TWO TANGOS FOR CASH IN AMERICAN JUSTICE
Alex S. Gabor
October 04, 2006
There is an article written by David Heleniak which is poignant to say the least. He is a family law attorney who wrote about Yvette Cade, who was doused with gas and set afire by her ex after her request to extend a restraining order was denied by a judge.
Poor Yvette, what could she possibly have done to her ex to make him want to kill her?
In American society there is no justification for killing unless you are President Bush and have access to weapons of mass destruction and biological chemical weapons, and have been given a message from God to invade foreign lands.
Judge Richard A. Palumbo, the poor fellow, must have been too old to be a judge.
Can judges actually be non partisan, non politically motivated? Can you really blame judges who get paid by the government to administer justice?
Roger Hargrave on the other hand is a sick man. How could he possibly think that dousing someone with gasoline would be some sort of fair justice for whatever rage was boiling inside him. This is just another manifestation of insanity. Was he on drugs or something?
Sure, interview Cade, and don't talk to the judge or to the perpetrator (despicable as his act was), Nancy Grace should go to Fox News where there is "fair and balanced" reporting. (joke)
Congressman Ted Poe was right, the judge needs to leave the bench, in fact, the entire judicial system in America needs changing.
If Judges served as volunteers, you would see a lot more justice, less crime, and less suffering in America. The money factor prejudices too many cases.
So now Palumbo is retired and has no further responsibility in the matter. Judges, according to various laws cannot be sued, but they can be held accountable.
If you are a woman requesting a restraining order against a man, whether the judges are men or women, there is a 99% probability that the Judge will automatically grant the request for the order, whereas if you are a man requesting a restraining order against a woman, there is a 99% chance that the request will be denied unless the other side has a chance to file a response before it goes into effect. It does not matter if the judge is male or female. What matters is who is filing the complaint.
In other words, woman are more likely to get ex-parte restraining orders granted than men, particularly in divorce and family law cases.
Just like the metaphor Heleniak used by citing the FDA examples in his article, a judge can err by approving a restraining order based on false allegations, or deny a restraining order which results in the further harm or death of the Petitioner.
In either case, there is usually not a sufficient preponderance of evidence when such cases are initially filed.
Most of them are based on opinion, conjecture, hearsay evidence, but they are granted anyway especially if you are a woman filing against a man.
The media only pounces when a story carries more than a few ounces of weight with the general audience.
The public usually denounces without sufficient knowledge or proof and bases most of its opinion on faulty logic and missing data.
The conflicts created by the medias' inaccurate reporting tends to skew the perception of the public, and the public always invents informaton when it is lacking.
Congress pronounces from both sides of its' mouth and still has a lower approval rating than Bush.
They can pronounce all they want, it will not change the court system in this country as long as Judges, Clerks, Lawyers and anyone involved in the "criminal" justice system continue to garner fat annual paychecks for basically pushing papers around that wrap nooses around peoples necks and destroy lives, regardless of which side of a case one finds themselves.
Getting paid to administer justice is a conflict of interest.
Although public sentiment is growing, you still don't see all that many judges, lawyers, clerks, and people who work in the myriad layers of the national, state and local judicial systems in this country getting excoriated and punished in modern-day pillories: congressional hearings, television news magazines, and newspaper editorials.
In this country politics cannot be far removed from money, and money cannot be far removed from justice. O.J. Simpson proved that once and for all.
It may soon be more politically correct to say that women can and do use false allegations of domestic violence to gain sole custody and to get their children to hate and fear their fathers. But generally speaking, women who do that sort of thing have been alienating their children's fathers through various means long before it gets to the point of needing a restraining order.
My mother used to tell me what a horrible man my father was constantly as I grew up. She died when she was 38 of cancer.
Perhaps that was her justice. And yes he did beat the pulp out of me on more than one occaision, but I still loved him. And I wound up loving him more than I loved my mother. Does that make me sick?
If a child has the great capacity to love, it will love no matter what is done to it. That is why mothers can scream and yell at their children, make them cry and suffer at all manner of verbal and physical abuses, and they still love her.
When a restraining order doesn’t snowball into complete parental alienation, a judge’s declaration that a father is an abuser can permanently tarnish his image in his child’s eyes according to Heleniak.
What is really missing here is that both parents are usually abusive in any family law matter but the media focus is always on one side or the other.
Most abusive parents never grew up. They are like two siblings fighting over who gets to play the next new video game on the console when there is only one computer in the house. Surely the courts know or should know this, and must always take one side or the other. They have a 50% chance of getting it right and 50% of getting it wrong.
