Rick Brita

Rick Brita (real name) has become something of an activist against Massachusetts visitation centers, as a result of his own experience. As a result, he's spoken to a number of people, and he's been able to establish the connection that shows how false accusations of domestic violence generate funds for social worker organizations.

Brita is the father of two children by his estranged girlfriend, who is not an American citizen. His troubles started in 1995, when his girlfriend was being threatened with deportation. Since their two children were American citizens, he wanted the children to stay in the country.

"The only way she could get a green card to stay in the country was to take out a restraining order against me," says Brita. His girlfriend got the help of the South Middlesex Legal Services, a grant-funded group of lawyers whose purpose is to educate women on how to get restraining orders and to provide free legal support. Their clients are instructed to stay away from their husbands in order to be able to collect money. As we'll see below, this arrangement has been extremely lucrative for this legal services firm.

As a result of her completely unsupported accusation, the judge held up any deportation orders, and also ordered that Brita could only see his children at the Visitation Center at 5 Sacramento St. in Cambridge.

Brita has spoken to a number of men who attend the same Visitation Center, and has put together a picture of what attending these is like.

"There's no privacy," says Brita. "Every visit is supervised by a counselor from a battered woman's shelter. She writes down everything you say, and if you raise your voice, she writes down that you're violent. You can't hug your kids without her permission. If you say the wrong thing, she reprimands you in front of your kids. They lecture you on parenting in front of the children. If you ever object, that's part of the validation that you're a violent person. If you tell your child to do something, she'll say to the child, 'You don't have to listen to him. You just have to listen to your mother.'"

According to Brita, the counselors set a number of arbitrary rules, and change them constantly. As an example, he points to a time when he brought a birthday cake for his daughter, having asked permission and set it up with the head of the center well in advance. When he got there, the counselor made a scene and reprimanded him in front of his children for breaking the rules and bringing a cake. His protestations that he had obtained advance permission were useless. "It's like a black man being judged by the Ku Klux Klan," he says.

The charges are steep, and they get steeper as time goes on. For Brita, they started at $20 per visit, and kept increasing up to $120. Even worse, "the visits started out at two hours, then they cut it down to one and one half hours, sometimes less, because they don't have a counselor available." In addition, if a father wants to obtain the notes taken by the counselor during a visit, they charge $25 in "copying fees."

There are a number of other expenses as well. "They can require you to go to counselors, they make you go to a child psychologist. You have to pay for that, in addition to visitation fees, copying fees, child support and alimony. They make you pay thousands of dollars just to have a relationship with your children, all from a false charge of abuse or domestic violence."

With this remark we're beginning to see the nexus between money and false charges of abuse or domestic violence -- each man who is charged -- falsely or not -- is worth thousands of dollars to the social worker community.

Brita says he's investigated how these visitation centers are funded, and indicates that the more charges of abuse -- true or not -- that they can generate, the more money they receive -- and not just from fees paid by fathers.

"These are all private agencies, and they all receive grants from the government and United Way, in addition to the fees they collect from the fathers," he says. He says that the battered women's shelters, visitation centers, psychologists, pediatricians and the DSS (Massachusetts Division of Social Services) all cooperate with each other to keep the money coming in.

"They get a woman to make false allegations of abuse, then they talk to their friends in the DSS and get them to recommend Visitation Centers," he says. "They all make sure that they get paid first. Everyone makes a buck out of this."

Brita has been to trial several times, and brought material witnesses who were able to disprove all of the false charges. "For example, I was able to prove that I was out of the state at the time of several of her claims." Even the Framingham police testified in his favor.

Brita was able finally to get a judge in Marlboro Probate Court to lift the restraining order, and order that he be allowed to visit with his children in his home.

"The lawyers at the South Middlesex Legal Services took immediate action," he said, "and somehow got the whole case reheard in front of judge Sheila McGovern in Cambridge." McGovern, who is in charge of the Middlesex Probate Court in Cambridge, is well known as a militant feminist judge.

