ATTENTION: VICTIMS OF JUDGE MAUREEN MURPHY

**URGENT NOTICE**

For those of you who have suffered from having Judge Maureen Murphy violate your due process or human rights in Family Court, we are asking that you file grievances against this judge.  

Other parents suffering from Judge Murphy's orders will be filing grievances this week. 

NOMAS PRESENTATION AT THE BATTERED WOMEN'S CUSTODY CONFERENCE OF 2015!

Opening Remarks by Barry Goldstein:

NOMAS has various task forces to cover the variety of issues they are involved in.  One of the reasons why I came to NOMAS is because we are dealing with a plague from the abuser rights groups.  They want to create the illusion that complaints regarding Family Court Reform is about conflict between men and women. In fact, it is a group of both men and women who oppose the abusers who are attempting to undermine DV laws and regain control.  We want to reframe the issue correctly, which is part of what we do.  Look us up on NOMAS.ORG.  NOMAS wants to be on the side of Protective Mothers.  The organization can't do individual cases because we don't have the resources, but will write letters to support Amicus Brief.  NOMAS supports The Quincy Solution.  

Note:

Andrew Willis wanted to announce that The Stop Abuse Campaign wants stories from Protective Mothers to put on the website.  

Moshe Rozdial:  NOMAS was established in 1975 and is the oldest pro-feminist men's group in the Nation.  It coalesced into an organization that includes the men and women you see now on this panel.  National Organization for Men Against Sexism, the Aconym means No Mas, or No More in Spanish.  The four tenets of the organization are pro-feminist, anti-racist, LGBT affirmative and enhancing men's lives.

Today we will hear from different members of NOMAS who represent the different task forces in the organization.  We have homophobia and heterosexism, human trafficking, pornography--all these issues are there to enhance men's lives because we believe that without this intersectionality we will never be able to enhance people's lives including men's lives.  

This conference is the 40th conference re men and masculinity.  These oppressions are all interlinked, ablism, anti-semitism, the oppression of one group is the oppression of all groups.  We are not a one issue group which is a strength and weakness.  We provide training and information on all these issues, because they all intersect.  

Now we want to introduce Gloria from NOW to see how she came to NOMAS.  

Gloria Woods:  Gloria has been an activist in Michigan for NOW. In her words--In 1995 I was the President of NOW and we were totally blindsided when Republicans took over our legislature and the governorship.  We were blindsided by a raft of father's rights legislation from the abuser's lobby that came forward, the main thrust of it being "shared parenting."  The intention was to change the state law to default to joint custody which was again shared parenting.  Legislatures wanted to believe the nonsense mythology that it wasn't fair to good fathers others.  Why do you think that PAS continues?  Because it is out there in our patriarchal system that men should be believed?  

I called a friend to find out what I could do and she said call Jack Straton in California and explain the issue.  He said ok, here is what I can do for you, and he gave us all sorts of reports and research and explained how to speak to our legislators.  We did stop them.  We lost on welfare, we lost on abortion, but that we won regarding custody.  From that time, I was in support of NOMAS and I have worked with them ever since that time. I have successfully gotten Barry and The Quincy Solution coming in a month to Michigan.  

We (NOMAS) have an excellent website.  The resources I received by mail are now available on the website.  It has child custody and so much more, so definitely go on the website.  

David Greene:  I head the task force on Social Class issues, Classism.  I am part of the Men's Studies Association, studying men and masculinity, and coming from a strong feminist perspective.  Many people in the field don't come from this perspective, but we have sought to keep this narrow voice clear.  We used to have a newsletter and journal--the latter became financially unfeasible and then became Men and Masculinity of Sage Publications.  But we lost editorial control of it.  

We try to have a much more feminist based collaborative approach to our work.  We try to use our research to engage with activists, so we go beyond the traditional scholarly approach.  

Phyllis Frank: I have been part of NOMAS for now more than three decades.  I would like to talk about the problem of racism; it is sometimes referred to as racial injustice.  It has more frequently been referred to as white privilege, or white entitlement, or else white supremacy.  We believe this is characteristic of the U.S. from its roots.  I head the Task Group of Racial Injustice of NOMAS.  

