F&F Helps Defeat Radical Bill from Opponents of Recognizing Parental Alienation

Blog entry here. Excerpt:

'The Northern California-based advocacy group the Center for Judicial Excellence is one of Fathers and Families’ main legislative opponents. This increasingly powerful and well-funded group has been the prime mover behind California AB 612, a bill that would exclude evidence of Parental Alienation from family law proceedings and prevent target parents of Parental Alienation from raising PA as an issue in their cases. Last year Fathers and Families’ legislative representative Michael Robinson helped build a professional coalition to scuttle AB 612.

The CJE claims that there’s a “crisis” in family courts, and that courts are handing over custody of children to physically and sexually abusive fathers. They promote reforms which will make it easier to deny parents shared custody or visitation rights based on unsubstantiated abuse claims.

Recently Assemblymember Jim Beall, Jr. (D-San Jose), a close ally of the CJE’s who sponsored AB 612, did a gut and amend of AB 2475. The amended bill added Section 43.94 to the Civil Code to remove quasi-judicial immunity from court-appointed practitioners such as custody evaluators, parenting coordinators, therapists, minor’s counsels, special masters, and others. The amended bill, which was sponsored by the CJE, was done in response to a perceived problem of evaluators supposedly recommending to judges that they place children with physically and sexually abusive parents.'