By:
Dean Tong
January 18, 2009
NewsWithViews.com
As
President-Elect Barack Obama readies to assume Commander-In-Chief of
this great country, he is joined by, arguendo, the most left-winged
cabinet in recent memory. Hillary Clinton, author of "It Takes
A Village" is our new Secretary of State. She'll be joined by the
new head of Health and Human Services Tom Daschle who will keep the
Child Abuse Prevention & Treatment Act (CAPTA) alive and well as
he "creates" new and more ways to falsely accuse men and fathers
(and some mothers, too) of child abuse and neglect. They'll both be
surrounded by our new Vice-President Joe Biden. You remember him - the
author of the Violence Against Women's Act (VAWA).
What does this Obama administration mean for new and old men and fathers?
It means - welcome to family, I mean father-ectomy court, where if you
think you are getting custody of your kid(s), think again! It means
millions of more dollars funneled in to support CAPTA and VAWA, its
constituents, its supporters, and that includes advocacy programs supporting
the protection of women and children and what is in their best interests.
If you think father custody is now at about 15% wait until 2010 when
Obama, et al start to crank up the pressure in support of domestic programs
created to ultimately curtail the rights of you guessed it - deadbeats,
visitors, high rise condos known as time-sharers in Florida, child molesters
and wife beaters; aka fathers.
My recently published article Fatherhood Crisis (In Search of Fatherhood,
2008) takes you, the reader, through Fatherhood America over the past
40 years from the Equal Rights Amendment and No-Fault (Unilateral) Divorce,
to CAPTA, the wave of feminism, the child sex abuse hysteria of the
80's, "repressed memories," and VAWA to what I referred to
as "daylight and redemption" for fathers. Men and fathers
actually made gains over the past ten years or so as we witnessed the
pendulum shift toward the "best parent is both parents." Outspoken
academics such as Phyllis Schlafly and Stephen Baskerville authored
scores of articles and books articulating the need for fairness and
justice in America's family courts. Their well-argued hypotheses were
reinforced by "father's rights media shakers" Glenn Sacks
and Kathleen Parker. And Respect for Accuracy
in Domestic Abuse Reporting (RADAR) - came out of the woodwork to
call attention to deluge of false domestic violence claims and raised
the eyebrows of Washington D.C.'s finest.
But I'm afraid the election of Obama, et al will empower our family court triers and finders of fact to err on the side of mothers and children against fathers. Family courts require proof by a preponderance of evidence (51% v. 49%) and we just made it easier for our family courts to rule against daddys in alleged child abuse and/or domestic violence cases. It's the fox guarding the hen house, folks, and starting January 20, 2009 family court judges across the USA will be looking out for #1.
This is a numbers game. It is an industry and money is at the very core of it. I've always said that if we took the profit away from and out of abuse reports and investigations, the solution would go a long way toward correcting itself. In this time of economic recession where families need to "stay out of court," I'm afraid the opposite is going to come to fruition. I fully expect both child abuse and domestic violence reports and investigations to soar and probably 2/3 or greater of the same will be unfounded or false. And in that same vein I fully expect father custody to plummet to an all time low as dads will not have the resources to impeach Goliath in court. Hear yee, Hear yee, father-ectomy court has concluded and you now need $15K to appeal Judge HurtDad's final judgment.
