Drunk driver has affluenza

The Wash. Post reports on the lastest goofy forensic psychologist:

A Texas boy, 16, has received probation after pleading guilty to killing four people in a drunk-driving collision earlier this year. A psychologist who testified in the boy’s defense said he had been spoiled by his parents’ wealth and that he suffered from what he called “affluenza.” ...

The boy pleaded guilty last week to manslaughter and assault while intoxicated. He had been speeding, and had Valium and a high level of alcohol in his blood, according to testimony. ...

Meanwhile, they neglected to teach [the boy] that dangerous behavior could have serious consequences, according to the psychologist.

“He never learned that sometimes you don’t get your way,” Miller said. “He had the cars and he had the money. He had freedoms that no young man would be able to handle.”

He used the term “affluenza,” which describes the ennui and depravity of certain very rich people, and which was popularized by psychologist Oliver James in a 2007 book by the same title.

No, affluenza is not in the DSM-5 yet.

My opinion of this case would be influenced by how the boy got the Valium. Did the parents take him to some stupid shrink who gave him Valium in lieu of normal parenting?

Supreme court sympathetic to kidnappers

The US Supreme Court usually avoids any cases involving child custody or parental rights, but is now hearing Lozano v. Alvarez:

Issue: Whether a district court considering a petition under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction for the return of an abducted child may equitably toll the running of the one-year filing period when the abducting parent has concealed the whereabouts of the child from the left-behind parent.

They just had the oral argument:

But several Justices – including Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Samuel A. Alito, and Stephen Breyer – expressed concerns that, because Regan’s rule would require near-automatic return, it would preclude courts from considering the best interests of children who had spent enough time in their new location to form attachments there, effectively punishing the children for the sins of the abducting parent.

ConcernS? What concerns? So kidnappers should be able to get away with it because they hide for a year and end up in a friendly jurisdiction?

I occasionally here of fathers rights groups and even mothers who hope to get a parental rights case to the US Supreme Court so that they can declare a constitution right to force family courts to let all fit parents have joint custody.

Forget it. Look how confused these justices are in the transcript:

JUSTICE BREYER: Well, what is the answer? I'd like a straight answer in your opinion, because Justice Kagan's case, the mother kidnaps the child. They live in a grain elevator, a nicely refurbished grain elevator, in Peoria for a year. And after the year, a month later the father finds both of them, goes to a family judge -- a very tough job by the way -- and the family judge reads this and he says, well, I have to admit the child is settled here now in Iowa. All right. Is settled. ...

The father says this is the most unfair thing I've ever seen. She hides out for a year. The child could be just as well back in London. Almost as well. Who knows? Maybe better. But now, what can the family court do -- judge do? That's the straight question we've been trying to get your answer to that, and it isn't an answer to say -- you could say, if that's the answer, I don't know.

Family court judges have very easy jobs. It only becomes a "very tough job" if the judge tries to micromanage parents and make crazy decisions like giving a child to a kidnapper on a theory that the child's best interests will be served by cutting him off from a fit parent.

Our Supreme Court is unfit to hear a parental rights case.

Sick Australian inbreeding family

I think I said that this sort of thing never happens. I stand corrected. It happened in a strange Australian family:

Not only were the Colt family closely related by generations of incest. In fear of discovery the appalling facts about their family, the Colts had fled three other Australian states before coming to rest in rural NSW.

And it was here that four generations of interbreeding exploded into a life of depravity.

Under the eye of the family matriarch, Betty Colt, who slept in the marital bed with her brother, the children copulated with each other and with adults.

Years of interrelations had resulted in some of the children misshapen and intellectually impaired. Many of them could not speak intelligibly.

They were profoundly neglected, to the point they didn't know how to shower or use toilet paper, and were covered in sores and racked with disease.

Left to their own devices, brothers with sisters, uncles with nieces, fathers with daughters, they engaged in sexual activities. ...

When they finally managed to get test swabs into a laboratory, geneticists uncovered a family tree which was a nightmare of "homozygosity", when a child's parents are closely related.

Eight of the Colt children have parents who were either brother and sister, mother and son or father and daughter.

A further six have parents who were either aunt and nephew, uncle and niece, half siblings or grandparents and grandchild.

Interviews with the Colts revealed the family saga began back in New Zealand, in the first half of last century when June Colt was born to parents who were brother and sister.

This will be a textbook example of how too much inbreeding can be bad.

First Lady scowls

These are pictures of President Barack Obama with Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt at the Nelson Mandela funeral. Michelle Obama seems unhappy.

Update: A NY Post columnist adds:

My bookshelves sag with encyclopedic volumes arguing that America and the West are in decline. But proving that a picture is worth a thousand books, the “selfie” seen ’round the world ends the argument.

It’s official — the government of the United States of Obama consists of boobs and bores and is led by a narcissist. It is no consolation that Great Britain joins us in racing to the bottom.

President Obama’s flirting with Denmark’s prime minister would be shameful on any occasion. That it happened at the memorial for Nelson Mandela only adds to the embarrassment.

But the “selfie” episode also symbolizes the greater global calamity of Western decline. With British prime minister David Cameron playing the role of Obama’s giggling wingman, the “look at me” moment confirms we have unserious leaders in a dangerously serious time.

Zimmerman girlfrend recants

A lot of domestic violence disputes are just silly arguments that do not need to be police matters. Here is a recent one that was all over the news. AP reports:

Prosecutors are considering whether to move forward with domestic violence charges against George Zimmerman even though his girlfriend is asking them not to do so.

Without a witness willing to testify, prosecutors can still use law enforcement reports, 911 calls and other witnesses to build a case. But such cases are more difficult to prove, State Attorney's Office spokeswoman Lynne Bumpus Hooper said.

