Showing posts with label Safe Visit. Show all posts

Monday, July 28, 2014

We Can Stop Domestic Violence. The Question is -- Do We Want To?

Domestic Dispute, Leads to SWAT Stand-off with Topeka Police Department

[Tell me, how in the hell a SWAT stand-off, for four hours with police, of a man who kicks the mother out of HER home, locking her out from HER baby girl, and the Topeka Police (and Community) call this Domestic Dispute???

We have become so complacent in our society with violence against women that the "violence" has been dropped from "domestic violence". There is nothing Domestic about violence against women and children. Drop the "domestic" and charge as any other person crime, e.g. assault, battery etc.

But now..... we have "Dispute" replacing "Violence"? This is an intentional minimizing from the top of the chain, fed exclusively to the sheeple --- whom sadly, seem to kool-aide drink into this whole mind control - or, is it really that we do not want to stop the violence?] Actions speak louder than words.

Kansas -- is always decades late in promoting the newest, and best standards and practices for victims of (~~domestic)~~ violence. Profit Over Protection - The Industry Of Abuse.

Why they can not just drop the word "domestic" from the violence and prosecute accordingly, is beyond me or simple common sense. Currently the word "domestic" is a "get out of jail free" card, to continue to terrorize women and her children.

Currently in local news, several KC, DV programs and agencies are WRONGLY implementing and touting the "Lethal Assessment Tool". An out dated and dangerous tool to use. I am like, come on already. Its not that hard.

Apparently, it is.

Why common sense can not just be implemented in violence against women and children. the DV industry, the profits? For what ever reasons, they do not help women and children who are subjected to violence.

Perhaps maybe, rewriting simple common sense will work for Kansas. Please take note of the Quincy Solution.

(Ok, Kansas. So there ya have it, again. Actual real solution to address actual real issues. Please follow a common sense approach, and truly offer real resources and real support to woman and children who suffer from violence, needlessly. The information about the Quincy Solution will be published Oct.1, 2014. I highly recommend that agencies purchase, disseminate and model their approaches along these common sense guidelines. It really is not hard to stop violence against women and children in Kansas. We just have to want too.)

The Quincy Solution Will End Most Domestic Violence

http://stopabusecampaign.com/the-quincy-solution

A solution pioneered in Quincy, Massachusetts and perfected in San Diego, California and Nashville, Tennessee will prevent domestic violence and domestic murder, saving American taxpayers $500 Billion every year.

The original Quincy Model involved strict enforcement of criminal laws, protective orders and probation requirements together with practices that made it easier for women to leave their abusers and a coordinated community response when they did.

There were a few cases in which the complaining witness stopped cooperating with the prosecutor after the abuser sought custody. This did not derail the success of Quincy because this was still a rare tactic.

Today seeking custody to regain control over victims is a standard abuser tactic and the Quincy Solution cannot be successful without preventing this tactic from undermining the efforts to prevent DV crime. This could be done by educating and training court professionals based on ACE, Saunders and other research. Sadly many courts are very defensive about criticism. (and why profit heavily by selling abuse victims into slavery with their abusers -cd)

The Safe Child Act requires courts to reform their practices and stop sending children to live with abusers. This is accomplished by making the health and safety of children the courts first priority and by specifically stating this includes circumstances where children are placed in jeopardy such as witnessing domestic violence or separation from primary attachment figure.

The legislation would also require the use of genuine experts and promotes a multi-disciplinary approach.

Profit Over Protection - The Industry Of Abuse. Spotlight "Kansas Batterer Intervention Program"

Author Note: When I began researching this topic, it was to be a broad and national review paper. However, to show the different views of what researchers thought were important in the successes of this program, I came across my own state's Batterer Intervention Program (BIP). The more I learned, the angrier I became. Although the state of Kansas really sticks out in this particular profit over protection, BIP -- the nation it's self uses funding for all sorts of so called BS.

The bottom line is simple. What all the organizations, all the same ole same, all the (fill in the blank) are doing, and the new - take their place fatherhood initiatives, and their by-organizations, are doing, is NOT working. It is time to stop profiting and start protecting. Until that time, if ever it comes, domestic violence will never end. As you can tell, it is only getting worst. No longer are their just "punches" and "slaps". We simply have "dead' and more dead. Women and her children, being murdered daily.

