News Article

Child Poverty Rising, Report Says

Washington Post, July 11, 2009

A growing number of American children are living in poverty and with unemployed parents, and are facing the threat of hunger, according to a federal report. 18% of all children 17 and younger were living in poverty in 2007, up from 17% in 2006. The percentage of children with at least one parent working full time was 77% in 2007, down from 78% in 2006.  More

Opinion

A Homespun Safety Net

The New York times, July 11, 2009

If nothing else, the recession is serving as a stress test for the American safety net. How prepared have we been for sudden and violent economic dislocations of the kind that leave millions homeless and jobless?   More

News Article

New Policy Permits Asylum for Battered Women

The New York Times, July 15, 2009

The Obama administration has opened the way for foreign women who are victims of severe domestic beatings and sexual abuse to receive asylum in the United States. The action reverses a Bush administration stance in a protracted and passionate legal battle over the possibilities for battered women to become refugees.
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News Article

Educating dads may help protect babies from abuse

USA TODAY, July 27, 2009

More than 2,400 children under 2 were murdered in the USA from 2001 to 2005, almost twice the number killed in car accidents, the study says. Children this age account for about half of all homicides of children under 14. The murder rate for babies this age — 6 per 100,000 children — is 10 times higher than the rate for children 7 to 8 years old, and even higher than the rate for 15- and 16-year-olds, the study says.  More

Opinion

Femicide: There's not enough outrage

Toronto Star, August 12, 2009

"There's not enough outrage," lamented one women's rights activist at a candlelight vigil for the three women cut down last Tuesday night in a Pittsburgh-area aerobics class.

As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette noted, only 75 people showed up to mourn Heidi Overmier, 46, Elizabeth Gannon, 49, and Jody Billingsley, 38, massacred by a man, who didn't know them, simply because they were women.

That's unusual as the vast majority of femicide victims are killed by their intimate partners or male relatives.  More

Opinion

Women at Risk

The New York Times, August 7, 2009

We’ve seen this tragic ritual so often that it has the feel of a formula. A guy is filled with a seething rage toward women and has easy access to guns. The result: mass slaughter.
We have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that the barbaric treatment of women and girls has come to be more or less expected.  More

Opinion

Opinion

Shakesville Blog, August 20, 2009

From whom are the world's women being saved? From themselves? From just the women and girls in the developing world? Or are those the only women and girls who need saving? Everything's peachy in the developed world, is it? And then there is this: Can the lives of women and girls, anywhere, be changed if the lives and men and boys aren't changed, too?  More

News Article

Family of Man Who Killed Wife, Self, Gets Custody

Centre Daily, June 11, 2009

Williamsport Judge Richard A. Gray has decided to give primary physical custody of the child who lost both parents in the Easter 2007 murder- suicide to the father's family in Williamsport. Ben Barone shot and killed his wife Jodi Barone during a planned custody exchange of their daughter April 8, 2007. Jodi's mother had been fighting for custody.  More

News Article

Man kills wife, now wants to control custody of children from jail

The Valley Independent (Pittsburgh, PA), August 12, 2009

A Fayette County man accused of running over over his wife with his car and killing her wants his parents to have legal custody of two of his children. In addition, he wants the cousins of a third adopted child to have custody of that youngster.  More

News Article

Man Accused of Shooting and Killing Wife Asks for Children to be Moved to Safer Home

KSBY 6 News, August 19, 2009

A family torn apart after a fatal shooting is now in a heated fight over where to place the victim's children.On July 9, 24-year-old Tasha Norris was fatally shot. Her husband, John Norris, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter. Despite that, his wishes for who will have custody of his children are being considered by child services.  More

News Article

Judge Dismisses Abuse Allegations

Des Moines Register, August 20, 2009

An Iowa judge dismissed abuse allegations made by a 6-year-old girl who called 911 while in her father's care in Council Bluffs, paving the way for the girl to return home to her mother from an emergency shelter.
The judge did so on the recommendation of a child-protective worker who found the case lacked sufficient evidence to move forward.   More

Publication : Master's Thesis

Disciplining Divorcing Parents: The Social Construction of Parental Alienation Syndrome

Department of Sociology, Queen's University, September 1, 2008

This thesis explores the development of the concepts of “parental alienation syndrome” and “false allegations” in the context of custody and access, as ‘social problems’. It analyzes the course of these concepts through an historical account of Canada’s divorce arena and recent changes to custody and access law, analyzing the reasoning and motives of the major claimsmakers: the Fathers’ Right Movement, medical experts, the legal arena and the counter-claims of Feminist activists. It examines the role of the supervised access facilitator in the construction of the concepts as ‘social problems’. The theories of psychiatrist Richard Gardner are examined in particular, due to their pivotal role in the advancement of the claimsmakers’ goals. Finally, empirical studies are reviewed and analyzed, demonstrating how the concepts of “parental alienation syndrome” and “false allegations” have mutated and permeated the domain of divorce and access in Western society.  More

Presentation

Parental Alienation Syndrome in Family Courts

Presented at the Child Sexual Abuse: Justice Response or Alternative Resolution Conference, May 1, 2003

The question of allegations of sexual abuse in Family Law cases is a complex issue. It is becoming increasingly common to see Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) invoked as an explanation for such allegations, with the implication that the allegations are false. This presentation will review some of the literature on both issues - false allegations and PAS – in the context of Family Law disputes. It will examine the concept of PAS and will suggest that it has neither validity nor utility.
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Presentation

Parental Alienation Syndrome Revisited

Presented at the Child Sexual Abuse: Justice Response or Alternative Resolution Conference , May 1, 2003

In family courts, the ramifications of recognising abuse as a reason for supervising or aborting contact have led to laws which are ambiguous, expert opinions which are not based in science and outcries from parents of both sexes about the unfairness of the system. The concept of alienation has gained ascendancy in family courts around the world particularly over the last five years. While most professionals familiar with the courts’ workings recognise that children can and do side with one or other parent, especially in the early stages of separation, little was done to research this. Indeed most of the papers written address Parent Alienation Syndrome, not parent alienation, and distinguished researchers in the field have only just turned their attention to the problem.  More

Publication

Parental Alienation Syndrome: A Paradigm For Child Abuse In Austrailian Family Law

Paper presented at Child Sexual Abuse: Justice Response or Alternative Resolution Conference, Australian Inst. of Criminology, May 1, 2003

This paper argues that the absence of a publicly funded investigative capacity in the Family Court of Australia when there are allegations of child abuse by a parent, creates the conditions for the de facto operating presumption of the Parental Alienation Syndrome paradigm in the courts. This paradigm, at its simplest, insists that claims of serious child abuse are invented and that children’s statements and manifestations of fear are the outcome of parental coaching. Without a publicly funded professional child protection investigative service available to inform the family court, the private adversarial system of family law commonly fails to substantiate allegations of child abuse, thereby systematically producing the outcome that child abuse allegations will be deemed to be false. Safety for children in family law proceedings who are subject to abuse depends on access to a professional investigative service to inform the court, and a redefinition of a child’s best interests in the Family Law Act to give safety the highest value.  More