Messages

I gotta admit, I like the ad-free browsing. The board is wider, and I'm not in hand-to-hand combat with those *$&^! pop-ups. I don't mind banners, but if I ever meet the clown who invented pop-ups, me and him and my Smith & Wesson are gonna have a short but effective little chat.

The same goes for the maggots that write those 'browser bugs' that mess with your browser. They change your homepage and pop up ads whenever you open a browser, and the new ones grey-out the settings so you can't change it back. THOSE scumbags ought to be taken out back and shot.

Me: "So, you're the guy that wrote that annoying browser bug?"

Him: "Yes, I sure did! Cool, huh?"

Me: (BLAM) (BLAM) (BLAM)

> I had a thought about this whole DV mess. I wonder...(and
> yes, flame away) what would happen if in each act of DV,
> the victim was allowed one good, solid punch to the face of
> their abuser.

I think this is a terrible idea and I fail to see how this would do anyone any good, especially in the long-term. Violence against another person is wrong. Suggesting a court sanction it is just as wrong, if not more so.

If you like the idea of court-ordered violence, there are lots of countries in the Middle East where you'd feel right at home. If that's your idea of justice, by all means, move to Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Steal an apple, lose a hand. Curse someone, have your tongue pulled out.

Send us a postcard and let us know how wonderful it is.

For a question like this, and how to proceed, I'd sdefinitely uggest asking Socrateaser on the "Dear Socrateaser" message board.

1) He will need to go to court to get the custody officially changed/recognized.

2) He is entitled to child support, and this will also have to be awarded or changed through the court as well.

3) One of the first things you'll hear is "Document, document, document!". Having good records is crucial. Some of these pages will apply more than others, but they all have valuable information. You didn't say if he had an attorney or not, so there are a couple on hiring an attorney in the list:

Tips For Getting Started
http://www.deltabravo.net/news/10-19-2000.htm

How To Hire An Attorney
http://www.deltabravo.net/custody/hiring.htm

Hiring An Effective Attorney
http://www.deltabravo.net/custody/effective.htm

Success Factors In Obtaining Custody
http://www.deltabravo.net/custody/tips.htm

Also, get yourself either the Parenting Time Tracker (PTT) at: http://www.deltabravo.net/custody/tracker.htm or the OPTIMAL Custody Tracking service at: http://www.parentingtime.net. The PTT is free, but the OPTIMAL service is better.

> We're both aware the arrears, nor the interest won't go away,
> but geez, can't they give him a break or something??

They could, but most likely they won't. This may not be what you want to hear, but it's the truth. :(  Child support officers, workers, and the  bureaucratic structure in general couldn't care less about the people who pay support or the fairness of the awarded amounts. They have zero motivation or incentive to reduce support, no matter what the reason or circumstances. It's not fair, and it's not just, but it is the way it is.

Getting a downward mod is difficult enough, abolishing or reducing arrears is next to impossible.

> My questions is this...can he get that back child support modified
> due to hardship?

Back child support is rarely modifiable or dischargable. I won't say 'never', but it's generally very difficult to do.

In many cases you'll spend more trying to get it discharged or modified than the actual amount of the support itself. :(

Do a search here for child support information on the site; you may find something useful that I overlooked:

http://www.deltabravo.net/cgi-bin/search.cgi?Terms=child+support&Match=1&Realm=All

Cept they're pretty darned handy in custody, as MANY of us have learned. They're used to better "position" a person as CP in a custody battle, cause NO ONE is held accountable for a false RO.

Unfortunately, this is 100% true. They are the weapon of choice in custody battles, along with false allegations of sexual abuse.

[The news story I read on Slater had the headline "Haddon Glasses Slater". Cute. If Christian Slater had hit his wife in the head with a glass, splitting her scalp open, would they have run such a dismissive headline? Would the headline have said "Slater Glasses Haddon"? NO, it would have said that he attacked causing severe injuries. There would have been no cute dismissal of his assault and battery upon her. But she can attack him and the paper hides her violence under a cutie-pie term like "Haddon Glasses Slater". ...Brent]

"The other aggressor in domestic violence"
CATHY YOUNG - 12/1/2003

LLEGATIONS of domestic violence involving celebrities are nothing new, but two such stories in the news in the past couple of months have had a relatively unusual twist: The accused perpetrators were women and the alleged victims were men.
ADVERTISEMENT
 

First, there was the lawsuit against Liza Minelli by her estranged husband, David Gest, claiming that the singer-actress had subjected him to repeated physical abuse. Then actor Christian Slater's wife, Ryan Haddon, was arrested on charges of battery after smashing a glass on her husband's head and causing a cut that required stitches. Yet despite such incidents, the public perception of domestic abuse as something that horrid men do to helpless women persists. People who have challenged this stereotype (myself included) have been called everything from anti-feminists to backlash peddlers to apologists for abusive men.