When will we finally say, "enough is enough?" Until that time, like that program below, profit over protection is all that victims can expect.

(hat tip to joel - for the term "Profit Over Protection")

-Claudine

Are Batterer Intervention Programs Reducing Domestic Violence?

Courts often mandate that ‘convicted’ abusive partners attend “batterer intervention programs” in addition to serving a probation term. Throughout the past twenty years, alternatives to battering programs and batter intervention programs receive funding through local, state and federal agencies. The very name of these programs implies that they reduce domestic violence.

It is the consensus across the board with experts and scholars in the field of Intimate Partner Violence, that these programs, by varying names, since their inception more than twenty years ago, are not treatment modalities, they do not cure, and that battering is not a mental illness. However, due to the lack of prosecutions and the lack of consequences to the batterer or perpetrator, the increase in the use of ‘batterer intervention programs” have been implemented by almost every State in an attempt to further follow up with the perpetrator as part of his probation requirements in a domestic violence conviction.

However, the National consensus and final conclusions, from the large body of objective data, research and studies, as per the National Institute of Justice, The Department of Justice, The Office of Crime Victims and other Leading organizations is that; “Batterer Intervention Programs Do Not Change Offender Behavior.” The recent National Institute of Justice report isa compilation of data and research over the past decade and as a result, the report spurred a joint committee sponsored by National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and the Family Violence Prevention Fund (FVPF) to have an “Expert’s Round Table” meeting in December 2009. The resulting meeting published in 2010 “Doing the Work and Measuring the Progress: Batterer Intervention Meeting Report,” in which includes, executive order and further recommendations.

One of the major recurring themes in the research is that there exists a gap between “what researchers emphasize when they evaluate batterer intervention programs” and “what practitioners consider reflective of their program goals and accomplishments.”

For example:

Oddly, or not, during this research paper, there currently does not exist an audit report in the State of Kansas on the Batterer Intervention Programs. In fact my research shows that the Kansas States “Batterer Intervention Program” – adopted by the Kansas Attorney General’s Office, as the ‘model’ for Domestic Violence and Batterer Intervention (KS Attorney General, Victims’ Rights)’ is one in the same as the “Kansas Family Peace Initiatives” (FPI) founded entirely by one person with his private business attached to it. The FPI claims an astonishing “81% success rate” in their Batterer Intervention Program and they simply state: “our success rate has been verified by private sources retained by FPI.”

Therefore, we are to take the ‘word’ of the Family Peace Initiative’s own agenda, and platform. An individual, not a group, but a business, in that “they” claim is so successful, although no objective data or empirical research can be found to verify this, even though it would be the only Batterer Intervention Program in the Nation, to claim an “81 percent success rate,” when the rest of the Nation shows none. This gives rise to a whole other set of ethical issues and questions. In that, from the Family Peace Initiative website, (www.FamilyPeaceInitiative.com) “they” now offer --“paid for” expert testimony, “paid for“ expert training, to which the “husband and wife” team are currently booking ‘training's’ throughout Kansas and Texas at $300.00 per person with a thirty person cap per class. This, is in addition to the money earned not only from Federal and State grants, funding for the program its self,but also from the public and the clients/perpetrators who are court ordered to attend.

However, since the Judiciary and Criminal Justice system have failed and continues to fail victims of domestic violence, the Batterers Intervention Program is all that ‘victims’ receive in the way of any type of validation and nothing remotely close to justice. It is also another way to keep ‘eyes on’ the batterer, in alleged protections of the victim, for those very failures. Imagine what should be a prosecution and incarceration of a severe person crime, that now has moved to “treating the batterers” and not the victim.

In conclusion, with the overwhelming research readily available nationally, it is more than clear that Batterer Intervention Programs have had ‘minimal at best’ to ‘absolutely no effect’ at all, on reducing violence against women. It is clear from reviewing other perpetrator/victim crimes that prosecution alone is the single strongest deterrent in reducing violence against women. So this begs the question, “Why are we funding yet another wasted program where we “think” we should “treat” a perpetrator versus “prosecute”? And, further harms incurred by sending out a false sense of security from the Judges, to the public, and the victims - by what is essentially, further silencing victims of domestic violence by “treating” the criminal as if it were a disease.

