#child welfare reporting

[fosteringinsc]

Mandated Reporters. Who are they?

Mandated reporters are individuals required by law to report suspected child or vulnerable adult abuse or neglect. Professionals who work with children or vulnerable adults or have regular contact with them, such as teachers, healthcare providers, foster parents, social workers, and law enforcement officials, are typically mandated reporters. Mandatory reporting laws are designed to help…

[feralprancinghomosexual]

Is my mental health the worst it's been since leaving uni and being diagnosed properly? Yes! Are me and jo trying to do everything to avoid becoming homeless and placed in emergency housing even though no other authority seems to care very much about that? Yes! But did I have the ingredients for a mountain of bruschetta and did it make me feel a little better? Also yes!

[the-cimmerians]

Today, ProPublica reports on yet another big change that stands to solve a decades-long problem we first learned about back in 2016, closing a huge loophole that allowed states to divert federal antipoverty funds to governors’ pet projects, like promoting abstinence, holding “heathy marriage” classes that did nothing to prevent out-of-wedlock births, funding anti-abortion “clinics” to lie about abortion “risks,” sending middle-class kids to private colleges, and other schemes only tangentially related to helping poor kids. It’s the same loophole that Mississippi officials tried to drive a truck through to divert welfare funds to former sportsball man Brett Favre’s alma mater, for a volleyball palace. [ ]

The agency has proposed new rules — open for public comment until December 1 — aimed at nudging states to actually use TANF funds to give cash to needy parents, not fill budget holes or punish poor people.

One change will put an end to the scheme Utah used to substitute LDS church funds for welfare, by prohibiting states

from counting charitable giving by private organizations, such as churches and food banks, as “state” spending on welfare, a practice that has allowed legislatures to budget less for programs for low-income families while still claiming to meet federal minimums.

Another new rule will put the kibosh on using TANF to fund child protective services or foster care programs, which are not what TANF is supposed to be for, damn it.

And then there’s the simple matter of making sure that funds for needy families go to needy families, not to pet projects that have little to do with poverty:

The reforms would also redefine the term “needy” to refer only to families with incomes at or below 200% of the federal poverty line. Currently, some states spend TANF money on programs like college scholarships — or volleyball stadiums — that benefit more affluent people.

[kcinpa]

TL;DR Project 2025

Project 2025 has crossed my dash several times, so maybe tumblr is already informed about the hellish 900-page takeover plan if Trump wins office again. But even the articles covering Project 2025 can be a LOT of reading. So I'm trying to get it down to simple bulleted lists…

Navigator Research (a progressive polling outfit) found that 7 in 10 Americans are unfamiliar with Project 2025. But the more they learn about it, the more they don't like or want it. When asked about a series of policy plans taken directly from Project 2025, the bipartisan survey group responded most negatively to the following:

Allowing employers to stop paying hourly workers overtime

Allowing the government to monitor people’s pregnancies to potentially prosecute them if they miscarry

Removing health care protections for people with pre-existing conditions

Eliminating the National Weather Service, which is currently responsible for preparing for extreme weather events like heat waves, floods, and wildfires

Eliminating the Head Start program, ending preschool education for the children of low-income families

Putting a new tax on health insurance for millions of people who get insurance through their employer

Banning Medicare from negotiating for lower prescription drug costs and eliminating the $35 monthly cap on the price of insulin for seniors

Cutting Social Security benefits by raising the retirement age

Allowing employers to deny workers access to birth control

Laurie Garrett looked at the roughly 50 pages within Project 2025 that deal with Health and Human Services (HHS) and other health agencies, and summarized them on Twitter/X in a series of replies. I've shortened even more here:

HHS must "respect for the sacred rights of conscience" for Federal workers & healthcare providers and workers broadly who object to abortions, contraception, gender reassignment & other issues - ie. allow them to deny services based on religious beliefs

HHS should promote "stable and flourishing married families."

Require all welfare programs to "promote father involvement" – or terminate their funding for mothers and children.

Prioritize adoptions via faith-based organizations.

Redefine sex, eliminating all forms of gender "confusion" regarding identity and orientation.

Eliminate the Head Start program for children, entirely

Ban all funding of Planned Parenthood

Ban birth control services that are "egregious attacks on many Americans' religious & moral beliefs"

Deny pregnancy termination pills, "mail-order abortions."

Eliminate Office of Refugee Resettlement; move all refugee matters to the Department of Homeland Security

Healthcare should be "market-based"

Ban all mask and vaccine requirements.

Closely regulate the NIH w/citizen ethics panels, ensuring that no research involves fetal tissue, leads to development of new forms of Abortions or brings profits to the researchers.

Redirect the Office of Global Affairs to promoting "moral conscience" & full compliance w/the Mexico City policy

The CDC should have no role in medical policies.

"Because liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism," HHS should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence & by what method.

I'm still looking for a good short summary of the environmental horrors that Project 2025 would bring if it comes to fruition…

[sarahs-library]

Forgotten: Part Three

Azriel resolves to find answers; you try to keep from falling apart.

A/N - Finally! This week was really busy for me and all I wanted to do was get this finished. I hope you enjoy it, despite the angst. Cassian is the real star here, I absolutely loved writing his little part in this one. Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

Word count: 5,982

Part One ☪ Part Two

Forgotten Universe: Pretty Eyes

Azriel

“We really can’t put it off any longer, you know how unruly they get if left to their own devices for too long.” Azriel nodded absent-mindedly, his attention still mostly on the papers in front of him. Several months’ worth of reports had been piled on his desk by Rhys, an olive branch, something to occupy him whilst he waited out Madja’s orders of rest and recuperation. No training and no flying, not until the lingering effects of the concussion that still left him feeling weak had subsided.

After the disastrous intervention his family had staged yesterday culminated in him storming away from the table feigning a headache, he’d locked himself away in his room, preferring his solitude whilst he’d sorted through the mess of emotions. Finding sleep that night had been impossible. After hours spent tossing within the sheets and wrestling with an empty sense of wrongness he couldn’t explain, he resolved to sneak into the training room in the early hours and get through his regime before the rest of the house was stirring. His shadows alerted him to Cassian’s presence, moments before he found him only partway through his warm-up. His disappointment made Azriel feel like a chastised child, and he preferred to flee rather than confront his family’s meddling concern for his welfare.

He’d been holed up in his study ever since. Though well maintained by the House, the bound reports were old and mostly pertained to his early years as the Night Court’s spymaster. Now his preferred place of storage rather than the quiet sanctuary for work he remembered.

“You don’t have to explain it to me, Rhys, I understand.” Azriel continued to avoid his brother as he lounged in a chair opposite. He couldn’t stand to look at him, at any of his family. A constant reminder of everything he’d lost after waking. But the perfect opportunity was presenting itself, he just had to bide his time.

“I would understand if you didn’t want to come, with everything that’s happened.” Azriel still knew his brother. Knew that Rhys would rather disadvantage himself by not having him attend the Court of Nightmares than cause him distress. He also knew that Rhys would expect him to protest, to martyr himself and come anyway, for his family, his court, as he had done so many times before.

The shadows he’d sent out earlier, reluctant but reliable, began to slink back in under the closed door. They dispersed into the room, melding into their siblings hanging off the bookcase and in the archways of the windows. They heeded his silent plea to stay out of Rhys’ eyeline. Azriel touched the pads of his two scarred fingers to his forehead and closed his eyes, feigning discomfort.

The headache powder Elain had thoughtfully gifted him sat on the desk. Sweet, beautiful Elain who had paid attention to him, noticed the mannerisms he shielded with shadows and made him feel seen in a way his family never had. Who the male he’d become had seemed to snub. After tearing his room apart, he found the powder that he remembered so recently staring at as he tried to find sleep. In a drawer with broken-handled daggers and scraps of patching leather, gathering dust. Azriel met Rhys’ gaze and hoped that he wouldn’t be able to read the insincerity. He paused as if considering, before nodding in agreement.

“I think that would be best.” The slight widening of his brother’s eyes was the only sign of his surprise. “I’m sorry.” The apology was real, the guilt of manipulating Rhys lay heavy on his conscious.

“No, don’t be sorry. We understand Az. We just…We just want you to take care of yourself right now, brother.” Azriel swallowed heavily but managed to keep his face masked in unease. Rhys deserved better than this. His shadows thickened around him, sensing his emotional turmoil and desire to hide away. Rhys rose and leaned over the desk before clasping Azriel on the shoulder. He could feel the warmth of his brother’s hand through the dark dress shirt he wore. The affection on his face, so open and expressive now that Feyre had entered their lives, only served to make Azriel fall deeper into the pit of his self-loathing.

“We’ll be back this evening, Nesta will stay behind at the House with you in case you need anything.” His shadows affirmed that she was in the library a few floors below, engrossed in her latest smutty romance novel. It would be hours before she deigned to come back to reality, more than enough time for him to accomplish his task.

“I’ll finish reading these reports.” A tried-and-true tactic, Rhys had always understood Azriel’s need to use his work to buffer and evade situations that made him feel uncomfortable. He couldn’t let it go though, not completely. Not when Azriel was a shell of the male he’d been just a week before. The change had been gradual, Rhys couldn’t pinpoint when his brother had become happier in life, and more open in displaying his affection. Or at least less inclined to shroud himself in shadows. “Join us for dinner tonight?” The silence that followed was heavy.

Maybe it was the guilt, but Azriel found himself angling his head in acquiescence. Amethyst eyes brightened and Rhys nodded, accepting that Azriel was at least trying at some semblance of normalcy. Stepping away, Rhys resolved to dedicate himself to bringing his brother back to them, back to you, to the babe whose birth was fast approaching. The surge of power as he winnowed back to the River House left a lingering essence in the room. Azriel exhaled slowly, excitement and nervousness building in tandem as he realised the plan he set in motion was coming to fruition.

The shadows descended now, curling up to wait to relay the information. You found her? He asked; a chorus of voices relaying their affirmation. Where?

Rising from the chair behind the desk, straightening the papers into neat piles before glancing one last time at the small pot of powder, he returned to his bedroom. The door to the balcony hung ajar, letting in a cool morning breeze. He slipped through and climbed onto the edge overlooking Velaris. Stretching out the stiff muscles of his wings he gave a few precursory beats before launching himself off the balcony into a free fall over the city. His wings caught him in a gentle glide as he neared the rockface below and leveled out, carefully he prolonged riding the updraft as much as he could before he started to fly. The beats were slow, just enough to keep him a respectful distance from the city skyline but not enough to draw attention should Nesta decide to look out the window.

He followed the winding path of the Sidra through the city and reached the house nestled in the outskirts in a matter of minutes. There were no signs of activity, but his shadows had confirmed she was there. Circling the structure he tipped into his descent, heavy boots hitting cobbled stone as he landed in the lush gardens.

Your POV

You gripped the mug tightly between your hands, savouring the warmth seeping through the porcelain as you blew gently causing craters in the hot tea. As exhausted and emotional as you had been last night, sleep had eluded you long into the early morning. You’d managed a few fitful hours, but the gnawing emptiness Azriel’s absence left could not be abated. Separated only by the city of Velaris, you felt as though you may have been on separate worlds.

The babe you carried, so active now in the last stages of your pregnancy, had greeted the morning with a symphony of limbs played against your ribs. But it seemed that even they had stopped for the beauty of the sunrise over the skyline. You rubbed fondly against your abdomen, trailing a thumb over a small rounded bony prominence. The heel of a foot or the curved apex of a wing.  

Your eyes moved from the window to take in the nursery in the dawning light. A Pegasus, poised to take flight hovered on the wall by the small planet in one of the corners of the galaxy mobile. Home. You hadn’t thought seriously about your world in centuries, the one left behind as fire and brimstone destroyed everything you once had. You considered how your life would be different if you had never been forced to flee, to lead a nomadic existence through the stars.

