Mothers Loosing Custody: Kelly Rutherford on Her Ongoing Custody Battle, the Battered Mothers Custody Conference

Kelly Rutherford on Her Ongoing Custody Battle

Kelly has been locked in a bitter custody battle with her ex-husband since their divorce in 2010 and last

September a judge ordered the children to live with their father in France.

 

Kelly Rutherford writes from her heart on why her ongoing child custody battle represents a greater legal issue. We asked Kelly’s ex-husband, Daniel Giersch, for a statement on the show and his attorney, Fahi Takesh Hallin, responded, “Daniel Giersch continues not to comment publicly about the parties’ custody case, in order to protect the children’s privacy.”

I am sharing my story with the world so that no other mother has to experience the pain and suffering that I am going through. We have a flawed legal system and there needs to be a change.

Although I did everything within my power to facilitate a positive relationship between my ex-husband and our children, and although I traveled far and wide to facilitate a shared custodial arrangement with my ex-husband, a judge effectively deported my two (2) minor children to accommodate a man who had his VISA revoked, for reasons unknown.

Without any inquiry as to why my ex-husband’s VISA was revoked, the Judge forced my young children, both of whom are US Citizens to reside in France, even though the children have no relationship to France, nor is their father a French citizen. Although, NY was the only home my children have ever known and the children’s own counsel recommended that the children be allowed to stay in the United States with me, the Judge made a decision in direct contravention of expert opinion.

Although my children are US citizens, the fact that they reside in France places them in legal peril. The longer they remain in France, the greater the chance becomes that they are afforded the status of French residents. This is particularly dangerous because France is in no way obligated to respect and/or enforce judicial determinations made in US Courts. In essence, French officials could modify a custody and visitation decision at any time, without any legal recourse for me or my children. Change needs to happen now.

www.BatteredMothersCustodyConference.org

 

Video one here: http://www.katiecouric.com/videos/kelly-rutherford-custody/

Video two here: http://www.katiecouric.com/on-the-show/2013/04/19/kelly-rutherford/

 

“Gossip Girl” star Kelly Rutherford sits down with Katie to speak out about her custody battle that’s making headlines.

Kelly Rutherford’s lawyer, Amanda Shaked, explains the steps she’s taking to get Kelly’s kids back.

MOTHERS FILE INTERNATIONAL COMPLAINT AGAINST UNITED STATES- IACHR

Mother’s day complaint claims United States courts violate human rights of abused women and children.

On the heels of the Jessica Gonzales Ruling at the IACHR (International Commission Human Rights) Comes the following petition.
You can read the Petition in it’s entirety at the Stop Family Violence site.
http://www.stopfamilyviolence.org/info/custody-abuse/legal-documents/petition-to-inter-american-commission-on-human-rights/full-text-of-iachr-petition

Amplify’d from www.stopfamilyviolence.org

“For more than 30 years U.S. judges have given custody or unsupervised visitation of children to abusers and molesters putting the children directly at risk,” says Dianne Post, an international attorney who authored the petition.  “These horrendous human rights violations have been brought to the attention of family court systems, and state and federal governments, to no avail. We turn now to international courts to protect the rights and safety of US children.”

The complaint details several cases with documented medical evidence of child sexual abuse, yet in each instance the father who was accused of abuse was given full custody of the children.  Several of the mothers were jailed by the courts because of their persistent efforts to protect their children from abuse, several were ordered not to speak of the abuse and not to report abuse to authorities.  Every mother was denied contact with her child for some period of time though none was ever proven to have harmed them.

“My life was completely shattered apart on that day and my childhood was destroyed,” said Jeff Hoverson, the adult child petitioner, about the day a family court judge ordered sheriff deputies to deliver him into the custody of his abuser. “It was as if I was just kidnapped. I was torn from everything I knew….I was made into a possession rather than a child.”  Hoverson endured years of trauma and fear living in his father’s home before escaping and returning to his mother at age 17.  He is haunted by years of feeling helpless to prevent his father’s night-time visits to his sisters’ bedrooms.

“The cases in this petition represent the proverbial tip of the iceberg,” says Irene Weiser, executive director of the online organization  Stop Family Violence.  “We are contacted by an average of three protective mothers each week who have lost custody to fathers accused of child abuse – in many cases with supporting medical evidence. This is a nationwide crisis of enormous proportion.”

“The lives of thousands of children and mothers have been irreparably harmed by family courts across our nation,” says Joyanna Silberg, Ph.D., executive vice-president of The Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence, another national organizations supporting the petition. “The years of trauma and psychological abuse because of the courts’ failings result in lasting emotional damage to the children they are supposed to protect.”