Batter Intervention Programs do not decrease domestic violence. Yet there continues to be an increase in the use of ‘batterer intervention programs”. I believe this program needs to be tabled and other sources sought out and implemented to decrease domestic violence.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Memories: Past, Present, Future

Leaving The War Zone: A Battered Mothers Memoirs For He Daughter

Chapter 8 Memories, Past, Present, Future

Mother, daughter and granddaughter.

A strong and powerful maternal bond created by God

for mothers and daughters only.

A Mother Hold’s

Her Daughters Heart Forever

Nineteen and half years, that’s how long I have lived in hell on earth. I was four months pregnant when I was first hit. Pregnant with my dear daughter at age 30 a pregnancy that I was told I could never get pregnant-- one I would never have, one that proved to be life threatening not only to my daughter but to myself. Then, throw in all the stomach punches…. And as the pregnancy continued the violence only increased. Until Rikki was taken emergency c-section, the Dr’s saying - about my daughter “prepare, she may not live, in fact it highly unlikely”. You did. All legs no brown fat and several weeks in the neonate intensive care unit. You lived.

After your birth, nothing else mattered. I was determined focuses like no other and hence began the next 18 years. My fight to be free of torture, to free my child to believe in a beautiful world to raise her with the goal that there is no limits to what she can dream what she can do and who she is.

The most special and most beautiful person, born out of the ashes of pain and suffering to be a wholesome, loving smart and wise person.

I try to write to you. I try. There has been such a ‘block’. Awhile back I threw all the documents of court litigation away. (Most never scanned as it happened before the age of technology.) It was all my life, it was you. It was painful all the pain all the truth all the lies, I disposed of. Literally it filled a semi tractor trailer, representing millions of dollars - that is plural the millions - of the fight for simple justice that never came. The whole – “The truth will always win” - never came. Not in the hell of the judiciary any ways. Please always believe what the heart tells you there is baby an Ultimate Justice, a beautiful Justice and that Justice is eternal.

With putting the legal away (that part of life now over) I am now able to look at my memories before we were separated. It doesn’t hurt like it did. In fact I even smile. It is as it should be.

You are 18 now, as of December 12, 2012 -- but still you will be trapped until age 23. That is when my Social Security Disability payments will run out for your dad - as payee to you, my dependent child. At this date the amount is about $800.00 a month. But in order for him to keep it he must keep you, and so you will continue school in a local community college, still living under his control, his transportation his, his, his, his…

One day, you will leave - but only allowed - when he knows without a doubt - that his control remains complete - and that you will never think to attempt to reach out to your mother. But you will think-- and once gone your mind will begin to question (yes I know and unheard of thing - dare to question - but is normal) as no longer will the ‘punishment’ for thinking about your mom be physically there. It will be subconsciously - scary at first, as you have been conditioned like “Pavlov’s dogs” to avert all such thinking. Evan Stark writes about this in Coercive Control.

Do not be afraid baby, but at the same time do not push it. Let it happen as it may, let your defenses block when it is too painful. And for many years this is what will happen.

I too, am going through that. I had to - many years ago pack up all your photos, all the memories and store them in a place that was safe. Safe to not hurt me. Safe to survive, safe to continue the battle, to focus only on the task at hand. When I packed up all the legal documents unknown to me, eventually I was able to look at your photos, and was able to really see past all the red hot pain. I am currently trying to get all this up on line along with all the home videos Granny made, I still cannot watch those, the pain torturous. But slowly – literally as the years pass they are getting there. My goal to have it all up by your graduation. ( I can always view on line via mobile technology from anywhere in the world)

When you turned 18 December 12. 2012 - It was and I really did not expect this - was my freedom. The titanic was no longer chained to my neck; I no longer was gasping holding my head up for each and every breath. It felt good. To the normal person it would be like the child has grown, now let her go and let her spread her wings and fly--- fly high, fly free. Our mantra baby from all those years ago and here it is back again. It’s the beginning of your life and the last that I will be able to even watch you from a distance, like I have watched you grow quietly from the sidelines, just a blurred face, a stranger who was always there at all your events. Me - Your mother.

High School Track will be coming soon next month; I will be at every single track meet. Your last of High school. I plan to stay throughout them all - in years past the physical pain many times had forced me to leave before the end - most meets out of town lasting 8 hours on a cold hard bench. Since my lower back was kicked out of place, the vertebrae not breaking only twisting the pain of sitting standing becomes too much. But this year, I will sit front seat front row at all track meets.