You started as you heard the flapping wing beats that circled the house, descending lower before a pair of boots thudded against the stone. Abandoning the mug, you braced your arms to haul yourself out of the rocking chair in the nursery’s corner, cursing the sheer size your abdomen had grown to and how it restricted even the most basic of movements. Your feet were quick against the floor of the hall and as you began your descent of the stairs, leaning back to accommodate the additional weight that threw off your centre of gravity.

A heavy knock on the door made you more breathless than the sudden burst of activity. Your heart swelled.

“I’m coming!” Smiling as you called out. You faltered slightly when you heard the response.

“Hurry up! It’s freezing out here.” Cassian. The excitement that had bubbled in your chest died, hitting your stomach and leaving a leaden feeling in its wake. You were still on the stairs, taking a moment to collect yourself before you continued the down, moving much slower this time.

You made it to the bottom slightly out of breath, making sure to school your features before reaching out to open the front door. Cassian stood, a solid mass of muscle and a wide grin, grasping a crinkled paper bag in one of his mammoth hands. You couldn’t help returning him a small smile which soon died as you considered his unscheduled appearance.

“Is everything okay? Is it..Is it Az?” You knew Feyre and the others had spoken to him, tried to explain to him this new world he’d woken up to. She had confided in you last night that it hadn’t gone according to plan, that there hadn’t been the opportunity to convey more than basic information before he’d fled. She’d been apologetic, promising to try to see if she could get through to him, asking if there was anything you needed before returning to the River House.

“Oh. No, no, he’s fine. Well, I caught him trying to train this morning against Madja’s orders but that’s just Az being predictable.” Cassian shifted his weight and looked down at the bag he cradled like it held something precious. “The bakery across from the Sidra, the one that sells the hazelnut croissants. Az said that he was picking them up for you every morning after training. That you’d been cravin’ ‘em, so here.” He held the bag, heavy with sweet-smelling pastries, out across the threshold to you. Tears pricked the back of your eyes as you reached for them, meeting Cassian sheepish grin as he took in the emotion displayed clearly on your face.

“Thank you.” It was a near whisper, but you managed to get the words around the lump that had formed in your throat. The hulking male shrugged it off as if to say it was nothing. You swallowed before speaking again. “You hungry?” His grin widened, taking on a lupine quality as he scoffed and stepped over the threshold at the invitation.

“Like you need to ask."

Azriel

The cloying, sweet smell rising from the uniform beds of roses tickled his nose. Morning dew clinging to the blades of grass left trails of shining wetness on the leather of his shoes. The wrought iron garden table held a pot of steaming tea, a clear glass sticky with the remnants of juice, and two plates dusted with crumbs. Shadows directed him towards the bottom of the garden and Azriel's heart raced with anticipation as he thought about seeing her again.

She knelt on a towel with her back to him, gloveless hands digging into damp soil. Azriel took a moment to admire how the cut of the lavender dress exposed the gentle curve of her shoulders. An errant lock of hair hung forward, swinging with her movements and he longed to pull it back behind her ear and trace his fingers against the soft skin of her neck, feeling her warmth beneath his fingertips.

“Elain.” She started, pulling her hands from the dirt and turning to face him. Her eyes widened in surprise and her lips parted slightly.

“Azriel, what are you doing here? Madja said you needed to rest.” He drew closer to where she still knelt frozen in the grass.

“I couldn’t stay away, I had to see you.” She shifted her weight, rising to her feet quickly. The hem of her dress brushed against the grass as she took several steps away from his advance, the lavender darkening from the wetness. “Please.” Elain stopped her retreat at his plea.

“Azriel…” She was beautiful, even as her brows furrowed in concern. Azriel wanted to take her face between his hands, wanted to bare his soul and promise to do anything, be anything that she needed.

“You can’t deny this Elain, what’s here between us. You feel it, I know you do. And the Solstice, I know what I said but…It’s not what I meant. It was Rhys, he was concerned about the bond you share with Lucian, about the repercussions of me courting you.”

Elain sighed, “I know that Azriel. You may not remember, but I do.”

"I remember the Solstice,” she continued. “I remember what you said. But I also remember the way you looked at me, the way you touched me. I remember the way you made me feel."

Elain paused, her eyes meeting Azriel's. “And I remember being happy in those months after, happy with you.” Azriel's heart swelled with hope. “But it...We didn’t work Azriel, not like that.”

“What do you mean?” Azriel asked, seeming to deflate under Elain’s gaze.  “If we were happy…”

“We were. Initially at least. But being mated to Lucien, even though I hadn’t accepted the bond, strained us. You’ve always struggled with feelings of inadequacy, no matter what I did it wasn’t enough, not to help you get past that.” He’d realised, when he spoke with Rhys on the Solstice, that he hadn’t considered a life with Elain outside the moments he stole before sleep. After he had, the life he’d built in his mind hadn’t factored in her continued bond with Lucien.

“We both wanted each other for the wrong reasons.” She continued, Azriel’s hope morphed into a sick sense of dread. “I wanted control, to be able to dictate something in my life that wasn’t because of the Cauldron. And you were chasing what Rhys and Cassian have.” Elain’s words gave free rein to all the thoughts of inadequacy, an open invitation for the dark whispers of self-deprecation to taunt and tease and belittle him for expecting anything else, for expecting more. Of course, he couldn’t have what his brothers had; he didn’t deserve it.  

Elain’s eyes were knowing, as if she could follow the train of insecurities his thoughts had taken. She closed the distance between them, her features radiant and softened with compassion. She reached out and took his hand, hidden by his side in a whirlpool of shadows, gently clasping it between her own. She had never shied away from his hands; it was one of the things that enamoured Azriel to her. 

“The decision to end our relationship was a mutual one. I think we both recognised that we couldn’t make our relationship what either of us truly needed.” Azriel no longer looked at her face, but where their hands touched. His skin was imperfect from the path the flames left, hers was torn and dirty from the garden. All he had wanted since the Solstice was to feel her touch. Now, as her palms cradled his own, an unexpected wave of instinct that screamed it was the wrong pair of hands made itself known. Azriel forced it back.

“I know that I need you, Elain. You and I understand each other. We could make this work; I know that too.” Elain smiled at him. Not in relief or joy, but the kind of smile that is given when you indulge someone.  

“There are no second chances for us. This is all temporary, what you feel for me. Once you remember you will-“Azriel couldn’t stop himself from interrupting her, addressing the memory that had burned under his skin since their lips had touched.

“You kissed me back.”

“You surprised me. It wasn’t…Azriel I understand that you’re scared but…” Trailing off, she sucked a deep breath in between her teeth. He tore his gaze away from their hands to fix on her face and was surprised to see anger waiting for him there.

“It was a mistake, Azriel.” And there Elain was, throwing back the words he’d said to her at the Solstice. “If you could see the way you’re acting right now, you’d be horrified.” She ripped her hands from his and took a step back. The sudden loss of contact had the warmth her skin had left on his cooling in the morning breeze. Azriel felt mournful at the loss, but any emotion seemed to pale in comparison to the gaping chasm of emptiness that still sat behind his sternum.

A shriek of joy broke the tension between them. Azriel tensed, taken off-guard. His shadows had been unusually quiet, they often disappeared completely in Elain’s presence, but since he woke up he was finding them to be downright uncooperative. They hadn’t alerted him of anyone else’s presence in the gardens. Instinct drove his hand to his thigh as he turned towards the sound. A boy with a mop of dark unruly hair barrelled towards him, wings flapping in excitement. In an outstretched hand spearheading his charge was a battered wooden sword.

Azriel reacted on instinct, shifting his weight to remain standing as the boy threw his arms around his thighs. Hazel eyes met blue-grey, a perfect replica of his High Lady’s. The boy's cheeks were flush from activity, and a wide toothy smile shone from his face as he looked up at Azriel.

Nyx.

Rhys had said he was perfect. Looking at the small joy-filled child a distant part of Azriel agreed. But seeing him, this obvious reminder of the time he had lost was so much worse than looking at the expectant faces of his family.

“You’re back!” His face was still pressed against the soft leather covering Azriel’s thighs. Azriel returned the child’s embrace by placing a hand on his small shoulder, moving slowly and half-expecting the child to flinch away. Nyx didn’t. Instead, his grin seemed to grow impossibly wider, such open displays of affection nurtured in an upbringing that he and his brothers had only dreamed of. Nyx released Azriel’s legs, toy sword still gripped in one hand as he announced without preamble that they were going to play together.

Your POV

You followed the cobblestone path next to the Sidra deeper into the heart of the city. The light coat you wore protected you from the chill in the air as you buried your hands deeper into your pockets. The sun offered little warmth to your face but you basked in the feeling. As beautiful as the seasons were in Velaris, the bleakness winter promised often had you yearning for warmer climes.

It was still early but the city was beginning to bustle with activity, you watched as vendors began opening stalls to display their wares. Observed the groups of people clustered around tables tucked near the rails shielding them from the steep drop of the river’s bank, enjoying steaming drinks and warm food. The breakfast you’d shared with Cassian, all wide grins, bad jokes, and dancing around the elephant in the room, had left you in better spirits than you had expected. Still, seeing all the residents of the city going about their business coursed envy through your veins.

You hadn’t realised you’d stopped and were staring, paying particular attention to a couple at one of the tables. The male, dark-haired with tan skin and high cheekbones, leaned closer to whisper into the female's ear, delicately moving loose hair aside for easier access. She tipped her head to the sky as she laughed, carefree. This couple, these strangers, so open in their happiness and displays of affection loosened the careful hold you’d been maintaining on your emotions, and for a moment you felt as if you’d be washed away. Anger, guilt, and sadness all warred within you. It had been waging since you’d found Azriel and Elain together only yesterday. And underneath it all, a despair that would cripple you if given the chance.

A lone shadow, the one that had been racing ahead cleaving an inquisitive path through the street, danced into your eyeline. There once was a time when one straying so close to your face would cause you to instinctively flinch away in surprise. In the early days of your friendship, Azriel had kept them on a tight leash that had been exhausting to maintain out of fear of scaring you away. Now, after years of cohabitation, you’d grown used to their proclivities and peculiarities. Their cool brush was almost as familiar and comforting as the feeling of Azriel’s warm, scarred hands. It swirled in front of your face now, its movements jerky, verging on agitated, and though they couldn’t speak to you it was clear what they were trying to convey. You were going to be late.

Closing your eyes and taking a few deep, calming breaths you tried to force the emotion back. A hand moved on autopilot out of the depth of your pocket to slip between the buttons of your coat, fingertips resting on the swell of your midriff over warm wool. You could control this, you decided.

One summer night, childfree and enjoyed under the stars whilst sharing a bottle of wine, Feyre had shared the circumstances of her own pregnancy with you. How she’d made a seemingly impossible decision to you at the time, to carry on because she did not want her son to experience anything other than love whilst sequestered in her womb. Now you found yourself vowing the same, that your emotional turmoil would not impact the life growing inside of you.

Resolved, you turned away to continue your journey through the streets, guided by the shadow that weaved in between other pedestrians, just skirting their notice. After a few minutes, you came to a stop outside the warm and brightly lit shop. The medicinal smell of herbs leaked under the door and into the street. The shadow had already disappeared under the frame, scouting ahead for any sign of danger. It returned to you almost lazily, coiling up dark wood towards the handle of the door in invitation.

You clasped a hand over the knob, shadow dancing over your fingers as you pushed open the door. A bell tinkled above your head announcing the arrival of a customer. Dark-stained wood lined the floor of the shop, and a counter full of books and candles sat before massive shelves full of various jars and decanters.

“I would have come to you, child.” Madja’s form appeared in the doorframe to her examination room at the back of the shop.

“I know.” You bristled a little at her referring to you as such. “I had to get out of the house.” You eyed her warily, still not entirely comfortable around the high-fae female. Though you knew Feyre held no ill feelings towards her, you had been incredibly reluctant to allow her to be involved in the care of your pregnancy, citing her blatant disregard for Feyre’s body autonomy. It was only her experience with Illyrian babes that made you acquiesce.