Zimmerman filed an affidavit from his girlfriend, Samantha Scheibe, saying she doesn't want him charged with aggravated assault, battery and criminal mischief. The affidavit was filed with a motion Monday asking a judge to change the terms of his bond so he can have contact with Scheibe.

Zimmerman was arrested last month after Scheibe accused him in a 911 call of pointing a gun at her, smashing a coffee table and pushing her outside. Zimmerman also called dispatchers, denied pointing a gun at her and blamed her for the broken table.

More difficult to prove? This was a simple he-said-sge-said, with no injuries or hard evidence. And the girlfriend has renounced the complaint:

In the signed affidavit, Scheibe -- referring to Zimmerman as "my boyfriend" -- said detectives misinterpreted what she said and that she hadn't been coerced into signing the document.

"I am not afraid of George in any manner and I want to be with him," Scheibe wrote.

It's not uncommon in domestic violence cases for the alleged victims to change their minds about pursuing charges, said Blaine McChesney, a former prosecutor in Orlando who now is a defense attorney.

"In the heat of the moment, they're angry about what has happened. Later, upon reflection, they're not as angry. They're not as upset," McChesney said Tuesday. "The feelings of love and compassion overcome any feelings the victim had."

Although prosecutors can move ahead without the cooperation of the victim, it makes it difficult to convict if there is no physical evidence of injuries, he said.

"Juries really want to see the alleged victim on the stand talking about the case," McChesney said. "It's very hard to convict in a case when the victim isn't there."

Of course juries want to see that a crime was committed, before they vote for a conviction. Without a complaining witness, how could there be a crime?

Some victims refuse to cooperate believing the person who assaulted them will wind up in prison, said Carol Wick, chief executive of Harbor House of Central Florida, which offers shelter and programs to victims of domestic violence.

In reality, the courts offer alternatives to prison such as mandatory therapy and anger management classes. In metro Orlando, where more than half of the cases that end up being dropped are due to victims unwilling to testify, police are starting a program that tries to get victims in touch with counselors within 24 hours of a reported assault.

"People don't understand the psychological manipulation that goes on when this happens," Wick said.

Yes, some women realize that sending a boyfriend to prison for a little argument is not fair.

Divorce battle over dog custody

A reader sent this NY Post story, saying it reminded her of me:

A pair of divorcing women are about to fight it out in court over a miniature dachshund named Joey in what will be New York’s first matrimonial pet-custody case.

“People who love their dogs almost always love them forever,” Manhattan Justice Matthew Cooper opines in his ruling granting the women oral arguments. “But with divorce rates at record highs, the same cannot always be said for those who marry.” ...

The only bone of contention in their divorce is who will get sole custody of their 2-year-old pet.

Travis bought Joey as a 10-week-old puppy from a pet store and gave him to her then-girlfriend as a gift and “a consolation for her having to give away her cat at Travis’ insistence,” according to court papers.

Murray is fighting to keep her best friend, who always slept on her side of the bed.

“I consider this puppy, my little angel Joey, the love of my life,” Murray told The Post.

“He is my little soul mate, and there was no way in this lifetime I could ever live without him.” ...

While some state courts like those in Kansas declined to stick their noses in a custody cases, others have leaped at the chance to treat canines like humans in legal proceedings.

An Alabama judge awarded a dog named Preston to one spouse over the other by taking into consideration the pet’s “best interests,” a gauge typically used in child custody cases.
Instead of regarding Joey like a piece of property, the judge — who gives the full disclosure that he owns a 12-year-old rescued pit bull mix named Peaches — will schedule a hearing to determine his fate.

“This is a cutting-edge case for animal rights,” said Murray’s attorney Sherri Donovan. “It recognizes the special place of pets in our families.” ...

He will ask the pup’s mothers to answer questions similar to those posed during child custody trials such as: “Who spent more time with Joey on a regular basis?”

Our family courts have gone mad, when they consider the best interests of a dog.

Chemo not forced on Amish girl

An Ohio family has successfully evaded busybody govt officials who want to interfere in medical decisions. The Boston Globe reports:

A court-appointed guardian is dropping her attempt to force an 11-year-old Amish girl with leukemia to resume chemotherapy after she and her parents fled their home to avoid treatment.

The move filed in court Friday will likely bring an end to a months-long fight between Sarah Hershberger’s family and a hospital that began when her parents decided to halt the treatments because they were making the girl sick.

The guardian, an attorney who’s also a registered nurse, was given the power to make medical decisions for Sarah after an appeals court ruling in October said the beliefs and convictions of the girl’s parents can’t outweigh the rights of the state to protect the child.

But the guardian, Maria Schimer, decided to drop the effort because she doesn’t know where Sarah is now and it has become impossible to monitor her health or make any medical decisions, said Clair Dickinson, an attorney for Schimer.

This was not really a religious freedom case.

Andy Hershberger, the Ohio girl’s father, said this past summer that the family agreed to begin two years of treatments for Sarah last spring but stopped a second round of chemotherapy in June because it was making her extremely sick and she feared the treatments would make her infertile.

The family’s attorney said the girl’s parents made their decision after researching the effects of chemotherapy.

I am surprised that the authorities did not hunt them down until the girl is dead.

Asperger definition is like male brain

Asperger syndrome has been dropped from the DSM-5, but still causes trouble. It is diagnosed:

Asperger syndrome is defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) as a pervasive developmental disorder that is distinguished by a pattern of symptoms rather than a single symptom. It is characterized by impairment in social interaction, by stereotyped and restricted patterns of behavior, activities and interests, and by no clinically significant delay in cognitive development or general delay in language. Impairments must be significant, and must affect important areas of function, and the diagnosis is excluded if criteria are also met for autism.

