Keep Kids Free from Abuse

leg.colorado.gov

advocacy_training.htm Domestic Violence Trainings Courses

From Darkness to Light: Your Inner Journey: Transformational Journaling for Healing Souls From Darkness to Light: Your Inner Journey: Transformational Journaling for Healing Souls

Be on the lookout on Amazon.com for this updated version coming this week. Learn how you can access free half-hour coaching sessions with Dr. Debra to walk beside you on your transformational journaling path.

It's time to raise our voices and stand up for children in family court. Thank you Andrea for helping me share this message.

Why We Need to Understand Trauma and Coercive Control with Dr. Debra Wingfield Dr. Debra Wingfield is an Author, Speaker, and Trainer for family abuse prevention and intervention treatment. She practiced counseling for 25 years with domestic abuse victims, offenders, adults,…

Check out all the information available on child development.
https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resourcecategory/infographics/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=december_2019

Infographics Archives - Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University

What will you do for the next 5 weeks to engage in !

Center News: Let's Tell Everyone About #ServeAndReturn!

All children have a primary right to health and safety in their homes.

Safe Child Act Safe Child Act - The paramount concern of all child custody decisions must be to provide complete safety when determining the best interests of the children.

Monsters In the Closet - Domestic Violence From a Child's View http://americanmotherspoliticalparty.org/ampp-article-library-family-court-custody-abuse-dv/8-news-action-alerts-press-release/76-monsters-short-animated-vid...

When will the family courts stop protecting abusers and start protecting children?

Maryland Judge Disregards “Extraordinary Amount of Evidence”
Makes Faustian Bargain: Grants Sole Custody of Twins to Father
Restricts Harvard Educated Physician Mom to Supervised Visits

“What? We have to go live with our father? We can’t do that! Mama, we’re freaking out. Can’t you fight for us?”
- One of Nashwa’s 6 year-old twins

“…[A]n extraordinary amount of evidence from photographs, video, medical records and witnesses supports the allegations [of abuse]…From ages 3-5…the boys came home from visits with their father with a long list of suspicious injuries…[One son] also had a bruised ge***al and described digital and pe**le pe*******on of his a**s to several individuals, including investigators.”
- Tara Haelle, Forbes investigative reporter

“How does a family court judge make a decision like this? Pulling the boys away from their mother and giving them to a man with a hair trigger temper who wouldn't even pay child support.”
- Robert Arrant, Master Sgt., Air Force

Tomorrow morning, two six-year old brothers will leave the sole custody of the mother they have lived with for the past five years to live in the sole custody of their father, an Air Force colonel alleged to have physically and sexually abused the boys for years.

The Air Force had deemed the abuse allegations against [the father] as lacking evidence, but as this reporter previously covered [linked below], an extraordinary amount of evidence from photographs, video, medical records and witnesses supports the allegations. This evidence includes five disclosures by the boys themselves to non-parental caregivers, medical authorities and child welfare authorities.

Yet in an August 15 Maryland Montgomery County family court decision, Judge Joan Ryon awarded sole custody of the boys to Col. Holt and ordered the boys’ mother, a Harvard-trained anesthesiologist, only to supervised visitation once every two weeks. Ryon did not require Col. Holt to pay any of the more than $100,000 he owed in back child support—despite a previous court order that he do so—but she ordered the boys’ mother, Dr. Holt*, to pay $5700 a month in child support to their father going forward.

Now, the mother, the boys’ babysitters, and multiple family friends worry for the boys’ safety.

“We are shocked. At worst, we thought Eric would get supervised visitation,” said retired Air Force Master Sgt. Robert Arrant, a member of Holt’s team during a tour in Afghanistan. Arrant was among the first on the scene when Col. Holt and others were blown up by an IED in their Humvee. Arrant has also described the impulse control and violent behavior he observed in Col. Holt after the colonel’s traumatic brain injury from the explosion.

..“[The father] has admitted he cannot control his anger and sexual impulses. It’s sad he is like this because of the IED explosion, but that won't help the boys if he physically or sexually abuses them.”

… Montgomery County is the same court system that gave unsupervised visitation to the father of Prince McLeod Rams, whose father killed him on the fourth unsupervised visit the boy’s mother had fought to prevent. It was also in Montgomery County that Anthony, Austin and Athena Castillo (ages 6, 4 and 2) were drowned by their father after he was awarded unsupervised visitation despite multiple warnings from their mother, a pediatrician, that he would kill them.

In announcing her decision, Judge Ryon said she believed the boys’ mother had manipulated the boys into making the abuse allegations, but it’s very rare for that to happen, according to child abuse experts and research.