“You’re alone.” It wasn’t a question. There was a marked note of disapproval in Madja’s tone. You had considered briefly asking Cassian to accompany you during breakfast. He’d shared Rhy’s plans for their visit to the Hewn City but had stressed that he would stay behind with you if necessary. But the idea of bringing anyone other than your mate here made you feel worse than the prospect of attending alone. So you’d lied to Cassian, told him you planned on relaxing and organising a few things in the baby’s room and that you didn’t want to bore him with that. He’d been quick to reassure you, but you’d pushed him to go, knowing that Rhys and Feyre relied on him for their games in court posturing.

Azriel had never missed an appointment. For every progress check, every measurement, every sweet cooling sweep of Madja’s magic across your abdomen he’d sat dutifully by your side, tracing gently patterns on the back of the hand he’d gripped in his own. Remembering the way his face lit up, the tears of joy that lined his hazel eyes as Madja informed you that the babe was healthy and your pregnancy was progressing well made the empty chasm in your chest ache.

“Not completely.” You gestured vaguely to the rogue shadow that had accosted you when you’d tried to leave the house this morning, now snaking between jars of brightly coloured poultices and dried ingredients lining the shelves.

She gestured for you to follow her into the room at the back, shutting the door behind you and your shadow companion. You began to shrug off your coat, hanging it on the hook by the door. The examination table creaked under your weight as you hoisted one leg on, wiggling yourself back until your back was flush against the rest. Madja’s wrinkled face was impassive as she watched you struggle. She lowered herself into the chair next to you, lifting the jumper to expose your abdomen. The room was heated with her magic, for which you were thankful.

“How are you feeling?” You kept your eyes on her hands as they moved over the swell of your stomach, skimming over the darker map of marks left by your skin stretching to accommodate. You loved and hated those lines.

“Just fatigued more than anything else.” Madja made a noise of agreement at the back of her throat. She didn’t ask a follow-up question, in the silence you found yourself offering up more information. “I’m hungry all the time. And my feet are so swollen it’s difficult to put on shoes.” The shadow had made its way onto the examination table next to you, it watched Madja’s hands as you did. It strayed closer to where your hands lay clasped, resting on the edge of your stomach just under your breasts. It perched there, half weaving between your fingers and half observing.

“And?” The feel of her magic wasn’t unpleasant, but the longer you stayed under her touch the more uncomfortable you became. Instinct urged you to get away from under her hands, as harmless as they seemed, to put more distance between her and the babe than just the thin layer of skin and organs. You clenched your teeth, on edge as the examination continued.

“And what?” You knew what she was probing for, to discuss Azriel.

“Your mate, girl. Don’t play stupid. I want to know how you’re handling the stress of this situation. I don’t need to tell you that it isn’t good for the babe.” Your eyes strayed from her hands for a moment, meeting brown before averting them again. You wanted to be anywhere but here. And you certainly didn’t want to be discussing this with the spindrift-haired fae.

“I’m fine.” She scoffed at that. Her hands finally stilled, pulling away from you. Tugging the jumper back down, you swung your legs around perching on the edge of the examination table. You picked at the nail of your thumb, anxiety starting to build.

“There are no medals for a brave face.”

“How are things?” She allowed the diversion. Her pause prompted you to finally look at her. Madja’s face remained impassive. Panic started to set in, its tight grip made it difficult for you to suck in your next breath. You and Azriel had known this pregnancy wouldn’t be without risk, but you’d thought the similarities of physique and bone density you shared with the Illyrians would shield you against major complications.

“You’re progressing well,” Madja said. “Only a few more weeks, I expect.” You released the breath you didn’t realize you were holding, relief flooding through you. It was short-lived as Madja opened her mouth to speak again.

“I am however concerned about you.”

“I’m fine.” Perhaps if you said it aloud enough you could make yourself believe it. It seemed that Madja wasn’t going to allow that though, incredulity written on her face.

“If that’s all you’re going to say girl, we’ll get nowhere.” You held your tongue against informing her to mind her own business, knowing that Rhys held a particular soft spot for the ancient fae and wouldn’t take kindly to you insulting her. “You’re…situation,” she paused briefly, feeling the fire developing in your gaze as she pushed. “The stress increases the risk of preterm labour.” You nodded, continuing to pick at your fingernail. “I know of healers, ones that specialise in the mind. I could-“

You cut her off before she could finish. “I don’t need a healer, I just need my mate,” voice breaking on the last word as traitorous tears brewed at the line of your lashes. Madja reached out a wrinkled hand to clasp your own, her skin warm above yours, her face sympathetic.

“It could help, acknowledging our emotions gives them less power over us.” The idea of explaining to a stranger the events of the past few days filled you with dread. The agony of watching Azriel collapse bleeding on the steps of the River House, of tugging on the bond only to find strands that led to nowhere as you had pleaded for him to wake up. Your mate, usually so strong and unyielding, seemed almost fragile as Rhys and Cassian had manhandled him into the House. Sitting at his bedside after, watching each breath he took as he slumbered, every shift of the babe inside you filled you with fresh grief. You’d told him everything, every mundane thought that passed through your head as you tried to distract yourself from the thought that Azriel may never wake up and meet his child.

And you’d been so tired, with the pregnancy and sitting dutifully at Azriel’s bedside, that when Elain had offered to relieve you to get some rest you’d felt grateful. You couldn’t have predicted what happened when he woke. The likelihood of him reacting favourably to someone he considered to be a stranger at his sick bed was absurd. Still the guilt gnawed at you; if you’d stayed perhaps things wouldn’t have turned out as disastrously as they had.  

“No.” You considered for a moment, before adding a thank you as an afterthought. Madja sighed, exasperated.

“Well, if you’re unwilling to do that then you must promise to take it easy. Bed rest, no magic.” The thought of languishing your time away in the house alone irked you, but it was more agreeable than the alternative. You inclined your head in agreement.  

Azriel

The tension in the room was palpable, and Azriel couldn't decide which was worse: the fury etched across Rhys' face or the wounded hurt concealed beneath. A dark power coiled behind Rhys's desk, while Feyre's portrait watched from above, her eyes twinkling with mischief. In the hallowed confines of Rhys's study, Azriel couldn't help but be reminded of a similar, scolding conversation, one where Rhys had warned him to stay away from Elain.

"And if I catch you panting after her again," Rhys had said, "I'll make sure you regret it."

Now, once more, his brother was fuming over Azriel's dalliance with her. And as in the past, when faced with his brother's wrath, Azriel donned his well-practiced mask of ice, a facade carefully crafted in the darkness and shadows of his childhood.

Rhys' voice, as sharp as a blade, pierced the stillness of the room. "What in the world are you thinking?" Azriel felt a surge of cold rage in response, but Rhys remained unyielding. He had always understood the volatile undercurrent beneath Azriel's surface and was adept at meeting it with his own resolute strength.

"Madja ordered you to rest.” Rhys continued. “Not only did you defy her orders, but you also lied to me.” Azriel broke the eye contact he’d been holding, loathing himself for the deception. “I find you here, pestering Elain when she made it abundantly clear she wants nothing to do with you.”

"I had to," Azriel protested, his voice tinged with stubbornness.

Rhys sighed, gesturing around the room. "This," he said, encompassing Azriel, "all of it is temporary. We will find a way to heal you and restore your memories. In the meantime, if you could refrain from setting your life ablaze, it would be greatly appreciated."

Azriel's gaze hardened, his reluctance evident. "I can't just forget her, Rhys. You know I can't.”

Rhys paused for a moment; his eyes filled with compassion. Then, he played his last card. " Az, I understand how hard this is for you, but you also have responsibilities. You have a mate, one who carries your child. I can't stand by and watch you ruin things now, only to hate yourself later when you regain your memories.”

A whirlwind of conflicting emotions churned within Azriel. The burden of his forgotten memories weighed heavily on his shoulders, and it was a struggle to reconcile his past self with the man he had become. He couldn't help but feel a profound sense of loss for the memories that had been stolen from him. Loss of Elain, of the history they’d shared together. But the thought of having a mate he couldn’t recall, someone whom he so obviously shared a life with, was both a source of guilt and deep frustration. It was as though he had been robbed of a part of himself.

His thoughts swirled with questions and doubts about the nature of their relationship, about Elain. These questions gnawed at him, a relentless reminder he was living a life that he couldn’t recognise as his own, despite being surrounded by his family.

Azriel clenched his jaw, his reluctance growing stronger. “You're just going to leave your child without a father?" Rhys' voice was firm, and Azriel felt the weight of the responsibility.

"Of course not," Azriel replied, his tone strained.

"So you'll what, meet her during the birth? After the babe's born?" Rhys pressed.

Azriel hesitated before saying, "She's a stranger, Rhys. I can't just pretend everything is normal when I don't even know who she is."

The room remained shrouded in an oppressive silence, the unspoken weight of their conversation bearing down on them. Azriel's reluctance and frustration grappled with Rhys' unwavering insistence, and the seconds ticked by in limbo. It was then, amidst the heavy tension, that Rhys's voice broke the impasse.

"So meet her," Rhys said, his words soft yet unwavering.

Azriel blinked, taken aback by the simplicity of Rhys' suggestion. His eyes locked onto his brother's. "What?"

"Meet her," Rhys repeated with quiet determination. "And she won't be a stranger."

The clarity of Rhys' statement struck Azriel like a revelation. He had been so consumed by the paralyzing fear of the unknown and the torment of his stolen memories that he hadn't contemplated the possibility of forging new connections.

Thank you for reading, to everyone who asked to be added to the tag-list I think I've included everyone I can but some blogs I couldn't tag so apologies if that's yours.

Tag list: @kalulakunundrum @impossibelle @we-were-beautiful @going-through-shit @mulansaucey @sv0430 @naturakaashi @amygdtjhddzvb @airstrip-0 @acourtofsmutandstarlight @myheartfollower @whyonearthisyourusernamethi-blog @valencia-rou @amysangel @furiousbooklover @phoenixgurl030 @imnotsiriusyouare @i-am-infinite @cat-or-kitten @marvelouslovely-barnes @gretavanbobatea @tothestarsandwhateverend @furiousbooklover @esposadomd @meritxellao @kemillyfreitas @juneangel21 @a-frog-with-a-laptop @luvmoo @originalcrusadetrash @mandowhatnow @bangtanbecks @bookslut420 @goldenmagnolias @inkedaztec @opheliaas-stuff @spongehappy @oingo233 @unstablefemme

[truth-has-a-liberal-bias]

But once the babies are here, the state provides little help.

When she got pregnant, Mayron Michelle Hollis was clinging to stability.

At 31, she was three years sober, after first getting introduced to drugs at 12. She had just had a baby three months earlier and was working to repair the damage that her addiction had caused her family.

The state of Tennessee had taken away three of her children, and she was fighting to keep her infant daughter, Zooey. Department of Children’s Services investigators had accused Mayron of endangering Zooey when she visited a vape store and left the baby in a car.

Her husband, Chris Hollis, was also in recovery.

The two worked in physically demanding jobs that paid just enough to cover rent, food and lawyers’ fees to fight the state for custody of Mayron’s children.

In the midst of the turmoil in July 2022, they learned Mayron was pregnant again. But this time, doctors warned she and her fetus might not survive.

The embryo had been implanted in scar tissue from her recent cesarean section. There was a high chance that the embryo could rupture, blowing open her uterus and killing her, or that she could bleed to death during delivery. The baby could come months early and face serious medical risks, or even die.

But the Supreme Court had just overturned Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed the right to abortion across the United States. By the time Mayron decided to end her pregnancy, Tennessee’s abortion ban — one of the nation’s strictest — had gone into effect.

The total ban made no explicit exceptions — not even to save the life of a pregnant patient. Any doctor who violated the ban could be charged with a felony.

Women with means could leave the state. But those like Mayron, with limited resources or lives entangled with the child welfare and criminal justice systems, would be the most likely to face caring for a child they weren’t prepared for.

