Divorce courts are treating children as second-class - Bubbles of Love Day Austin Texas 2015

hi my name is Wendy Archer and I would like to welcome you to the 2015 parental alienation awareness day also known as bubbles of Love day my story of Parental alienation and family court corruption was featured in the documentary divorce court I'm also the co-founder of Parental alienation awareness organization USA also referred to as PA aao USA a PA aao USA is a 501c3 nonprofit organization with 12 chapters across the United States the mission of Pao USA is to increase awareness and education about the signs preventions and remedies of Parental alienation we increase awareness of Education by reaching out to the public and professionals with educational information support group meetings chearing of resources and with community

outreach activities such as today's event parental alienation awareness day we have several other speakers that you will get to meet and hear from this afternoon it's a pleasure and honor to have the following speakers here with us today Ron Palmer Ron is the president and founder of fixed family courts as well as a constitutional scholar Ron is the author of protecting parent child bonds the 28th Amendment and not in the child's best interest how do divorc courts get it all wrong and how the Constitution can fix it as an expert in family rights and constitutional law Ron is highly sought after across the country for his expertise Stuart McMullan Stuart is the

proud father of Sterling Stuart is a supporter of the father's rights movement of Texas and an Austin advocate for equal parenting and an advocate for Children of Divorce to have equal and fair access to both parents Frank Boos Frank is the proud and loving father of Jacob Frank is a UT graduate a filmmaker a shared parenting rights activist a state level representative of the father's rights movement of Texas and an advocate for Children of Divorce to have equal and fair access to both parents Chuck Huber Chuck is a TV film and Stage actor as well as a producer and writer and has had guest starring roles on NBC Fox and CBS dramas Chuck

has also worked in the educ ation field as a workshop leader teacher consultant board member and principal for 20 years in a variety of settings ranging from Southern Methodist University's Co School of Business to communities in Nigeria today Chuck will share with us why the subjects of Parental alienation and family rights are of great importance to him all of these gentlemen are leaders in the fight for legislative reform in the state of Texas and are on the front lines of advocating for Texas House Bill 23 63 they're all working very actively and very diligently to make legislative changes for children and families in Texas they are putting their hearts Souls time and talents into trying to

ensure that all children in Texas are able to freely love and enjoy both of their parents today is actually the 10th Annual International parental alienation awareness day as we are all gathered here in Austin Texas many others are gathered around the world on this very day to share the message that all children need to be able to freely love and enjoy both of their parents and both sides of their family today there will be events throughout Canada in Costa Rica in Finland in Sweden in Ireland in South Africa in Poland and in over 40 cities across the United States sadly this is necessary because parental alienation is a global epidemic that's why today we share a universal

message and the hope that someday all children around the world will be able to freely love both of their parents and everyone in their family parental alienation is when one parent tries to damage or destroy the relationship that a child has with the other parent the parent attempting to inflict the damage is known as the alienating parent the parent who is intended to be harmed is known as the target parent this damage or destruction is caused by a set of behaviors ranging from very subtle cues and innuendos to very blatant and cruel ultimatums placed on the child parental alienation can be mild moderate or severe it can strain the relationship that a child has with a

Target parent or it can sever the relationship entirely the result is usually the same for extended family members and close friends when a child is forced to disrespect or entirely reject a Target parent they are almost always also forced to disrespect or entirely reject Aunts Uncles cousins their precious grandparents and sometimes they're even forced to reject one or more of their own siblings alienated children do not snap out of it when they turn 18 years old as long as they are under the control and manipulation of the alienating parent the child will remain alienated it is not uncommon for a child to remain alienated for a lifetime if you're not familiar with

parental alienation the fact that it's a global epidemic might surprise you you might think that could never happen to me I'm a great parent I have a wonderful and very close relationship with my kids your next thought might be what did those parents do to deserve to be alienated from their children the answer is they did nothing to deserve to be alienated from their children parental alienation is not caused by the Target parent parental alienation is not a choice made by the alienated child parental alienation is caused by the manipulative and cruel behaviors and actions of the alienating parent as unbearably painful as it is for for the Target parent it is even

