The Flyer for AFCC NeuroScience (brainwash) Conference

Welfare Reform Forces Psychological Reprogramming of Children

19 min readJun 11, 2022

This paper summarizes proof that psychological processes are unjustifiably practiced to break children’s primary parent bond, and disregard the most egregious forms of child maltreatment, was always an integral goal of the federal OCSE fatherhood Access/Visitation (A/V) incentive grant program enacted under Welfare Reform through the lobbying efforts of the father’s rights community. Father’s rights grew a network of public and private operators who would assist men in preserving their financial and authoritative position after dissolution. Foundational proof is comprised of quotes from policy books, fatherhood grant and NIH-funded research, and family court trade association publications. This summary will prove that father’s rights allied with the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) to systemically entrench baseless, reformulated parental alienation methodology in a concerted effort to replace due process, fact-based custody determinations.

Written by Doreen Ludwig, author of three books[1] on the intersections of fatherhood funding and custody determinations, this summary is merely a snapshot of the vast, interconnected community of government programs and grants that influence family court protocol. For ease of comprehension, the author has taken the liberty of bolding highly relevant extractions. Italicized portions are copied word-for-word from documents cited.

I. ENABLING LEGISLATION

42 U.S.C. 669b, The Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), commonly called “Welfare Reform,” authorized $10 million/year incentive grants to states to establish and administer programs to support and facilitate non-custodial parent access to and visitation of their children. Custody determinations and actions became enfolded into support office operations. “Non-custodial” equates to “non-primary” parent. From its inception, the legislation intended to minimize the importance of quality, primary caregiving. Grants go to court administrative offices; Domestic Relations offices (child support); Dept. of Social Services (Connecticut); and Office of the Attorney General (Texas), to integrate family court services into the structure of custody determinations. AFCC’s network being the fundamental instructor.

Section 391 of P.L. 104–193 authorizes the use of “court service providers.”

“States are directed to accomplish this goal through the provision of services including, but not limited to: mediation; counseling; parent education; development of parenting plans; visitation enforcement; monitored visitation; neutral drop-off and pick-up; supervised visitation; development of guidelines for visitation and custody”(2008 OCSE AV Jurisdictional Profile, pg 5).

OCSE A/V Jurisdictional Profiles are published yearly and list the number of increases in custody by state and service. OCSE staff Debra Pontisso worked with CRC members to author program reporting instructions. Instructions prove that A/V service providers discount maltreatment because counselors are told report increases in custody and “not focus on general issues such as child sexual abuse, battering, domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse.”[2] Instructions align neatly with AFCC practices.

II. A/V PROGRAM FORMATION BOOKS

“Promising Practices”[3] and “Strategic Planning Guide”[4] are the two OCSE documents that outline program formation. Both are authored by Jessica Pearson, AFCC Research Director (proof: AFCC articles of incorporation).

PROMISING PRACTICES:

Section 3, AV Services to High-Conflict Families (pages 25–36) introduces psycho-education as a means to solve domestic violence, child maltreatment, alcoholism, drug addiction, criminal behavior, unfit and no history of parenting. In psycho-education the mental health practitioner acts as a facilitator and teacher, adapting psychological practices to “manage and treat” the custody dispute, irrespective of the nature of the dispute. Child sexual abuse, a violent nature, unfit or uninvolved parenting are disregarded and labeled a “conflict” or “dispute.” Instead, Parenting Coordinators, described as “parents for the parents,” are judicially ordered to enforce the custody order, for exorbitant fees. Childcare facts are obliterated; the dispute becomes the issue at hand.

“Interventions to Provide Families with Parenting Conflicts with Long-Term Assistance (pages 28, 29) “Court orders and mediation agreements do not effectively end conflict for some couples with entrenched disputes, a history of litigation, and other dysfunctions. Several courts are experimenting with ways of providing more sustained forms of assistance with problem solving. They also hope that longer term intervention will help parents to learn more effective ways of parenting and practice implementing their court orders dealing with custody and visitation. These interventions are meant for “frequent fliers” in the court system.” (Johnston, J., and L.E.G. Campbell (1998). Impasses of Divorce: The Dynamics and Resolution of Family Conflict. New York: Free Press.)

