Comments from My Old Blog: http://tishas.blogspot.com/

These are comments from my old blog when the address was http://tishas.blogspot.com/
If you see your comment & you want to copy & paste & repost it to where you posted it before I changed my blog address feel free to do so...

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http://disenfranchisedfather.blogspot.com/

John Doe said...
Hi b3yond,

Liz Richards of NAFCJ is a clear nutcase who gets off on slinging mud at men and fathers at every possible opportunity. She has particular vitriol for Richard Gardner and seems to view him as a rampant pedo. These people are capable only of seeing PAS as a means to gain an advantage in court, like a husband and father who has been falsely accused of abuse and who thereafter insists that there is no abuse of women and children by other men. As such, they themselves are damaged, and insist on spreading their damage to others. The way to fight back is with quiet insistence on reason. This is a long, slow path, but there is no short, quick one.

Hang in there.
John

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http://www.blogger.com/profile/32738638

The reason for the divorce & life after the divorce...

Karla said...

Hi Tisha
Awesome blog, good on you for getting this up and out there. You've worked hard. My mother is an alcoholic and my father raised us when she abandoned her two children. I thought I had grown up fine, but like you I discovered that I had been affected as a child, and am still affected as an adult. I joined an Alanon group for Adult Children of Alcoholics, and I have found, and still find, the love and support that my famiy couldn't give me there. I wish you well in your journey.
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Question: How old I was when i realized what was going on...

ROCKDUNDEE said...
Wednesday, January 17, 2007

STATE SPONSORED PARENTAL ALIENATION

My husband and I are writing in regard to our on-going fight for his four-year-old daughter. We have been struggling with various related legal obstacles for more than 18 months, and a partner in our attorney’s office suggested we take our story to the press. However, no member of the media would even grace us with a response. So we decided to reach out to you. Our situation is becoming rather urgent, with a trial date having passed by today. We are desperate to be heard by those who can empathize, and perhaps even help in some way. We apologize because it is a long story, but we have condensed it as much as possible.

I will preface our remarks with a bit of background about my husband Terry and his youngest daughter. Since she was born, she has been Daddy’s little girl. He was her primary caretaker. Even her mother readily admits that their daughter has always preferred her daddy to her mommy. When she was two years old and her parents split up – even though there was no custody or visitation arrangement in place because they had never been married – this little girl spent about 50% of her time with Terry. I can attest to that because I met Terry and his daughter a few months after the break-up. She was almost always upset when she had to leave her daddy.
This was always a sore spot with Terry’s ex. On one occasion, she denied her daughter access to her daddy for most of a month because she didn’t want her to be around the “nigger babies” – Lisa’s two biracial daughters. On another occasion she kept this little girl from her daddy because he was a week behind in paying support. And finally, in May of 2005, Terry’s ex dropped what is fast becoming an all too common bombshell when child custody and visitation are at issue. She spewed out an allegation of abuse.

Actually, the sole source of any and all allegations against Terry is a very manipulative teenage girl with a long history of attention-seeking behaviors – his ex-girlfriend’s older daughter from her previous marriage. The complaint was filed about 19 months ago – in May of 2005 – even though the purported abuse incidents allegedly occurred in June, 2004, and December, 2003. That was when Terry still lived with his ex, and he was the sole source of discipline for her daughter’s then-eleven-year-old bad attitude. That provided plenty of motivation which, when coupled with the influence of three very street-wise older half-sisters, gave this kid just the trick to get rid of Mom’s boyfriend. Terry’s ex is spineless, and the girl’s biological father is permanently attached to a barstool. With Terry out of the picture, she no longer has any rules. But it took her mother a year and a half to report her daughter’s complaint to the authorities – and only after Terry’s daughter was very creatively included in the allegations. The timing of the complaint just happens to coincide pretty closely with his filing of a petition for joint custody and visitation of his little girl. Funny thing though – during the lengthy time between the alleged abuse and this report, Terry’s then-two-year-old daughter was allowed to spend half her time with him (with the exception of the two occasions I mentioned earlier), unsupervised, overnights and all, with no court order for this visitation in place. Doesn’t really sound like a mother who’s concerned the man is a pedophile, now does it?

