#grave inquiries

[chronicallyuniconic]

"6 out of 10 people who died from Covid between March and July 2020 were disabled"

As part of the UK covid inquiry, evidence has now been brought to light which shows that "Do Not Attempt Resuscitation" notices, were put on the files of patients with Down's Syndrome, Autism & other learning disabilities.

These people were healthy, before contracting Covid19.

The NHS watchdog we know as NICE, (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence), issued guidance for trusts and hospitals advising them to apply a “clinical frailty scale” to decide whether patients should be admitted to intensive care.

Older and more frail patients were viewed as being less likely to survive even with critical care treatment.

The original NICE guidance also suggested that those who could not do everyday tasks like cooking, managing money and personal care independently, would be considered frail & not receive intensive care treatment.

This original guidance has since been removed....

Which leads us to the Do not attempt Resuscitation notices...

The DNAR notices were often placed on the files of the patients without their consent, or with limited understanding of its meaning.

Patients with learning disabilities were classed as 'clinically frail'

NHS England have of course denied this, yet the evidence shows they let them die, as to not overwhelm the NHS in the early days of a pandemic.

Yet many specialist nurses have come forward to say that they were constantly put in place for people with learning disabilities and often "inappropriately."

_____

I feel utterly sick. I remember at the start of the pandemic, talking about how disabled people will become a target, that we will be killed off, and people looked at me like I was purple.

4 years later we're here. In case you need to read it again, 6 in 10 people with covid that died during March to June 2020, were disabled. 6 in 10. I can't stop repeating that number.

Read more here:

https://archive.ph/4BQ3s

[capn-twitchery]

song 42!

ok. exposing myself here bc i looped this song a lot to draw warrior cats ocs when i got fixated on clangen for a little bit

i don't have much to add in writing so here's an old sketch of some of the cats who had the most unhinged family drama instead 😌

(send me a number 1-100 and i'll tell you the song it corresponds with on my spotify wrapped playlist!)

[castelleve]

nezumivc103221​ asked: 🌻 🌻 🌻

I feel like a lot of people assume Damian is an asshole with a heart of gold when he’s kind of the opposite. He has a pleasing exterior but inside he really is just an ultra introverted crotchety asshole old man. 

Henri is incredibly arrogant - but not for no reason and not (mostly) irresponsibly. They ARE  demigod - worshipped as a a full-on deity on their homeworld, given descendants of Mortau and Vita were considered above most minor deities. They’re very much a ‘great power means great responsibility’ kind of person and despite their terrible actions in life, they, for the most part, thought they were necessary and would have positive returns one way or another. This is also why Henri isn’t much of a risk taker - never was. Their one big gamble contributed to an apocalypse and they’ve definitely learned their lesson.

Earlier I was with my brother in law’s mom with everyone eating dinner and on the tv there was this guy who ate raw fish fresh from the bayou, had a pet alligator, used a shotgun as a boat oar and ate a squirrel and I kind of feel like thats Lucas vibes. 

[inun4ki]

Truth or dare:: I dare you to wear the maid outfit for the whole week

truth or dare / accepting

"...Hm, w-well--" Kaede stammered, his composure temporarily broken by blush, flush, and the tweak of delicate nerves.

A whole week?! Were they insane? There's no way he could wear a maid costume for an entire week! He couldn't exorcise curses in a mini-dress, especially not since he knew he would have to leave before the week was up! Or, maybe he could... There was quite a lot of freedom, a nice breeze, and, really, the thigh-high socks made his thighs pop. The fabric was soft and ruffled, light enough to simply rest where it lay and poofy enough to make his hips seemed wider, waist more slim, and, if he were honest with himself, he was kind of...into it.

The only thing he didn't like about it was the dare that got him into this mess, really, but everything else was just fine. After all, he looked good - and he could let himself look good outside of work clothes, couldn't he? Besides, he felt dreamy, out-of-place and strange, but dreamy nonetheless.

With a bashful scowl, he huffed and looked away, trying his best to conceal his obvious meager sense of pride, and the combination of embarrassment and unwanted attention crippling it. Oh! He was torn, in truth, tempted to fiddle with the hem of his dress, straightening his posture with utmost confidence instead.

"You're all depraved little perverts... But, fine. Fine... I'll keep wearing it."

[ryeonah]

tag dump ii

[thegoatsongs]

I love how we never are told explicitly what Dracula does, yet we realize the truth. We're left to put the pieces together. We're never shown or told that he drank the crew or that he tossed them once he took what he wanted just to spread terror and doubt like we know he loved doing with Jonathan, so we fill in the blanks from previous knowledge. We're not told that he's hiding in a grave of suicide, we're told a nice dog freaked out at that one grave which Mina and Lucy have been sharing a seat the history of which we already know thanks to Mina's early inquiries.

We're told that Mr. Swales died of horror right there as well. But his neck is broken. Did he really die of horror, or did Dracula kill him because -he being so close to Death at 99 years old- could recognize him for what he is, and go warn the girls and the rest? Just like he recognized that the Demeter looks and smells like Death itself from the horizon? You're left to wonder, just like how he spreads doubt and is an unknown horror hiding from sight.

This is a kind of horror that is missing from adaptations that make it all about Dracula arriving to Seduce The Women/make him a romantic goth guy, the eerie slow progression from the point of view of the unsuspecting victims that we can feel it will eventually crescendo to something hellish.

[mphountitled]

𝐀𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐥𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐃𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐬

Pairings: Fratboy!Sungchan x Shy!reader

Warnings: Language, Enemies to Lovers, Manipulation, Bully!Sungchan, Smut +18 (Minors DNI), Hate sex, Non/Con, Choking, Fingering, Size Kink, Massive Degradation Kink, Praise Kink, Breeding, Choking, Spitting, Rough Sex, Unprotected Sex, Coercion

I needed bully smut, so I wrote bully smut. Also I'm ovulating so don't mind me.

To say you were tense was a grave understatement.

You were forced to sit through your lecture feeling absolutely haunted by the presence beside you. A class you would normally find yourself enjoying is suddenly marred by the stretch of shadow that is Sungchan.

Making comprehensive notes had proven to be difficult when you had to keep a peripheral gaze on the slouching figure seated on the shared desk beside you.

Everything about him vexed you absolutely: The stupid way he wore his snapback (reversed). How he slouched beside you, nearly dozing off on multiple occasions.

Most harrowing was the fact that Sungchan did not make any notes during the entire course of the lesson. In fact, his notebook remained closed. His laptop, untouched.

“Damn,” Sungchan croaks when the professor concludes the end of his incessant rant, “We done?” He asks, “already?”

You only hum in affirmation, keeping your head low as you gather your belongings.

Sungchan watches you scramble to pack up - scramble to get away from him - with unreadable expression.

“Hey, I need to ask you something.”

