A dad's role will never equal a mum's - By the Self confessed Pedophile Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer the self confessed pedophile, who has never had children and never will has just published an article that regales us with her vacuous opinions on parenthood. Which I find amusing coming from someone who admits that she is sexually turned on by young boys and has never been pregnant or adopted any kids.

It is kind of like going to Nabokov's Humbert, (from Lolita) to get some advice on child rearing.

Furthermore, I find Greer’s perspective to be logically flawed. For on the one hand we have one of the leaders of the feminist movement describing how certain female roles are only the domain of women and men must be excluded from such roles. Furthermore, women should be actively encouraged and supported to take on male roles . On the other hand she says that fathers are not as important as mothers, and that males are not able to fulfill such roles and should be excluded from them.

Greers. stance sounds very similar the old argument that was trotted out by patriarchy that said women cannot do the same things that a man can and as such were restricted from accessing the world of work. Basically she is saying that while women can do anything men can only do men's stuff.

Today men are discriminated against by being denied access to their families.

If feminism states that men and women are equal then surely we are both capable of the same roles. If women can be leaders then men can be parents, if women can be soldiers then men can be nurses etc. However, Greer boldly claims that only woman can nurture their children, this is logically inconsistent.

So I have reprinted this egregious attack on fathers by the pedophile Greer with my comments to her pathetic opinions in bold - GR KLEIN.

The Times (Britain), 4 June 2008, By Germaine (Pedophile) Greer

The notion that mothers could be required by law to register the names of the fathers on the birth certificates of their children has been around for years. The latest version originated with John Hutton in July 2006, when he was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. Enthusiasm for the idea waned when wiser heads pointed out that being forced to identify a reluctant or violent father could place vulnerable women and children in danger. (What about violent mothers who kill or abuse their kids - GR KLEIN)

When Mr Hutton brought forward his Child Maintenance Bill a year later, the issue was not raised, apparently because someone had realised that registration of births was nothing to do with Department for Work and Pensions. The Institute for Public Policy and Research then took up the baton, timing its contribution for Father's Day 2007.

Kate Stanley, the head of social policy at the left-of-centre IPPR,
announced that "everyone should know who to send a card to on Father's Day," an assertion hardly more cogent than grammatical.

She went rampaging on through sense and syntax, laying all waste before her. "Most people will be thanking their fathers... but many will be wondering who their father is and why they have not helped support their family. Requiring fathers to be registered on a birth certificate sends an important signal about the duties of parenthood. It communicates the message that fathers have an equal role to mothers and that they must take their responsibilities seriously."

Common sense tells us that a father's role is not equal to a mother's (What a load of rubbish, and I wonder how Germaine reached this conclusion, was it based on her extensive experience as a parent, I think not she has no kids or was it - GR Klein). A man can become a father and not know he's done it.(Does not knowing that you have kids equal not caring, I dont think so - GRK)

A woman can only become a mother after she has carried her child to term; regardless of what happens to her baby, whether it dies, or is given away, or grows up in her care, or commits a hideous crime, she will always be attached to it. She will suffer more for her child than she has ever suffered for herself. If her child is taken from her, she will experience pain at the site of the separation for the rest of her life (What the hell would Greer know about motherhood, she has no kids and never will have - GR KLEIN)

This is a real difference between men and women; neither fashion nor politics can argue it away. Fathers may want me to believe that their experience of parenthood is just as involved and passionate as mothers'. As far as I'm concerned this is like the pretence that men suffer menopause. Claiming to replicate female experience is another way of belittling it, just another insidious variation of misogyny (Oh would this be similar to the manner in which women claim to 'replicate male experience' and perhaps all it does is belittle it and is another version of misandry - GR KLEIN)

The perennial suggestion has come around again in the Welfare Reform Bill, to be debated later this year. Mothers will no longer be able to keep the name of the father off the birth certificate just "because a relationship has broken up acrimoniously".

This is a curiously prissy way to refer to the prevalence of domestic violence and the role of such violence as an important cause of miscarriage, stillbirth and maternal death in this country. Considering that in any one year there are 13 million separate incidences of violence against a woman by a partner or former partner, it's surprising that only 50,000 men are left off birth certificates. In a third of cases the violence emerges only after the woman has become pregnant. The risk factors for domestic violence are three; being a woman, being young and being
pregnant (no actually Germain they are not most partner violence is about 50/50 between men and women click here for more - GR KLEIN) . Physical violence is only part of the story; women who fall pregnant are even more likely to be belittled, reviled, deserted, rejected and denied than they are to be bashed.

It should be obvious that in a humane society no woman or child should be forced into an enduring relationship with a reluctant and resentful father (or mother... curious this is left out - GR KLIEN) . We see fewer reluctant mothers than we used to because of the availability of contraception and abortion (thats right women can kill their babies on demand - GR K) , but reluctant fathers have always been with us. In the ten years or so that DNA paternity testing has been available it has been used almost exclusively by men who have had a relationship with a woman and seek to disprove paternity of her children ( or confirm paternity, I ask you would a women want to pay child support for a kid that is not theirs? - GRK)

The State has proved so spectacularly incapable of getting recognised fathers to fulfil the obligations they have already acknowledged (Yeah because fathers are given very little support by the state, by the community and by people like the pedophile Greer - GRK ) , that one can only wonder why they are so anxious to track down still more from whom they will fail to get a penny. A father who wants to take responsibility for a child whose mother wants no more to do with him will have the Government on his side (absolute BS, where have you been Germaine, had your head up some young boys ass perhaps, I think she has forgotten about the mass of oranisations that actively support mothers and the absolute lack of such services for men, this is really too much - GRK) . Heaven help the child if the mother wants nothing
to do with him because she doesn't trust him around young childrenn ( This might be like the fact that I would not want you around my kids Germaine considering that you admit you are a pedophile - GR Klein)

A woman must be relied upon to decide whether or not she wants or will allow the sire of her child to share their lives, and her decision should be respected (A child is the product of DNA from both parents and the child has a right to a relationship with both and whats more most research indicates that having two parents is essential to developing a stable adult identity for both boys and girls _ GRK) . In the world according to the Welfare Reform Bill, the woman who had a fling with a married workmate in a moment of madness at the office party, say, found herself pregnant and decided to have the baby, would have no choice but to finger him, thereby wrecking his marriage and
bringing disaster upon his children. Her only other option would be
abortion, which may be entirely unacceptable to her.

The funny part is that a married woman who has a baby by someone other than her husband will be asked no questions. Her husband's name will be entered on the birth certificate as a matter of course. Neither the registrar nor the Government really cares who a child's real father is. What they really, really want is someone to foot the bill for raising it.

You would think that a Labour Government would know that the only way to make sure that no child grows up in poverty is, not to replace one inefficient and outrageously expensive bureaucracy with another that has even greater powers to harass and humiliate, but to provide for all children out of tax revenue.

