Letter to British Columbia Ministers regarding their inaccurate views on Domestic Violence

From: Mike Murphy

Date: 11 February 2010 11:26

Subject: Domestic Violence

To: SG.Minister@gov.bc.ca, HSD.Minister@gov.bc.ca, MCF.Minister@gov.bc.ca

Cc: >

Dear Ministers:

I had the opportunity to review your response to S.M. with respect to the various services offered to your citizens with respect to Intimate Partner Violence and most importantly the rationale.

You proffer the usual feminist answer that is in every DV shelter operating manual and comes out of the pseudo psychological premise from the Duluth Power and Control Wheel with no basis in real science and I quote, " The Ministry does fund specific Violence Against Women programs in recognition of the gendered nature of domestic violence, which acknowledges that domestic violence is a power-based crime in which, most often, the male in an intimate relationship exercises power and control over the female."

I am very disappointed to see in the 21st century a government actually using this false premise as an excuse for not providing similar services to men. Given the research in place which clearly shows quite the opposite of what you describe, and outlined below, it is time to stop the sexist discrimination and provide equivalent services where warranted.  Men and women react differently to DV and men, despite taking a financial, physical and psychological battering, are guilty before all, as you show above and do not report the abuse to anyone in most cases. If they call the Police they are likely going to be the one arrested for the very reason you described. They largely internalize it unless a volunteer support group exists to provide assistance.

You also quote police reported statistics which do not give the real picture of actual occurrences of IPV.  In fact if DV is gendered how to you account for the upwards of 50% violence between Lesbian couples which is much higher than heterosexual couples?  You may wish to consult with Professor Don Dutton at UBC on matters relating to IPV between heterosexual  and Lesbian couples. He is on your doorstep and a well respected leader in the discipline who can bring some sense to your sexist policies.

You have also, as most feminists do, cherry picked your information from one source while leaving out anything that gives rise to DV being mutual, being initiated more by females than males, and showing it impacts 7% of women and 6% of men. Family violence in Canada: A statistical profile, 2005. An estimated 7% of women and 6% of men representing 653,000 women and 546,000 men in a current or previous spousal relationship encountered spousal violence during the five years up to and including 2004, according to a comprehensive Statistics Canada report on family violence.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/Daily/English/050714/d050714a.htm

Males are the largest victims of violence in Canada according to the most recent Homicide Stats. Canadian Homicide Stats 2008

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/091028/dq091028a-eng.htm

Total 611, 465 men 146 female
Rate of homicides with firearms has increased 24% since 2002. Handgun use on increase (gangs don't register their weapons)
Women victims 24% - lowest proportion ever Men Victims 76%
Both the rate of females killed (0.87 per 100,000 population), as well as the proportion. (24%), were the lowest since 1961
62 spousal homicides - no change from 2007. Lowest rate in 40 years, 45 women 17 (27.4%)men

Many DV homicides of men are not classified as such and this number is higher than 27.4%. Some police Departments actually suppress calling a homicide as DV even when it is patently obvious. See this article in the National Post on the London Police Chief Faulkner who falsified his 2007 reports by omission.  Its clear he has an agenda and uses the same mantra as does your government. See this column in the National Post http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/01/28/barbara-kay-london-ontario-police-statistics-on-domestic-violence-show-classic-signs-of-abuse.aspx and this one in the London Free Press. http://www.lfpress.com/comment/columnists/herman_goodden/2010/02/05/12762196.html

There are hundreds of studies showing the mutuality of IPV and I direct you to a small sample as follows:

Male victims of domestic violence have been seriously neglected in public policy, outreach and services. But they are not rare. They’re less likely to report it, which makes oft-cited crime data (DoJ, etc.) unreliable especially for men.

Prevalence and Injuries

Virtually all empirical survey data shows women initiate domestic violence at least as often as men in heterosexual relationships and that men suffer one-third of physical injuries from domestic violence. Over 200 of these studies (and growing), using various methodologies, are summarized by Professor Martin Fiebert at

http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm

Harvard Medical School and the American Psychiatric Association both recently announced a major national study in the U.S. that found half of heterosexual domestic violence is reciprocal and that: "Regarding perpetration of violence, more women than men (25 percent versus 11 percent) were responsible. In fact, 71 percent of the instigators in nonreciprocal partner violence were women."

http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/42/15/31-a

http://www.patienteducationcenter.org/aspx/HealthELibrary/HealthETopic.aspx?cid=M0907d

The study also found: "As for physical injury due to intimate partner violence, it was more likely to occur when the violence was reciprocal than nonreciprocal. And while injury was more likely when violence was perpetrated by men, in relationships with reciprocal violence it was the men who were injured more often (25 percent of the time) than were women (20 percent of the time)."

A recent 32-nation study by the University of New Hampshire found women are as violent and as controlling as men in dating relationships worldwide.

http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2006/may/em_060519male.cfm?type=n

To make my point clearer that Domestic Violence is not gendered I supply some information from Australia and the USA on child killing and abuse where you will find the female, particularly the single mom, takes the lead role.  This information may provide some ideological dissonance and perhaps hurt your sensibilities but it is time for the feminine benign artifice  bubble to be burst. It is hurting men and boys, children and indeed women who are viewed by many as an underclass of victims needing government intervention at all levels of their development leaving the impression they are unable to function equally to men without such assistance..

You may wish to view the child abuse information with a view toward public policy for child protection. There is a move afoot to align the Violence Against Women (VAW)  sector with the child protection services and this clearly is not good public policy given the woman is the most likely to harm or kill the children. There is a definite conflict of a child's best interests involved.

There are no valid peer reviewed studies or government surveys of recent date showing the rates of abuse by dads are equal to mothers. In fact a recent Australian study shows mothers themselves and mothers in concert with a non-biological boyfriend/partner are far and away the highest cause of death of their children. Mothers killed 11 alone, with a partner not the biological father 5, dads 5.  That’s a 16-5 ratio toward mothers.

Kids are safer with Dads

The Australian Institute of Criminology has reviewed the most recent child homicide statistics from its National Homicide Monitoring Program. The new data shows that during 2006-07, eleven child homicides were perpetrated by a mother, while five perpetrators were fathers, and another five were de-facto partners of the mother who lived with the child. Importantly, no child victims were killed by a complete stranger during this period.

You can go here for the USA stats showing by far Mothers are the greatest killers and abusers of their children. http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/stats_research/index.htm

2006,  is outlined below:

Some data on child abuse from Child Maltreatment 2006, a report by the Federal Administration for Children & Families...

