An open letter to David Yas, Lawyers Weekly (Mass.) Publisher

Aug. 13, 2009

Dear Mr. Yas

This is in response to an article you wrote in May regarding the efforts of Joe Ureneck and the Fatherhood Coalition to prevent two nominations to the Governor’s Council.
I’ve meaning to respond since I first read it but it’s taken me until now to get around to it.

First off, thank you for quoting my article. I thought that riff on Hillary was one of the better lines in the piece, so thanks for the exposure.

By way of background and to nip in the bud any potential guilt-by-association mischief you might consider to further tarnish the Fathers Rights movement (henceforth: “FR” and “the movement”) and specifically the Fatherhood Coalition, I am no longer associated with them or any other organization. I removed myself from the Fatherhood Coalition quite some time ago for various reasons, mainly personal.

As I’m not associated with any organization, I’m not constrained to censor my words for any of the typical reasons: to conform to what is—believe it or not—the PC conventions of the movement, to get published in the mainstream media, to increase the credibility of the movement or an organization, or even in the vain hope of educating someone from “the other side” who may turn out to be educable.

No, you’re going to get it straight from the shoulder, Mr. Yas.

To further elaborate on that point, I recall the mantra of George Kelly of Concerned Fathers, the reigning FR organization in the state at the time I fell victim to THE THING (refer to Aldous Huxley, “Ape and Essence”) over 15 years ago: “You get more flies with honey than vinegar.” I disagree with that sentiment. I believe the movement needs to focus far more on attacking its enemies rather than trying in vain to educate them.

As such, feel honored that I have taken the time to write this missive to you, as lately personal matters have limited my ability to engage in much activism of any kind. So, my essential message to you is simply this:

David Yas, you are an ignorant fool.

I will repeat this or some variant throughout this piece, as it is what you deserve, what you have earned, and what you need to hear—not just a polite rebuttal of your misguided beliefs.

Ignorance comes in two flavors. One may be ignorant because the truth has been hidden from them. Such ignorance is a lesser offense. Then we have ignorance in spite of the truth. In the matter at hand, this would include people such as you who are actually in the business; those who are confronted with the truth yet wish to remain ignorant and whose wish is being granted, to paraphrase a quip from Christopher Hitchens.

With respect to your kind of ignorance, another quote comes to mind, from the seventies’ comedy troupe Firesign Theatre: “Everything you know is wrong.”

And furthermore your ignorance is not benign, it is harmful. It leads to a continuation of an evil. Evil, furthermore, is not excused by ignorance. After 9-11, I am a believer in the aphorism “evil is as evil does.” The fruits of your ignorance, exemplified by your article, are a contribution to an ongoing evil.

David Yas, you are not only an ignorant fool, you are causing harm.

In your article you carefully choose words and expressions to mock and discredit both Ureneck and Ned Holstein and their claims. To wit, according to you, they (Ureneck and/or Holstein):
• are “plotting to defeat judicial nominees whose philosophies don’t comport with their own.”
• are “spurned by the courts and angered by a society that has been sensitive to battered women.”
• “loudly protest[ing] judicial nominees who have shown any sort of sensitivity to domestic-violence issues.”
• “utter things that many of us would say simply defy reason.”
• “may be on the fringe.”
and:
• “Ureneck didn’t sound like a fanatic when I spoke with him over the phone.”

I will give you one thing, Mr. Yas, unlike most reporters on this subject, you make no attempt to conceal your bias.

No such pejoratives are used when you rescue the reader by introducing the voice of reason, Lydia Watts, from the Victim Rights Law Center, a DV feminazi. [I warned you that I don’t censor my words; regardless of what anyone else might think of Rush Limbaugh he has earned my gratitude for coining this wonderfully evocative, and wholly appropriate, conjunction of “feminist” and “nazi.”]

“No. There is no epidemic of women fabricating tales of domestic violence,” you say, followed by her direct quote: “I have heard thousands of victims’ stories and barely ever doubted one.”

So here’s the 4-1-1, Sherlock. Anyone that claims they have “barely ever doubted” just “one” DV victim’s story out of “thousands” has automatically demonstrated a complete absence of credibility, as any honest person with experience in the courts and a molecule of common sense would know.

And you say, “I believe Watts.”

Davis Yas, you naive, gullible, dupe.

