I appeared on Fox's nationally-syndicated Morning Show with Mike and Juliet recently (to watch, click here) and was pleased to learn some good news about Fox host Juliet Huddy (pictured).

Some of you may remember that several months ago Juliet and I had an argument on the Morning Show during a debate on issue of Single Motherhood by Choice. 

Juliet said that she was 38-years-old and was running out of time to become a mother.  She said that she would love to have a husband and a family, but she also thought that Single Motherhood by Choice was a good option.

I countered that fatherless children are deprived of something very valuable.  I also disputed her claim that she could not find a husband or marital happiness.  I said that she and many other women are simply too critical and too picky--great at picking apart the guy's flaws but apparently unaware of their own imperfections. 

I said, "Look Juliet, I'm married but I'm not blind.  You're a very attractive woman and there are plenty of good men who would consider themselves very lucky to be your husband." To watch the video of that show, click here--our argument begins at about 9:00.

Given Juliet's previous comments, and the fact that she is running out of time to have a baby, I figured she was going to go the Single Motherhood by Choice route. You know the deal -- she'll decide to get pregnant, she'll go on her show and announce to her largely female audience that she's a single mother by choice and that there is no father, and the audience will applaud and give her a big "You go girl." 

Then as a pregnancy progresses we'll all be told about how wonderful and empowering this is.  After she gives birth, we'll hear lots about how mom and baby are happy and the baby has everything he or she could possibly need or want even though there is no father.  I wasn't looking forward to it.

Anyway, apparently that's not going to happen.  While we were in the green room before the show I noticed Juliet's ring.  I asked her, "Is that what I think it is?"  She said yes, she is engaged, and she is getting married on January 23.  I congratulated her and got a big hug.  I'm hoping it all works out for her, and I'm glad she made the right choice.

She had announced her engagement on the show a few months earlier--I had missed it. Her fiancé is Doug Barrett. Her co-host Mike Jerrick made the announcement on the show here.

I am sometimes skeptical about how fairly we're dealing with apparent sex offenders because false accusations of child sexual abuse are fairly common in divorce and custody disputes.  The story below is perhaps another example.  From the Associated Press' Sex Offenders Try to Block Laws Allowing Them to Be ID'd Online:

One plaintiff, identified as Doe 2 in court documents, said neither he nor his attorney at the time understood that lifetime supervision would apply after he pleaded guilty in 2001 to a sex offense, or that he would continue to be banned from going to parks or schools.

He said that during an acrimonious divorce his ex-wife accused him of sexually assaulting her 14-year-old daughter. He faced five felony charges but pleaded guilty to one count of attempted lewdness with a minor under 14, and was sentenced to 5 years probation.

"I never touched my stepdaughter or any other child inappropriately," he said in the affidavit, which says he took a plea deal to spare his children the embarrassment of a trial. "I was not told that there would be any restrictions on me whatsoever after I was done with probation."

He now lives with his second wife, his adult adopted stepdaughter, his 15-year-old son and the couple's 5-year-old son in Las Vegas. He said he fears for his family's safety and his job if he is identified publicly as a sex offender.

"I have done everything I can to comply with the law, and be a good citizen," he says in the affidavit. "I would never hurt anyone. But none of that matters now."

Thanks to Michael Robinson for sending the story.

If it's abuse and it's committed by a mom, it's not really abuse. From Mom Who Starved Daughter Gets Lifetime Probation (NewsNet5, 8/14/08):

PHOENIX -- A judge sentenced a west Phoenix woman to lifetime probation Tuesday after she admitted to starving her 2-year-old daughter to death.

Eboni Perri, 26, had earlier pleaded guilty to charges of attempted child abuse.

Her daughter, Nakeisha Walker, was pronounced dead at a Phoenix hospital on March 5, 2005. She weighed only 14 pounds at the time, NewsChannel5 sister station ABC15 in Phoenix reported.

After Nakeisha's death, police searched Perri's apartment. Officers found no baby formula, cups, plates or utensils, they said.

They did find a $15,000 life insurance policy Perri took out on her daughter seven days before her death.

Nakeisha was born in March 2003 with neurological problems because of prenatal cocaine and marijuana in her system, according to prosecutors.