Figure 4-2 Perpetrator Relationships of Child Fatalities, 2006

Child Maltreatment 2006

Perpetrator Relationships of Child Fatalities, 2006

This pie chart indicates that 27.4 percent of child fatalities were perpetrated by the mother acting alone. Such non-parental perpetrators as daycare providers, foster parents, or residential facility staff were responsible for 14.6 percent of fatalities.


Leaving aside killings by non-parents or by mothers and fathers acting together, mothers committed a significantly greater number of the parental murders of children.



 

Figure 3-5 Victims by Perpetrator Relationship, 2006

Victims by Perpetrator Relationship, 2006
 
This pie chart shows that 39.9 percent of child victims were maltreated by their mothers acting alone; another 17.6 percent were maltreated by their fathers acting alone; 17.8 percent were abused by both their mother and father. Victims abused by a nonparental perpetrator accounted for 10.0 percent.


Until DV is treated as a family problem rather than a female victim/male perpetrator we cannot expect much to change. It has been going on for a very long time with no end in site. Resources need to be spent on trying to salvage a family caught in the trauma of disputes holistically rather than all women are victims. I often wonder if that had been available to my family whether things would have worked out differently. How about a court process requiring all family members into counseling and if the alleged perpetrator does not respond in a timely manner then the criminal process kicks in? Australia's Family Centres are a good example. 

We know the downstream impacts of the current process with destroyed families, criminal records, loss of jobs, poverty, and increased social problems of children in single family homes. In fact children learn from their parents and the cycle becomes multi-generational. If such a system existed early warnings, as part of an education process, would allow the victimized spouse or child to seek counsel and have the family brought into a healthy counselling process before things got out of hand. It would be far more proactive and preventative. Before it becomes a police action we should look for other alternatives which will decrease the current stresses on police services to deal with the problems. Note I say family not a single gender. A process involving the family that is non-threatening may reduce the fear factor of a non-working spouse, male or female (recall I was the stay-at-home dad in my case) and have them make the move earlier with a chance to salvage the relationship and family.

As long as you stick to this Duluth Wheel psycho-babble of male power and coercion taxpayers money is not being spent in a wise fashion.

Mike Murphy
682 Old Garden River Road
Sault Ste. Marie ON  P6A 6J8

> February 10, 2010

Mr. S. M.

E-mail:

Dear Mr. M:

I am responding to your January 7, 2010 e-mail regarding your thoughts on the government’s funding of domestic violence programs.  I would like to take this opportunity to clarify the services available for both men and women in British Columbia who are the victims of domestic violence.

The majority of Ministry programs and services for victims of crime in British Columbia serve all victims of violence, including both men and women.  In fact, all but seven of the Ministry’s Victim Service Programs are mandated to serve both men and women.  Three victim service programs serve only men and four serve only women.  Similarly, the Ministry’s Crime Victim Assistance Program provides medical and dental expenses, counselling services, protective measures, income support and other benefits to assist all eligible victims of crime and their families to recover from the impacts of crime.  In the same manner, the Victim Safety Unit provides notification services to victims of crime regarding the custody status of an accused or offender including releases from custody and information about conditions that must be followed when in the community.  This service is available to both men and women who register with the unit.

The Ministry also funds VictimLINK, a toll-free, province-wide 24/7 multilingual help and information line that provides emergency crisis support for all victims of family and sexual violence.  Our Victim Court Support Program provides enhanced support to victims in the criminal court process including emotional support, court updates, information, orientation, accompaniment, and referrals to victims/witnesses and their families.  Additionally, the Ministry funded Children Who Witness Abuse Programs which provide counselling for children aged 3 to 18 who have witnessed abuse, threats, or violence in the home to help these children and their adult caregivers heal from the trauma and learn about healthy relationships.  This program serves boys, girls, and caregivers of either sex.

The Ministry does fund specific Violence Against Women programs in recognition of the gendered nature of domestic violence, which acknowledges that domestic violence is a power-based crime in which, most often, the male in an intimate relationship exercises power and control over the female.  For this reason, our Stopping the Violence Counselling Programs and Outreach and Multicultural Outreach Services exclusively serve women.

The reality is that the majority of victims of police-reported spousal violence are females, accounting for 83 per cent of victims in 2007 (Statistics Canada. Family Violence in Canada: A Statistical Profile 2009, p. 5).  Women are also more likely than men to be victims of spousal homicide.  In 2007, almost 4 times as many women were killed by a current or former spouse as men (Statistics Canada. Family Violence in Canada: A Statistical Profile 2009, p. 6).  In domestic violence situations, women are twice as likely as men to be injured, three times more likely to fear for their lives, twice as likely to suffer serious injury and six times as likely to seek medical attention (Statistics Canada. Measuring Violence Against Women: Statistical Trends 2006, p. 19).  For all of these reasons, we do fund specific services for women but for the Ministry as a whole, the majority of our programs and services for victims of violence are for both men and women.

I would like to personally thank you for writing to get clarity on the types of programs and services available for victims of domestic violence and for the important work you do in the area of law enforcement.  Working together we can ensure safer homes and communities for all British Columbians impacted by violence. 

Thank you once again for writing.

Yours truly,

Kash Heed

Solicitor General

pc:     The Honourable Rich Coleman

        The Honourable Mary Polak

Dr. Richard Warshak ~ Tough love from Texas

This visit by Dr. Warshak indicates progress is being made within the judiciary. In one report it was stated about 130 Judges attended his seminar. The comments by The Honorable Justice John Gomery of Canada in 1991 present a vivid reminder on the passage of time before cases of Parental Alienation of a child can be identified and dealt with in an expeditious manner    “Hatred is not an emotion that comes naturally to a child. It has to be taught. A parent who would teach a child to hate the other parent represents a grave and persistent danger to the mental and emotional health of that child.”

He was a wise member of the Bench to have not overlooked the emotional abuse of the children in this Quebec case. Hopefully the judiciary will start taking the matter with the seriousness it deserves and keep the same judge involved through court proceedings and also divest themselves of the argument only recalcitrant parents take matters to litigation.

When PA is involved it is often because the alienator themselves have personality disorders and use the children as pawns.MJM

TARA WALTON/TORONTO STAR

Psychologist Richard Warshak offers intensive and controversial programs to help children who have suffered parental alienation during divorce. “Love your kids more than you hate your ex-spouse,” he says.

February 09, 2010

Susan Pigg

Living Reporter

When Richard Warshak whisked into Toronto last week from his native Texas, he brought along some tough-love advice for both divorcing parents and family court judges.

"Love your kids more than you hate your ex-spouse," the renowned expert on parental alienation said.

