Letterman Case Shows Problems with Restraining Orders

This is the latest article by Glenn Sacks and Jeffery M. Leving

Letterman Case Shows Problems with Restraining Orders

Excerpts:

A Santa Fe, New Mexico judge recently granted a temporary restraining order against TV talk show host David Letterman for a woman who alleges that Letterman—who works in New York City and whom she has never met--has mentally harassed her through his TV broadcasts. According to Colleen Nestler, Letterman has caused her "mental cruelty" and "sleep deprivation" for over a decade, and has used code words and gestures during his broadcasts to show her that he wanted to marry her and train her as his co-host.

Beginning in the 1970s, restraining orders became a tool to help protect battered women. This is as it should be. However, in the rush to protect the abused, the rights of the accused are being violated on an arguably unprecedented scale. Many if not most domestic violence restraining orders are simply tactical maneuvers designed to gain advantage in high stakes family law proceedings. The Illinois Bar Journal calls the orders "part of the gamesmanship of divorce.”

A recent article in the Family Law News, the official publication of the State Bar of California Family Law Section, explains that the bar is concerned that "protective orders are increasingly being used in family law cases to help one side jockey for an advantage in child custody.” The authors note that protective orders are “almost routinely issued by the court in family law proceedings even when there is relatively meager evidence and usually without notice to the restrained person....it is troubling that they appear to be sought more and more frequently for retaliation and litigation purposes.”

Such orders are generally done ex parte, without the accused's knowledge and with no opportunity afforded for him to defend himself. When an order is issued, the man is booted out of his own home and can even be jailed if he tries to contact his own children. This helps women position themselves as their children’s sole caretakers, which aids them in winning sole (or de facto sole) custody of their children in their divorce settlements. In California and other states, the order itself can be considered a finding of domestic abuse, making the restrained person ineligible for joint custody.

Despite these grave effects, many courts grant restraining orders to practically any woman who applies. District Judge Daniel Sanchez, who issued the restraining order against Letterman, explained "If [applicants] make a proper pleading, then I grant it."

Restraining orders generally only limit the restrained person’s contact with the protected person but not vice versa. As a result, husbands who have reconciled with their wives are being arrested during routine traffic stops for being in the same car with them. In one case, a father was arrested and jailed for three days for breaching a domestic violence order by taking his son to the hospital. The mother had called the father, said their son had been injured in a bike accident, and asked him to take the boy to the hospital. The conviction stays on his record and hurts his job prospects but he can’t get it undone.

Some men have been arrested and jailed after being tricked into violating their restraining orders. In one Seattle case, a man was jailed for three months after returning phone calls from his ex-wife, who showed the police the phone screen with the man’s number on it. The man explained that when he received the messages he worried that something might have happened to his kids. He asks “what kind of parent would I be if I didn’t return those calls?”

Jim Crow Days For Men

Jim Crow Days For Men
by Carey Roberts

Excerpts:

Abuse of these orders is not an isolated problem. In Massachusetts, about 30,000 domestic orders are issued every year. One analysis by the Massachusetts Trial Court found that fewer than half of these restraining orders involved even an allegation of physical abuse.

Another troubling piece of this law -- clearly unconstitutional -- is its “mandatory-arrest” provisions. Let’s say you get into a marital tiff, your wife or girlfriend calls 911, and the cops come running. But in the meantime, things cool down and she asks police to leave. Fine, but don’t forget your toothbrush, because you will be going out in handcuffs.

It’s no surprise that this $1 billion-a-year anti-father juggernaut eventually takes its toll on families. Highlighting the fact that almost 40% of our nation’s children now live in a home without their own father, Schlafly urges Congress to “conduct an investigation to find out how much of this fatherlessness is the result of bad government in the hands of a small radical group that is biased against marriage and fathers.”

Related article: Time to Defund Feminist Pork — the Hate-Men Law by Phyllis Schlafly

New research shows bias in restraining orders

MensNewsDaily

Excerpts:

209A abuse protection orders grant the “victim” enormous power over their alleged abusers. Provisions include removal from one’s own home, granting of immediate custody of minor children to the alleged victim with a consequent assignment of child support, and the threat of 2 ½ years in jail and $10,000 fine for any violation of the order, including the no-contact provisions. It’s important to understand that a 209A order taken against a father, besides removing all legal and physical custodial rights to his children, also extends the no-contact provisions to those children. Any contact he may have with his children, direct or third-party or even unintentional, holds him criminally accountable to the same punishments as mentioned above. This is why a 209A restraining order is referred to as the nuclear first-strike in the commencement of a divorce action.