And so, the same state that questioned Mayron’s fitness to care for her four children forced her to continue a pregnancy that risked her life to have a fifth, one that would require more intensive care than any of the others.

Tennessee already had some of the worst outcomes in the nation when measuring maternal health, infant mortality and child poverty. Lawmakers who paved the way for a new generation of post-Roe births did little to bolster the state’s meager safety net to support these babies and their families.

In December 2022, when Mayron was 26 weeks and two days pregnant, she was rushed to the hospital after she began bleeding so heavily that her husband slipped in her blood. An emergency surgery saved her life. Her daughter, Elayna, was born three months early.

Afterward, photographer Stacy Kranitz and reporter Kavitha Surana followed Mayron and her family for a year to chronicle what life truly looked like in a state whose political leaders say they are pro-life. [...]

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Walmart political operatives write nearly all the Republican legislation that you protest against. They are the most despicable union busters in the history of America. They have entire stores where only the managers are full-time and everyone else is part-time minimum wage with no benefits. The Walton family donates zero % of their wealth to charity, they have been documented as the stingiest 1%ers in the country. They are reported for more wage theft and child labor law violations than every other US company combined. Welfare, food stamps, and other aid to their employees is in the billions nationwide. They donate a billion dollars out of pocket in election years to fund every single Republican candidate for state and federal office.

Yet 99% of you will refuse to boycott them because it would inconvenience you. A boycott of them for a month could change our entire political landscape for the better and bankrupt many Republican campaigns. They are not diversified like other oligarchs and would be highly susceptible to a boycott.

Why do you tolerate them being behind every single thing that is wrong with this country.

😡

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

In 2017 I interviewed Bernadette Wren, then head of psychology at the Tavistock Gids clinic, and asked what effect puberty blocking drugs have on the adolescent brain. Looking highly uncomfortable, she replied that the evidence so far was only anecdotal but that the clinic would study its patients “well into their adult lives so that we can see”.

Even back then, before whistleblowers had exposed the rush to medically transition children, it was alarming to hear that heavy-duty GnRH agonists such as triptorelin — used to treat advanced prostate cancer and “chemically castrate” sex offenders — were being prescribed to arrest puberty in hundreds of children as young as 11.

Moreover, they were being used “off-label” before any clinical trials. And the long-term study Wren promised never materialised: Gids (the Gender Identity Development Service) routinely lost touch with patients, and the 44 it did follow reported little long-term mental health improvement.

This shocking chapter in medical history, where the ideological objectives of trans rights campaigners trumped the welfare of disturbed children, is coming to an end worldwide. The decision by NHS England effectively to ban the prescription of puberty blockers comes after the Cass review noted these drugs could “permanently disrupt” brain development, reduce bone density and lock children into a regime of cross-sex hormones requiring life-long patienthood.

NHS England unites with other national health services including those in Finland, France, Sweden and, most notably, the Netherlands — where the “Dutch protocol”, a regime of early blockers then hormones, was devised in 1998 — in pulling back from prescribing them.

Even in the United States, where a toxic combination of extreme activism and medical capitalism has pushed child gender medicine to grotesque extremes, with double mastectomies performed on 14-year-old girls, there is some retrenchment.

Leaks from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the body which formulates guidance on “trans healthcare”, reveal doctors perplexed at how they should explain to an 11-year-old child that drugs will render them infertile. Crucially, liberal media such as The New York Times are now reporting grave medical misgivings about child transition, once dismissed as a culture-war issue for the Republican right.

Yet the question remains: how was this ever allowed to happen? For years, puberty blockers were cheerily billed as a mere “pause button”. In 2014, Dr Polly Carmichael, the last head of Gids before the Cass review ordered its closure, went on CBBC in a show called I Am Leo, saying of blockers: “The good thing is, if you stop the injections, it’s like pressing ‘start’ and the body carries on developing as it would if you hadn’t started.”

The BBC permitted her to make this unevidenced claim to an impressionable audience of six to 12-year-olds. Imagine hearing this as a developing girl, freaked out by your new breasts and periods. No wonder Gids referrals subsequently rocketed.

Carmichael failed to mention that she did not know if pressing “restart” on puberty is always medically possible — it is not — and in fact, almost every child Gids put on blockers went on to irreversible cross-sex hormones.

After years in a Peter Pan state while their peers developed, they understandably felt there was no way back and forged on with treatment. Yet if allowed to experience natural puberty, almost 85 per cent of gender dysphoria cases resolve themselves.

Nor did Carmichael tell CBBC kids that the blockers-hormones combination, if taken early enough, not only results in sterility but kills the libido so that a young person will never experience an orgasm.

At the 2020 judicial review brought by a former Tavistock clinician and Keira Bell, the brave young detransitioner rushed onto hormones by Gids, judges expressed astonishment at Gids’s lack of an evidence base.

Reporting on this issue for seven years, I too have been struck by a complete clinical incuriosity. Not only was data not collected, but those who queried treatments or pressed for evidence faced angry condemnation. Perhaps activists knew what research might find because one long-term Finnish study, recently reported in the BMJ, destroyed the myth used to justify blockers: that a child will commit suicide if denied them.

The Finns found that “gender-affirming care” does not make a dysphoric child less suicidal. Rather, such children had the same suicide risk as others with severe psychiatric issues. In other words, changing bodies does not fix troubled minds.

Yet even after NHS England’s announcement, activists refuse to heed the now-overwhelming evidence. In its response, Stonewall persists with the myth that puberty blockers “give a young person extra time to evaluate their next steps”.

Many questions remain unanswered: will private clinics still be permitted to prescribe puberty blockers; and is Scotland’s Sandyford child gender clinic still determined to close its ears to all evidence? Plus, we have few details on how the NHS’s new “holistic” treatment for gender-questioning children will operate when it opens next month.

This repellent experiment — in which girls who like trucks or little boys who dress as princesses, and who invariably grow up to be gay, are corralled inexorably down a road towards life-changing treatments — belongs in the book of medical disgraces. As do the cheerleaders who raised money for Mermaids and those who persecuted whistleblowers or damned journalists asking questions as transphobic.

In 50 years, chemically freezing the puberty of healthy children with troubled minds will be regarded with the same horrified fascination as lobotomies — which, never forget, won the Portuguese neurologist Antonio Egas Moniz the 1949 Nobel prize.

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

{Article source (behind paywall)}

[carriesthewind]

"Although hired as a consultant by Washington County in this case, Baird had a long-standing independent agenda: helping foster parents across Colorado succeed in intervening and permanently claiming the children they care for. Often working hand in hand with Tim Eirich, she has been called as an expert in, by her count, hundreds of child-welfare cases, and she sometimes evaluates visits between birth families and children without having met them. Baird would not say how many foster-parent intervenor cases she has participated in, but she can recall only a single instance in which she concluded that the intervenors should not keep the child. Thinking that particular couple would be weak adoptive parents, she told me, she simply filed no report."

"With the supply of adoptable babies dropping, foster children were becoming a “hot commodity,” he said, and he and his colleagues (among them Tim Eirich’s law partner Seth Grob) realized that attachment experts could be called into court to argue that foster children needed to remain with their foster parents in order to avoid a severed bond."

"The judge ruled in favor of Eirich’s clients, a social worker and a real-estate agent. “Court found [Baird’s] testimony credible. She has significant experience,” the judge said, adding approvingly that Baird’s analysis had “focused on primacy of attachment over cultural considerations.”"

"Was Baird’s method for evaluating these foster and birth families empirically tested? No, Baird answered: Her method is unpublished and unstandardized, and has remained “pretty much unchanged” since the 1980s. It doesn’t have those “standard validity and reliability things,” she admitted. “It’s not a scientific instrument.”

...

Had she considered or was she even aware of the cultural background of the birth family and child whom she was recommending permanently separating? (The case involved a baby girl of multiracial heritage.) Baird answered that babies have “never possessed” a cultural identity, and therefore are “not losing anything,” at their age, by being adopted. Although when such children grow up, she acknowledged, they might say to their now-adoptive parents, “Oh, I didn’t know we were related to the, you know, Pima tribe in northern California, or whatever the circumstances are.”

The Pima tribe is located in the Phoenix metropolitan area."

"We found that — leaving aside the question of whether attachment theory should even be used as an argument in these cases — Baird’s assessments of foster children’s relationships aren’t just unscientific. They barely touch the surface of a child’s life.

“I don’t know these children,” she testified in one 2017 case, adding, “I have not met anybody.” Still, she said, she “strongly” recommended that those children’s birth parents’ rights be permanently terminated and that the kids be adopted."

"She also regularly uses terms like “mirror neurons,” “neurotoxins,” “synapses,” “hormones,” and “encoded trauma in the central nervous system” to justify her conclusions about children’s family relationships. (Baird is not a neuroscientist.)"

______________________

The New Yorker article focuses on possible legislative solutions, but I think these articles point to something more pernicious and more difficult to address. Judges - in all kinds of cases - routinely give credence to professionals and "experts" who are biased, bigoted, and testify far outside their expertise (if they have any expertise at all). These professionals have credentials (like being a police officer or social worker) that are validated by institutional hierarchies. Their frequent systematized interaction with the legal system is mistaken as experience that makes their subjective beliefs more credible, when in truth they lack any objective expertise. They are considered credible and unbiased because they conform to, and validate, systems of hierarchical oppression, while the people they hurt - often poor, marginalized, and most frequently, not white - are viewed with inherent distrust.

The ProPublica article focuses primarily on Baird. I'm more concerned with the judges who believed her, who used her to justify funneling children away from their (safe and loving, but poorer and frequently browner) birth families. She was only able to do so much harm because of the the power given to her by courts, and the judges inside them.

The ProPublic article ends with the line, "This past fall, with Baird’s help, the foster parents were granted full custody of the baby girl through her 18th birthday." It names Baird as a force that led to the theft of this child. The passive voice hides the judge who made the ultimate decision.

[coochiequeens]

This is why I hate it when MRAs whine about the courts “favoring” the mothers

How the 'junk science' of parental alienation infiltrated American family courts and allowed accused child abusers to win custody of their kids.

This story was reported in partnership with the nonprofit newsroom Type Investigations.

In the summer of 2020, when he was 12, the boy told his therapist something he'd never told anyone else.

For years, Robert claimed, his stepdad had sexually abused him.

The therapist alerted the San Diego County child welfare agency, which launched an investigation. The county sheriff opened an inquiry, too. Thomas Winenger, the only father figure Robert had ever known, began assaulting him when he was only 7, Robert told a forensic social worker in October 2020. Winenger would pin him down, cover his mouth, and force him into acts he found "disgusting," he said. Sometimes, he said, Winenger recited Bible verses during the attacks, claiming the devil was in Robert's heart.

Robert, whom Insider is identifying by only his middle name, said that as he struggled to breathe, he fought back by hitting, punching, and kneeing his stepfather. But he said Winenger overpowered him.

By the time Robert came forward, Winenger had been named his legal father and was divorced from Robert's mother, Jill Montes, with whom he also shared two young daughters. Robert confronted Winenger with the allegations that November, and within weeks Winenger denied the claims in family court. "This NEVER HAPPENED," he asserted in a filing.

He offered an alternative explanation for Robert's disturbing claims, one that shifted the blame to Robert's mother.

Montes, Winenger contended, had engaged in a pattern of manipulation known as "parental alienation." Robert's accusations weren't evidence that he'd abused the boy, Winenger claimed. They were evidence that Montes had poisoned the children against him. The delayed timing of Robert's allegations, Winenger argued, only made them more suspicious. Montes was causing the children such grave psychological harm, he claimed in the filing, that the children should be transferred to his custody right away.

That December, Child Welfare Services substantiated Robert's allegations, calling them "credible, clear, and concise." But the family-court judge, Commissioner Patti Ratekin, withheld judgment until the following October, when the psychologist she'd appointed as a custody evaluator submitted his own report.

That report, which has been sealed by the court, appears to have convinced Ratekin that Winenger was correct.

