24.2.11

How the media can stop its biased reporting about domestic violence and homicides

How the media can stop its biased reporting about domestic violence and homicides

From Justice's Posterous. I have cited some of these concerns myself about domestic violence coverage in the media. But this is a very complete and concise list. Reporters take note!

http://justice.posterous.com/how-the-media-can-stop-its-biased-reporting

How the media can stop its biased reporting about domestic violence and familicides

Don't refer to domestic violence as a "dispute." Abusing someone is not a quarrel.

Don't call him a "nice guy." Nice guys don't murder women and children. Being cordial to his co-workers doesn't make him a "nice guy".

Don't write more positive comments about the perpetrator than about the victim.

"Snapped" is not a mental diagnosis. Most perpetrators have a history of control, jealousy or abuse (even if his neighbors really weren't close enough to him to know about it.)

Don't call him a "man" if he was a "father" or "husband" of the victim -- especially if you would use "mother" for a female perpetrator. The relationship is newsworthy.

Don't imply that it was caused by a "custody dispute". Custody issues are another manifestation of an abuser's harassment, intimidation, and punishment of a woman.

Say whether the perpetrator had shared child custody or visitation rights so the public gets to know about bad policies and decisions in our family courts.

Find out why a child victim lived with the father -- and where the child's real mother is.

Don't call stepmothers "mothers"-- especially if they were criminally complicit.

Report perpetrators' prior charges or convictions (yes, you can).

Don't call men's lies "hoaxes" or other euphemisms. Call them lies or false allegations.

Don't use "alleged" to describe acts that were witnessed, confessed, or proved.

Don't call violent crimes against others "tragedies".

-- Partly based on "ten tips" information provided by stopfamilyviolence.org

Also see http://justice.posterous.com/chesterfield-indiana-man-was-facing-child-mol

and http://justice.posterous.com/johnson-city-tennessee-father-an-ex-con-with

How the media can stop its biased reporting about domestic violence and homicides

How the media can stop its biased reporting about domestic violence and homicides

From Justice's Posterous. I have cited some of these concerns myself about domestic violence coverage in the media. But this is a very complete and concise list. Reporters take note!

http://justice.posterous.com/how-the-media-can-stop-its-biased-reporting

How the media can stop its biased reporting about domestic violence and familicides

Don't refer to domestic violence as a "dispute." Abusing someone is not a quarrel.

Don't call him a "nice guy." Nice guys don't murder women and children. Being cordial to his co-workers doesn't make him a "nice guy".

Don't write more positive comments about the perpetrator than about the victim.

"Snapped" is not a mental diagnosis. Most perpetrators have a history of control, jealousy or abuse (even if his neighbors really weren't close enough to him to know about it.)

Don't call him a "man" if he was a "father" or "husband" of the victim -- especially if you would use "mother" for a female perpetrator. The relationship is newsworthy.

Don't imply that it was caused by a "custody dispute". Custody issues are another manifestation of an abuser's harassment, intimidation, and punishment of a woman.

Say whether the perpetrator had shared child custody or visitation rights so the public gets to know about bad policies and decisions in our family courts.

Find out why a child victim lived with the father -- and where the child's real mother is.

Don't call stepmothers "mothers"-- especially if they were criminally complicit.

Report perpetrators' prior charges or convictions (yes, you can).

Don't call men's lies "hoaxes" or other euphemisms. Call them lies or false allegations.

Don't use "alleged" to describe acts that were witnessed, confessed, or proved.

Don't call violent crimes against others "tragedies".

-- Partly based on "ten tips" information provided by stopfamilyviolence.org

Also see http://justice.posterous.com/chesterfield-indiana-man-was-facing-child-mol

and http://justice.posterous.com/johnson-city-tennessee-father-an-ex-con-with

22.2.11

Eric Holder “ Why Are Mothers Who Are Victims of Domestic Violence Losing Custody to Abusers?” (fatherhood.gov) of course.

“and if so what does that relationship look like?”  -Eric Holder

It look like (fatherhood.gov) Holder Knows Abusers get Custody of their Children, HE SUPPORTS IT! And Finances it. WTF?

AG Eric Holder

Eric Holder Knows about Batterers Getting Custody and HE SUPPORTS it with Fatherhood.gov.