After all, the last time I see the most beautiful woman in the world, my precious, my heart, my every breath - my daughter.

Then in May 2013 - your high school graduation. Again, I will be on the front row. I will not cower nor be intimidated or frightened. With your graduation a set of luggage, a new international cell phone, my 3 T external drive. I hope as well to finish the collage you and I started. It got ruined but will hand clean each and every image you and I placed then use new clean clear Hodge- Podge (the stuff I placed on it turned everything cloudy white L ) Not thinking how important they were – memories- I had mostly blown it off, I know that now they need preserved and finished with love.

When I met you in the parking lot of your school (27 seconds - after so many years of no contact) and gave to you all the stuff you had asked me to keep safe for you from all these years gone by – years before all our contact was ended, (you smiled like you would at a family reunion when meeting an uncle bob who gave you something— someone you may have met once in your life when you were 6) you were polite and with a smile you accepted your gift box….. all your stuff from granny - well the important limited edition stuff, heirlooms.

This is when I realized that you too had absolutely no memory. Of not of just the decades past but even from just a few years ago.

In talking with another mother who had contact w her daughter and even regained custody of her daughter, her daughter too has absolutely no memory of even a few years ago. This mother’s daughter started college out of state, the mother worried that the memories will come and incapacitate her. I thinking of you and even worst, no contact for the better part of the last 10 years of your life. No just hanging out with your mom, talking, laughing, shopping—doing everything and nothing, things that most mothers and daughters have. Each other.

You were denied that. I had not died, so even worst to keep us apart words, hate and shock conditioning were implemented from the time my baby you were taken from your mother at age 6.

It was never that we feared each other—it was the fear of the punishment of seeing each other that we knew would happen. We feared it.

Again Evan Stark’s coercive control – that power of consequence, even when no longer does it exist—well for you now it does, but one day it will not, but the stripping of that autonomy will remain. You can read much about coercive control on the internet. I have met w Evan he is an amazing person. He also touches on the taking of a woman’s child as has happened with us as just one part of the coercive control. Human rights.

He explains where words cannot, it is not the single physical attack, and it is not so simple to just leave. It is a control that has never before been seen in any other crime victim, a control that long holds its victims’ across space and time.

The memories will come. One day. This is why I try to write now. So one day you can be validated set free from that pain. The mother above I was talking to - her daughter too. But she has her mom, although it is painful, when she should need to - her mother, she now knows and she will be ok.

My daughter, they have stripped away not only our autonomy but for you, all that is left is just another memory - of your mother. A memory that through the years has been chipped away and replaced with inaccurate and falseness. I can only say baby, that when you begin (and I will hopefully have released all else that holds me down by your graduation, will also mark the end and beginning for me) that I will be able to seriously leave the war zone and seriously write to my own distant memory. You my daughter.

I do not know you - but I do know the strength of the bonds of a mother and daughter. I know this from my own mother and I. We were the most close in the last 20 years, because of you J my momma was there when my heart opened, for the first almost 7 years of your life you were endowed with incredible beyond words, wise, compassion, strength wisdom and a love like no other.

I did not understand it then but my mother your granny had said “However you are at age 7 is exactly who you are as an adult” - this is your core platform. She was then preparing me for what she must have already foreseen… that we would not be together that justice would fail.

I miss my mom, I miss her terribly. Each spring I miss her more. As it always takes me to the ‘feel-good’ I had when we went home to Texas - cold in Kansas, swimming pool at granny’s J Home….. That’s where we were and the most peaceful time of my life, the constant laughter of you baby and granny, the amazing invisible but seen and amazingly felt - the strong bonds between you and granny. Two peas in a pod. Two hearts beating as one.

I know that all you had loved has been destroyed and replaced in your memories. I will try to put more up about the two of you—you and Granny. I think that your 1^st know is the fact that if you have ever been told and then viciously dislike or think how evil or dangerous any one from your maternal family is—know that the worst—is actually the best. The more you were taught to fear someone the more that someone is very important and is to you. I would use that as a guide.

Incredible isn’t it? I as an old lady now, a smart one, even a psych nurse, could I have imagined the not only current placement of the years of torture but even the decades later. For you, for myself, for what was your maternal family. All but gone now. Granny, great gramps J he loved you so much! You him lol.