… When the mother’s counsel attempted to introduce photographic evidence of one of the boy’s injuries, the judge appeared unwilling to consider evidence relating to abuse, according to sources present at the decision hearing.

… “Once again we have found that child sexual abuse allegations brought by mothers and children against fathers are almost never credited,” Meier said. “In addition, the data confirms what we have seen in the courts — that rates of mothers losing custody to alleged abusers are at their highest when the mothers allege child sexual abuse.”

Her research, which also focuses on the use of alienation arguments, has found that courts only believe a mother’s claim of a child’s sexual abuse 1 out of 51 times (approximately 2%) when the accused father alleges alienation. Even when alienation is not brought up, courts only believe mothers’ claims about child sexual abuse 15% of the time, Meier found.

… One of the biggest problems [with parental alienation] is that “as a rule, this is classed as a women's sickness alleged by men…No hypothesis so rooted in gender bias should be credited by medical science,” she writes, adding that it is very frequently used to “counter maternal allegations of abuse” and that experts testifying about it “can be aiding and abetting a system that takes children from abused mothers and hands them right back to abusive fathers.”

“To take these kids from their primary caregiver, which is itself traumatic, and then order her to supervised visitation based on junk science is a tragedy,” Griffin said.

… “The legal system has just completely failed these boys,” Slavoff said. It's hard to know what will happen next. "Their mother just is trying to protect these kids, which is what a devoted, loving mother does for the children she adores.”

Excerpts from:
Young Boys Allegedly Abused By Air Force Colonel Now In His Sole Custody
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tarahaelle/2018/08/17/young-boys-allegedly-abused-by-air-force-colonel-now-in-his-sole-custody/

TWC NOTE: Some professionals interviewed in this article said the problem was the judge was not properly trained, but the fact that Judge Ryon deliberately disregarded and concealed evidence of abuse by the father shows that was not the problem. Ryon’s findings that Nashwa is a manipulator and alienator are lies, pure and simple, told in her effort to maintain paternal entitlement.

Ryon is obviously “going along to get along” with the old boys by taking these children away from a loving, primary nurturing mother and forcing them to live with their named abuser so she can maintain, and perhaps even increase, her own power. In other words, Ryon has made the ultimate Faustian bargain: hurting kids for power.

FAUSTIAN BARGAIN: a pact whereby a person trades something of supreme moral or spiritual importance for some worldly or material benefit, such as knowledge, power, or riches.

FOLLOWING are excerpts from previous article:
Failure To Protect: Air Force Handling Of Colonel's Child S*x Assault Charges Raises Questions
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tarahaelle/2018/07/26/failure-to-protect-air-force-handling-of-colonels-child-sex-assault-charges-raises-questions/

… [The twins’] mother is not pressing charges for abuse she suffered: she’s focused on her boys. From ages 3-5, after the parents had separated, the boys came home from visits with their father with a long list of suspicious injuries, documented in photos, videos and medical records reviewed by this journalist. An independent board-certified child abuse pediatrician unconnected to the case also reviewed some of the evidence at my request.

During those three years, one boy sustained bruising on sides of both thighs, two black eyes, an eye laceration, a small injury on his right ear, a wrist laceration, abrasions on the back of his knee, broad patterned marks across his shoulder, and a hematoma (bruised lump) on his forehead after his dad allegedly kicked the chair he was spinning in. (A local police officer called it a difference in parenting styles.) His brother had a large apparent bite mark and bruise below his knee, a long cheek laceration, a black eye, a bruise on his rear thigh, a puncture wound in his palm, and multiple other injuries. Holt attributed each injury to different accidental incidents that occurred under his care during visitations.

… [Her son] also had a bruised ge***al and described digital and pe**le pe*******on of his a**s to several individuals, including investigators. According to research and child abuse pediatricians, bruised ge***als are extremely suspicious for abuse. The boy described the alleged abuse through fearful tears in a cell phone video where his mother asked open-ended questions.

He told the same account, with consistent but non-identical language, to five individuals: a nanny, a playmate’s mother, a child advocacy center social worker, an Air Force interviewer and the boys’ state-assigned and state-paid therapist. The Air Force investigator concluded the child was being coached, but the investigator had not followed American Academy of Pediatrics recommended procedures for interviewing alleged child sexual abuse victims, such as questioning the child outside caregivers’ presence. Holt denied sexually abusing either son, according to court documents.

Three Congress members expressed their concern:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4546425-GIllibrand-Kennedy-Tsongas-Letter-to-USAF-12.html