The first American mother and children granted asylum abroad

Jewish Women International and the National Alliance to End Domestic Abuse have produced a very fine webinar that includes interviews with Holly Collins, Jennifer Collins, and Professor Mo Hannah, who chairs the annual Battered Mothers Custody Conference in Albany, New York. CEU credits are available. (Click on the title above OR paste the following web address into your browser. Click on the small blue WMV box. It will take a few seconds to download.)

http://jwi.peachnewmedia.com/store/streaming/seminar-launch.php?key=3LshdDpeRBDH6dDPl2I1B8PhL8ylSgTZ0XLJxcHwCdY%3D

After fourteen years living safely in the Netherlands, Jennifer Collins realized that the FBI was about to prosecute her mother for protecting her and her brother Zachary. The young woman mounted an amazing effort to tell their story to people in the United States. Jennifer spoke two years ago at the Battered Mothers Custody Conference.







Psychology profesor Mo Hannah at Sienna College has brought together battered mothers from around the country at the annual Battered Mothers Custody Conference in Albany, New York:
http://www.batteredmotherscustodyconference.org/

Custody decision gone bad

http://www.fox10tv.com/dpp/news/local_news/mobile_county/stepfather-of-missing-children-speaks

Stepfather of missing children speaks
Jonah Heathcock tries to stay optimistic

Updated: Sunday, 05 Dec 2010, 1:47 PM CST
Published : Saturday, 04 Dec 2010, 10:14 PM CST

Paige Malone
MOBILE, Ala. - UPDATE: A search for the bodies of three-year-old Johnathan DeBlase and his four-year-old sister, Natalie continues today. This time at a second locaton in Mobile County according to Mobile Police Department.

Search teams began the second search in an area in the western part of the county. Stay with Fox 10 News. We have a crew on the scene and will keep you updated as information is released.

After hours of searching, police still have not found the bodies of three-year-old Johnathan DeBlase and his four-year-old sister Natalie.

Friday, their father, John DeBlase was arrested and told police the children are buried within a 100- mile radius of Mobile. Even after this news, their birth
mother and stepfather are trying to stay optimistic.

On November 19, police began searching for the missing children. Two weeks later, John DeBlase and his wife were arrested.

"My hope actually went up a notch with them having him," Corrine Heathcock, the children's mother told Fox 10 News earlier this week.

Not long after the interview, Heathcock and her husband Jonah Heathcock got some shocking news. DeBlase revealed to police that Jonathan and Natalie were dead.

"It was an eruption of tears. We just held each other as tightly as possible and cried like crazy. Called friends, called family," said Jonah Heathcock.

After hearing the news, Corrine Heathcock said, "Our hope is that they are found alive and well."

The search for the bodies began early Saturday morning and the Heathcock family was on edge all day.

"I'm just waiting for that phone call from a police officer to either call us or come up here and say we found them," said Jonah Heathcock.

Heathcock said they have been focusing on the good times they had with Jonathan and Natalie instead of looking toward a grim reality.

Today, memories of little Jonathan came to mind.

"He couldn't say hot dogs. He'd say dot dogs, so this morning I woke up with dot dogs on my mind."

Jonah and Corrine have not seen the children in over a year. They said DeBlase was granted custody because they could not provide the environment the children deserved.

"He called his son prince he called his daughter princess. At this point, I don't see where he could call them that anymore," said Heathcock.

Now, they wish they would have fought harder for the children and have a message for DeBlase.

"I do have one thing to say to John, if you know where they are, you say you don't know, but I know you do. Tell them where they are. You say you don't remember, you do. And if you don't, Heather does. So one of you better tell them where they are so we can put closure to this thing"

Police narrowed the search down to the area just north of Vancleave, Mississippi. The search will continue early Sunday morning.

DeBlase is being held in Mobile Metro Jail on two counts of aggravated child abuse and two counts of aggravated assault of a corpse.

His wife, Heather Keaton, is being held in Louisville, Kentucky on two counts of willful abuse of a child. Police say she will be extradited to Mobile within a week.

Announcing BMCC VIII

Psychology professor Mo Hannah and her students at Siena College in Albany, NY, have done it again!

They have organized the eighth annual Battered Mothers Custody Conference. (You do not need to be physically battered to bear the marks of emotional, psychological, financial, and legal abuse, or to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder--PTSD--due to living with a coercive controller.)