more painful for the child imagine your child longing to talk to you Longing To See You longing for one of your hugs longing to say and to hear you say I love you but knowing it is not safe for them to do so alienated children know that showing the target parent any affection is considered the worst possible betrayal and the consequences are too severe to wris the trauma caused to alienated children is so severe that it can and often does leave lifelong emotional damage and scars alienated children often suffer from depression anxiety substance abuse problems difficulties with basic coping abilities and relationship issues for a lifetime parental alienation is cruel and vicious so much so that many experts

call parental alienation the worst form of child abuse it is a true hate crime we have many alienated appearance here today I heard say hello to them they are some of the nicest and kindest people you'll ever meet these are some of the faces of Parental alienation they're great parents just like you they had wonderful and close relationships with their children just like you they're fun loving caring and illegal terms they are fit parents some Target parents have not seen their children for one year 2 years 7 years and some have not seen their children for over 20 years now making them alienated grandparents as well as alienated parents [Music] right now you might be asking yourself

how can awareness like this bring any real change if you're not sure that awareness is a good start I would like to share a little story with you do you know who Becky Brown is you probably think you've never heard of Becky Brown in 1979 36 years ago Becky Brown lost her beautiful son Marcus Daniel Brown Marcus was only 18 years old when he died Marcus died due to injuries caused by a drop driver in 1980 Becky Brown founded Mothers Against Drunk ding the mission statement of Mothers Against Drunk Driving was simple to support the victims and to increase public awareness about drunk driving it started with awareness by the end of 1983 129 new anti-drunk driving

laws have been passed due to the awareness generated by Mothers Against Drunk Driving nearly every anti-drunk driving law and nearly every anti-drunk driving education program to this day is due directly to the awareness that was brought to the issue by Mothers Against Drunk Driving actually when you think about it it's all due to the awareness brought to the issue by one loving and determined parent all because one parent loved her child enough to speak up loved her child enough to say this is wrong loved her child enough to say this must stop loved her child enough to stand up for all children so that they might not suffer as her and her family did now I ask you

do you think awareness is a good start the mission others Against Drunk Driving has changed over the years they brought the awareness now their mission statement is to prevent and end drunk driving I look forward to the day when we can change our mission statement and remove the word awareness because it has been accomplished and we can focus on the eradication of Parental alienation you see social awareness leads to a public outcry and a public outcry leads to real change Becky Brown knew that and that's what we need we need courageous people to join us in creating a social awareness to lead to a public outcry that will lead to real social and legislative change to save

our children and our families we must bring this issue to light we must talk about it openly and we must address boldly our children not only deserve for us to do this our children need us to do this I want to share with you that when I was going through my divorce all three of my kids came to their dad and I and this is exactly what they said they said we talked about it and we all want to split our time with you and Dad 50/50 equal because we love you both the same and it's the fair and right thing to do out of the MS of waves as the saying

goes we love you both the same and it's the fair and right thing to do you see kids not only natural love and want relationship with both parents kids naturally know that it's right and fair to have equal time with both of their parents Mother's Day and Father's Day is just around the corner many of us will not see our children on these special holidays because our children will not feel safe to see us remember the consequences from the alienated parent are too much to risk still many of us will anxiously await a phone call we'll keep looking out the front door hoping and praying only to go to bed that night

with no visit no phone call not even a text message as much as it will hurt us it will hurt our children even more can you imagine this happening to you can you imagine this happening to your child I would like to close with a very simple and very true statement that I hope you'll remember it can happen to anyone so it should matter to everyone thank you for listening and next we'll have Ron Palmer hi and welcome everybody much like you guys I got into this the same way I was served with a divorce petition I'm a father I have a daughter she's now 16 and a half I got served with this petition in 2007

and the state tried to take my child away and I say the state and not my child's mother because my child's mother didn't create the unconstitutional statutes that allowed her to do this it was the state it was the legislature right down the road here that created these statutes that blatantly violate the constitution and it was the state that tried to do this a district judge who is a state official a state bureaucrat tried to take my child I was a able to prevent this I have 50/50 custody it cost me a tremendous amount my ex tried to alienate my child for me she was not successful but I remarried and the woman

