Is psychology a science or a political and financial tool of influence?

There was a piece today on "conversion therapies" of homosexuals in South Carolina - something that was prohibited by the government in New York.

Psychology - that is used extensively and often, as the only "evidence" in CPS proceedings - appears to be not a science, but a tool. 

Not such a long time ago, when families desired to get rid of a woman suffering from a postnatal depression, or who were doing what people did not understand and preferred to label as "witchcraft", or lock up heiresses to use their fortune, they were sent to "Bedlam", insane asylums, because criticizing men were deemed as a sign of insanity. 

Psychology is now used as a sword, and the word of psychologist is uncritically accepted in awarding custody of children and in separating families, where psychologists (paid by CPS) "find", predictably, for CPS and in favor of separation of children from families. 

Of course, when that same separation of children from families can be used to bash Trump, then psychologists change course and say that separation of children from adults who claim to be their parents when illegally crossing the U.S. border will bring irreparable harm to children. 

There is also the recent scandal with the American Psychological Association pronouncing pedophilia as a "sexual orientation".

After public protests the APA changed its "scientific" pronouncement to a "mental health disorder" - creating even  worse problem.

I have the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5), where pedophilia is deemed such a disorder.

Yet, every person convicted of sex crimes against children is then presumed sick and subjected to "sex offender treatment", a large industry in the United States - and that includes "treating" children who engaged in experimenting as "sex offenders". 

Which creates a problem - because if a person is sick, he might not be criminally responsible for his actions.  And, if he is criminally responsible, he is not sick.  

So, psychologists, while playing a crucial role in convictions for sex crimes and making "treating" sex offenders (while agreeing that pedophilia "is not curable") into a huge multi-million dollar industry - do not really know whether it is a sexual orientation, a disease, or just a deliberate criminal proclivity.

As to changing the label on pedophilia from sexual orientation to a mental health disorder, the American Psychological Association shot itself in the foot, practically confirming that clinical psychology has nothing to do with science.

Have you ever seen demonstration against a manual how to diagnose, let's say, a heart attack?  Cancer?  Infections? Diabetes?

And approaches to diagnosing medical conditions changed by doctors because of public protests?

And here comes the latest point of public protests - the so-called "gay conversion therapy". 

It has long been pointed out that homosexuality has been rendered a sin, a crime, a disease, then not a crime, and after that - "voted" to be not a disease based on political influences and not on evidence.

The change came quickly and dramatically.

Before 2003 homosexuality was a crime.

After 2003, Lawrence v Texas decided by the U.S. Supreme Court - it was no longer a crime.

Then, gay marriage was allowed in some states.

In 2011 psychologists "decided" that now it is embarrassing to call homosexuality a mental heath disorder and removed that from the DSM.

In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a precedent, "made law" (that court is not allowed by the U.S. Constitution to make law, but it still did) allowing gay marriage in the entire United States.

Now the type of therapy offering "conversion" of homosexuals is forbidden in many states.  

Once again.  A type of therapy is forbidden by law as harmful to people, which was before that not deemed harmful and even beneficial - on the basis of claims of those same psychologists.

First, psychologists claimed, after religious ministers who claimed that homosexuality is a mortal sin, that homosexuality is a mental health disorder and needs treatment. 

Then in some states (like South Carolina) it still remained a disorder, with gay conversion therapy available, and in New York such a therapy is forbidden by the government. 

Oh, and let's not forget that in the times of slavery in the U.S. psychiatrists claimed that slaves running from their masters are sick because the idea for a slave to consider that he deserves freedom and may want to run away from his owner is an expression of a mental health disorder. 

That "disease" was "discovered" in 1851 and given a name - "drapetomania".

6 years after this "discovery" the U.S. Supreme Court, judges who were themselves (or their families) slave-owners, refused to cancel slavery by a court precedent, the way they cancelled criminality of homosexuality - and plunged the supposedly "democratic" country into a bloody civil war over slavery.

By the way, in Russia which was at that time a monarchy, and also had slavery, slavery was abolished by a King's (Czar's) decree, earlier than in the U.S. - and no war ensued.

Of course, later, when Russia was captured by the Bolsheviks, in the USSR psychology and psychiatry was extensively used to "treat" dissidents into a vegetative state. 