It should be obvious from the definition how ridiculous this is. It is like saying:

Homosexuality is a disorder that is characterized by impairment in heterosexual interactions, and in stereotypical gay behavior.

Here is the AQ Test, a diagnostic tool for adult Asperger, as described in a 2001 Wired article. About half of the 50 questions have to do with preferring facts and details over fiction.

Preferring reality over fiction is a male charactistic. Christina Hoff Sommers writes in Time magazine:

In a major report released last year by the British Parliament’s Boys’ Reading Commission, the authors openly acknowledge sex differences and use a color-coded chart to illustrate boys’ and girls’ different reading preferences: girls prefer fiction, magazines, blogs and poetry; boys like comics, nonfiction and newspapers.

Adults show the same pattern, with the fiction best-sellers being female fantasies like Fifty Shades of Grey. Men watch the History channel while women watch the Lifetime channel.

About a quarter of the questions detect anti-social tendencies, such as "I would rather go to a library than to a party." Or preferring to do things on one's own, or not being good at social chit-chat. Men are more individualist than women. These questions might distinguish an introvert from an extrovert, but that's all.

Men are more focused on their interests and activities than women, and about 7 questions detect that. Another 5 questions are about having an organized and orderly life.

Surprisingly, only a couple of questions have anything to do with a communications deficiency. One is "I am often the last to understand the point of a joke."

Men tend to communicate directly, and women indirectly. For women, nonverbal clues like body language are much more important. Men are much more like to be the type to say what they mean, and mean what they say. That type is also the most obvious symptom of Asperger.

A NY Times article on tech novelties just said:

People with autism, who can have a hard time reading facial expressions, may be among the beneficiaries, Dr. Burleson said. By wearing Google Glass or other Internet-connected goggles with cameras, they could get clues to the reactions of the people with whom they were talking — clues that could come via an earpiece as the program translates facial expressions.

I have ridiculed this idea before. Men who communicate directly and verbally have no need for trying to read subtle cues in facial expressions.

Differences in people are like cats and dogs. New research shows that cats recognize their master's voice, and ignore it. Dogs are much more responsive.

It is sometimes said that women are more social than men, and hence typical men have some sort of sociability deficit. That is partially true, but misleading. As explained in this Roy Baumeister ZURICH.MINDS INTERVIEW video, women tend to do well in emotional exchanges in one-on-one and small family interactions, but men do better in large groups. Men tend to have better social skills for team sports, business organizations, and politics.

The main thing being detected here is a male brain. There is nothing disordered about preferring reality, being focused, or even being introverted. Psychologists tend to be effeminate and emotionally fragile themselves, and consider regular men to be disordered. The whole concept of Asperger syndrome is wrong and offensive.

Update: The WSJ reports:

Women and men display distinctive differences in how nerve fibers connect various regions of their brains, according to a half-dozen recent studies that highlight gender variation in the brain's wiring diagram. There are trillions of these critical connections, and they are shaped by the interplay of heredity, experience and biochemistry. ...

Broadly speaking, women in their 20s had more connections between the two brain hemispheres while men of the same age had more connective fibers within each hemisphere. "Women are mostly better connected left-to-right and right-to-left across the two brain hemispheres," Dr. Verma said. "Men are better connected within each hemisphere and from back-to-front."

That suggests women might be better wired for multitasking and analytical thought, which require coordination of activity in both hemispheres. Men, in turn, may be better wired for more-focused tasks that require attention to one thing a time. But the researchers cautioned such conclusions are speculative.

This may explain why boys are more focused.

The trouble with grandparent visitation

The US Supreme Court made a mess of grandparent visitation law in Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57 (2000), and the states have been sharply divided on the issue ever since. The latest mess is a N. Dakota case:

GRAND FORKS – A couple here who were sued by the man’s parents for visitation with the grandchildren is appealing the case to the state Supreme Court.

That’s after a judge confirmed his ruling that Cory Bjerke and his longtime partner, Naomi Sterf, must allow their 16-year-old to visit her grandparents any time she wishes, and also must allow the couple’s other two younger children to see Bjerke’s parents.

State law says grandparents may be given visitation, as long as it’s in the children’s best interests and doesn’t interfere with the parent-child relationship.

Bjerke and Sterf argue the 16-year-old’s unfettered visitation rights laid out in the order by Grand Forks County District Court Judge Lawrence Jahnke do interfere with their parent-child relationship.

These visitation laws foolishly undermine parental authority, as can be seen in this case.

It is especially infuriating when the judge orders an outrageous and unconstitutional visitation schedule, and then disavows any responsibility for it:

The judge wrote that he hoped the bad feeling between the two sets of adults could be set aside, especially as holidays approached.

“It’s time for the Respondents and Petitioners, for the sake of their children and grandchildren, to once again attempt to re-establish a civil dialogue with one another. They can’t expect the court to repair their fractured relationship,” Jahnke wrote. “Only they themselves can do it.”

Judge Jahnke fractured that relationship by ordering the parents to let their kids run off to the grandparents whenever they please. The parental responsibilities are with the parents, not the grandparents, and the parents need the authority to use their own judgment without the micro-management by an a-hole judge like Judge Jahnke.

Fatherlessness alters the brain

The UK Daily Mail reports:

Growing up without a father can permanently alter the BRAIN: Fatherless children are more likely to grow up angry and turn to drugs

Canadian scientists believe growing up in a fatherless household could have a greater impact on daughters than on sons

They said growing up without a father could permanently alter the structure of the brain and produce children who are more aggressive

Dr Gabriella Gobbi of McGill University in Canada said that the main impacts were seen in the prefrontal cortex

Growing up without a father could permanently alter the structure of the brain and produce children who are more aggressive and angry, scientists have warned.

