UPDATE: Nightmare in Oconto County

I previously posted A Nightmare in Oconto County which gave the history of what this mother and daughter have gone through in trying to free themselves from abuse.  Now the mother has been jailed because of the daughters refusal to visit her dad.  The mother has not prevented the visits, the daughter refuses. 

Another update and discussion can be found here:  WI: Judge jails mother over daughter's refusal to visit father

Please support this protective mother by signing this petition.

The below press release has been issued by Stop Family Violence.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 19, 2009

Contact:
Irene Weiser                     
Stop Family Violence
iw@stopfamilyviolence.org

WHY IS THIS MOTHER IN JAIL?

(Oconto Falls, WI) Today an Oconto County family court judge sentenced a mother to jail because she was unable to force her daughter to court mandated visitation with her abusive father.  The daughter will be sent to foster care if she refuses to live with her father while the mother serves her sentence.

Circuit Judge David Miron sentenced Lorraine Tipton to 30 days in county jail for contempt of court, for her failure to follow the custody order requiring her daughter to live every other week with her father, Craig Hensberger.

“She’s terrified of going;  she has night terrors and severe anxiety” says Tipton, who admits her daughter hasn’t visited with her father since August. 

“I thought the court was supposed to look out for the best interests of the child, not the best interest of the father,” Tipton continued.  “I thought once I got out of the abusive relationship everything would be fine.  Instead, my abuser is continuing his abuse of me and my daughter with the help of the court.” 

Over the course of their on and off 8 year relationship Hensberger was arrested three times for domestic violence and once for child abuse.  Since their separation in 2005, Hensberger has been arrested twice for DWI, including once while the daughter was in the car. 

Although the court has ordered Hensberger into alcohol treatment and ordered “absolute sobriety” when having visitation, the daughter claims he continues to drink to excess when she is visiting.   The father told the court he had stopped drinking completely.  The mother recently had a private investigator follow the father, who found that the father drank heavily on a night he was scheduled to have visitation.  In court today the father admitted to his continued drinking; nonetheless the judge still sentenced the mother to jail. 

Hensberger achieved his local 15 minutes of fame in Oconto in March of this year, when he forced his daughter to enter 3 different fishing tournaments using the same fish so that he could collect the money - a story covered widely by local news.   While the local media angle related to his transportation of fish against DNR regulations,  Ms. Tipton’s concerns were for the well-being of her daughter, who was  being taught to lie, cheat and steal by her father.  Since this incident, the daughter’s relationship with the father has deteriorated, Tipton claims.

Additionally, the father’s employment is irregular, his house is in foreclosure and he currently resides with his mother.  The daughter claims she is forced to sleep on the floor in the living room or in the unfinished basement since there is no bed or private space for her in the small 2 bedroom house.

“Sadly, this case typifies the problems we are seeing in Family Courts nationwide,” says Irene Weiser, executive director of StopFamilyViolence.org. “Family court judges are failing to recognize signs of abuse, and are placing children in harms way.  Even worse, instead of investigating the abuse allegations, they accuse the parent making the allegations of being vindictive and punish them for taking actions to protect their children.  Often judges seem more concerned with maintaining the child’s relationship with the father than ensuring the child’s safety.”

###

StopFamilyViolence.org is a national activist organization that works to ensure safety, justice, accountability and healing for victims of family violence.   Irene Weiser coordinates the Family Court Reform Coalition, a coalition of advocates, professionals and organizations formed in response to the national crisis in the custody court system, where all too often, judge’s order children to live with abusers and punish, silence, or jail the parent who tries to protect the children from harm.

Irene Weiser

Executive Director

StopFamilyViolence.org

331 W. 57th St #518

New York, NY 10019

iw@stopfamilyviolence.org

Painfully Precious

Precious may get people to start believing that lower income children, and/or children with darker skin are getting abused, maybe. But what about higher income children with lighter skin? When abuse is discovered there, especially sexual abuse, the abuser PAYS unethical lawyers and psychologists to claim the child has a fictitious mental illness called "Parental Alienation Syndrome" and that the child has somehow been "infected" with this PAS "disease" by the protective parent, usually the mother. No mother should ever allow what happened to Precious, but with advocates for fictitious mental illnesses such as Parental Alienation Syndrome are mothers going to be forced to go along with abuse of the child or risk losing custody? If you think this couldn't happen, think again. It's already happening in the United States, Canada, UK, Australia, and this terrible trend is spreading to the rest of the world as the unethical purveyors of a fictitious syndrome makes lots and lots of money covering up child abuse for the wealthy.

There is one case that I’d like to point out where a mother, Joyce Murphy, lost custody of her daughter after leaving the state to protect her from sexual abuse by her father.  She was accused of PAS and charged with kidnapping.  After six long years, the father was caught and the mom turned out to have been right all along.  You can read more about that here:  http://batteredmomslosecustody.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/joyce-murphy-testifies-in-support-of-california-ab-612/  This daughter is back with her mom now and safe from her abusive father.