Your heart plummets when his hand makes contact with the notepad you were shoving into your backpack. You bite the inside of your cheek while your stomach plummets lower and lower.

“Actually, Sungchan… I kinda have somewhere to b-”

“Nah, you're good. It'll only take a few minutes,” he says, lightly tugging on the sleeve of your button-up to lower your butt back down to the chair. You watch with sullen eyes as the rest of your fellow students file out of the classroom.

Two of Sungchan's frat brothers eye you both suspiciously, but Sungchan only gives them a flick of the head in greeting as he leans in to whisper, “You know I don't bite, right?

You didn't care to calculate the validity of that statement because you knew everything this boy had to say was completely and wholeheartedly false. It was almost a marvel, the way he could aimlessly switch from terrorising you one moment to bathing you in unprovoked friendliness the next. It gave you a terrible case of whiplash. Before you're able to respond, however, your professor speaks up from the front of the class. The only other body in the room.

"I hope you plan on actually doing something about those grades this semester, Mr Jung.” Your professor says, eyeing you both through the windows of horn rimmed glasses, “I trust you understand the severity of your current predicament."

Sungchan leans back against his seat, regarding the teacher with a passiveness that made you sweat with nerves.

"Being suspended from basketball definitely sucked," Sungchan's jaw is tight when he speaks, so obviously vexed by the inquiries of your lecturer. "But I've got a secret weapon this semester, Prof," the boy says, slamming his basketball on the conjoined tables, enough to make you jump. "I'll be back on the court in no time."

The sound of your name slipping from your professor's mouth was enough to have you snapping your head up from the weathered pages of the book you had taken out a mere second ago. Sungchan watches, slyly enamoured by the way you sit up when addressing the teacher. The way you correct your spine and elongate your neck. Closing your book with a finger propped in between the pages so as not to lose your space while simultaneously lending the professor your optimal focus.

You were such a fucking prude.

"S-Sorry Sir?" You couldn't have heard him right.

There was absolutely no way.

"I assume you're the student Mr Jung is referring to?" Your professor seems oblivious to the way your face threatens to fall, but Sungchan catches it in the slight twitch of your left brow.

"Oh- I-" everything in you was screaming to send out an SOS signal. Your neck still hurt with the imprint of his palm from when he had terrorized you just a few hours ago... Willingly choosing to be put in a space with Jung Sungchan alone seemed like a viable death wish.

"She already agreed to help tutor me yesterday, actually?" Your heart plummets when the boy turns to face you. "Very admiral."

A wave of nausea washes over you and you try your damndest to just not fucking cry as he places a tentative hand on your thigh underneath the table. Everything in your being responseded negatively to this man. Everything perhaps except your eyes.

While you could not deny that he was the spawn of Satan, you couldn't deny that he had the biggest, most brightest, most kindest eyes you've ever seen.

And that was the fucked up part.

"You said it yourself," Sungchan shoots back at the professor as his nails sink into the sensitive, plush skin of your thighs, "She's the best of the best so I figured, only the best can get me back on that court,"

You wanted to cry. To break out into a blaze of uncontrollable hysteria. Anything at all that might convince your professor to get Jung Sungchan away from you. The tempest of emotions swirling inside, the humiliation, the vile, disgusting feelings that only make themselves known in the vulnerabilities of the AM's...

It all threatens to boil over like an abandoned pot left on an open stove.

Perhaps Sungchan notices the quiver in your lips.

"I trust you'll get started as soon as possible then?"

"We're getting started right now, actually," Sungchan says, peeling his eyes away from your bowed frame, just in time to catch your professor gathering his belongings by the desk, "Basketball season is just around the corner, so you know how it is,"

All his fingers are digging into you thigh now. You have to resort to biting down on the inside of your cheeks to avoid letting that torrid screech rip its way through your vocal cords.

"I'm very impressed by your work ethic, Mr Jung," your professor says, completely oblivious to the way your eyes widen at the sight of him filing his way out the classroom, "And a very special thank you to you, Miss L/N. This is incredibly admirable and something I most definitely will not forget,"

For the briefest moments, the sun peaks through the murky, heavy clouds and you're awash in not only the approval of your professor, but by the possibility that you were perhaps one step closer to making TA. It would undoubtedly look wonderful on your resume, and having a member of staff essentially vouch for you would be... fucking miraculous.

"Wipe the drool off your face, it's not very sexy," Sungchan's grumbles have you hurtling out of your daydreams and straight back down to earth where you're left abandoned in a lecture hall with the only person in the entire world you believed deserved death.

Sungchan's head is leaning back passively against the chair, his legs are spread and his hand has yet to leave your thigh.

You try to keep your voice remaining steady as you ask "How much work do you plan on putting in?" Your voice is dripping monotony and is ice cold, nothing at all like the lazy smile flitting across Sungchan's face as he watches you, still slouching like he couldn't give less of a shit.

"None." His words have you snapping your head towards him, eyes blazing with the signs of your very first tear growing pregnant in your tear ducts.

"Th-Thats impossible- you can't do that!"

"I can't do any of this shit," Sungchan snorts as he motions with his other hand towards the blackboard scribbled with details on Austomarixsm, your most recent study, and most daunting assignment.

"Sungchan I-" You exhale, completely and utterly dumbfounded, "Sungchan, I have my own work to do. I have school, a-and a part time job- I have my own assignments due- just the other day I fucking passed out from a stress migraine-"

The calluses of his palms rubbing against the inside of your thigh, momentarily bring you out of the reverie of your own self pity, “I'm sorry that happened to you, Angel,” he begins, in the most sickeningly sweet voice you've ever heard anyone utter to you, let alone a man you found so incredibly... attractive.

You're not immune to Sungchan's charms and that was perhaps, part of the problem. You feared that if it ever came down to it, you might fall on a fucking sword for him, “Just make sure you get my assignment done on time, yeah?”

Your eyes are focused on his hand. The size of it. The labyrinth of veins running the expanse of it. The way it's rubbing against your inner thigh with a dizzying mysticism.

All it takes is for the first tear to fall directly on his palm before you're lifting your head and murmering, “No.”

Sungchan's hand stops all movement on your thigh and for the first (but certainly not last) part of this evening, you're utterly, and completely filled with fear.

“Sorry?” he shakes his head, displaying that sunshine smile, “What did you say? I don't think I heard you right.”

“You heard me perfectly well,” you tip your head back in defiance, letting your nose raise higher than it's used to being. Finding that glimmer of confidence that lay wasting, like an old relic somehwere inside of you.

“I said n-”

His hand was encircled around your throat before you could even get the final word out and he is pushing your face down on the table with immense force. A dark shadow settles across him, only intensifying his glare.

You writhe underneath him but Sungchan's grip on the side of your face only doubles in force as he slowly rises from his chair, towering over your bent frame as he twitches his head a little to side.

“Come again?”

