E-Newsletter/Week in Review (12/23/08): Dad-Bashing Texas AG Finally Finds ‘Deadbeat Dad’ with a Good Job; CA. False Child Sex Abuse Scandal?
Has Texas AG Abbott Finally, Finally Found a 'Deadbeat Dad' with a Good Job?
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott recently got major headlines for nabbing former major league baseball player Troy Neel (pictured) for being a "deadbeat dad." Abbott has launched repeated, well-publicized campaigns against child support debtors, featuring many arrests.After years of harassing day laborers, roofers, janitors and maintenance men, Abbott finally, finally arrested a "deadbeat" with a good job.
What I find most troubling about Neel's behavior is not his alleged failure to pay child support but instead his apparent absence from his children's lives. That's assuming that the children's mother would have allowed him to be a part of his kids' lives, which may or may not have been the case.
Neel may well be the despicable deadbeat that Abbott claims. I do, however, have some questions. To learn more, click here.
Fraudulent child abuse claims in Santa Clara County?
"Prosecutors said the trove of tapes came to light after medical experts hired by two convicted defendants belatedly discovered videotapes in their cases and concluded they contradicted medical findings that sexual abuse had occurred.
"In those cases the new evidence proved crucial — one conviction has been overturned, and the second is in jeopardy...
"Though prosecutors downplay the significance of the tapes, experts for the defense say the videotapes could make a huge difference in child sex-abuse cases that rest heavily on medical evidence. Sometimes the allegations come years after the alleged incidents, making the search for physical trauma like scars, tearing or notching on the hymen or anus that much more challenging.
"Additionally, in many cases children recant their accusations before trial — so medical evidence is even more critical."
Agustin Uribe’s conviction for sexually abusing a 5-year-old girl was overturned by California’s Sixth Court of Appeals last year. Why? The San Jose Mercury News reports that the hospital at which the girl was examined maintained a videotape of the examination which showed that no abuse had occurred. Read the story here.
Now it develops that the hospital has some 3,000 newly-found videotapes of similar examinations in child abuse cases since 1991. As you might expect, defense attorneys in pending and closed cases are seeking access to those tapes.
To learn more, click here.
More False Abuse Allegations Unmasked
Following up on the piece out of San Jose, CA about hospital videotapes being used to reveal false allegations of child sexual abuse, comes this from the Legal Intelligencer. Amazingly enough, the headline and much of the article are devoted to the excessive fees charged by attorneys in the case. But that's the minor detail of the case--to learn more, click here.
Vicki Courtney: 'Any reference to marriage in fashion magazines is a stern warning to avoid it like the plague'
In the new book Five Conversations You Must Have with Your Daughter, youth culture expert Vicki Courtney advises mothers to tell their daughters that "It’s OK to dream about marriage and motherhood" and says that young women have been "brainwashed" against marriage.
Courtney writes:
Any reference to marriage in fashion magazines is a stern warning to avoid it like the plague...God forbid that any of our girls say they are looking forward to becoming wives and mothers! They will likely be met with pitying stares that imply they lack the common sense or smarts to make it on their own.
Courtney says "Clearly our young people are buying the message." To learn more, click here.
Stop the Presses! Marriage benefits children!
Writing in Volume 42 of the San Diego Law Review in 2005, then-University of Maryland law professor and feminist Robin Fretwell Wilson gave a masterful summary of existing social science data on the effects of marriage on children. And the data are clear - marriage is good for children.
Children of married couples are, on average, less likely to engage in delinquent behavior, less likely to be suspended or expelled from school and are more likely to go to college than are their peers without married parents.
The data go on to point out why children of married parents have better outcomes; married fathers are more involved in their children's lives than are co-habiting fathers. "Obviously, marriage is differentiating the investment fathers make in their children," and this is true "above and beyond the characteristics of the fathers themselves."
To learn more, click here.
Some of the other issues I'm covering this week include:
Ex-Con: 'If my dad had done something like that to me, it probably would have helped me' Nice piece on foster child grown up
The Boy Crisis in Education and the Boy Parent Dilemma
How do you give a man back 20 years?
Progress--If a Wife Attacks Her Sleeping Husband with a Meat Cleaver, the Media Will Actually...
A Story about Anti-Father Bias in DV Restraining Order Proceedings
Well, that's OK then 'Dumb Blond' Commercials (Video)
Times are hard--Let's trash men
Come Back Gary Cooper: Male Feminization in the Movies
Ex-LA County DA Gil Garcetti's Child Support Enforcement Victimized Thousands of Innocent Men
Surprise, female-on-male violence is OK after all
Feminist TV Ad Pushes 'Wage Gap' Myth (Video)Some thoughts on mob-friendly political applause lines
To comment on what I've written or to join the lively discussion on my website, simply click on the "comments" link below each blog post on my website.
(To avoid the previous confusion, comments on the E-Newsletter itself are disabled--please comment on the individual blog posts themselves.)
Best Wishes,
Glenn Sacks
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