Last year 2010 he plays a mentor to Fathers in Prison getting out and being 'dad'. See Fathers Day 2010 where Obama gave 500 Million dollars MORE to the Fatherhood Initiatives.

See Video here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRJBkoq1DXs

Obama steps up fatherhood advocacy with new mentoring initiative: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2010/06/21/AR2010062100006.html

Original Domestic Violence speech of Holder here:http://www.justice.gov/ag/speeches/2009/ag-speech-090602.html

 

FATHERHOOD Funding $500,000,000.00

IMG00177

 Motherhood Funding $0.

Fuck that shit.

Mothers time to March!

 

181667_153398881383159_153380204718360_333947_4652387_n

more information endorsed by www.AmericanMothersPoliticalParty.org

179827_153399094716471_153380204718360_333948_5749014_n

21.2.11

UPDATE: From the Mothers Rally In Washington, DC on Feb 13th, 14th, 2011

www.mothers-of-lost-children.com

168356_153380361385011_153380204718360_333875_8375934_n

Our Heroes

The Mothers Movement is patterned after all movements that oppose human rights violations:

  • Madres de los Desaparecidos (Mothers of the Disappeared) movement in Argentina http://blog.buzzflash.com/editorials/103,
  • African American civil rights movement in the United States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_Civil_Rights_Movement_(1955%E2%80%931968)
  • Women's movement that stopped a civil war in Liberia

     

    February 13, 2011

    On Sunday February 13, twenty to thirty mothers and children participated in a vigil and demonstration in front of the White House for two hours. They held one big banner, three large double-sided signs on poles, and several other large signs.

    The purpose was to express grave concerns about five hundred million dollars ($500,000,000.00) designed to encourage fathers to pay child support and provide abusers with supervised visits.

    Instead, this gender-biased project provides legal services to batterers, molester, felons and drug addicts who avoid paying child support by getting custody. Safe mothers are put on supervised visitation. Children's continued outcries of abuse are ignored.

    We want the President to know our tax dollars are destroying children's lives, not improving them.

    Federal Fatherhood Initiatives

    IMG00177

    February 14, 2011

    A press conference and speak out were held on Monday, February 14 at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to inform them how their fatherhood programs impact children.

    Advocates joined the speak out. A television reported came by, but security staff forced him to leave. Fortunately, he had a zoom lens, so could film the event from afar. We don't know if he was able to air the story on Channels 4, 5 or 9.

    About half way through the speak out, several Homeland Security vehicles arrived. A small squadron of large uniformed federal agents announced that the group was on Federal property and told us to leave or be arrested.

    After a lively discussion from citizens whose taxes provide HHS with money for the property, the mothers, children and advocates (including 2 attorneys) marched off, finishing the speak out while moving along peacefully.

    The march continued up Independence Ave., past the three House of Representative buildings, turned left on First Street and ended at the Senate buildings.

    Many of the mothers stood with the signs and banners during the next several hours in front of the Senate buildings, while others met with Senate aides and distributed packets of information.

    A courageous kid told Senate aides how she was forced to reunite with her sex offender father.

    A mother explained how she was turned away from federally-funded HHS legal services because she is a mother, not a father.

    Two attorneys, two counselors, and several mothers discussed how the HHS fatherhood program backfires, leading to destructive outcomes for children.

    Family Court Related Research and Articles

    IMG00171

    February 15, 2011

    The next day, one stalwart mother continued to distribute the rest of the packets and flyers to the remaining Senators. She found that Senators and their aides recognized her white t-shirt with Mothers of Lost Children in black letters on the front. Our emblematic uniform is being noticed - an excellent sign.

    http://americanmotherspoliticalparty.org/

    IMG00169

    Mothers Day 2011 Demonstrations

    • Our next events will be on Sunday May 8, Mothers Day and Monday, May 9, 2011. We hope to have Mothers of Lost Children t-shirts for sale in advance. Those who are not able to come to Washington DC can organize a speak out at your local courthouse on Monday May 9 and wear the t-shirt 'uniform'. If needed, wear a white scarf over your face to prevent recognition and retribution by the court. White pants or skirts complete the ensemble.