Studies of gender bias in the courts, conducted in the 1980’s and 90’s, found disturbing trends of courts minimizing or excusing men’s violence against women, and favoring the abusers.  In 1990 the United States Congress passed a resolution recommending the prohibition of giving joint or sole custody to abusers.  Seventeen years later, the practice continues unabated.  Ten years ago today, leading national organizations were joined by  members of Congress in a protest in Washington D.C. to again raise awareness about the problems in family courts.  Today, petitioners say, the problem is systemic and widespread in family law courts across the nation.

The petition seeks a finding from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that the U.S. has violated the Declaration of the Rights and Responsibilities of Man and the Charter of the Organization of American States and a statement of the steps that the U.S. must take to comply with its human rights obligations in regards to battered women and children in child custody cases.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights was created in 1959 and is expressly authorized to examine allegations of human rights violations by members of the Organization of American States, which include the United States. It also carries out on-site visits to observe the general human rights situations in all 35 member states of the Organization of American States and to investigate specific allegations of violations of Inter-American human rights treaties. Its charge is to promote the observance and the defense of human rights in the Americas.

Dianne Post, a 1980 graduate of the University of Wisconsin law school, has worked on issues of gender based violence since 1976.  In addition to private practice and legal aid, she has taught legal classes and been a consultant working or living in Russia, Cambodia, Hungary and some dozen other countries. She is currently in Vladivostok, Russia.

In addition to The Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence, other national organizations supporting the international lawsuit include: National Organization for Women and the NOW Foundation, National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Justice For Children, National Family Court Watch Project, Legal Momentum, Family Violence Prevention Fund, National Alliance to End Sexual Violence, Domestic Violence Report, Sidran Traumatic Stress Institute, and the National Center on Sexual and Domestic Violence. The petition is supported by many state organizations as well.

In December 2005, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a petition against the United States with the Inter American Commission on Human Rights for their failure to protect Jessica Gonzales’ three children from their abusive father, who murdered them.  Their petition, the first of its kind, asserted that domestic violence victims have the right to be protected by the state from the violent acts of their abusers.

Claudine Dombrowski Photos of Abuse Read more at www.stopfamilyviolence.org

 

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/q2qWPX

Small Justice-Little Justice in Americas CourtS

URL:  http://vodpod.com/watch/1172358-small-justice-little-ju…

Garland Waller Productions

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/94y5aW

A Plea From Protective Mothers

URL:  http://vodpod.com/watch/3486795-a-plea-from-protective-…

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/enA60R

Mr President when will you give Mothers their Children back??

URL:  http://vodpod.com/watch/3646323-mr-president-when-will-…

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/a30fP9

Maternal Deprivation Abuse

 

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Maternalism What is Maternalism? Are the voices of mothers who identify with the liberation of mothers and the rights of their children. There was a past emergence of Maternalism in feminist history in the nineteenth century, however it is not consistent to today’s issues that continue to undermine her rights and values.

We believe that the act of giving birth has been extremely undervalued in today’s society much as a result of patriarchy but also due to the lack of representation of mothers voices in women’s rights organizations. We note that the eight hour day was inclusive of workers rights, but failed to acknowledge the labor of mothers towards raising future generations.

In the last twenty years, our rights have declined further with this acknowledgement as our children have grown to become the property of the state and men. We have the right to work from home, have flexible hours so that our care and work is balanced to eight hour days. We demand that employers provide the technology and opportunities to do so.

We have the exclusive right to be prioritized to be the exclusive candidates that have existing or possible opportunities to do so. We believe that joint parenting and shared parenting that is forced under the state of law upon dissolution of marriage undermines our rights to:

• Consent to the renamed marriage contract.
• Continue our natural primary care giving relationship with our children.
• Make decisions for the welfare of our children
• Obtain protection of family Freedom of movement
• Love our children without scrutiny of the deep bond we place with our children
• Raise our children
• Be appreciated for the lives we bore onto this earth.

Whilst the status of women has improved, the status of mothers has declined that our representation in the media of mothers is poor and discriminatory. We believe that both forced and persuasive adoption is a degradation of women equivalent to prostitution and laws against this abdominal crime need to be enforced.

We believe that threats to take our children for objecting to medical practices that are harmful is an exploitation of mothers and undermines her ability to intuitively know what is best to raise her children as she has done hundreds of years prior to the introduction of medical treatment.

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SEX AND ENTITLEMENT

RightsForMothersFILED IN: PATRIARCHY, SARAH STEFANSON, SEXUAL RELATIONS, ENTITLEMENT

Someone had brought a post to my attention, and it struck a chord with me.  Thinking back, I think my ex-partner’s presumption of “entitlement” to it started the increase of his hostility and this is what started the physical abuse.  I found this segment on a men’s message board (Men Going Their Own Way) a while back sharing some of those manly feelings:

“I was driving back from a meeting this morning, thinking about my wife, and I really wanted to go home, and simply beat the living shit out of her. I have been supporting everyone for years, working my ass off, and my wife has not done one single fucking thing to make my life easier, to encourage me, or to help me with anything that’s bugging me. She’s on the PTA, the board of her preschool, she teaches art at the elementary school, is involved in a book club, and on and on and on. Her calendar is ridiculous. But I am some kind of fucking afterthought. I’m the engine that powers this entire thing, and I haven’t gotten laid in months.

