As a child, Chip was raised by abusive parents. I am not going to give any of the stories away, but it is abuse by a man who was evil and sadistic and, in my opinion, a mentally ill mother.
That he survived at all, is a miracle, and he has shared his story with the world, as well as his break-through recovery.
This is a special cause for me, as I find abuse in my own family. I am now raising, well they are almost raised at 21, 19 and 16, three abused boys. I see, on a daily basis, how this background haunts them. They struggle with many things the rest of us take for granted. They are seeing a clinical psychologist, and have all had flashbacks from Post Traumatic Stress.
They were robbed of their childhood and education, and they hold a constant fear as to what is happening to their siblings. They sit and reminisce about being locked in closets and beaten with horse cinches. I am hoping that, Mr. St. Clair’s book can help them learn how to recover and I recommend it as a must read by everyone.
How many times have you said to yourself, “I wonder what goes on in that home?” Don’t just say it. Become informed. Go to some of the websites Chip lists as resources. Get involved. Do not sit back and wait for someone else to report it. It’s hard enough to get anything done about it; believe me, I know.
Children are too precious to ignore.
P.S. I want to thank http://www.crazyauntpurl.com/ for the give-away I won this book on. It will mean a lot to my family
I am troubled about Chip St Clair and his deep affiliation with the group, Justice for Children. http://www.jfc.org.
Justice for Children by its own admissions and the admissionin the May 2, 2007 edition of the Houston Chronicle, http://www.chron.com , of one of its new hires, Alene Levy, Atty. Haynes and Boone, Llp. rejects and repudiates Sysytematic Parental Alienation.
In the Chronicle story Alene Levy claims that any mother who ‘discloses’ child sexual abuse on the part of the dad, is correct in her allegations.
In the Chronicle story, Ms. Levy then goes on to say that where there is a custody issue, this so-labeled father will claim parental alienation on the part of the mother, in order to get custody!
My daughter and I are exactly such victims of the demented predations of fathers and children done in courts of law by Juctice for Children and those affiliated.
Justice for Children rejects parental alienation, as I said. They clearly seem to behave with sexism too.
How on Earth can Parental Alienation and false reporting not exist when there are behavioral disorders prevalent among human beings as Narcissism, Bi Polar disorder, Stockholm Syndrome. Passive Agressive Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder.
Chip needs to reexamine his affiliation with Justice for Children after he has found the reason within himself that he finds the need to affiliate with such evil.
I would hope, in a perfect world, that a Judge would consider the issues in any child custody matter on the facts. Unfortunately, for abused children, those facts are difficult to prove.
The author states something about a perfect world. Does this forgive us under imperfection and error, for separating a child from its parent? How about sending people to prison or executing them for something they did not either do?
I cannot agree that “the facts of child abuse are difficult to prove”. There is too much known information on human behavior available today. Even the Jekyll and Hyde personas of many parental alienators can be known by someone skilled or under appropriate testing.
If this is about money, having or not having it to throw at the system, then what about that? Does this entitle anyone of us to take a child away because a targeted parent does not have it?
And if true, as she says, then what business does a government or anyone of us have with its intrusions into human lives?
I am sorry, but I do not understand and have never heard of the term Parental Alienation.
I did not say, “a perfect world, I said “IN a perfect world.” Obviously, we do not live in a perfect world. Sometimes father’s loose custody for no right reason. Sometimes mothers do.
I did not say anything about money. And, neither did Mr. St. Clair nor I mentioned Sexual abuse.
No one, in Brown County, from the school system on denies abuse happened to the boys I am raising, but, since they are now in a safe home, and a thousand miles away from the mother and step-father who, locked them in closets, beat them, threw them out in the middle of the night, withheld food for three days at a time, and did not give the youngest boy an education, telling people he was mildly retarded (he was reading at a 2nd grade level at age 13, when we took him and was NEVER taught to write, and will now always have a writing disability). And, other people, in the two states where they lived, knew some of the abuse that went on, especially the educational, but they did not speak up. They did not tell the authorities.
There are eight children still in that home but I have no proof, other than perhaps some cigarette burns on the youngest boys chest and the educational abuse, so there is nothing I can do.
And YES, absolutely, positively, the government has a right to intrude on people’s lives if an elderly person or a child is being abused, having food withheld, behing whipped with a horse cinch.
We, as humans, have the responsibility to ensure that humans and animals are not abused.
Yes I share some of your thoughts and feelings. A truly imperfect part is the fact there is seldom a forum or system for intervention in a dysfunctional situation such as you mentioned. If in my situation with my daughter I had had those systems available her mother would had her taken from her at the point of her birth and certainly never returned to her after I raised her for 5 1/2 years.
and in the meantime it is up to each one of us to speak up when we see abuse.
Parental Alienation is a very interesting matter in that it is epdemic in society today and in my opinion ignored and rejected by systems that are themselves plagued by addiction and addictive processes themselves. Hence they must ignore and reject because the matter approaches the lie within which they ‘function’. Avail yourself of Amy J L Baker’s new book Adult CHildren of Parental Alienation, or do some reading on Richard Gardner, Dean Tong, Jane Major. or go to www. paao.org
Robert