The study also analyzed court response with respect to granting of custody of minor children when the litigants are parents. Mothers were 288% more likely than fathers to receive custody of children as a direct provision of the 209A order. However, in the few cases where fathers received custody, which was only at ex parte hearings, none of the fathers secured long-term custody of their children at follow-up hearings.

The message couldn’t be clearer. If you are a father suffering domestic violence from your wife (or otherwise mother of your children) do not try to use the legal system to gain protection for yourself and/or your children—there is a high risk you will lose your children regardless of the circumstances of the abuse in the household.

A Government Program is No Substitute for a Bear-Hug

RedState.org

A Government Program is No Substitute for a Bear-Hug
By: Carey Roberts

In this Father's Day essay, Carey Roberts analyzes how well-intentioned government programs have contributed to the rise of fatherlessness.

For the better part of the last 40 years, policy experts and childrearing gurus relegated fathers to the parental minor leagues. Dads were seen as well-intentioned but inept Homer Simpsons who might be able to teach junior how to swing a baseball bat, but little else.

But kids see it differently. Mary Kay Shanley's book, When I Think About My Father, recites these love-words from Amanda, age 6: "At the end of the day when I go to bed, Daddy tucks me in. We talk together about our day. He reads me a story to help me sleep. We pray together. That is my favorite part."

Research confirms with Amanda's endorsement of fatherhood. It turns out that kids with hands-on dads have greater levels of self-esteem and social competence, get higher grades in school, and do better on a broad range of social and psychological indicators. Even in high-crime, inner-city neighborhoods, over 90% of children who grow up in two-parent families avoid becoming delinquents.

Sadly, government social welfare programs have a dismal track record in this area. It's not that they have just ignored the essential role of fathers. The problem is, they have offered inducements to actually remove dads from the lives of their kids.

This pattern can be traced back to the 1960s. Under Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, welfare benefits came with a catch: first, kick dad out of the house. As a result of this exclusionary "man-in-the-house" rule, the number of children growing up in fatherless homes rose dramatically.

Before long, people began to notice that poor fathers were "abandoning" their children. So beginning in 1975, the Congress passed a series of child support laws that targeted so-called "deadbeat" dads.

The reforms may have been well-intentioned, but they missed the mark on one key point: many low-income dads couldn't pay their child support because they were on Skid Row. But that fact didn't stop the federal Office for Child Support Enforcement, with a budget of $4 billion, from hounding indigent fathers and sending thousands to debtor's jail each year.

But the government was not done with its task of dismembering the traditional family.
In 1994 the Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act, a $1 billion-a-year feminist windfall that claims to combat domestic violence. One of VAWA's tools is the issuance of restraining orders.

The dirty little secret that feminists never like to admit is that they have stealthily broadened the scope of violence. For example, the National Victim Assistance Academy came up with this all-encompassing definition: "Domestic violence is a pattern of coercive behavior designed to exert power and control over a person in an intimate relationship through the use of intimidating, threatening, harmful, or harassin behavior."

As a result of this definitional sleight-of-hand, "domestic violence becomes whatever the woman says it is," according to columnist Phyllis Schlafly.

So when these "battered" mothers seek a restraining order, they also petition for divorce and custody of the children. Once again, the kids are left without a father.

The effects of these federal programs are predictable -- and tragic. In 1960, five million American children lived in fatherless homes. By 1980, that number more than doubled to 11 million. And now, 16 million children live only with their mothers.

The National Fatherhood Initiative issued this sobering warning: "Children who live absent their biological fathers are, on average, at least two to three times more likely to be poor, to use drugs, to experience educational, health, emotional, and behavioral problems, to be victims of child abuse, and to engage in criminal behavior."

So consider the 16 million boys and girls who go to bed each night without getting a bear-hug from daddy, and it's easy to see why a 1999 Gallup poll found that 72% of Americans believe that "the physical absence of the father from the home is the most significant problem facing America."

On Father's Day, it's traditional to honor our fathers - those home-grown heroes who sacrifice their moments of quiet reflection, their comfort, and even their health to support and protect their families. This coming Sunday I will remember my own dad, thankful for all the good times we spent together.

Perhaps this Father's Day should also be a day of reckoning. It's time to ask, Why does the US taxpayer continue to subsidize government programs, to the tune of billions of dollars a year, that end up separating fathers from their families?