For one parent to point the finger at the other before the other gets to point the finger back only results in teaching children to carry on being children and never really grow up.
It sticks them in time, keeps their attention trapped in trauma and gradually erodes the joy of being a child and growing up.
Children in abusive families do grow up and some even overcome the tendency to commit the same sins as their fathers and mothers. Those are strong willed successful children. It might even take 50 years, but eventually we gain wisdom from all experiences we go through in any family relationship.
Heleniaks' statment that "damage to father/child relationships and to children’s mental health caused by the overzealous entering of restraining orders is seldom if ever reported, while the harm caused by overtly violent acts following the failure to enter restraining orders most certainly is," only points to the media flaws.
It may be true enough, but what the media is really missing here is that it takes two to tango. A fight is not a fight unless there are at least two parties involved, and usually, there is false information, misunderstanding and perhaps even a third party, hidden from view of both parents that keeps the conflict in perpetual motion.
Even delusional rantings of homeless people involve an imaginary second party which they are talking to as they meander through the streets. Surely you have seen such people. But something triggered their anger and rant and they react to it as a result of a causal third party agent.
That third party could even be a child who has learned to manipulate one or the other parent into getting what it wants from the parent who is usually the "good guy".
Heleniaks' statement that, like the FDA officials worrying about the headlines, judges deciding whether to enter domestic violence restraining orders have their careers to think about in addition to the merits of the particular cases before them so that when in doubt, they err on the side of hidden harm, may be true as well.
If judges, jurors, clerks, lawyers, and legal judicial system workers were paid on statistics which resulted in fewer crimes, fewer conflicts, and fewer errors of judgement, they would work themselves out of their jobs.
They are all paid to create more conflict, not less...thus you have what any rational human being would jokingly call a truly "criminal justice" system.
I agree that facts should be determined by several fresh, open minds, not one with a career on the line. Jurors, relatively anonymous one-time actors in the judicial system, are far less concerned with extraneous matters than are judges.
It may be time for such cases to be brought before Grand Jury investigations before they are automatically authorized, but then again, there is the time element when a real abuser is going after a potential victim.
Surely in the wake of the Yvette Cade tragedy, it is more critical than ever that juries, not judges, be used to decide when domestic violence restraining orders are warranted, but then you would have to pay 12 people instead of just one, and the courts are already so backed up, it would only give more time for real abusers to strike again.
The real answer lies in money. The price of freedom is justice and real justice is priceless.
Poor Yvette, what could she possibly have done to her ex to make him want to kill her?
In American society there is no justification for killing unless you are President Bush and have access to weapons of mass destruction and biological chemical weapons, and have been given a message from God to invade foreign lands.
Judge Richard A. Palumbo, the poor fellow, must have been too old to be a judge.
Can judges actually be non partisan, non politically motivated? Can you really blame judges who get paid by the government to administer justice?
Roger Hargrave on the other hand is a sick man. How could he possibly think that dousing someone with gasoline would be some sort of fair justice for whatever rage was boiling inside him. This is just another manifestation of insanity. Was he on drugs or something?
Sure, interview Cade, and don't talk to the judge or to the perpetrator (despicable as his act was), Nancy Grace should go to Fox News where there is "fair and balanced" reporting. (joke)
Congressman Ted Poe was right, the judge needs to leave the bench, in fact, the entire judicial system in America needs changing.
If Judges served as volunteers, you would see a lot more justice, less crime, and less suffering in America. The money factor prejudices too many cases.
So now Palumbo is retired and has no further responsibility in the matter. Judges, according to various laws cannot be sued, but they can be held accountable.
If you are a woman requesting a restraining order against a man, whether the judges are men or women, there is a 99% probability that the Judge will automatically grant the request for the order, whereas if you are a man requesting a restraining order against a woman, there is a 99% chance that the request will be denied unless the other side has a chance to file a response before it goes into effect. It does not matter if the judge is male or female. What matters is who is filing the complaint.
In other words, woman are more likely to get ex-parte restraining orders granted than men, particularly in divorce and family law cases.
Just like the metaphor Heleniak used by citing the FDA examples in his article, a judge can err by approving a restraining order based on false allegations, or deny a restraining order which results in the further harm or death of the Petitioner.
In either case, there is usually not a sufficient preponderance of evidence when such cases are initially filed.
Most of them are based on opinion, conjecture, hearsay evidence, but they are granted anyway especially if you are a woman filing against a man.
The media only pounces when a story carries more than a few ounces of weight with the general audience.
The public usually denounces without sufficient knowledge or proof and bases most of its opinion on faulty logic and missing data.
