropriate names. The expert on this subject has a name that combines "fink" and "whore"! Those are two words that come to mind when I think of CPS agents investigating child abuse.

San Jose judge boycott continues

I mentioned before that the San Jose prosecutors were boycotting a particular judge. The San Jose prosecutors are defending their boycott, with this letter in today's newspaper:

Boycott of judge was necessary

I recently retired after almost 29 years with the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office, during which time I never once disqualified a judge.

Yet when I heard of Judge Andrea Bryan's outrageous decision in the sex exam tapes case, I immediately urged my former colleagues to blanket disqualify her.

Such an action is extremely rare and only egregious conduct justifies it. Judge Bryan's record as a judge was so poor in the past that this latest decision put her in that category.

I personally had only two preliminary hearings in her department, and she made decisions in each of them that can only be described as horrible. Other prosecutors report similar experiences.

I am sure the office did not come to its decision to blanket disqualify Judge Bryan easily.

However, it is clear that the decision was not an act of peevishness over a single decision, no matter how bad that decision was. Rather, it protects the criminal process from biased judgment.

Stan Voyles
Los Gatos

Here is the story that caused the dispute:

Judge orders man freed over prosecutor's conduct
The Associated Press
Posted: 01/06/2010 07:14:17 PM PST

SAN JOSE, Calif.—A man serving time in a child molestation case will be freed after a judge ruled there was prosecutorial misconduct in the case.

Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Andrea Bryan on Wednesday ordered that Augustin Uribe be released from prison because of what the judge termed "numerous acts of misconduct" by Deputy District Attorney Troy Benson.

Uribe was serving a sentence of 38 years to life after being convicted in 2006 of child molestation.

The ruling comes after an appellate court finding in 2008 that determined the District Attorney's Office had improperly withheld a videotape of the purported victim's physical exam.

The District Attorney's Office termed Wednesday's ruling as "factually and legally flawed." The office is considering an appeal.

The newspaper said this: Editorial: DA Carr's pattern of arrogance goes unchecked.

To recapitulate, the prosecutors convicted a man while refusing to give him the videotape that would have proved his innocence. The judge and the appellate court ruled that the man is entitled to a new trial with the videotape. Whether he is innocent or guilty, he is entitled to a fair trial.

If I worked in that prosecutors' office, I would want to reexamine the evidence to see whether a new trial is justified, and if so, quietly try him again. Instead the prosecutors have chosen to generate a lot of publicity out of this, and to try to scapegoat the judge.

Prosecutors are the sort of people who never admit that they make mistakes. Furthermore, the bigger the mistake, the more stubbornly they dig in their heels. If they send an innocent man away to prison for 38 years, then they will lie, cheat, steal, and do whatever they have to do in order to keep that man in prison. And they have a high degree of confidence that they can get away with it, or else they would not be pursuing this arrogant boycott.