That way all men and women provide for all children, including their own and ones they didn't know they had. Nothing else has worked or will work. If Gordon Brown had the courage of his convictions, he would reform the taxation system and ditch this ridiculously unrealistic Reform Bill.

Mum doesn't live with us any more

The following story is an interesting reversal of the typical post seperation custody outcome - ie most of the time the kids go with the mother. As such fathers often miss out on the same level of contact with their children post seperation or divorce.

However in the following story the situation is reversed and the mother loses custody of her kids. Please note how the author of this story still implies that the mother is the victim, and she expresses a desire to understand and help this poor women. Whereas a father in a similar situation would typically be denigrated in the article and no effort would be made to understand his motivations - GR KLEIN




The Times (Britain), 3 June 2008



More than 150,000 UK mothers live apart from their children, as courts increasingly give custody to fathers, Catherine Bruton reports on the rise of ‘mothers apart'

Margaret Clarke went out to work one day and returned to find that her children had gone. “My husband ended our eight-year marriage by walking out with my two young sons, then aged 4 and 2. I came home to an empty house. It was a nightmare.”(Yep I can certainly relate to that feeling as I am sure can many fathers who have seperated from their partners - GR KLEIN)

Margaret applied to the county court, which ruled that the children should be returned to their mother - but her estranged husband refused to do so.

In the six-day court hearing that followed, Margaret found to her dismay that “when it comes to custody battles, possession is nine tenths of the law. If you've got the kids from the outset you are in a much better position to maintain the status quo. My ex-husband was able to establish a ‘new normal' with the children, thus initiating the elimination of me as their mother from their lives.”(This is what happens to so many fathers every single day, they are eliminated from their children's lives - GR KLEIN)

When the judgment finally came, Margaret, a 42-year-old business manager from South London who had been working full-time as the family's main breadwinner, felt that she was penalised for being a working woman. The court granted residence to the children's father, confining Margaret's contact to once a week and alternate weekends.

Margaret's story is not uncommon. The number of UK mothers who have little or no contact with their children is rising each year. The latest quarterly Child Support Agency figures (September 2007) show that women are registered as the “non-resident parent” in 66,900 maintenance cases. These figures do not include mothers who have been denied “parental status” and so have no access at all to their children. Penny Cross of Match (Mothers Apart from Their Children) estimates that there are more than 150,000 mothers living apart from their children in the UK, and the numbers are rising every year.

A new book seeks to dispel some of the myths and misconceptions about such mothers. A Mother Apart: How to let go of guilt and find happiness living apart from your child (Crown House Publishing, £12.99) is written by Sarah Hart, a counsellor and “mother apart” who argues that we live in a world of gender double standards( Oh gender double standards they are so horid I agree but it is obviously men that have the most to complain about here, being as they comprise the overwhelming majority of all parents who are absent from their children _ GR KLEIN), where non-resident mothers are unfairly
stigmatised. “People assume that they have either abandoned their children or been deemed unfit mothers by the courts. They are perceived as bad mums, odd, possibly even heartless, selfish or cruel,” she says. “In reality, the circumstances surrounding a mother choosing to living apart from a child are often complex and emotionally charged. Decisions are often made very quickly in times of high stress, few resources and seemingly few choices.”

Cultural expectations of male and female parenting roles have changed in recent years, but the stereotype of the mother who would fight to the death rather than live without her children continues to hold sway over the public imagination. “Many ‘mothers apart' feel that they have no socially recognised right to grieve the loss of their children,” explains Hart. “They may keep quiet about the existence of children with whom they have no
contact, struggling in silence with feelings of worthlessness, guilt, high anxiety and depression.”

Each year between 150,000 and 200,000 (married and unmarried) parental couples in England and Wales separate. Most parents agree arrangements for residence and contact without the involvement of the courts. As in Marie's case (see left), financial constraints are the most common reason for mums to relinquish custody, but illness, depression and personal ambition may also be factors.

For an increasing number of women, though, the decision is taken out of their hands by the courts. About 30,000 residence orders are made each year in English and Welsh courts. According to Miranda Fisher, a family law solicitor with Charles Russell: “If there has, in the past, been a presumption in favour of the mother as primary carer, now that more mothers are working full time and fathers taking on more childcare responsibilities, there is a growing trend in the family courts towards making shared residence orders. There are also more cases where fathers obtain sole residence orders, although they are still very much in the minority.”(Thankyou for pointing this out, but it is typical of our society that we tend to view a problem as more worthy of notice if it affects a woman , although the majority of people affected by it may be men - for example it is horrible to think of a women being a vicitm of assault but young males make up the overwhelming majority of people in this category, it is horrible to think of women in jail but 94% of prisoners are male, it is terrible to think of a women killing herself but 80% of all suicides are male, and it is very sad to think of a mother living without her children but the fact is the overwhelming majority of people in this situation are fathers _ GR KLEIN )

Fisher says that courts are reluctant to cause children upheaval by
disrupting existing residence arrangements. “For example, if a mother moves out of the family home - perhaps planning to organise alternative accommodation for herself and the children - it might take between six and 12 months to get to a court hearing that will make a final determination about residence. By that time the father may have made arrangements for the children that work well, and the court must then decide what the effect on the children would be of changing these arrangements. What the mother may
have intended to be only a temporary arrangement could result in her permanently losing residence.”

And for many mothers who fail to gain residence, the story doesn't end there. “The real difficulty for the absent parent often lies not in
obtaining an order for contact with children, but in making contact work in the long term,” says Fisher. “This is most apparent where the court is faced with a hostile parent with residence of the children who refuses to accept that any contact is in their interests.”

In the past, courts could hand out fines or prison sentences only to
obstructive parents - measures usually not considered to be in the best interests of the child. “When the Children and Adoption Act (CAA) 2006 comes into force, parents who breach contact orders, or conditions attached to contact, will risk having to do community service alongside those convicted of criminal offences,” explains Fisher. “However, the success of the new powers will depend largely on the extent to which judges are prepared to use these measures.”

But if the children themselves refuse to comply, there is little that the courts can do. “I have a piece of paper confirming that I have shared residence of my children, but it's worthless,” says Margaret. “My eldest son was convinced by his father that I was evil and dangerous, and two years after the split he started refusing to stay with me.”

Afraid that her relationship with her youngest son was also at risk
Margaret applied to the courts. “The judge refused to believe that my children were being brainwashed against me. Now I have two children who are my life but will not acknowledge me. My ex believes he has ‘won' and that our children, aged just 11 and 8, are old enough to have decided that they don't want me as a mother.”

Separated parents of both genders who are prohibited from seeing their children suffer deeply as a result. “All I have left is to pray that one day, when they are old enough, they will somehow find their way back to me,” says Margaret. “I will always be waiting for them.”

Barbara Stillman, 54, has left the door open to her estranged daughter for more than a decade. “I've had no contact with my eldest daughter, now 24, since she was 14 but I have never let go of her in my heart,” she says.