The Court at its worst, just like the abuser, tries to isolate battered mothers from their support system. Mothers who have tried to protect their children from abuse at home find out at BMCC that they are not alone. Lawyers, psychologists and other advocates have joined this effort to protect children from abuse.

Here is the 2011 BMCC flier (Click once on these images to enlarge them):

Parents and advocates march in California

http://www.centerforjudicialexcellence.org/

Click on the title above for more information (or enter the link in your browser). Tomorrow, parents and advocates will march in California against many of the same kinds of legal abuse that children are suffering in Rhode Island domestic abuse custody cases. Some Rhode Island parents and advocates will also gather in solidarity across from the Garrahy Court House in Providence.

Mothers of Lost Children march on Department of Justice

Thank you, Mothers of Lost Children. Click on title above or paste this link in your browser:
http://www.wusa9.com/video/default.aspx?bctid=622782249001

The law favors joint custody regardless of safety

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7219334.html

Slain kids' mom tells of abusive marriage

Court papers detail alleged violence by children's father before their deaths
By LINDSAY WISE
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Sept. 27, 2010, 8:02AM

Harris County Sheriff's Office
Mohammad Goher is accused of shooting his son and two daughters as they slept in his apartment.

Norma Martinez said her husband was drunk when he chased her into their daughter's bedroom in May 2006, threatening to shoot her if she didn't tell him the name of the man who asked her out.

"I told him no one had asked me out," Martinez said in an affidavit she later filed in support of a protection order against her husband, Mohammad Goher.

Goher handed her the gun and told her to shoot him, but Martinez took the bullets out instead, she said. He responded by pulling her hair and punching her on the arms and stomach, she added.

Goher was convicted of assault of a family member and placed on deferred adjudication.

The 47-year-old Harris County man now faces capital murder charges in the deaths of the couple's three children. He is accused of shooting son Saeed, 12, and daughters Saeedah, 14, and Aisha, 7, on Sept. 19 as they slept in his apartment.

Court documents obtained by the Houston Chronicle detail Martinez's allegations that her husband physically, emotionally and verbally abused her throughout their 15-year marriage. She said Goher "has thrown objects, broken things, spit at me, pulled my hair, pushed and shoved me, grabbed me, slapped me, and threatened me with a weapon." Several times, Martinez said, he'd threatened to kill himself and kill her, including incidents in July and August 2008, when Goher allegedly tried to strangle her and pointed a Chinese sword at her.

In September 2008, Goher accused her of having an affair with his friend, Martinez stated in the affidavit.

Goher "told me I had to clean his name, that I had to take his gun and go kill this man," Martinez said. She said Goher made her sit right next to him so he would know where she was at all times.

"When I walked away to use the restroom, I had to tell him where I was going," she said. "I left the house the next day."

About two months later, Goher took the children and refused to let her talk to them, Martinez said.

Threats to take children

Martinez described expletive-laced phone calls and voice mails between December 2008 and February 2009 in which Goher allegedly called her names, accused her of running off with drug dealers, threatened to shoot her, and told her she'd never see the children again.

"The children were supposed to be in Pakistan temporarily to study the Koran and then come back here, or we were going to go to Pakistan to live with them," Martinez said in the affidavit.

Martinez's divorce petition, dated Feb. 5, includes copies of correspondence between Martinez and her legal advocate and the State Department, begging authorities to help locate her children in Pakistan.

Martinez said she hadn't spoken to her children since November 2008. That month, officials from the U.S. Consulate in Karachi had conducted a welfare visit at her request to check on the children, who were living at an apartment with Goher's parents in the Garden West neighborhood of Karachi.

Consular officials sent Martinez a letter recounting the visit on Nov. 25, 2008. Officials had only been allowed to talk to the children for 15 to 20 minutes. They were living in a three-room apartment with 10 or 12 people in a lower-middle-class neighborhood. All three children were clean and well-dressed, but their grandmother maintained control of the conversation and did not allow photographs.

"The children were not communicating, especially the eldest," a consular official wrote in the letter to Martinez. "They sought the grandmother's approval before answering any questions."

Not long after the welfare check, Martinez said she received a phone call from her daughter from an unknown number. She said her daughter told her that she and her two siblings had been moved to another location.

"My daughter also asked me to come get her — I was very fearful to hear this," Martinez wrote in a letter to the State Department's Office of Children's Issues on Jan. 12.