I was raised in a liberal NE Brooklyn family, and raised not to be racist.  And because of that, and because I didn't know I was absorbing white privilege and white entitlement subconsciously, when I began my activism as a feminist non racist warrior, black women would often confront us re our own racism.  Yet white sisters and I would often say things like "It's not always about race." or "I don't have a racist bone in my body." or "You must be wrong." or "You don't even know me."  

So as much as I knew about sexism and male supremacy I wasn't making that leap to understanding racial injustice.  Then a friend gave me a copy of the video of "The Color of Fear".  The guy in the video was quite racist, and I noticed that everything that the guy thought I had also thought and said.  So my colleagues and I were talking about eliminating racism while not even understanding what it is.  

Eventually, in 1994 I took a Undoing Racism Workshop and was furious that I was this old and had no idea about what white racism was.  We make sure every person who works on this issue in NOMAS takes this workshop.  

Jacob Jacquez: psychotherapist.  It is an honor to be here and to listen to the stories people have shared.  I grew up in Utah and came out as gay when I was 18 years old and I began to see so much injustice in the world, but I was luckier than most.  So even though my Dad didn't speak to me for a while, I had the support of my mother.  

As a listener, I heard stories from families and friends, also at a DV shelter.  Over and over heard stories of abuse.  I began to wonder what is going on.  Then luckily I met NOMAS and they had a perspective that really helped me to understand and explain it.  I realized with NOMAS that what's going on is a natural manifestation that values men over women and children.  It includes street harassment, coercion and control, rape and sexual assault, and femicide (also a big problem in this country).  You cannot unknow what you already know.  I realized I could continue my life enjoying male privilege, but would that make me a good guy.  NO.  I realized that I had to stand up and fight the oppression, or else I would be complicit in it. I came to learn more about the issue, and understood how sexism and heterosexism is integral to the abuse going on in our culture.  

I want you to know where NOMAS comes from in regard to this group.  We oppose the presumption that heterosexuality is the norm and all other sexualities are deviant.  We oppose the presumption underlying homophobia that the female is bad and less valuable.  We oppose discrimination against LGBTQ folks.  We have so much work to do.  We are gaining in terms of legalizing gay marriage, but there remains evidence that there is still more we need to do.  

Robert Brannan:  The task force I am a part of observes and study sex trafficking, and the use of women and girls in prostitution and also the proliferation of pornography in our culture.  Amazing that there is a feminist branch that opposes pornography.  

The media presumes that this issue no longer exists.  It does.  The anti-pornography movements has largely withered and died; as a culture we are being pornofied.  Many social evils created by pornography have continued up to the present day.  Even men are being affected, such as the problem of internet pornography addiction.  There are many men who have lost their careers and lives because of internet pornography.  

Other harms are of a different nature, such as the idea that sexual coercion is OK and that women like it.  We believe this issue of pornography, which is complex, will continue to emerge and present challenges.  

Is pornography a single phenomenon or a combination of several with several effects.  

Is it solely sexual explicit?  

The argument that pornography is speech has defied legal action and so we have not won there.  

Feminists appear to be having fairly reasonable success in identifying the problems with sex trafficking, and the public is very critical of sex trafficking and legal protections against sex trafficking have been put into place.  Nonetheless, the level of human sex trafficking has gone up, not down, and our laws are largely ineffective in fighting it.  The problem of much legislation is that it requires that victims demonstrate the harms done to them under hostile examination in Court.  It is extremely daunting for any penniless victim very far from home.  The result is very few actual conviction.  

Furthermore, in the first 9 years after passage there has been a minimal amount of convictions.  This resulted in the opponents of legal and social action against human trafficking claiming that human trafficking isn't happening.  

There is an early age of entry into human trafficking--five separate studies in five cities have indicated that 14 is the average age.  Many of these young girls have been victims of childhood sexual abuse.  The term sex workers misleads people that it is a benign phenomenon when it is not.  