You're struggling to breath under the pressure of having your cheek pressed so completely against a flat surface and your limbs are shot with panic.

He's far bigger than you though, your movements mean absolutely nothing. “I couldn't hear you the first time, Angel, what did you say?” His shadow bleeds across your form, like an immense, horrible darkness and so you squeeze your eyes shut, hoping that whatever this is, whatever that was about to be inflicted on you would disappear.

“I know I didn't just hear you say no to me, baby,” your limbs stop their idle protests when Sungchan's hand slithers up your skirt, “You're too good an angel to ever say no to me, right?” Your mouth is trembling as his words wash over the side of your face, “You're too fucking pathetic to say no to anyone.”

“Sungchan- please-”

“Please?” He asks, swiping his fingers past your underwear, “Please stop or Please carry on?” Your mind is completely overrun with both panic and a second, more sinister second feeling that you truly did not want to confront in a moment like this. All you wanted to focus on was escaping the iron grip, keeping your cheeks pushed against the desk, where a small puddle of drool had accumulated from your open mouth.

You writhe underneath him, valiantly trying to get his fingers away from you, but your movements only cause the first bit delecrable of friction against your cunt.

“That's it,” He whispers, “That's a good little slut,” Sungchan watches as you continue to push your cunt back against his fingers, subsequently raking the first moan out of your clogged throat.

“Look at you…” He marvels at the sight of you. How easily you've gotten wet for him despite being completely and wholeheartedly defiant just a moment before. Sungcham doesn't know whether to look at your pussy desperately trying to pleasure itself with his fingers, or your face, and those pretty half lidded eyes rolling to back of your head.

“You can't so no to anything, can you?” He finally pushes two digits in, immediately causing you to gasp underneath him, “You'll let anyone fuck this pussy raw, hm? Even me?” His words are enough to have you writing even more underneath him.

“F-Fuck you-” Sungchan buries his fingers inside of you, all too pleased to watch you attempt to stave off the pleasure coursing through your body. His cock is fucking aching at the sight and it only has him fingering you harder and faster.

“You're gonna cum on my fingers, yeah? You're gonna cum like the sick fucking slut you are?” Your body is racked with unbearable spasms as you're forced into your first orgasm. The room goes white and all you're consumed by is the feeling of Sungchan's massive fingers inside of you and your head still pressed to the side of the table. You're fucking back against his fingers and he watches, completely enamored with his mouth hanging limply open. He is utterly taken with the sight.

“Fuck, you're so hot,” the room spins and it takes a few seconds to notice you're not pressed against the desk anymore.

Now you're being pulled up and pushed with your ass against the desk while Sungchan towers over you, hurriedly fiddling with his belt as he glares down at you with monotonous lust. He doesn't smile. He doesn't crack any incessant jokes, he only grabs you by your neck and forces his hand in your mouth.

“Spit,” you do more than that. You gag around his fingers, until Sungchan is finally satisfied with the string of saliva when he slips his hand out.

“Watch,” his forces you to bow your head and watch him coat his aching red cock with your spit. He jerks himself off right in front of you, loving the way your eyes stay glued on his dick.

“You're such a dirty fucking slut, you know that?” He is saying it to himself at this point. Words drenched in arousal and uttered through clenched teeth, “You’re such a pretty fucking slut, aren't you, Princess?”

You can't stop your eyes from watching how he fucks himself, you can't bare to look away.

“Are you gonna fuck me?” Your voice is hoarse and shaking,

“Are you asking me to fuck you?”

All it takes is one nod before he's pushing you backwards against the small table and forcing himself between your open legs. “Then I'll give you what you want,” he whispers before pushing himself inside of you, completely knocking the wind out of your lungs.

He's too big. Far too big, and you try to tell him this by pawing lamely at the lapels of his letterman.

“F-Fuck, this pussy is so fucking tight!” Sungchan rolls his head back and you stare up at him as if he were a God as he drags your hips towards his, fucking you completely dumb on his cock.

“Is this what you wanted, Angel? You wanted my dick inside you like a needy fucking slut.”

“Sungchan I'm c-cumming, FUCK-” Your orgasm quite literally sneaks up on you and it has you throwing your head back while Sungchan continues to fuck himself into you. He watches you writhe and scream and he feels you clench his dick impossibly tighter.

“F-Fuck you're gonna me me cum,” he whispers, causing the very familiar feeling of alarm to pour out of you. You struggle against him but Sungchan keeps his palm lpcked around your neck, keeping your body very much against his.

"S-Sungchan, please."

"Stop moving or im really gonna cum," you try to push him away but your movements only succeed in raking a broken moan out him.

"You can't cum inside! Fucking- Stop,"

Sungchan is completely caught in the throes of his own prgasm. You're not sure if he hears you at all through all his mumbling and moaning.

“Fuck, angel, you're gonna make me-” Sungchan's thrust grow incredibly sloppy and you nearly start crying until he guides himself out of you, spilling his seed all over your drenched cunt. "F-Fuck, I pulled put, see?" He's breathing heavily as he continues to milk out tye rest of his cum and your lips are quivering, "I pulled out, Angel, don't worry."

The palm across the side of your face is warm, almost disarming, "You'll help me out, right? You'll help me get back on the court." Your lips have yet to stop their horrible quivering, "I need your help, Angel. You know I do,"

<3

© to @mphountitled on tumblr; do not repost

[just-jammin]

u ever just have a crush on ur oc (rhetorical meme question but ive met several ppl like that i think its funny)

i admired Jabs’ accidentally big man tities so yes technically

[doorfanatic]

We are in dire financial straits, and until we're not, I will be taking on any and all commissions- I dare you! Don't be shy. Send all requests and inquiries to my email at:

corpse at cicadamarionette dot com

More details below:

Let me describe to you this wonderful offer.

CHARACTER MODELS - $80

I will fashion a "3D Model" of a character or object from your description. I can send renders if you'd like, and/or send the model files themselves. If you want a horrible animation of the character waving their arms, or crying, or digging a grave, just tack on 30 dollars and I will add one to the model and send a complimentary GIF of the model doing this animation as well - if you want to describe a simple 3D environment to be included as a backdrop, add $50. If none of these quite addresses what you want feel free to email me with more questions.

----

YOUR VERY OWN CRYPT - $150

Send me a photo or description of a room or other small environ, and I will make a 3D Model of that environment in the style of the original Crypt Worlds. I will then add it to the original game, as a stand-alone scene, and send you a playable build where you can walk around and piss on things.

I will include 1 NPC from the original Crypt Worlds in the environment, with custom dialogue of your choosing- and if you want I can also have them say something when pissed on. If there's any other stuff from the original game you want added into the scene I'm open to suggestions. If you want me to change the player's portrait (in the bottom left of the game's UI) to a custom photo I can work it into the UI for an additional 10 dollars.

You will have infinite piss in this custom build so the fun will never end.

