Posts

War on Mothers: Part 2

By Barry Goldstein Gender Bias At least 40 states and many judicial districts have created court-sponsored gender bias committees.  Although they have used widely varied approaches and strategies over a few decades, they have all found substantial gender bias against women.  In earlier studies there was a focus on unwanted touching and inappropriate requests for […]

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Of Sluts and Bastards: The criminalization of women’s resistance in the court system

by Louise Armstrong: A summary by Janet Dodd, (surrounding an internet discussion on CPS): The book is fabulous.  Historically, the concept of “family privacy”, has functioned, in practice, as protection from public scrutiny for families headed by able-bodied, middle-class (and above), white, hetero-sexual men.  You show very clearly in your book that for the most […]

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Safe Child Act

Improving the Safety of Children involved in Child Custody Cases The thrust of our Safe Child Act is that courts must make the health and safety of children the first priority in any decision about child custody and visitation.  Although there is a long history of society treating children like property, it is hard to […]

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Dylan Farrow Speaks Out about Sexual Abuse

by Barry Goldstein The original ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) study led by Dr. Vincent Felitti included interviews with over 17,000 middle age and middle class patients of Kaiser Permanente. In a confidential survey 22% of the patients said they had been sexually abused as children. They had no reason or benefit for lying and it […]

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Using The Saunders’ Report- Part One

Part I: The Game Changing Findings The United States Department of Justice provided a grant to support a major study by Dr. Daniel Saunders of the University of Michigan to determine how well court professionals and particularly evaluators are responding to domestic violence cases. The study comes in the context of frequent and substantial complaints […]

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Will the real hero please stand up!

The Quincy Model to the Quincy Solution By Barry Goldstein Bill Delahunt served as a Congressman from Massachusetts for 14 years.  I can easily imagine some people who are frustrated with our political system and debate would think of him as just a typical politician.  But Bill Delahunt is a hero who saved many lives […]

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Understanding Domestic Violence Dynamics: A Prerequisite For Court Professionals To Work On DV Custody Cases

by Barry Goldstein The frequency with which judges, lawyers, evaluators, child protective caseworkers and other professionals fail to recognize true complaints of domestic violence made by mothers in child custody cases has led to extensive discussions among domestic violence experts about the need for training. In many of these cases the professionals denied valid complaints […]

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Domestic Violence Cases Require Domestic Violence Experts: Duh!

By Barry Goldstein I can understand why the court system did not immediately seek to learn from and rely on domestic violence experts when domestic violence first became a public issue in the mid to late 1970s. There was no research available and few domestic violence advocates. A popular assumption and misconception was that domestic […]

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What Does Safe Feel Like?

The Real Meaning of Stopping Domestic Violence: Helping Potential Victims Feel Safe By Barry Goldstein   Dara Carlin is one of the best domestic violence advocates and told Elizabeth Liu and me a story when we were working on our book to train attorneys. Dara has a friend who is literally seven feet tall and […]

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Shared Custody Issues in the Context of Domestic Violence

by Barry Goldstein In a Queens New York custody case, the court appointed a prominent psychologist to evaluate a young couple.  The psychologist was frequently used as an expert in the New York courts despite a fathers’ rights bias that included a quotation in a New York Times article supporting shared parenting.  Throughout his testimony […]

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