Free Republic

A Smithfield man this morning filed a federal lawsuit against Fayette County Children and Youth Services alleging that the agency removed his children from him -- and has forbidden contact with them for nearly a year -- even though there were no allegations of any kind of abuse against them. Filed on his behalf by the American Civil Liberties Foundation of Pennsylvania, the lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order that would prohibit CYS from placing -- or threatening to place -- his children, who are staying with his parents, in foster care. The plaintiff is listed as "John Doe" in...

5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans is hearing a a suit brought forth byAttorney Susan Watson of Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid on behalf of Monica Castro who lost her daughter in a custody dispute 5 years ago. Ms. Castro had been living with her daughter Rose, and common law husband Omar Gallardo. Gallardo was in the US illegally, while his wife and daughter were both American citizens. The dispute arose when Gallardo was arrested, detained, and later deported by Border Patrol Agents. He stated that he was the father of then 11 month old Rose and...

"The raid ­- resulting in the largest child custody case in American history - was based on a lie." "Police traced the calls to 33-year-old Colorado Springs woman named Rozita Swinton. Swinton had earlier been arrested for making a false report, and accused of posing as "Jennifer," 16, who called 911 to report that her father had locked her in a basement for days. Swinton may also have posed as thirteen-year-old Dana Anderson, who was being sexually abused by her pastor and raped by her father. There is no evidence that Sarah, Jennifer, or Dana exist. Swinton remains a "person...

SAN ANGELO, Texas — The day after FLDS mothers celebrated an appeals court decision ordering the return of their children, child welfare officials went to the Texas Supreme Court to prevent it. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services asked the Supreme Court to stay the 3rd Court of Appeals order and keep the children where they are, in foster facilities, until the high court considers its arguments. Attorneys argued the more than 450 children will "suffer irreparable harm" if the appellate court order is followed and says the children "will be at risk of sexual and emotional abuse"...

AUSTIN – Texas Child Protective Services will ask the state's highest court to keep a polygamist sect's children in state custody, following a Thursday appeals court ruling that ordered the youngsters be returned to their homes. Texas Supreme Court spokesman Osler McCarthy said attorneys for the state called Friday morning and said they'd be "filing an action in this court" later in the day. On Thursday, a state appeals court ordered many though perhaps not all of a polygamist sect's children returned to their parents Thursday, saying Texas failed to prove they were in physical jeopardy and urgently needed to...

Texas authorities no longer believe that a woman who gave birth to a child in state protective custody is a minor herself. Lawyers for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services acknowledged in a hearing in San Angelo on Tuesday that the young woman is legally an adult. "We received information — credible information — and we now believe this woman who was believed to be a minor in question, is in fact, an adult," said Texas Child Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner. However, she will still remain in custody alongside her baby boy, who was born in San...

A woman who claimed that she is allergic to her ex-husband's cat cannot prevent their two children from visiting their father's home, a Long Island, N.Y., judge has ruled.

If you watch much television, you've probably heard of a product called Mike's Hard Lemonade. And if you ask Christopher Ratte and his wife how they lost custody of their 7-year-old son, the short version is that nobody in the Ratte family watches much television. The way police and child protection workers figure it, Ratte should have known that what a Comerica Park vendor handed over when Ratte ordered a lemonade for his boy three Saturdays ago contained alcohol, and Ratte's ignorance justified placing young Leo in foster care until his dad got up to speed on the commercial beverage...

"If Walther gives CPS permanent custody of the children, the agency will begin looking for foster homes in a case that has already stretched the legal resources of this small town and the state's child welfare system. The custody case is one of the largest in U.S. history and involves children from six months to 17 years in age. Roughly 100 of the children are under age 4. ... Typically, each child would be given a separate hearing, but given the number of cases, it's likely the judge will have the state, the children's attorneys and the parents' attorneys make...