In case it isn’t abundantly clear to the reader what you think of Joe Ureneck and the FR movement by this point in your article, you “recall a scene” from a Gene Hackman sports film where “a narrow-minded fellow” tells coach Hackman, “Look, mister, there’s two kinds of dumb: the guy that gets naked and runs out in the snow and barks at the moon, and the guy who does the same thing in my living room. First one don’t matter; the second one you’re kinda forced to deal with.”

I guess it doesn’t matter exactly how the reader interprets this paragraph. Regardless of whether Ureneck is the “narrow-minded fellow” or “the guy that gets naked and runs out in the snow and barks at the moon” or “the guy who does the same thing in my living room,” the point is clear. Ureneck is not worth listening to.

So here’s the truth about domestic violence. Women initiate interpersonal violence with partners more often than men, as the “evil patriarchy” instills in boys that it is fundamentally un-manly to ever hit women. Women are not so constrained by our cultural mores. Taking into account the scientific data and figuring in a fudge factor for the inherent biases of both the respondents (the man to underreport assault by his wife, in good chivalric fashion; the woman to underreport her own violence, as women are conditioned to see themselves as victims) and the research methodologies (where a man who raises his arms to defend himself when a woman is attacking him is considered the aggressor if the woman’s fists come into contact with his arms), it is probable that women are more likely than men to be the initiators in the majority of real domestic violence incidents.

And here’s another fact you can cast into your “defy reason” category: women often hit themselves and then call the police and show their marks as evidence that they have been beaten. Why don’t you run that by your trustworthy expert Ms. Watts and watch the blood rise to her face?

I repeat, to make sure you get it: women’s initiation of violent assault and battery on their partners and their inflicting their own injuries are facts. I have personally observed this behavior, and when I have heard similar stories by others over and over, there is little reason to doubt them because I experienced it myself, and I am not unusual. It’s called the school of life.

Back to 209A. The vast majority of 209A protection orders taken out by women against the fathers of their children are taken out not for protection, but as weapons to cause harm—specifically, to gain “temporary” custody of children (and a child support order) and immediate occupancy of the driver’s seat in the divorce. Shared custody is off the table from the court’s perspective once there is a 209A order in place. Didn’t you get the memo?

When marriages break down, the parties are usually (always?) angry with each other. There is often a sense of betrayal. The feelings and emotions that arise during the breakdown of a marriage can be the most virulent the parties have ever or will ever experience again. Listen to what women often say when looking back on their divorces, things like, “I can’t believe the things that I did.”

Recall the words of prosecutor Mia Magness in her closing arguments to the jury in the trial of Clara Harris, the woman who killed her husband by repeatedly hitting and running over him with her Mercedes:

“[If you catch your husband cheating] you do what every woman would do in this county: You take him to the cleaners. You take his house, his car, his kids. You make him wish that he was dead. But you don’t kill him!”

Magness argued.

There was no shock or outrage at this admission: that a woman has the power to make a man “wish he were dead” by going after him in divorce court. It’s simply an accepted fact of life. Because it’s a universal truth. Magness didn’t even need to mention the really heinous things women do in divorce, like accusing their husbands of sexually abusing their own children, or rape, sexual assault or battery.

Question: How is it that this potential for using the courts with deliberate malice exists, and yet there is no punishment or even disincentive? Answer: look no further than your own article. The legal system has been hopelessly corrupted by so-called “feminist jurisprudence,” of which the domestic abuse regime is a cornerstone. And stupid, gullible men like you that cheer them on…

Women know that if they wish to “teach him a lesson” the state will be their willing accomplice. How is it possible that in what is supposed to be a civil court there exist offices and agents whose specific purpose is to aid one of the parties, the plaintiff in a domestic abuse allegation—with the further outrage that this “service” is denied to men who are seeking protection from women?

In a divorce, custody battle or other domestic relations, it is not “he said, she said,” nor is it husband v. wife. It is man versus wife-and-state. And man does not have a chance.

All women know this, and every father is a potential victim to it.

Ureneck is dead on when he describes the 209A regime as a “travesty.” I’ll go one further: it’s a monstrosity.