“Ma'am, you didn't show very well in the report. You are toxic. You're poisonous. You're an alienator," Ratekin told Montes at a hearing on October 28, 2021. "I don't believe for a second" that Robert's father molested him. "Not for a second," she repeated. "I think you've put it in his head."

Ratekin acted swiftly, granting Winenger's bid for custody and ordering him to enroll Robert and his sisters in Family Bridges, a program that claims to help "alienated" children reconnect with a parent they've rejected. She barred Montes, a stay-at-home mom and home schooler, from all contact with her children for at least 90 days, a standard prerequisite for admission to the program.

"I just wanted to crumble," Montes said.

Rejected as a psychiatric disorder

Parental alienation is a fairly recent idea, conceived in the 1980s by a psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Gardner, who argued that divorcing mothers, desperate to win custody suits, were brainwashing children against their fathers. In "severe" cases, Gardner wrote, children with "parental alienation syndrome" must be removed from their mothers, transferred to the care of their fathers, and reeducated through what he called "threat therapy."

Alienation has never been accepted as a psychiatric disorder by the medical establishment. Yet today, mental-health practitioners across the United States assess and treat it, particularly those who specialize in custody cases. Many of them collaborate closely, attending the same conferences, following the same protocols, and citing the same papers. Some run reunification programs like Family Bridges; others offer family therapy or produce custody evaluations for family courts.

Influenced by these experts, many judges have given the unproven concept the force of law.

Though most custody cases settle out of court, in a small fraction parents don't come to terms. In some of these contested cases, one parent accuses the other of alienating the children. The most intense disputes arise in cases where one parent alleges spousal or child abuse and the other responds with a claim of alienation.

But alienation claims are highly gendered. Men level the accusation against women nearly six times as often as women level it against men, one study suggests. That landmark study, published in 2020, found that in cases when mothers alleged abuse and fathers responded by claiming alienation, the mothers stood a startlingly high chance of losing custody.

Occasionally, parents accused of alienation are cut off from their children altogether. Since 2000, judges have sent at least 600 children to reunification programs that recommend the temporary exile of the trusted parent, a collaborative investigation by Insider and Type Investigations revealed. While the programs suggest a "no-contact period" of 90 days, this term is routinely extended and may last years, according to an analysis of tens of thousands of pages of court papers and program records.

The treatment typically starts with a four-day workshop for children and the parent they've rejected; aftercare can add months or years. Children may be seized for the workshop by force, with no opportunity for goodbyes.

Former participants at Family Bridges and a similar program, Turning Points for Families, said they were taught that their memories were unreliable, the parent they preferred was harmful, and the parent they'd rejected was loving and safe. In some cases, participants who resisted these lessons said they were verbally threatened; at Family Bridges, a few were threatened with institutionalization. Some participants said they ended up depressed and suicidal.

Program officials say they are helping children. Lynn Steinberg, a therapist who runs a program called One Family at a Time, said in an interview that virtually all the kids she's enrolled have falsely accused a parent of abuse and that she does not accept children into her program whose abuse claims have been substantiated. Without treatment, she said, alienated children would risk being plagued by guilt, and the relationship they wrongly spurned might never heal.

In Steinberg's view, the only child abusers in the families she sees are the "alienators," who have "annihilated" a devoted parent from their children's lives.

Recently, alienation theory has faced rising criticism. Efforts to legitimize the diagnosis have been rebuffed by the American Psychiatric Association, the World Health Organization, and the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children. And the reunification programs burst into public view last fall, when a video documented two terrified children in Santa Cruz, California, being seized for One Family at a Time. In the clip, which went viral on TikTok, a 15-year-old girl named Maya pleads and shrieks as she's picked up by the arms and legs and forced into a black SUV.

Since then, bills that would restrict reunification programs have been introduced in Sacramento and four other state capitols.

An idea takes off

When a law professor named Joan Meier founded a nonprofit to help victims of domestic violence two decades ago, she didn't expect to focus on custody disputes. But day after day, she heard from mothers with similar, troubling stories. They'd finally escaped their abusive marriages, but their exes had fought them for custody — and won. The mothers had been accused of something Meier knew little about: parental alienation.

Meier, who taught at George Washington University, ordered a stack of books by the child psychiatrist who coined the term.

Richard Gardner began writing about children of divorce in the 1970s, when a dramatic transformation was underway in family court. Under the "tender years presumption," judges had long favored women in divorce cases, typically assigning children to their mother's sole custody. But as more women entered the workforce, more men participated in child-rearing, and more couples divorced, a nascent "fathers' rights" movement emerged, demanding gender neutrality in custody proceedings. The idea appealed to many feminists, too. By the 1980s, most states had recognized joint custody in their statutes.

This left judges in a quandary when couples failed to settle. Now, aside from a vague mandate to advance the "best interest" of children, courts lacked a clear paradigm for resolving disputes. Overwhelmed, judges turned to mental-health professionals, asking them to assess each parent's fitness and recommend an optimal arrangement. Gardner, then an associate clinical professor of child psychiatry at Columbia University, was an early custody evaluator, and in 1982 he published a how-to manual.

By 1985, Gardner was arguing that some mothers, seeking to regain their advantage in court, were inducing a mental illness in their children, a condition he dubbed parental alienation syndrome. Children afflicted with the syndrome, he said, could be identified by the "campaign of denigration" they waged against their fathers, which was accompanied by "weak, frivolous, or absurd" rationalizations and a disquieting "lack of ambivalence."

Some "fanatic" mothers even manipulated children into claiming their fathers had sexually abused them, Gardner contended. When other maneuvers against a father fail, he wrote, "the sex-abuse accusation emerges as a final attempt to remove him entirely from the children's lives." Child sexual-abuse claims made during custody disputes, he claimed, "have a high likelihood of being false." To prove children are suggestible, he often invoked the wave of 1980s cases in which preschool teachers were charged with sexual abuse but later exonerated.

Gardner's theory sidestepped what Joan Meier saw as a glaring truth: Many children accused their fathers of abuse because their fathers were actually abusive. In fact, by the early 2000s a large-scale study had found that contrary to Gardner's writings, neither children nor mothers were likely to fabricate claims during custody disputes.

The remedies Gardner proposed for parental alienation syndrome were harsh. "Insight, tenderness, sympathy, empathy have no place in the treatment of PAS," he said in a 1998 address. "Here you need a therapist who is hard-nosed, who is comfortable with authoritarian, dictatorial procedures."

In a 2001 documentary, Gardner told a journalist how a mother might respond to a child reporting sexual abuse: "I don't believe you. I'm going to beat you for saying it. Don't you ever talk that way again about your father."

Juvenile detention could cure children who refused to visit their fathers, Gardner said. But the main remedy he advanced in severe cases was "the removal of the children from the mother's home and placement in the home of the father, the allegedly-hated parent." This would break what he called a "sick psychological bond."

After introducing his theory, Gardner began using it in expert testimony and promoting it to other evaluators and fathers'-rights activists. By the early 2000s, family-court judges were regularly citing parental alienation.

To address this, Meier said, she undertook a series of academic articles examining the scholarship on parental alienation. She found that the theory was based on circular reasoning and anchored almost entirely in anecdotal data.

"I still believed in that day that if you did careful, thoughtful analytic scholarship, people would read it and be persuaded by it," she said.

The scarlet 'A'

Jill Montes had always wanted a big family. In 2008, she already had a 5-year-old daughter, Paige, with a man she'd divorced, and she was finding regular work as an actor in Los Angeles. She decided to adopt an infant son, Robert.

The next year, she met Thomas Winenger, who had master's degrees in engineering and business, on eHarmony. "He wanted to talk a lot about faith and God, and that wooed me," she said. She also welcomed his interest in Robert, whom she was insecure about raising alone.

In 2011, the couple married and settled near San Diego, and Montes quit acting. Soon, she later said in a court filing, Winenger was shoving, insulting, and threatening her, often in front of the kids. He promised to change, and she hoped he could. In 2012, their first child, Claire, was born, and Eden followed in 2015. Insider is identifying Montes' children by only their middle names.

Later that year, Montes accused Winenger of dragging Paige across a room. Montes sought a restraining order, which was ultimately denied, and kicked him out. He rented a room in a house nearby, where he regularly hosted the three younger kids. Sometimes, Robert went there by himself.

Montes filed for divorce in February 2018. Under an informal agreement, the kids continued spending time at Winenger's place. But at a hearing that fall, a 10-year-old Robert testified that during an argument over his math homework, Winenger had repeatedly grabbed, shoved, and spanked him.

Montes filed a petition for a domestic-violence restraining order, which Winenger fought, saying he hadn't mistreated Robert. In the end, Ratekin, the judge presiding over the divorce, signed a "stay away" order prohibiting Winenger from contact with Robert. But it didn't address the allegation of violence. Weeks later, Winenger asked Ratekin to name him Robert's legal father, arguing that he'd helped raise the boy from toddlerhood. Ratekin ruled in his favor and ordered the custody evaluation.

In court papers he filed on July 19, 2019, the day after the evaluator was appointed, Winenger accused Montes of parental alienation.

Often, according to Meier, the dynamic of a custody case shifts radically once alienation is raised. "It's like the table turns 180 degrees and now the only bad parent in the room is the alleged alienator," she said. An abuse allegation "fades out of view," she said, and any attempts by the mother to limit the father's access are seen as suspicious. It's almost as if, like Hester Prynne in "The Scarlet Letter," she's been branded with a flaming red "A," Meier said.

Indeed, Montes soon lost ground in court.

In January 2020, Ratekin ordered Robert into the care of a therapist, Mitra Sarkhosh, who has since provided aftercare for at least one reunification program. Sarkhosh saw Robert and his father together about 20 times, charging $200 an hour. But by summer, she had halted the sessions, saying Robert's anger was "not improving."

In a report filed in court, Sarkhosh appeared to blame Montes. Living with her, Robert was "saturated with negativity about his father," she wrote. There may be a need for "new interventions." (Citing patient-confidentiality laws, Sarkhosh declined an interview request.)

Robert was relieved to be finished with Sarkhosh, Montes said. He started seeing a new therapist, and, during the first session, he told the therapist he'd been sexually abused.

On November 18, 2020, at the direction of the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, Robert called Winenger to try to elicit a confession. When that failed, the department paused its investigation, but the child welfare inquiry proceeded. On December 1, the California Health and Welfare Agency issued a report substantiating Robert's claims.

"The Agency is worried that if given the opportunity, Tom Winenger will sexually abuse [Robert] again," the report says.

Neither Winenger nor his divorce attorney, Tamatha Clemens, responded to requests for interviews or to a list of detailed questions. In a motion for custody he filed on December 8, 2020, Winenger argued that Robert's allegations had been "orchestrated" by Montes and that her alienation "will not stop until she is restrained by the court."

The welfare agency sent Ratekin its report on January 4, 2021, according to a cover sheet reviewed by Insider. But Ratekin was still awaiting the custody evaluation, which she'd assigned to a psychologist, Miguel Alvarez. In 2009, Alvarez coauthored a handbook for parents in custody disputes. While the manual spells out in detail how to prove an alienation claim, it offers no specific guidance on how to prove a claim of abuse.

According to the report, part of which Insider reviewed at a San Diego County courthouse, a personality test Alvarez administered suggested that Montes suffered from "extreme hyper-vigilance" and "persecutory fears." People with these traits, Alvarez wrote, "are often quick to anger and overreact to perceived or imagined threats."

Winenger's scores on the same test were "normal," Alvarez wrote, and his performance on psychosexual and polygraph tests was "inconsistent" with Robert's allegations of sexual abuse.

The 136-page evaluation cost Robert's parents more than $90,000, according to bills reviewed by Insider. Alvarez didn't respond to requests for comment.

Ratekin reviewed the evaluation just before the October 28, 2021 hearing. Alvarez's findings were "exactly" what she'd expected, she said. In her view, the situation called for immediate action.

She put Claire, 8, and Eden, 6, in their father's custody that day, and she sent Robert, 13, to stay with his football coach. That was for Winenger's protection, she said. Until Robert was "detoxified," she said, he'd be prone to false claims of abuse.