11-year-old Libby Mashburn is at the center of a child-custody battle with far-reaching consequences. Libby's mother says she lost primary custody of her daughter because she was deemed to be too religious.[A Judge in Alabama ruled that Libby could not be taught the Bible by her Baptist mother.] Libby tells INSIDE EDITION, "I think children should be able to choose who they want to live with." Libby's mom Laura Snider is a member of an [large] ultra-conservative Baptist church in Alabama. Libby spends several hours each week attending sermons. On weekends, she goes to Sunday school.[She attends church at...

MADISON, Ala. — On a January night nine years ago, Laura Snider was saved. A 27-year-old single mother at the time, Mrs. Snider felt she had ruined her life through a disastrous marriage and divorce. But in her kitchen that night, after reading pamphlets and Bible passages that her boss had pointed her to, she realized she was a sinner, she said, she prayed for forgiveness, and put her trust in Christ. Four years later, the conservative brand of Christianity Mrs. Snider embraced became the source of a bitter, continuing custody battle over her only child, Libby Mashburn. Across the...

In the heartbreaking Melinda Smith case, a San Diego father and daughter were needlessly separated by the foster care system for over a decade. Last week, Los Angeles County settled a lawsuit over the case for an undisclosed sum. Yet a recent Urban Institute study found that the Smith case typifies the way the foster care system harms children by disregarding the loving bonds they share with their fathers. Smith was born to an unwed couple in 1988. Her father, Thomas Marion Smith, a former Marine and a decorated Vietnam War veteran, saw Melinda often and paid child support. When...

A Maryville woman who went to court on Aug. 14 for a child custody hearing says she was persecuted because of her religious beliefs at the hands of the Blount County judicial system. According to Jo Anne White, what was supposed to be a standard child custody hearing turned into an almost hourlong “Bible study” in the courtroom in spite of the repeated protests of her attorney, Kevin W. Shepherd. After a detailed discussion of her religious beliefs — documented in court reporter transcripts obtained by The Daily Times — and a brief recess to chambers, Blount County Circuit Court...

MADISON, WIS. — Talk about treating Fido like one of the family: Wisconsin legislators have introduced a bill that outlines how divorcing couples and the courts should handle custody battles over pets. The measure would let couples specify, among other things, visitation rights and the right to move animals out of state. If the feuding spouses can't agree on what to do with the pet, the solution is simple: A judge can either pick a spouse — or ship it off to a local Humane Society facility or similar shelter. Whoever gets there first owns the dog, cat or even...

MURCIA, Spain, July 24, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Spanish judge ruled in June that a woman must leave her lesbian relationship for the sake of her children or give up custody of them to the father, her former husband, in a controversial story that has just come to light. Homosexual advocacy groups have begun clamoring for an investigation into Fernando Ferrin Calamita, a family court judge in the southeastern city of Murcia who has insisted that the "most prestigious specialists" and "common sense" say homosexual environments are damaging to the development of children. In his June 6 decision Ferrin Calamita...

A former Morris County man who learned 30 years after his son was born that the child was not his cannot recoup $110,000 spent in child support from the biological father, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled yesterday. The 7-0 decision overturned an appellate court ruling in 2005 and found there is no exception in the New Jersey Parentage Act to extend the deadline in a paternity case beyond the child's 23rd birthday. "The Legislature evidently knew what has been known since time immemorial -- that children would be born of adulterous relationships and that the true identity of the...

LOS ANGELES -- David Hasselhoff beamed outside of a Los Angeles courtroom Friday when saying that he won his long-running battle with ex-wife Pamela Bach over custody of his two teenage daughters. After the hearing, Hasselhoff declared that the judge said, "Enough is enough." Bach and her lawyer aren't talking about the case. They said they are prevented from doing so by a court order. Bach and Hasselhoff had been splitting custody of their daughters, who are 14 and 17. Last month, a judge put a hold on Hasselhoff's visitation privileges for two weeks. The decision came within days of...