Greg White:  I am working in Buffalo with Catholic Charities.  Criminal Justice system asked us to create a batterer program for men which would accept court mandated referrals.  Some of us in NY state worked together to find out what kind of model would be ethical and doable.  What emerged is that these programs didn't work.  30 years ago when they started their goal was to stop intimate violence.  Some batterer programs haven't acknowledged this truth, and they are included children as part of the program which we felt put those children at risk.  

We wanted to put together a model that would work.  We came up with the New York Model of Batterer Programs.  In principle, every thing we do its policies programs and procedures, we seek input from DV programs as well state level programs.  Our goal is to never undermine the battered women's movement in this country.  We try to hold men accountable who are going through the court system.  This model is about holding men accountable and making sure that the men follow up and complete their program.  Men take a weekly, one hour session on DV, info that we would offer anyone, including what you'd hear today from members of this panel.  

Rose Garrity:  NOMAS operates in a more feminist way than many others who do this kind of work.  We are all allied together in doing this work.  I am part of the Ending Men's violence task force group.  We put out position papers on this issue.  Addresses faulty and misleading information that women are more violent than men.  Through this task group NOMAS has been pretty allied with many DV programs and supportive of the New York Model which many feminist groups support.  

As a survivor myself, this meeting has triggered me.  Our systems in this culture serve the patriarchy.  This has been demonstrated at this conference where children have been handed over to the abusers.  We need to keep this broader analysis on our minds regarding why things happen the way they do. We don't hate men; We hate the patriarchy.  Comment from audience:  We need equality before the law and we also need to close the wage gap.

INFORMATION ON MARALEE MCLEAN'S BOOK "PROSECUTED BUT NOT SILENCED"!

Biography of the Author:

MARALEE MCLEAN: Maralee is a child advocate, professional speaker, and author of PROSECUTED BUT NOT SILENCED: (Courtroom Reform for Sexually Abused Children) Maralee has several articles published in the ABA Child Law Journal, Women's E-News, NPEIV, on the problems in our family courts to protect abused children. Maralee McLean is with Women's Media Center (WMC), SheSourceExpert, NPEIV (National Partnership to End Interpersonal Violence and RAINN Speaker bureau. Maralee is a passionate and driven force in domestic violence and child sexual abuse and speaks at Conferences, Law Schools and is a spokesperson for Protective Mother's. Maralee's involvement in legislative work spans two decades. She testified before Congress to promote judicial accountability to better protect sexually abused children's rights in our courts. She has been covered by many local media outlets, and her story has been covered internationally on CNN.

Summary of the Story:

A powerful documentary about a mother and daughter's tragic involvement with the judicial system when there were allegations of child sexual abuse. This riveting book is a must read for all those working in the fields of domestic violence, child abuse, or child trauma so they can realize what does occur even today. It is important to ensure that all judges, attorneys, mental health professionals, medical personnel, child custody evaluators, and social workers are trained in the dynamics of such maltreatment so that there are no more situations like what happened to Maralee and her daughter.

Link to the Book:

http://www.amazon.com/Prosecuted-but-Silenced-Maralee-Mclean/dp/1620240637

MARILEE MCLEAN SPEAKING ON HOW TO OBTAIN MEDIA COVERAGE OF YOUR CASE!

BARRY GOLDSTEIN AND ANDREW WILLIS PROVIDE JOINT PRESENTATION AT BMCC 2015 IN NEW JERSEY!

NANCY S. ERICKSON, J.D., DR. KARIN HUFFER, AND JANE DOE SPEAK ABOUT INVISIBLE DISABILITIES IN THE COURTROOM AND THE ADA AT THE BMCC 2015!

Nancy Erickson stated as follows:  In my work in litigation, I see that the fathers would abuse the mother who would then develop PTSD or some other form of mental illness.  The mother would then come across very badly in psychological tests and lose custody.  

These tests are not meant to figure out whether you are a good parent and they cannot really arrive at such conclusions, but they are misused for that purpose.  

PTSD is extremely common among battered women.  If you look at these percentages, there are studies indicating that among women in DV shelters 40-89% have PTSD.  PTSD is not what you would really call an illness.  It is an injury.  The best way to think about it and explain it to the court is that we are starting to learn about it.  Soldiers returning from combat have PTSD.  All of the research money is out there to treat PTSD, not for DV, but that which results from combat.  