You and your colleagues have been taught the standard catechism, that “not so long ago” (translation: over a century ago) wife and children were property of the father. After the rare divorce, children went with their owner, the father. Wifey, usually lacking the education or professional skills to support herself to any dignified degree, was left to her own devices. Hence “rehabilitative alimony,” a phrase delicious with irony considering the feminist mantra that “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”

Unquestionably, women suffered more after divorce… then. Besides the devastating emotional and psychological toll, there was the often enormous loss of standard of living.

However, ask any father today and he will tell you that he would gladly trade places with the 19th century divorced wife, because today, feminists haven’t merely “leveled the playing field,’ they haven’t just “got even,” they have turned divorce into a process of criminalization for men. The emotional and economic hardships faced by the divorced woman of yesteryear are trivial when compared with the lot of today’s divorced father: loss of children, loss of wealth, loss of one-third of his income for 23 years, and criminalization: a constant threat of loss of liberty itself—as in jail—for an infraction, real or imagined, of the state’s so-called “child support” regime or wholly unconstitutional “domestic abuse” regime, whereby a mere hearsay claim by a woman of illegal contact between a man and his children is sufficient by law to send him to jail for two-and-half years.

David Yas, you ignorant fool.

Several years ago Steve Basile of the Fatherhood Coalition set out to show that abuse protection law is applied differently to men and women, something that is common knowledge to everyone “in the system” regardless of whether or not they choose to admit it. (As of course, everyone in the system does indeed deny it.) When the DV feminazis got wind of the research being done in the Gardner District Court, they furiously went to work. Deliberately manipulating and misinterpreting email messages from the study’s author regarding the progress of the study, they in record time managed to get a bill through the Statehouse amending Massachusetts’ version of the Freedom of Information Act, preventing any further such research. Read the relevant documents on the Fatherhood Coalition web site for a blow-by-blow: http://www.fatherhoodcoalition.org/cpf/Gardner_209A_study_index.htm.

All has been recorded for posterity. Basile also maintains a scrapbook of all news items relating to the study. The study has now been referenced in around twenty other research papers, though feminazis in Massachusetts have sought to discredit the study and Basile himself, referring to him, a software engineer with a Masters degree from UMass Lowell in Applied Math, as “some guy off the street.”

Seeking justice in courts that have become little more than feminist tribunals where men are punished for “gender crimes” and the sins of the patriarchy, is a Kafkaesque nightmare. If you ask me exactly how justice is subverted for a man charged with a gender crime like domestic abuse, I would answer, “in every way that it is possible to do so.” By simply violating rules of procedure such as rules of service; by violating the law itself; by hiding files; by “losing” files; in short, whatever is expedient at the moment to accomplish the goal of preventing the male litigant from moving forward. First the simplest ploys, then, if that isn’t sufficient, the tactics increase in subtlety, with the subsequent punishments for the litigant who dares to challenge the status quo ratcheted up commensurably with the degree of work required to quash his efforts. A loss of a weekend of visitation. His wife’s attorney fees. An increase in his child support, etc., etc.

As has already been pointed out to you, the state’s anti-SLAPP statute, our whistleblower law designed to protect individuals from retaliation who reveal crimes by moneyed and/or powerful enterprises, has been transmogrified to protect the 209A/domestic abuse regime from men who seek redress in higher courts from a foul injustice under the law’s many police-state provisions.

Here’s what the law says:

209A Section 1
“’Abuse’, the occurrence of one or more of the following acts between family or household members:
….
(b) placing another in fear of imminent serious physical harm;”

As has been pointed out to you, this is a subjective standard that cannot be disproved. And you are an attorney?

David Yas, you ignorant, stupid, fool. This law is indeed an ass, as are you.

Along with the isolated cases of women who are legitimately terrified by a violent man in their life (rarely the biological father of her children), 209A is a weapon of choice used by vindictive women to cause harm to a man that they wish to punish, for any of a variety of reasons, to any of a variety of ends, including gaining automatic custody of children, a child support order, a Judgment Nisi on terms most favorable to her, or even something as mundane as a higher number on a public housing list.

The law is written and applied to accommodate such a woman. All attempts to modify the law to just give it the appearance of comportment with foundational liberty precepts such as the presumption of innocence and due process, by removing and/or modifying the most egregious provisions, always die in committee. The dozen or so proposals I crafted into the 209A Reform Bill in 2004 sought to achieve a good balance without diluting or removing any of the real protections in place for true victims of real domestic violence.