The news story I read on Slater had the headline "Haddon Glasses Slater". Cute. If Christian Slater had hit his wife in the head with a glass, splitting her scalp open, would they have run such a dismissive headline? Would the headline have said "Slater Glasses Haddon"? NO, it would have said that he attacked causing severe injuries. There would have been no cute dismissal of his assault and battery upon her. But she can attack him and the paper hides her violence under a cutie-pie term like "Haddon Glasses Slater". ...Brent



Well, now someone with strong feminist credentials challenges a lot of the conventional wisdom on domestic violence and ways to combat it, and confirms a lot of the things we dissenters have been saying for years. That someone is Linda G. Mills of New York University, a professor of law and social work and author of the new book, ''From Insult to Injury: Rethinking Our Responses to Intimate Abuse.'' Mills, 45, is a feminist who has spent a decade working on behalf of battered women. Moreover, as she reveals in her book, she herself, 20 years ago, was a battered woman -- though she would prefer the more neutral term, ''woman in an abusive relationship.''

Drawing both on research and on her own experience in the field, Mills concludes that the conventional feminist paradigm of domestic violence as a form of patriarchal oppression is woefully inadequate. It is manifestly irrelevant for abused lesbians and gay men; it also has little meaning for women of color, who do not see the men in their community as powerful oppressors. Even for white women, it is a vast oversimplification of a complex reality. ''Years of research, which mainstream feminism has glossed over or ignored, shows that when it comes to intimate abuse, women are far from powerless and seldom, if ever, just victims,'' Mills writes. ''Like men, women are frequently aggressive in intimate settings.''

''From Insult to Injury'' is full of such heresies. Thus, Mills asserts that women who stay in abusive relationships often do so not just because of ''women's socialization within a patriarchal system'' but for complicated emotional, familiar, and cultural reasons. In many cases, she says, this decision has to be respected. She claims that policies of mandatory arrest and prosecution in domestic violence cases not only disempower women -- who aren't given any say in the handling of the case -- but actually endanger them, since an arrest may trigger an escalation of further violence. She suggests that mothers' physical violence toward children, particularly male children, plays a key part in perpetuating the cycle of abuse.

Mills does not deny (and neither does anyone else) that male violence toward women is more likely to result in physical injuries than the reverse, and that women in abusive relationships are more likely than men to be in danger. But she argues that this is no reason to disregard female violence, which needs to be acknowledged not only out of fairness to male victims but out of concern for female victims as well: A woman who starts a physical confrontation with her male partner may well find herself severely battered. To understand and prevent male violence, Mills concludes, we must understand female violence as well, whether it's physical assault or psychological aggression.

Where do we go from here? Mills is critical of the current ''lock 'em up'' dogma; instead, she would like to see a practice of ''Intimate Abuse Circles'' in which the spouses could discuss the abuse in the presence of other family members, relatives and friends. While she stresses that batterers must be held fully accountable for their actions, she also wants to see more emphasis on healing rather than punishment.

Currently, Mills's plea for reform is unlikely to have much effect. The ideology that views men as wolves and women as lambs is too deeply entrenched, and despite some feminists' claim that the media are eager to leap on any ''antifeminist'' bandwagon, Mills' thought-provoking book has received little coverage. Her message needs to be heard by politicians, judges, prosecutors and many others. It took the ''mainstream'' feminists about 30 years to establish their monopoly on the public debate about domestic violence. Mills's book may be the first step in dismantling that monopoly.

Cathy Young is a contributing editor at Reason magazine. Her column appears regularly in the Globe.

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/335/oped/The_other_aggressor_in_domestic_violence+.shtml

Public heaps scorn on male victims of abusive women
By Linda G. Mills

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2003-11-30-opcom_x.htm

There has been much public snickering about David Gest's $10-million lawsuit against his estranged wife, Liza Minnelli, in which he claims she beat him. Whether the suit is rooted in truth or in greed, its existence opens the door for a public discussion about our society's disquieting and pervasive problem of abusive women.

Most people's first reaction to the term "abusive women" is disbelief. Who would believe the so-called weaker sex can be as guilty of abuse as men can be? But consider these facts: In a 1975 national survey, researchers Richard Gelles and Murray Straus found that nearly equal numbers of husbands and wives committed violent acts against each other. These findings were confirmed 10 years later and in more than 100 additional studies. So, women have a long-established record as abusers.

What clearly emerges from these studies is that abusive women get away with their sins. Abused husbands either refuse to admit they are abused — and why should they, considering the scorn heaped upon Gest? — or, in a chronic state of fear or denial, refuse to recognize or even understand that they are being abused.

A striking feature of women's violence is that it can be both physical and emotional. Suzanne Steinmetz, now a sociology professor at Indiana University, called "husband beating" the most unreported crime in the United States. According to a 1997 study of New Zealand young adults, women admitted committing severe physical aggression at three times the rate of men. Kicking and hitting with an object were typical examples of severe physical violence inflicted by women.

Emotional antagonism

Violence researcher Victoria Burbank found that women also are guilty of emotional abuse, such as locking a partner out of the house or belittling him. Those who are quick to minimize emotional abuse should know that these tactics have been found to predict physical aggression in marriage. In other words, a woman's emotional abuse can be a catalyst for a physical reaction from her partner.