I know I was awful tired taking care of a baby by myself all the time at night.  He would not help….ever.  He said his job was more important so he needed more sleep, yet we worked the same jobs (even had the same degrees, although mine more advanced).  Would it help to try and get joint counseling in this before you get the crap beat out of you?  I don’t know…I tried that and he wasn’t a willing participant.

Now try and look at it from the other point of view…can a guy turn this around and truly blame a woman?  (**Shakes head and rolls eyes**).  No.  Nobody deserved to be abused if they don’t give it up.  Back to the post that caught my attention…the writer (a woman!) on the Fox News story tries to come up with reasons why that woman just won’t put out, and fails miserably.  What follows here is some really good commentary on the Men’s Health post on Fox News:

“Women withhold sex because men let them get away with it”

Published by Jill

Feel like puking? Check out this crusty scab of human hatred from the Fox News website, a men’s advice column entitled “Reasons Women Withhold Sex.”

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “why would I feel like puking?” Or possibly, “why would anyone bother writing a men’s advice column entitled ‘Reasons Women Withhold Sex’ when the answer, so obvious to anyone with half a grip, is ‘because sex with you sucks’?”

But apparently men need to hear something other than the truth. Enter men’s advice-ist Sarah Stefanson. Rarely has so puke-a-riffic an example of the acculturation of sexist male entitlement been seen in this, or any other, galaxy.

I would call Sarah Stefanson a lousy turncoat collaborating suck-up shitbag, but I don’t want to jump to conclusions. There’s always the possibility that she was forced against her will to scrawl this feces-stain on the knickers of human achievement. Forced, perhaps, by some asshole who literally held a gun to her head, threatening to kneecap her 80-year-old grandma and foreclose on her 9-acre dirt farm, send a shipment of tainted vaccines to blind orphans in Bangladesh, and drown a sackful of kittens in a pond of toxic run-off. That has to be the scenario, because otherwise I’d be forced to contemplate that there actually exists a woman so degraded, so corrupt, so sociopathic, or so desperate that she would willingly turn out this kind of unremitting, lobe-scorching dudebro misogyny for the pitiful sum of 10 cents a word.

But I digress.

Sarah Stefanson’s hate speech addresses a dudely audience, and begins, I am sorry to say, like this:

One of the benefits of being in a long-term relationship is that you have someone that you can readily depend on for regular sex.

But uh-oh. Dude’s dependable meatsock may not be feelin’ it. She may even be “withholding” it. This suggests that the benefits of which Sarah Stefanson speaks so glowingly might be experienced by the party of the second part as unpleasantness. Hence her tips on how to manipulate your sex-woman and “get the carnal door open again” (Jaysus, 10 cents a word for that? Kill me now).

Observes Stefanson, “if there’s one area of a relationship women think they have control over, it’s sex.” But don’t buy it, men!

In the wild world of men’s advice columny, “purposefully withholding” sex is universally understood as a wholly nefarious, cruel, and mystifying method of female retribution. That’s because sex is a commodity to which men are entitled by the Global Accords Governing Fair Use of Women. Women are the sex class. If the flow of access is interrupted, the natural order is out of whack, and your sex-woman needs to be reset. But hey, chillax, bra! Stefanson’s column addresses the painful question “what can a suffering dude do when his receptacle is ‘purposefully withholding’ sex?”

In answering the question, Sarah Stefanson, with whom I begin to grow increasingly annoyed, leaves no tired old war-between-the-sexes cliché unturned. Women who “close up shop” (yes, really) are manipulative, out to prove who’s boss, cheating, or “playing games.” If they’re too tired to fuck, men are urged to poke them with sticks. If none of the tactics listed sufficiently cajoles them, “you might have to wait it out and service yourself until she comes to her senses.” But ultimately, Sarah Stefanson opines, women withhold sex “because men let them get away with it.” So man up, you spineless fairy, and take what’s yours.

Stefanson’s article is a stupid lowbrow clump of oppression-culture condensation, and doesn’t really merit a full-on paragraph-by-paragraph analysis, but it’s worth pointing out that it was filed on a major news website under “Men’s Health,” where it is accepted, uncritically and without analysis, that women are an underclass with so little agency that sexual manipulation is their only recourse.

Puke.

[Thanks, PhioGistic]

Please go to her website and comment on this great piece.

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