"You previously informed me that my children were not considered missing because I had their location in Karachi, Pakistan - but they are now missing!" she wrote. "They have been missing for almost a year now."

Traveled to Pakistan

She asked officials to help her find her the children and requested that they be added to databases for missing children.

"I implore that your office move forward with my case," she wrote. "Every day of not knowing where my children are or how they are doing is devastating."

A desperate Martinez traveled to Pakistan with Bibi Khan, the president of An-Nisa Hope Center, a Harris County shelter and advocacy group for Muslim women.

"If you had seen the way she cried, and if you had seen the way she was begging to see her kids again, I think you, too, would have said, 'OK, I'm going to go to Pakistan to help her find her kids,'" Khan said.

Khan said she helped Martinez scour the area in Karachi where her husband's parents had been living, interviewing neighbors for clues.

"We had to go to each school to see if they were there," Khan said. "You can imagine how many schools there are in Karachi. The only lead we had was her husband's family made her older daughter wear the veil."

Martinez finally reunited with her children at her lawyer's office in Houston, after she filed for divorce from Goher in Harris County's 312th District Court. He brought them back to the U.S. in time for a hearing in March.

"She hadn't seen them in a long time so there were hugs and tears and joy that they were back together again," said Martinez's attorney, Sandra Peake. "They were very, emotional and they were very happy and they just started talking and hugging almost as if they weren't sure that that was mom."

Sought sole custody

In her petition for divorce, Martinez requested sole custody of the children and sought damages for expenses, mental suffering and anguish.

In his response to his wife's suit, Goher denied her "gratuitous and self-serving allegations" and rejected her request for sole custody. He said that Martinez had committed acts of violence against him and the children, and asked the court to order Martinez to pay his attorney's fees and costs.

After a March 9 court hearing, Martinez and Goher were given temporary orders for joint custody of the children. Goher and Martinez were prohibited from contacting each other, or removing the children from Harris County. The children's passports were confiscated. Goher was granted unsupervised visitation with the children every weekend. The rest of the time, the children lived with their mother at the An-Nisa Hope Center shelter.

"The presumption in family law is joint custody; you have to overcome that to deprive the father of his visitation rights," said Syed Izfar, the amicus attorney appointed to assist the court with issues related to the children. "The legal presumption is that children benefit from nurturing and care of both parents. In this case it didn't work out, that's true, but that's the presumption of the law."

Given visitation rights

After the court issued the temporary custody orders in March, Martinez's attorney did not oppose Goher's visitation rights, Izfar said.

Peake expected to request continued joint custody at a divorce mediation scheduled for Sept. 24.

In the absence of specific threats against the children, there was no reason to think Goher was anything but a loving father, Peake said. "I thought that (Martinez) would be more at risk than they were," she said.

"How would you know that he would shoot three kids in the head or however he shot them?" Peake said. "They've been going over there and they've been coming back and they're not bruised and the amicus doesn't seem to have any concerns."

The children never expressed any fear of their dad, Izfar said. "They did say that he was trying to pressure them into staying with him. ... I said, 'Do you want to go visit your dad, or do you want to stop visitation?' One and all said, 'No, we do want to go visit him.' "

"I don't know what happened," he said. "I wish I knew."

Goher's divorce attorney, Fel E. Tabangay, declined to comment without instructions from his client, who was listed in fair condition at Ben Taub General Hospital, where he is recovering from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

An-Nisa Hope Center: 713-339-0803; annisahopecenter.com/
DAYA: Serving South Asian Families in Crisis: 713-981-7645; www.dayahouston.org/
Asians Against Domestic Abuse: 713-339-8300; www.aadainc.org/
Houston Area Women's Center: 800-799-SAFE (7233), www.hawc.org

lindsay.wise@chron.com

When authorities do not listen to victims of abuse

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=7683866&pt=print

New details in case of dad accused of slaying kids
Thursday, September 23, 2010
by Jessica Willey
Related Video

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- We've learned that a gun police say a father used to shoot his three children was once handled by investigators. It's new information in a disturbing case.

The gun the father is accused of using was returned to him by the legal system. It was the same gun that was around the children for years, and there's nothing the courts could have done about it.

Mohammad Goher was still at Ben Taub Hospital Wednesday night after surviving what investigators describe as a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. They say he used the same gun to kill his three children, ages 14, 12 and 7, and that gun was once the temporary property of the court.

"It's horrifying," said Steven Halpert.

