Kids thrown in juvenile detention for refusing to see possibly violent father

Oh and Dr. Phil is a hack quasi-psychologist (not licensed to practice).

I mean, if some children I had never even met were detained and I was told only I had the power to decide who visited then or to get them released, I would drop everything to resolve it, as I believe most adults would do. It is shocking behaviour on the part of the father.

So true. I cannot imagine the pain if I though my DD was going to be locked up. Fly to another country? Not a hope in hell.

It's like some awful 1984/Clockwork Orange thing. Feel a certain way or get locked up. Deny the evidence of your own eyes and submit to the Court. Utterly horrifying.

IYSWIM so even if they are refusing to see their dad just because they feel like it, then that's not a reason to send them to prison and tell them they may be incarcerated til age 18. It's nuts.

But surely it is not the place of the courts to imprison 9yo for being recalcitrant.

Inconsistency too, in that the children are deemed old enough to be blamed, in fact imprisoned, for making their own minds up about seeing their father, but not deemed to be old enough to be reliable witnesses to his alleged violence. Do they know what they're doing or don't they? Have they been alienated or are they being deliberately obstructive for, er, no particular reason? Judge is so far off the planet I'm expecting her image to be beamed back from the New Horizons probe any day now.

It's shocking and abusive isn't it?

And yet people still say "well we don't know if he was abusive".

We're not allowed to draw any inferences about whether or not he was abusive in the past (which the 15 year old boy says he was and he witnessed) from his current behaviour. The fact that we know past behaviour is the best guide to current and future behaviour in most cases, must be totally disregarded because innocent before proven guilty.

We all have to hold judgement like we did on Bill Cosby before we found out he admitted being a rapist, because a man who commits violence against women and/ or children, must always always be given the benefit of the doubt, however strong the evidence is against her, while a woman who says she was abused by a man, however likely her allegation is, is merely Medea's heir and so unreliable.

It is like the wisdom of Solomon because you have two people who claim to care about the children.

On hearing that the children are being sent to a detention center, one asks for that not to be the case and works to get them out. The other (the only one allowed to visit the children) does not visit them, but leaves the country for work purposes.

No caring parent would leave a 9,10 and 15 year old who had committed no crime in a detention center. They would do everything in their power to get them out. The conclusion to draw is that the dad doesn't care about the children.

I mean, if some children I had never even met were detained and I was told only I had the power to decide who visited then or to get them released, I would drop everything to resolve it, as I believe most adults would do. It is shocking behaviour on the part of the father.

It's been compared to the wisdom of Solomon all over the Internet.

I think so. One of those chat show people.

There's a lot of them around

"Let's have a heated debate about a very marginal issue which doesn't affect many people at all, but men are doing badly at the hands of women because of it so it's a huge overweening societal problem and we must all be very worried about it and Something Must Be Done."

There are very few programmes where they cover the issues where staggeringly large numbers of women are doing badly at the hands of men. Proportionately if you were an alien and got all your information about Earth from TV heated debate shows, you would think we lived in a vicious matriarchy where women have all the power.

Can't think why. Oh hold on...

What is Dr Phil?

Is it like um, that bloke who's like jerry springer? jeremy kyle? That's my guess.

And of course this guy is abusive FGS.

He's thinks it's OK to have his kids sent to prison for not loving him the way he feels he deserves and then instead of pleading with the judge to put his children's interests first, he went off on a business trip.

If you don't think that's abusive, you're probably not doing parenting right.

Imagine a woman posting on Mumsnet: "I don't think my children love me, so I've grounded them/ taken away screen time/ sent them to the naughty step/ insert sanction here until they do".

There would be a litany of why she is a fucking terrible mother who doesn't know the first thing about parenting and yet even after this guy gets on a plane for his business trip, we still bend over backwards to give him the benefit of the doubt.

"People have seen enough of Dr Phil to work out how parental alienation works and that it's a huge problem in child socialisation/custody/visitation"

Actually I don't believe it is a huge problem at all.

I think it's a tiny, tiny problem that has been blown out of all proportion by men who as Gatorade says, are simply incapable of seeing their own behaviour the way their kids do - because they're always right, the fact that their kids think they are wrong, is not evidence that they might be wrong, or that their kids are actual people with their own opinions, it's evidence that mother is a malevolent bitch who shouldn't be allowed to have custody of her children.

Parental alienation rings all misogynists' bells because it chimes with their fear that their abuse of women and children will be noticed and rewarded with the attitudes from their children that they deserve, rather than the attitudes to which they feel they're entitled - the attitudes due to the pater familias. They invented Medea as the most extreme version of a woman who, because she has control of their children, can use them to hurt a man. She's the embodiment of why women can't be trusted with their own children and this nonsense about the so-called widespread problem of parental alienation, is just an updated modern version of that deep discomfort men have about women's care and control of children.