Be firm and fast at pushing toxic custody cases through the clogged courts, he advised judges attending a day-long seminar at the Four Seasons Hotel.

The psychologist runs the controversial Family Bridges, a Texas-based "educational workshop" aimed at undoing the damage of parental alienation – orchestrated campaigns of hate and hurt in which one parent turns their children against the other in bitter divorce battles.

Critics have decried his work as "deprogramming" but for the past year, Warshak has been working with two Ontario psychologists and says a third is due to join him soon. He's teaching them how to run similar programs here to tackle what Toronto psychiatrist Sol Goldstein describes as the "scourge of parental alienation in Canada."

Warshak's aim is to make the intensive therapy more affordable – with airfare to Texas it can hit $20,000 (U.S.) – and ease the optics of Canadian kids being whisked away from nasty parents and flown off to the United States for what skeptics label as brainwashing.

"Every day I get letters from parents with very, very tragic stories in which they've lost all contact with their children – in some cases for years," Warshak says. "It's heartbreaking to see so much pain, but it's enormously gratifying when you've been able to restore a child's identity and help them recover a lost relationship."
The key, stresses Warshak, is for parents to know that badmouthing their ex-spouse, fixating on their flaws and blaming them for the divorce in front of the kids, can doom children to a life of anger, depression and a divorce of their own later in life.

Since these bitter marrige breakdowns often end up in court, judges need to get tough before things spiral so out of control that the only solution is expensive and intensive therapy, says Warshak.

"Judges can help these families by making very clear and unambiguous (custody and visitation) orders, by having very clear expectations about what will happen if the orders are violated and by moving on these cases very early rather than allowing the problems to reach the point where expensive and intensive (therapy) is necessary."

He's determined to make parental alienation as socially unacceptable as sexual or physical abuse of children.
His 2001 book on the topic, Divorce Poison, has been updated and was re-released last month. This spring he's coming out with a new, self-help DVD (Welcome Back Pluto, which he hopes to sell on his website www.warshak.com for $19.95 U.S.) for parents struggling to reconnect with kids who've been poisoned against them.

During an hour-long interview with the Star, Warshak talked about Family Bridges. While acknowledging that it's financially out of reach of most families, he says it's treated 103 children in the past 18 years.
Of the 23 kids he's personally helped reconnect with an alienated parent since 2005, 18 still maintain a relationship with both parents. Eight of those 23 children came from Canada.

"Some parents don't really realize what they are doing – they are so preoccupied with their own anger and disappointment over the failed marriage that they fail to understand how harmful their behaviour is to their children," says Warshak.

"Others deliberately turn their children against the other parent as a way to express their anger. (The alienation) can happen literally overnight and turn into what we call `tribal warfare.' I've talked to relatives who say that as soon as the divorce was announced, their nephews and nieces stopped talking to them."
Family Bridges isn't for everyone and it's critical for family law lawyers and judges to be sure the alienation isn't because of "realistic estrangement" – a parent who is abusive or neglectful or has a new partner, for instance, whom the child doesn't like.

It's aimed mainly at children who have been so alienated that a judge thinks there should be a change in custody to give the rejected parent time to reconnect.

"We teach children how easy it is to develop a distorted view of someone, a hatred that has no sense, and we teach them how to overcome that, to think for themselves, have a compassionate view of both parents and help them understand that all parents make mistakes and that in most cases children are better off having both parents involved in their life," Warshak says.

Family Bridges is meant to be a getaway, in every sense. The child and rejected parent are sent to a hotel or a resort (in rare cases the treatment takes place at home) for four days of intensive therapy – 64 hours of treatment that's the equivalent to about a year of regular therapy, although there's lots of time to just hang out and swim. Two mental health professionals work with the parent and child.

"We find that most children under the age of 8 don't really need this kind of program to make the transition.

"Even though they've been taught to hate or fear a parent, all it really takes in most cases is to be around that parent long enough to see that they are not what they've been led to believe."

http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/newsfeatures/article/762379--tough-love-from-texas

Dad lost his kids due to bogus doctor and the Durham Region Children's Aid society

The following story is yet another tragedy discussing a case of a dad who lost custody by a  misandric  court judge. This bencher may be incompetent in dealing with complex interpersonal human relationship actions particularly dealing with child custody and who is part of a group who give sole physical care to moms 90% of the time. They do it on the least amount of evidence favouring the mom even if there is overwhelming evidence she has serious problems.  It is a production line of negative consequences for children based not on good science but mythology.

Justice Alexander Sosna has the appearance of just another eunuch, also known as a chivalrous drone, no doubt having received training proffered by people like Peter Jaffe, a useful tool of the feminists, that causes these judges to marginalize and bankrupt fathers. Jaffe is infamous for his cherry picked studies deliberately refusing to ask simple questions of his subjects, most all of whom are in a DV shelter, such as whether they abused their male partners.  He, therefore, gets the answers he is seeking because women are in these shelters ostensibly because they were abused. This is not always the case as I have documented elsewhere. He is one of the favourites of the National Judicial Institute (NJI) who arrange training for judges. No one else is privy to the information on this training and its content but based on the 9-1 ratio for mom getting sole physical custody it is not hard to guess the feminist psycho babble that all men are abusers and all women benign holds sway.

In 2006 the Federal Conservatives appointed to Ontario's Superior Court, longtime Conservative Alexander Sosna, an Oshawa lawyer who ran unsuccessfully for the Conservatives in the 1984 federal election. Sosna is another political hack but then that is the nature of the game for appointments. It is not merit but who you know. He certainly doesn't subscribe to any notion of equality between parents.  Conservatives are supposed to be the party of family values but when it comes to marriage breakdown they are as pro-feminist as any lefty liberal or dipper. Sosna was the defence lawyer in a case in Oshawa several years back ( circa 2004) involving 2 boys  who were being caged and beaten by their foster parents. He got the foster parents off with a very light sentence of 9 months. The Crown was seeking 8 years.  Who did the  assessments on the abusive foster parents? Something else fell through the cracks.

I have stated before it matters not whether you have a criminal lawyer turned judge in these chairs or a real estate lawyer turned judge.  They are not competent to judge on complex human interpersonal dynamics involving family disputes unless they are the extremely rare appointee with a PhD in Psychology.  Child custody is more about interpersonal relationships than law.  Putting a non-feminist psychologist in the chair as judge would render more informed and balanced decisions.  Even when a judge has a comprehensive psychological report from a competent clinician Sosna chooses the phony one because it favours mom. He should be thrown off the bench but then so should a lot of the other ones who are trained to believe fathers are incompetent and potentially dangerous to have even shared custody.  Did I also mention there is this business of entitlements that goes to moms if they have sole custody which also suggests tacit approval by the other branches and levels of the nanny state, such as Status of Women at each level.