I remarried or the mar woman I married she has four children and her ex was successful in alienating several of her children from her and we went through years long custody battles that were financially devastating emotionally devastating and had lifelong impact on the relationship between my wife and her children and between me and her children and I knew her children long before either of us ever got divorced and had very strong very close connections with these children and that's been forever damaged not because of the exes per se but because the statutes allow this to happen the state gets involved and the state says we are going to decide the state is going to decide what is

essentially a fundamental right for each of the parents parents now we were able to win in this battle and my wife has 50% custody now 50% time but again it took years and it was devastating and we went very long periods of time without seeing her children at all and we had tremendous expense as her ex took the children out of state and the court supported this after the fact after he violated the orders so what we learned in all of this was a number of things we learned how to combat the state how to identify what the state is doing and how they're doing it unconstitutionally and what we can do

about it we learned a little bit about how to deal with children who are alienated how to deal with exes who do the alienation and how to deal with family members who participate in the alienation and we've worked very hard to help other parents go through this and help them solve the problems and we work to change issues with the legislator to change the laws and to confront the judges directly in what they know are constitutional violations our judges all take an oath to support the Constitution of the United States before they can become judges and this United States Supreme Court has said very very clearly as recently as this as an opinion this past

month that state judges are required to follow the United States Constitution even in the face of state laws that violate that Constitution and what that means is when you go to a divorce court judge they are violating their oath of office when they support unconstitutional state laws that deprive us of our children the number one most unconstitutional law we have is statute 53.2 the best interest of the child this statute says that all decisions of state judges will be made in the best interest of the child now who can argue with that everybody wants the best interest of the child right what if you have two children which child's best interest are we going to

follow which one gets precedent well it doesn't happen that way you cannot possibly support the best interest of both children it's completely impossible so best interest has to give the United States Supreme Court has said this very clearly has said best interest is not the controlling factor for custody and in fact parents can as long as they meet the minimum basic needs of child care they can subordinate the best interest of the child to other children and even to their own needs and not lose their custody and yet the state courts continue to force us into this model so what we need to do is understand what our rights are where they come from and how to fight for them

in court because what the state courts are operating on is this outdated idea that your parental rights depend on your marital relationship and 100 plus years ago that was the reality right the the everybody believed that your parental rights depended on marriage and we had these things called um bastardy laws and what this meant was that if a child was born outside of wedlock that child could be treated as a second class Citizen and they W treated as second class citizens and also the father of that child could be treated as a second class Citizen and they were well in the early the late' 60s early '70s the United States Court through a series of cases said very

clearly that this is unconstitutional we cannot create unequal classes of child or unequal classes of parent based on the marital status of the child's parents it's blatantly unconstitutional and in previous rulings the Supreme Court has said that your parental rights are individual rights they exist between each parent and each child as rights that parent and child share irrespective of the marriage so we cannot treat single parents differently than married parents there's even a statute in Texas that alludes to this and it says no discrimination based on marital status and then it goes on to say that children born to single parents cannot be treated second class to children born of marriage right that

leads a blatant gaping hole What About Children of Divorce the statute specifically and I believe intentionally leaves out an entire class of children who are treated as second class citizens simply because of the marital status of their parents because the marital status of their parents changed after they were born we have to confront this this is all based on bias and Prejudice and outright bigotry against divorce divorce used to be despised and hated in this country right I grew up in the 70s and divorce was an awful thing in the 70s everybody talked bad about it if you were a divorced person you were looked down on by Society right well that has