    181667_153398881383159_153380204718360_333947_4652387_n

  • 20.2.11

    Home where abused twins lived was a house of horrors

     

    http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/02/19/2076037/victor-and-nubias-house-of-horrors.html

    CHILD ABUSE TRAGEDY

    Home where abused twins lived was a house of horrors

    The 3-bedroom home where two abused twins lived resembles a fortress — cloaked in shrubs, protected by cameras and secluded behind a gate.

    BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER AND DIANA MOSKOVITZ
    CMARBIN@MIAMIHERALD.COM

    Jorge and Carmen Barahona had custody of fraternal twin foster children for three years and were moving slowly toward adoption when they hit a formidable obstacle: a stubborn court-appointed guardian.

    Paul Neumann, a volunteer guardian-ad-litem, had seen something in the West Miami-Dade couple that scared him, and he said so to everyone in the child welfare system who would listen.

    The Barahonas sought help from an administrator with the foster care agency that oversaw their case. And when that fell short, they prevailed to a higher authority: then-Gov. Charlie Crist.

    In a series of three letters spanning the summer of 2007 through early 2008, the Barahonas accused Neumann of conspiring with employees of the Miami-Dade school system, “tampering’’ with witnesses and trying to snatch the twins from their custody. Neumann, they wrote, was violating their civil rights.

    “They have been deceitful with us all along,” the Barahonas wrote in a June 4, 2007 letter to Crist, “and we feel that we have been taken for fools.”

    Florida child welfare administrators now claim that they were the ones who were deceived.

    On Feb. 10, the Department of Children & Families’ child abuse hotline received a report that the Barahonas were binding the twins, Nubia and Victor Doctor, hand-and-foot and forcing them to stand in a bathtub for hours at the family home in West Miami-Dade. Investigators had yet to find the twins when Victor was discovered in a pickup truck on the side of Interstate 95 in West Palm Beach doused in chemicals and in the midst of seizures. Hours later, police found Nubia’s body in the truck’s flatbed, stuffed in a bag and drenched in chemicals. A source said Friday the children may have been sprayed with pesticides.

    DCF administrators have declined repeatedly to release records on the couple, though they say some documents may be forthcoming.

    But several records obtained last week by The Miami Herald, along with interviews of neighbors and child welfare workers, paint a portrait of a couple determined to raise their adoptive family their own way, shielded from the prying eyes of child-welfare workers, in a house cloaked by thick, overgrown shrubs.

    “All roads lead back to that house,” DCF’s top Miami administrator, Jacqui Colyer, said last week.

    SUBURBAN VENEER

    Jorge Barahona was born in Nicaragua; Carmen in Cuba.

    They married on Jan. 19, 1996, in Coral Gables. She was 45; he was 38.

    Carmen Barahona has worked for several years for one of South Florida’s largest medical practices, Pediatric Associates. Her husband owned a pest control company, and operated out of a red pickup truck that carried lethal chemical in plastic jugs.

    The couple had another, rather substantial source of income: state subsidies for the four foster children they adopted. In court last week, Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman ordered that the roughly $950-per-month in adoption subsidies for the three surviving children be immediately discontinued. The amount likely reached $1,200 when Nubia was alive.

    The Barahonas lived in a typical western Miami-Dade suburb, close to a hospital, a public school and filled with families whose children move easily between English and Spanish.

    The Barahona home, a three-bedroom, one-bath, at first glance passes for the best-kept home on their suburban block, with a gleaming front driveway of fresh pavers, a coat of light-colored paint and a lawn full of lush landscaping. But look closer, and it resembles a well-manicured fortress, armed with heavy shrubbery to keep away glancing eyes and cameras that peered out at visitors, showing those inside whoever came near the front door.

    A black metal gate, more than four feet tall, keeps passersby from setting foot on the front yard. Tall wooden planks on the side of the house, bearing Beware of Dog signs, obscure any view from the side. Palm trees and tall shrubs line the front of the house, obscuring the windows.

    Thick shrubs grown so tall they brush against the roof guard each side of the front doors like centurions. The heavy tangles of branches and leaves on both sides of the front entrance mean that neighbors like Leida Alonso, who has lived next door for more than five years, can glance over and not even see if the door is open.

    What went on in the house was a “family secret’’ that was never to be discussed, one of the Barahonas’ surviving adoptive children — as well as the couple’s biological granddaughter — told investigators in recent days.

