This is a comment by Barry Goldstein on the post “Are States Giving Custody to Rapist Fathers?“
TW for rape.
“The common problem of sensitive discussions like this is the failure to place the arguments in context. Thus already a substantial part of the discussion has been diverted to the extremely rare situations where women make false allegations or commit the rape. The main topic is how should custody courts respond in cases in which the father raped the mother. The fact that so many states would consider the rapist as just as qualified for custody and visitation as the mother demonstrates that the custody system strongly favors fathers.
“I believe it would be better for custody courts to focus on the well being of children rather than the “rights” of parents. Significantly the research shows that fathers who rape mothers (even when the rape did not cause the pregnancy) pose a signficantly greater risk to the mother and child. This would be true regardless of conviction which as has been discussed is very difficult to obtain. It seems to me that if the mother can prove the father raped her, she should have the right to keep the father out of their lives. Abusers often use the courts to gain access to their victims (this is more often applied in domestic violence cases) which does enormous harm to the mother and children. We can only imagine the enormous harm to the rape survivor of havng to interact with her rapist and this cannot possibly be beneficial to the child who depends on the mother. The policy is easy to see if we focus on what is best for children.
“The problem is that custody courts have heard a lot of misinformation and do not use critical thinking. Many judges repeat the false assumption that children need both parents equally. In the most common example children need their primary attachment figure more than the other parent. Separating a child from their primary attachment figure increases the child’s risk of depression, low self-esteem and suicide when older. Children also need their safe parent more than their abusive parent. Witnessing domestic violence undermines children’s ability to reach developmental goals and makes them more likely to engage in harmful behaviors when older. Ideological attempts to give parents equal rights and time with children thus cause tremendous harm. Again it is based on failing to do what works best for children.
“The problem is compounded by the routine use of outdated and discredited practices by court professionals. The recent US Department of Justice study led by Dr. Daniel Saunders found there is a specialized body of domestic violence research available but evaluators, lawyers and judges do not have the training they need. They need not just generalized training, but specific training in topics like risk assessment, screening for domestic violence and post-separation violence. Signifcantly those evaluators and other professionals with inadequate training tend to focus on harmful approaches such as the myth that women frequently make false allegations, beliefs in unscientific alienation theories and assumptions that mothers seeking to protect children from abusive fathers are harming the children. The use of these bad practices results in outcomes that harm children.
“This discussion will be helpful if it helps illuminate the present system is placing children in jeopardy by routinely promoting interaction of children with dangerous fathers. Every year 58,000 children are sent for custody or unprotected visitation with dangerous abusers and about 90 children are murdered by abusive fathers involved in contested custody often with the unwitting assistance of custody courts. This is the next scandal to be exposed. It is time we focus on what works best for the children instead of the rights of rapists.”
Photo credit: Flickr / woodleywonderworks
The fact that so many states would consider the rapist as just as qualified for custody and visitation as the mother demonstrates that the custody system strongly favors fathers. I have to disagree with this a bit. This seems to imply that since some rapists qualify for custody then the custody system favors fathers. If that is the case then why are there fathers that fight tooth and nail to be with their children where claims of rape are nowhere near the case but they still end up going the mother’s way? It seems like the line of thought is… Read more »
Yes, last I checked it is mothers acting alone or with someone who is not the father who are responsible for the majority of child murders.
Again, this is a massive manipulation of data.
You can’t look at the number of abuses cases against children at the hands of mothers without making the data relevant with the amount of time mothers spend with their children. Then you have to take the time fathers spend with their children, and the number of abuse cases against children perpetrated by men, and you’d have a ratio.
IOW, we need to see a percentage, not a flat number. This is being discussed over in the other thread. It’s a simple conflation of “correlating data” and a causal relationship.
Someone on the other thread did, n found the abuse rate equalish?
Why do we need a percentage Joanna: You say we need it, but you don’t give a reason why a percentage is more important than a raw number. If a child is abused by a parent, does it matter to the child (you know, best interests of the child) if that child spent more time with their abuser than the other parent.