“Promoting Greater Parent Involvement, (page 3)

The ongoing Access and Visitation Grant program and the various fatherhood programs (e.g., Responsible Fatherhood Demonstration projects, Partners for Fragile Families projects) are only the most recent examples of Federally funded responses to this problem. Supplementing Federal activities have been efforts at the state and local level. Some examples of these efforts include:

A tremendous growth in services offered by courts, such as mediation, parent education, and other interventions aimed at reducing parental conflict and promoting contact with children.
Programs funded by community and faith-based organizations, such as fatherhood programs in selected states.
Supportive services from parent advocate groups, which have lobbied for joint custody legislation, Federal acknowledgment of custody and visitation issues, and direct services for fathers seeking to strengthen ties with their children. Funding through the Access and Visitation Grant program supports many of these efforts either in whole or in part. A preliminary report on the access and visitation programs shows that grants have led to the creation and/or augmentation of a great many programs of different types that serve a heterogeneous group of parents…”

Doreen Ludwig’s book AFCC net expands on the interconnectedness of federal grants, and father’s rights connections to the growth of social service “networks”; a goal clearly disclosed in Promising Practices.

III. LEGISLATION PASSAGE AND IMPLEMENTATION

David Levy and members of the Children’s Rights Council, a father’s rights and men’s rights aligned umbrella group, worked with OCSE bureaucrats and members of Congress to pass and implement A/V family court practices. Other special interest groups influencing program design include:

the male supremacy group National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI);
the private endowment Annie E. Casey Foundation and its off-shoots Casey Family Programs, Family Resource Centers and Kids Count Data Center; and,
the family court trade association AFCC comprised of judges, court administrators, and private-practice legal and mental health researchers and practitioners.

AFCC net exposes the maneuvers essential to legislation passage. AFCC net reveals associated Networks and operations which sprang out of Welfare Reform. Infiltration is disclosed in a decade of CRC newsletters (1989–2000), posted on the Department of Education website. Notable OCSE actions are: the use CRC’s mailing list to solicit grant applications; and, CRC’s and NFI’s aid to their members in obtaining federal funding and operating programs, a role that NFI administers today.

CRC’s newsletters reveal psychological theology that formed the basis of A/V family court services institutionalized thru AFCC. AFCC net highlights CRC conference presenters and workshops proving parental alienation and Family Dynamics/Systems theory became foundational beliefs of A/V service providers. Both schools of thought blame and punish the non-offending parent when child maltreatment presents, the response is worse than the act itself, regardless of harm. Political and legal strategies proliferate, favorable research and educational items are endorsed.

IV. CRC/NIH RESEARCH COLLABORATION

CRC’s 1997 newsletter advertises a co-sponsored conference on Children and Fathers — part of CRC’s policy to network with government agencies. Due to their affiliation, members of CRC and AFCC receive NIH research grants. Therefore, CRC and AFCC operatives have accumulated a multitude of whitewashed research that serves the purpose of legitimizing and embedding doctrine in treatment and protocols. For example, a Pubmed search revealed over 4,500 articles on the benefits of joint parenting and 402 articles on the validity and treatment of parental alienation. AFCC members who receive NIH grants include: Janet Johnston, Marsha Kline Pruett, Robin Deutsch, and William (Bill) Bernet (all promote a pure or filtered version of Parental Alienation Syndrome).

Fatherhood and NIH grants-built University programs. The relationship between fatherhood programs, research grants and higher-learning establishments cannot be disregarded. Research is generated to justify policy goals and outcomes. Two identified programs are:

The University of Texas at Austin, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, Child and Family Research Partnership writes and disseminates policy briefs.[5] Brief #B.032.0617 contains a summary of state fatherhood programming.[6]
The Father’s Support Center at Washington University’s Brown School of Social Work is one of several Washington University programs that engage in family court practices and outcomes.[7] Formed with an initial fatherhood grant, Father’s Support Center generates favorable fatherhood research, influences federal policy, and provides direct custody legal services to men.[8]

V. SUPERVISED VISIT NETWORK (SVN)[9]

CRC members lobbied and won inclusion of “divorced parent support groups” and “those concerned about access” in applications for supervised visit program development grants passed within the 1994 Crime Bill. CRC urged members to apply. Father’s Rights/Men’s Rights activist Dick Woods, an early fatherhood grantee located in Iowa, shared grant application and program operation materials with interested members. Robert Strauss, a lawyer and psychologist who performed custody evaluations in Massachusetts, founded the Supervised Visit Network (SVN), a dominant service provider. Strauss’s work is cited in Promising Practices as a model for development of supervised visit services. SVN offers customizable “bench cards” so local providers can market to judges.[10]