[secretmellowblog]

Before writing Les Mis, Hugo’s beloved 19-year-old daughter Leopoldine tragically drowned. As a result Les Mis is full of drowning imagery— drowning as a a symbol of impossible grief and loss, drowning as a symbol of being left behind by a society that doesn’t care about protecting your life, drowning as a method of suicide.

The les mis letters chapter today is the first chapter where Hugo highlights the drowning imagery that becomes central to the rest of the novel. The horrible symbolic death Valjean suffers as a result of being entirely isolated and forgotten by a society that doesn’t value his life is also foreshadowing of Javert’s eventual death.

Throughout the novel, Eponine also frequently talks about her desire to drown herself in the Seine; Thenardier monologues about how “the river is the true grave” and when bodies fall in it “justice makes no inquiries;” later Valjean escapes prison by faking his death by drowning, and so on and so on. There’s this emphasis that drowning doesn’t just mean death, it means erasing yourself from existence. It means you’re forgotten.

One of the saddest references to the death of Leopoldine is the way Valjean and Javert learn about the other’s death (or “death.”)

Hugo learned about his daughter’s death not from a family member/friend, but by reading about it in a newspaper. He was on vacation away from his family at the time. He was reading the news in a cafe and happened to stumble on an article about Leopoldine’s horrible tragic drowning, which was how he first learned that she was dead.

When Javert learns about Valjean’s “death” in prison (when Valjean pretends to drown in order to escape), he learns about it by reading it in the newspaper. When Valjean learns about Javert’s death by drowning, he learns about it by reading it in the newspaper.

So…yeah :(. Les Mis is full of all these agonized metaphors around drowning (as a metaphor for death/grief/being entirely forgotten by the people around you) and part of that comes from Hugo’s own deep personal trauma around the death of death of his daughter.

[coochiequeens]

This is why I hate it when MRAs whine about the courts “favoring” the mothers

How the 'junk science' of parental alienation infiltrated American family courts and allowed accused child abusers to win custody of their kids.

This story was reported in partnership with the nonprofit newsroom Type Investigations.

In the summer of 2020, when he was 12, the boy told his therapist something he'd never told anyone else.

For years, Robert claimed, his stepdad had sexually abused him.

The therapist alerted the San Diego County child welfare agency, which launched an investigation. The county sheriff opened an inquiry, too. Thomas Winenger, the only father figure Robert had ever known, began assaulting him when he was only 7, Robert told a forensic social worker in October 2020. Winenger would pin him down, cover his mouth, and force him into acts he found "disgusting," he said. Sometimes, he said, Winenger recited Bible verses during the attacks, claiming the devil was in Robert's heart.

Robert, whom Insider is identifying by only his middle name, said that as he struggled to breathe, he fought back by hitting, punching, and kneeing his stepfather. But he said Winenger overpowered him.

By the time Robert came forward, Winenger had been named his legal father and was divorced from Robert's mother, Jill Montes, with whom he also shared two young daughters. Robert confronted Winenger with the allegations that November, and within weeks Winenger denied the claims in family court. "This NEVER HAPPENED," he asserted in a filing.

He offered an alternative explanation for Robert's disturbing claims, one that shifted the blame to Robert's mother.

Montes, Winenger contended, had engaged in a pattern of manipulation known as "parental alienation." Robert's accusations weren't evidence that he'd abused the boy, Winenger claimed. They were evidence that Montes had poisoned the children against him. The delayed timing of Robert's allegations, Winenger argued, only made them more suspicious. Montes was causing the children such grave psychological harm, he claimed in the filing, that the children should be transferred to his custody right away.

That December, Child Welfare Services substantiated Robert's allegations, calling them "credible, clear, and concise." But the family-court judge, Commissioner Patti Ratekin, withheld judgment until the following October, when the psychologist she'd appointed as a custody evaluator submitted his own report.

That report, which has been sealed by the court, appears to have convinced Ratekin that Winenger was correct.

“Ma'am, you didn't show very well in the report. You are toxic. You're poisonous. You're an alienator," Ratekin told Montes at a hearing on October 28, 2021. "I don't believe for a second" that Robert's father molested him. "Not for a second," she repeated. "I think you've put it in his head."

Ratekin acted swiftly, granting Winenger's bid for custody and ordering him to enroll Robert and his sisters in Family Bridges, a program that claims to help "alienated" children reconnect with a parent they've rejected. She barred Montes, a stay-at-home mom and home schooler, from all contact with her children for at least 90 days, a standard prerequisite for admission to the program.

"I just wanted to crumble," Montes said.

Rejected as a psychiatric disorder

Parental alienation is a fairly recent idea, conceived in the 1980s by a psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Gardner, who argued that divorcing mothers, desperate to win custody suits, were brainwashing children against their fathers. In "severe" cases, Gardner wrote, children with "parental alienation syndrome" must be removed from their mothers, transferred to the care of their fathers, and reeducated through what he called "threat therapy."

Alienation has never been accepted as a psychiatric disorder by the medical establishment. Yet today, mental-health practitioners across the United States assess and treat it, particularly those who specialize in custody cases. Many of them collaborate closely, attending the same conferences, following the same protocols, and citing the same papers. Some run reunification programs like Family Bridges; others offer family therapy or produce custody evaluations for family courts.

Influenced by these experts, many judges have given the unproven concept the force of law.

Though most custody cases settle out of court, in a small fraction parents don't come to terms. In some of these contested cases, one parent accuses the other of alienating the children. The most intense disputes arise in cases where one parent alleges spousal or child abuse and the other responds with a claim of alienation.

But alienation claims are highly gendered. Men level the accusation against women nearly six times as often as women level it against men, one study suggests. That landmark study, published in 2020, found that in cases when mothers alleged abuse and fathers responded by claiming alienation, the mothers stood a startlingly high chance of losing custody.

Occasionally, parents accused of alienation are cut off from their children altogether. Since 2000, judges have sent at least 600 children to reunification programs that recommend the temporary exile of the trusted parent, a collaborative investigation by Insider and Type Investigations revealed. While the programs suggest a "no-contact period" of 90 days, this term is routinely extended and may last years, according to an analysis of tens of thousands of pages of court papers and program records.

The treatment typically starts with a four-day workshop for children and the parent they've rejected; aftercare can add months or years. Children may be seized for the workshop by force, with no opportunity for goodbyes.

Former participants at Family Bridges and a similar program, Turning Points for Families, said they were taught that their memories were unreliable, the parent they preferred was harmful, and the parent they'd rejected was loving and safe. In some cases, participants who resisted these lessons said they were verbally threatened; at Family Bridges, a few were threatened with institutionalization. Some participants said they ended up depressed and suicidal.

