Fathers Day: "When the State Breaks a Man"

I received the Sentinel link on this Friday, spent some time last night reading further and was intending to write today about it but William Griggs has an excellent post on it and how the State of New Hampshire broke this man.

One evening in April 2001, Mr. Ball suffered a momentary lapse of patience with a disobedient four-year-old daughter and slapped her face. He left the house at his wife's suggestion. When he called her a short time later, he learned that his wife -- "the type that believes that people in authority actually know what they are talking about" -- had called the police, who told her that her "abusive" husband wasn't permitted to sleep in his own home that night. Ball was arrested at work the following day. Under the conditions of his bail, he wasn't allowed to ask his wife what had possessed her to call the police.

Years later Ball would learn that if his wife hadn't called the police and accused her husband of abuse, she would have been arrested as an accessory -- leaving the children at the mercy of New Hampshire's utterly despicable Division of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF).

Dot Knightly, who tried vainly for years to win custody of three grandchildren seized on the basis of spurious abuse and neglect accusations, recounts how a DCYF commissar contemptuously batted away both her pleas and her abundant qualifications to serve as a custodial caretaker: "Nobody gets their kids back in New Hampshire. The government gives us the power to decide how these cases turn out. Everyone who fights us loses."

Everyone should read Mr. Ball's statement- not merely Fathers, everyone as his facts and figures should open your eyes. The state is a monster- at every level and for those that think this hyperbole, I remind you of the Ballad Of Carl Dregga who chose another route. From Vin's December 1997 editorial take note of the sections that I have placed in BOLD:

"I sort the incoming letters-to-the-editor for a major metropolitan newspaper. The receipt of such sheafs of heartfelt, illiterate pleadings from folks at their wits' end (child custody leads the list, though property rights also feature prominently), pleading for help from SOMEONE, has become an almost daily occurrence."

For way too long, Americans have taken this abuse and now that more are waking up to the realities of the monstrosities that have been allowed to grow- so does the anger of the citizenry. However, the grip is becoming tighter and what I see coming, as do many of you, is something that is going to be ugly. If you think that Tom Ball's statement is nothing more than the ramblings of a crazy man, that is up to you. I do not and suspect we will see more acts.

WP