Memories, they are important when the mind is ready. No hurry no worry, just know that I unconditionally love you. When you were born my life changed, once a mother ALWAYS a mother, nothing else matters… everything I had ever done in my life the very full life as when I turned 18 I too was set free… and Baby I lived my life—the world was mine and I experienced it 100x more than the normal person… If I thought about something—I did it. J As for you my daughter - I wish this.

The sky is the limit!! I know that you recall that I used to sky dive… I know that for some reason you thought that was beyond cool. I guess looking back it was J but at the time it was just yet another of the beautiful things I experienced because I thought about it.. Think you want to do that. And do it - I did. You think it - baby girl and then it is yours – do it. Live life it really is a most amazing venture.

Then one day (I pray- a very long time away) you will become a mother. J and all that you have done will still be memories and there but as a mother God has connected you to your child and a daughter mother bond is even more profound because we are the creators of life, a magic if you will made into us, mother is humanity, that’s just how God made us and really baby although our experience has been nothing except harrowing, that golden thread is still there and one day we meet again and no words will be needed. Like I and my mother, we just picked up where we were…. (I had stopped talking to my mother ten years prior to your birth—I don’t even know why—some silly stupid-ness that seemed important when I was a bratty kid through the years I had long forgotten why--) But when we did meet, and Rikki it was you my darling, nothing else mattered.

My mother was and is my very best friend. The last time I saw her, I was able to see her as not just my friend, your granny but as a mother herself. The wooden statute – (I gave to you in your b-day box) a tree carving --- from the same tree branching into a mother and another branch into a daughter was the last xmas gift she gave me before she died. Instantly I loved it – thinking of you and I—and although my beautiful mother loved her daughter—me--- as I love my daughter –you. She said “You know, I too am a mother who loves her daughter more than anything”. My most treasured of all—but knowing that I needed for you to have this – as with all granny’s heirlooms- it was time to give to you.

I will never forget the pain in her face when she gave it to me—not from the painful terminal illness that took her soon after. But of the pain she felt because she was powerless to stop the pain of her daughter. Myself. I boarded the plane to come back to Kansas to as granny said “Fight for my granddaughter”. That was the last time I saw her alive.

It was also the last time you and I -- 2^nd and 3^rd generation had any further contact.

Though out this past 18 years, we were allowed only a few supervised visits -in a year – many years not even that…. This is how you grew up. Perhaps with the paid hours of supervised visits maybe combined a Month? Then again perhaps not even that….. In all your 18 years.

But like granny said, we are bound and it is always there. All through eternity.

"Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the oppressed.

Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

Sometimes we must interfere.”

- Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Survivor

www.AngelFury/org

www.AmericanMothersPoliticalParty.org

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Domestic Batterers Do Not Need Help! They NEED PUNISHED!! Jailed and Kept Away from their Victims!

Will this insanity ever end? Topeka decriminalizes domestic violence, Kansas City just followed suit yesterday.

I listen to the local police Scanner and am simply amazed at all the poor batterer Domestic Violence calls—Daddy refusing to give children back after visits, kidnapping when mom does it- his kids when he does it, he is just stressed, addiction etc, etc, etc..... -sigh-

Photo by Gordon Cheung:The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Women will never be free as long as they cannot leave an abuser a Violent Offender with her children, in fact - this is where they do the next best thing to killing her- they take her kids. With the Courts help. Stop treating this as a illness, a family thing it IS A CRIME!!!! We Do Not Need Safe Visit For Violent Offenders like 'Safe Visit' see prior post.

We do not need to treat them we need to punish them for crimes committed. Punish as you would assault cases. At least get rid of the DV clause -- or 'get out of jail free card'.

Domestic batterers find help in YWCA program

Topeka Capital Journal

Steve Halley leads small groups that provide help for domestic violence offenders through the Family Peace Initiative program, based at the Topeka YWCA, 225 SW 12th. By Phil AndersonDomestic violence is a widespread problem that often spirals out of ...

Kansas City Ends Domestic Violence Ordinance - Women on the Firing Line

Jan 27, 2012

In October, the District Attorney of Shawnee County, which encompasses Topeka, Kansas, announced that he would cease to prosecute domestic violence cases within the city of Topeka. He argued that with recent budget cuts he no longer had sufficient resources and that the city should take on the burden of these prosecutions. The city council responded by repealing their ordinance against domestic violence!