When Barbara's husband walked out of the marriage, her two girls opted to go with him while their brothers stayed with Barbara. “You can't force contact with your children but you never stop being a mum,” she says. “I always went along to parents' evenings. On one occasion my eldest daughter started screaming at me ‘You're not my mother. You have no right to be here!'”

Last week Barbara's daughter sent her a text message - the first contact in years. “I'm overjoyed!” says Barbara. “It may seem like only a small thing but for me it's the best gift I could hope for.”

Barbara believes that while you should never give up hope, mothers apart cannot dwell in the past. “It may seem impossibly hard but you have to find a life of your own, try to move on. If you spend your time mourning the childhoods you can't recapture and running over all the painful memories, you will end up emotionally crippled,” she says.

Sarah Hart, a counsellor, agrees: “If there is to be a chance for a
meaningful adult relationship, it's important for mothers apart to work through those feelings of pain, guilt, shame or anger.”

I'm still their mum

Two years ago Marie Cartwright, 39, from York, walked out of an abusive marriage, leaving behind her two girls: Elizabeth, 6, and Charlotte, 2. “I desperately wanted to take the girls with me but all I could afford was a single room in a shared house,” she says. “The only other option was a homeless shelter. If the girls stayed in the family home with their father they would be surrounded by friends, grandparents, uncles, aunts and all that was familiar. It was a heartbreaking decision for any mother to have to make but in the end I did what I thought was best for them.

“Sometimes I torture myself wondering if I did the right thing. My greatest fear is that the girls will grow up believing I left because I didn't love them enough.” Some members of Marie's family refuse to forgive her. Her own mother hasn't spoken to her since the split.

Marie maintains regular contact with her daughters. “Of course I'd love to see the girls more than I do, but there's no point in beating myself up all the time for not being there for them 24/7. I just have to try to be the best mum I can in the time I have with them. I stopped being a wife but I never stopped being a mum.”

Mothers Apart from Their Children: www.matchmothers.org

Sarah Hart, counsellor and author: www.sarahhart.co.uk

National Family Mediation (NFM): www.nfm.org.uk

Families Need Fathers (FNF) www.fnf.org.uk

Dads take on 'executive' role at home

Anne Marie Owens, National Post (Canada) , 5 June 2008

More than 9,000 academics are in Vancouver this week to present research on everything from gender roles to the sociology of first names. In a week-long series on the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, the National Post showcases some of the most interesting research.

The men who make school lunches and take control of immunization schedules - and the women who let them - may be the vanguard of the most equal of parenting arrangements today.

With more men taking parental leave, a gradual increase in the sharing of household duties and fathers taking an increasingly active role in the lives of their children, the final frontier of shared parenting lies in the bureaucratic business of family life - scheduling doctors' appointments, overseeing teacher meetings and school communications, organizing play
dates and birthday parties, keeping track of homework and taking on lunch duties.

It is what those who examine the sociology of the family call "executive responsibility," and it is still predominantly the domain of women. But that, according to new research unveiled at Canada's largest academic gathering this week, is beginning to change.

In a paper called, "Who's Really in Charge?" sociologist Gillian Ranson explores the division of this particular form of labour in non-traditional families across Canada. Her findings are culled from extensive interviews with 32 couples across the country with breadwinner-mothers and caregiver fathers or dual-working/ dual-parenting partners.

It is an admittedly small sample, says Prof. Ranson, who teaches at the University of Calgary, "but by digging deep, you get a picture of life that helps demolish some of the stereotypes and raises the possibilities for how we might work together."

Included in her sample are a couple where the mother has completely surrendered this executive responsibility and is essentially on the sidelines, couples where fathers have taken on increasing roles but where mothers retain this key
family manager role, and the majority of those interviewed, where the couples are actively negotiating who does what.

In many cases, what that means is mothers letting go of control of an aspect of family life that is at once drudgery and minutiae, and yet also intensely critical to family functioning.

"It is, ideologically, one of the key parts of mothering," Prof. Ranson said. "These kinds of things help keep a handle on the emotional tenor of the family. They are very important."

Prof. Ranson discovered that those mothers who do cede some of this control to their spouses, however, begin to regard each other more thoroughly as partners in a shared venture. As one of the women she interviewed said, "I can talk to Matt about Emma the way I would talk to one of my girlfriends about our daughters. We can use the same language. We are absolutely on the same page."

An entirely different picture of modern mothering and fathering roles is conveyed by studying the dominant images in Mother's Day and Father's Day cards sold in Canada.

Two B. C. sociologists scrutinized more than 2,500 cards on display at stores in the province's Lower Mainland to see how gender and family work was portrayed in what the researchers describe as a valuable source for giving "a good indication of what people in our society currently recognize and value as important aspects of mothers' and fathers' roles."

What they found, and what they document in their presentation this week called "Angels, Heroes and Slobs: How Do Representations of Gender and Family Work in Mother's Day and Father's Day Cards Help Explain the Stalled Revolution?" are images still very much bound to tradition: mothers as
synonymous with home, busy with a daily juggling act of work, and fathers as protectors, providers and all-around hero figures.

They also uncovered a murky undercurrent in the Father's Day cards that reveal father as couch potato and, in a spin that runs counter to Prof. Ranson's cutting-edge families, a recurring theme of father as subordinate to mother.

"The egalitarian ideals of shared parenting - and sharing other forms of family work - are not being given as much attention in popular culture today," conclude the researchers, Alison Thomas of Douglas College and Elizabeth Dennis, of University College of the Fraser Valley.

"This has implications for the pace of change: If men's involvement in the home is so frequently minimized and/or ridiculed, while women's is praised, how much encouragement is there for people to take seriously the possibility of sharing family work more fairly?"

Dangerous sex as the state enters bedroom

The Australian, 30 April 2008, By Janet Albrechtsen

If you are a man, sex got a whole lot more dangerous. Consider this scenario. A woman meets a man in a bar or at a party. She likes the man. He likes the woman. She may not normally be a sex on the first night kind of girl. But they have a number of drinks. Fuelled by alcohol, they put aside their inhibitions. The woman goes home with the man. She says yes to sex. In the morning, the man makes it clear it was a one-night stand. The woman
is deeply offended and regrets her drunken decision. She claims rape. Under new rape laws introduced in NSW this year, that man is likely to be convicted as a rapist. He is likely to go to prison.

Rape reform in NSW means that post-coital regrets can now be refashioned into rape claims that send innocent men to prison. That's why Gold Coast Titans footballer Anthony Laffranchi is a fortunate man. He walked free from a rape charge last week after the prosecution failed to establish lack of consent. He and his then Wests Tigers NRL teammates met a woman at the Sapphire Club in Kings Cross in September 2006 and continued to party at a
teammate's apartment. The footballer said he had consensual sex. The woman, who was "significantly affected" by alcohol, claimed she was raped. Had Laffranchi met the woman after January this year, he would probably be a convicted rapist facing a long stint in prison.