Program officials say they are helping children. Lynn Steinberg, a therapist who runs a program called One Family at a Time, said in an interview that virtually all the kids she's enrolled have falsely accused a parent of abuse and that she does not accept children into her program whose abuse claims have been substantiated. Without treatment, she said, alienated children would risk being plagued by guilt, and the relationship they wrongly spurned might never heal.

In Steinberg's view, the only child abusers in the families she sees are the "alienators," who have "annihilated" a devoted parent from their children's lives.

Recently, alienation theory has faced rising criticism. Efforts to legitimize the diagnosis have been rebuffed by the American Psychiatric Association, the World Health Organization, and the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children. And the reunification programs burst into public view last fall, when a video documented two terrified children in Santa Cruz, California, being seized for One Family at a Time. In the clip, which went viral on TikTok, a 15-year-old girl named Maya pleads and shrieks as she's picked up by the arms and legs and forced into a black SUV.

Since then, bills that would restrict reunification programs have been introduced in Sacramento and four other state capitols.

An idea takes off

When a law professor named Joan Meier founded a nonprofit to help victims of domestic violence two decades ago, she didn't expect to focus on custody disputes. But day after day, she heard from mothers with similar, troubling stories. They'd finally escaped their abusive marriages, but their exes had fought them for custody — and won. The mothers had been accused of something Meier knew little about: parental alienation.

Meier, who taught at George Washington University, ordered a stack of books by the child psychiatrist who coined the term.

Richard Gardner began writing about children of divorce in the 1970s, when a dramatic transformation was underway in family court. Under the "tender years presumption," judges had long favored women in divorce cases, typically assigning children to their mother's sole custody. But as more women entered the workforce, more men participated in child-rearing, and more couples divorced, a nascent "fathers' rights" movement emerged, demanding gender neutrality in custody proceedings. The idea appealed to many feminists, too. By the 1980s, most states had recognized joint custody in their statutes.

This left judges in a quandary when couples failed to settle. Now, aside from a vague mandate to advance the "best interest" of children, courts lacked a clear paradigm for resolving disputes. Overwhelmed, judges turned to mental-health professionals, asking them to assess each parent's fitness and recommend an optimal arrangement. Gardner, then an associate clinical professor of child psychiatry at Columbia University, was an early custody evaluator, and in 1982 he published a how-to manual.

By 1985, Gardner was arguing that some mothers, seeking to regain their advantage in court, were inducing a mental illness in their children, a condition he dubbed parental alienation syndrome. Children afflicted with the syndrome, he said, could be identified by the "campaign of denigration" they waged against their fathers, which was accompanied by "weak, frivolous, or absurd" rationalizations and a disquieting "lack of ambivalence."

Some "fanatic" mothers even manipulated children into claiming their fathers had sexually abused them, Gardner contended. When other maneuvers against a father fail, he wrote, "the sex-abuse accusation emerges as a final attempt to remove him entirely from the children's lives." Child sexual-abuse claims made during custody disputes, he claimed, "have a high likelihood of being false." To prove children are suggestible, he often invoked the wave of 1980s cases in which preschool teachers were charged with sexual abuse but later exonerated.

Gardner's theory sidestepped what Joan Meier saw as a glaring truth: Many children accused their fathers of abuse because their fathers were actually abusive. In fact, by the early 2000s a large-scale study had found that contrary to Gardner's writings, neither children nor mothers were likely to fabricate claims during custody disputes.

The remedies Gardner proposed for parental alienation syndrome were harsh. "Insight, tenderness, sympathy, empathy have no place in the treatment of PAS," he said in a 1998 address. "Here you need a therapist who is hard-nosed, who is comfortable with authoritarian, dictatorial procedures."

In a 2001 documentary, Gardner told a journalist how a mother might respond to a child reporting sexual abuse: "I don't believe you. I'm going to beat you for saying it. Don't you ever talk that way again about your father."

Juvenile detention could cure children who refused to visit their fathers, Gardner said. But the main remedy he advanced in severe cases was "the removal of the children from the mother's home and placement in the home of the father, the allegedly-hated parent." This would break what he called a "sick psychological bond."

After introducing his theory, Gardner began using it in expert testimony and promoting it to other evaluators and fathers'-rights activists. By the early 2000s, family-court judges were regularly citing parental alienation.

To address this, Meier said, she undertook a series of academic articles examining the scholarship on parental alienation. She found that the theory was based on circular reasoning and anchored almost entirely in anecdotal data.

"I still believed in that day that if you did careful, thoughtful analytic scholarship, people would read it and be persuaded by it," she said.

The scarlet 'A'

Jill Montes had always wanted a big family. In 2008, she already had a 5-year-old daughter, Paige, with a man she'd divorced, and she was finding regular work as an actor in Los Angeles. She decided to adopt an infant son, Robert.

The next year, she met Thomas Winenger, who had master's degrees in engineering and business, on eHarmony. "He wanted to talk a lot about faith and God, and that wooed me," she said. She also welcomed his interest in Robert, whom she was insecure about raising alone.

In 2011, the couple married and settled near San Diego, and Montes quit acting. Soon, she later said in a court filing, Winenger was shoving, insulting, and threatening her, often in front of the kids. He promised to change, and she hoped he could. In 2012, their first child, Claire, was born, and Eden followed in 2015. Insider is identifying Montes' children by only their middle names.

Later that year, Montes accused Winenger of dragging Paige across a room. Montes sought a restraining order, which was ultimately denied, and kicked him out. He rented a room in a house nearby, where he regularly hosted the three younger kids. Sometimes, Robert went there by himself.

Montes filed for divorce in February 2018. Under an informal agreement, the kids continued spending time at Winenger's place. But at a hearing that fall, a 10-year-old Robert testified that during an argument over his math homework, Winenger had repeatedly grabbed, shoved, and spanked him.

Montes filed a petition for a domestic-violence restraining order, which Winenger fought, saying he hadn't mistreated Robert. In the end, Ratekin, the judge presiding over the divorce, signed a "stay away" order prohibiting Winenger from contact with Robert. But it didn't address the allegation of violence. Weeks later, Winenger asked Ratekin to name him Robert's legal father, arguing that he'd helped raise the boy from toddlerhood. Ratekin ruled in his favor and ordered the custody evaluation.

In court papers he filed on July 19, 2019, the day after the evaluator was appointed, Winenger accused Montes of parental alienation.

Often, according to Meier, the dynamic of a custody case shifts radically once alienation is raised. "It's like the table turns 180 degrees and now the only bad parent in the room is the alleged alienator," she said. An abuse allegation "fades out of view," she said, and any attempts by the mother to limit the father's access are seen as suspicious. It's almost as if, like Hester Prynne in "The Scarlet Letter," she's been branded with a flaming red "A," Meier said.

Indeed, Montes soon lost ground in court.

In January 2020, Ratekin ordered Robert into the care of a therapist, Mitra Sarkhosh, who has since provided aftercare for at least one reunification program. Sarkhosh saw Robert and his father together about 20 times, charging $200 an hour. But by summer, she had halted the sessions, saying Robert's anger was "not improving."