Children brought up only by a single mother have a higher risk of developing ‘deviant behaviour’, including drug abuse, new research suggests.

It is also feared that growing up in a fatherless household could have a greater impact on daughters than on sons.

This is based on mouse studies, so may not be directly applicable to humans. Nevertheless it gives a biochemical mechanism for how kids are harmed from the lack of a father in the home.

I show the brain scan because that always makes any brain article seem much more scientific.

‘This suggests that these mice are a good model for understanding how these effects arise in humans.’ The report said the behaviour of the mice was ‘consistent with studies in children raised without a father, highlighting an increased risk for deviant behaviour and criminal activity, substance abuse, impoverished educational performance and mental illness’.

It added: ‘Our results emphasise the importance of the father during critical neurodevelopmental periods, and that father absence induces impairments in social behaviour that persist to adulthood.’ Dr Gobbi said the results suggested both parents are vital for children’s mental health development and hoped the findings would spur researchers to look more deeply into the role of fathers.

A separate report by the Centre for Social Justice, published in June this year, found that more than 1million British children currently live without a father and have no adult male role model, a figure that is rising by 20,000 a year.

Some of the poorest parts of the country are becoming ‘men deserts’, the report found, because there are so few visible male role models for children.

In the Manor Castle ward of Sheffield 75 per cent of households are headed by a single parent, most commonly a woman.

A large number of our social ills can be attributed to kids being raised by single moms.

Leftist actor defended

Left-wing MSNBC hosts sometimes lose their jobs over their anti-conservative hate speech, but right-wing author Ann Coulter actually defends a leftist actor and MSNBC host:

What are conservatives doing demanding Baldwin’s head for calling some pestilential paparazzi a “c*cks*ck*ng little f*g.” ...

Liberals don't mind abortion, sexual promiscuity, adultery, lying or criminal behavior. They save all their moral indignation for people who use politically incorrect words. ...

The most spectacular of Baldwin's alleged misbehaviors -- the angry voicemail he left for his daughter -- resulted from his absolutely legitimate frustration over divorce laws written by feminists. His ex-wife, Kim Basinger, was jerking Baldwin around on child custody and he exploded in rage.

I know people who were with Baldwin before he made that call. He had been working overtime all week on two TV shows, but instead of kicking back with friends when it was over, Baldwin went out of his way to keep a phone appointment with his daughter.

She didn't answer and he exploded, mostly at his wife, albeit via an angry message to his daughter. Baldwin's voicemail was immediately released to the press by Basinger's people.

The court punished him for leaving the message. It did not punish Basinger for leaking it to the press.

Up and down the family law system, the deck is relentlessly stacked against men. There are state and federal laws against "deadbeat dads" -- rigorously enforced -- but judges rarely enforce a father's visitation rights.

This has real-life consequences. Feminists don't care, just as they don't care about the real-life consequences of women in combat, abortion on demand or insane sexual harassment rules. It's only about their side winning. They're for the Girl Team.

Alec Baldwin: Victim of feminism.

I have also defended Baldwin's rant, and recommended his book.

Controversial article for men

The manosphere has apparently just published its most offensive article ever. Roosh writes:

On November 13, I allowed publication of Tuthmosis’ article 5 Reasons To Date A Girl With An Eating Disorder. I did so because it contains value for men who want to date thin women in America, a country that is currently facing a devastating obesity epidemic, which we recently highlighted with Fat Shaming Week.

The article states several facts about women with eating disorders:

A girl who spends inordinate mental and physical energy on her looks is rarely fat. ...

You can go out to nice restaurants and order take-out with the confidence that your expense on her will be minimal. ...

The delivery of ideas like these may make some people uncomfortable, but they are based on our experiences and views of the world. We speak the truths that politically correct outlets are too afraid to share because of sensitive mainstream readers who lose their composure at anything they disagree with.

By "eating disorder", they mean women who eat too little, and not the ones that eat too much.

I am not endorsing this; I am just passing along what some women find offensive. Apparently articles with titles starting "5 reasons" generate more hits.

The site has advice for men, such as this:

Only take advice from those who have done what you want to do ...

This principle may seem obvious, but it is astonishing at how many people fail to adhere to it. Take dating for example — the internet abounds with female dating coaches and advice columnists who presume to tell men how to attract and please women. None of them have ever done this themselves, and it’s no coincidence that their advice is almost universally worthless.

Whether you want to get huge, write a book, travel the world, get a promotion, date hotter girls, or start a business, you must only take advice only from those who have accomplished what you want to do.

Yes, a lot of dating advice is worthless, especially when women are giving advice to men.

Update: The site also has articles like 5 Reasons To Date A Man With Cancer and This Is Why Girls Go For Bad Boys.

John Nazarian, the King of Scumbags

Suzanne McCarley asks:

What sort of unscrupulous scum makes a living off of offering professional services designed to teach women how to make false allegations of abuse to police, criminal courts and family courts in order to evict their husbands from the family home and gain the upper hand in a divorce? How morally bankrupt do you have to be to encourage and instruct such conduct, intentionally targeting people you know to be innocent, unjustly depriving them of civil rights, property and even causing emotional and psychological harm to their children?

We all know the family court system is a deck stacked against men and their children. A growing number of people are recognizing this, recognizing the damage it is doing, and working toward correcting the problem. But what kind of human being recognizes the bias and pitfalls in the system, and profits from those problems by encouraging criminality?

John Nazarian is such a parasite.

The video gives a lesson for wives to make false charges against their husbands, in order to set up a favorable divorce. I hesitate to publicize such tactics, but some people need to know what can happen.