Affiliated with SVN and AFCC, the Clearinghouse on Supervised Visitation Institute for Family Violence Studies School of Social Work Florida State University became the contractor for the U.S. Department of Justice under the Office on Violence Against Women to provide technical assistance to federal Safe Havens — Supervised Visitation grantees. Director Karen Oehme, and Lynne Rosenthal (President Obama’s Domestic Violence Liaison), authored a judicial training manual that requires supervised visit staff to have proficient knowledge of alienation. The bibliography contains numerous articles that classify failure to coparent (alienation) a form of child maltreatment.[11] Primary parents, whose only offense was resisting a maltreating male, being court-ordered to supervised visit punishment and reprogramming, became normalized. Indeed, a 2007 OVW report entitled “Fathering After Violence” discloses “in most centers some (if not most) parents ordered to visits are mothers…some of whom might be in fact victims, rather than perpetrators of domestic violence.”[12]

VI. MEDIATION

Parameters applied to mediation services were developed and marketed by AFCC. AFCC members distort and reinvent accepted psychological treatment methods in order to enforce an alleged coparenting model of custody. Father’s rights theology is entrenched in family court mediation methods. Janet Johnston and Joan Kelly’s seminal article, The Alienated Child: A Reformulation of Parental Alienation Syndrome, published in AFCC’s trade journal Family Court Review in 2001[13], is marketed at AFCC conferences, and forms the basis for numerous psychological labels, custody determinations, and treatment methods promoted and practiced by AFCC to this day. The reformulation incorporates Family Systems/Dynamics theory while white-washing Gardner’s disdained PAS theories and methods. However, Johnston and Kelly’s ideology undergirds all access/visitation supplementary, high-conflict services in use today.

For example: Missouri spends its Access/Visitation grant operating a mediation program with M.A.R.C.H. Mediation. Program Director, Dawn Kuhlman sells trauma-informed mediation (cross-pollination).[14] An affiliate of Missouri’s AFCC chapter, (promoted as a government service on the website https://www.govserv.org/US/St.-Louis/97836023531/MO-AFCC), Kuhlman markets her reconstituted mediation method in a TedX video.[15] Missouri’s A/V program director Kulhman admits she does not use “facilitative” mediation methods, but rather practices her self-designed “transformative” method (tapping, eye-roll, and neuro-feedback), to manage clients’ emotional reactions rather than help them formulate a custody arrangement that optimizes child rearing.

AFCC dominates family court mediation practices by dominating training at the higher-education, professional organization (Bar, APA), and continuing education level. The book AFCC net delves into the numerous tentacles of AFCC’s educational reach. Conference workshops validate how all sides work collaboratively to intrude in custody litigation and foist bizarre, unproven family court services on maltreated litigants. A/V funded mediation services are merely a first-step to a wider array of supplementary, high-conflict services entrenched by the passage of Welfare Reform.

In order to convey the foundational ideology of family court services, this summary cites portions of AFCC’s academic textbook “Divorce and Family Mediation: Models, Techniques and Applications.” It’s 24 chapters, written by “an all-star cast of those influencing the development of divorce and family mediation” outline “state-of-the-art” models of practice that “foreshadow the future.” Chapter author affiliations are listed and include law professors, researchers, and private practitioners.

The section Methods, Techniques and Interventions, gives insight into AFCC adaptations. Chapter 6, Hybrid Practices, is written by Arnold Shienvold, a Pennsylvania therapeutic practitioner who sits on numerous protocol boards, and serves on AFCC’s conference organizing committee. Shienvold teaches mediation “may be viewed as a hybrid process [that] contain elements from psychotherapy, negotiation, facilitation and other services.” Shienvold promotes combining evaluative court appointment with mediation, a hybrid process he terms “evaluative mediation (eval-med).” When eval-med is applied in contested custody the evaluator conducts a custody evaluation, recommends a custodial determination, then, the same practitioner “changes roles and becomes a mediator in an attempt to facilitate the parties settlement of their dispute.” The evaluator has authority from the court because “if the parties perceive the evaluator as “powerful” and strongly attached to the decision maker in court, they are likely to adjust their genuine desires and accept compromises (based on the results of the evaluation) that they would not have accepted if there were no formal report to the court.”

Chapter 5 “Therapeutic Mediation with High-Conflict Parents” is written by Janet Johnston and Marsha Kline Pruett, both instrumental in forming domestic violence A/V protocols that lean heavily on alienation theory, including psychologically labeling women raising maltreatment.