Terry has been thoroughly evaluated by Dr. Joseph Rizzo, one of our area’s foremost forensic psychologists with many years of experience in regard to child sexual abuse cases. Dr. Rizzo’s evaluation showed that Terry has the lowest possible level of risk for sexual acting out of any kind (there is no such thing as zero risk). In fact, Dr. Rizzo has stated that the accusation itself is ridiculous. And yet the harassment continues. “Prosecutorial delay” is the term our lawyer used to describe the thirteen months between when the so-called evidence was collected and the criminal charges were filed. Then there is the County Attorney’s repeated and blatant disregard for the Iowa Rules of Criminal Procedure, and each judge’s coddling of said attorney, allowing multiple do-over’s, resulting in additional delays. Basically, we are being forced to choose between Terry’s Constitutional rights. Either he can have a speedy trial with our attorney not fully prepared to defend him properly - due to the sloppy, inconsistent presentation of the prosecution’s case. Or he can have a fair trial, after our attorney has sorted through the County Attorney’s multiple bumbles, with multiple judges gently chastising as they allow his errors to proliferate from one court appearance to the next. Thus far, Terry has been forced to waive his right to a speedy trial twice. And as motions are filed, the prosecution continues to provide us information in a piece meal fashion, only producing when their hand is forced by a judge.

We have educated ourselves a great deal since this debacle began. There is currently an epidemic of abuse – especially sexual abuse – allegations in custody battles in our country. Mothers are believed, and fathers are assumed to be guilty. In our current social climate, merely mentioning children and sex in the same breath incites a lynch mob mentality. And our social services system and law enforcement agencies seem more than happy to draw conclusions based on an accusation alone. An objective investigation with a presumption of innocence until guilt is proven may be what our laws require, but those ideals are very seldom, if ever, brought to fruition. The so-called “investigators” are in reality merely validators, including in their reports only those pieces of information that support their assumptions, while conveniently ignoring the rest.

This is much more than just my opinion after almost two years of intensely frustrating battles with the current system. We have DHS documents showing information that has been omitted from official reports. And we have other dated assessments showing conclusions drawn by a social worker, including a recommendation for treatment – all of which were filed BEFORE the alleged victim or the alleged perpetrator were even interviewed. There is a videotaped police and DHS interview with my husband for which the audio portion has mysteriously disappeared, thereby making it impossible to refute THEIR VERSION of that event. Add to this the fact that, although Terry lives in the same house with my daughters (ages 8 & 10), no investigator has ever spoken to me. I ask you, how can a professional possibly state an informed opinion without first collecting all the relevant data? Would a physician start a patient on chemotherapy without running tests to determine what’s wrong? Perhaps that sounds a bit extreme. But consider for a moment the effects on the very impressionable mind of a young child when she undergoes a lengthy regimen of counseling for abuse that never happened…

Accusation has been treated as fact from the very beginning in this case, as I’m sure it has in many others. Juvenile court judges often listen to DHS workers’ opinions “off the record,” behind closed doors, without checking for facts to back them up. And they make life-altering decisions about children and their parents every day, basing them solely on the highly subjective views of those social service workers – workers who know how to manipulate the system in order to keep their funding streams flowing. Very few lawyers are willing to do battle with this severely flawed system. Even fewer accused parents (mostly fathers) have the financial ability to pay for the required defense.