In a report filed in court, Sarkhosh appeared to blame Montes. Living with her, Robert was "saturated with negativity about his father," she wrote. There may be a need for "new interventions." (Citing patient-confidentiality laws, Sarkhosh declined an interview request.)

Robert was relieved to be finished with Sarkhosh, Montes said. He started seeing a new therapist, and, during the first session, he told the therapist he'd been sexually abused.

On November 18, 2020, at the direction of the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, Robert called Winenger to try to elicit a confession. When that failed, the department paused its investigation, but the child welfare inquiry proceeded. On December 1, the California Health and Welfare Agency issued a report substantiating Robert's claims.

"The Agency is worried that if given the opportunity, Tom Winenger will sexually abuse [Robert] again," the report says.

Neither Winenger nor his divorce attorney, Tamatha Clemens, responded to requests for interviews or to a list of detailed questions. In a motion for custody he filed on December 8, 2020, Winenger argued that Robert's allegations had been "orchestrated" by Montes and that her alienation "will not stop until she is restrained by the court."

The welfare agency sent Ratekin its report on January 4, 2021, according to a cover sheet reviewed by Insider. But Ratekin was still awaiting the custody evaluation, which she'd assigned to a psychologist, Miguel Alvarez. In 2009, Alvarez coauthored a handbook for parents in custody disputes. While the manual spells out in detail how to prove an alienation claim, it offers no specific guidance on how to prove a claim of abuse.

According to the report, part of which Insider reviewed at a San Diego County courthouse, a personality test Alvarez administered suggested that Montes suffered from "extreme hyper-vigilance" and "persecutory fears." People with these traits, Alvarez wrote, "are often quick to anger and overreact to perceived or imagined threats."

Winenger's scores on the same test were "normal," Alvarez wrote, and his performance on psychosexual and polygraph tests was "inconsistent" with Robert's allegations of sexual abuse.

The 136-page evaluation cost Robert's parents more than $90,000, according to bills reviewed by Insider. Alvarez didn't respond to requests for comment.

Ratekin reviewed the evaluation just before the October 28, 2021 hearing. Alvarez's findings were "exactly" what she'd expected, she said. In her view, the situation called for immediate action.

She put Claire, 8, and Eden, 6, in their father's custody that day, and she sent Robert, 13, to stay with his football coach. That was for Winenger's protection, she said. Until Robert was "detoxified," she said, he'd be prone to false claims of abuse.

Ratekin suggested Family Bridges as a solution. She'd had "really good success" with the program in another case, she said, and she thought it would ease Robert's transition. Without it, the boy wouldn't "get better," she said, and his sisters stood to benefit, too.

Winenger agreed. Under an order Ratekin signed on January 3, 2022, the children would attend a Family Bridges workshop with their father from January 11 to 14 and then return to his home. Montes was barred from contact with the children for at least 90 more days. Ratekin also prohibited the children from communicating with their older sister, their maternal grandmother, and anyone else who might "interfere" with their healing.

Contact would resume at Ratekin's discretion, depending upon how well everyone was cooperating.

Insider and Type reviewed 35 cases from the past two decades in which judges removed children from their preferred parent and sent them to a reunification program. In most of these cases, the children had resisted court-ordered visits with their fathers, and judges had held mothers responsible. Many of the judges framed the no-contact period as salutary: Children would be freed from the overbearing influence of their mothers, and their mothers would be motivated to change.

A case from New Castle County, Delaware is typical.

In 2016, Judge Janell Ostroski transferred two brothers to their father's custody and ordered them into treatment at Turning Points for Families, a program in upstate New York run by a social worker, Linda Gottlieb. Both boys had told Ostroski that their father, Michael D., yelled at them frequently, court records show, though neither had alleged physical abuse. The 9-year-old, O., told Ostroski he felt unsafe at his dad's house. Ashton, 14, was refusing to go there. Insider is not using the family's full last name in order to protect O.'s identity.

Michael had pleaded guilty several years earlier to public intoxication and indecent exposure for an incident in a public park with Ashton. A court-ordered psychological evaluation found that he had alcohol dependence and narcissistic personality disorder "with antisocial features." In 2013, the state's child welfare agency found that he'd emotionally abused Ashton, then 10 years old. The report, including any denials Michael presented, is sealed. This history was all cited in court three years later, in a custody dispute between Michael and his ex-wife, Kelly D.

During that dispute, Michael accused Kelly of alienation, and a custody evaluator backed him up. The evaluator, a psychologist, determined that Michael had become "a more positively functional person" and that Kelly, a preschool teacher, was the problematic parent. Kelly "distorts the reality of events" and "conveys to others an inaccurate and menacing perception of Mr. [D.]," the psychologist wrote in a May 2016 report. (Michael did not respond to detailed requests for comment. Neither did the psychologist.)

In written rulings that barred Kelly from contact with both children, Ostroski said the boys were "well cared for" in Kelly's home but blamed her for Ashton's refusal to see Michael. "Mother has done nothing in the past year to promote the Father/son relationship," Ostroski wrote, adding, "the court is hopeful that, with the appropriate interventions, Mother can recognize her role in helping the children have a healthy relationship with their Father."

Insider and Type sent questions about parental alienation and its remedies to Ostroski, Ratekin, and 19 other judges who've ordered the programs. Only Ratekin responded, and she declined to speak about the Winenger case because it is still pending. Nor would she answer general questions. "I am definitely not an expert in this area," she wrote, "nor do I feel qualified to answer questions about the issue or programs." 

'A moratorium on the past'

In her January 2022 ruling, Ratekin authorized Winenger to hire a transport company to drive Robert and his sisters to the Family Bridges workshop, which would take place at a hotel a few hours outside San Diego. There, the children and Winenger met Randy Rand, who founded Family Bridges in the early 2000s, and a woman the children knew only as "Chris."

In 2009, Rand deactivated his psychology license after the California Board of Psychology found he'd committed professional violations including "dishonesty," "repeated negligent acts," and "gross negligence." Since then, he's accompanied at workshops by at least one other clinician. Rand isn't the only alienation expert to face sanctions from a state licensing board. Two other psychologists who've led Family Bridges workshops, Jane Shatz of California and Joann Murphey of Texas, have been sanctioned — Shatz after an allegation of negligence and Murphey after a finding that she failed to respond promptly to a subpoena. Both Alvarez, the custody evaluator in Robert's case, and Steinberg, who runs the program where a judge sent the girl in the viral TikTok, have been cited by California regulators for improper recordkeeping. Steinberg said her citation was the result of a series of meritless complaints by an "alienating parent."