changed divorce is common so many people we know are divorced and nobody is looked out on on for divorce in general unless you are a parent and if you are a parent of a child and you get divorced then you are absolutely treated as a second class citizen in this country even though the Constitution says you cannot be and the Supreme Court says you cannot be Society still does it and the laws are still still have bias and bigotry entrenched in them all the way through them essentially the state of Texas says that all it takes to deprive you of your fundamental rights with your children and your children's fundamental rights to you is the filing of a piece of paper

with the court one person files a petition and all of a sudden your rights that are fundamental to get the highest level of protection of any right in this country are swept away as if they did not exist simply because somebody files a piece of paper to divorce you and you and you have children what we have done is documented how this is wrong why it's wrong we wrote a book it's called not in the child's best interest there are copies up here if you want to take a look we cite over 90 United States Supreme Courts uh Supreme Court opinions that go through and explain why this isn't unconstitutional and we explain what

these opinions are what they mean how they apply to what the states are doing Texas is not alone in this all 50 states do this right but our Point here was and we wrote this book after we won our battles and we had time and ability to sit down and do this I expected this to be a very very short book but it turned out that the Supreme Court has had many many cases saying that this can't be done right the most recent in 2000 a a case called Troxel where I started the search and it explains what our rights are that they're fundamental and what the state has to do before they can

infringe them but because this was a grandparents rights case the states say well that only applies to grandparents rights doesn't apply to those divorced people why because we despise divorced people no other reason because we want to be biased and prejudice against divorced people there's no other reason every bit of legal reasoning and legal logic says that that opinion extends to divorced parents but because they have this bias and this Prejudice they refuse to do it so what we have to do like every other group in this country that was treated as second class citizens from the blacks to women to gay rights that are going on now we have to stand

up and confront this we have to understand what our rights are and we have to articulate those rights and we have to demand that the courts respect our rights we should never ever enter a divorce proceeding and talk and ask the judge to make a best interest decision that's foolishness we should enter a divorce proceeding and demand that the judge resp respect our rights and support our rights and we should demand that the court articulate what our rights are right this is called a declaratory judgment and what I'm starting to recommend to parents is that when you walk into a court in any kind of proceeding you file an original petition for decory declaratory judgment

and asking the court to make a statement about what your rights as a parent are and what the bar is before the state can infringe those rights and what this does is forces them to put it in writing in a way that we can challenge in the courts and we can challenge in the legislator we can show what they're doing but we have to know what to ask for we have to know how to do this so I implore all of you to learn your constitutional rights no matter what stage you're in here even if your children have aged out right join the fight and help others in this so that your children don't have to go

through it other people don't have to go through it but the first step is to learn your constitutional rights and to learn how to fight them and that's what we aim to help parents do thank you hiy everyone my name is steuart McMullen I am the father of Sterling McMullen he's 5 years old and just started kindergarten this year I don't have a written speech prepared I'm just going to speak from the heart based on my experience with uh parental alienation um it comes in many forms uh the forms of Parental alienation that I've had to endure include false allegations to get protective orders placed on me they include uh denial of access to my son on

the phone I've only talked to my son my son eight times in one year because according to my ex the children's Bill of Rights is not included in our decree so she's only allowed me to talk to him on the phone eight times than one year uh it also comes in the form of denied possession um I was denied seven times overnight possession periods and I had to seek enforcement but um because uh it's a civil matter the the the police won't do anything about it you can have the sheriff show up and they say it's a civil matter so then you got to take it to court which costs thousands of

dollars only to find out that if it's been longer than 6 months since you filed for the enforcement those violations of the decree are wiped away so this has been a learning process I've also been banned from the school based on FSE false allegations I'm The Home Room Dad I'm a watchdog I put in over 50 hours of volunteer service just in the in the fall semester and then one day the showed up because I was there simply exercising my rights that were granted to me in the final decree of divorce when the cops showed up they said what are you doing here and I said I'm exercising my rights they said well