Halpert has something heavy on his mind. He was the defense attorney for Goher who saw him through a successful deferred adjudication for assaulting his wife.

"This is every human being or every lawyer's nightmare for this to happen," Halpert said. "He was a model probationer."

Halpert also helped him get back the gun investigators say he used to murder his children.

"Had I had an inkling that there was something dangerous lurking or that he would do something improper with these weapons, then I would not have signed my name to that motion," Halpert said.

That motion led to an order on June 13, 2008, from Judge Jean Hughes to return two of Goher's guns taken from him after the 2006 assault on his wife. The two weapons were a 9mm and a rifle.

Harris County investigators confirm that the 9mm was the murder weapon Goher allegedly used early Sunday morning to kill his three children inside the back of his convenience store as they slept.

"There's no fault of the judge for giving back a gun that was used ultimately in a murder here because the judge had no more jurisdiction," KTRK Legal Analyst Joel Androphy said.

Androphy says the judge was legally required to return Goher's property. Any opposition, he says, should have come from the state or family court.

Friends of Goher's wife have described a violent past that sent her fleeing to a local Islamic domestic abuse shelter. Halpert says he never saw it.

"He was just a working guy and a very nice guy," Halpert said.

But he still can't help but feel some guilt.

"If I could go back to June 12, of course; it's a nightmare," Halpert said.

Those close to Goher's ex-wife say he should have never had access to any guns and that the children were afraid of him.

Goher is charged with capital murder. The Harris County District Attorney's Office hasn't said whether it will pursue the death penalty.

(Copyright ©2010 KTRK-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)


http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=7678461

Shelter: Dad accused of killing kids made threats
Tuesday, September 21, 2010

by Miya Shay

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- There's new information in the case of a man accused of killing his own children before trying to commit suicide.

Police say Mohammad Goher was afraid of losing custody of the children to his ex-wife, but we're learning more about their split and the unusual demands he made to spend time with his children.

It's such a devastatingly sad story in any way you look at it. Goher is still being treated for a gunshot wound at an area hospital, but he has been charged with capital murder in connection the slaying of his three children. He has a court appearance scheduled on Tuesday, but on Monday, a lot of people who knew about the divorce between him and his ex-wife say this was something they didn't quite expect.

A teddy bear and a few burnt out candles marked the place where three children lost their lives. Attorney Sandra Peake remembers meeting them.

"They were just as cute as they could be, and very loving and affectionate towards their mom," Peake said.

Peake represents Norma Goher, the mother of 14-year-old Saeedah, 12-year-old Saeed, 7-year-old Aisha.

Their birth certificates show the kids were born in America, but Goher, their father, sent them to Pakistan for two years until, family members say, Norma Goher managed to get them returned to Houston this past February.

"She was extremely attached. She was very determined to get the kids back from Pakistan and bring them here so she could raise them," Peake said.

But this past Sunday, the unthinkable happened.

Goher is now accused of killing his three kids during a court-ordered visitation.

"Apparently, someone told him last week that the children would be taken away from him," said Syed Izfar.

Izfar is the attorney who was representing the interests of the children as their parents divorced.

"No one knew this was coming," he said. "This was a bolt out of the blue."

Prior to that visit, Goher had reached out to local Pakistani radio host Manzoor Memon and was willing to go on the radio to talk about his case.

"Our plan was to put him on radio talk show on Sunday at 12 o'clock," Memon said. "And I called him around 11 o'clock to confirm that he will be on the radio, and he didn't pick up the phone and this thing had had already happened."

Norma Goher has been living in a women's shelter for more than a year. She had a restraining order against her ex-husband, who was also arrested in 2006 for beating her.

So why did the children visit every weekend? The women running the shelter An-Nisa Shelter offers some insight.

"Many times, he threatened the children, 'If you don't come back to me, I will kill you. I will kill myself. I will kill myself,'" one of them told us. "They cared about their father."

In fact, the women who run the shelter say the kids often had reservations about visiting their father, but because they loved him and wanted to see him alive and well, they'd often go visit him when he made threats.

Despite these alleged threats, Child Protective Services says not one single complaint had been filed in connection to the alleged mistreatment of the children prior to their deaths. The only records of abuse are between the mother and the father.

Late Monday night, strangers mourned for the three children during a vigil. Kneeling in prayer before freshly lit candles, they also pray most for the mother of the victims.

(Copyright ©2010 KTRK-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)