This Durham Children's Aid Society is a disgrace and may represent a danger to vulnerable children they have contact with. Hopefully the police will do a thorough investigation of this organization and the management and any potential conspirators working in it are summarily fired and charged for fraud and child abuse. If this fraudster, Carter,  has been doing this for 18 years it is worthy of starting a public inquiry into the operation of Children's Family and Protective Services across this Province especially if they operate using the Feminist dogma of a Patriarchy oppressing females  and appear to want to officially align themselves with the Violence Against Women movement here who deny females can abuse and promote the fallacy of a Patriarchy whose role is to coerce and abuse women. In math terms the formula is male=abuser, woman=benign. The whole philosophy and doctrine is based on falsehoods and can be considered perpetration of a fraud in and of itself.

These are quotes from the Durham Region News  who interviewed  Executive Director of the Durham Children's Aid Society, Wanda Secord in the left photo.

"But he also carried out parenting capacity assessments, measuring the suitability of people to care for children. Ms. Secord noted that in cases where Mr. Carter carried out such assessments, all parties involved had reviewed his qualifications and agreed to his participation."

We are missing the how of this review. Did the CAS produce what they had on file which we know is phony or did they contact the CPA or the Provincial governing body to determine his level of education, what his Doctoral Dissertation consisted of and any conclusions it uncovered.  The CAS has the overall responsibility to ensure they have hired a person qualified to do the job. They obviously do not undertake due diligence and this may only be the tip of the iceberg.

"Allegations that Mr. Carter falsified his qualifications have given rise to questions about the validity of rulings rendered in cases he took part in.

"There could be a potential impact on children and families," Ms. Secord acknowledged."

This is quite an understatement from a person entrusted with the welfare of children and making over $130,000 per year of taxpayers money.  Secord was predicting a spending overage of $3.9 million as of October, 2009. Perhaps a new model of child welfare agency is necessary that can protect children but be prudent fiscal managers and that is not aligned with an ideological feminist dogma that appears to be on the table through its March. 2010 meeting with the Violence Against Women sector.

The Durham CAS has the dubious distinction of being the first Child Welfare organization in canada to be successfully sued for negligence based on false allegations, also involving a father. The following is an excerpt from a report done for the Canadian Federal Government entitled "ALLEGATIONS OF CHILD ABUSE IN THE CONTEXT OF PARENTAL SEPARATION: A DISCUSSION PAPER."

" 3.2.1 Child Protection Agency Liability to the Wrongfully Accused Parent

There have been a number of highly publicized cases in Canada in which individuals have claimed that they have been wrongfully accused of sexual abuse by "overzealous" investigators, and have sought redress in the courts.  In most cases, these individuals have been satisfied with an acquittal in criminal court, or a finding in a civil proceeding that refutes the abuse allegation.  However, in a few cases individuals have sued investigators for monetary damages to compensate for the expense and emotional anguish from being wrongfully alleged to have abused their child.

Perhaps the most noteworthy case^[36] of agency incompetence and bad faith began in 1987 when a Children's Aid Society in Ontario supported allegations of sexual abuse made by a mother against her former husband.  The initial allegation of abuse arose in the context of parental separation and related to the couple's young children.  The agency worker with primary responsibility for the investigation was inexperienced, and the judge in the later civil case brought by the former husband concluded that the investigation and subsequent agency conduct were negligent in several critical respects.

Shortly after the initial report from the mother was received, and without interviewing the father, the worker quickly concluded that the mother's sexual abuse allegations were well-founded.  The worker's initial interview with the children had many leading questions, and was conducted in the presence of the mother, who was clearly hostile to the father.  The worker later displayed hostility towards the father and his lawyer, and dismissed any concerns about the mother without investigation.  Indeed, reports by the children of ill treatment by the mother and the worker's direct observation of poor treatment of the children by the mother were ignored by the worker.  The father was not adequately interviewed for his version of the alleged incidents until two years after the initial allegations.  The worker kept very poor notes of the various interviews and none were audio or video recorded. 

As the child protection trial proceeded in Family Court, it became apparent that the agency's allegations were groundless, but the agency refused to discontinue the protection application unless the father agreed to forego any claim for court costs.  The child protection trial eventually took 51 days to complete.  The judge in the protection hearing dismissed the agency allegations against the father, awarded him custody of the children, and ordered the agency to pay $60,000 towards the father's legal fees. 

The father then began a civil suit against the agency and the child protection worker to recover the balance of his legal and other expenses incurred in his lengthy battle to regain his reputation and custody of his children, as well as punitive damages.  In 1994 in D.B. v. C.A.S. of Durham Region, Justice Somers of the General Division of the Ontario Court of Justice awarded the father over $110,000 in damages resulting from the false allegation of sexual abuse.^[37]  

The judge in the civil suit concluded that the agency and worker had been negligent and unprofessional in their treatment of the father, negatively affecting both the father and his children.  The judge found that the father, an Anglican minister, suffered emotional trauma and loss of reputation as a result of the child protection proceedings and awarded $35,000 in damages for this, and an additional $10,000 for exemplary damages to punish the "bureaucracy's" incompetence and abusive actions.  The court also awarded a total of $1,500 to the two children for their emotional harm and loss of enjoyment of their relationship with their father.  The trial judge also awarded the father $77,000 to cover legal, travel and telephone costs not previously paid as a result of the Family Court proceeding, though the Ontario Court of Appeal reduced that part of the award by $25,000, ruling that the issue of recovery of legal expenses was fully resolved in the earlier Family Court proceedings.  While the Ontario Court of Appeal reduced the damage award, it affirmed the principle that an agency could be liable if it was both negligent and biased in its investigation. 

The decision in D.B. v. C.A.S. of Durham Region may seem burdensome for a public agency with an obligation to investigate all reports of abuse^[38] despite limited financial resources.  However, the Court of Appeal emphasized that there was not merely negligence, but actually a demonstration of bias sufficient to conclude that the agency staff was not acting in "good faith."  Not only did the agency carry out an inadequate and biased investigation, it continued a lengthy child protection proceeding only because the father pressed a legitimate claim for payment of his legal costs in the protection hearing.  The decision emphasizes the need for child protection agencies and their workers to conduct fair investigations, and treat fairly those alleged to have abused children. 