There are similarities and also differences.  PTSD from DV is worse, because you have been traumatized by someone you thought was going to love, protect, and take care of you--not an enemy, but a person you trusted.  Thus, your trust in the whole world has gone.  So it is an injury.  

PTSD is defined in the DSM-5 as follows:

1.  You had to have had a trauma; 

2. you have to have the requisite numbers and kinds of symptoms, i.e. one or more--sort of like a restaurant menu in a Chinese restaurant:

A. intrusive thoughts--nightmares of the abuse, flashbacks or dissociative reactions, not a memory, an oh my God, I am back there again, distress at exposure to external or internal cues regarding what happen, physiological reactions to external or internal cues; 

B. avoidance, avoidance of thoughts and feelings of this event, avoidance of external reminders: people, places, activities, objects; 

C.  negative changes in cognition/mood, can't remember something that happened, change from before to afterwards, loss of trust, distorted thought like blaming yourself, anger, feelings of detachment or estrangement from others, memory problems, and persistent inability to experience positive emotions; 

D.  changes in arousal or reactivity such as exaggerated startle response, hypervigilance, problems with concentration, sleep disturbances, suicidal behavior or ideation.  

I sometimes like to give the Court the following analogy if they are considering taking a mother's children away from her based upon PTSD.  What if the abuser had taken a sledgehammer and crippled the mother for life because he destroyed her knees and now she can't walk.  Then he comes to court and says, your honor, she can't even walk how can she be a parent?  Yet he caused this problem!  

This is not something is biochemical; this is an injury caused by the perpetrator and will stop once the constant abuse is over.  Are these symptoms always at play?  No.  You have PTSD, but it isn't triggered all the time, only when in Court or facing the abuser, or having to see him in court.  In other words, PTSD is often episodic, which is covered under the ADA.  

Jane Doe mentioned requesting breaks, obtaining reduced price transcripts, pencil and paper to take notes on the stand, breaks, etc. as her accommodations under the ADA.  The ADA Amendments Act of 2008 has expanded and extended the civil rights of people with disabilities.  

Dr. Karin Huffer began her presentation taking note of Jane Doe's situation.  She has broken heart syndrome where the pressure of family court has caused her heart attacks.  

If you are in a situation like Jane Doe, says Dr. Karin Huffer, the first thing to note is:  1.  You are not crazy; 2.  You are not alone; 3. You have rights under the ADA.  

The ADA empowers us with a powerful federal tool so that victims of DV can stand up for themselves.  Family courts are a maze where you can end up being abused more because your abuser controls family court the same way he controlled the family.  

In this situation, the ADA can help you.  For instance, you can obtain accommodations under the ADA to undergo a deposition in writing in your own time rather than being put on the spot in an oral deposition.  

It is critical to have a person in your life to address the disability issues when you are in a court proceeding.  

When you request an ADA accommodation, you only have to provide a single diagnosis.    So don't feel you have to provide more than one.  A request for accommodation is administrative; it is confidential and does not belong under discussion in court.  

Federal Court also has to comply with the ADA as well even though they will deny that.  And this is why.  PTSD interferes with expressive speech and so without the ADA a litigant is unable to communicate effectively with the court.  

In addition,  Federal law supersedes state and local law.  

You don't file a motion with the judge.  You go to the clerk ex parte.  

People with invisible disabilities often need extra time; they need a stay, they need a break, etc.  People must have executive functionality--anything that takes it away is not lawful.  

It is my view that Family Courts have become a public health crisis and must be treated as such.  

Consider whether it makes sense to have a psychological evaluation which is intended to take your child from you if they find a disability vs. a disability asssessment in order to address the accommodations you need in order to function.    

One trick of the abuser is to litigate you to the point of bankruptcy.  We need to address this issue.  

Finally, we need to train ADA advocates to be in those courts.  If these advocates can get all over these courts like an anthill, they will not be able to do this any further.