    ‘NEVER SAW A KID’

    In all her years in the neighborhood, Alonso said, she saw Jorge Barahona maybe five or seven times. She never saw anyone else at the house at all, she said.

    “I never saw his wife, never saw a kid,” Alonso said

    Across the street, Hilda Duque said in five years in the neighborhood she only saw children with the couple once. About six months ago, she saw two small children. She thinks they were coming or going to the beach because a little girl was wearing a bathing suit.

    Sen. Scott Brown, a perplexing connection -- ‘The message coming through is when males complain of abuse it's real and different from females who are crazy liars.’

     http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2011/02/20/for_brown_a_perplexing_connection/

    JOAN VENNOCHI

    The Boston Globe

    For Brown, a perplexing connection

    In light of his sexual abuse revelation, why did he back Jeff Perry?

    SENATOR SCOTT Brown’s revelations about a childhood that included sexual assault by a summer camp counselor are genuinely sympathy-inducing.

    But, they also make you wonder: in light of this searing experience when he was 10, how could Brown endorse Jeff Perry, the Republican congressional candidate, who, in 1991, allegedly stood by as a 14-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by a fellow police officer?

    The victim, Lisa Allen, came forward during the race that Perry ultimately lost and said that Perry “had to hear my screaming and crying. Instead of helping me, Jeff Perry denied anything happened.’’

    It’s an eerie echo of the personal trauma Brown reveals in his book, “Against All Odds.’’ As he tells “60 Minutes’’ correspondent Lesley Stahl, he never went to police or any authority — and told no one, not even his mother — because his abuser told him: “If you tell anybody, you know, I’ll kill you. I will make sure that no one believes you.’’

    Adds Brown in the interview that will be aired tonight: “When people find people like me at that young vulnerable age, who are basically lost, the thing that they have over you is, they make you believe that no one will believe you.’’

    Despite his own horrific experience, Brown still chose to believe Perry over Allen; or, if he didn’t believe him, he still backed him for an important political position. Given that Brown is the father of two daughters, his loyalty to Perry was always curious. The revelations in his book make it even odder. In response, Brown said there is “no correlation’’ between his story and Allen’s and it is “really inappropriate’’ to link them.

    Brown’s candor about his own past won instant praise from victims of child sex abuse and their advocates. It sends a powerful message to others who suffered abuse, they said.

    Five years ago, Brown was among supporters of a state bill that extended the period of time in which a victim of sex abuse could file charges against a perpetrator. He called sexual abuse the “number one public safety issue affecting us here in the Commonwealth,’’ according to the State House News Service. He also cosponsored a federal bill that would limit the ability of those convicted of sex abuse from working in a variety of settings. When Brown was running for US Senate, he and Democratic opponent Martha Coakley said they would ask Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley to release the names of all priests in the archdiocese who were credibly accused of sexual abuse. (Only one legislator, former state senator Marian Walsh, called for Cardinal Bernard F. Law to be prosecuted when the clergy abuse scandal rocked the Boston Archdiocese.)

    Brown’s book is perfectly timed, from both marketing and political standpoints.

    His dramatic disclosures overshadow those of Governor Deval Patrick, whose new book, “A Reason to Believe,’’ addresses race issues and his wife’s depression. And Brown’s book puts the Massachusetts senator back in the spotlight just as talk about the 2012 Senate race starts heating up.

    Brown’s tough childhood was a general part of the narrative when he won the Senate seat held for decades by Ted Kennedy. But his pickup and semi-nude Cosmopolitan photo spread got most of the attention.

    In his book, which goes on sale tomorrow, he also reveals that it took two photo shoots to get the famous 1982 centerfold. The first time, “I looked pale and I wasn’t physically toned; I probably needed to lose 10 pounds,’’ he wrote. When he returned after a crash diet of three cans of tuna a day, “I was bronzed and toned.’’

    Even Brown’s glamour shot has an “everyman’’ story behind it, leading to this question for Massachusetts Democrats: can anyone beat Brown?

    Democrats still find it hard to accept that Kennedy’s seat went to a Republican who brilliantly rechristened it “the people’s seat.’’

    Now, Brown will be collecting new accolades for bravery. Given Patrick’s tome, it’s hard to tag him as uniquely opportunistic.