Parents who refuse to conciliate hold “psychological and systemic dynamics that generate and sustain the disputes…In most cases and varying degrees, the negative views of one or both spouses have some basis in fact, as part of their real experience of the other spouse’s violent, neglectful, or substance-abusing behavior. The goal for the mediator/clinician is to help parents distinguish unrealistic from realistic fears about the other parents’ capacity to safely and competently care for the children.” Johnston and Pruett’s solution is “impasse directed mediation” where “the role of the mediator is intensified” and interventions occur in a legally defined framework.

Robert Benjamin, who holds degrees in law and social work, created the more extreme treatment methods of which parents ordered to A/V service providers complain. Crazy-making processes first published in Benjamin’s books (“The Mediator As Trickster,” “Guerilla Negotiation” “The Beauty of Conflict”) are reiterated in Chapter 12 “Strategies for Managing Impasses.” To break down an impasse, Benjamin recommends mediators create “a measure of confusion with regard to the parties operative mythologies about justice, truth, rationality, and the finality of the outcome of the dispute. Resistance to negotiation must be countered if there is to be movement. Creating a measure of cognitive dissonance in the parties thinking unsettling them to the point that they are not so sure of what they thought they knew about potential outcome…Challenging resistance with logic or persuasion may be not only ineffectual but actually catalyze more pernicious resistance in other ways at other times…the intemperate or unilateral filing of formal legal actions such as a petition, motion for discovery, or order for spousal protections can unduly legalize a divorce action and cause an impasse.”

To advance his unvetted mediation methods (and those who practice them) Benjamin founded the platform “mediate.com” which he advertises in AFCC conference brochures, listing AFCC members who join. A notable video features Benjamin interviewing Joan Kelly disclosing her intervention strategies for parents embroiled in contested custody. [16]

VII. PARENT EDUCATION

Parent education is another A/V service that is predicated upon AFCC’s father’s rights ideology.

“Taking Stock of Parent Education in the Family Courts: Envisioning a Public Health Model,”[17] written by AFCC Executive Director Peter Salem, and father’s rights aligned, Arizona State University researchers Irwin Sandler and Sharlene Wolchik, advocates for classifying and treating divorce as a serious public health concern. Salem et al use the public health model and assign increasingly restrictive interventions termed “parent education.” Citations reveal a plethora of white-washed, father’s rights generated research. Admittedly, this A/V service eradicates due process.

“Parent education programs emerged in the 1980s and 1990s as a part of what Singer (2009) has labeled the “velvet revolution” in which the law-oriented, judge-focused adversary model in family law was replaced with more collaborative, interdisciplinary and future-focused dispute resolution processes.”

“Indicated services are appropriate for parents who are behaving in a way that the court deems to be harmful to their children’s well-being. Such behaviors might include intimate partner violence or chronic high levels of inter-parental conflict, particularly conflict that puts the children in the middle or that involves repeated re-litigation over issues of parenting time, which leads to a lack of family stability.”

“There are important due process considerations that are beyond the scope of this paper.”

VIII. INTER-DISCIPLINARY/COLLABORATIVE TEAMS

Family court employees and appointees who operate A/V services work together; a fact undisclosed to litigants. AFCC writes numerous articles promoting their inter-disciplinary, collaborative team model. The judge appoints a “manager.” Hearing Masters, and Guardian Ad Litems may perform this management role.[18] A custody order effects the re-assignment of caregiving from the primary (aligned, favored) parent to the non-historical, maltreating parent.

Northern California Judge Marjorie Slabach best explains the process in “Today’s Estranged Child, Yesterday’s Alienating Parent? How We’ve Grown in Our Understanding of Cause and Treatment”[19]

“I was extremely lucky to sit in Northern California where amazing clinical psychologists and researchers practiced within the judicial system as evaluators and parent coordinators. Some of those clinicians (Joan Kelly, Janet Johnston, S. Margaret Lee, Nancy Olesen, Matthew Sullivan, Marjorie Gans Walters, and Steven Friedlander) formed a Bay Area study group and task force to try to understand and define the phenomenon of estranged children in all its complex forms. Their presentations and writings resulted in a series of articles in the AFCC Journal: Family Court Review, Vol 39(3) (July 2001).”