While D.B. is a very disturbing case, it is the only reported case in Canada where a child protection agency has been found liable to a falsely accused parent.  In other cases where an agency has been found to have supported an unfounded allegation of parental abuse and been sued for alleged incompetence in investigating abuse allegations, the courts have dismissed the claims, generally by finding that the agencies were acting in "good faith" and hence entitled to statutory immunity from civil suits for "mere" negligence, or the cases are still before the courts.^[39]"

They have been involved in other litigation as well including (Schmitz 1994).  This is but one agency exploring affiliation as a member of the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies  (OACAS) with the Violence Against Women Sector. Dads need to be aware of this potential alliance and its ramifications given VAW supports the theory of a Coercing Patriarchy in which all men are abusers and all women benign.  Many organizations do not learn from history and it appears more extensive extreme bias against males may be in the offing.

Here is a recent unfolding case in the Victoria, BC  area with another fraudster former Children's Aid Investigator, Jason Matthew Walker

MJM

By MICHELE MANDEL, QMI Agency

An alleged victim of Greg Carter's - who cannot be identified - holds a business card identifying him as Dr. Carter. (Ernest Doroszuk/QMI Agency) Fraudster posed as doctor in court Grandfather investigated fake doctor

WHITBY, Ont. -- A child custody battle is an ugly, twisted jungle at the best of times, but a Whitby father never stood a chance after family court accepted a disparaging assessment done by a man posing as a psychologist.

And ignored the one by the true PhD.

Now the terrified 48-year-old dad must share custody of his two young boys with a woman who the real psychologist has warned is mentally ill and poses a danger to their care.

Greg Carter, 63, has been charged with three counts of fraud, two counts of obstructing justice and two counts of perjury for allegedly impersonating a psychologist.


He is also facing a complaint of professional misconduct by Ontario's College of Psychologists.

"Nobody should go through what I went through," says "Mr. S", the angry father who can't be named because the case involves the Children's Aid. "If he had kept his unqualified opinion to himself, my children would be safe and we wouldn't have lost all our money to lawyers."


The dad had his suspicions after Carter presented an assessment to family court that said  the father had a narcissistic personality disorder -- despite never meeting him -- while administering one test on his ex-wife to completely dismiss an exhaustive, 37-page evaluation by a highly respected psychologist who diagnosed her with a borderline personality disorder.


Rattled by his findings, Mr. S. contacted the College of Psychologists of Ontario and discovered that Carter was not a psychologist at all, but a psychological associate whose registration stipulated that he was not allowed to make an independent diagnosis without the supervision of a qualified psychologist.

He had also told the court that he had a PhD from Pacific Western University, the now-defunct school that awarded degrees based on "life experience" and was branded a "diploma mill" in a report by the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs.

"I can't believe nobody checked his credentials until I came along," says Mr. S.

What's even more astounding is that Justice Alexander Sosna was then presented with a letter from the College outlining Carter's restrictions -- and the fact that he wasn't a psychologist as advertised -- but still chose to accept the bogus doc's assessment and set aside the damning one by the real psychologist.


The judge, who has a background in criminal, not family law, rejected the dad's bid for sole custody, threw him out of the matrimonial home and ordered him to pay his ex-wife's $13,000 in legal costs within 90 days or he wouldn't be able to see his kids at all.

He had to go to the bank to get a loan because the protracted custody battle had wiped out his $400,000 in savings. But the drain on his finances pales beside his constant fear of what will happen to his sons in their mother's care.

He doesn't understand why a former criminal lawyer is ruling in family court.

"Carter is just one piece of a whole broken puzzle," insists the beleaguered father.


But an integral piece. Mr. S. went on to launch a complaint of professional misconduct against him with the College as did the real psychologist.


"He has been masquerading as a psychologist for some time and had deceived myself and the public about his credentials," the doctor wrote Mr. S. "His conduct is simply unethical."

Carter did not respond to messages left at his home and his Whitby office.


He did offer a tepid mea culpa in a December 2008 letter. "While my concerns are not groundless, I now believe that expressing them in written form based on the information I had was wrong. I owe Mr. S. an apology for that mistake."

But his apology will not give Mr. S. sole custody of his children or undo the harm Carter has allegedly caused in at least two other child custody disputes, including one where his testimony led to a granddaughter being wrenched away from her grandparents after she'd spent most of her 10 years in their care.


"What's an apology if you don't fix the problem you created?" demands the heartbroken father. "He's got to have affected hundreds of people. He's been doing it for 18 years."

And that is why all of his cases need to be reviewed if he is found guilty.

In the meantime, what about all the poor children?


In Mr. S's case, the Children's Aid is now involved after the mom allegedly restrained the 9-year-old by throwing him to the ground and sitting on him. In a list of written expectations on a CAS contract, his ex-wife has been told that her discipline "at no time shall include sitting on either child."

The worried dad has pleaded with them to remove the boys from her care, especially now that Carter's assessment has been discredited, but they refuse.


They say there is nothing they can do but monitor the situation. After all, there's two conflicting psychological reports and the judge accepted the one by Carter
.
They don't seem unduly concerned that he's a man now facing charges for fraud.

READ MANDEL EVERY SUNDAY, THURSDAY AND FRIDAY. MICHELE.MANDEL@SUNMEDIA.CA OR 416-947-2231.

Texas mom 'groomed' Barrie teen

There are those who have said this is every adolescent boys dream. Its also a dream of many adolescent girls but remember this is an adult who lured a young teen who is highly susceptible and highly vulnerable to sexual manipulation. There ought not to be two different sets of rules for boys and girls. Sexual predation no matter what the gender is unacceptable in our society.  At least the Texas authorities followed up on it. I wonder where our Ontario Child Protection Agencies were throughout this.MJM

Kept up pressure before hotel tryst, police say

Published On Thu Jan 07 2010


A 42-year-old Houston mom relentlessly "groomed" a Barrie teen online before flying north and having sex with him at a hotel in Rosseau, Ont., U.S. authorities say.

Lauri Price, a mother of four, met the boy online playing "World of Warcraft" in September 2008 when he was 15, says the Harris County, Tex., district attorney's office.

After Price flew to Toronto, drove to his home but failed to lure him away last February, she kept up the pressure in a "long, long grooming process," said Lieut. Matthew Gray of a Houston-based Crimes Against Children Task Force.

Price allegedly came north again Dec. 29 and took him about 110 kilometres to the hotel. The two-day tryst ended when an off-duty police officer spotted them.

Price doesn't face charges here.

However, she was arrested when she returned to Texas.


She remains jailed there, charged with two counts of online solicitation of a minor and one count of enticing a child with the intent to commit a felony.