Ratekin suggested Family Bridges as a solution. She'd had "really good success" with the program in another case, she said, and she thought it would ease Robert's transition. Without it, the boy wouldn't "get better," she said, and his sisters stood to benefit, too.

Winenger agreed. Under an order Ratekin signed on January 3, 2022, the children would attend a Family Bridges workshop with their father from January 11 to 14 and then return to his home. Montes was barred from contact with the children for at least 90 more days. Ratekin also prohibited the children from communicating with their older sister, their maternal grandmother, and anyone else who might "interfere" with their healing.

Contact would resume at Ratekin's discretion, depending upon how well everyone was cooperating.

Insider and Type reviewed 35 cases from the past two decades in which judges removed children from their preferred parent and sent them to a reunification program. In most of these cases, the children had resisted court-ordered visits with their fathers, and judges had held mothers responsible. Many of the judges framed the no-contact period as salutary: Children would be freed from the overbearing influence of their mothers, and their mothers would be motivated to change.

A case from New Castle County, Delaware is typical.

In 2016, Judge Janell Ostroski transferred two brothers to their father's custody and ordered them into treatment at Turning Points for Families, a program in upstate New York run by a social worker, Linda Gottlieb. Both boys had told Ostroski that their father, Michael D., yelled at them frequently, court records show, though neither had alleged physical abuse. The 9-year-old, O., told Ostroski he felt unsafe at his dad's house. Ashton, 14, was refusing to go there. Insider is not using the family's full last name in order to protect O.'s identity.

Michael had pleaded guilty several years earlier to public intoxication and indecent exposure for an incident in a public park with Ashton. A court-ordered psychological evaluation found that he had alcohol dependence and narcissistic personality disorder "with antisocial features." In 2013, the state's child welfare agency found that he'd emotionally abused Ashton, then 10 years old. The report, including any denials Michael presented, is sealed. This history was all cited in court three years later, in a custody dispute between Michael and his ex-wife, Kelly D.

During that dispute, Michael accused Kelly of alienation, and a custody evaluator backed him up. The evaluator, a psychologist, determined that Michael had become "a more positively functional person" and that Kelly, a preschool teacher, was the problematic parent. Kelly "distorts the reality of events" and "conveys to others an inaccurate and menacing perception of Mr. [D.]," the psychologist wrote in a May 2016 report. (Michael did not respond to detailed requests for comment. Neither did the psychologist.)

In written rulings that barred Kelly from contact with both children, Ostroski said the boys were "well cared for" in Kelly's home but blamed her for Ashton's refusal to see Michael. "Mother has done nothing in the past year to promote the Father/son relationship," Ostroski wrote, adding, "the court is hopeful that, with the appropriate interventions, Mother can recognize her role in helping the children have a healthy relationship with their Father."

Insider and Type sent questions about parental alienation and its remedies to Ostroski, Ratekin, and 19 other judges who've ordered the programs. Only Ratekin responded, and she declined to speak about the Winenger case because it is still pending. Nor would she answer general questions. "I am definitely not an expert in this area," she wrote, "nor do I feel qualified to answer questions about the issue or programs." 

'A moratorium on the past'

In her January 2022 ruling, Ratekin authorized Winenger to hire a transport company to drive Robert and his sisters to the Family Bridges workshop, which would take place at a hotel a few hours outside San Diego. There, the children and Winenger met Randy Rand, who founded Family Bridges in the early 2000s, and a woman the children knew only as "Chris."

In 2009, Rand deactivated his psychology license after the California Board of Psychology found he'd committed professional violations including "dishonesty," "repeated negligent acts," and "gross negligence." Since then, he's accompanied at workshops by at least one other clinician. Rand isn't the only alienation expert to face sanctions from a state licensing board. Two other psychologists who've led Family Bridges workshops, Jane Shatz of California and Joann Murphey of Texas, have been sanctioned — Shatz after an allegation of negligence and Murphey after a finding that she failed to respond promptly to a subpoena. Both Alvarez, the custody evaluator in Robert's case, and Steinberg, who runs the program where a judge sent the girl in the viral TikTok, have been cited by California regulators for improper recordkeeping. Steinberg said her citation was the result of a series of meritless complaints by an "alienating parent."

Family Bridges workshops are held at hotels around the country and tend to cost parents more than $25,000, receipts show. In 2016, for example, one family from Seattle paid more than $27,000 to Family Bridges and another $3,500 to spend three nights at a Sheraton in Southern California. Since the children had opposed the intervention, a company was hired to transport them for an additional $8,300.

Once they arrive at Family Bridges, children quickly learn the rules, program documents show, including a policy called "a moratorium on the past." As Murphey, the Texas psychologist, testified in 2018, "There's no talking about 'You did this back when.'" Instead, she explained, "this is a new family, this is a new paradigm, we are starting off in a healthy way."

Ally Toyos was a 16-year-old in Kansas when she was taken from her mother five years ago. In an interview, she said she and her then 14-year-old sister tried defying the Family Bridges moratorium, telling Rand and his colleagues that their dad had abused them. (Toyos' mother said a court order prevented her from speaking with the press; Toyos' father didn't reply to interview requests.) Threats ensued, Toyos said. The girls were told that if they didn't comply, they could be separated, sent to wilderness camps, committed to psychiatric facilities, and cut off from their mom for the rest of their childhoods, according to Toyos.

Much of the Family Bridges workshop involves watching and discussing videos, program documents show. One of them, "Welcome Back, Pluto," tells the fictional story of a petulant teen who scorns her father. "If you're alienated, like Emily, you might get mad when others don't take your complaints seriously," a female narrator says. In time, however, Emily "learned to see things more clearly." She realized her complaints were "exaggerated," the narrator explains, and "sounded just like her mother's."

According to the video, which was scripted by Richard Warshak, a psychologist who helped develop Family Bridges, some children who steadfastly reject a parent "suffer for the rest of their lives."

Other materials warn children against trusting their memories. Toyos, whose workshop took place at the C'mon Inn in Bozeman, Montana, said she was shown a 2013 TED Talk by Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist who developed the idea that memory is malleable and who has served as a defense witness in high-profile trials, including Harvey Weinstein's. Memories are often contaminated by outside influences, Loftus warns in the talk, which leads to false accusations that can ruin lives.

Insider and Type spoke with or reviewed statements by 17 youths ordered into Family Bridges, Turning Points, or other reunification programs. Their accounts of the workshops were broadly similar. Hannah Rodriguez, then a 16-year-old living in Tampa, Florida, said her workshop, in 2016, was held at Linda Gottlieb's home in New York's Hudson Valley. Gottlieb, the author of a book on parental alienation syndrome, had founded Turning Points about two years earlier. Rodriguez said Gottlieb's office was right off the living room, where her husband spent his time in a recliner. Every day, Rodriguez could see him and hear his TV shows, she said.

Rodriguez, Toyos, and several other former participants said the workshops plunged them into depression.

In spring 2022, one 13-year-old girl got so distressed during a session with Gottlieb at a hotel that she banged on a wall and screamed for help, court papers show. Someone called the police, who brought her to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. "I just want my mom," the girl said, according to hospital records, but under the court order she couldn't call her. She was held at the hospital for three days.

In a written statement that Montes said he later dictated to her, Robert said he became suicidal. "The only thing that stopped me from throwing myself off the balcony was the 24/7 surveillance," the statement reads. "I never thought so many people would be that horrible, controlling, and manipulative towards little kids."

At the end of the workshop, Robert went home with Winenger and had "horrible, weird depressive anxiety episodes," according to the statement. In early February, he was admitted to the psychiatric ward of a children's hospital, according to court records.

Repeated emails to Rand were met with an auto-response saying he was "on sabbatical." The psychologist managing Family Bridges in his absence, Yvonne Parnell, declined interview requests, as did Gottlieb. Gottlieb forwarded Insider's queries to a lawyer, Brian Ludmer, but Ludmer said he couldn't speak for her. Neither Parnell nor Gottlieb replied to detailed written questions.

Lynn Steinberg said her program One Family at a Time, based in Los Angeles, has treated some 50 families over the past eight years. A family therapist, she's the author of "You're Not Crazy: Overcoming Parent/Child Alienation." She was the only program director who agreed to talk.

She said she begins each workshop by listening to the children and taking down every accusation they make; she then works to achieve "an agreement between parent and child." After those conversations, she said, the children are dramatically transformed. They apologize and cry, she said; they kiss and embrace the parent they'd rejected, even sitting in the parent's lap. They're eager to make up for lost time, she said, and can't wait to see long-lost kin.

Daniel Barrozo, of Chino, California, said Steinberg's workshop was a "tremendous help" to him and his daughter in 2021. Steinberg successfully challenged his daughter's misperceptions about him, he said. When Steinberg asked her what he'd done wrong and what she hated about him, his daughter simply looked down and cried, he said. "The whole time, she had nothing to say, because Mom was the one speaking for her," he said. Now, he said, his relationship with his daughter is stronger than ever.

Steinberg said her own mother alienated her from her father, a realization she reached only after his death. She called her ex-husband an alienator, too, saying her adult daughters reject her to this day. She regrets that they didn't get help from a program like hers.

Left untreated, alienated children "fail at relationships" and risk developing eating disorders, drug addiction, depression, gender dysphoria, and other ills, Steinberg said, citing her clinical experience.

But an increasing number of scholars are criticizing the programs. Jean Mercer, an emeritus professor of psychology at Stockton University, is the author of recent papers on parental alienation. One examined six reunification programs, including Family Bridges and Turning Points, and found that the research evidence supporting the effectiveness of the programs "has few strengths and many weaknesses." For another paper, Mercer reviewed the scholarship on the programs and statements from five youths who'd attended them. She found that the programs "may contain elements of psychological abuse."

Another study, by Michael Saini of the University of Toronto, examined 58 empirical papers on alienation and its treatments and found the body of research "methodologically weak." While some divorcing parents exhibited "alienating behaviors" and some children rejected a parent, the nexus between those phenomena hadn't been proved, Saini found. Moreover, he found the studies hadn't shown that interventions worked.

Following the workshop, the programs commonly assign children to a specially trained aftercare therapist. Meanwhile, the exiled parent undergoes reeducation.

Insider obtained audio of a call last year between Gottlieb and the mother of a 14-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy in Turning Points. "I think what you did is criminal," says Gottlieb, who, like Steinberg, has publicly stated that her own mother alienated her from her father. There was "no reason" the children shouldn't have a relationship with their father, Gottlieb says in the recording, and "you have failed miserably to require it."

"That's alienation," she says. "That is what you are guilty of, and it's child abuse." For the children's sake, the woman must "make amends," Gottlieb says. Otherwise, "I will recommend extending the no-contact period until they're 18."

Insider and Type interviewed 12 mothers whose children were sent to Turning Points, many of whom said Gottlieb rebuked them over the phone and in emails. Most said they were required to write letters to the kids praising their fathers and submit them to Gottlieb for approval.

In early November 2016, Gottlieb told Kelly D. — Ashton and O.'s mother — that her letters contained superfluous details and secret messages and needed to be redone. In the end, Kelly submitted several drafts for each of her sons, all of which Gottlieb rejected.

"She sets a bar," Kelly said. "You try to reach the bar. She sets the bar higher."

Judge Ostroski had ordered Kelly to find a therapist "acceptable to Ms. Gottlieb" who would help her support Michael's relationship with the children. From a list provided by the Delaware Family Court, Kelly chose a psychologist, William Northey. But Gottlieb warned in an email, "I cannot approve him before I speak with him about his specialized knowledge of alienation."

The conversation went poorly. Gottlieb considered Northey unacceptable, she later testified, and Northey found fault with Gottlieb, too. He sent her a letter, reviewed by Insider, criticizing her for calling Kelly a "sociopath" and for using the phrase "parental alienation syndrome," which, he wrote, "is not a recognized diagnostic term."