It is the judge’s job to order intervention services (treatment plan) even when a parent was inept, cold, unavailable, or directly abusive to the child and/or the primary parent. “Helping an estranged child requires judges to recognize they are responsible for managing an interdisciplinary team of helping professionals.” Programs and psychological practices include:

Family Bridges “an innovative educational and experiential program that helps unreasonably alienated children and adolescents adjust to living with a parent they claim to hate or fear.”
Overcoming Barriers Family Camp “a combination of psycho-education, clinical intervention and milieu therapy.” Prominent AFCC officers Robin Deutsch and Matthew Sullivan conduct therapy.
Multi-Modal Family Intervention (MMFI) developed by Janet Johnston, Walters & Friedlander. “Child-centered, multi-tiered intervention for families in which a child aligns with one parent and resist/refuses to have contact with the other parent.”
Experiential therapy uses play, props, imagery, animals and other interactive events to make the child relive their experience and release negative emotions; the goal of the therapy is to make the child change their perception of the perpetrator and maltreatment itself.
Psycho-education treats, manages and forces compliance with a custody order that gives authority to an unwanted, maltreating, unfit, or non-historical parent. Therapists tell the child they are at fault; children may be psychologically labeled.
Milieu therapy changes the child’s environment to change the child’s perception of the maltreating parent. Sole custody orders to perpetrators effect this therapeutic goal.
Multi-Model therapy believes that all behaviors are created, maintained and modified through environmental events. As in milieu therapy, the therapist believes changing custody from a primary, nonoffending parent to the maltreating parent effects a change in behavior.

IX. AFCC CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS

Conference workshops reinforce AFCC net’s message: that research was created to legitimize training and family court service intrusion into contested custody without regard to children’s safety, stability and nurturing; and, that VAWA and welfare reform grants instituted evaluation, treatment and management organizations grounded in distorted beliefs and psychological practices. This summary concerns itself with AFCC’s 2007 conference because workshops highlight the interconnectedness of legislation, bureaucrats, ideology and program expansion.[20]

Workshop #49 (pg. 17), “Integrating Possession and Access Issues into the Public Child Support Program” was conducted by AFCC affiliate/fatherhood grantee Jessica Pearson, federal OCSE employee Debra Pontisso (A/V protocol author), and Texas A/V coordinator Anita Stuckley.

Plenary Session (pg. 11) “Marriage, Separation and Divorce: The Politics of Policy, Practice and Parenting” The description states “Improving child wellbeing has been often cited as a key goal of welfare reform, child support policy and the current administration’s Healthy Marriage Initiative.”

Conducted by: Ron Haskins, House Ways & Means staff during welfare reform passage, CRC member, and Annie E. Casey Board Member; AFCC officer & Univ. of Virginia father’s rights researcher Robert Emery; Ronald Mincy, fatherhood researcher, Urban Institute associate; and, Elizabeth Marquardt, Institute for American Values.

All-day “Judicial Officers Institute: Domestic Violence and Differentiation” (pg. 6) was conducted by OVW grantee Loretta Frederick, BWJP; alienation reformulation authors Janet Johnston and Joan Kelly. “Differentiation” claims there are different forms of domestic violence: “coercive control”; or “bilateral,” “mutual,” “situational couples violence.”

Workshop (pg. 8) “Differential Assessment and Intervention in Domestic Violence Cases” given by President Obama OVW appointee Susan Carbon and OVW grantees Nancy Ver Steegh (BWJP associate, AFCC president) and NCJFCJ staff.

X. GREENBOOK INITIATIVE: CHILD MALTREATMENT

Maltreatment as defined by the CDC includes physical, sexual, and psychological abuse. Its cure is safety, stability and nurturing. Domestic violence is defined and funded as being physical violence against an intimate partner. For over twenty years, the domestic violence community appreciate that males who maltreat women have a high probability of maltreating their mutual children. To rectify VAWA’s policy oversight, the NCJFCJ recommended policies and practices related to the co-occurrence of child maltreatment and domestic violence so jurisdictions could improve their response to involved families. The “Greenbook Initiative” encompassed a wide range of diverse activities, and proposed to introduce new policies, protocols, and practices across three major service systems (Family Court, Child Protection, Domestic Violence). The target audience for the Initiative included administrators, managers, and direct service workers at all agencies, as well as the judiciary. System changes were expected to produce impacts at the client level.

While 90 jurisdictions submitted proposals, 6 received demonstration grants: St. Louis County, Missouri; El Paso County, Colorado; Grafton County, New Hampshire; Lane County, Oregon; San Francisco, California; and Santa Clara County, California.