Refer to: http://www.fatherhoodcoalition.org/cpf/legislation/2004/209A_Reform_long_w_old_text.htm

Just to quell your impulse to dismiss me as an angry embittered, misogynous man, though I don’t make a habit of explaining myself to people who deserve no such courtesy, know the following. I regained custody of my children 6 years after they were (legally) stolen from me. Both children are college graduates and doing well. We enjoy a wonderful relationship. I am on good terms with my ex-wife who considers me her dearest friend, and who regrets taking the actions she did (which included a 209A order that took me three years to beat once I shed lawyers and represented myself).

Though I no longer have a personal stake in this issue, I remain outraged at the terrible injustices perpetrated against men and their children under the rubric of protecting women from “domestic abuse.” And I expect to continue from time to time to emerge from my now peaceful retirement from the movement to serve up the figurative two-by-four between the eyes to individuals like you who are sorely in need of correction.

The last point I wish to make is the one that ‘good’ FR advocates are expected to make first. It is considered politically suicidal to criticize battered women advocates, and so the nuanced approach is to first offer ‘validation’ for true female victims of domestic violence before letting loose with the criticism. I offer it here last.

Do not infer from anything that I have written that I am somehow unaware of the reality of domestic violence (against women). It is insulting to even suggest such a thing. We are all aware of the all too real cases where vicious men brutally assault and abuse their wives or girlfriends. Even make-believe violence against women is difficult for me to watch; after all, I’m but a helpless victim of patriarchal conditioning. I still cringe during the domestic violence scene in “The Godfather.” One of the most difficult things I have ever had to watch is the infamous example where some animal actually videotaped himself abusing his wife.

And this knowledge contributes to my utter disdain for DV feminazis who exploit real victims of domestic violence by manipulating public perception because of such sympathies and emotions that are experienced by all good people.

Don’t bother to reply. I have no interest in educating the stupid. Besides cc’ing Joe Ureneck (who is unaware of this letter) I will however be posting this on the web as an open letter. All this effort shouldn’t go to waste… perhaps some good may come of it if it inspires others to similarly upbraid fools like you.

If you do wish to actually learn something about the subject, I suggest you get back in touch with Joe Ureneck, one of the few people in the movement whom I hold in high regard—and see if he is willing to overlook your hatchet job and expend some effort to educate you. Better yet, go to an actual courtroom and talk to litigants. And never, ever, trust anything spoken by a feminazi.

FINI

http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-199033051/commentary-domestic-violence-out.html

Domestic violence: out of the frying pan …

By David Yas, Lawyers Weekly, May 4, 2009

Joseph Ureneck really wants me to write that wives physically abuse their husbands just as often as husbands physically abuse their wives.

He wants me to write that the vast majority of women are lying when they claim that they have been beaten by their husbands.

And he wants me to write that the law is so flawed in Massachusetts that men accused of domestic violence lose everything important in their lives without a real chance to defend themselves.

I can’t write that. I won’t. But Ureneck has my attention.

His group and others like it are plotting to defeat judicial nominees whose philosophies don’t comport with their own.

Spurned by the courts and angered by a society that has been sensitive to battered women, fatherhood rights groups have landed on our turf, the judicial system.

Buttoned-downed and organized, they are now making a point of loudly protesting judicial nominees who have shown any sort of sensitivity to domestic-violence issues.

Ureneck didn’t sound like a fanatic when I spoke with him over the phone. The chair of the Fatherhood Coalition, Ureneck in recent days urged the rejection of two judicial nominees, Laurie MacLeod and Sydney Hanlon, at their confirmation hearings. Both judges were ultimately confirmed (MacLeod to the Palmer District Court; Hanlon to the Appeals Court).

Said Ureneck: “We saw two individuals who were proactive in promoting the 209A [restraining-order] regime. … Our perspective is that there is something akin to a Holocaust going on, and so it is worth rejecting a judicial nominee.”

Ned Holstein, executive director of Fathers and Families, claims that “in a relatively short period of time, we will look back on this as an embarrassing era. It reminds me of the McCarthy era, or the anti-immigrant hysteria, or other periods of time when we have singled out particular groups.”

Holstein and Ureneck utter things that many of us would say simply defy reason.

Ureneck estimates that between 80 to 90 percent of women who claim they have been beaten, or are in genuine fear, are lying.