BARRY GOLDSTEIN AND ANDREW WILLIS SPEAK ABOUT THE STOP ABUSE CAMPAIGN AT THE BMCC 2015!

The mission of the Stop Abuse Campaign is to stop abuse.  First, there is the right of every single victim is not to be a victim at all.  Victims rights for us should start before victims are even made.  

In regard to adverse childhood experiences--you only need two. One being separated from your mother, two your father is an alcoholic, and your chances of being an alcoholic are doubled.  Five incidents improve the chances that a person will be an intravenous drug user.  

Adverse childhood experiences lead to incredible damage for children.  

Stop them before they start.  

Our website produces blogs each day on prevention of abuse.  We advocate for changed public policies.  We have an enduring belief that abuse and neglect can be prevented by changes in public policy.  

Today we do know what to do, the science exists, i.e. The Quincy Solution, The Child Safe Act.  These approaches will stop the nonsense going on in family courts today.  The programs we advocate for, everyone of them is evidenced based.  They are researched.  The problem with abuse and neglect can stop.  All we have to do is change public policy.  

F.Y.I., in two weeks we hope these policies will be introduced in New York.  

Prevention is a local business.  It isn't something for which you can go and knock on the federal government's door.  Each state has to pass this legislation.  We need to go community by community.  

The relationship between domestic violence and child abuse is very close, so when you limit DV, you limit the other.  

So how can you help?  Here is what you can do.  We have put together a basket of public policy, sort of a manifesto, and now what we have to do is sell it.  Because when we enact that, abuse stops, including DV.  

What we need is your help and money.  If you can, go to our website.  If you can make a donation on a recurring monthly basis, we can start budgeting it.  This includes marketing brochures, etc.  A small contribution every month is better than one large one.  

There's different kinds of volunteer work you can do--you can do P.R., mail chimp, word press--or else you can lobby or just spread the faith.  Evangelize the news to as many people as you can, share with them on social media.  The more you share, the less we have to spend on promoting them.  

Recruit your friends--have tupperware type parties but on instead share the Stop Abuse Campaign.  Talk about the sexual abuse problem we have in this campaign.  Talk about how abused mothers who will find it difficult to parent because of the abuse.  Then pass a hat and get ten dollars from each person and we'll take care of it very well.  

Andrew Willis is not a lobbyist, but still the Stop Abuse Campaign needs to find ways to get the program funded.  

We need at least two protective mothers who can act as administrators in groups on Facebook.  

Working together we should be able to stop these problems.  

We are looking for professionals.  

We are working on grants and sponsorships from businesses.  

We are putting together consistent, regular, content online regarding adverse childhood experiences.  More people need to hear about what we are doing.  Up to 20,000 - 30,000 are visiting our website per month, and we need more.  

So we are counting on you!  Every single one of us here at the Conference is capable of making change happen.  And I know that.  All of us.  I know that because we are doing that in New York with a group of activists who have no background in politics.  

So many of us have no experience in changing laws, but we are going to do it now.  Each one of us has a sphere of influence, people in positions of authority, others who have considerable finances available.  Let us know about these folks and we will help you to connect with them so they know how important our work is.  

I have reasonably high hopes that we can succeed in this work.  We have activists in states everywhere, i.e. Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Florida, Ohio, etc. Together, we can make this nonsense stop.  

Barry Goldstein adds:  We need to tell media when violence occurs that The Quincy Solution could have stopped the domestic violence.  

A few years ago we were in Washington, D.C. intending to lobby at the House of Representatives when they decided to shut down government.  We were concerned we couldn't meet with political leaders.  Around that time, we noticed an article indicating there was a problem with poison ivy in the parks around town.  Apparently, goats love to eat poison ivy and were positioned in parks to control the plant.  However, when the government was shut down, then the goats had to be sent home.  

Goats protect their kids, just as we protect our children.  Since that time, we have taken on the symbolism of these goats.  They do what everyone should do which is protecting their kids.  At the conference, we honored the Netherlands for protecting Holly Collins and her children.  The ambassador from the Netherlands said, "It is really very simple.  We must protect the kids.  And this is what we are here for."