Let us be clear. Rape is wrong. It is a crime that calls for imprisonment. It can destroy a victim's life. But let us be clear about something else. Wrongful claims of rape are made. And they can destroy a man's life. No one knows whether a rape occurred that night when Laffranchi had sex with the woman. But under the old laws of rape, the defendant's actual state of mind was critical. If the accused had an honest belief that sex was consensual,
the rape charge failed. And when the evidence became a simple contest between "he said, she said", a reasonable doubt would lead to an acquittal. Criminal law says that is as it should be; we are talking about a serious crime and imprisonment.

Not anymore. Now the rules have changed. Now, in a contest between he said it was consensual and she said it was rape, a jury may be forced to convict the man of rape without any further corroborating evidence.

The new laws say that if a woman is "substantially affected" by alcohol, she may lack the capacity to consent to sex even if she says "yes" to sex.
More disturbing, even if a man honestly believes consent was given, his state of mind is now irrelevant. Now, the man is effectively deemed to have knowledge of lack of consent if there are no reasonable grounds for believing consent was given. And it gets worse. When asked to determine whether the man had no reasonable grounds for believing the woman gave consent, the jury must ignore the fact that the man was drunk.

In other words, the fact that the woman who says "yes" to sex is drunk is highly relevant: it may vitiate her consent. But the man's intoxication must be ignored when working out whether he had "reasonable grounds" for believing consent was given. It is a curious law that says alcohol only affects the cognitive abilities of women.

These new rape laws degrade women. They treat them as helpless victims, stripping them of the power to make decisions about sex after consuming alcohol. Down a few too many Bacardi Breezers, and the law says you are no longer responsible for your actions. Is this really the message we want to send to young women?

And for men, it's even more serious. As the President of the NSW Bar Association, Anna Katzmann SC, has pointed out, these new laws mean that the intoxicated man will be treated just like "the true rapist, the aggressor who inflicts himself on his victim, knowing they do not consent". There is no gradation of penalties.

Why is this happening? Lawyers point to the perfect storm. The intoxicated man is trapped between a strident but misguided feminist agenda and the law and order lobby driven by perceptions that rape conviction rates are too low.

In reality, the low conviction rates reflect nothing more than the
reasonable doubt that arises when, absent other evidence about an alleged crime in private, a woman claims rape and a man claims sex was consensual.

Stephen Odgers, a senior Sydney silk who chairs the Criminal Law Committee of the Bar Association, told The Australian that, while we all want a civilised world where people treat each other with mutual respect in all walks of life, including sexual interactions, the new rape laws are a "very blunt and brutal instrument" to educate and civilise us about sexual relations. He fears that the new rape laws, in effect, can be used to criminalise those who merely treat others with disrespect after a night of sex. "And people will end up going to jail for long periods as a result." That is why his committee, made up of almost equal numbers of prosecutors
and defence lawyers opposed the reforms.

So how does a man navigate the consent nightmare? Bring a witness into the bedroom? Perhaps bring along a lawyer to guide him through every stage of consensual sex from foreplay to orgasm to ensure that the final, breathless and drunken "yes, yes, yes" is genuine consent? Similar rape reforms in South Australia led independent MP Ann Bressington to suggest earlier this
month that perhaps "parliament could devise a sex contract which men could carry around in their pocket, next to their condoms". Bressington is concerned that otherwise sensible rape reform has gone too far, leaving "very little room for a decent defence of a man who has been falsely accused".

False accusations are helped along, says Heather MacDonald in the winter edition of City Journal, by feminist victimology and rape industrialists intent on redefining drunken sex where a bloke wants to get inside a girl's knickers in terms of the classic case of domination rape by power-hungry men.

If you are a man, you are entitled to be frightened by the new order. While society is still committed to a 1960s model of sexual liberation, encouraging men and women to explore their sexual desires, the state is also entering the bedroom trying to educate us about appropriate sexual conduct. Unfortunately, we may discover that civility cannot be legislated by criminal sanction without innocent men going to prison.

Five Myths about No-Fault Divorce

Inside Catholic, 3 June 2008, By Stephen Baskerville

Almost four decades after the "no-fault" divorce revolution began in California, misconceptions abound. Even the many books about divorce, including myriad self-help manuals, are full of inaccurate and misleading information. No public debate preceded the introduction of no-fault divorce laws in the 1970s, and no debate has taken place since.

Yet divorce-on-demand is exacting a devastating toll on our children, our social order, our economy, and even our constitutional rights. A recent study <http://www.americanvalues.org/html/coff_mediaadvisory.htm> estimates the financial cost of divorce to taxpayers at $112 billion annually. Recent demands to legitimize same-sex marriage almost certainly follow from the divorce revolution, since gay activists readily acknowledge that they only desire to marry under the loosened terms that have resulted from the new divorce laws. Divorce also contributes to a dangerous increase in the power
of the state over private life <http://www.stephenbaskerville.net/>.

Here are some of the most common clichés and misconceptions about modern divorce, along with the facts.

Myth 1: No-fault divorce permitted divorce by mutual consent, thus making divorce less acrimonious.

Fact: No-fault divorce is unilateral divorce. It permits divorce by one spouse acting alone for any reason or no reason. No "grounds" are required, and the involuntarily divorced spouse need commit no legal infraction, either criminal or civil. It is therefore forced divorce, meaning you can be divorced over your objections. (Some 80 percent of divorces today are unilateral.)

Even more serious, you can be forcibly separated from your children, your home, and your property, also through literally "no fault" of your own. Failure to cooperate with the divorce opens the innocent spouse to criminal penalties. No-fault divorce made divorce far more destructive by allowing the state to undertake court proceedings against innocent people, confiscate everything they have, and incarcerate them without trial.

Myth 2: We cannot force people to remain married and should not try.

Fact: It is not a matter of forcing anyone to remain married. The issue is taking responsibility for one's actions in abrogating an agreement. With no-fault divorce, the spouse who divorces without grounds or otherwise breaks the marriage agreement (for example, by adultery or desertion) thereby incurs no onus of responsibility. Indeed, that spouse gains advantages.

Courts therefore do not dispense justice against a legal wrong. Instead, every divorce is granted automatically, and the courts simply divvy up the goods - including the children - according to any criteria they choose, including separating the innocent spouse from his or her children without having to give any reason. Because the divorce creates work and earnings for judges, lawyers, and other court personnel, there is a strong incentive for these officials to reward the guilty spouse in order to encourage more
divorces and more business for the courts. As Charles Dickens pointed out, "The one great principle of the ... law is to make business for itself."

Myth 3: No-fault divorce has led men to abandon their wives and children.