you're doing nothing wrong I said I know well the cops were called three more times that week and the principal finally had enough of it so she Banned Me from campus on days that I didn't have possession even from volunteering [Music] so after all of this and three protective order attempts and five hearings later based on false allegations the protective order was granted um I was able to get my rights on campus back after three hearings with the school district and uh claiming that they advis violated my civil rights I've got those back but these are the forms of Parental alienation that you can go through after after I endured this I

reached out to the father's rights movement of Texas now just because it says the father's rights movement doesn't mean women are not affected and should not be involved as a matter of fact there was a petition that was signed on the website and more than half of the signatures were from women unfortunately 85% of the [Music] time the the women have primary custody and so the men are the victims of Parental alienation most of the time but this is gender neutral and it's it's race blind and it's it's it's a political thing as as Wendy pointed it's a it's a worldwide thing as Wendy pointed out um after all of this I

reached out to the father's rights movement and started getting involved and uh I happened to live in Austin so going to the capital wasn't an easy thing for me to do um so a buddy of mine who's in a similar situation we came down to the capital and just started talking to the legislators trying to find out if there was any way to get equal parenting bills we also reached out to Ron and Sher Palmer with fixed family courts and they had drafted one so we started handing that out we came across Gilbert Peña and his office and they had House Bill 2363 already drafted so from there we uh I've been up to the capital two to three

times a week for the past 6 weeks and just talking to the legislatur trying to promote this bill so my my main point if you're feeling alienated you're not alone first of all don't lose hope second of all there is an ability to change the system and I'm firsthand knowledge of that go to your state legislator your rep your Senator tell them your story and tell them that you want them to support House Bill 2363 and you would like some changes if there was 5050 access my opinion is that this parental alienation would be greatly minimized because no parent has the upper hand in that situation so I'm going to be around here

till 2:00 if anybody wants to talk to me please uh come find me and uh we can discuss more thank you good afternoon my name is Frank Boos and I am here on behalf of myself my son Jacob Elijah Boos and also representing the father's rights building of Texas when my son Jacob was born in October of 2010 um like most of you that are parents you know something inside of me changed and I was gleaming with excitement Pride Joy I had high hopes and dreams of participating and watching Jake grow as an infant into a toddler into a young boy dreams of participating and guiding him through monumental writes a passage and steps along the

way like his first words that he babbled out of his mouth the first time he ate solid foods his first footsteps his first teeth coming in teaching him how to ride a bike um unfortunately and sadly I missed out on a lot of these firsts for Jake and painfully so did my parents um I was a victim of a brutal Distortion campaign of Parental alienation that began even before Jake's mother and I split up as those of you who've been alienated May realize that sometimes like that starts to happen in subtle ways before you actually notice it when you know notice it you're already neck deep in it so as it turns out as it

turns out I was ambushed and victimized by a vindictive ex unfortunately and her very unethical attorneys and the biased very biased adversarial court system that thrives off of encouraging and promoting this type of fighting leading to unnecessary litigation that just all it does is Damages it hurts children non-custodial parents and the relationship between those two so I've had to struggle essentially my son's entire life to just have a normal relationship with him and create a meaningful strong bond with him luckily by the grace of God my son is very responsive to me he's smart and we do enjoy a very strong relationship and but it wasn't easy I endured classic paral alienation

badmouthing of me of my parents in front of our kid withholding a visitation of court ordered visitations false allegations of abuse even frivolous protective order filings one as recently as last fall all these attempts are basically attempts by his mom and I'm sure under the influence of the attorneys to undermine my role as his father to gain an advantage in a system that promotes animosity between parents and creates custody battles um in my darkest of moments and I actually feel a little embarrassed saying this because it's you know I endured seven months of alienation uh during his toddler years or and I know there's people here that have gone years without seeing their kid but for me

those S months were like my darkest of dark not being able to see my little kid and um you know I sat at home alone and cried like a baby on Father's Day by myself while my kid was down the street five miles 5 miles away from me down the street and I had to sit by myself on Father's Day I missed a Thanksgiving dinner I missed Christmas I even miss his second birthday altto together and during all of these occasions he was right down the street five miles and I had court ordered visitation rights and they were just blatantly being violated and I begged on numerous occasions to be the source