Stupid Men June 7, 2007 at 6:04 pm · Filed under Sex & Relationships, Mating, Marriage & Divorce, Feminism, Child Support & Custody, Vox Populi I’m going to give you the highlights of a very unfunny joke. A man is married for 8 years, and comes home one night to “the talk.” The one about the relationship, about the need for space, (I have a boyfriend, and it’s getting to hard to cover it up) – a lot of us know the drill. So, he agrees to move out “for a while” to “work on the relationship.” Fast forward a...

Psychology Today To Child Custody Divorce Courts, Father's Rights Groups: Dads Are Equal By Joel Leyden Israel News Agency Jerusalem ----June 3 ...... It was not easy writing the above headline. But when Psychology Today, one of the most respected lay journals on clinical psychology releases research illustrating that fathers are empowered biologically no differently than women when it comes to nurturing children, all keywords are needed. The Psychological Today story: The Making of a Modern Dad, by Douglas Carlton Abrams illustrates in vivid scientific detail how fathers are no different in their biological programming than mothers when raising children....

Legal question for anyone who knows. A friend of mine is in a bad relationship (unmarried) with two kids. The lady has definite mental issues and some prescription drug issues as well. He finally had enough and is leaving her. The lady in question called his mom up at 3:30 in the morning and told her to come get the kids, that she couldn't handle them and if she didn't she would call 911 and have them take her kids. Apparently, she had threatened suicide to her fiancee as well. This woman has a history of faking seizures and being...

WASHINGTON, April 27, 2007 – The Defense Department announced today that it has taken a senior al Qaeda operative into custody at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The detainee, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, was transferred to Guantanamo this week from CIA custody and is now under the control of Joint Task Force Guantanamo, Bryan Whitman, a Defense Department spokesman, told reporters. Abd al-Hadi is considered a high-value detainee, like the group of 14 detainees who were transferred to Guantanamo from CIA custody in September, Whitman said. At the time of his detention, Abd al-Hadi was one of...

PAPILLION, Neb. -- A teenager accused of threatening students at Papillion La Vista High School will stay in police custody, a judge said on Wednesday. The 16-year-old faces a charge in juvenile court of making terroristic threats. He was accused of saying in class on Monday that he intended to kill everyone at school. The teen allegedly told school administrators that he didn't mean the threat seriously, that he was resonding in anger to harassment at school, prosecutors said.

McGreevey seeks sole custody of 5-year-old daughter Former governor's amended divorce lawsuit also asks for child support Tuesday, March 13, 2007 BY JOSH MARGOLIN Star-Ledger Staff Former Gov. James E. McGreevey has revised his divorce lawsuit against his estranged wife and is now seeking sole custody of the couple's 5-year-old daughter -- and child support. The new documents make no mention of a "matrimonial settlement agreement" that McGreevey's original divorce filing said had resolved all issues of custody and support. Advertisement McGreevey, who resigned as governor after announcing he had had an affair with a male aide, has retained a...

Why Women Are Abandoning MenBy SHMULEY BOTEACH The Jerusalem Post Remember the days when little girls grew up dreaming about a knight in shining armor whisking them off their feet to live happily ever after? Remember when a woman's foremost fantasy was finding the man of her dreams? Well, that's all over now as women are abandoning men in droves and learning to find happiness completely on their own. Two astonishing studies show just how alarming the trend has become. First, there was the study, from the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University and others, that two-thirds of all divorces...

No. 95,203 IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF KANSAS DAVID A. YORDY, Appellant, v. LISA M. OSTERMAN, Appellee. SYLLABUS BY THE COURT 1. When the district court orders that parents have joint custody of their child, the parents have equal rights to make decisions in the best interests of their child. This includes the decision about which school their child should attend. 2. When parents subject to the court's ongoing jurisdiction during the minority of their child cannot agree on the school their child should attend, it is the task of the court to resolve the dispute...

A father embroiled in a custody dispute posted phony ad on the Internet offering to give away his 5-year-old boy to make his wife look bad, investigators said Wednesday. The ad, written as if it were placed by the mother, listed the boy as "free to a good home" on the popular Craigslist Web site. "I've had him now for five years. I've somewhat abused him, but I cannot control myself or him," the ad read. "I have mental problems. DCF (The Department of Children & Families) won't remove him. His father lives in California and has no contact with...