It doesn’t matter anecdotally or to the individual, but it matters when saying “Moms abuse more” if the rate isn’t the same. For instance, when we talk about crime rates, we say “per capita”. In this case, we have to make it into a ratio. I don’t know why people keep getting confused on this point. Raw numbers are only good in context. If 8 people were murdered in New York City and 8 people were murdered in Ames, Iowa you wouldn’t say they were equal in their crime rates. Because it needs to be a percentage of total population… Read more »
Except people (except you and Mr goldstein) aren’t saying anything about rates at all. They are saying MOMS ABUSE MORE. To use your analogy above, if 9 people are murdered in NYC and 8 people are murdered in Ames, then people can say and be correct that more people are murdered in NYC. Let me give you a more clear analogy that explains why we shouldn’t look at rate or in this case minutes spent with the victim. Mike is married to Karen, they have been together for 5 years. In that 5 years Mike has punched Karen an average… Read more »
Aspire: Your example is good BUT, it is a rather rare occurence and perhaps has never happened, if you don’t mind, I will give you a much better example. Mike has 2 kids, Billy and Jane, in that same 5 year period , Mike hits Jane 100 times and he hits Billy 150 times, WHO DOES HE ABUSE MORE, he abuses BILLY more, no one would ever be concerned with finding out if he spends more time with BILLY or less time with JANE, because quite frankly it isn’t even remotely important to stopping child abuse. Take for example Violence… Read more »
You are confusing “Likely to abuse” with “Abuse more”, MORE isn’t a ratio, it is a flat out comparision of numbers.
BTW, Doesn’t this insistence on ratio just smack of “trying to find an excuse”.
Yes it is starting to look that way. Ratios are handy but flat-out abuse is important to note especially for campaigns to make people aware of it, why aren’t there anti-abuse campaigns targeted solely at mothers? “Real mothers can stop abuse” etc
Joanna, you’re wrong about your child-minding time. The reason is this: abuse of a child is a wilfull act, not an accident you may accrue more likelihood of happening as say more hours driven = more chance of a car accident. More child-minding hours =/= more likelihood of abusing the child. Most abuse is done by dysfunctional individuals. Functional people DO NOT abuse children no matter how many child-minding hours they do. I know several women who ran at home daycares. If this theory had any relevance than they should all have abused children several times over by now. Instead… Read more »
Well said John D. It really bothers me when someone nitpicks a single point that is (and she said as much herself) completey irrelevant to the subject of child abuse. It just comes off as trying to find a way of excusing behaviour. I especially like statement that child abuse is not an accident but a willful act and spending more time does not increase the likelyhood . @Joanna: Mr Goldstein in the other thread (someone you seem to be delighted with) referenced the Liz Library. Here is a link to a calculation from that Liz Library on who is… Read more »
Joanna: Actually it isn’t a massive manipulation of data, it is presenting the data in is raw form, in point of fact, it is you who is manipulating the data but trying to add in a caveat that we should look at rate without any real explanation about why rate matters.
It goes both ways, but it’s only a problem to anti-men & fathers when it’s clearly showing reality of mother’s abuses.
To suggest that one should look at the incidents of a crime as a weighted or pro-rata factor based on time spent with children is a disgusting, ignorant and highly offensive comment. Any man reading this with any amount of analytic skill or understanding of statistics should be offended by this. But one does not need to understand quantitative research methodologies to see that this is offensive. Imagine that rape statistics were massaged to take into account the amount of time rapes happen a percentage of the total time spent with the perpetrator. I am confident that this would change… Read more »
Interesting, if what was said in the article is true, looking at the dire stats on boys from fatherless homes it is reasonable to conclude that the father is the primary attachment figure. Extraneous cases such as the above aside it is therefore reasonable to conclude that boys belong with their father. Or….perhaps equal parenting.
Being that the women’s union and perhaps The Good Men Project is against equal parenting, perhaps men should not get to involved with the idea of fatherhood in the first place.
I think the emphasis here should be on the fact that Goldstein isn’t talking about ALL fathers, but he’s talking specifically about the way in which ABUSIVE parents use this study to make it seem like ANY father is as good as a GOOD father.
We here at GMP think fathers’ rights is a HUGE issue and support ALL fit parents who want equal access to their children.
However, this is an interesting angle about how stats can be manipulated in a way that can harm children.
I’ll have to disagree here. Barry among a lot of things wrote this in a comment: The most common question he receives from other judges is what to do about women who are lying. When asked what they mean they cite cases in which mothers return to their abusers, file petitions for protective orders but don’t follow through, or as you were referencing do not have police or medical records. In reality all of these are normal behaviors of battered women for safety and other reasons and if this behavior is used as if it proves the allegations are false… Read more »
What is completely missing from this conversation is emotional abuse. For too long we have heard about how horrible all men are because it is men who are the perpetrators of physical abuse. That myth has only recently been thoroughly debunked, yet seemingly articulate intelligent people still use the outdated assumption. Despite this, we are still hearing this broken record of “men are violent”. I wonder what others think about the emotional abuse that happens to children. Frankly, now as an adult I would prefer that someone slap me right in the face rather than hear biting, sarcastic, toxic words… Read more »
Perhaps it is a false assumption that a child needs both parents equally. Let’s say for the sake of argument that it’s an incorrect assumption. For me, what is more important and perfectly clear is that both parents have equal *rights*, until there is a compelling, proven reason for this not to be the case. They both have equal parenting rights during the marriage, and they are both still parents when the marriage is over, so the equality should continue until there’s a good reason to make them legally unequal. And, I’m curious how the 90 children killed every year… Read more »
If witnessing domestic violence harms the children…don’t women intitiate domestic violence more often than men in relationships? I’ve never seen anything said on that, that mothers more often than fathers are causing damage to their children via that method? That said abusive people either need therapy and to stop their abuse, make it up to their family or seriously just GTFO of the relationship so the non-abusive partner and children can live a life of peace. Sounds like it isn’t just the rape that is the problem, but the overall domestic violence, all forms together that are causing big harm.… Read more »
don’t women intitiate domestic violence more often than men in relationships?