Family Bridges workshops are held at hotels around the country and tend to cost parents more than $25,000, receipts show. In 2016, for example, one family from Seattle paid more than $27,000 to Family Bridges and another $3,500 to spend three nights at a Sheraton in Southern California. Since the children had opposed the intervention, a company was hired to transport them for an additional $8,300.

Once they arrive at Family Bridges, children quickly learn the rules, program documents show, including a policy called "a moratorium on the past." As Murphey, the Texas psychologist, testified in 2018, "There's no talking about 'You did this back when.'" Instead, she explained, "this is a new family, this is a new paradigm, we are starting off in a healthy way."

Ally Toyos was a 16-year-old in Kansas when she was taken from her mother five years ago. In an interview, she said she and her then 14-year-old sister tried defying the Family Bridges moratorium, telling Rand and his colleagues that their dad had abused them. (Toyos' mother said a court order prevented her from speaking with the press; Toyos' father didn't reply to interview requests.) Threats ensued, Toyos said. The girls were told that if they didn't comply, they could be separated, sent to wilderness camps, committed to psychiatric facilities, and cut off from their mom for the rest of their childhoods, according to Toyos.

Much of the Family Bridges workshop involves watching and discussing videos, program documents show. One of them, "Welcome Back, Pluto," tells the fictional story of a petulant teen who scorns her father. "If you're alienated, like Emily, you might get mad when others don't take your complaints seriously," a female narrator says. In time, however, Emily "learned to see things more clearly." She realized her complaints were "exaggerated," the narrator explains, and "sounded just like her mother's."

According to the video, which was scripted by Richard Warshak, a psychologist who helped develop Family Bridges, some children who steadfastly reject a parent "suffer for the rest of their lives."

Other materials warn children against trusting their memories. Toyos, whose workshop took place at the C'mon Inn in Bozeman, Montana, said she was shown a 2013 TED Talk by Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist who developed the idea that memory is malleable and who has served as a defense witness in high-profile trials, including Harvey Weinstein's. Memories are often contaminated by outside influences, Loftus warns in the talk, which leads to false accusations that can ruin lives.

Insider and Type spoke with or reviewed statements by 17 youths ordered into Family Bridges, Turning Points, or other reunification programs. Their accounts of the workshops were broadly similar. Hannah Rodriguez, then a 16-year-old living in Tampa, Florida, said her workshop, in 2016, was held at Linda Gottlieb's home in New York's Hudson Valley. Gottlieb, the author of a book on parental alienation syndrome, had founded Turning Points about two years earlier. Rodriguez said Gottlieb's office was right off the living room, where her husband spent his time in a recliner. Every day, Rodriguez could see him and hear his TV shows, she said.

Rodriguez, Toyos, and several other former participants said the workshops plunged them into depression.

In spring 2022, one 13-year-old girl got so distressed during a session with Gottlieb at a hotel that she banged on a wall and screamed for help, court papers show. Someone called the police, who brought her to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. "I just want my mom," the girl said, according to hospital records, but under the court order she couldn't call her. She was held at the hospital for three days.

In a written statement that Montes said he later dictated to her, Robert said he became suicidal. "The only thing that stopped me from throwing myself off the balcony was the 24/7 surveillance," the statement reads. "I never thought so many people would be that horrible, controlling, and manipulative towards little kids."

At the end of the workshop, Robert went home with Winenger and had "horrible, weird depressive anxiety episodes," according to the statement. In early February, he was admitted to the psychiatric ward of a children's hospital, according to court records.

Repeated emails to Rand were met with an auto-response saying he was "on sabbatical." The psychologist managing Family Bridges in his absence, Yvonne Parnell, declined interview requests, as did Gottlieb. Gottlieb forwarded Insider's queries to a lawyer, Brian Ludmer, but Ludmer said he couldn't speak for her. Neither Parnell nor Gottlieb replied to detailed written questions.

Lynn Steinberg said her program One Family at a Time, based in Los Angeles, has treated some 50 families over the past eight years. A family therapist, she's the author of "You're Not Crazy: Overcoming Parent/Child Alienation." She was the only program director who agreed to talk.

She said she begins each workshop by listening to the children and taking down every accusation they make; she then works to achieve "an agreement between parent and child." After those conversations, she said, the children are dramatically transformed. They apologize and cry, she said; they kiss and embrace the parent they'd rejected, even sitting in the parent's lap. They're eager to make up for lost time, she said, and can't wait to see long-lost kin.

Daniel Barrozo, of Chino, California, said Steinberg's workshop was a "tremendous help" to him and his daughter in 2021. Steinberg successfully challenged his daughter's misperceptions about him, he said. When Steinberg asked her what he'd done wrong and what she hated about him, his daughter simply looked down and cried, he said. "The whole time, she had nothing to say, because Mom was the one speaking for her," he said. Now, he said, his relationship with his daughter is stronger than ever.

Steinberg said her own mother alienated her from her father, a realization she reached only after his death. She called her ex-husband an alienator, too, saying her adult daughters reject her to this day. She regrets that they didn't get help from a program like hers.

Left untreated, alienated children "fail at relationships" and risk developing eating disorders, drug addiction, depression, gender dysphoria, and other ills, Steinberg said, citing her clinical experience.

But an increasing number of scholars are criticizing the programs. Jean Mercer, an emeritus professor of psychology at Stockton University, is the author of recent papers on parental alienation. One examined six reunification programs, including Family Bridges and Turning Points, and found that the research evidence supporting the effectiveness of the programs "has few strengths and many weaknesses." For another paper, Mercer reviewed the scholarship on the programs and statements from five youths who'd attended them. She found that the programs "may contain elements of psychological abuse."

Another study, by Michael Saini of the University of Toronto, examined 58 empirical papers on alienation and its treatments and found the body of research "methodologically weak." While some divorcing parents exhibited "alienating behaviors" and some children rejected a parent, the nexus between those phenomena hadn't been proved, Saini found. Moreover, he found the studies hadn't shown that interventions worked.

Following the workshop, the programs commonly assign children to a specially trained aftercare therapist. Meanwhile, the exiled parent undergoes reeducation.

Insider obtained audio of a call last year between Gottlieb and the mother of a 14-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy in Turning Points. "I think what you did is criminal," says Gottlieb, who, like Steinberg, has publicly stated that her own mother alienated her from her father. There was "no reason" the children shouldn't have a relationship with their father, Gottlieb says in the recording, and "you have failed miserably to require it."

"That's alienation," she says. "That is what you are guilty of, and it's child abuse." For the children's sake, the woman must "make amends," Gottlieb says. Otherwise, "I will recommend extending the no-contact period until they're 18."

Insider and Type interviewed 12 mothers whose children were sent to Turning Points, many of whom said Gottlieb rebuked them over the phone and in emails. Most said they were required to write letters to the kids praising their fathers and submit them to Gottlieb for approval.