Meanwhile, Gottlieb was making demands of Ashton and O. Shortly after they returned from New York, according to an email to both parents obtained by Insider, Gottlieb determined that they needed to transfer schools immediately, as their current schools had "actively undermined" their relationship with their dad.

She sought custody of O., too. But in September 2020, Ostroski found that Kelly still hadn't been properly treated for her alienating tendencies and denied her petition.

For now, even visits were too risky, Ostroski concluded.

"Ashton's behavior of running away from Father and refusing to now see Father supports Gottlieb's prediction that, if the children are returned to Mother before she addresses her alienating behavior, they will revert to their prior behaviors when they were refusing to see Father and all of the work that has been done over the past 4 years will be wasted," Ostroski wrote in the ruling.

'Junk science'

In June 2010, more than a thousand mental-health practitioners, lawyers, and judges gathered at the Sheraton in downtown Denver for the annual conference of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, which unites players in the child-custody field from around the world. The theme that year was "Traversing the Trail of Alienation," and over four days the condition was discussed in more than 30 sessions. Participants could learn how to spot an alienating parent, when it was best to defy a child's wishes, and what might help an alienated child heal.

The event signified a remarkable embrace of an idea whose author had been consumed by scandal and tragedy just a short time earlier.

In the late 1990s, critics of Gardner's dealt a powerful blow to his credibility by unearthing writings in which he'd defended pedophilia.

"Sexual activities between an adult and a child are an ancient tradition," he wrote in a 1992 book.

As a product of Western culture, he viewed pedophilia as reprehensible, he wrote, but it may not be "psychologically detrimental" in other cultures. The following year, in a journal article, Gardner argued that from an evolutionary standpoint, children benefited from being "drawn into sexual encounters," since these experiences steered them toward early reproduction. "The Draconian punishments meted out to pedophilics go far beyond what I consider to be the gravity of the crime," he wrote in 1991 in "Sex Abuse Hysteria: Salem Witch Trials Revisited."

In May 2003, at age 72, Gardner dosed himself with painkillers and stabbed himself to death. His son told reporters he was driven to suicide by chronic pain that had recently worsened.

In the assessments of his life that followed, Gardner's work was lambasted by prominent psychiatrists, including Dr. Paul Fink, a past president of the American Psychiatric Association. "This is junk science," Fink told Newsday in July 2003. "He invented a concept and talked about it as if it were proven science. It's not."

The theory could have died with Gardner. Instead, it gained ground.

In 2001, Richard Warshak, a clinical professor of psychology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, published "Divorce Poison: Protecting the Parent/Child Bond From a Vindictive Ex." The book, released by HarperCollins, brought parental alienation theory to a wider audience — and made it more palatable. Unlike Gardner, Warshak spoke of alienation in gender-neutral terms, saying many fathers were programmers, too, and he likened the no-contact period between children and their preferred parent to study abroad.

Warshak started leading workshops for Family Bridges around 2005 and eventually became its unofficial spokesman, a role in which he excelled. In 2010, he appeared in "Welcome Back, Pluto" and published an influential article about Family Bridges in the AFCC journal.

In that study, Warshak reported on outcomes for the 23 children he'd worked with in the program so far. During the four-day workshop, 22 of them recovered a "positive relationship" with their rejected parent, he observed, including recalcitrant teens.

After the workshop, however, four children regressed, Warshak wrote, following what he called "premature" contact with their preferred parent. The program worked best, he said, when this contact was blocked "for an extended period of time." Warshak didn't respond to interview requests.

Meanwhile, another Gardner successor, Dr. William Bernet, a professor of psychiatry at Vanderbilt University, was working to push alienation theory forward. He submitted a proposal to the American Psychiatric Association to include "parental alienation disorder" in the next version of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, and authored a scholarly article making the case for inclusion. He submitted a similar application to the World Health Organization, which was revising its International Classification of Diseases.

Bernet declined a request for an interview. But in a 2010 book, he wrote that since alienation scholarship had advanced in the wake of Gardner's death, "there is no need now to dwell on the details of what Richard Gardner did or said or wrote."

At the AFCC's conference in Denver in June 2010, Warshak was given a platform to discuss his Family Bridges paper, as was Bernet, to describe his DSM bid. Other presenters staked out a more moderate stance, arguing that while alienation was a pervasive problem, there was insufficient research to support construing it as a mental illness or ordering extreme interventions.

A few alienation opponents presented, including Joan Meier. But she said she flew home to Washington in tears.

"Everywhere I turned, alienation was the coin of the realm," she said.

She set out to design a study that would document how women who alleged abuse were treated in family courts nationwide — especially when alienation was raised. The Justice Department supported the project with a grant of $500,000.

In 2013, the new edition of the DSM was released with no mention of parental alienation. And in 2020, the World Health Organization ruled that parental alienation was "not a health care term" and lacked "evidence-based" treatments.

Bernet and his colleagues simply regrouped. In court, they started calling alienation a "dynamic" or a "phenomenon" rather than an illness, which appeared to satisfy some judges. And Bernet incorporated the nonprofit Parental Alienation Study Group, a coalition of parents, lawyers, and therapists who collaborated on cases and research. Rand, Gottlieb, and Steinberg joined, along with hundreds of other mental-health practitioners involved in custody work. Many, like Steinberg and Gottlieb, claimed to have experienced alienation themselves.

Meier assembled her own research team, comprising a statistician, three social scientists, and two assistants, to conduct her large-scale study. In January 2020, just weeks before the WHO decision, the results were published in the Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law.

The stark findings shocked even her.

Most trial-court rulings in custody cases are unpublished, but Meier's team identified 15,000 rulings involving abuse or alienation that were published electronically from 2005 to 2014. After winnowing that dataset to cases in which the only parties were two warring parents — not, for example, a child welfare agency — the team was left with 4,300 rulings. There were nearly 2,200 cases in which a mother had accused her ex of spousal or child abuse, and in 10% of these, the father had fought back with an alienation claim.

In general, judges were hesitant to credit mothers' abuse claims. When alienation wasn't raised, judges credited these claims 41% of the time, Meier found, and 26% of the time, mothers lost primary custody.

For the 222 mothers whose spouses accused them of alienation, the picture was even grimmer. Women who alleged abuse and whose husbands accused them of alienation lost custody half the time — twice as often as women who weren't accused of alienation.

To Meier, one of the study's most staggering findings was how rarely mothers branded with the scarlet "A" were believed. In cases where mothers alleged child physical abuse and fathers cross-claimed alienation, judges credited mothers a mere 18% of the time, she found. And in the 51 cases where mothers alleged child sexual abuse and fathers claimed alienation, all but one mother was disbelieved.

For a father accused of child molestation, Meier concluded, "alienation is a complete trump card."

'The whole world is watching'

In January 2022, three months after losing her children, Montes chanced upon a sickening discovery.

In a cloud storage account she'd once shared with Winenger, she said, she found thousands of his photos and videos, including explicit images of their three shared children. She loaded them onto a thumb drive for the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, whose investigation into Winenger had never closed.

Within days, Winenger was arrested. He was soon charged with 19 felonies, including possession of child pornography and 14 counts of committing forcible lewd acts against a child, Robert.

He pleaded not guilty and was released on bail, his access to the children suspended. Because of the no-contact order he'd previously obtained against Montes, the children landed in a county shelter. Winenger's defense attorney, Patrick Clancy, declined to comment on Winenger's behalf, saying he doesn't try his cases in the press.

Suddenly, the custody dispute was transferred to juvenile dependency court, which meant Ratekin was no longer presiding. The new judge ordered the kids into their mother's care while the case was pending. On February 18, they came home.

At first, Montes said, the two youngest children were so scared of being taken again that they couldn't sleep in their rooms. She set up a big mattress on her bedroom floor.

Meanwhile, Joan Meier was using her research to make inroads with policymakers.

She'd worked with colleagues to draft a federal law that would incentivize states to protect children from abusers during custody disputes. They named the bill Kayden's Law, after a girl in Pennsylvania whose father murdered her during a court-ordered visit. During negotiations over reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, the child's congressional representative, Brian Fitzpatrick, got Kayden's Law in.

The legislation, signed into law on March 15, 2022, sets aside up to $5 million a year for grants to states if, among other measures, they mandate training for custody judges on abuse and trauma and prohibit them from ordering treatments that cut children off from a parent to whom they are attached. If enough states comply, the law could spell the end of the reunification programs.

Last summer, California was the first state to consider such a bill. It was introduced by state Sen. Susan Rubio of Los Angeles County, a survivor of domestic violence herself, after she heard from mothers who'd been accused of alienation and children who'd been sent to reunification programs.

Rubio's bill set off a battle that has since spread to statehouses around the country. Steinberg, the alienation therapist from Los Angeles, was a vocal opponent, arguing that men would be rendered powerless against false accusations. She was joined by fathers' rights groups and by the Parental Alienation Study Group, which was simultaneously pushing hard to discredit Meier's study. (Two prominent members of the group authored a studyconcluding that her findings could not be replicated, which Meier then rebutted.) After Rubio's bill passed the assembly unanimously last August, she was forced to withdraw it in the face of intense opposition from state judges over the training mandate.

Then, last October, the momentum shifted. That's when Maya, the 15-year-old from Santa Cruz, told a custody judge that her mother had abused her and her brother. The judge, Rebecca Connolly, didn't believe her and ordered the children into Steinberg's program, cutting off contact with their father. The graphic video of the children being seized on October 20 was quickly viewed millions of times.

In response to an interview request, an officer of the Santa Cruz County Superior Court said Connolly could not speak about pending cases. Maya's mother has denied the abuse claims in court. Her lawyer, Heidi Simonson, declined an interview, citing court orders pertaining to "privacy and confidentiality."

On the heels of the viral video, a coalition of activists — many of them mothers accused of alienation — organized protests around the country. The first took place October 28 outside the courthouse where Maya had just testified. Standing on concrete risers and facing the building, a pack of Maya's friends demanded her return. "The whole world is watching!" they shouted. Protests also erupted in Michigan, Kansas, and Utah.

Rubio introduced a new bill, with modified judicial training requirements, in February. A similar bill passed both chambers of the Colorado legislature in April. One in Montana died in committee; its sponsor, Sen. Theresa Manzella, said she was up against a "deliberate distribution of misinformation" by opponents, including attorneys who use parental alienation as a legal tactic.

Montes said she's "cautiously optimistic" about Winenger's criminal trial, set to begin in June, and she hopes for an imminent victory in her custody case. Five years of legal bills have left her in debt and on food stamps, she said, but she considers herself lucky all the same. Almost every day, she talks to mothers who remain severed from their children.

Mothers like Kelly D., whose children were sent to Linda Gottlieb's reunification program in New York.

Kelly last saw her younger son, O., early on a Monday morning. It was a warm, sunny day, and she dropped him off at his best friend's house so they could shoot baskets before school. She hugged him, told him she loved him, and said she'd pick him up in the afternoon. Then she drove to court for a hearing.

That was six years, six months, and 24 days ago.

The reporting for this story is part of a forthcoming documentary from Insider, Retro Report, and Type Investigations.

If you are experiencing domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence hotline at 1-800-799-7233.

Read the original article on Insider

[fosteringinsc]

SC Out of Home Abuse and Neglect (OHAN)

In your foster care training you may have heard about OHAN. Over the years I have always been told it isn’t IF, but WHEN you get investigated by OHAN. That is why documentation is extremely important for foster parents and social workers alike. You can read the importance of documentation in one of my other articles, but here is what OHAN is. Sounds scary doesn’t it? The Out of Home Abuse and…

[codenamesazanka]

Eri's touted as sort of a 'Tenko But Things Went Right', which isn't wrong, but I feel like her save relied a lot of luck too. And luck shouldn't be a determining factor in child welfare??

It was by pure chance that Deku and Mirio first encountered her. 100% random bump. Nighteye had no idea about any child in the Shie Hassakai compound, despite having staked it out for at least a few days already.