When Brita appeared before this judge, his lawyer explained that his girlfriend had never provided even one piece of evidence to back her claims, and that in fact previous court trials had proven him innocent several times. Sheila McGovern just asked his girlfriend, "Are you afraid of this man?" The girlfriend said, "Yes." McGovern reinstated the restraining order that had just been lifted. "I'd rather be safe than sorry. We're on the side of protection."

This clearly illustrates the fact that the collusion that we've previously described between social workers also extends to women judges. We've shown in detail how the Middlesex Court Clinic, headed by Barbara Hauser, has a policy of always siding with the mother against the father, irrespective of any facts.

In fact, the Middlesex Court Clinic is part of the Middlesex Probate Court, headed by Sheila McGovern. This suggests that the policy of always siding with the mother against the father is approved by McGovern, and here we see that the actual policy appears to extend to McGovern herself. Obviously the lawyers at the feminist South Middlesex Legal Services firm knew in advance that McGovern would take jurisdiction away from the Marlboro court that had lifted the restraining order and would reinstate it even with no evidence whatsoever, which is what she did.

Furthermore, the sole effect of McGovern's reinstatement of the order was to force Brita to continue returning to the Visitation Center which is down the street from McGovern's court in Cambridge, and which also works closely with McGovern. As a result of her order, this visitation center would receive thousands more in fees and grants. This shows how all these feminist organizations, -- the Probate Court, the Court Clinic, the feminist legal services firms, the feminist-run visitation centers -- all work together to generate lucrative fees and grants.

According to Brita, "Female judges are taking over the family courts, so that women have total control over the court systems, social services, and the visitation centers. They all cooperate with each for their mutual benefit, so you may think that you're having a dispute with your ex-wife, but you're actually having a dispute with a number of women's activists. There are male judges, but they're older, and they just want to get their pensions, so they go with the flow. So the women have total control of the court system, the DSS and the visitation centers."

This is very lucrative for these women's activist organizations, according to Brita, especially South Middlesex Legal Services firm.

"My girlfriend has cost the state of Massachusetts over $300,000," he says. "She's had three different lawyers representing her against me, and she's had four immigration lawyers, all paid for by the state," he says. "She's picked up and driven to and from court by the South Middlesex Legal Serivces. She's on welfare, and gets free housing, food, and all these other services, all paid for by the government."

He adds that she has a job. "She works every day, and sends all that money back to her relatives in Brazil," he says.

And, as we'll see in chapter 3, tens of thousands of false charges of domestic violence are generated each year in Massachusetts alone. Judging by Brita's research, these false charges are extremely lucrative for all these private feminist agencies, probably generating millions or perhaps tens of millions of dollars per year. This might mean billions of dollars nationwide.

And obviously the most lucrative accusations are the false ones, for a couple of reasons.

A man who is guilty is less likely to fight back, and is probably less likely even to bother to try to see his kids. He won't generate any revenue for these feminist-run organizations.

But a falsely accused man will fight back in court, and will fight to spend time with his kids. For both of these reasons, all of this generates fees, budgets and grants for all the feminist organizations -- the probate court, the court clinic, the visitation centers, the feminist legal services firms, the child psychologists, and so forth.

Even worse, Massachusetts is one of several dozen states where, once a restraining order is issued, all the woman has to do is call the local police and say that she thinks the restraining order has been violated, and the man will automatically be arrested, with no hearing or anything. This is a tool that the feminist organizations can use at will against any man who has done absolutely nothing wrong -- and judging from my interviews with men, it's used quite often.

And it's a sure bet that the feminist organizations are going to win, because they have a policy of always siding with the mother against the father, in accordance with feminist "theory," as we've shown.

As we'll also see, feminists vehemently oppose mandatory arrest for alleged batterers, since a man accused of an actual crime would have Constitutional rights. McGovern didn't actually charge Brita with anything, since then he could have demanded that evidence be presented; instead she simply reinstated a phony restraining order, which was not a criminal charge, but which generated the desired lucrative fees and grants.