Child Protective Services said they went to Perri's home five times after receiving complaints Nakeisha was being neglected.

Probation?  Probation?  She starves her two-year old daughter to death so she can cash in on an insurance policy and she gets probation?  I bet they took away her right to visit Disneyland and her Macy's charge card too.

Yes, I realize that there was probably a plea bargain in there, and I realize that they will go lighter on her for that.  Still, cold-blooded murder. And in a very cruel way. Not to mention prenatal child abuse. Surely this merits life in prison.  Okay, with the plea bargain maybe it should be knocked down to 10 or 20 years.  Instead, her prison sentence is... nothing. 

If it was her boyfriend who did this, they would've locked him up and thrown away the key. It's going to be the mom...

While prepping to discuss the Saddleback Civil Forum on television the other day, I saw a TIME magazine feature about evangelist Rick Warren, the forum's host, and the religious beliefs of both candidates.  John McCain's discussion of his faith was particularly interesting. McCain said:

My mother has recounted to me how when I was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, she sometimes overheard my father praying for me. He was in charge of U.S. forces in the Pacific at the time and suffered from the burden of commanding a war in a country where his son was imprisoned. As my mother recalled, she could hear my father in his study, on his knees, beseeching God to "show Johnny mercy."

My father would have been surprised to know what unlikely forms God's mercy could take. In prison, my captors would tie my arms behind my back and then loop the rope around my neck and ankles so that my head was pulled down between my knees. I was often left like that throughout the night. One night a guard came into my cell. He put his finger to his lips signaling for me to be quiet and then loosened my ropes to relieve my pain. The next morning, when his shift ended, the guard returned and retightened the ropes, never saying a word to me.

A month or so later, on Christmas Day, I was standing in the dirt courtyard when I saw that same guard approach me. He walked up and stood silently next to me, not looking or smiling at me. Then he used his sandaled foot to draw a cross in the dirt. We stood wordlessly looking at the cross, remembering the true light of Christmas, even in the darkness of a Vietnamese prison camp.

This guard was my Good Samaritan. I will never forget that fellow Christian, and I will never forget that moment. I will always remember as well the Christmas services that my fellow prisoners and I held in a cell, when I gave thanks to God for the blessings he had granted me with the company of men I had come to admire and love.

Needless to say, that Vietnamese Christian guard put his safety on the line to make things easier for McCain.

While on the subject of Christian Good Samaritans, I'll relate a story from my own family's history.  My grandfather on my father's side was born in czarist Russia at a very bad time for Jews.  In 1905, led by Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, the czarist tyranny was almost overthrown. 

The regime survived--barely--and in the aftermath of the revolution there was a terrible backlash against Russian Jews.  My grandfather was only eight-years-old at the time, but 60 or 65 years later he still remembered it well, and would on occasion tell us stories about it.

On one occasion, Russian Cossacks were rampaging through my grandfather's village.  My great-grandparents hid my grandfather behind a table in the house, but the Cossacks grabbed my great-grandfather, dragged him outside, and put him up against the wall. 

They were going to shoot him, but a Russian Christian intervened.  The Christian pretended to be a drunken village idiot and he stood in front of my great-grandfather.  He pretended as if he was going to fall down and tried to balance himself on the and of the Cossack's rifle.  In doing so, he pushed the rifle out of the way and made the Cossacks laugh. Thankfully, they decided to move on.

Glenn's E-Newsletter/Week in Review, August 19, 2008

DNC Platform: Bad News for Dads

In my new co-authored column, DNC Platform: Bad News for Dads (World Net Daily, 8/15/08), Mike McCormick, Executive Director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, and I criticize the new Democratic Party platform's family and fatherhood policies. We wrote:

If the Democratic Party is interested in garnering men’s votes, one certainly would not know it from their platform. The Democratic National Committee’s "Renewing America's Promise" is bad news for American fathers.

The platform’s "Fatherhood" plank puts all blame for father absence squarely on men, and promises to "crack down" on fathers who are behind on their child support. It also promises to ratchet up draconian domestic violence laws which often victimize innocent men and separate them from their children...