Begun in 2001, the grants continued until 2007. Doreen Ludwig read in full, the St. Louis Implementation Assessment produced in 2005.[21] Pursuit and realization of goal “h” could have enhanced life conditions for maltreated mothers and children, instead neglect is divulged.

“(h) Develop a direct service component to assist domestic violence victims in securing services that will lead to self-sufficiency, such as housing, transportation, employment, and child care, which will give victims of domestic violence the option of leaving a perpetrator upon whom they may have been economically reliant.
This objective had not been addressed during the evaluation period.”

Upon inspection of the Greenbook Initiative final evaluation[22] the money instituted a hierarchy, where administrators, managers, direct service workers, and the judiciary collaborate to operate screening, assessment and treatment services that omit the input and needs of survivors and the community-at-large.

Ludwig identified several avenues of infiltration including:

Annie E. Casey Foundation operates Child Protection programs by way of the Family Resource Center;
Batterer’s Intervention Programs shifted to operate fatherhood A/V objectives; and,
the domestic violence shelter (an initial party to the Greenbook Initiative whose staff resigned due to a lack of cooperation and respect from other parties), is now operated by St. Louis County Department of Human Services.[23]

The St. Louis Greenbook Initiative did provide ample wealth for domestic violence national experts. Ellen Pence (Praxis International) received a portion to conduct an audit which admittedly “added nothing new.” Lundy Bancroft, a professed expert on men who batter, received funds for training.

Rather than improve policy, protocols, and client outcomes, today, 37 states have “failure to protect” laws which punish and imprison mothers when father is violent. Today, it is common for mothers to be required to divorce dad, and subsequently lose custody because the abusive dad is aided by fatherhood and A/V programs.

XI. OVW CHILD CUSTODY DIFFERENTIATION

Another misappropriated grant was issued by OVW because “the family court system is failing to adequately protect the safety and wellbeing of children — and their battered and battering parents — in child custody cases where domestic violence is alleged.” Instead of appraising Congress, grant recipients BWJP and its partner Praxis International, assembled a “blue ribbon team of representatives from NCJFCJ and AFCC, as well as scholars and expert practitioners from across the country.” It is imperative to recognize that the Child Custody Differentiation Project permits “stakeholders” to collaborate and maintain a hidden hierarchal status quo. The grant report itself was found not on OVW’s website, but in a menagerie of materials compiled by government services consulting firm Young Williams.[24] Pages 5–10 list due process violations inherent to A/V family court services, which obviously are acknowledged by BWJP, AFCC and NCJFCJ in 2009, yet were hidden from Congress or other government oversight. Litigants paying for the process have also been kept in-the-dark. Instead, the Health and Human Services consulting firm of YoungWilliams[25] sells the “velvet revolution” developed by AFCC. Their marketing document contains articles written by AFCC affiliates, disparate domestic violence screens; and even promotes a court-connected fatherhood program. Perhaps most importantly, the marketing document omits concern for child maltreatment and its cure: safety, stability and nurturing.

XII. DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AGENDA

VAWA funds an entrenched hierarchy of researchers and service providers. Evan Stark coins it “an economy of victimization.” AFCC net explores the domestic violence legislative agenda and research directions. Because the public mistakenly believes domestic violence groups assist maltreated mothers and their children, for this summary, Doreen Ludwig feels it necessary to reveal actions that occurred in Spring of 2016, before the election of President Donald Trump.

The aforementioned documents (OCSE A/V reporting instructions and a Tarrant County Texas contract authorizing shared parenting and alienation therapy), were discovered by Doreen Ludwig. In the course of proffering numerous policy and industry documents with Dr. Leora Rosen, OVW grant recipient Joan Meier became aware of the policy to ignore child sexual abuse, etc. Instead of petitioning Congress for program oversight, Meier telephoned Obama ACF appointee Vicky Turetsky (herself a Casey Foundation fatherhood grantee). A meeting was arranged with Michael Hayes, staff of OCSE and participant in A/V foundational program book, Strategic Planning Guide. Integral program malfeasance documents were covered-up while Meier pursued “how domestic violence can get some of the grants.”[26] Concurrently, Meier obtained a $501,791 grant for “Child Custody Outcomes in Cases Involving Parental Alienation and Abuse Allegations,” a study of gender appellate opinions which Dr. Rosen authored. Meier marketed the work during AFCC conferences, alongside those selling PAS identification and therapy.