The conflicts created by the medias' inaccurate reporting tends to skew the perception of the public, and the public always invents informaton when it is lacking.
Congress pronounces from both sides of its' mouth and still has a lower approval rating than Bush.
They can pronounce all they want, it will not change the court system in this country as long as Judges, Clerks, Lawyers and anyone involved in the "criminal" justice system continue to garner fat annual paychecks for basically pushing papers around that wrap nooses around peoples necks and destroy lives, regardless of which side of a case one finds themselves.
Getting paid to administer justice is a conflict of interest.
Although public sentiment is growing, you still don't see all that many judges, lawyers, clerks, and people who work in the myriad layers of the national, state and local judicial systems in this country getting excoriated and punished in modern-day pillories: congressional hearings, television news magazines, and newspaper editorials.
In this country politics cannot be far removed from money, and money cannot be far removed from justice. O.J. Simpson proved that once and for all.
It may soon be more politically correct to say that women can and do use false allegations of domestic violence to gain sole custody and to get their children to hate and fear their fathers. But generally speaking, women who do that sort of thing have been alienating their children's fathers through various means long before it gets to the point of needing a restraining order.
My mother used to tell me what a horrible man my father was constantly as I grew up. She died when she was 38 of cancer.
Perhaps that was her justice. And yes he did beat the pulp out of me on more than one occaision, but I still loved him. And I wound up loving him more than I loved my mother. Does that make me sick?
If a child has the great capacity to love, it will love no matter what is done to it. That is why mothers can scream and yell at their children, make them cry and suffer at all manner of verbal and physical abuses, and they still love her.
When a restraining order doesn’t snowball into complete parental alienation, a judge’s declaration that a father is an abuser can permanently tarnish his image in his child’s eyes according to Heleniak.
What is really missing here is that both parents are usually abusive in any family law matter but the media focus is always on one side or the other.
Most abusive parents never grew up. They are like two siblings fighting over who gets to play the next new video game on the console when there is only one computer in the house. Surely the courts know or should know this, and must always take one side or the other. They have a 50% chance of getting it right and 50% of getting it wrong.
For one parent to point the finger at the other before the other gets to point the finger back only results in teaching children to carry on being children and never really grow up.
It sticks them in time, keeps their attention trapped in trauma and gradually erodes the joy of being a child and growing up.
Children in abusive families do grow up and some even overcome the tendency to commit the same sins as their fathers and mothers. Those are strong willed successful children. It might even take 50 years, but eventually we gain wisdom from all experiences we go through in any family relationship.
Heleniaks' statment that "damage to father/child relationships and to children’s mental health caused by the overzealous entering of restraining orders is seldom if ever reported, while the harm caused by overtly violent acts following the failure to enter restraining orders most certainly is," only points to the media flaws.
It may be true enough, but what the media is really missing here is that it takes two to tango. A fight is not a fight unless there are at least two parties involved, and usually, there is false information, misunderstanding and perhaps even a third party, hidden from view of both parents that keeps the conflict in perpetual motion.
Even delusional rantings of homeless people involve an imaginary second party which they are talking to as they meander through the streets. Surely you have seen such people. But something triggered their anger and rant and they react to it as a result of a causal third party agent.
That third party could even be a child who has learned to manipulate one or the other parent into getting what it wants from the parent who is usually the "good guy".
Heleniaks' statement that, like the FDA officials worrying about the headlines, judges deciding whether to enter domestic violence restraining orders have their careers to think about in addition to the merits of the particular cases before them so that when in doubt, they err on the side of hidden harm, may be true as well.
If judges, jurors, clerks, lawyers, and legal judicial system workers were paid on statistics which resulted in fewer crimes, fewer conflicts, and fewer errors of judgement, they would work themselves out of their jobs.
They are all paid to create more conflict, not less...thus you have what any rational human being would jokingly call a truly "criminal justice" system.
I agree that facts should be determined by several fresh, open minds, not one with a career on the line. Jurors, relatively anonymous one-time actors in the judicial system, are far less concerned with extraneous matters than are judges.
It may be time for such cases to be brought before Grand Jury investigations before they are automatically authorized, but then again, there is the time element when a real abuser is going after a potential victim.
Surely in the wake of the Yvette Cade tragedy, it is more critical than ever that juries, not judges, be used to decide when domestic violence restraining orders are warranted, but then you would have to pay 12 people instead of just one, and the courts are already so backed up, it would only give more time for real abusers to strike again.
The real answer lies in money. The price of freedom is justice and real justice is priceless.
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