The media have taken it up enthusiastically and promoted it as a serious, huge problem for the same reason they take up and pretend any problem, however unusual, which women might cause men, such as false rape allegations, false DV allegations, denying contact with children unreasonably - is a huge, enormous, out of control problem - because we live in a woman-hating society and people are much more comfortable with the idea that it's more likely that a woman is a malevolent, wicked, dangerous bitch, than that a man might be an entitled abuser.

That's why Dr Phil has so much about it. That's why judges are so antsy about it. Not because it's a serious problem, but because any challenge to men's right to be abusive to women and kids and still have their kids adore them, is felt to be an outrageous attack upon their human rights.

I mean yes obviously some parents will manage to turn their children but that it wasn't a widespread common "thing" that it got painted as in the 80s or whenever it was.

I thought parental alienation had been debunked as a "thing". That yes some parents say mean stuff but actually children aren't stupid, and further that most times when children didn't want to see a parent they had their own (genuine) reasons?

Have you read the court transcript it is horrifying.

The judge is incredibly spiteful. She wants to scare and upset the children. She says she is going to lock them up until age 18, the youngest is 9. She asks them how they will feel having to go to the bathroom (toilet) in front of other people. She says they will be prevented from talking to each other when inside.

Have you read it. I don't know why you are defending her Dad.

DawWasHere because the dad could have acted to avoid the children going to prison, but instead he left straight away on business for a fortnight.

The mum didn't want them to go to prison.

That was what she meant. The judge said, shall I incarcerate these children t least until September. The mum said please don't. The dad said OK and he was the one who had the power to stop it and he didn't and just left. The mum was not allowed to visit or anything, or anyone else on her side. And the dad didn't obviously, as he had flown back to Israel.

That is what that post is about.

Zippey I would imagine it is just you, yes!

Did you miss the part about him hitting the mother in front of his children?

Or the part about him agreeing that the children should go to jail?

It must be just me who has a smidgen of sympathy for the father, if the judges statement is true and the mother has alienated her children. It's similar to the case where the mother absconded for a week after custody had been given to the father. A quick look on these forums will also show women are not always the good guys.

Having said that, the judge's remedy is not going to have a positive effect on the father child bond. Counselling is a more appropriate solution.

DadWasHere My DF believed my DM alienated me from him. She never said one negative word about him, and always encouraged me to reply to his letters. But I could see what an unpleasant character he was from a fairly early age. I remember feeling quite confused that she wouldn't agree with me. A lot of abusive/neglectful parents just don't see their children as having their own minds - why would they, they're just belongings after all! So no matter how old their children get, no matter how much shitty behaviour they witness, it's always the mothers fault for alienating them early on.

Judgement of Solomon, innit. Though Solomon was famously wise, and gave custody of the child to the parent who put its welfare before their own rights. This judge would appear to be... not quite so wise.

How so? Solomon had to judge between a parent and someone who was lying about being a parent, not two parents. In that respect he had it easy. People have seen enough of Dr Phil to work out how parental alienation works and that it's a huge problem in child socialisation/custody/visitation. A parent becomes convinced that contact with the other parent is not in the best interests of the child and often its not simply spite, they genuinely believe it. Both parents often come to believe it over time. I am willing to bet the most common denominator, more common than a parent actually being a significantly negative force on their child enough to warrant no contact, is parental input that at best unintentionally poisons the well or at worst directly damages a childs view of the other parent.

The judge is certainly not fit to hold office. She comes across as seriously sociopathic and obsessed with wielding power - it's pretty scary. But the US is getting more and more overrun with individuals displaying psychotic levels of misogyny equivalent to the Islamic State headbangers.

"Your father has never been convicted of anything."

This is taking 'innocent until proven guilty' a bit far; you saw your dad hit your mum, but since he hasn't been convicted of it in court, you have to pretend it didn't happen

That should work.

Apart from the first part with the judge, this is the supposedly impartial children's guardian in the legal system speaking, again - shocking. He is supposed to be caring for them:

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It seems to me that courts must be used to forcing mothers to make children behave nicely to fathers, court officials etc, or the court can claim the children are disturbed and give residency to the father.

I believe in this case, another judge already gave residency to the mother on the basis the children did not have an established residency of enough duration in Israel for the father to take them to Israel.

So there is nothing the court can do to control the kids. They can't give the kids to the father. They can't force the kids to be nice to a sheriff (even one who has a gun as the guardian points out!), see a therapist or love their dad. The kids can't be forced to do anything, and are not criminals. And that lack of power seems to be really pissing all these adults off.

And after the kids have been in detention for two weeks, they are still refusing to see the father. I think that regardless of what either of the parents did, the court situation with adults in the court behaving like that judge and guardian over five years would traumatise any child.

The younger two were four and five at the start of the divorce. All they really know of their father is them being in court, being in therapy and being interviewed by that court guardian guy.

The father agreed to the children going to prison. The mother didn't. Remind me again which one is supposed to be the abusive one?

Judgement of Solomon, innit. Though Solomon was famously wise, and gave custody of the child to the parent who put its welfare before their own rights. This judge would appear to be... not quite so wise.