Citation? I’ve never seen any data that even comes close to this assertion, but am willing to learn if you’ve got some information that is trustworthy.
ht tp://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm Take your pick. ht tp://www.huffingtonpost.com/glenn-sacks/researcher-says-womens-in_b_222746.html Basically from everything I’ve read on DV, women initiate as much or slightly more, but size difference tends to end up with more women suffering serious damage although they do significant amounts of damage themselves. ht tp://divorcesupport.about.com/od/abusiverelationships/a/male_abuse.htm ht tp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070625111433.htm “In addition it showed that nearly twice as many women as men said they perpetrated domestic violence in the past year including kicking, biting or punching their partner, threatening to hit or throw something at their partner, and pushing, grabbing or shoving their partner.” (no stats for this, this is just for argument sake)… Read more »
There is a video of daddy justice asking a questions of a governor about the new bill signed which protects children of DV (but like VAWA) this protection must be attached to an adult female parent who is claiming dv services (i.e. children who witness violence against their dads are to be denied service as are the dads–I guess it’s not all about the children after all). DAddy justice asks the very prevalent question: what about all the children abused by mothers? Where is the protection for them? The governor and cronies laugh him off and sick the security guard… Read more »
That’s it in a nutshell. If the issue was really about the children then the children of abused dads would not be ignored like this. But at the end of the day we are supposed to believe that it’s dads that are trying to put children at the bottom of the priority list? While yes there are some dads that do this somehow they are getting fingers pointed at them for such manipulative tactics while actual lawmakers get away with it unchallenged. If it was really about helping children then there would not be a gender check on which of… Read more »
Here is the film in question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fiwsq_31s64&list=UUC40L8FhA7oE7ucDCxoQGCA&index=17&feature=plcp
Daddy justice is doing great work. It is brave men and women like him and orgs like fathers and families that will get help for the invisible abused kids whose abusers are the “wrong” gender for aid to be rendered.
It’s being discussed over in the original post, wellokaythen, that in order to compare who abuses children more, one must look at the time mothers spend with children compared to the time fathers spend with children (in total) and then compare the number of abuse instances relative to time spent.
One commenter, in a layman’s way, did some basic calculations over there.
Joanna, if somebody divides the child-minding time for genders I doubt if rates of abuse would be much different between the genders. However, the 2006 Health and Human Svcs Child Maltreatment study shows that 70% of all parental abuse comes from mothers. 70% of all parental slayings comes from mothers as well. It’s logical to assume that the reason for this is the huge numbers of single mothers. Women and mothers are not the problem. The problem is the primary / non-custodial family court method of dividing up parenting time. The primary/sole custody model removes a childs best defense against… Read more »
Every hour I spent at work in extra hours was about supporting my kid, not because some ideologically biased court’s order, as a man I guess all of us fathers are damned if we did & damned if we didn’t.
I am wondering if the Commenter (Barry Goldstein) mentioned above is the same lawyer who was disbarred by the New York Bar authorities when it comes to dishonest & corrupt lawyers, wasn’t he disbarred for stealing money from one of his clients plus making false claims & statements publicly on the steps of the Court in which he lied about the procedures & actions taken by a judge that he didn’t agree with or like after he the ruling went against him??? Is he the same lawyer, ladies & gentlemen !!! If it is I wouldn’t put to much credibility… Read more »
I try to be consistent and look at every bit of writing on its face. I try to look at the arguments idea by idea. He could be a pathological liar and at the same time produce an entirely valid, totally accurate article. This is the interwebs. For all I know, this piece is written by someone posing as Barry Goldstein.
Anyone got a phone book for any major city in the United States? Just curious how many Barry Goldsteins there are… Probably only like eight. Maybe 30.
Though I know how ridiculous I sound… I mean, who has a phone book these days?