Fact: This does happen (wives more often than children), but it is greatly exaggerated. The vast majority of no-fault divorces - especially those involving children - are filed by wives. In fact, as Judy Parejko, author of Stolen Vows
<http://www.amazon.com/Stolen-Vows-Illusion-No-Fault-American/dp/1591960223/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212463971&sr=8-1>,
has shown, the no-fault revolution was engineered largely by feminist lawyers, with the cooperation of the bar associations, as part of the sexual revolution. Overwhelmingly, it has served to separate large numbers of children from their fathers. Sometimes the genders are reversed, so that fathers take children from mothers. But either way, the main effect of no-fault is to make children weapons and pawns to gain power through the
courts, not the "abandonment" of them by either parent.

Myth 4: When couples cannot agree or cooperate about matters like how the children should be raised, a judge must decide according to "the best interest of the child."

Fact: It is not the business of government officials to supervise the
raising of other people's children. The entire point of a marriage and family is for mothers and fathers to cooperate and compromise for the sake of children and provide an example to those children of precisely these principles, without which no family can operate. Allowing one parent to surrender both parents' decision-making rights over the children to government officials because of "disagreement" - without any infraction by the other (who may "disagree" only about losing his or her children) - negates the very principle of private family life and invites collusion between the divorcing parent and state officials.

Judges and civil servants are not disinterested. When we give government officials the power to make decisions about the best interest of other people's children, it may well become the best interest of the officials. Allowing them to control the private lives of citizens' who have committed no legal infraction simply by invoking "disagreement" gives them an incentive to reward the parent that is being the most disagreeable. That is precisely the reason for the runaway divorce epidemic.

Myth 5: Divorce must be made easy because of domestic violence.

Fact: Actual physical violence is legitimate grounds for divorce and always has been. So it does not justify dispensing with all standards of justice, which is what no-fault entails. On the contrary, openly false accusations of domestic violence and child abuse have become an industry in themselves, mostly to secure child custody. By dispensing with standards of justice for
divorce, we have allowed them to be abandoned for criminal justice too. Thus "domestic violence" and "child abuse" are not adjudicated as criminal assault, and the accused seldom receives a trial or chance to clear his name. Instead he simply loses his children until he can prove his innocence, an impossible standard.

Most domestic violence and child abuse take place during and after family dissolution; very little occurs in intact families. So domestic violence is a red herring. Federal funds for domestic violence and child abuse now serve effectively as a subsidy on divorce in every state in America, encouraging spouses to bring false accusations and law-enforcement officials to reward them. This shatters another myth: that family law is the province of states.

No-fault divorce has exacerbated the divorce epidemic on almost every count. We urgently need an extensive public debate on divorce and the connected issues of child custody, domestic violence, child abuse, and child support - precisely the debate that the divorce industry has suppressed for four decades.

---

Stephen Baskerville is associate professor of government at Patrick Henry College and author of Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family (Cumberland House, 2007).
<http://www.amazon.com/Taken-into-Custody-Fatherhood-Marriage/dp/1581825943/sr=8-2/qid=1169683598/ref=sr_1_2/102-0715661-8120912?ie=UTF8&s=books>

Huge increase in drunken women turning to violence - police crime stats

The following article lends weight to my previous post where I called on governments to create an anti-violence campaign focused on female perpetrators, perhaps something like "Blokes dont dig chicks who brawl" - GR Klein


By Nick Taylor, May 31, 2008, Perth Now

DRINK-FUELLED violence by young women is soaring, according to figures released by WA Police.

Latest crime statistics show more drunken and loutish behaviour by so-called ladettes -- girls who mimic the binge-drinking and brawling antics of male louts.

The number of women arrested for assault and anti-social behaviour in 2007 was 30 per cent up on 2005 figures.

There has also been a significant rise in the number of women arrested for alcohol-related offences.

Alcohol-fuelled assaults leapt dramatically once females reached the legal age of 18 and began tapering off once they hit their 30s. Other crimes like disorderly conduct, property damage and threatening behaviour follow a similar pattern.

Police are not surprised by the findings.

``It is a changing world for our officers who are facing increasing aggression from young women,'' Acting Assistant Commissioner Dwayne Bell said.

``These are alarming trends. There is an increase in violent incidents, but what is more disturbing is the greater increase in aggressive anti-social behaviour.

``What is just as alarming is the hidden picture, the anecdotal evidence from my officers of other incidents where the aggressive behaviour of the woman has inflamed a situation.''

Mr Bell said statistics reflected changes in drinking patterns.

``Binge drinking is increasingly prevalent in young females and alcohol-related offences are showing the greatest increases.

``There is a greater propensity to young females binge drinking and being involved in aggressive anti-social behaviour -- and it is our officers who have to face this,'' he said.

Mr Bell said police would back any measures to reduce binge drinking, including abolishing ``happy hours''.

``People have to address these issues and take personal responsibility for their actions,'' he said

Acting executive director of the WA Drug and Alcohol Office Eric Dillon said: ``Recent police data about the number of alcohol-related offences involving women, particularly those involving violence and aggression, is quite disturbing.

``That is why it is so important for parents and the community to work with young people to rethink the way we drink alcohol.

``We don't want young people or anyone else becoming tomorrow's crime statistic. Drinking alcohol has become a firmly entrenched part of our everyday life.

``The problems associated with binge drinking affect us all and the community will need to work together with government to ensure that alcohol is consumed responsibly.

``The Drug and Alcohol Office has launched a hard-hitting campaign asking the whole community to rethink the way that we drink, to reduce the health impacts, violence and injury that drinking too much alcohol can cause.

``Advertising is just one way to connect with young people and change their behaviour.''
Figures from the 2007 National Drug Strategy Household Survey revealed teenage girls were outboozing male counterparts.

Girls aged 14-19 were almost twice as likely as their male counterparts to consume alcohol at a level that was a high risk of long-term harm.

Men held responsible for Women's crimes

The following articles present cases where women have committed crimes yet their husbands are held responsible.

While the final article points out that while women are given lighter sentences due to mental illness, male offenders receive no such consideration, and many men with schizophrenia and other severe mental health issues have been executed in Texas.

The picture above on the right, shows some old fashioned treatments for mental illness that were rather barbaric however, it would seem that we have not come very far because in Texas they treat mental illness with the electric chair (as depicted in the other photo on the left)

This also relates to a previous post about a mother who drowned her daughter in a bath but was declared not guilty because of insanity or the Mary Winkler case.

- GR Klein

25 May 2008, News Track, Dad charged after mom kills child

Mansfield, Texas, (UPI) - A Texas man warned not to leave his wife alone
with their infant son has been charged with abandonment after his wife
killed the baby, court papers say.

Michael Maxon, 54, of Mansfield knowingly left his son with his wife,
Valeria Maxon, 33, despite being warned by healthcare workers not to do so,
The Dallas Morning News reported Sunday. He is free on bond pending trial
and could be sentenced to 20 years in prison if convicted.

"To my knowledge, no action has been taken against the fathers until now,"
noted George Dix, a University of Texas law professor in Austin.

Valeria Maxon drowned her baby June 30, 2006. She was placed in a state
mental hospital after a judge found her not guilty by reason of insanity.