Soviet psychiatrists invented the term "sluggish schizophrenia" to pin it upon anybody who disagreed with the government. 

So, how can we claim that psychology is a science if it sets as diseases personal opinions disagreeing with the status quo, or is used to justify silencing and punishment of slaves, women, dissidents, parents, heterosexuals, and pronounce certain behavior, opinions or thought processes as a disease, not disease or a crime under public pressure or based on political or financial influences?

And how can it be legal that people are convicted of crimes, their children are taken away, and now the U.S. Supreme Court is deciding whether a person can be put to death - on the testimony of psychologists?

EDNY has established the same precedent as I've established for my clients in NDNY in March of 2015 - no warrantless searches based on child abuse/neglect investigations

In March of 2015 I have established for my three clients in federal court a precedent, where the court refused to give "qualified immunity" to social services for warrantless searches of a residence and a car.

On June 11, 2018 the same decision was made by the federal court in the Eastern District of New York in the case called Thompson v Clark - police officers were denied qualified immunity for a warrantless search of a residence and for beating up of a resident when the police came to a residence on a false child abuse report and broke down the door - since the resident refused to open the door without a search warrant.

So, in at least 2 federal districts out of 4 in the State of New York the police and social services may not search residences without a court order/search warrant.

I cover a lot of ground as to warrantless searches by social services and police and other criminal attributes of social services investigations in my published book "The Oxygen Mask Rule", the first book of its kind dedicated to defense of parents in child abuse and neglect proceedings in New York, and the first book in a planned series.

Published a book on defense of parents in child abuse and neglect proceedings in New York Family Court

I have finally published today the first of the books I have been working on for a long time - the beginning of the series "Defense of parents in child neglect and abuse proceedings in Family Court in New York".

Here is the cover of the book, it is available right now in both the Kindle (electronic) format, and in a paper format on Amazon.com.

As far as I know, there are no other books available on the issue of trial advocacy on behalf of parents in child neglect and abuse cases at all, and in such cases in New York Family Courts in particular.

This subject is not taught in law schools and is not tested on bar examinations, so there is no guarantee for the parent, if the parent either hires an attorney or has an attorney assigned to him in court, that the attorney actually knows this area of law - because attorneys usually learn this law by either self-teaching or being mentored by other attorneys.

This first book of the planned series is dedicated to the subject that causes the most number of fatal mistakes made by parents at the very beginning of CPS investigation, before any court case is filed and before any attorney gets into the picture - the mistake of believing the CPS that the case is "civil" in nature, that no criminal investigation is done at the same time as the CPS investigation in every single case.

Believing CPS (and police who often comes with CPS to the parent's home), parents talk to CPS, open their homes for their searches, and sign any number of papers driven by fear that otherwise the parent will lose his child.

The book provides an overview of statutes showing that proceedings in Family Court may be constitutionally characterized as criminal in nature; and, even if courts resist that characterization, provides techniques of proving to the Family Court, in the event the parent is called to testify against himself, which CPS often do, that the parent is entitled to the 5th Amendment protection, not to testify and not to be subject to contempt of court for refusing to testify.

The book has an extensive case study, with an analysis of constitutionality of court decisions, as well as with an analysis of mistakes that have caused the drastic consequences for the parent.

While the electronic format of the book does not allow a lot of latitude in providing lists of authorities, the table of authorities is included in the paper version of the book.

Buyers of the paper version of the book are allowed to get the electronic version of the book at a deep discount.

While the electronic version may be convenient to take with you on our phone or tablet without showing what you are reading, a paper book can be conveniently used by parents, law students and attorneys working in this area of law because of the listing of all legal authorities.

Statutes in this area of law are written in a deliberately confusing, convoluted way, and attorneys with large caseloads often do not have time to do the kind of research that was presented in this book.

The book contains a section explaining how to transform texts of New York statutes into a readable format to make them more understandable.  Examples of such transformations, and what such a transformation does to improve understanding of such statutes is provided.