There are no orphan homes in Western Europe and the USA - there are queues for abandoned children. Will it be harder or easier for foreigners to adopt a Russian child since custody regulations in Russia have changed? The rules concerning activity of foreign organizations dealing with children adoption have recently been amended which caused a confrontation of opinions: some consider the new regulations more liberal, others claim it’s nothing but toughened demands.

Call it the backlash against the backlash. Over the past decade, Americans have increasingly understood that the divorce revolution, fatherlessness and single parent households are harming our children. Now those who view the traditional family as disadvantageous to women are firing back, defending women who choose single motherhood and depicting fathers as superfluous. Last fall Stanford University Gender Scholar Peggy Drexler penned the highly-publicized book Raising Boys Without Men: How Maverick Moms Are Creating the Next Generation of Exceptional Men. This month Oxford Press released Wellesley College Women's Studies Professor Rosanna Hertz’s Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice: How Women...

Jane is a successful career woman. She has moved up rapidly in a competitive field, and is advancing her career by attending business school at night. Bob works out of their home and does most of the childcare. If Bob decides he doesn’t want Jane anymore, should he be able to take her kids away and push her to the margins of their lives? The opponents of the North Dakota Shared Parenting Initiative think he should. Under the NDSPI, unless a parent is unfit, both parents in a divorce will have joint legal and physical custody of their children. By...

Schwarzenegger Should Veto AB 2051 By Mike McCormick and Glenn Sacks The California Assembly just passed a domestic violence bill which will perpetuate the state’s harmful policy of excluding men and their children from receiving state-funded domestic violence services. Under AB 2051, only “battered women” are eligible for the shelters, hotel vouchers, counseling and legal services the state provides victims of domestic violence. Governor Schwarzenegger should veto this misguided legislation. Because AB 2051 is based on the discredited premise that men are rarely the victims of intimate partner abuse, the bill has aroused considerable opposition from domestic violence researchers and...

Oh the HUMANITY !!! Those poor,misunderstood al-Qaeda people have been in CIA custody all this time, without so much as a conjugal visit with a goat ! I'm sure you'll want to contribute a few mil for their defense fund.(Group hug,everybody !!)

The family and lawyers of schoolgirl Molly Campbell plan to use claims of anti-Muslim prejudice in Britain as a key pillar of their claim for her custody. In the increasingly bitter international tug-of-love over whether the 12-year-old should live with her father Sajad Ahmed Rana in Pakistan or mother Louise Campbell in Scotland, her lawyers blamed "anti-Islamic" feeling in Britain for the furore that has surrounded the case - and the break-up of their marriage. Against this background, Mrs Campbell was warned yesterday that if she comes to Lahore to personally fight the custody case, she should ask for protection...

Child support enforcement programs are supported by all sides of the political spectrum, from women’s advocates on the left to traditionalists on the right. While this popularity is sometimes understandable, it has also allowed glaring and inexcusable abuses to fester and grow. Of these, none is more egregious than when men are forced to pay 18 years of child support for children who are not theirs, and who in many cases they’ve never even met. In “The Innocent Third Party: Victims of Paternity Fraud,” a new article in the American Bar Association's Family Law Quarterly, Washington DC attorney Ronald K....

You may have read or heard the recent news about two women, both originally from the Commonwealth of Virginia, who decided to dissolve their three-year homosexual civil union that was granted to them by the state of Vermont in 2000. .......... The circumstance today is that the biological mom has renounced her homosexuality and wants to reside in Virginia with the child, away from her estranged partner. This seems to be a typical "moveaway" that men and children are all too familiar with in the aftermath of divorce and separation from heterosexual relationships. But it's not. In this case, the...