Court papers say she was despondent over her son's delayed development and
blamed her breast milk for his disorders.

Michael Maxon allegedly recorded tapes for his wife to hear in which he
repeatedly chanted such things as "Our son is riding on the short bus,"
"Life is so deliciously miserable" and "I am a mother. It's all my fault."

-------------------------------------------



Star-Telegram, 2 May 2008, Mansfield mom ruled insane in boy's death
By Melody McDonald

Fort Worth - Valeria Maxon believed that she was a witch and that her
1-year-old son, Alex, was the Antichrist. She was certain that her only
child was possessed by the devil, was dying and would start the apocalypse
and bring about the end of the world.

Soon, according to psychologists who later examined Maxon, she became
convinced that water was the only thing that could keep the evil spirits
away and save the world.

So on June 30, 2006, while her husband was out running errands, Maxon put
her son in the hot tub in the back yard of their Mansfield home and let him
drown.

And even now - nearly two years later -- Maxon thinks she did the right thing

"She thought it was horrible but that it prevented the end of the world,"
psychologist Randy Price testified Thursday during Maxon's capital murder
trial.

Later, state District Judge Wayne Salvant found Maxon, 33, not guilty by
reason of insanity and ordered that she be sent to a maximum-security state
mental hospital in Vernon for treatment rather than to prison for punishment.

"This has been a tragic situation," Salvant said. "I'm hoping Mrs. Maxon
can get the help that is needed."

To be found not guilty by reason of insanity, defendants must prove that
they suffer from a severe mental illness or defect and did not know their
conduct was wrong at the time of their crime. In Maxon's case, no one --
including the prosecutors -- disputed that Maxon was legally insane when
she drowned Alex.

"It is not my duty as a prosecutor to seek a conviction, but to see that
justice is done," prosecutor Alana Minton said later. "I do believe that
justice has been served today."

Maxon's defense attorney, Joetta Keene, said that she is really a "gentle
soul whose mental illness took over."

"That mental illness caused her to kill the love of her life," Keene said.
"We are happy that the state and the judge saw that it was the mental
illness that caused Alex's death and realized that Alex's mom loved him."

During the trial, which was decided by a judge, not a jury, a Texas Ranger,
two psychologists and Maxon's sister testified about Maxon's deteriorating
mental state, the drowning and a weird tape-recording that was found in the
Maxons' Mansfield home.

According to testimony, Valeria Maxon was living in Moldova in eastern
Europe when she met her husband, Michael Maxon, through a dating service.
She moved to the United States, and, on June 12, 2005, their son, Alex, was
born.

In March 2006, they learned that Alex was developmentally delayed, and soon
after, Valeria Maxon's mental health began deteriorating.

"She became more and more anxious about Alex," Price testified. "She wasn't
able to sleep and was extremely concerned about him and she began to
develop delusional thoughts."

Psychologists testified that Maxon became convinced that her son was dying
and that it was her fault because he needed her breast milk. She was
certain Alex was possessed and would cause the end of the earth. She
believed that God sent her a message, telling her water would prevent the
end of the world and Alex's suffering.

Maxon was hospitalized at least five times, from May 16 through June 30,
2006, in psychiatric hospitals in Dallas, Florida and California. On June
6, 2006, she attempted suicide by overdosing on Ambien. Doctors diagnosed
severe depression with psychotic features and told Michael Maxon not to
leave her alone with Alex.

But on June 30, 2006, Michael Maxon left to run errands, and when he
returned home, Alex was lying dead and naked on the couple's bed. Officials
said Maxon called his wife's family in Europe, put away groceries and the
dry cleaning, called a business partner and then dialed 911.

On Tuesday, Michael Maxon, 54, was charged with abandoning/endangering a
child. Investigators accused him of leaving Alex alone with Valeria,
knowing she was unstable.

At Thursday's trial, psychologists testified that they believe that Michael
Maxon exacerbated his wife's mental condition. Police found a tape in the
house in which Michael Maxon repeatedly chants negative statements. He told
police he played it for his wife as "therapy" when she was extremely depressed.

"It's all so deliciously tragic," Maxon says over and over in a singsong
voice. "It's all my fault. I really screwed up. I'm the mother; no one
understands me. If I'm miserable, the whole world has to be miserable.
Nobody understands. Our son is riding the short bus. It's all my fault."

What does the judge's order mean?

Valeria Maxon will remain in the state mental hospital for an indefinite
period. She will stay until a treatment team determines, and a judge
agrees, that she is stable enough to be released. Sometimes, the stays are
relatively short.

Other cases

Since 2001, at least four other Texas mothers have killed their children
and were found not guilty by reason of insanity.

In June 2001, Andrea Yates of suburban Houston drowned her five children,
ages 6 months to 7 years, in a bathtub, saying she was saving them from the
devil. During her 2002 trial, a jury found her guilty of capital murder and
sentenced her to life in prison, but the conviction was overturned. Yates,
who had a long history of mental illness, was retried and found not guilty
by reason of insanity. She was committed to a state mental hospital.

Deanna Laney of Tyler was charged with capital murder in May 2003 for
bludgeoning two of her sons to death with rocks and severely injuring a
third. She said God told her to kill her sons. Laney was found not guilty
by reason of insanity and was committed to a state mental hospital.

Dena Schlosser of Plano fatally injured her daughter by cutting off her
arms with a 10-inch butcher knife in November 2004. Schlosser, who suffered
from postpartum depression and exhibited hyper-religious behavior, believed
she was sacrificing her baby to God. She was found not guilty by reason of
insanity and sent to a state mental hospital.

Lisa Ann Diaz of Plano drowned her two daughters, ages 5 and 2, in 2003.
She told doctors and psychologists that they had lupus and ringworm. She
was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was released from a state
mental hospital in 2006.

---

Related Content

Mom ruled insane in boy's death
http://www.star-telegram.com/news/photos/gallery/618729.html

Crime Time blog
http://startelegram.typepad.com/crime_time/

Other cases

Since 2001, at least four other Texas mothers have killed their children
and were found not guilty by reason of insanity.

In June 2001, Andrea Yates of suburban Houston drowned her five children,
ages 6 months to 7 years, in a bathtub, saying she was saving them from the
devil. During her 2002 trial, a jury found her guilty of capital murder and
sentenced her to life in prison, but the conviction was later overturned.
Yates, who had a long history of mental illness, was retried and found not
guilty by reason of insanity. She was committed to a state mental hospital.

Deanna Laney of Tyler was charged with capital murder in May 2003 for
bludgeoning two of her sons to death with rocks and severely injuring a
third. She claimed God told her to kill her sons. Laney was found not
guilty by reason of insanity and was committed to a state mental hospital.

Dena Schlosser of Plano fatally injured her daughter by cutting off her
arms with a 10-inch butcher knife in November 2004. Schlosser, who suffered
from post-partum depression and hyper-religious behavior, believed she was
sacrificing her baby to God. She was found not guilty by reason of insanity
and sent to the state mental hospital.

