‘Visitation is automatically stopped once a telephone report is made..from any source, alleging sexual abuse…No questions asked–the caller remains anonymous’  

Dr.  J Michael Bone, PhD, one of the nation’s foremost experts on Parental Alienation, recently sent me this letter notifying me of a new, anti-father Florida law. Bone writes:

“House Bill 77, entitled the ‘Keeping Children Safe Act,’ is very flawed and will probably be challenged on a constitutional basis. Until this occurs, it has the potential to wreak havoc on many fathers. The bill went into effect on July 15, 2007. The subject of the Bill, as the title suggests, is for the safety of children.  However as we both know these attempts to create legislation for protection also become portals whereby falsely accusing parents can successfully separate children from a parent (typically fathers).
 
“Here are some of the chilling details.
 
“Visitation is automatically stopped once a telephone report is made, essentially from any source, alleging sexual abuse.  No questions asked.  The caller also remains anonymous.  Visitation continues to be interrupted, until the court has a hearing about this, at which point, the court may allow visitation to resume.  It sounds to me like there is an implicit presumption of guilt versus one of innocence.  This however is nothing new.

“At the hearing, the accused must prove by clear and convincing evidence (the highest of legal thresholds), that the safety of the child would not be threatened by continued visitation.

“Even if the accused is victorious at the hearing, the court may then permit continued visitation, but it s not required to reinstate the prior schedule.

“At the hearing, the court may rely on evidence that is not admissible in court.  This could mean hearsay, outright lies, you name it.

“If such allegations are made in the first place, the court must then appoint a GAL or an Attorney ad Litem, with special training in the detection of sexual child abuse. First, the law does not specify what kind of training would be required.  However, even if it was substantial training required, we must be reminded that investigation of allegations of sexual abuse is among the most complex and difficult clinical evaluative areas that exists.  Even the most otherwise competent clinician, can and does often bungle this.  We must also keep in mind that there is no accepted psychological instrument that is thought to be reliable in this area.  So, in essence, the court is appointing a lawyer or sometimes just a volunteer that took a GAL course to do the equivalent of psychological brain surgery.

“If that is not enough, subsequent to the original allegations, if the court hears from the child, though any source (read the other parent), that the accused is trying to influence what the child says, then visitation is immediately suspended.  No questions.

“Further, if the child is in therapy, the therapist may be asked to opine about the wisdom of continued visitation.  When we are reminded that, therapists for alienated children most often buy directly into what the alienated child is saying, one can see how this will basically authorize and then protect a therapist from opining about that which they as a therapist should not be opining about at all.  We all know that in alienation cases, the therapist is most often heavily influenced by the alienating parent.

“Obviously,  this new legislation slipped under the radar and is now law in Florida.  The concerns that I have are the obvious ones:  that the purpose of this legislation, to protect children from being sexually abused, is much more likely to have the effect of supporting the process of alienation.  I do believe that this law will be significantly corrected or repealed since it truly does violate certain civil rights, and ignores due process. However we know that this will take considerable time, and until then many fathers will be at great peril of losing their children.”
 
The text of the bill can be found here. It’s passage “under the radar” is another indicator of the weakness of our movement. We should have a full time legislative associate/lobbyist in Tallahassee who would have picked up on this bill and helped organize opposition to it. Like Michael Robinson of the California Alliance for Families and Children recently did with AB 612–to learn more, see Good News: Bill to Make It Harder to Protect Children from Parental Alienation Dies.

Online Dating Rights Online Dating Rights opposes the new federal International Marriage Broker Regulation Act, which requires Americans who seek to meet foreigners via the internet to have a criminal background check and an intrusive report about intimate details of one’s life BEFORE any communication–the first time in US history that such checks have been required.