In Kai Ma’s recent AlterNet column “The Difference Between a Womb and a Wallet” (7/26/06) she applauds a U.S. District Court judge’s quick, contemptuous dismissal of Matt Dubay’s “Roe v. Wade for Men” lawsuit. Dubay sought to wipe out the child support payments he is obligated to make to an ex-girlfriend who, he says, used a fallacious claim of infertility to deceive him into getting her pregnant. In opposing “Choice for Men,” Ma asserts that a “woman's decision to terminate a pregnancy is not the equivalent of a man's choice to financially opt out of fatherhood.” She cites the pain...

An important truth has been lost in the controversy over the way the Philadelphia Phillies handled pitcher Brett Myers after his recent arrest for spousal abuse. Mrs. Myers’ injuries and the accounts of several witnesses leave little reason to doubt her husband’s culpability. Nevertheless, the Phillies at first reserved judgment about the case, and allowed Myers to pitch. This was wrong, as the team admitted after widespread criticism, and Myers was given a leave of absence. However, in many domestic violence cases the men arrested do deserve the open mind and support which the Phillies mistakenly extended Myers. Spousal abuse...

Ken Chase criticized Senator Kennedy for voting against the Child Custody Protection Act, which passed the Senate July 25th by over 30 votes. It even received the yes votes of 13 Democrats. "Clearly, Ted Kennedy is on the far-left on this issue, unwilling to do anything that might upset the radical pro-abortion lobby, including voting for a common-sense bill like the Child Custody Protection Act, which would simply ensure that those who help teens go behind their parents' back are punished. It's time for Massachusetts to get a Senator who votes for common sense, not special interests".

Child support debtors are everybody’s favorite punching bag. The Daily News is apparently no exception, as reporter Dana DiFillippo recently penned two ill-advised, one-sided critiques of divorced and separated fathers. In Jail Threat Springs $$, DiFillippo highlights the story of a local "deadbeat” who offered a judge a “list of reasons why he had failed to pay almost $16,000" in child support. The judge “barks” at these explanations and gives the surprised father two months in jail. DiFillippo approvingly quotes prosecutor Maria McLaughlin, who “chalked up another victory” with the case, as McLaughlin blames the debtor for his incarceration. According...

LAS VEGAS, July 31, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An unfortunate toddler is the object of a legal battle with five adults vying for his custody: the homosexual father who paid a surrogate mother $23,000 to impregnate herself with his sperm, the homosexual’s sister, the biological mother, and the boy’s current foster parents. Baby X, as identified by court documents, is currently in the care of foster parents who want legal custody of the child, after the surrogate mother, Rachel Sullivan, found it too taxing to care for him, reported the Globe and Mail on July 21 in a lengthy article detailing...

The National Organization for Women turned 40 this summer, and formally celebrated its anniversary at its national conference in July. NOW President Kim Gandy has proudly recounted her organization's successes in opening up opportunities for women, and says they are “never giving up the dream of full equality for all.” Unfortunately, on some issues – particularly in family law and child custody – NOW's policies and actions contradict its ideals of “full equality for all.” This is most evident in the group's dogged opposition to joint custody and shared parenting. The logic behind shared parenting is hard to dispute. Kids...

Virginia Dads Take To The StreetsTom Porter, founder of Vision4Children, and Ron Jagannathan, board member of Fathers For Virginia, took their message to Virginia commuters on July 8, 2006. "We plan on demonstrating on a regular basis," said Porter, "We encourage all local parents who feel letdown by the family courts to join us." Porter added, "Vision4Children.org will be online this week." Australian Dads Speak Out On TVNZ(VIDEO)Take a look at this July 9, 2006 television newscast on tvnz.co.nz called The "F" Word. This video lasts about 15 minutes and shows interviews with distraught Australian fathers. It also includes...

Porno-candy trafficker and anti-Fathers' Movement writer Trish Wilson must have hit a dry spell with her Penis-Pops, since she's asking for donations from her readers. "We are in serious financial straits...I just put a PayPal donations button at the very top of my left sidebar." Gee, I guess there isn't a very large market for genitalia-inspired chocolate, or for her biased man-hating writing. I can't comment on the candy, but I can honestly say her writing has made my stomach turn a few times.Wanting to market herself as a quasi expert on the fathers' movement must be the reason she...