Most important, nobody is claiming that restraining orders protect anyone, including the feminists that implement the various policies. As we'll see in chapter 3. research has found no difference in abuse between women with and without restraining orders, and that 96% of women don't even bother to renew restraining orders when they expire after a year.

Sheila McGovern surely knows that, and when she said to Brita, "I'd rather be safe than sorry. We're on the side of protection," with no evidence whatsoever, she was surely aware that there was no evidence against Brita anyway, and the only thing being protected was her own power and budget and the lucrative incomes of her friends in other feminist organizations.

There's an interesting legal wrinkle associated with Brita's girlfriend's strategy. Brita says that she's using the restraining order to prevent him from paying her any child support. Under advice from his lawyer, Brita has tried to get several agencies to accept his child support payments, but they've all refused, including the Massachusetts Department of Revenue (DOR), which normally collects child support payments from fathers through payroll deductions. "Since I'm self-employed [as a home improvement contractor], they refused to take my money," he says.

So, following his lawyer's instructions, he's been placing his child support payments into a bank escrow account. "If she collects the child support, then she can't collect welfare or get subsidized housing," he says, adding that her strategy is force him to pay tens of thousands of dollars in back child support as a lump sum when the children come of age. "I'm trying to find a way to stop that," he says.

Brita faces an additional hardship because he went to court to fight for his rights. The Visitation Center counselors threatened to keep him from seeing his children at all if he took them to court. He did so, and now they've refused to let him see his children since 1999, possibly to intimidate other fathers who might try to fight back.

In addition to getting to know a number of men who are being forced to used Visitation Centers, he's also gotten to know a number of young women who are involved in the domestic violence scene from the women's point of view. On one occasion, he wanted to help a female friend who was applying for subsidized housing by going with her to the housing office in Framingham. With him standing there, she spoke to a social worker. He describes the conversation she had with the social workers as follows:

"There's a two-year wait for subsidized housing. Are you married?"

"Divorced."

"Did your husband abuse you?"

"No."

"Well, there's a two-year wait for subsidized housing, but if your husband has been abusing you, then we can put you into a battered women's shelter for two months, and then put you into subsidized housing. Now let me ask you again: Did your husband abuse you?"

[Hesitating] "Yes."

She was instructed to fill out forms establishing her need for housing and to claim that her husband was abusing her. She was told that she must move into the battered women's shelter for two months in order to qualify for the subsidized housing.

"Women like my friend are golden geese to the agencies," says Brita. "They make a lot of money this way."

These experiences establish a clear nexus between false charges of domestic violence and a great deal of money, and show how these Massachusetts social services organizations may be making millions or even tens of millions of dollars from these false charges.

Brita says, "I've spent the better part of eight years just trying to find out why this happened to me. Before meeting her I've never been accused of anything. I come from a family that's never had a divorce -- my parents' marriage, both my grandparents' marriages are all intact. I don't understand why any of this stuff happened. I have no concept of this."

Brita has some very strong advice for any father who's being forced to see his children at a Visitation Center: "Don't go!"

He says that once you go to the Visitation Center, they'll never let you out. "They document everything you say do," he reminds me. "If you break a rule, or raise your voice, then they can use anything you say as proof that you're a violent person, and they can force you to continue going. But if you don't go, then they have nothing on the record to use against you.

He recommends taking parenting classes or doing some volunteer work with children, and then getting a letter of recommendation saying how good you are with children.

"That way you're in control instead of the counselors at the Visitation Center," he says. "After six months, you can go back to court and show them the letters of recommendation and ask to visit with your children at home. They'll have nothing that they can use against you, so you'll probably win."

Of course, this kind of legal strategy might not work for every man's situation. Before attempting this or any other legal strategy, be sure to check with your attorney first.

Brita says ruefully, "If I'd never gone to the Visitation Center in the first place, none of this would have happened, and my kids would probably be here at home with me right now."

-- Excerpted from "Fraternizing with the Enemy: A book on gender issues for men ... and for women who care about men," by John J. Xenakis, published by 1stBooks.com, 480 pages, to appear in late 2001.

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