The teen's mother told The Canadian Press her son is heartbroken.

"(My son) believed he was in love, or believes he is in love," said the boy's mother.

"He's devastated. He really, really is. He feels responsible, even guilty."

The boy has been "assured by family and professionals that this is not his fault," she added. "This is someone much older than him, and it's an adult who has manipulated him into these feelings."

Price, a substitute teacher, was working on contract at a school but it has been cancelled because of her arrest.

Associated Press

Texas mom 'groomed' Barrie
teen ~ Toronto Star -

Lauri Ann Price via
MyFoxHouston.com ~Orlando
Sentinel

Woman arrested for
luring ~ Barrie
Examiner

Texas woman, 42, charged with online luring of
Ontario boy, 16 ~ National Post

iNews880.com - CBC.ca    all 355 news
articles

Group of 50 Mental Health Experts Pushing to Add Parental Alienation to DSM

The lunatic fringe were certainly evident on the board at US News and World Report in the article quoted below. They have no notion of the perception others have regarding the absurdity of their comments. Many of them have lost custody based on their "wing-nut" behaviour but still haven't understood why?MJM

November 2nd, 2009 by Glenn Sacks, MA, Executive Director

Now 23, divorced, and a parent herself, Anne has recognized only recently that she was manipulated, that her long-held view of her father isn’t accurate. They live 2,000 miles apart but now try to speak daily. “I’ve missed out on a great friendship with my dad,” she says. “It hurts.”

A group of 50 mental health experts from 10 countries are part of an effort to add Parental Alienation to the 2012 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the American Psychiatric Association’s “bible” of diagnoses. According to psychiatrist William Bernet, this “would spur insurance coverage, stimulate more systematic research, lend credence to a charge of parental alienation in court, and raise the odds that children would get timely treatment.”

Few family law cases are as heartbreaking as those involving Parental Alienation Syndrome. In PAS cases one parent has turned his or her children against the other parent, destroying the loving bonds the children and the target parent once enjoyed.

Numerous misguided feminist groups oppose recognition of Parental Alienation in court or in DSM. Some of these opponents raise legitimate concerns. For example, Janet Johnston, a feminist-oriented clinical sociologist and justice studies professor at San Jose State University who has studied parental alienation, fears that “PAS” could be invoked by an abusive parent to gain rights to a child.

She is correct. One example is the Joyce Murphy case in San Diego–to learn more, see my post Feminist Opponents of Shared Parenting Get It Right in Parental Alienation/Abuse Accusation Case. The solution to Johnston’s concern is to have courts make thorough, unbiased investigations into abuse claims.

It also true, as some opponents of recognizing Parental Alienation assert, that there are fathers (or mothers) who have alienated their own children through their personality defects or lack of parenting skills, and who attempt to shift the blame to their children’s mothers (or fathers) by falsely claiming PAS.

However, opponents of recognizing Parental Alienation are on the lunatic fringe, denying that Parental Alienation exists at all, and spinning fantasies of masses of mothers losing custody to molesting fathers. In most of the cases put forth in the media by these extremists, no abuse occurred and the mothers only lost custody of their children after going way out of their way to destroy the relationship between the children and their fathers. Some examples of these frauds include the Genia Shockome, Sadia Loeliger, and Holly Collins cases

Even if many claims of Parental Alienation were false–and there’s no evidence to suggest this–it still would not mean that opponents’ assertions that PA doesn’t exist are credible. In family law cases, false accusations of any and all types of maltreatment, including PA, are used to gain advantage. Since false accusations of domestic violence and child sexual abuse are common, should we then conclude that battering and molestation don’t exist?

Another issue opponents of recognizing Parental Alienation have latched on to is the debate over whether Parental Alienation should by considered a syndrome. They then argue that if it’s not a syndrome, it can’t be real. I believe the assertion that Parental Alienation is a “syndrome” is defensible, but regardless, the key fact is that alienating behavior and Parental Alienation campaigns exist and are a major problem in divorce.

Johnston also asserts that in teens, a level of parental rejection appearing similar to Parental Alienation might be a developmentally normal response. This assertion is questionable. Johnston is correct that many teens reject their parents to various degrees. However, there’s a difference between this and active alienation.

Several of my wife’s male friends have been alienated from their teenage children, and many of them try to mask their pain by shrugging and saying, “You know how teenagers are.” Well, I do, and I don’t buy it. For example, my 17-year-old son is convinced that I’m a hopelessly out of touch old loser, and I certainly don’t disagree with him. Still, he clearly loves me, and will sometimes (grudgingly) acknowledge it. That’s not Parental Alienation, which is far more visceral.

The new U.S. News & World Report article Parental Alienation: A Mental Diagnosis? (11/2/09) covers the efforts of Parental Alienation experts to get PA accepted by DSM. I suggest that readers comment on the piece by sending Letters to the Editor at letters@usnews.com.

In it, author Lindsay Lyon writes:

From an early age, Anne was taught by her mother to fear her father. Behind his back, her mom warned that he was unpredictable and dangerous; any time he’d invite her to do anything—a walk in the woods, a trip to the art store—she would craft an excuse not to go. “I was under the impression that he was crazy, that at any moment he could just pop and do something violent to hurt me,” says Anne, who prefers that only her middle name be used to guard her family’s privacy.

Typical of a phenomenon some mental-health experts now label “parental alienation,” her view of him became so negative, she says, that her mother persuaded her to lie during a custody hearing when the couple divorced. Then 14, she told the judge that her dad was physically abusive. Was he? “No,” she says. “But I was convinced that he would [be].” After her mother won custody, Anne all but severed contact with her father for years.

If a growing faction of the mental-health community has its way, Anne’s experience will one day soon be an actual diagnosis. The concept of parental alienation, which is highly controversial, is being described as one in which children strongly attach to one parent and reject the other in the false belief that he or she is bad or dangerous.

“It’s heartbreaking,” says William Bernet, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, “to have your 10-year-old suddenly, in a matter of weeks, go from loving you and hiking with you…to saying you’re a horrible, ugly person.” These aren’t kids who simply prefer one parent over the other, he says. That’s normal. These kids doggedly resist contact with a parent, sometimes permanently, out of an irrational hate or fear.

Bernet is leading an effort to add “parental alienation” to the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the American Psychiatric Association’s “bible” of diagnoses, scheduled for 2012. He and some 50 contributing authors from 10 countries will make their case in the American Journal of Family Therapy early next year. Inclusion, says Bernet, would spur insurance coverage, stimulate more systematic research, lend credence to a charge of parental alienation in court, and raise the odds that children would get timely treatment.