The book contains constitutional analysis on important issues relevant to the topic of the book, criminal aspects of "civil" child neglect and abuse proceedings in New York Family Courts, including but not limited to:

• analysis of what makes a court proceeding civil or criminal in nature, from a constitutional standpoint;
• analysis of several contempt and contempt-like statute that may be used against parents by Family Courts in order to put parents in jail for "non-compliance" with various court orders, a detailed analysis, based on mandatory precedents, of constitutionality of such statutes, and of constitutionality of Family Court practices in application of such statutes;
• verification what makes a contempt proceeding civil or criminal in nature, what is the difference in mandatory constitutional procedure, and how Family Courts often confuse or misuse criminal-in-nature contempt statutes under the guise of civil proceedings;
• constitutional issues involved in forced "evaluations";
• constitutional issues involved in forced drug-and-alcohol testing;
• constitutional issues involved in court orders giving social services a blanket authority to "supervise" parents and to order them to undergo any "evaluations" and tests at all, and procedures required by the Family Court Act and by the U.S. Constitution to be followed by courts to issue such orders;
• constitutional issues involved in branding parents "sex offenders" where they were never convicted (and often were never even charged) for a sex offense, the New York State policy of such branding that comes with a requirement to separate the so-branded parent from his children;
• constitutional issues of punishing parents for inability to pay for evaluations, or for asserting their true legal status as a non-sex offender;
• constitutional issues of punishing parents for any type of "noncompliance" by separating them from their children, or by threats of such separations;
• constitutional issues involved in forced speech of parents during the "civil" Family Court child abuse or neglect proceedings - in court-ordered evaluations and in forced testimony of parents, when they are called to testify against themselves at trial;
• constitutional issues involved in presence of criminal prosecutors in Family Court proceedings and of their access to record of such proceedings and of the central state child maltreatment register;
• constitutional issues and procedures related to three types of searches in Family Court - of the parent's home, body and mind.

I hope that the book will be helpful, as a textbook and a reference in this sensitive and difficult area of law.

Children who are truly sexually abused by parents need to be interviewed properly - to be able to establish their right to protect themselves in court

Just read an article describing how Family Courts supposedly place children sexually abused by fathers into the hands of sexually abusing fathers, not believing the children.

The key phrase in the article is in the first three words of its headline:

Children's advocates may be those who actually cause this problem - a real problem, I know of several such cases myself where parents asserted that a child made disclosures of sexual child abuse by a relative, and the child nevertheless was placed by the court with that same relative, while the child's own statements, including audio-recorded statements were not believed.

Why do courts do that?  Are they that heartless?

And why it is the children's advocates who may be causing the problem, paving a road to the child's very real hell with their good intentions?

By repeatedly interviewing the child with leading questions and without videotaping their interviews, so that courts, as a result, do not know whether the child's testimony is

• the result of coercion and manipulation of "advocates" and/or of the other parent who may have a grudge against the parent the child is accusing through testimony, or
• whether it truly happened.

Try to watch with an open mind, this video about experiments of forensic psychologists showing how easy it is to implant false memories of abuse into children - and about cases where implanting those false memories did lead to criminal convictions, wrongful convictions, overturned convictions.

If parents, and "child advocates" really want to protect the children - they will not mess up the interviewing process and will INSIST that forensic interviewing techniques are followed:

• that the number of interviews of the child is reduced to a minimum;
• that all such interviews are handled by trained forensic (not clinical) psychologists knowing how not to lead the child on; and
• that all such interviews must absolutely be videotaped.

Many police precincts have interviewing rooms with hidden videocameras, so that the person interviewed does not see the actual video camera - that is necessary to put the child at ease, while preserving the evidence properly.

Not doing it, putting the child through numerous, numerous interviews - by the mother, by the "advocates" instead of neutral professional forensic experts, does a disservice to the accused, if they are accused wrongfully.

But, if sexual abuse truly happened, and it DOES happen, the disservice is TO THE CHILD - because doing repeated non-videotaped interviews with the child allows the court to presume that suggestive techniques and leading questions were used, and that what the child says in his testimony may be the result of a long-term manipulation by "advocates", rather than what truly happens.

If you care about your child, if you believe that the child was really sexually abused, INSIST that forensic interviewing techniques are observed.

Otherwise, your child may lose his right to establish in court that sexual abuse ever happened - and even be placed further with the sexual abuser, to be abused more, while his credibility is destroyed, for now and for the future.