Hounding the Divorce Industry

The divorce regime is the most totalitarian institution ever to arise in the United States, Britain, and the other English-speaking democracies. Its operatives in the family courts and the social service agencies recognize no private sphere of life. “The power of family court judges is almost unlimited,” according to Judge Robert Page of the New Jersey family court. “Social workers are perceived to have nearly unlimited power,” a San Diego Grand Jury concludes. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Total immunity [enjoyed by social workers] is absolute power.”

The divorce regime is responsible for much more than “ugly divorces,” “nasty custody battles,” and other clichés. It is the most serious perpetrator of human and constitutional rights violations in the Western world today. Because it strikes the most basic institution of any civilization – the family – the divorce regime is a threat not only to social order but to civil freedom. It is also almost completely unopposed. No political party and no politicians question it. No journalists investigate it in any depth. A few attorneys have spoken out, but they are eventually suspended or disbarred. Some academics have written about it, but they soon stop. No human rights or civil liberties groups challenge it, and some positively support it. Very few “pro-family” lobbies question it. This is because the divorce regime operates through money, political power, and fear.

The divorce regime is much more serious than simply “unfairness” or “gender bias” against fathers in custody proceedings. It is the government’s machine for destroying the principal check on its power – the family – and criminalizing its main rival: fathers. The most basic human and constitutional rights are routinely violated in America’s family courts. The lives of children and parents are in serious danger once they are, as the phrase goes, taken into “custody.” Systemic conflicts-of-interest among government and private officials charged with child custody, child support, child protection, and connected matters have created a witch hunt against plainly innocent citizens.

The terror of the divorce regime is not a future possibility; it is a present reality. The following methods are currently employed by family courts and other government agents. These practices are now widespread in America:

• mass incarcerations without trial or charge
• forced confessions
• children forcibly separated from parents who are under no suspicion of legal wrongdoing and parents stripped of the care, custody, and companionship of their children without explanation
• government agents entering the homes, demanding and examining private papers and personal effects, and seizing the property of citizens who are under no suspicion of legal wrongdoing
• official court records, including hearing tapes and transcripts, doctored and falsified with the knowledge of court officials and evidence fabricated against the innocent
• defendants denied the constitutional right to face their accusers
• bureaucratic police authorized to issue subpoenas and arrest warrants against parents, with no hearing and contrary to due process of law
• special courts created specifically to process parents for political offenses
• forced labor facilities created specifically for parents
• children instructed to hate their parents with the backing of government officials
• children forced by government officials to act as informers against their parents
• children abused and killed with the backing of government officials
• knowingly false allegations, for which no evidence is presented, accepted as fact without proof, overturning the presumption of innocence, and not punished when demonstrated to be untrue
• parents ordered by government officials to separate from their spouses, on pain of losing their children
• parents forced to pay the private fees of court officials they have not hired and whose services they have not sought or used, on pain of incarceration
• parents suspected of no legal wrongdoing punitively stripped of their property and income, sometimes at gunpoint, and reduced to penury
• government officials using the mass media to vilify private American citizens, and political leaders using their offices as platforms to verbally attack private American citizens, who have no right of reply or opportunity to defend themselves
• parents jailed without trial reportedly beaten, in at least one case fatally, and denied medical attention while in police custody.

I have made these charges in some of the most reputable publications in the English language. They have never been refuted. Yet neither have they been corrected or even addressed by public officials, the media, or academics.

My site (http://www.stephenbaskerville.net) will tell you the truth about the divorce regime. It contains virtually all my published works—some 100 articles, several studies, and a book on the fatherhood crisis and the corruption of the divorce industry (except book reviews and radio commentaries) For better or worse, these are the most strongly worded writings to appear on this subject in mainstream publications.

I am heavily indebted for the many letters, stories, documents, clippings, studies, citations, books, e-mail communications, and telephone calls—collected and sent to me by hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. It is not possible to name all these people, and many prefer not to be named.