And millions of women are getting the divorce advice:

Dear Margo: I have a difficult problem I need an outsider's help with, as I wouldn't want friends or family to know. My husband is a very quiet man, and when I say quiet, I mean that he can go for days without having a conversation.

It doesn't seem to bother him, but it certainly bothers me. I knew he was quiet when I married him, ...

Dear Get: ... Tell him that conversation is going to become part of his life, either with you, a therapist or his divorce lawyer. ... Now you know how to make things better. — Margo, responsively

20th century witch hunts

I have some readers who seem not to believe that mass hysteria could lead to false charges and convictions for child abuse. Many such cases have been documented.

One sign that these cases are bogus is that there are wildly implausible and nonsensical accusations. Another is the supposed expert testimony of a quack with no reliable expertise in the subject matter.

Reuters reports on a new exoneration:

Texas has released a woman who spent 21 years in jail on charges of sexually abusing children in satanic rituals at her daycare facility, saying expert medical testimony that helped convict her was wrong.

Frances Keller, 63, was released on bond late Tuesday night and her husband, Dan Keller, who was convicted at the same time, will be released within a week in a deal reached with lawyers for the two, the Travis County district attorney's office said.

"There is a reasonable likelihood that (the medical expert's) false testimony affected the judgment of the jury and violated Frances Keller's right to a fair trial," Rosemary Lehmberg, the district attorney for Travis County, which is located in central Texas and includes the city of Austin, said in a statement.

The release comes on the heels of a similar move in San Antonio where prosecutors agreed this month to release three lesbian women imprisoned since 1998 on sexual assault convictions that critics say were based on junk science and false views on sexual orientation.

Michael Mouw, the doctor whose testimony helped convict the Kellers, said in an affidavit presented to court this year that he had little training at the time on how to examine sexual abuse in children and came to the wrong conclusions in examining a child in the Keller case.

"While my testimony was based on a good faith belief at that time, I now realize my conclusion is not scientifically or medically valid, and that I was mistaken," he said in the affidavit, which was obtained by Reuters

The Kellers were convicted of sexually abusing a 3-year-old girl in their care and faced accusations of dismembering corpses, putting blood in drinks served to children and flying children to Mexico, where they would be sexually abused.

"The Keller case is definitely about the panic back then," Keith Hampton, a lawyer for Frances Keller, told Reuters.

Hampton filed a 128-page writ earlier this year in which he sought to refute the accusations leveled against the Kellers as well as describe the panic about daycare in that era.

The convictions in Texas were part of a national trend in the 1980s and early 1990s triggered by sensational accusations of satanic rituals and the sexual abuse of hundreds of children at a California preschool in what was known as the McMartin case.

Daytime talk show hosts stoked the fire with segments describing horrors inflicted upon children at daycare.

Between 1984 to 1989, some 100 people nationwide were charged with ritual sex abuse and 50 were put on trial, according to Debbie Nathan of the National Center for Reason and Justice, which works to free those wrongly imprisoned.

Another newspaper reports:

The Kellers, tried together in 1992, were sentenced to 48 years in prison after three children from their home-based Southeast Austin day care made allegations of sexual abuse that included strange and horrific rituals.

For those who believed in the prevalence of ritual abuse, the allegations were powerful proof that secret societies and dangerous cults — often protected by top politicians, business leaders and law officers — engaged in depraved attacks on children who could be dominated and indoctrinated through pain, humiliation and terror.

But for Hampton and other skeptics, the Kellers were the victims of an investigation run amok, featuring poor fact-gathering and interview techniques that spurred three young children to devise ever-more fantastic claims of abuse that should have raised doubts. Instead, in the hysteria over similar claims at day cares nationwide, the case spiraled out of control, Hampton said. ...

“A 21st century court ought to be able to recognize a 20th century witch-hunt and render justice accordingly,” the appeal said.

There have been a bunch of TV documentaries on these bogus cases. Here is one that impressed me:

About a third of the way into the movie, the Cummings describe how neighbors were being arrested, including one close friend that they knew had to be innocent. They decided that a witch hunt was in progress, and they had to get out. They had both lived in Bakersfield their whole lives, but they packed up and left the state in the middle of the night, never to go back.

I wish I could say that these 20th century witch-hunts do not happen anymore, but they do.

A current witch-hunt is the Jerry Sandusky Penn State scandal, as I argued here, here, and here. The scandal is costing Penn State maybe $100M or so. The core of the allegation is that Sandusky was regularly taking underage boys to the campus gym, and anally raping them in the shower where anyone could see him, and Penn State officials knowingly permitted it.

This is as crazy as the satanic ritual allegations. Sandusky was a retired coach with no power or authority over anyone. Nobody would have let him rape anyone, and there certainly could not be a conspiracy to cover up rape. The story is wildly implausible.

I would have to accept it if there were bodily fluids, video recordings, or any other objective evidence. But there is not. The only evidence is the recovered memories of people who changed their stories years later while preparing to sue Penn State for millions of dollars.

If you think that Sandusky is a creep, that's fine, you are entitled to your opinion. Maybe he is, and maybe he is not. My point here is that the public was overwhelmingly persuaded that Penn State was horrible, when the actual evidence against it was very slim and had bad motives.

Update: Penn State prosecutors have just released their strongest case against the Penn State officials, with emails showing that the officials knew more than they admitted to the grand jury, assuming that the officials read all of their emails 20 years ago. Also:

In a matter sure to be hotly disputed at trial, Spanier testified he never knew the allegations against Sandusky were of a sexual nature. Spanier told the jurors he was told a staff member (McQueary) had witnessed “horsing around” in the showers that made that staff member uncomfortable.

McQueary has repeatedly testified that he told Paterno, and later Curley and Schultz, that he believed he was witnessing a sexual assault.