Kansas has so much crap going on at the moment, Gov. Sam Brownback pushing couples counseling and ABSTINENCE? It would be hysterically funny to even think this -- if it weren't true, that this, IS what they are doing.

I mean C'mon.... “Hey you perp… stop raping and beating your wife'. Yeah, that will sure fix it.

State's proposed domestic violence contract widely criticized

Kansas.com - ‎Jan 14, 2012‎

But the two sentences are still inappropriate in a proposed contract for domestic violence services, no matter the rationale, said state Sen. Laura Kelly, D-Topeka, ranking minority member of the Ways and Means Committee and the Public Health and ...

Fatherhood Initiatives being forced down everyone's throat, His motto: "Woman stay married period." Brownback-I-Stan? indeed.
From Reality Check: Brownback, The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, Attacks Single Mothers...

“I’m going to force women into motherhood and marriage, Reduce Funding to SRS for mothers and Children and INCREASE Funding to SRS for Fatherhood Initiatives."

That is by the way DADDY WELFARE!!

I Expect The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse To Ride In Soon.

Topeka, KS: Safe Visit Looses United Way Funding, A Child trafficking, Batterer Friendly, Custody Switch Program. Fatherhood Initiatives Give Batterers Custody

Custody Switch - Safe Visit of Topeka, Kansas - The Scam, Court Ordered Abuse for profit-

Because of the Fathers Rights Initiatives. Mommies NOT needed. Just Access Visitation Programs.

It’s about time!!!! YEAH!!!! one less, so many more to go….

Safe Visit and the many other programs that have morphed in the past two decades Odyssey, TREC, Fathers Rights Topeka and all the many many other so called metal health supposed professionals—and simple ‘social workers’ -who found easy $$- e.g. Connie Sanchez, Jenny Shaw, Kara Haney, (just to name a very few) who ‘charge $’ to SUPERVISE a Mother’s Visits with HER own Children.

I had not finished this chapter in my “Leaving The War Zone” I find it very difficult to write about the horrific human rights crimes that Kansas committed, allowed, continues… to my daughter and I, all to turn a buck. But due to the recent article about Safe Visit and Connie Sanchez in Topeka Kansas, "United Way pulls funding on Safe Visit program"

I publish below what I have written thus far and WHY all these so called –do good- human experiment-Programs [may be profitable to ‘Hitler’ type persona’s-this HUMAN Experiment, social engineering Program FAILURE] for use to follow up on article about Save Visit Loosing their Funding. And HOPEFULLY, God please… Closing by February.....(Note in the article it states ‘max 30 one hour supervised visits.’) hmmm.....

Rikki and I were SUPERVISED there for over Decade at SAFE VISIT- 15 YEARS. Incredible. Two lives completely destroyed ... the best they could come up with was a limit of 30 hours. If this had been the rule (or if it had never existed in the first place) in the many years of it's inception in 1995 and in 1996 when we were 1st Court Ordered to the 'human trafficking' and 'Take Battered Mothers Children and give to Abusers Program' aka Safe Visit.

These people need to go down, them and all ACCESS VISITATION aka Custody Switch Programs for Batterers.

Perhaps........This mother and daughter would know each other today if 30 hours was max......As is, the batterer Hal Richardson has maintained his complete control bound in chains and imprisonment of my daughter, with the assistance from Safe Visit and other 'anti mother', 'Abuser friendly' individuals and businesses….there has been absolutely no contact in several years. Which is why I began writing or attempts to "Leaving The War Zone."

Perhaps..…....another mother and her daughter will survive the 'custody switch' Programs. one down so many, many more to go.

#####

Chapter Three – Safe Visit - The Custody Switch, The Scam, The Profit$
June 15^th 2011 7:00 A.M.

Rikki with her Mother Claudine Dombrowski. Casualties of Safe Visit Program Who Assist's Batterers In Getting Child Custody, While Erasing Mother.

This case leads in a Human Rights suit filed at the Inter American Commission Human Rights on behalf of all battered Mothers and their children.

‘Dombrowski et el. v US’

#######

Leaving The War Zone Chapter Three: The Custody Switch

It’s Wednesday, ‘hump day’. I am sitting outside this cool morning drinking my coffee, feeling the warmth on my legs listening to the world waking up- I am reminded of a time –many years ago when Rikki and I were still safe. In W. Kansas in our in Pawnee Rock.