Fathers’ ties to their children are more tenuous than at any time in American history. Child support and domestic violence policies have helped drive a wedge between fathers and their children. Sadly, the Democratic Party has committed itself to policies which will make the problem worse.

Court Rules Boy Must Pay Child Support to His Rapist

I've previously discussed cases where boys who have been statutorily raped by older women are forced to pay child support to their rapists. Here's a new one, from Ohio. From Boy's parents sue to get his baby from mom, 21 (Columbus Dispatch, 8/16/08):

LANCASTER, Ohio --- A Pickerington couple and their son are fighting for custody of a baby born to a Lancaster woman charged with having unlawful sex with the boy, who was 15 at the time of conception.

A paternity test shows that the teen is the father of the baby born April 7 to Jane C. Crane, who was 19 when she became pregnant. Now, a judge has ordered him to pay $50 a month in child support and set visitation at seven hours a week.

Crane, meanwhile, faces criminal charges. A Fairfield County grand jury indicted her last month on two counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, a fourth-degree felony. Conviction carries a maximum sentence of 18 months in prison and a requirement to register as a sex offender for 25 years.

Crane is living with the baby and her family in Lancaster.

The boy's parents say they can provide a better upbringing for the baby than Crane can. Her household includes her stepfather, David L. Jacobs, who was convicted of domestic violence last year for hitting, choking and pointing a gun at Crane's 17-year-old sister and was placed on two years' probation, court records show.

"We don't want to have our granddaughter abused by these people," the boy's father said. "We are trying to do the right thing.

"The child support was the icing on the cake. I couldn't believe that our son has to pay child support to his abuser."

Note also that the boy is allowed only seven hours a week of "visitation" with his son. He's really getting an early education on the joys of the family law system.

As an aside, I don't believe a 19-year-old having sex with a 15-year-old should be statutory rape. However, legally in this case it is statutory rape--just as it would be if it were a 35-year-old with a 15-year-old--so demanding that the victim pay child support should be out of the question.

To learn more, click here.

Glenn Discusses Misleading Media Reports on Dads & Stepdads on Canadian National Radio (Audio Available)

"Stepdads beat biological fathers in parenting, study says."

"Stepdads do better than real dads in 'fragile' families."

"Stepfathers make better parents."

This is how dozens of major newspapers and media outlets are reporting a new study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family which compares stepfathers to biological fathers.

Many of you have written to me about this study--to learn more, see Stepdads are better parents, study finds (Detroit Free Press, 8/10/08). Contrary to what the media is saying, the study does not actually say that stepfathers are better or that they parent better than biological fathers.

I discussed the study on Adler on Line, a nationally-syndicated radio show available on radio stations throughout Canada. To listen to the broadcast, click on the network's audio page here and set it to August 12 at 3 PM. The interview begins after the top of the hour news at about 7:00 and continues for about a half hour.

To comment to Charles Adler about the broadcast, click on adleronline@gmail.com.

Glenn Discusses Saddleback Forum--Anybody Guess Which Key Issue Was Missing?

I appeared on Al Jazeera Saturday evening to discuss the Saddleback Civil Forum, where both presidential candidates vied for the Christian vote in a televised two-hour forum at the Saddleback Church in Orange County, California.
I was disappointed and surprised that evangelist Rick Warren, who asked an hour's worth of questions to each candidate, did not mention family breakdown and divorce. If there is any "moral" issue for our time, it is the breakdown of the family and the way millions of children are being separated from the fathers they love and need. There was no mention of this though, and the only discussion about marriage was the damn gay marriage sideshow...

To learn more, click here.

Newsweek Has Shockome Syndrome

Two years ago women's advocates snookered Newsweek into making Genia Shockome out to be a heroine in their article Why Parents Who Batter Win Custody (9/25/06).

I pointed out at the time that the article was riddled with problems and mischaracterizations, and hundreds of my readers wrote to Newsweek criticizing their article. Shockome didn't lose her custody battle kids because of "gender bias" or underhanded "fathers' rights" tactics--she lost because she's so nuts that even the pro-mother family courts were forced to side with the kids' father.