The rescue effort was launched to save Eri, yes, but only because the Heroes had that one lucky detail to connect “DNA inside bullets” to “visibly injured child”. Without that...who knows? If Heroes had no compelling evidence to storm the compound, would they have just continued a routine drug investigation? If they raided the compound but didn’t know about the child beforehand, what would’ve happened to her? Shunted off to an orphanage because she’s ‘a criminal/yakuza’s child’? Place under HPSC supervision because of her relation to the bullets?

The manga itself stated that Eri was going to be sent off to an orphanage, BUT her out-of-control quirk was cause for concern and fortunately there was the one (1) guy who can suppress her quirk and help train her - who happened to be a teacher at a private educational campus run by a multi-millionaire who can afford to take her in as a ward. How amazingly lucky!!!! (And everyone themselves said that they were hoping to teach Eri how to use her quirk so that she can cure Mirio. How nice that her quirk is deadly but also has this miraculous healing ability that lends this additional incentive to take her in.) Eri is still only in custody of UA because her last living blood relative, her grandfather, is still in a coma. Would Pops ever want her back, if he ever wakes up? Would UA let him? Good thing UA has the resources and connections to win a custody battle, in this case.

Plus, before all of that, Eri was already another abandoned child, way before the Heroes ever learned of her. Her mom abandoned her; then her grandfather took her in, but when he fell into a coma, she ended up with the worse possible caretaker. Yeah, Overhaul is Overhaul, but a relative falling ill and being unable to take care of a child is something that can happen to any family.

Eri was abandoned by her mom because she killed her dad. What on earth was the police doing then? Did her mom is not report this? Five seconds after the dad disappeared, the mom immediately plopped the toddler in the car seat and drove her off to Pops? Or is it more likely the mom screamed and panicked and called emergency services, but it turned out that there’s nothing to be done about the dad… and then emergency services also apparently did nothing about the mom or Girl With Newly Lethal Quirk or the beginning of quirk counseling so that the mom could understand the accident as ‘mutant quirk’ and not ‘curse’??

There were points where Eri could've been saved, before she ever bumped into Deku, before Overhaul put Pops in a coma and started cutting her up.

Similarity, saving Tenko shouldn't have just been 'Hero happened to be in the area and wasn't busy and was able to spot this injured child and go help him' (if it doesn't turns out AFO was behind this too lol), or 'if only there could've been a Hero 15 years ago who could handle his quirk, hold his hand, and give him relief'. It should've been 'first person who saw this injured child called the police or took Tenko to a police box'. It should've been 'Kotarou's last act of parenting was not to pick up garden shears and whack his kid with it, but know to keep calm and know what to do in a quirk emergency' or whatever. It should've been 'the three other adults in the household had enough conscience to not let Kotarou bully his toddler'. Hell, it should've been 'All Might and Gran kept tabs on the Shimura boy'.

idk. I just don't think 'Luckily a Hero noticed!' is good enough.

[feminist-space]

"Now, already experiencing the clawing pangs of contractions, she pulled out a frozen pizza and a salad with creamy everything dressing, savoring the hush that fell over the house, the satisfying crunch of the poppy seeds as she ate.

Horton didn’t realize that she would be drug tested before her child’s birth. Or that the poppy seeds in her salad could trigger a positive result on a urine drug screen, the quick test that hospitals often use to check pregnant patients for illicit drugs.

Many common foods and medications — from antacids to blood pressure and cold medicines — can prompt erroneous results.

The morning after Horton delivered her daughter, a nurse told her she had tested positive for opiates. Horton was shocked. She hadn’t requested an epidural or any narcotic pain medication during labor — she didn’t even like taking Advil. “You’re sure it was mine?” she asked the nurse.

If Horton had been tested under different circumstances — for example, if she was a government employee and required to be tested as part of her job — she would have been entitled to a more advanced test and to a review from a specially trained doctor to confirm the initial result.

But as a mother giving birth, Horton had no such protections. The hospital quickly reported her to child welfare, and the next day, a social worker arrived to take baby Halle into protective custody.

...

To report this story, The Marshall Project interviewed dozens of patients, medical providers, toxicologists and other experts, and collected information on more than 50 mothers in 22 states who faced reports and investigations over positive drug tests that were likely wrong. We also pored over thousands of pages of policy documents from every state child welfare agency in the country.

Problems with drug screens are well known, especially in workplace testing. But there’s been little investigation of how easily false positives can occur inside labor and delivery units, and how quickly families can get trapped inside a system of surveillance and punishment.

Hospitals reported women for positive drug tests after they ate everything bagels and lemon poppy seed muffins, or used medications including the acid reducer Zantac, the antidepressant Zoloft and labetalol, one of the most commonly prescribed blood pressure treatments for pregnant women.

After a California mother had a false positive for meth and PCP, authorities took her newborn, then dispatched two sheriff’s deputies to also remove her toddler from her custody, court records show. In New York, hospital administrators refused to retract a child welfare report based on a false positive result, and instead offered the mother counseling for her trauma, according to a recording of the conversation. And when a Pennsylvania woman tested positive for opioids after eating pasta salad, the hearing officer in her case yelled at her to “buck up, get a backbone, and stop crying,” court records show. It took three months to get her newborn back from foster care.

Federal officials have known for decades that urine screens are not reliable. Poppy seeds — which come from the same plant used to make heroin — are so notorious for causing positives for opiates that last year the Department of Defense directed service members to stop eating them. At hospitals, test results often come with warnings about false positives and direct clinicians to confirm the findings with more definitive tests.

Yet state policies and many hospitals tend to treat drug screens as unassailable evidence of illicit use, The Marshall Project found. Hospitals across the country routinely report cases to authorities without ordering confirmation tests or waiting to receive the results."

Read the full piece here: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/09/09/drug-test-pregnancy-pennsylvania-california

[sztupy]

The report found that at a regional level, London had the highest destitution levels in 2022, followed by the North East and the North West of England, and then the West Midlands.

The regions in the south of England had the lowest rates of destitution, with both Wales and Scotland having rates comparable with the Midlands.

While destitution had increased in all regions of the UK over the period 2019 to 2022, the report found Scotland’s position had improved “with by far the lowest increase since 2019”.

It added: “This may be indicative of the growing divergence in welfare benefits policies in Scotland, notably the introduction of the Scottish Child Payment.”

[bnyrbt]

The leader of the Choctaw Nation is joining an outpouring of support for the family of a 16-year-old student whose death is being investigated in Oklahoma.

Nex Benedict passed away on February 8, following a physical altercation at a high school the day prior. Chief Gary Batton confirmed that the young student’s mother is enrolled with the Choctaw Nation.

“The loss of a child is always difficult for a community and a family to accept,” Batton said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Although Nex does not appear to be affiliated with our tribe, their mother, Sue Benedict, is a registered member,” Batton continued. “Nex’s death weighs heavily on the hearts of the Choctaw people. We pray Nex’s family and their loved ones will find comfort,” Batton concluded.

Nex’s death has directed widespread attention to Oklahoma, where Republican officials have increasingly adopted policies hindering the rights and freedoms of Two Spirit and LGBTQ+ people. Sue Benedict has embraced her child’s gender identity and has vowed to donate funds to other youth experiencing some of the same struggles.

Two Spirit and LGBTQ+ advocates incorrectly identified Nex as being a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, whose reservation borders that of the Choctaw Nation. Cherokee Chief Hoskin Jr. expressed support for the Benedict family on Tuesday.

“As Chief, the health and welfare of all children within the Cherokee Nation Reservation is of concern,” Hoskin said in a statement.

Nex attended Owasso High School in Owasso, located on the Cherokee Reservation. Local authorities are investigating the death and have said they will forward the results of the investigation to prosecutors in Tulsa County for potential action.

Hoskin has offered the support of the Cherokee Nation Marshal Service as the investigation continues. The Owasso Police Department indicated in a statement on Tuesday that interviews would be taking place “over the course of the next two weeks.”

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R), a Republican who happens to be a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, has not spoken publicly about the death. He has repeatedly derided efforts to address diversity, equity and inclusion as discriminatory.

But a senior official with President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has weighed in. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre offered a message of support from the administration in a post on social media.

“Every young person deserves to feel safe and supported at school,” Jean-Pierre wrote on her official government account. “Our hearts are with Nex Benedict’s family, their friends, and their entire school community in the wake of this horrific tragedy.”

“For many LGBTQI+ students across the country, this may feel personal and deeply painful,” Jean-Pierre continued. “There is always someone you can talk to if you’re going through a hard time. Dial 988 and press 3 to reach a counselor dedicated to serving LGBTQI+ young people.

According to the 2023 LGBTQ+ Youth Report, a project of Human Rights Campaign and the University of Connecticut, more than half of transgender and gender-expansive youth feel unsafe at school. In particular, nearly a third said they feel unsafe in school restrooms.

“All students, including trans and gender-expansive students like Nex, have the right to feel safe and protected while attending school,” Tori Cooper, the campaign director of Community Engagement for the Transgender Justice Initiative at the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement on Wednesday. “That Nex was only 16 years old compounds this tragic injustice and they should have lived to see a fulfilling and authentic life.”

The 2023 study was based on a survey of nearly 3,000 LGBTQ+ youth ages 13-18 nationwide, according to the organization. Some 0.6 percent of respondents identified themselves as American Indian or Alaska Native.

According to Owasso Public Schools, a “physical altercation” took place in a bathroom at the high school on February 7. The Owasso police responded to a local hospital on the same day of the incident.

Police then said they were informed that a “juvenile” was taken back to a hospital on February 8, the same day as Nex’s passing.

[deathsmallcaps]

Casual reminder that being queer does not preclude you from repeating racist, xenophobic, conservative and just down right inappropriate shit, or from being a terrible hypocrite. I don’t want to out this person, so I covered their name. but I spotted a bad take, went to investigate and block, and saw these two posts right above and below each other.

This person, with a bi flag as part of their avatar, reblogged a fairly popular post about how the term ‘pedophile’ is weapon used against queer people. Right after reblogging a post about the troubles in Libya right now and adding a comment about how they can’t feel sorry for a country with bad child marriage laws.

As if such a statement wasn’t heartless and hypocritically unaware. As if such a statement didn’t also write off all the people that they’re supposedly arguing for (the women and children affected by those laws). As if derailing a post about the deaths of thousands from the collapse of a dam during a drought was in any way appropriate.

Warning for mentions of pedophilia, and xenophobic and Anti-Libyan comments. The photos below will be followed by image descriptions.

Image Description One: A tumblr post from December 10, 2017 by Robotlyra. The original post says: If "grooming an underage person" becomes the new go-to accusation that gets trotted out any and every time an adult makes any mention of sexual topics in the presence of a person under the age of 18, I wonder if it will eventually become functionally impossible for any adult in a position of authority to act as an educational reference for sexual health matters.

It is then followed by a reblog from Robotlyra, the original poster, on December 14 2022. It says: I was going back through my tumblr archives and found this post from five years ago and now I need a drink.

End image description One

Image description two: a picture just to prove that that the post in the previous screenshot is connected to the post in the next image. It shows parts of both posts.

End image description two

Image Description Three: a post by Unhonestlymirror from September 15, 2023. It is a screenshot of a tweet by Lyla_lilas, and contains both text and an image of a man wiping tears from his eyes. The text reads: A Libyan journalist cried live on television before declaring: "The world has abandoned us."

As a reminder: a new report shows at least 11,300 deaths in the country.

#PrayForLibya #Lybia

End Image Description Three

Image Description Four

A screenshot of a September 16 reblog with a comment, with part of the previous image’s tweet visible to make it clear this was a reblogged comment. The text reads: Ima be real. I struggle to feel bad for a country that has no issues with child marriage (as long as it is arranged by the parents/father, which it always is anyways)

And the age of consent is “Must be married”.

Oh and if rape is acknowledged, the woman (or girl) is kicked out and out in a “social welfare” home.

So I apologise if I struggle to cry about a country filled with pedophiles.

End image description Four