Both men are convinced that the notion that men are more likely to do harm to women than vice versa is a myth, largely citing the comprehensive work of a professor of psychology named Martin S. Fiebert.

“It’s a seriously flawed argument that men are inherently violent,” Ureneck declares.

Holstein says: “There’s no question … it’s not a matter of debate.”

I asked Holstein: Can’t most men overpower most women? Isn’t that common sense?

“When you actually think about it, it’s not common sense at all,” he says, claiming that most people know of an incident of a wife becoming violent with her husband. He recalls the image of a wife hitting her husband with a frying pan.

“Culture thinks that’s funny,” he says. “But if a man did it, it would be unacceptable.”

Lydia Watts, executive director of the Victim Rights Law Center, says what a lot of us think: No. There is no epidemic of women fabricating tales of domestic violence.

She says: “I have heard thousands of victims’ stories and barely ever doubted one.”

I believe Watts. Or at least I want to. But the uneasy truth is that I don’t know for sure.

Watts says that Fiebert’s research is flawed, and perhaps it is. But I cannot stand up and say that Ureneck and Holstein are 100 percent wrong. And, in fact, voices, including that of Governor’s Councilor Christopher A. Iannella, have made the point at confirmation hearings that reform is needed in the law to give divorced dads a fair shake.

Ureneck and Holstein may be on the fringe. They may even be downright sexist. (Mark Charalambous, who writes a column for the Fatherhood Coalition’s website, wrote on the subject of then-presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton: “There has never been a female president. Ergo, no woman candidate can be perceived as ‘presidential,’ assuming a rational interpretation of the word. When one thinks of the phrase ‘commander in chief,’ a pear-shaped woman in a pants-suit doesn’t come to mind.”)

But they also may have found a comfortable forum to state their case.

Hanlon, a leading voice against domestic violence during her days as a practicing lawyer, heard no fewer than five speeches from representatives from the Fatherhood Coalition at her confirmation hearing. That’s a lot, even given the Jerry-Springer-like hysteria that can erupt at any given Governor’s Council hearing.

As it turns out, Ureneck had rallied his group with the following post on the coalition’s website: “Please rendezvous with Joe Ureneck who will be at the Governor’s Office and will be wearing a badge that says, ‘Vote No on Hanlon.’”

The Fatherhood Coalition then uploaded to YouTube video footage of the hearing that its members had shot – in 13 parts. I’ll let you know when I’m done watching them all.

And this sort of thing will continue.

“This is a fast growing movement,” Holstein says of calling out judges and judicial appointees. “It’s not new in concept, but it is new in execution.”

I am reminded of a line from the film “Hoosiers,” when a narrow-minded fellow is concerned that Gene Hackman’s new-to-town, unconventional basketball coach is turning the small town of Hickory upside-down. He tells the coach: “Look, mister, there’s two kinds of dumb: the guy that gets naked and runs out in the snow and barks at the moon, and the guy who does the same thing in my living room. First one don’t matter; the second one you’re kinda forced to deal with.”

Yes, judicial nominees are going to have to deal with groups like Ureneck’s and Holstein’s.

Watts, of the Victim Rights Law Center, says these groups “are free to do what they want, but the frustration I have is that this is a calculated effort against judges. These are judges who have shown strong understanding and commitment, and they are penalized for doing so.”

The modern manifestations of free speech – public hearings, websites, the vast chaos of the blogosphere – tend to turn the sullen into spokespeople.

Seeing these groups protest at judicial confirmation hearings gives dads who have been accused of domestic violence some hope. But is it false hope?

Before showing up at a hearing and telling their tale, men embittered by their treatment in the legal system should demand answers.

Are these leaders arguing facts, or are they playing on emotions? Will attacking a judicial nominee keep an unqualified person off the bench, or will it merely stain the reputation of someone who will serve Massachusetts well?

Fatherhood rights groups should be careful that their attacks are really meant to improve the judiciary and are not just borne out of the most contemptible of motives: revenge.

END

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 13th, 2009 at 11:22 am and is filed under Child Support & Custody, Conservatism, Crime, Culture, Domestic Violence, Fatherhood, Feminism, Judicial Activism, Law, Men's Rights Activism, Vox Populi, parents rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. | 154 views | Trackback | Print this page |

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