Spanier told grand jurors that message was never conveyed to him, and “I know better than to jump to conclusions about things like that.” ...

The perjury charges will not be easy to prove.

The trouble with this accusation is that McQueary only gave that testimony after supposedly recovering memories from many years earlier. If McQueary witnesses a sexual assault, then he should have stopped it or reported it to the police at the time. He had the power to do both and did neither, making him a horrible person, if he is now telling the truth. He has changed his story a few times since. Now he is suing Penn State for millions of dollars, and his payoff depends on him sticking to his current story.

I do not believe McQueary. By his own words, he is such a morally damaged man that he is unreliable. It is possible that some of the Penn State administrators lied about some of the emails, but that is a minor matter. Lying about emails is not what made this a big scandal.

Mom loses child to CPS while shopping

The current New Yorker magazine has a story starting:

WHERE IS YOUR MOTHER?
A woman’s fight to keep her child.

On December 5, 2005, a three-year-old boy named Adam spent the morning in his crib, playing a handheld Spider-Man computer game and snacking on crackers. He began calling, “Mama help!,” a phrase he used when he couldn’t get his games to work. He repeated the phrase at least ten times, but his mother never came. He had been alone for ninety minutes when police officers arrived at the home, an oceanfront condominium in Huntington Beach, California. A fireman climbed a ladder to the second floor, where Adam’s cries could be heard, and pushed open the window. Adam was standing in his crib, his blond hair falling just below his shoulders. A policeman on the ground shouted up to him, asking him where his mother was. “Shopping,” he replied.

The story is behind a paywall, unfortunately. I doubt that I would have the patience to read it anyway, as the magazine is famous for paying by the word and presenting a overly lengthy and one-sided view.

The mom ended up losing custody of the boy as he was put out for adoption.

The mom is a well-educated Egyptian-American. Here is the story, as reported in the local Orange County newspaper, with their real names:

The lawsuit has its roots in December 2005, when a neighbor heard a child crying in a Huntington Beach condo. Police forced their way in and found Ismail's young son, Anthony, home alone in his crib.

The boy, then about 3, was taken by the Orange County Social Services Agency, and Ismail has not had custody of him since. She pleaded guilty in 2007 to child endangerment, and a judge gave her a suspended sentence.

Anthony was placed with foster parents, Shelby and Michael Ford, who later decided to adopt him.

Okay, but even if she was guilty as hell of child endangerment, California law requires CPS to give her a plan for restoring child custody. If she takes the parenting class or does whatever else they say, she should have gotten the boy back within a year. That is how I understand the law, anyway.

The typical child neglect case is where the parents are busted for illegal drugs, and CPS puts the kids in foster care. But then the parents are supposed to get the kids back if they produce a series of clean drug tests.

I posted a story about a local meth-addicted couple who tried to sell their baby last year for $25 in a Wal-Mart parking lot. According to news reports, they had to be offered a plan to go clean and get the kid back. In that case, they did not get the kid back because they were in prison.

Ismail is persistent, and the authorities tried to set her up for another criminal charge:

Concerned, Ismail met with private investigator Robert Young in November 2009, according to Snyder's opinion. The judge wrote that Young told investigators Ismail mentioned two plans: either having Young find negative information about the foster parents or having him kidnap Anthony so the boy could be taken out of the country.

Young called police. A few days later, he brought Detective Neil Schuster, who posed as a partner, to meet with Ismail. Police secretly recorded the conversation.

According to the judge's summary of the transcript, Ismail discussed a kidnapping in the meeting, but did not tell the men to go through with it. Instead, she said she wanted them to uncover negative information about the Fords first.

Police arrested Ismail right after the meeting, and she was held on $1 million bail.

Prosecutors argued she intended to take her son to Mexico, then to France or her native Egypt.

In August 2010, Newport Beach police arrested her again after Shelby Ford said Ismail followed her for several blocks on Balboa Island, in violation of a restraining order. Ismail said she went to Balboa Island often and was not there to see Ford or her son.

A judge acquitted Ismail in December 2010 of violating a court order. A year later, a jury acquitted her of solicitation for kidnapping.

I am not condoning kidnapping and fleeing the country, contrary to some of my readers. She could plausibly argue that she was just trying to ensure that the foster parents were taking good care of her son, and the secret tape recording failed to catch her advocating anything illegal. Apparently the jury bought that argument, and I believe in innocence until proven guilty.

I am still trying to get to the bottom of this. It does appear that CPS and other authorities were out to get Ismail. It is not clear why. Maybe because she is Egyptian, maybe she refused to admit to being a bad mom, maybe a personality conflict, maybe prosecutors were just evil and vindictive, I don't know.

Even if you believe that she deserved to lose her son, it is very unusual to try to entrap her with an undercover cop and tape recorder, and then still prosecute her when she says on tape that she does not want to do anything illegal.

All of her lawsuits have failed, of course:

By then, Ismail had already filed two lawsuits against multiple police officers, two cities, Orange County social workers and her son's foster parents.

In the first case, she accused Huntington Beach police of wrongly entering her apartment and conspiring with the Fords and county social workers to keep her son from her. Most of those counts were dismissed. But claims are still pending against the Fords, who have filed a motion to dismiss.

The Fords have adopted Anthony, who is about 11 and doing well, said Katherine Marie Schreurs, a lawyer for the family.

She said the Fords hope to get the lawsuit behind them.

"They were the innocent ones," Schreurs said. "They just had the child placed in their home, and then the county freed him for adoption."

No, the Fords are not the innocent ones. They filed a lawsuit to gain the adoption of a boy against the wishes of the boy's mother, and I cannot find any papers showing that the mother was unfit.