XIII. CONCLUSION

This summary, Ludwig’s three books, and upcoming book “Shillackery: How Domestic Violence Sustains Inequality and Maltreatment” prove Congress must recontextualize legislation and funding influencing family court processes and outcomes. The Office of Child Support Enforcement should not fund services that pre-determine custody outcomes, intrude in parenting, and subject litigants and children to distorted psychological and legal shenanigans, that are intended to give financial and authoritative advantage to an undisclosed, chosen parent.

A first step to fixing a problem is to properly identify it. While I have provided enough evidence of program malfeasance, it behooves Congress to investigate further. Oversight can be accomplished by the Inspector General, Government Accountability Office, Department of Justice, committee hearings, or with a special commission.

Family court service providers acting under the guise of law have awarded themselves judicial immunity. At a minimum, legislation should be attached to A/V funding that omits judicial immunity for appointees.

[1] “Motherless America: Confronting Welfare’s Fatherhood Custody Program” Sept. 2015

“Trumpian Abuse: Government & Family Systems that Prop-Up the Male Regime” March 2018

“AFCC net: People, Policy, Practices that Intrude in Child Custody Determinations” Oct. 2020

[2] File of Doreen Ludwig, available upon request.

[3] “Access/Visitation Programs: Promising Practices” Jessica Pearson, 2001/2002.

[4] “A Collaboration and Strategic Planning Guide for States: Child Access and Visitation Programs,” Pearson, 2006.

[5]https://childandfamilyresearch.utexas.edu/sites/default/files/ImplementingServicesforFathersBrief.pdf

[6]https://childandfamilyresearch.utexas.edu/sites/default/files/CFRPBrief_B0320617_SupportingFathersinUS.pdf

[7] Washington University School of Law teaches AFCC mediation, several law professors are AFCC members and receive court appointments; Psychology and Psychiatric Centers conduct treatment and evaluation; Brown School holds continuing education in AFCC mediation and treatment practices.

[8] https://fatherssupportcenter.org/legal-clinic/

[9] https://www.svnworldwide.org/

[10] https://www.svnworldwide.org/products-for-sale

[11] Faller, K. C. (1998). The parental alienation syndrome: What is it and what data support it? Child Maltreatment, 3(2), 100–115.

[12] https://www.futureswithoutviolence.org/userfiles/file/Children_and_Families/FAV-final.pdf page 45. Page 6 “in some centers mothers make up almost half of the caseload”

[13]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227680682_The_alienated_child_A_reformulation_of_Parental_Alienation_Syndrome?enrichId=rgreq-58b9a4e07f1d4dc4202f997c61fc3798-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIyNzY4MDY4MjtBUzo1ODQ3MzY2NjU3ODAyMjVAMTUxNjQyMzQ5MzI3NA%3D%3D&el=1_x_3&_esc=publicationCoverPdf

[14] http://www.kuhlmansolutions.com/

[15] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTdJK04Q38M&t=6s

[16] https://www.mediate.com/articles/CompleteKelly.cfm

[17] Salem, Sandler, Wolchik, “Taking Stock of Parent Education in the Family Courts: Envisioning a Public Health Model,” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3638966/

[18] “Parenting Coordination for High Conflict Families” Coates, Deutsch, Starnes, Sullivan, Sydlik, Family Court Review, Vol. 41, 2003 1–17 Coates, C. A., Deutsch, R. , Starnes, H., Sullivan, M. J., & Sydlik, B.L. (2004). Parenting coordination for high conflict families. Family Court Review, 42, 246–262.

[19] https://mslabach.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Todays-Estranged-Child-Yesterdays-Alienating-Parent.pdf

[20] AFCC’s 2007 Conference Brochure is in the personal files of Doreen Ludwig.

[21]https://www.thegreenbook.info/documents/Implementation_Assessment_Report.pdf

[22] https://www.aspe.hhs.gov/reports/greenbook-initiative-final-evaluation-report-0

[23] St. Louis County Department of Human Services assumed the operation of the shelter.

[24] https://www.youngwilliams.com/sites/default/files/pdf-resource/roundtable_on_domestic_violence_child_support_and_parenting_time_orders_binder_of_materials_part_2.pdf

[25] https://www.youngwilliams.com/

[26] Doreen Ludwig possesses the narrative of three meetings between Mr. Hayes and domestic violence advocates which prove hierarchal status quo collaboration.