For this reason, I was surprised to see Why Parents Who Batter Win Custody reemerge recently after it was linked to a new Newsweek article about family law. Two years ago I dissected Shockome's claims about her case in my co-authored piece Shockome Syndrome--to learn more, click here.

Some of the other stories I've been covering this week include:

Bad news on the male birth control pill

'It was the protests of other women that got her kicked out of the mall'

'Girls should be taught feminism at school to stop them from being disrespectful to each other'

UK Fatherhood Leader Calls US Fathers' Movement the 'United States of Eunuchs'

Alienating Mom Denies Dying Man Chance to See Child

Leading Olympian Jessica Mendoza Credits Her Father

CS Enforcement Erroneously Badgers College Athlete, He Forfeits Scholarship & Drops Out

This Takes Restraining Order Madness to a Whole New Level

To comment on what I've written or to join the lively discussion on my website, simply click on the "comments" link below each blog post on my website.

Best Wishes,
Glenn Sacks
www.GlennSacks.com

As many of you know, during the Heather Mills-Paul McCartney divorce, Mills made many serious accusations of abuse against McCartney. 

In previous posts I've discussed contradictions in her story and speculated that her claims of abuse may be false. 

Now Heather Mills press representative for four years has come forward and helped confirm that Mills lied.

From Heather Mills’s Rep Confirms Abuse Tapes Were Imaginary:

Michele Elyzabeth, who was Heather Mills’s press rep for four years before she had enough, confirmed to Access Hollywood that her client never really had those video tapes of Paul McCartney being abusive toward her.

She told US news show Access Hollywood: “I really don’t believe she did (have the video).

“I was close enough and I heard a couple of conversations. Now that I know what I know, I don’t really think that Paul really went after her for anything.

“She had basically nothing - she had tapes of her being in the studio with him, her being on the road with him, private moments.

“She told me a bunch of stuff… (but) I don’t see him being a violent person.”

In case you didn’t follow the divorce mess too closely, Mills once claimed she had ten tapes that showed Sir Paul behaving badly, including one situation where he called her a “one-legged bitch.”

She threatened to show the sensational evidence to the court but mysteriously never did.

Now we know why.

You know what really bothers me about this?  It's not that Mills made false accusations of abuse -- as bad as that is, women do that in divorce and custody battles all the time.  What bothers me is that here a famous person did it and yet it doesn't seem to matter. 

Many people have come forward condemning her for being a "gold digger" or whatever.  But how many have criticized her for making false accusations of abuse?  How many have drawn a connection between Mills' accusations and what so many divorced dads have had to endure?

And why hasn't anybody from the other side -- the feminist side -- criticized her for this?  You would think we would at least get a "false accusations are bad because they harm abused women" quote.  I haven't seen anything.  If anybody has, please let me know at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.

Thanks to Wayne, a reader, for sending me the article.

"If the Democratic Party is interested in garnering men’s votes, one certainly would not know it from their platform. The Democratic National Committee’s "Renewing America's Promise" is bad news for American fathers."

My new co-authored column, DNC Platform: Bad News for Dads (World Net Daily, 8/15/08), criticizes the new Democratic Party platform's family and fatherhood policies. 

To write a Letter to the Editor of World Net Daily, one of the largest content websites in the world, regarding DNC Platform: Bad News for Dads, click on letters@worldnetdaily.com.

The column, co-authored with Mike McCormick, Executive Director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, is below.

DNC Platform: Bad News for Dads
By Mike McCormick and Glenn Sacks

If the Democratic Party is interested in garnering men’s votes, one certainly would not know it from their platform. The Democratic National Committee’s "Renewing America's Promise" is bad news for American fathers.

The platform’s "Fatherhood" plank puts all blame for father absence squarely on men, and promises to "crack down" on fathers who are behind on their child support. It also promises to ratchet up draconian domestic violence laws which often victimize innocent men and separate them from their children.

It’s doubtful that many dads wake up in the morning and say to themselves, "My child loves me and needs me, my wife/girlfriend loves me and needs me--I'm outta here." Research shows that the vast majority of divorces, as well as many break-ups of unmarried couples, are initiated by women, not by men, and that most of these do not involve serious male transgressions.