I would sit outside drinking my coffee in the early morning quiet. The weather cool- watering my awesome flowers that I had landscaped for several years.

Our home was beautiful. We had a small pool 12 ft for Rikki her friends and I. These were warm memory days. Days when I knew where my daughter was, days when hope floated with each beating of her heart. I would love to watch her sleep- she sleeps like I do- rough. She snores- like I do- an inherited maternal trait from my own dear mother.

Allergies tend to hit us with a storm, but we never let them effect the beauty and joy of each precious day we had. At this time in the late 90’s we had only 3 weeks together before the week long hell visits would begin for her.

The courts start in the custody switch. A game that is now known to many mothers- “The Custody Switch” mine came on snail mail by the Judge with out motion from either party, without hearing, the judge simple on his own issued his own 9 page order on July 31, 2000 that Rikki would be living with her father. And that if I foreclosed on our beautiful home and quit my well paying state job (dad never paid child support - I never needed it - I had been working for the state of Kansas as a psychiatric nurse for almost 13 years ) I was to quit my job, severe all contact with my home, Rikkis home, and relocate to Topeka Kansas (the courts knowing that do to my physical injuries inflicted by daddy dearest that I would not be able to work in Topeka—Larned state hospital had made concessions for my physical disabilities- and Topeka state hospital had closed in 1996- when I moved to Pawnee Rock). That I MIGHT Be able To See My Daughter. If I did all the Above-- I did-- they did not.

That day, July 31, 2000 will always mark the day-:the music died’.- we had after 6 years of heavy litigation and after I had spent in upwards of over 1 million dollars—my child was gone. I was forced into unemployment, homelessness, and no health care—all for “the best interest of the child’. Makes no sense does it? Daddy promptly tried to get me back into the house by forcing me to have sex to even see Rikki—I did. Who wouldn't.

By December of that same year 2000, the last time I saw Rikki with out armed guard—daddy had beaten Rikki so badly, I could not allow her suffering anymore -- I confronted him—only to find that once again as a good ‘co-parenting’ (as quoted by Harry Moore Case manger—‘it’s called co-parenting deal with it”) I had the hell beat out of me again. (this is co-parenting).

I then found myself brutally raped that same beating Dec 16^th, 2000 just two days after Rikki had been beaten, (she fell up the hill btw) her face swollen and tears in her eyes. God, Rikki I am so sorry, I am so sorry. I tried to protect her, I did the unthinkable. I reported it.

As all protective mothers are - I was swiftly denied any contact with my dear sweet Rikki for the next two years. Then when I was placed into supervised visits “SAFE VISIT” of TOPEKA- armed guard in a church of all places—hence began the next decade of our lives.

When I was able to see her it was through safe visits only. The cost was excruciating, the time was only an hour—we could not hug we could not talk about anything past dull, how’s school etc. And never never about why we were even there, why mom and daughter could not even see each other in the park, outside or at home, or go anywhere.

We remained confined to a 10’ x 10’ room with 1 monitor, 1 supervisor, 1 armed Shawnee county sheriff guard – all within arm distance - the monitor wrote down everything we said - everything we did. They even would stop us when we would talk to fast, so they could catch up.

I am sorry Rikki. (of course- I am not to have access to these reports) I do have some reports that they sent to the court or to the guardian ad litem. Not all mind you but some. See here: SAFE VISIT REPORTS & MEMOS

I am brought back to present day, the sun warm on my legs. The cool morning air of a Kansas summer. A life time ago. I have no contact with Rikki. Its been more that a year and a half since I last talked to or saw her. I have always been able to follow her cyber prints. But they ceased a month ago. No one knows where she is—dad will not report her missing. He is dad after all—still with his child’s coffin and hunting rifle on the wall.

No one sees a problem with this.
Where are you baby? I pray you are safe, I pray you are alive.

There have been no unidentified bodies in the 100 mile radius fitting her description. ‘whew’.
Since I am a nobody the police will not help inform me of her whereabouts—after all dad a snitch for the police has just helped to ‘bag’ a 60 person felony drug bust—so they are really protecting him. –as usual.

[Leaving The war Zone – A Battered Mother’s Memoirs For Her Daughter] Claudine Dombrowski

Claudine Dombrowski

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