A few readers may be shocked at this week’s headlines “Government officials remove couple’s newborn baby due to father’s involvement with anti-totalitarian group.” A few, but probably not many of us.

Oath Keepers

When people espouse beliefs not in line with Federal goals it may be time to start impressing children’s minds before they get to public schools. Younger is better according to New Hampshire, where a couple’s newborn baby was taken from them by officials because the father is involved with a group opposed to government suppression.

New parents Stephanie and Johnathan say their child was taken from them and placed into public care solely because the baby’s father Johnathan Irish has links to a Constitutionalist organization known as the ‘Oath Keepers’.

A state official has however cited domestic violence and child abuse allegations as the reason for the abduction.

Parents in this case however, deny allegations. On Friday they staged a demonstration outside Concord Hospital, a public protest at their child being removed from their care just hours after her birth.

Stephanie and Johnathan were joined by demonstrators rallying against what they termed the state’s unconstitutional interference in a family matter.

Oath Keepers is a non-profit organization founded in 2009 which advocates that its members uphold the U.S. Constitution and when necessary resist unconstitutional actions of the government.

Mr Irish claims police officers and state officials took his daughter away on Wednesday because of his involvement in the group.

The Division for Children, Youth and Families, however, said the authorities took the child away because the father has a record of violence and abuse.

According to the statement, a judge decided action should be taken given the ‘lengthy history of domestic violence’ between the parents. They did not state what that was, only that their documents say the mother has “failed to recognize the impact of domestic violence in her life and the potential danger it poses to a newborn baby”, while Mr Irish had ‘not acknowledged any responsibility to date and remains a significant safety risk to an infant in his care… Without the intervention of the court, the infant will be at risk of harm’. Court papers referenced, “The Oath Keepers,” described as a ‘militia’, and the fact Mr Irish had a number of run-ins with Epsom police over firearms.

via Government Abducts Newborn Daughter From U.S. Federal Resistors.

NEW YORK — The American Psychiatric Association has a hot potato on its hands as it updates its catalog of mental disorders — whether to include parental alienation, a disputed term conveying how a child’s relationship with one estranged parent can be poisoned by the other.

There’s broad agreement that this sometimes occurs, usually triggered by a divorce and child-custody dispute. But there’s bitter debate over whether the phenomenon should be formally classified as a mental health syndrome — a question now before the psychiatric association as it prepares the first complete revision since 1994 of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

“We’re gotten an enormous amount of mail — more than any other issue,” said Dr. Darrel Regier, vice chair of the task force drafting the manual. “The passions on both sides of this are exceptional.”

On one side of the debate, which has raged since the 1980s, are feminists, advocates for battered women and others who consider “parental alienation syndrome” to be an unproven and potentially dangerous concept useful to men trying to deflect attention from their abusive behavior.

“This is a fabricated notion — there’s no science to support it,” said Joan Meier, a professor at the George Washington University Law School who has written extensively on domestic violence and child custody.

On the other side are legions of firm believers in the existence of a syndrome, including hundreds gathering for a conference on the topic this weekend in New York. They say that recognition of parental alienation in the psychiatrists’ manual would lead to fairer outcomes in family courts and enable more children of divorce to get treatment so they could reconcile with an estranged parent.

“This is a problem that causes horrible outcomes for children. … All the arguments I’ve heard against it are trivial,” said Dr. William Bernet, a psychiatry professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

via The Associated Press: Psychiatric experts assess parental alienation.

The war on fathers’ rights in adoption proceedings continues and fathers are starting to win a few battles, like the one described in this article (Toledo Blade, 9/24/10) and this Ohio Supreme Court opinion (Leagle, 7/22/10).

Benjamin Wyrembek had a brief affair with a married woman. She became pregnant in 2007 and, along with her husband, decided to place the child for adoption. Wyrembek had no way of knowing if the child was his or not and possibly neither did the woman, although neither the article nor the opinion says. But he timely filed his claim of paternity with the Ohio Putative Father Registry and brought suit in juvenile court in December, 2007 to establish paternity. In January, 2008, the adoptive parents, Jason and Christy Vaughn, filed their suit to adopt the child.

Genetic testing determined that the child is Wyrembek’s and every court has since ruled in his favor. Basically, he’s the biological father who’s done every legal thing in his power to get custody of his son and every court has ruled that the adoption can’t go forward. It seems that biological fathers have a few rights after all; it seems that the many United States Supreme Court cases so ruling actually mean something.

But, you may ask, “it’s been almost three years since genetic testing determined Wyrembek’s paternity; why does he still not have possession of his son?” Well, the answer is that adoption attorneys for many years have understood that when they’re caught trying to force adoption on a child who doesn’t need to be adopted because it has a fit father who wants it, the best thing to do is to stall.

via » Ohio SC Decision a Clear Win for Dads in Adoption Cases – Blogger News Network.

This is up in Canada.  The only problem is the proviso that is always present “absent abuse”.  There is no question that abuse is intolerable. However it is unfortunate that allegations of abuse sky rocket when it becomes evident that child support received will be affected by a shared parenting order. This has become a real problem everywhere.

The people for whom this issue matters most — people whose lives have been negatively impacted by the current iniquitous system — are united and organized. The Equal Parenting Coalition (EPC) is now an international social movement focused on averting the tragedies that result for children when a parent is legally disenfranchised from his or her children’s lives.

I say “his or her,” but in reality, the iniquities of the system overwhelmingly target fathers. What are most fathers asking for? According to the EPC, the clearly stated primary goal would appear to be equal physical parenting. Advocacy in the equal parenting movement has moved well beyond fathers’ rights groups, and is now a broad-based coalition of both mothers and fathers. More and more women realize that excluding fathers from their children’s lives is unethical and psychologically counter-productive for everyone involved. Fathers want more input than just offering suggestions that their ex-wives can ignore. They want to truly share in parenting, including all its responsibilities

Indeed, the current president of the Canadian Equal Parenting Council is a woman. Kris Titus took up the EP cause when she saw how much her children suffered from the absence of their father after their divorce. She became an activist in the family law reform movement when she actually had to fight with a judge to change his award of sole custody to shared parenting, a move that benefited everyone in her family.

via Give fathers their rights back.