When a married or cohabiting couple splits up, the father is generally relegated to visitor status and often can only participate in his children’s lives if the mother allows it. Courts tilt heavily towards mothers in awarding custody, and enforce fathers' visitation rights indifferently. In most states, mothers are free to move their children hundreds or thousands of miles away from their fathers, often permanently destroying the fathers' bonds with their children.

Obama and the Democrats say they’ll gain billions of dollars in revenue by taxing the “windfall profits” of the evil oil companies. Similarly, the DNC promotes the illusion that cracking down on child support obligors will create a windfall for single mothers.

Yet Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement data shows that two-thirds of those behind on child support nationwide earned poverty-level wages; less than four percent of the national child support debt is owed by those earning $40,000 or more a year. There’s no pile of “deadbeat dad” gold out there for the taking, and research shows that heavy-handed enforcement measures often drive fathers away from their children.

More ominously, the DNC platform pledges to “strengthen domestic violence laws,” support the Violence Against Women Act, and increase funding for domestic violence programs. Society rightfully despises the wife-beater, but the specter of the wife-beater has been used to justify many destructive policies and civil liberties violations. They have also provided easy ways for disgruntled women to kick decent, loving fathers out of their homes and exclude them from their children’s lives.

Domestic violence laws were dramatically altered in the wake of the OJ Simpson double murder case, and VAWA was passed in 1994. Among the most harmful is the trilogy of mandatory arrest, the primary aggressor doctrine, and “no drop” prosecution policies.

Greg Schmidt, who created the Seattle Police Department’s domestic violence investigation unit in 1994, says that under mandatory arrest laws police officers are forced to make arrests “in petty incidents, often where the abuse is mutual or it is unclear who the aggressor was.”

Attorney Paul Stuckle, a former Dallas, Texas patrol officer, believes these laws lead cops to make arrests based only on the alleged victim’s statements, and that officers often fail to complete a fair and thorough investigation. Some cops call this “You call, we haul”—all a woman has to do is make a 911 call, and police arrest her spouse or male partner.

When mandatory arrest laws were first passed, they led to a sharp increase in the number of women arrested, reflecting the well-documented fact that women are as likely to initiate and engage in domestic violence against their male partners as vice versa. In response, the VAWA-funded DV establishment promoted the primary/dominant aggressor doctrine.

Under this doctrine, when police officers respond to a domestic disturbance call, they are instructed not to focus on who attacked whom and who inflicted the injuries, but instead consider different factors which will almost always weigh against men. These factors include: comparable size; comparable strength; the person allegedly least likely to be afraid; who has access to or control of family resources (i.e., who makes more money); and others.

Third, many if not most jurisdictions have adopted "no drop" prosecution policies.  As a result, many cases of mutual, trivial, or nonexistent "violence" are prosecuted as if they are serious crimes, even when the alleged victim recants or asks that the charges be dropped.

For example, last year Suzanne Gassner Weatherford, a Marin, California juror, told the Marin Independent Journal:

"I spent three days as a juror in a case in which it seemed obvious early on that no conviction could possibly result.

"A woman had called 911 complaining her fiancé had been drinking and pushed her onto their bed. The defendant claimed he held her arms to keep her from hitting him with a phone. The next day, the woman phoned police and the district attorney's office asking that her fiancé not be prosecuted.

"She stated that she had overreacted, and that she would do anything she could to stop the prosecution…Nonetheless, the case proceeded.

"The only other witness the prosecution had was a policeman who had heard the woman's original complaint. Part of his testimony was contradicted by facts that could be ascertained from the 911 recording…In the jury room, some of us speculated about why this case had ever been brought to court." Read the rest of this entry »

I appeared on Al Jazeera Saturday evening to discuss the Saddleback Civil Forum, where both presidential candidates vied for the Christian vote in a televised two-hour forum at the Saddleback Church in Orange County, California.

I thought both candidates came off well.  McCain was, if you like him, blunt and direct.  If you don't, he was simplistic and moralistic. 

Obama was, if you like him, philosophical and thoughtful.  If you don't, he was wishy-washy and evasive.

