PBS: "Fathers; Guilty Until Proven Innocent"

Fatherhood doesn't catch a lot of breaks.

The courts routinely dismiss its importance, denying fathers custody or, often, meaningful visitation as a matter of course.

Politicians? Quick - go through the campaign literature of many "feminist" politicians, and see how many times the phrase "women and their children" pops up. (Answer: Many. It should almost be a word on its own; womenandtheirchildren).

And the media?

Wendy McElroy of IFeminists notes that the "Fair, balanced, unbiased" PBS is in a brouhaha right now over the issue:

Dr. Scott Loeliger says the producers of the show ignored extensive court findings, records and testimony that he claims prove it was his ex-wife, and not he, who abused their daughter and her half-sister.

Loeliger, a medical doctor in Northern California, says he provided documentation of the mother’s abuse to a co-producer of the show, "Breaking the Silence: Children’s Stories," six months before it aired, and that his pleas to have his case removed from the show were ignored.

Aired by PBS on Oct. 20, the much-publicized documentary presents "children and battered mothers [who] tell their stories of abuse at home and continued trauma within the courts," which allegedly return children to abusive parents.

A spokeswoman for PBS, Director of Corporate Communications Jan McNamara, says the accuracy of "Breaking the Silence" is under "official review."

Part of the issue is the notion of "Parental Alienation Syndrome", the idea that one parent can over time turn a child against the other parent. McElroy notes:

Critics of the fathers' rights movement and "Breaking the Silence" contend that PAS does not exist as a valid psychiatric syndrome.

...which is true, in the sense that North America did not once exist as a "valid continent" according to European geographers. But as we've seen in this blog, it happens. In fact, given the extent to which political correctness has infiltrated science - and the extent to which psychology isn't a science, one might wonder if there's another reason PAS isn't "recognized".

In an article entitled "PBS Declares War on Dads", [Radio host Glenn] Sacks not only disputed the premise of the documentary -- that courts assign custody to abusive fathers -- but also its use of statistics. PBS has reportedly received over 6,000 protest calls, emails and letters.

Women's rights organizations have launched a counter-effort. The National Organization for Women advised their membership to send emails of support to PBS, noting, "Your emails are especially important, as we know that PBS is being flooded with emails from bogus 'fathers' rights' activists opposing the airing of the film."NOW, by the way, thinks all fathers rights groups are "bogus", because they consider the very concept of father's rights bogus. To put this in perspective, NOW opposes laws that would require family courts to presume that Joint Physical Custody is the best situation for children - because it's inconvenient for women and keeps children with abusive men (since they presume most men are abusive).

The documentary's ultimate credibility may hinge on one question: does it incorrectly portray Amina's mother as an heroic mom instead of a child abuser?

Loeliger's argument that he and the mother have been misrepresented has precedent. Loeliger says he first learned of the accusations of his abuse through a Jan. 20, 2005 Davis Enterprise article titled "Teen Turns Tug-of-War Lessons Into Message." It claimed that Loeliger had verbally and physically abused his daughter.

On April 5, the Enterprise published a retraction and an apology to Loeliger, stating that the story "contained many factual inaccuracies."

The stakes on a comparable apology from PBS are high.

Read the whole thing.

I'm trying to book McElroy on the NARN. This issue is a vital one for the future of our society...

...as we'll discuss later.

Glenn Sacks, by the way, has a harrowing article on Parental Alienation Syndrome:

In it the filmmakers label PAS "junk science" and assert that it "has been used in countless cases by abusive fathers to gain custody of their children" by falsely accusing the mothers of PAS.

Despite the film's claims, research shows that parental alienation is a common facet of divorce or separation. For example, a longitudinal study published by the American Bar Association in 2003 followed 700 "high conflict" divorce cases over a 12 year period and found that elements of PAS were present in the vast majority of them.

The most extreme examples of PAS are the false allegations of sexual abuse which are often used for advantage in custody cases. Canadian Senator Anne Cools, a prominent feminist who led Canada's battered women's shelter movement during the 1970s, labels this tactic "the heart of darkness." She says:

"I've studied this extensively and I've placed on the Canadian Senate record 52 cases where there was a finding that the accusations were false, and there are countless more. Studies have shown that under these circumstances false accusations far outnumber truthful ones."

Read that whole thing, too.

(Via email from Lady Logician at Savage Republican)

Posted by Mitch at November 10, 2005 07:03 AM | TrackBack