of his uh supervision or child care in times that uh mom was out working cuz she works night just right down the street here in downtown Austin um and it always fell on death ears it seems like there was always somebody else uh um a boyfriend uh her sister um the neighbors down the street or some friends to watch Jacob instead of his dad it was right down the road um during this seven-month period of time that I didn't see him at all uh my mom was extremely ill um this Jake's my parents only grandkid the only grandkid they ever had on this Earth and um my mom pass in November of 2013 without ever forming a

true strong bond with u my son and her only grandchild and it it pains me because I was super tight with my mom and you know if you hurt my mom you hurt me when a when a person becomes a grandparent they shouldn't have to worry about their son not seeing their kid or themselves not being able to rejoice and celebrate the joy of grandparenthood so you know it left deep scars on our family the whole family it's not just me that was elated from Jake or Jake alienated from me Jake was alienated from a whole portion whole that whole half of the family and those scars are just they're always going to

be there um there's memories that we should have been able to have with my mom and Jacob that we never got to have you know pictures for Prosperity that we should have been able to take that we never got to take and we can never get that time back only alienated parents and their family members that experience the pain of this know what's going on and what it feels like to be left in the dark to be treated like an undesired nuisance in your own kid's life knowing that your kid's right down the road and you don't even know what's going on with them you can't imagine what this feels like and these parents that tend to alienate

they don't operate alone they don't operate alone they have they Network a little army of people to help them in this assault essentially on your Parenthood they'll badmouth you they'll tell lies about you and essentially they'll do whatever it takes to get their allies to help them destroy your relationship with your kid or undermine your integrity or your rights and importance of a parent in your own kid's life these allies I call them enablers and to me they're just as guilty as the party that's enabling um I believe these enablers should be ashamed of themselves I believe they should be exposed in fact if you know anybody that's helping an alienator I urge each

and every one of you to shame these people expose them for their selfish and Dev acts their immoral acts and their harmful Behavior towards children as these are our kids that we need to stand up for right across the street here is the courthouse in my opinion they're the number one en enablers that's where they do their work over there in the capital also as Ron was saying right there is The Chopping Block that's the meat grinder that's where families are ripped apart and the cycle of Parental alienation begins in that Courthouse parents walk in into that courthouse on a daily basis and they get blindsided they walk out never having the same rights to

their own children again some of them not even having the same relationships with their kids anymore so it's up to us as Ron was saying to change the tide to get the family courts to hear us to get legislator legislature to hear us us that we're not just going to lay down and take this line down anymore that we're committed to standing up for our kids and their rights to have equal and fair access to both parents there's a um quote who I believe is by one of our forefathers um I'll just read it it says justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who

are affected fected and this is no less important today than it was 200 plus years ago when Benjamin Franklin uttered those words I mean it's completely relevant to the epidemic of Parental alation now because this is a civil rights issue and it's a constitutional rights issue um the civil rights movement in the 60s it wasn't only created by the big stars that we know from that moment like Martin Luther King or LBJ great as these guys were great as those men were the backbone of the Civil Rights Movement was actually made up of thousands and thousands of ordinary people just like you and I who got fed up with an unjust system

and decided to do something about it to organize to become community leaders activists because this is a civil rights issue and constitutional rights issue and nobody's going to protect those rights but us last thing I'd like to add is that I'd like everybody to educate themselves and try and um do their part to support Gilbert pin's house buillt 2363 for shared and equal parenting it is not the absolute end all be all solution it still allows for a certain amount of judicial discretion which is a problem but it is a step in the right direction I believe if we can include this option of 50-50 parenting into the Texas Family Code that it will decrease the need for

litigation which in itself will cut down greatly on uh parental alienation that seems to be associated with the whole custody battle thing so thank you guys very much