Obama has a very difficult row to hoe with Christian conservatives.  Much of the Democratic Party support comes from liberal women's activists/feminists, and Obama is understandably hesitant to cross them on what is perhaps their most emotional and important issue -- abortion.

I suppose he is throwing conservative Christians a bone by opposing gay marriage, which probably does annoy some Democratic Party stalwarts.

A few of my comments can be seen on the Al Jazeera website here or on the Media with Conscience website here.

I was disappointed and surprised that evangelist Rick Warren, who asked an hour's worth of questions to each candidate, did not mention family breakdown and divorce.  If there is any "moral" issue for our time, it is the breakdown of the family and the way millions of children are being separated from the fathers they love and need.  There was no mention of this though, and the only discussion about marriage was the damn gay marriage sideshow.

I also believe that Saturday's events represent yet another failure of the fatherhood movement.  Warren should have been under pressure to raise this issue, but he obviously wasn't.

And why couldn't there have been a pro-fatherhood act of civil disobedience there? Or even simply one divorced dad/activist in the audience standing up during the debate and shouting at Warren about how he has been separated from his children? Yes, it would be somewhat rude, but it would raise the issue in the national media and generate a round of buzz. 

My friend Amy Alkon, a syndicated advice columnist who is sympathetic to fathers, is being attacked on her blog by partisans of the popular left-wing blog Sadly No!.  Sadly No! has posted several nasty things about Amy and apparently has been sending people over to disrupt her blog.

They are mad at Amy over a previous post in which she (gasp) suggested that a woman who had six children with five different drug dealers and then took up with another drug dealer was a bad mother. By contrast, I would imagine that the proper politically-correct response to this scenario would be something like this:

It was the kids' fathers' fault--all five of them. All five fathers convinced the woman to have the kids or the kids were "accidents."

These "accidents" occurred--all six of them--even though the mother had a wide variety of birth control available to her, could have terminated the pregnancies through abortion , or could have simply returned the babies--all six of them--to the hospital(s) after their births, washing her hands of all responsibility.

And by the way, in each relationship--all five--the breakups were the fathers' fault.

Apparently Amy placed blame instead on the mother, which is, of course, politically verboten.

Now Amy has a new posting up asserting that that children do best with fathers--another "offensive" position to the politically correct--and is being criticized for it--to join the discussion at Amy's blog,  click here.

"I couldn't believe that our son has to pay child support to his abuser."

I've previously discussed cases where boys who have been statutorily raped by older women are forced to pay child support to their rapists. Here's a new one, from Ohio. From Boy's parents sue to get his baby from mom, 21 (Columbus Dispatch, 8/16/08):

LANCASTER, Ohio --- A Pickerington couple and their son are fighting for custody of a baby born to a Lancaster woman charged with having unlawful sex with the boy, who was 15 at the time of conception.

A paternity test shows that the teen is the father of the baby born April 7 to Jane C. Crane, who was 19 when she became pregnant. Now, a judge has ordered him to pay $50 a month in child support and set visitation at seven hours a week.

Crane, meanwhile, faces criminal charges. A Fairfield County grand jury indicted her last month on two counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, a fourth-degree felony. Conviction carries a maximum sentence of 18 months in prison and a requirement to register as a sex offender for 25 years.

Crane is living with the baby and her family in Lancaster.

The boy's parents say they can provide a better upbringing for the baby than Crane can. Her household includes her stepfather, David L. Jacobs, who was convicted of domestic violence last year for hitting, choking and pointing a gun at Crane's 17-year-old sister and was placed on two years' probation, court records show.

"We don't want to have our granddaughter abused by these people," the boy's father said. "We are trying to do the right thing.

"The child support was the icing on the cake. I couldn't believe that our son has to pay child support to his abuser."

Note also that the boy is allowed only seven hours a week of "visitation" with his son. He's really getting an early education on the joys of the family law system...

Read the full article here.

[As an aside, I don't believe a 19-year-old having sex with a 15-year-old should be statutory rape. However, legally in this case it is statutory rape--just as it would be if it were a 35-year-old with a 15-year-old--so demanding that the victim pay child support should be out of the question.--GS]