The boy will soon learn that everyone who googles his name, Anthony Ford, will learn that he was raised by horrible people who conspired to steal him from his real mom.

Googling the mom, I find that an Egyptian-American Neveen Ismail was an actress on Oxygen's reality soap, "The Bad Girls Club 2." I cannot tell if it is the same woman or not. The mom also had a blog for a while, but has not updated it.

Ismail did try to bring her case to the US Supreme Court, as she explains in a brief she wrote to influence a later case:

Amicus curiae, Niveen Ismail, is a private concerned citizen and a resident of Orange County,California, who has personal first hand experience with Child Protective Services (CPS) and the juvenile court system. Proceeding in pro per, she petitioned this Court in May 2009 for review. Docket No. 08-10723. The main question presented was whether California’s dependency laws terminating parental rights under a preponderance of the evidence conflicted with this Court’s holdings in Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745 (1982). This Court requested a response on August 27, 2009, and denied cert on November 2, 2009.

It appears to me that she had a strong case, but was shut out by the courts.

If CPS has unchecked power, we could end up like the UK, where this just happened:

Social workers in Britain obtained a court order to have a pregnant Italian woman forcibly sedated so her child could be removed from her womb without her consent.

The story, reported by the Telegraph, has raised questions about the powers afforded to social workers in the country.

The woman's lawyer, Brendan Fleming, called the forced operation "unprecedented."

The unnamed Italian national was in Britain for a work trip when she suffered a panic attack, which her family believes happened because she didn't take her medications for bipolar disorder.

You would think that the British could have just notified the Italian CPS to keep an eye on her.

Update: Here is the New Yorker issue (uses Flash).

Punished for reporting animal abuse

I sometimes report on child abuse cases, and I am reporting this because I did not even know that animal abuse was reportable like child abuse:

GREELEY, Colo. - The woman who took a video showing alleged animal abuse at a cattle ranch near Kersey is now facing animal cruelty charges.

Taylor Radig, who was associated with an animal rights organization, filmed the abuse as she worked at the Quanah Cattle Company from mid-July through September.

Radig was associated with an animal rights organization identified as Compassion Over Killing and referred to herself as a “contractor” for said organization, according to the sheriff's office.

The video footage was handed over to the Weld County Sheriff's Office two months after Radig quit working there, the sheriff's office said.

On Friday, Radig was charged with animal cruelty because she didn't report the abuse when it was happening, which is a violation of state law.

So she reported animal abuse and gets charged for not reporting it two months earlier?

There is somethihng fishy about this story. Maybe the cops just wanted to drive the animal rights group out of the county.

In most states, it is legal to fail to turn in a murderer. You can witness a murder, and report it 2 months late, or never report it, and you cannot be penalized. I do not know why animals would have more rights than human beings.

Update: A reader refers me to Ag-gag anti-whistleblower laws.

Update: No new ag-gag bills were passed in 2013.

CPS blames parents for bad diagnosis

Fox News Connecticut reports on a case where CPS blamed the parents when they got bad medical diagnoses for their daughter:

It’s a medical “mystery” that has left a Connecticut family baffled and heartbroken.

After a long history of medical problems, a West Hartford teenager is now “trapped” inside a hospital with seemingly no way out.

FOX CT spent the past few months investigating the emotional case.

It has been a bitter custody battle, and nine months after it started, it’s still going on.

In December 2012, Justina Pelletier was an active 15-year-old girl who would go ice skating, laughed and spent time with her family.

But just two months later, her family says their nightmare began.
“[Exhales] It’s beyond any wildest nightmare that you could think of,” says Justina’s father, Lou Pelletier.

Her longtime West Hartford psychologist has also been following the case.

“It’s the most bizarre situation … I’ve ever been involved with,” says Dean Hokanson, the clinical psychologist who has worked with Justina the past five years.

Justina was diagnosed with mitochondrial disease a few years ago. It’s a genetic disorder that can cause loss of muscle coordination and weakness.

Despite that diagnosis she lived a normal life.

But last February, she also got the flu and was admitted to Boston Children’s Hospital to see her specialist.

Almost immediately, a different team of doctors delivered a different diagnosis, questioning the original diagnosis of mitochondrial disease.

“They came in, and they said we cannot take Justina out of the hospital. They called DCF,” says Linda Pelletier, Justina’s mother.

They said Justina had “somatoform disorder.”

In short, they were saying she suffered from a mental illness, not mitochondrial disease.

Her parents, Lou and Linda Pelletier, were escorted out of the hospital by security, and within four days, they lost custody of Justina. ...

The Pelletiers are left fighting DCF in court, hoping to regain custody of their daughter, and watch her ice skate once again.

“Hospitals, be it this scenario or big picture, cannot just hide behind DCF to do their dirty work,” says Lou Pelletier.

Since our initial investigation, we’ve learned that the judge has issued a gag order in this case.

The fad psycho diagnosis of our age

I mentioned a NY Magazine article, and it has more:

“Is every man in America somewhere on it?” Nora Ephron wondered about the autism spectrum in an e-mail to a friend a few months before her death. “Is every producer on it? Is every 8-year-old boy who is obsessed with statistics on it? Sometimes, when we say someone is on the spectrum, do we just mean he’s a prick? Or a pathological narcissist? I notice that at least three times a week I am told (or I tell someone) that some man or other is on the spectrum.”

