Dear State Representative: (an email)
Responding to Dara Carlin’s unstated allegations promoting the San Francisco Daily Journal article, “The Dangerous Legal Tactic at the Heart of Baldwin’s Book,” 10/06/08, Sol Gothard & Randy Burton.
I am a victim of Parental Alienation. I am the ex-husband of Dara Carlin, a self-proclaimed Hawaiian advocate for domestic violence victims, and the father of our children. I have not been permitted to see my children in over two years.
After years of pleading innocent to false allegations of domestic abuse, Dara obtained an order that requires three psychologists to illegally break Federal HIPAA privacy rules in order for me to continue visitation with my children.
Judge Kuriyama could not see through this ruse. Instead, she convicted me of being a “bad parent,” guilty of everything that is in Dara’s mind. No evidence was needed for this conviction. I was self-represented against a bunch of angry women in a closed court room; the secretive Family Court of the State of Hawaii. Sole physical and legal custody is a powerful, profitable, and corrupting motive for the prosecution.
I have been attending the Family Education Training Center of Hawaii at the University of Hawaii Manoa Campus for the past five years. It is program that teaches respect and democracy within a household. They have helped hundreds of families decrease domestic violence in their homes.
I have a wonderful relationship with a fine woman and her two children. We have just passed our fourth anniversary. Their father is in Oregon. I encourage them to talk to him as often as they can. I speak well of their father.
I have successfully defended myself in two recent temporary restraining order cases in which Dara attempted to characterize me as angry as Bryan Uyesugi. I am a decent and devoted father who loves and misses my children.
My daughter, age 13, hates me–I am told–and hates her mother. She hates me because, from a child’s desire to belong to a family, it is the only way that my daughter is able to earn Dara’s love and respect. She hates her mother because her mother has terminated her father’s love.
My son–age 7 at the time–inexplicably, began to tell stories of “Daddy hitting.” His reward was to lose visitation with his Dad, his buddy, and friend. It tears my heart to understand and feel a child’s grief at the loss of a loved one.
My children, their school counselors, and their blended family and friends have been convinced by Dara that there is a “no-contact” order between me and the children. My kids have not responded to a year’s worth of “Thinking of you” cards. They do not send thank-you notes for birthday presents. They don’t call on Father’s Day. They are afraid to contact me.
To be killed, like Roy Hartsock’s wife, is a terrible thing; but her children have closure. To be alive and–at the same time–dead to your children is a worse fate.
I cannot tell you if there is a Parental Alienation “Syndrome.”
I know that there is Parental Alienation. According to a study by Chaim Steinberger of the New York State Bar Association in his Spring 2006, NY Family Law Review article (Vol. 38), “Father? What Father?,” nearly 80 percent of 1,000 divorcing families over a 12-year period suffered from mild to severe alienation from the custodial parent. As many as 20 percent of these families suffered from severe alienation, where insistent bad-mouthing turned into brainwashing and the children were damaged for their whole lives.
Children of these families are angry at both parents and often deny either parent into their lives after the age of emancipation. They go on; moving from one broken relationship to another. They are never able to trust another human being.
The Violence Against Women’s Act has done no favors for men like me or families who could have weathered bad times. Many of its misguided provisions increase domestic violence. But they have one small, important insight. Anyone who interferes with the right of the child to the other parent is guilty of domestic violence.
I have not read Alec Baldwin’s book. I don’t know the details of Mike Wooten’s custody battle. But I have talked to men and women around the country who experience the same second-class citizenship that is being a non-custodial parent. It’s not a black or latino prejudice. It is a prejudice that kills hope in fathers who are threatened with divorce. Hawaii’s recent string of murder-suicides, likely, have all been fueled by a common element; a wife demanding a divorce.
But, my case is far from those extremes. I am a statistic of men who suffer life without the children we brought into this world. I am an advocate for Shared Parenting laws that would significantly reduce divorces and domestic abuse. While my ethos for life is strong, the prejudice against me also kills hope in my children. No matter what I do, Dara has made sure that the children know I made the wrong choice. The children are violated and will never be able to fully re-establish relationships with either parent.
Dara does not act in the best interests of our children. At face value, articles like she attached here do not tell the story that women receive custody in over 80 percent of divorces. By sheer numbers, women are responsible for domestic violence against children in these single-parent households. And, on average, women are far better off financially after five years than the fathers who are shut out of the children’s lives.
Women, like Dara, are responsible for initiating nearly 80 percent of divorces. They are responsible for initiating domestic violence in 50 percent of the reported cases, even though men are a third as likely to report domestic violence. They are responsible for kidnapping and taking children over state lines. They are responsible for sneak attacks, escalating arguments, and making false allegations against their “alleged perpetrators.”
While my case is on appeal (Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals, Case No. 28563), I have lost confidence in Hawaii’s Family Court to make any decision on behalf of my children. Dara has led the charge. She has won. Our children have lost. Dara has become a larger and more powerful tyrant with each case. Her power and control have grown and she plays the DV card in the local media like a seasoned actor.
She promotes the idea that Parental Alienation does not exist because she cannot look in the mirror and see herself.
As for Alec Baldwin, I found his interview on CBS 60 Minutes to be very revealing about the second-class life that many of us would trade for the opportunity to collaborate with our ex-spouses and give our children the future they deserve.
If you wish to find out more, please visit my web site and blog at http://www.mywiferanoffwithourkids.com/. It is a simple-text and small-image, father’s help web site that loads quickly.
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