We have an excellent lawyer who is nearly as frustrated as we are by the incredibly inept behavior of the Pottawattamie County Attorney's office, the Council Bluffs Police Department and the Iowa Department of Human Services with regard to Terry's case. But we are currently more than $25,000 in debt to pay attorney fees. And as of early November, when the juvenile court case was dropped, we are charged $50 per hour for supervision of any visitation Terry’s ex allows. But much more important than any financial consideration is the emotional damage being continually weighed on Terry’s now-four-year-old daughter. Thus far she has endured 19 months of anxious separation from her daddy, with visitation initially limited to an hour per week. We thought it was an indication the nightmare was ending when that was doubled in early June of this year. We were wrong. So father and daughter get a mere two non-consecutive hours together every week. And at the end of every one of these hours, this little girl plainly tells us that she does not want to leave - she wants to stay with her daddy because she loves her daddy. That is the real injustice of this whole mess – the trauma being inflicted on an innocent child by those whose job it supposedly is to protect her.

We have barely scratched the surface of the system’s gross inadequacies in our case. And we are certain there are many more parents who have fought or are currently fighting similar battles. That is our reason for calling this to your attention. Judging from the content of your latest newsletter, you are already aware of this issue, at least to some extent. Terry’s criminal trial is scheduled for January 17, 2007. He is facing a minimum of 15 years prison time for the two charges the state has chosen to pursue - a B felony and an aggravated misdemeanor. Of course, Terry’s fate and the fate of our entire family are our primary concerns right now. But no matter how our case is ultimately resolved, the defects in our social systems will still persist.

Just today Terry was supposed to go to court to enter an Alford plea to domestic abuse. Which means “I’m not guilty of the charges but I’m taking the deal to reduce my high-end risk.” The deal had been struck between the county prosecutor and his attorney. However, the mother has refused to allow this plea to take place unless Terry agrees to give her sole legal and physical custody of his daughter and accept only two days visitation twice a month. And the county prosecutor is going right along with her. So his choices are; go to court and gamble 15 years of his and our family's life on 12 strangers or give up my rights to his daughter. His right to a meaningful relationship with my daughter is being held hostage. My constitutional rights have and continue to be violated.

Vital relationships between parents and their children are being destroyed by the assumption that every accusation is fact. Social workers say they have “seen enough to know” who’s guilty without looking at each case individually. And instead of finding some factual foundation on which to base their decisions, judges trust in the social workers’ OPINIONS, all facts aside. This amounts to nothing more than state-sponsored Parental Alienation Syndrome. If no one ever takes an objective look at the workings of our social services and judicial systems in matters such as these, and has the courage to point out the obvious flaws, Terry’s story will simply repeat for other fathers. But chances are those fathers won’t have the resources necessary to fight the way we have. They will lose their children, and perhaps even their freedom, to the dangerous combination of a vindictive ex and a flawed system that treats her word as gospel, without benefit of an objective investigation. And like Terry’s little girl, the children will bear the brunt of the damage in every story.

It is our sincere hope that your organization will continue to focus attention on these issues. Raising public awareness about the huge flaws in our social systems is absolutely crucial if significant change is to be achieved. As we mentioned earlier, our attempts to find a media spotlight have proven fruitless. No one seems interested in looking beyond the surface of the accusations against Terry. Hopefully someone will be willing to look a bit deeper and see this for the travesty it is. Any encouraging words or support you might be able to offer will be appreciated.
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http://www2.blogger.com/profile/02810262489567450571

Question: How old I was when i realized what was going on...

Sinkiss said...

you left a comment on my blog about cindy ross,, when you are dealing with Cindy you are also dealing with Liz...

Both claim that fathers are the root of all their problems.. Cindy has abuse her owe children and has try to take their father away. the last i hear that cindy no longer has custody.. it was a nasty divorce ..

However Cindy doesnt approve member to the list, liz does.. if you don't share their ideals they will kick you out banned you and lie about you...
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My dad passed the polygraph test...Now mom lets see you take a polygraph test...I bet you will fails it because you a nothing but a manipulative liar!

Tisha said...

Hey Tisha...just wanted to drop in and say hi.