After saying that Romney and Obama are both on the autism spectrum, it lists other celebrities:

The diagnosis is everywhere: Facebook’s former head of engineering has stated that Mark Zuckerberg has “a touch of the Asperger’s.” Time suggested that the intensely awkward Bill Gates is autistic; a biographer of Warren Buffett wrote that the Oracle of Omaha, with his prodigious memory and “fascination with numbers,” has “a vaguely autistic aura.” On Celebrity Rehab, Dr. Drew Pinsky deemed Dennis Rodman (selectively hyperfocused, socially obtuse) a candidate for an Asperger’s diagnosis, and the UCLA specialist brought in to make it official “seemed to concur,” Pinsky told viewers. On the Asperger’s community site Wrong Planet, threads like “Real life celebrities who have or probably have Asperger’s” include Jim Carrey, Adolf Hitler, Daryl Hannah, Slash, Billy Joel, J. K. Rowling, and Adam Carolla, who makes the cut because “I’ve heard guests on his podcast remark on his lack of eye contact.” “Kanye Probably Has Asperger’s,” BuzzFeed recently declared.

Still others are seeing it in themselves. David Byrne: “I was a peculiar young man—borderline Asperger’s, I would guess.” Craigs­list founder Craig Newmark, noting his poor eye contact and limited social competency, blogged that Asperger’s symptoms “feel uncomfortably familiar.” Dan Harmon, the volatile creator of NBC’s Community, told an interviewer last year that he had boned up on Asperger’s symptoms when researching the character Abed: “The more I looked them up, the more familiar they seemed.” Dan Aykroyd told NPR’s Terry Gross that he was diagnosed with Asperger’s as a child (a puzzling claim given that the diagnosis didn’t exist prior to 1981, when Aykroyd turned 29); Aykroyd insisted he was being serious, and as evidence of his continuing symptoms he noted his “fascination with law enforcement and the police.”

It concludes that autism specturm is the fad diagnosis of our ae:

Every generation has its defining psychiatric malady, confidently diagnosed from afar by armchair non-psychiatrists. In the fifties, all those gray-suited organization men were married to “frigid” women. Until a few years ago, the country of self-obsessed boomers and reality-TV fame-seekers and vain politicians and bubble-riding Ponzi schemers made narcissistic personality disorder—diagnosis code 301.81 in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition—the craziness of the moment. And who among us has not proudly copped to our own “OCD” or “ADD,” deemed a mercurial sibling “seriously bipolar,” written off an erratic ex as “obviously borderline,” or nodded as a laid-off friend pronounced his former boss a “textbook sociopath”? Lately, a new kind of head case stalks the land—staring past us, blurting gaucheries, droning on about the technical minutiae of his boring hobby. And we are ready with our DSM codes: 299.00 (autistic disorder) and 299.80 (Asperger’s disorder).

New Santa Cruz director of dad gouging

The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports:

SANTA CRUZ -- The Department of Child Support Services is getting a new director, Jamie Murray, who is moving here from the same job in Sutter County.

A 20-year veteran of child support services around California, "she brings to the table a lot of tools that you really want to see in the department," said Lynn Miller, the interim director.

Murray has a bachelor's in industrial psychology from CSU, Hayward and a master's in public administration from CSU, East Bay. She will oversee a staff of 64 employees and a budget of $6.8 million in Santa Cruz County, as well as 19 employees and a budget of $1.86 million in San Benito County. Child Support Services does everything from garnishing wages to revoking passports in an effort to get kids their fair share. They also handle state-mandated paternity tests. ...

The department has a lot of options for finding delinquent parents and getting them to pay child support, including revoking driver's, hunting, fishing and medical licenses. But the goal isn't just to punish delinquent cases. They'll work with parents through job loss and other financial straights, to make sure everyone can afford their payments.

"A lot of people who aren't in the system wonder what we do," Miller said. "We serve a lot of families. And we really want to keep the noncustodial parent as involved in the child's life as the custodial parent. We didn't in the past, but we're really trying these days."

She has 64 employees and $6.8M just for extracting support payments from noncustodial dads? Yes, I do wonder what they all do.

How can a noncustodial parent be as involved as the custodial parent? She is babbling nonsense.

A comment says that the dept is getting sued in federal court.

Children of the Underground

A reader provided more info on the case below. The NY Daily News reports:

According to The Australian, Barnett initially fled to South Africa, where she married a man, Juan Geldenhuys in 1995.

She later gave birth to a son, now 17, before moving to New Zealand. From there, she moved to Australia after splitting with Geldenhuys, who recently died of bone cancer. It was a friend of Geldenhuys who helped tracked down Savanna's father after becoming suspicious of the mother and tracking him down via the Internet.

She was apparently helped in the US by an organization called Children of the Underground, which helps women stuck in apparently abusive relationships.

Another source says:

Since then, he has spent nearly all his assets in an effort to recover Savanna. Leveraged to the hilt, he lives simply and works seven-day weeks at two jobs: as a stockbroker for Merrill Lynch and as a father engaged in a full-time search for his child.

There are hundreds of people like Todd, mostly fathers, who say they are victims of an underground network that willingly helps mothers and their children go into hiding - in violation of court orders.

Most of these fathers say they have been falsely accused of molesting their children. While the courts believe them, the underground's organizers don't; instead, they take the law into their own hands, leaving fathers cut off from their sons and daughters for years at a time, sometimes forever.

The most public of those underground leaders, Faye Yager, says she will only hide mothers who have extensive documentation of sexual abuse - medical reports, psychological evaluations, police statements.

But no such papers existed in Todd's case. Barnett never made any sexual abuse allegations during the long, nasty court battle for custody of Savanna. She called Harris Todd lots of names, but "child molester" wasn't one of them.

Just as I suspect, there is an underground network of child kidnappers that help moms violate child custody court orders. They tell themselves that they are preventing child molesters, or some such nonsense. Fathers no not molest their one-year-old babies. This is just a phony charges that is dreamed up by moms because they are vindictive, delusional, paranoid, possessive, borderline, or whatever.