Lisa Ann Diaz of Plano drowned her two daughters, ages 5 and 2, in 2003.
She told doctors and psychologists that they had lupus and ringworm. She
was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was released from a state
mental hospital in 2006.

Source: Star-Telegram archives
Related Tags (BETA)
mouse over a tag to see related stories
Mrs. Maxon Andrea Yates God sent Michael Maxon District Judge Wayne Salvant
June 2001 Valeria Maxon Randy Price Mansfield Moldova Ambien Antichrist
Joetta Keene

----------------------------------------------------------



TXCN - Texas Cable News, 25 May 2008

Charges against Mansfield man whose wife killed their child are seen as a
bold move
By Debra Dennis, The Dallas Morning News

Mansfield - Michael Maxon knew his wife was losing her fight for sanity.

Mental-health experts warned him that Valeria Maxon was despondent and
psychotic and, if left alone, could endanger the life of their 1-year-old
son, Alexander.

Mr. Maxon recorded tapes, homemade therapy for his wife when she became
depressed. On them, a police affidavit said, Mr. Maxon repeatedly chanted:
"Our son is riding on the short bus." "Life is so deliciously miserable."
"I am a mother. It's all my fault."

In a case tragically similar to that of Houston's Andrea Yates, who drowned
her five children in a bathtub in 2001, a solitary Mrs. Maxon drowned her
baby on June 30, 2006, at the couple's Mansfield residence. Authorities
familiar with Mrs. Maxon's history of mental disorders weren't surprised.

The bigger shock came late last month when police charged her 54-year-old
husband with child abandonment, a second-degree felony, in connection with
the child's death.

Legal experts say the charge against Mr. Maxon is as unprecedented as it is
bold. Investigators in these types of child homicides are now casting a
wider net in assigning blame – not leaving responsibility for the death
solely with the mothers – said George Dix, a University of Texas law
professor in Austin.

"To my knowledge, no action has been taken against the fathers until now,"
Mr. Dix said of Mr. Maxon's arrest. "The circumstances were ones in which
no reasonable, similarly situated adult would leave a child of this age and
ability and a reasonable person would believe that the circumstances would
place the child in imminent danger."

Watchful eye needed

Mrs. Maxon, 33, a native of Moldova, is confined to the state mental
hospital at Vernon after a judge this month found her not guilty by reason
of insanity in Alexander's death.

According to court testimony, Mrs. Maxon was despondent over her son's
delayed developmental issue and blamed her breast milk for his disorders.

An arrest-warrant affidavit released by the Mansfield Police Department
shows that weeks before Alexander's death, a California treatment center
advised Mr. Maxon not to leave his wife alone with their child. The former
magazine executive said that either he or his wife's sister would keep Mrs.
Maxon under constant watch.

But Mr. Maxon told police that on the day his son died, he left his wife
and son alone at their house for about 90 minutes while he went grocery
shopping. When he returned, Mrs. Maxon said that the boy had drowned in the
hot tub.

"I did it. I killed it," Mrs. Maxon told her husband.

Mr. Maxon's attorney, Jack Strickland of Fort Worth, said the charge
against his client is overreaching. Mr. Maxon, he said, took his wife and
child to medical facilities in Florida, California and Texas in an attempt
to get her the help she needed.

"Once the police realized that they weren't going to be able to
successfully prosecute Valeria Maxon, they looked for someone they could
focus their attention on, and that was Michael Maxon," he said. "There was
some suggestion that he encouraged her to harm the child. That's an unfair
suggestion."

Not really, says Mrs. Yates' attorney, George Parnham of Houston. Though he
said he has no direct knowledge of the Maxon case, he called the arrest of
the husband "a step in the right direction."

"I just think the parents need to be held jointly," Mr. Parnham said.
"Without getting into the merits of this case, I applaud the fact that at
least the state is looking at both parents. The fathers, they've got to be
educated that moms need some assistance."

Rusty Yates has divorced his wife and has remarried. On his blog earlier
this year, Mr. Yates said that he was a good husband and father and that
his family lived like many others.

"What is not written is that I worked hard to provide for my family," he
wrote in a blog post dated Jan. 21. "I worked hard around the house, I
helped care for our children, and I diligently sought medical treatment for
Andrea. In 2000, I suggested to her that she could work half-time and I
could work half-time; her response was, 'I am a mother now.' "

Mr. Yates was widely criticized for fathering a fifth child with his wife
knowing she had twice attempted suicide and suffered severe postpartum
depression. However, Harris County officials determined he was not
criminally responsible for his children's deaths.

"I think we're more sensitized to the obligations of husbands after the
Yates case," Mr. Dix said. "There is a great deal of difference in [Maxon]
in that he was warned specifically not to leave his wife alone. I can't
think of another case like this."

Placing blame

Dena Schlosser of Plano was also sent to Vernon after she was found not
guilty by reason of insanity for cutting off her baby daughter's arms,
killing her. Mrs. Schlosser suffers from schizoaffective disorder, which
makes it difficult to determine reality from delusion. She killed
10-month-old Maggie Schlosser in November 2004.

Her attorney, David Haynes, contends that Mrs. Schlosser's husband, John,
fed her predilection for religious-based solutions to her complex
psychiatric problems.

Mr. Schlosser, who Mr. Haynes said now lives in Parker County, was not
charged. He did not return repeated calls for comment.

"Any time a child is dead, there's a feeling that someone should be
responsible for it," Mr. Haynes said. "We've got a series of these in
Texas, and it's suggested that if the mother did the deed, there is
something in the family dynamic to hold the father responsible."

Mr. Strickland said that sort of thinking is unfairly penalizing his
client, who is free on $20,000 bail but faces up to 20 years in prison if
convicted.

He added that Mr. Maxon has suffered dual losses – the death of his son and
the loss of his wife to an institution. And fault, the Fort Worth lawyer
said, lies elsewhere.

"I'm a bit concerned that the medical facilities managed to keep her for a
day or two and decided that her illnesses were not serious enough for a
longer stay," Mr. Strickland said. "They were quick to wash themselves of
the Maxon family problems. When this thing turned horribly bad, these
people started trying to divest themselves and pointed a finger at
[Michael] Maxon.

"There's more than enough blame to go around here, and the most to blame is
Valeria, who walked out of a courtroom."

----------------------------------------------------------

http://preventionnotpunishment.blogspot.com/2008/05/another-mother-found-not-guilty-by.html

Prevention Not Punishment - Educating the public on the intersection of the death penalty and severe mental illness. 2 May 2008

Another Mother Found Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity

According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Valeria Maxon, who has been
diagnosed with "bipolar disorder, most recent episode depressed with
psychotic features," was found Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity (NGRI) in
the drowning death of her son Alex ("Mansfield mom ruled insane in boy's
death," May 2, 2008 ).
As with the vast majority of successful insanity defenses, the prosecution
and defense agreed on the appropriateness of this verdict, which was
delivered by Judge Wayne Salvant. Insanity must be proved by a
preponderance of the evidence.