The fact is that taking Gest's accusations seriously challenges our core assumption that women always are victims. In another recent high profile case, actor Christian Slater received several stitches to the back of his head after being struck with a drinking glass. According to news reports, Slater initially told the police that his wife threw the glass at him. Later, after learning about Nevada's strict domestic violence laws, he changed his story and said the glass accidentally slipped out of her hand while they were joking around.

Not as simple as it may look

The picture of a violent couple is always complicated. Although it is important to note that men tend to harm women at greater rates, what's most often occurring is a nuanced, even imperceptible dynamic between a man and woman in which they provoke each other. Minnelli's divorce papers, which were filed one day after Gest's lawsuit, claimed "cruel and unusual treatment." Five years ago, Christian Slater served 90 days in jail for slugging a girlfriend.

Sorting out exactly who is doing what to whom is a matter for a Solomon to decide. But until the American public recognizes and begins to grapple with this interwoven dynamic, the true causes of intimate abuse never will be understood nor its sad consequences adequately addressed.

Beliefs about men's and women's violence are so sacred and arouse such strong feelings that the thought of questioning them can sometimes evoke violence. After Steinmetz published her groundbreaking book, The Battered Husband Syndrome, in 1978, she was not only derided and denounced, but her children's lives also were threatened.

We must begin to revise our views on men's and women's violence, especially as it relates to the insights that a great body of research already reveals. Failing to do so will compromise all victims, men and women alike, in their efforts to gain the peace and justice that they deserve.

And lastly, perhaps it is time to stop snickering over David Gest's dilemma and begin to appreciate the sadness and complexities of his situation.

Linda G. Mills is a New York University professor of social work, an affiliated professor of lawand author of Insult to Injury: Rethinking Our Responses to Intimate Abuse.

From: http://www.familyeducation.com/experts/advice/0,1183,1-18564,00.html

It's mostly "rah, rah, what a great new drug", but there is some useful info there.

There is a new form of medication used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) which was approved by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) in August 2000. The brand name of the new drug is Concerta. It contains methylphenidate, the same medication found in the the brand-name drug known as Ritalin. The difference is that the Concerta tablet has been formulated with a special drug-release system that allows the medication to be released slowly over time. The tablet has an outer coat of the medication, and then two small compartments of medication inside. When swallowed, the outer coat of medication dissolves quickly. Over the next several hours, the inner two compartments are gradually released as well. The result is that the methylphenidate medication is released gradually into the body, reaching its peak level in the bloodstream at about 6 to 8 hours after ingestion. One dose will supply enough of the medication for a full 12 hours.

Without this special delivery-system tablet, methylphenidate doesn't stay in the bloodstream for long. That's why many children need to take medication two or three times a day. Even with Ritalin SR, which has a longer duration of action than regular Ritalin, peak concentrations occur at four hours and, for many children, it has worn off significantly by the early afternoon. This new formulation in Concerta was designed to last all day, even through the late afternoon hours when children are doing their homework.

Studies that compared Concerta to a placebo showed that children taking Concerta had a significant reduction in inattention and overactivity. Studies done to monitor blood levels of the drug showed steadier levels for a longer duration in patients taking Concerta versus those taking standard methylphenidate. There are no studies, however, showing a significant difference in teacher ratings of ADHD symptoms in children on standard methylphenidate vs. Concerta. The presumption is that if the drug levels don't fluctuate as much, and it lasts for a longer time, then it will improve control of the ADHD symptoms -- but I could not find proof of this.

In Concerta's clinical trials, the type of side effects seen were similar to what has been seen for traditional methylphenidate: headaches, stomach pain, loss of appetite, and insomnia. An important difference between this and the older medication is that the Concerta tablet isn't completely digested, even though all of the medication is released. The remnants of the tablet can often be seen in the stools. This isn't usually a problem, but Concerta isn't recommended for children who have any type of severe gastrointestinal narrowing. Concerta hasn't been studied in children under six years of age, so it's not recommended for use in that age group.

Since the drug was just approved, most physicians don't yet have enough experience with it to make specific recommendations. It sounds like a great innovation but may have drawbacks. For children who have difficulty with their ADHD symptoms later in the day, or have difficulty taking medication, a once-a-day dosage may be the perfect solution. For children who have less need for the drug outside of school hours, it may not make sense to give something that lasts for 12 hours. Also, we don't know if there is any long-term effect of having methylphenidate in your bloodstream for many more hours per day.

Keep in mind that this new formulation is more expensive than generic methylphenidate. When I priced it at our local pharmacy it was about $40 to $55 more per month. Concerta comes in 18 mg, 36 mg, and 54 mg tablets.

If you are interested in this new medication, you should talk with your child's doctor, and decide together if it's worth trying.

>
>I tell you what.  If those able to help are "Gods", why not
>make a suggestion to the head honcho (who does nothing to
>credit himself, btw....) that each poster have "paid X amount
>of $'s, spent X amount of time on the board, and spent X
>amount of time moderating" next to their username.  That way,
>the rest of us imbecils know who we can and can't disagree
>with, who we can and can't dislike, who we can and can't post
>to.  

It has nothing to do with that, and I'm sorry to see you're so fixated on money, instead of being objective and admitting that her comments were unproductive and hurtful. Have it your way.