But many experts balk at labeling the phenomenon an official disorder. “I really get concerned about spreading the definition of mental illness too wide,” says Elissa Benedek, a child and adolescent psychiatrist in Ann Arbor, Mich., and a past president of the APA. There’s no question in her mind that kids become alienated from a loving parent in many divorces with little or no justification, and she’s seen plenty of kids kick and scream all the way to the car when visitation is enforced. But, she says, “this is not a mentally ill child”…

In any case, divorcing parents should be aware that hostilities may seriously harm the kids. Sometimes manipulation is blatant, as with parents who conceal phone calls, gifts, or letters, then use the “lack of contact” as proof that the other parent doesn’t love the child. Sometimes the influence is more subtle (”I’m sure nothing bad will happen to you at Mommy’s house”) or even unintentional (”I’ve put a cellphone in your suitcase. Call when everyone’s asleep to tell me you’re OK”)…

“The long-term implications [of alienation] are pretty severe,” says Amy Baker, director of research at the Vincent J. Fontana Center for Child Protection in New York and a contributing author of Bernet’s proposal. In a study culminating in a 2007 book, Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome, she interviewed 40 “survivors” and found that many were depressed, guilt ridden, and filled with self-loathing. Kids develop identity through relationships with both their parents, she says. When they are told one is no good, they believe, “I’m half no good.”

Now 23, divorced, and a parent herself, Anne has recognized only recently that she was manipulated, that her long-held view of her father isn’t accurate. They live 2,000 miles apart but now try to speak daily. “I’ve missed out on a great friendship with my dad,” she says. “It hurts.”

Lyon did a pretty good job with the article but her assertions about Parental Alienation and the American Psychological Association are incomplete. She wrote “The American Psychological Association has issued a statement that ‘there is no evidence within the psychological literature of a diagnosable parental alienation syndrome.’” In reality, the APA has given mixed messages on PAS–to learn more, click here.

The controversy over Parental Alienation is largely political. Children are vulnerable and impressionable, and parents in emotionally-charged divorces are quite capable of using them as tools of their anger. It is true that family courts must weed out false claims of PA made by abusive or manipulative parents. It is also true that courts must act decisively to protect children from the emotional abuse inflicted by alienating ones.

http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/?p=5156

MELANIE PHILLIPS: If we don't take children and benefits from incapable mothers, the alternative is social catastrophe

Saturday, Oct 24 2009

This Evening 11°C Tomorrow Morning 16°C 5-Day Forecast

By Melanie Phillips
Last updated at 10:06 AM on 07th September 2009

• Comments (149)
• 
  

Once again, Britain is recoiling from the sickening spectacle of childhood innocence being turned into its monstrous antithesis.

Two young brothers aged ten and 11 from Edlington, South Yorkshire, subjected two other little boys aged nine and 11 to sadistic attack and torture, leaving one fighting for his life.

What is so horrifying is that the attackers showed no empathy whatsoever with the suffering of another living being.

A sketch of the two brothers facing Sheffield Crown Court. They will be sentenced next month.

People call these boys 'evil' because such absence of feeling is inhuman. But they are not evil. They are children.

We are all born with the capacity for both good and bad. Everything depends on whether the immature child is raised in a way that develops the good and discourages the bad, or whether something goes wrong with that process.

To label these boys 'evil' is to let the real villains off the hook. These children are the product of evil attitudes within the adult world.

Their personalities have been warped and their ability to feel for others blocked off because they have been deprived of the essential condition for developing into normally functioning human beings: a secure and loving family in which the basics of civilised life are programmed into children's characters.

Instead, they were abandoned to fend for themselves in a pit of absolute degradation, cruelty and inhumanity.

More...

• MAIL COMMENT: Are we too slow to put children in care?
• Aged 10 and 11 these brothers were already known to be sadistic thugs. So, why were they free to torture two innocent boys?
• Torture brothers will 'be free at 18': Sadists who maimed two innocent boys will also get lifelong anonymity

Their mother, who has seven sons by three fathers, is an alcoholic and drug addict who left them to forage from rubbish bins and fed them cannabis to keep them quiet; their father is a drunken brute, who regularly beat them and forced them to watch violent horror films.

We know that there are thousands of other children being raised in broadly similar backgrounds. There are areas of the country where the overriding problem is not material poverty but social, cultural and spiritual disintegration - at the heart of which is the collapse of family life.

Children are being born to lone mothers who were themselves raised in shattered homes by mothers who in turn came from identical backgrounds. The outcome is households in which children are neglected and maltreated, subjected to drug and alcohol abuse, violence and emotional chaos; and where the cruelty and indifference they endure is often translated into the sadistic way they treat others.

Indeed, only last week we learned of another case, in West Yorkshire, where three boys aged 13 and 14 pleaded guilty to stripping, kicking and beating a 13-year-old with wire and bricks.

Of course, only a tiny minority of children grow into attackers or sadists. And many lone parents do a heroic job in raising their children to become responsible adults. But the fact remains that family disintegration sets up chronic disadvantages for a child. Where these are not addressed, a cycle of deprivation is often transmitted down through the generations which replaces civilised behaviour by sheer savagery.

For the past three decades, warnings that the disintegration of the family would result in social catastrophe were brushed aside. What was deemed more important was never to hurt the feelings of those living in fragmented households and to throw welfare benefits at them instead.

Those who objected that this merely fuelled family breakdown were told they were cruel and heartless because depriving such families of welfare benefits would harm the children.

Now in Edlington we can all see the result: four child victims, two of them horrifically attacked and tortured by two others whose very humanity has been taken away from them.

Barnardo's chief Martin Narey says babies should be removed from bad parents

The question now is what to do about a problem that has become a social and cultural emergency. When Iain Duncan Smith's Social Justice Commission refers to 'broken Britain', it is not exaggerating.

Mr Duncan Smith himself suggests various imaginative schemes to repair such families, such as ones where both mother and child are taken into care. But such projects are too expensive and intensive to be applied to all the shattered lives which are growing so exponentially.

The problem has to be tackled at source. That's why the head of Barnardo's, Martin Narey, has now said babies born to such mothers should be removed from them at birth and adopted.

That may sound harsh - but the alternative, in smashed personalities, brutality and sadism, is much harsher. And all the evidence suggests that adopted children generally do very well indeed.

By contrast, the care offered by social services is often worse than useless. Despite the fact that it knew all about the Edlington boys' previous history of sadistic behaviour, Doncaster social services - which itself has a record of gross inadequacy - placed them with a foster couple who not surprisingly were totally unable to control such deeply disturbed children.