The Star-Telegram article is pasted below in its entirety. Note the
description at the end of four other tragic cases of Texas mothers who have
been found NGRI since 2001 as a result of their severe mental illness.

"Valeria Maxon believed that she was a witch and that her 1-year-old son,
Alex, was the Antichrist. She was certain that her only child was possessed
by the devil, was dying and would start the apocalypse and bring about the
end of the world.

Soon, according to psychologists who later examined Maxon, she became
convinced that water was the only thing that could keep the evil spirits
away and save the world.

So on June 30, 2006, while her husband was out running errands, Maxon put
her son in the hot tub in the back yard of their Mansfield home and let him
drown.

And even now -- nearly two years later -- Maxon thinks she did the right thing.

'She thought it was horrible but that it prevented the end of the world,'
psychologist Randy Price testified Thursday during Maxon's capital murder
trial.

Later, state District Judge Wayne Salvant found Maxon, 33, not guilty by
reason of insanity and ordered that she be sent to a maximum-security state
mental hospital in Vernon for treatment rather than to prison for punishment.

'This has been a tragic situation,' Salvant said. 'I'm hoping Mrs. Maxon
can get the help that is needed.'

To be found not guilty by reason of insanity, defendants must prove that
they suffer from a severe mental illness or defect and did not know their
conduct was wrong at the time of their crime. In Maxon's case, no one -
including the prosecutors - disputed that Maxon was legally insane when she
drowned Alex.

'It is not my duty as a prosecutor to seek a conviction, but to see that
justice is done," prosecutor Alana Minton said later. "I do believe that
justice has been served today.'

Maxon's defense attorney, Joetta Keene, said that she is really a 'gentle
soul whose mental illness took over.'

'That mental illness caused her to kill the love of her life,' Keene said.
'We are happy that the state and the judge saw that it was the mental
illness that caused Alex's death and realized that Alex's mom loved him.'

During the trial, which was decided by a judge, not a jury, a Texas Ranger,
two psychologists and Maxon's sister testified about Maxon's deteriorating
mental state, the drowning and a weird tape-recording that was found in the
Maxons' Mansfield home.

According to testimony, Valeria Maxon was living in Moldova in eastern
Europe when she met her husband, Michael Maxon, through a dating service.
She moved to the United States, and, on June 12, 2005, their son, Alex, was
born.

In March 2006, they learned that Alex was developmentally delayed, and soon
after, Valeria Maxon's mental health began deteriorating.

'She became more and more anxious about Alex,' Price testified. 'She wasn't
able to sleep and was extremely concerned about him and she began to
develop delusional thoughts.'

Psychologists testified that Maxon became convinced that her son was dying
and that it was her fault because he needed her breast milk. She was
certain Alex was possessed and would cause the end of the earth. She
believed that God sent her a message, telling her water would prevent the
end of the world and Alex's suffering.

Maxon was hospitalized at least five times, from May 16 through June 30,
2006, in psychiatric hospitals in Dallas, Florida and California. On June
6, 2006, she attempted suicide by overdosing on Ambien. Doctors diagnosed
severe depression with psychotic features and told Michael Maxon not to
leave her alone with Alex.

But on June 30, 2006, Michael Maxon left to run errands, and when he
returned home, Alex was lying dead and naked on the couple's bed. Officials
said Maxon called his wife's family in Europe, put away groceries and the
dry cleaning, called a business partner and then dialed 911.

On Tuesday, Michael Maxon, 54, was charged with abandoning/endangering a
child. Investigators accused him of leaving Alex alone with Valeria,
knowing she was unstable.

At Thursday's trial, psychologists testified that they believe that Michael
Maxon exacerbated his wife's mental condition. Police found a tape in the
house in which Michael Maxon repeatedly chants negative statements. He told
police he played it for his wife as 'therapy' when she was extremely depressed.

'It's all so deliciously tragic,' Maxon says over and over in a singsong
voice. 'It's all my fault. I really screwed up. I'm the mother; no one
understands me. If I'm miserable, the whole world has to be miserable.
Nobody understands. Our son is riding the short bus. It's all my fault.'

WHAT DOES THE JUDGE'S ORDER MEAN?

Valeria Maxon will remain in the state mental hospital for an indefinite
period. She will stay until a treatment team determines, and a judge
agrees, that she is stable enough to be released. Sometimes, the stays are
relatively short.

Other cases

Since 2001, at least four other Texas mothers have killed their children
and were found not guilty by reason of insanity.

In June 2001, Andrea Yates of suburban Houston drowned her five children,
ages 6 months to 7 years, in a bathtub, saying she was saving them from the
devil. During her 2002 trial, a jury found her guilty of capital murder and
sentenced her to life in prison, but the conviction was overturned. Yates,
who had a long history of mental illness, was retried and found not guilty
by reason of insanity. She was committed to a state mental hospital.

Deanna Laney of Tyler was charged with capital murder in May 2003 for
bludgeoning two of her sons to death with rocks and severely injuring a
third. She said God told her to kill her sons. Laney was found not guilty
by reason of insanity and was committed to a state mental hospital.

Dena Schlosser of Plano fatally injured her daughter by cutting off her
arms with a 10-inch butcher knife in November 2004. Schlosser, who suffered
from postpartum depression and exhibited hyper-religious behavior, believed
she was sacrificing her baby to God. She was found not guilty by reason of
insanity and sent to a state mental hospital.

Lisa Ann Diaz of Plano drowned her two daughters, ages 5 and 2, in 2003.
She told doctors and psychologists that they had lupus and ringworm. She
was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was released from a state
mental hospital in 2006."

Posted by Kristin Houle at 1:43 PM
Labels: Mental Illness, NGRI, Texas

---

Facts about Mental Illness and the Death Penalty

- The State of Texas ranks 47th nationally in terms of per capita spending
on mental healthcare, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
It ranks 1st in executions (more than 400 since 1982).

- Around 30 percent of those incarcerated in Texas prison or jails have
been clients of the state’s public mental health system. (TX Department of
Criminal Justice)

- The U.S. Supreme Court has prohibited the death penalty for people with
mental retardation, but it has not excluded offenders with severe mental
illness from this punishment. Texas law also does not adequately protect
those with diminished capacity from a death sentence.

- At least 20 individuals with documented diagnoses of paranoid
schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other persistent and severe mental
illnesses have been executed by the State of Texas. Many had sought
treatment before the commission of their crimes, but were denied long-term
care.

- Approximately 15 to 20 percent of Texas death row inmates receive ongoing
mental health services. (Houston Chronicle, March 18, 2007)

Download the Mental Illness and the Death Penalty Fact Sheet for more
information!
http://www.tcadp.org/uploads/documents/mental%20illness/MIDP%20Fact%20Sheet%2003-08.pdf