Enforcers of the state's deadbeat parent laws are failing to use often enough one of most powerful tools in their box of incentives -- the threat of a loss of a driver's license, according to an audit released Thursday. Under state law, any parent who is at least 56 days delinquent in his child support payments -- or who owes more than $500 in back child support -- can have his driver's license suspended. But during a single two-month period, the state's Child Support Enforcement Division sent out warning letters to only 3 percent of the nearly 27,000 parents who...

Ruling: Gay marriage ban doesn't nix custody COLUMBUS - A mother plans to appeal a magistrate's decision that she cannot use the state's constitutional ban on gay marriage to take away her former partner's visitation rights, the mother's lawyer said Thursday. Family courts often settle custody disputes between unmarried people and even people of the same sex, such as a grandmother and aunt or an adult sibling and a parent, according to the ruling by Magistrate Darrolyn Krippel of Franklin County's domestic relations court. "Granting custody of a minor child to a nonparent is done every day," Krippel wrote in...

RENO, Nev. - A man charged with killing his estranged wife and suspected in the sniper shooting of a judge was in custody early Friday, authorities said. Washoe County District Attorney Dick Gammick confirmed that Darren Mack had been arrested. No further details about where or how he was arrested were immediately released. On Thursday, authorities said Mack, 45, was believed to be on Mexico's west coast and had been spotted previously in Cabo San Lucas and La Paz. Gammick said then that Mack had arranged to turn himself at the U.S. consulate in Puerto Vallarta on Thursday, but failed...

EVERY other weekend for the past four and a half years, I've spent three precious days with my two adolescent daughters. We play tennis in summer, ski in winter, travel when the school schedule allows. But no matter where we are, we're all keenly aware of the thin membrane of secrecy that keeps us from being as close as we were before their mom and I divorced. Like most divorced fathers, I'm caught in exactly the kind of nightmarish situation that experts on stress say to avoid — a great deal of responsibility, but very little power. I'm the major...

Protesters seek justice for dads in custody battles Sunday, June 18, 2006 Bill Bush THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH In 1953, Kris Slaughter’s father got full custody of her and her older brother after her stepfather was accused of sexually molesting a child from their neighborhood. It was the right decision, she said, although it was almost unheard of then for a father to get custody over a mother — and it was rare for couples to get divorced in the first place. Although her mother was accused of nothing, Slaughter didn’t see her again until adulthood. "She never came back, except...

A 35-year-old woman accused of throwing hot oil on her baby boy and hacking off part of his ear will most likely never have custody of her son again, a county official said. Tonya M. Edwards of Cleveland was in City Jail Friday on suspicion of endangering children, domestic violence and felonious assault. She denied cutting her 10-month-old son's ear. "I bit [his] ear by accident," she said, according to a police report. Doctors told police the wound was clearly made by a sharp object, not by teeth. The boy, Micah Belcher Jr., was in good condition at MetroHealth Medical...

WASHINGTON For the second time, the Supreme Court on Monday shied away from getting involved in a child custody fight between a San Diego woman and her former lesbian partner. The birth mother, known as Sharon S., is trying to prevent her former partner from adopting one of the two children the women were raising together. Sharon S. and her partner Annette F. separated after an incident of domestic violence that Sharon blames on Annette. The California Supreme Court rejected the attempt by Sharon to prevent the adoption, which she consented to by signing an adoption petition in August 1999....

A man suspected of burning and stabbing a pit bull puppy that later died was arrested early Thursday, according to reports. Deshann Brown, 21, was arrested shortly after midnight in Corinth, a community in Denton County, and charged with animal cruelty, according to a report from NBC 5. The 10-month-old puppy, named Mercy, died Sunday despite efforts to save her from extensive injuries. She had been cut, stabbed, doused with gasoline and set afire. At one point last week, her caretakers said she had experienced a comfortable night and was eating. Mercy was found about two weeks ago in a...