Ed Koch

Mayor Ed at the Movies

Nov 10 2009, 1:38PM

Painfully Precious

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5FYahzVU44&feature=player_embedded
This is an extraordinary story with an exceptional cast.  The painful life burdens of the movie's main character, a teenager named Precious, will cause you to weep.

In the beginning of the film, an extremely obese teenager, Precious (Gabourey Sidibe), is caring for her Down Syndrome baby whom she has named Mongol.  She is soon to deliver birth to a boy who will be named Abdul. The horror is that both children were fathered by Precious's own father who is the boyfriend of her mother, Mary (Mo'Nique), with whom she lives.

Mary, who has stood by and allowed the raping of her child, has only ill-will approaching hatred towards her daughter. One of the most poignant and dramatic scenes in the film depicts a meeting at the office of a social worker, Ms. Weiss (Maria Carey), where the mother states why she resents her daughter. I was pained by the plight of both mother and daughter and wept for both of them.

Precious is shown in a classroom with a half-dozen other girls who become her substitute family. Without the positive interaction of her social worker, Ms. Weiss, her teacher, Ms. Rain  (Paula Patton), and her classmates, I have no doubt she would have been living on the streets.

The performances of Sidibe and Mo'Nique are extraordinary and spellbinding. In fact, the entire cast, including Lenny Kravitz in the role of Nurse John, does a wonderful job.

I believe everyone in the audience must have felt the way I did: how could God allow this to go on and what can our schools and society do to address the problem? The obvious answer is to provide more educational and training programs as well as money for programs to care for those in need who may never work, notwithstanding the prodding of their social worker. Clearly, however, we are not doing enough. The ending of this film, while conveying the possibility of change and a better outcome down the road, does not leave the audience with an unrealistic expectation and happy ending.

According to The National Center for Victims of Crime:

"Incest has been cited as the most common form of child abuse. Studies conclude that 43 percent of the children who are abused are abused by family members, 33 percent are abused by someone they know, and the remaining 24 percent are sexually abused by strangers (Hayes, 1990). Other research indicates that over 10 million Americans have been victims of incest.

One of the nation's leading researches on child sexual abuse, David Finkelhor, estimates that 1,000,000 Americans are victims of father-daughter incest, and 16,000 new cases occur annually (Finkelhor, 1983). However, Finkelhor's statistics may be significantly low because they are based primarily on accounts of white, middle-class women and may not adequately represent low-income and minority women (Matsakis, 1991).

Victims of incest are often extremely reluctant to reveal that they are being abused because their abuser is a person in a position of trust and authority for the victim. Often the incest victim does not understand - or they deny - that anything is wrong with the behavior they are encountering (Vanderbilt, 1992). Many young incest victims accept and believe the perpetrator's explanation that this is a learning experience that happens in every family by an older family member.  Incest victims may fear they will be disbelieved, blamed or punished if they report their abuse."

I saw the picture at the Regal Union Square Stadium Theater on 13th Street and Broadway which I like very much because of its stadium seating. The audience was made up largely of young black women. This film concerns problems affecting both blacks and whites and should be seen by every racial group in our country. It took enormous courage to make and participate in this film. Those who did should be rewarded with the honors of the industry and the applause of the nation.  http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/ed_koch/2009/11/painfully_precious.php

Items that may be of interest

 

1. Elkins Family Law Task Force recommendations need your input by December 4:

http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/jc/tflists/documents/draft-finalrec.pdf.   Many of the recommendations are quite good. However, one recommendation regarding case management would subvert all the other good ideas. Another recommendation would actually reduce children’s ability to talk directly to the court. See attached for ideas from our partner organization The Safe Child Coalition. Email comments to elkinstaskforce@jud.ca.gov or fax 415-865-7217.

 

2. If you have had a complaint about or negative experience with Sacramento mental health professional Janell Burrill, please contact cppa001@aol.com.

 

3. If you have had a 730 evaluator or counseling done by Dr. Roy W. Bradbury (San Bernardino area) through the courts please email infoeval77@yahoo.com. (I can't personally vouch for the people doing this, since it was an ad placed in the San Bernardino newspaper Nov 2009.)

 

4. On November 18^th  from 6:00 to 8:00 pm, Center for Judicial Excellence will present the First Justice Seeker Awards at the Falkirk Cultural Center, 1408 Mission Street, San Rafael. CA They will honor Senator Mark Leno (D-SF/Marin), Assemblyman Jim Beall (D-San Jose), and Supervisor Gail Steele (D- Alameda). www.centerforjudicialexcellence.org.

 

5. A group of mental health professionals are trying to get “Parental Alienation Syndrome” into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV). Please contact Daniel Pine, M.D., pined@mail.nih.gov to let him know that PAS is a legal defense for pedophiles which has been thoroughly debunked. Dr. Pine is Chairman of the Disorders in Childhood and Adolescence Work Group, for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-V), National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Building 15K, Room 110, Bethesda, MD 20892-1381, Phone: (301) 594-1318, Fax: (301) 480-8648.