Whatever needs to be done to address the weakness in social work, surely what is necessary is not just to try to pick up the pieces of shattered family life but to prevent it from breaking in the first place.

The key is to switch off the motor behind this catastrophe: the prevailing attitudes of a ruling elite which, pretending to be non-judgmental about family background, has actually smashed the traditional family to smithereens.

More from Melanie Phillips...

• MELANIE PHILLIPS: Our leaders are queuing to prove their virtue by denouncing the vile BNP. 19/10/09
• MELANIE PHILLIPS: At long last, a class act who might just save our schools... if his party lets him 12/10/09
• MELANIE PHILLIPS: If Cameron doesn't stop Blair being shoehorned as EU President, there'll be no point in him becoming Britain's Prime Minister 05/10/09
• MELANIE PHILLIPS: If the police won't tackle young thugs any more, then what ARE they for? 27/09/09
• MELANIE PHILLIPS: A dopey judge, a lesbian teacher and an insidious bid to lower the age of consent 22/09/09
• MELANIE PHILLIPS: If children are taught that patriotism is wrong, Britain's very identity is at stake 13/09/09
• MELANIE PHILLIPS: Mandy's new class war shows New Labour was always a cynical illusion 09/08/09
• MELANIE PHILLIPS: These mixed messages on drink and drugs are the road to social ruin 03/08/09
• VIEW FULL ARCHIVE

Far from alleviating poverty, distress and misery, these self-regarding 'progressives' instead created and perpetuated these ills. Holding that the real crime was not to produce neglected or emotionally disturbed children but to ' stigmatise' those who raised them in such a way, they incentivised family breakdown by handing out welfare benefits with no conditions attached to behaviour.

Through being paid automatically the birth of every child, child benefit has been an effective engine of mass fatherlessness. Other benefits, housing and child care payments offered to lone parents similarly rest on the assumption that the main problem to be addressed is always material poverty.

But this is merely one aspect of these mothers' desperate need, which is rooted overwhelmingly in the fact that they cannot cope with looking after themselves, let alone their children.

The independence afforded by the current benefits set-up is thus often a tragic delusion and cruel trap. Accordingly, a more humane response to unmarried motherhood is to treat it for what it really is - a potential disaster for both mother and baby.

Both should be looked after in motherand-baby units with specialised help. Turning off the benefits spigot would also remove the financial incentives that have made such disasters a commonplace - as indeed was intended by the well-heeled intelligentsia, who set out to make unmarried motherhood 'normal' but whose own income cushioned themselves against the worst of the damage that the removal of such constraints on behaviour inflicted upon the poor.

Hurling accusations of 'heartlessness' against their opponents concealed the fact that these 'progressives' were themselves causing unlimited damage and misery - not to mention a steady supply of jobs for themselves in interventionist programmes to 'rescue' the lives they were so cavalierly continuing to destroy.

It is those people who made morality into a dirty word. Since the essence of morality is feeling for others, and since the essence of psychopathy is the absence of any such feeling, is it any wonder that the result of the doctrines imposed by these 'progressives' has been the creation of psychopathic children?

The Edlington disaster can therefore be laid at their door. The next time they start moaning about flint-hearted 'moralisers' they should be firmly reminded of that fact. The rest of us have a society to rescue before it is all finally too late.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1211620/MELANIE-PHILLIPS.html#

'Where's mummy?': Babies left in filth as mother binged for 24 hours

By Liz Hull
Last updated at 1:54 AM on 23rd October 2009

• Comments (210)
• 
  

• Baby, aged three months, found crying with hunger
• Boy, one, found in cot with no blanket, soaked in urine
  
• Girl, four, had tried to feed her younger siblings

'Britain's worst mother': The 22-year-old drank a bottle of wine and snorted coke before leaving her children

A single mother left her four young children including two babies home alone while she went on a 24-hour drink and drugs binge, a court heard.

Worried neighbours contacted police after seeing the woman's eldest child, a four-year-old girl, hanging out of a window crying: 'Where's mummy?'

The 22-year-old mother drank a bottle of wine and snorted cocaine with friends after putting her daughters, aged three and four, and their brothers, aged one and three months, to bed.

But soon afterwards she left the children to fend for themselves and went out to carry on drinking at a series of house parties and bars, not returning until 10.30pm the following day.

Police alerted by neighbours found the house littered with empty beer cans
and bottles and a scene of 'filth and disorder' inside.

They discovered the one-year-old boy in a urine-soaked cot in a bedroom on his own.

His younger brother was found crying in a travel cot, with no blankets, and with a soiled nappy.

He had dried milk and sick over his clothing and was grey, docile and dehydrated.

The three-year-old girl had managed to dress herself, while her older sister, who was the most distressed, had pushed chairs up against kitchen cupboards to try to reach some food because she was so hungry.

There were also children's footprints in baby milk powder on the floor where the oldest child had tried to mix a bottle feed for her younger brother.

More...

• Newborn baby of 23st mother and her SIX siblings taken into care 'over obesity fears'
• Girl, 10, sprayed with CS gas after police storm teenager's birthday party
• Baby P fuels rise in children taken into care

Yesterday the mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was warned she faces jail after admitting four charges of child neglect.

She sat with her head bowed throughout the hearing at Preston Crown Court which was told that all four youngsters have since been taken into care and see their mother only on supervised visits.

Judge Norman Wright granted the woman bail while reports from social services are prepared. She will be sentenced next month.

An earlier hearing was told that the incident occurred in July after the woman, from Blackburn, put her children to bed in the early evening.

She drank a bottle of wine before a group of friends and strangers arrived. They carried on drinking and began snorting cocaine.

Leaving the children asleep upstairs, the woman then left with the group for another house party before moving on to several bars in Blackburn town centre. She eventually returned the following night.

Catherine Allen, prosecuting, told the earlier hearing before magistrates in Blackburn: 'The children had been trying to gain access to the cupboards because they were hungry.

'Inside the house there were empty cans, bottles, broken furniture and the kitchen knives could have been accessed. Any of the children could have been seriously injured or worse. They had no access to food or drink.'

One neighbour said last night that the community had been left 'deeply shocked' by the case.

'It must take the worst kind of mum in the country to do that to your kids,' the neighbour added.

The case comes days after figures released in the wake of the Baby P scandal revealed a shocking rise in child neglect.

Two serious case reviews - inquiries launched following the death of a child where abuse or neglect are suspected - have been launched every week over the past six months.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1222196/Britains-worst-mother-left-babies-toddlers-home-went-24-hour-drinking-binge.html#ixzz0UjDTKaEU