Stephen Baskerville (2)

There is a grave threat to the integrity of the legal system and to the core values of our society: The destruction of due process of law in the family courts, a malady that has now reached epidemic proportions throughout the Anglosphere.

Of all the scandalous behavior of the Left, perhaps none is so underreported as the systematic destruction of marriage and the family that is now practiced by the governmental divorce and child-custody machinery. This industry and the travesties it has perpetrated are summarized proficiently in the book, "Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family" by Stephen Baskerville, a professor of political science at Patrick Henry College.

Declares Baskerville:

"This book is about our unwillingness to confront the most destructive and dangerous injustice in our society today: the systematic seizure of children by government officials and the criminalization of their parents. A parent today who has committed no legal infraction can have his (or sometimes her) parenthood and relationship with his children criminalized entirely through the actions of others in ways that are completely beyond his control. [The book] focuses largely on fathers and divorce, because these are the ones most commonly involved."

The attack on fathers has been facilitated by the myth that they are abandoning their children in droves, at which point they become "deadbeats," and must be tracked down by government officials seeking justice for the forlorn wives and children. Nothing could be further from the truth, writes Baskerville:

"The myth of the deadbeat dad has already been discredited conclusively by Sanford Braver and other scholars. We have already seen that Braver is one of many social scientists who have found that few married fathers voluntarily abandon their children. Beyond this, Braver has also shown that little scientific basis exists for claims that large numbers of fathers are not paying child support. Braver found that government claims of nonpayment were derived not from any compiled database or hard figures but entirely from surveys of custodial parents. In other words, the Census Bureau simply asked mothers what they were receiving....Fathers overwhelmingly do pay court-ordered child support when they are employed, often at enormous personal sacrifice."

In the vast majority of cases, it is the wife who initiates the divorce proceedings. She is encouraged in this action by the regime of "no-fault" divorce. The old concept of marriage as a contract has broken down; today, the flimsiest, most whimsical reasons can be offered as justification--if justification is even needed.

Once this machinery is set in motion, the deck is stacked against the father. In the blink of an eye, he can be evicted from his home, forbidden from seeing his children, have his assets seized, his wages garnished, and he can be assessed huge fees--all without due process of law. Though not even charged with committing a crime, he is presumed guilty. Many of the proceedings are held without his knowledge or presence, and he cannot cross-examine witnesses.

In a macabre recitation, Baskerville shows how each amendment in the Bill of Rights is being systematically violated, with no appeal. For example:

"The Fourth Amendment protects the 'right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures'. Yet as we have seen, parents suspected of no legal wrongdoing and who have given no grounds or agreement for divorce are routinely ordered without warrants to surrender not only their children but personal diaries, notebooks, correspondence, financial records, and other documents. Those unwilling or unable to produce the demanded documents can be fined, ordered to pay attorneys' fees, and summarily incarcerated. We have also seen that fathers are regularly interrogated behind closed doors about intimate family matters most parents would not normally discuss with strangers, such as conversations with their children and spouse, and they can be jailed for failing to answer....In shades of Soviet psychiatry, citizens who refuse to submit to this inquisition--and even those who do not--can be ordered to undergo a 'mental evaluation'."

The divorce and child-custody apparatus has grown to enormous proportions. It is a veritable industry, with judges, lawyers, social workers, collection agencies, therapists, psychiatrists, caseworkers, and researchers making their living from the ever-expanding pie. The enforcement effort employs thousands of agents who have a degree of authority and immunity that is unthinkable for ordinary police and law enforcement agencies. It has become an independent fiefdom, with no oversight and little scrutiny, with an entrenched interest in generating more divorce, more restraining orders, more mental evaluations, and more outrageously inflated child-support payments (commonly approaching or exceeding the income of the victim).

Another myth deconstructed by Baskerville is that fathers commonly commit child abuse, incest, and wife-beating. In reality, this is rare. Mothers are more likely to use violence on fathers, and children are most subjected to abuse in single-parent households headed by a woman.

After describing in gory detail the horrors of the family-law system (backed up, I might add, by reams of studies and testimony), Baskerville turns his attention to the culprits, those whose ideology has resulted in one of the grossest perversions of justice in American (and British, and Canadian) history. There are several culprits, but towering above them all are the feminists, who have carved out this untouchable empire for the purpose of destroying fatherhood and the nuclear family.

A key buzzword used by advocates of this ideology is "for the children." This is the clarion call behind the incessant demand to insert the power of the state into the deepest recesses of the private lives of the citizenry. Children are used, in the most cynical fashion, to attain political ends. This has reached the highest echelons of America's Leftist establishment:

"The philosophy of turning children over to state control and denying a sphere of family privacy is succinctly conveyed in Hillary Clinton's aphorism, 'There is no such thing as other people's children.' Hillary rejects the notion that 'families are private, nonpolitical units whose interests subsume those of children' and believes instead in 'the status of children as political beings.' Commenting on these passages and others like them, the late Barbara Olson wrote, 'For Hillary, children are the levers by which one forces social change'."

Overall, "Taken Into Custody" is a balanced, non-emotional, well-written, and copiously footnoted exposé. The only sour note, I would say, are several odd forays into macro-level political analysis, such as the perplexing statement that "it is perhaps a legacy of the Enlightenment that today both liberals and conservatives seem to worship at the altar of the meritocracy." The author would have been better advised to confine the scope of the work to his area of expertise, in which his competence is duly impressive.

In any case, the book is a must-read for understanding the nature and scope of this insidious attack on a key foundation of Western society.… (meer)

In Taken into Custody Stephen Baskerville takes the “divorce industry” to task destroying the concept of the nuclear family and allowing an unprecedented level of government interference in people’s lives. The crux of the issue, according to the author, is that none of the professionals involved in the divorce process (including lawyers, judges, social workers, and court-ordered therapists) truly have the interests of families or children in mind. Lawyers advise wives and mothers not to try to work out their issues and not file for divorce until after they’ve already left their husbands with the children. Combined with a easy accusation of intimidation (which does not have to verified and, even if proven false, cannot be used by the husband in court) and the mother will automatically receive custody—something that happens over 93 percent of the time.

Baskerville’s real beef, however, is with the concept of unilateral divorce, in which one party of a contract (remember that marriage is a legally binding contract) can, without the permission of the other party, terminate the contract and permit the government to interfere in all aspects of either party’s life. The government, by judicial fiat, can prevent a parent from seeing his (or her) child without any reasonable cause, can garnish a non-custodial parent’s wages even if they’ve never missed a child support payment, and can actually jail parents if they don’t earn enough to pay their child support.

Baskerville’s solutions stem largely from Maggie Gallagher’s “observation that marriage has become ‘the only contract where the law now sides with the party who wants to violate it.’” In order to rectify this error he suggests that the concept of no-fault divorce be reformed in situations where children are involved. Additionally, shared parenting needs to be the default in no-fault divorce cases unless there is real evidence of wrongdoing.

Let no one be mistaken. This is not an objective look at the divorce courts and their procedures. Taken into Custody was written to bring the inequalities and unconstitutionality of the family courts to light. While Baskerville’s argument is pointedly and effectively made, this topic cries out for a more objective study. Still, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the processes of family law.… (meer)