In early November 2016, Gottlieb told Kelly D. — Ashton and O.'s mother — that her letters contained superfluous details and secret messages and needed to be redone. In the end, Kelly submitted several drafts for each of her sons, all of which Gottlieb rejected.

"She sets a bar," Kelly said. "You try to reach the bar. She sets the bar higher."

Judge Ostroski had ordered Kelly to find a therapist "acceptable to Ms. Gottlieb" who would help her support Michael's relationship with the children. From a list provided by the Delaware Family Court, Kelly chose a psychologist, William Northey. But Gottlieb warned in an email, "I cannot approve him before I speak with him about his specialized knowledge of alienation."

The conversation went poorly. Gottlieb considered Northey unacceptable, she later testified, and Northey found fault with Gottlieb, too. He sent her a letter, reviewed by Insider, criticizing her for calling Kelly a "sociopath" and for using the phrase "parental alienation syndrome," which, he wrote, "is not a recognized diagnostic term."

Meanwhile, Gottlieb was making demands of Ashton and O. Shortly after they returned from New York, according to an email to both parents obtained by Insider, Gottlieb determined that they needed to transfer schools immediately, as their current schools had "actively undermined" their relationship with their dad.

She sought custody of O., too. But in September 2020, Ostroski found that Kelly still hadn't been properly treated for her alienating tendencies and denied her petition.

For now, even visits were too risky, Ostroski concluded.

"Ashton's behavior of running away from Father and refusing to now see Father supports Gottlieb's prediction that, if the children are returned to Mother before she addresses her alienating behavior, they will revert to their prior behaviors when they were refusing to see Father and all of the work that has been done over the past 4 years will be wasted," Ostroski wrote in the ruling.

'Junk science'

In June 2010, more than a thousand mental-health practitioners, lawyers, and judges gathered at the Sheraton in downtown Denver for the annual conference of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, which unites players in the child-custody field from around the world. The theme that year was "Traversing the Trail of Alienation," and over four days the condition was discussed in more than 30 sessions. Participants could learn how to spot an alienating parent, when it was best to defy a child's wishes, and what might help an alienated child heal.

The event signified a remarkable embrace of an idea whose author had been consumed by scandal and tragedy just a short time earlier.

In the late 1990s, critics of Gardner's dealt a powerful blow to his credibility by unearthing writings in which he'd defended pedophilia.

"Sexual activities between an adult and a child are an ancient tradition," he wrote in a 1992 book.

As a product of Western culture, he viewed pedophilia as reprehensible, he wrote, but it may not be "psychologically detrimental" in other cultures. The following year, in a journal article, Gardner argued that from an evolutionary standpoint, children benefited from being "drawn into sexual encounters," since these experiences steered them toward early reproduction. "The Draconian punishments meted out to pedophilics go far beyond what I consider to be the gravity of the crime," he wrote in 1991 in "Sex Abuse Hysteria: Salem Witch Trials Revisited."

In May 2003, at age 72, Gardner dosed himself with painkillers and stabbed himself to death. His son told reporters he was driven to suicide by chronic pain that had recently worsened.

In the assessments of his life that followed, Gardner's work was lambasted by prominent psychiatrists, including Dr. Paul Fink, a past president of the American Psychiatric Association. "This is junk science," Fink told Newsday in July 2003. "He invented a concept and talked about it as if it were proven science. It's not."

The theory could have died with Gardner. Instead, it gained ground.

In 2001, Richard Warshak, a clinical professor of psychology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, published "Divorce Poison: Protecting the Parent/Child Bond From a Vindictive Ex." The book, released by HarperCollins, brought parental alienation theory to a wider audience — and made it more palatable. Unlike Gardner, Warshak spoke of alienation in gender-neutral terms, saying many fathers were programmers, too, and he likened the no-contact period between children and their preferred parent to study abroad.

Warshak started leading workshops for Family Bridges around 2005 and eventually became its unofficial spokesman, a role in which he excelled. In 2010, he appeared in "Welcome Back, Pluto" and published an influential article about Family Bridges in the AFCC journal.

In that study, Warshak reported on outcomes for the 23 children he'd worked with in the program so far. During the four-day workshop, 22 of them recovered a "positive relationship" with their rejected parent, he observed, including recalcitrant teens.

After the workshop, however, four children regressed, Warshak wrote, following what he called "premature" contact with their preferred parent. The program worked best, he said, when this contact was blocked "for an extended period of time." Warshak didn't respond to interview requests.

Meanwhile, another Gardner successor, Dr. William Bernet, a professor of psychiatry at Vanderbilt University, was working to push alienation theory forward. He submitted a proposal to the American Psychiatric Association to include "parental alienation disorder" in the next version of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, and authored a scholarly article making the case for inclusion. He submitted a similar application to the World Health Organization, which was revising its International Classification of Diseases.

Bernet declined a request for an interview. But in a 2010 book, he wrote that since alienation scholarship had advanced in the wake of Gardner's death, "there is no need now to dwell on the details of what Richard Gardner did or said or wrote."

At the AFCC's conference in Denver in June 2010, Warshak was given a platform to discuss his Family Bridges paper, as was Bernet, to describe his DSM bid. Other presenters staked out a more moderate stance, arguing that while alienation was a pervasive problem, there was insufficient research to support construing it as a mental illness or ordering extreme interventions.

A few alienation opponents presented, including Joan Meier. But she said she flew home to Washington in tears.

"Everywhere I turned, alienation was the coin of the realm," she said.

She set out to design a study that would document how women who alleged abuse were treated in family courts nationwide — especially when alienation was raised. The Justice Department supported the project with a grant of $500,000.

In 2013, the new edition of the DSM was released with no mention of parental alienation. And in 2020, the World Health Organization ruled that parental alienation was "not a health care term" and lacked "evidence-based" treatments.

Bernet and his colleagues simply regrouped. In court, they started calling alienation a "dynamic" or a "phenomenon" rather than an illness, which appeared to satisfy some judges. And Bernet incorporated the nonprofit Parental Alienation Study Group, a coalition of parents, lawyers, and therapists who collaborated on cases and research. Rand, Gottlieb, and Steinberg joined, along with hundreds of other mental-health practitioners involved in custody work. Many, like Steinberg and Gottlieb, claimed to have experienced alienation themselves.

Meier assembled her own research team, comprising a statistician, three social scientists, and two assistants, to conduct her large-scale study. In January 2020, just weeks before the WHO decision, the results were published in the Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law.

The stark findings shocked even her.

Most trial-court rulings in custody cases are unpublished, but Meier's team identified 15,000 rulings involving abuse or alienation that were published electronically from 2005 to 2014. After winnowing that dataset to cases in which the only parties were two warring parents — not, for example, a child welfare agency — the team was left with 4,300 rulings. There were nearly 2,200 cases in which a mother had accused her ex of spousal or child abuse, and in 10% of these, the father had fought back with an alienation claim.

In general, judges were hesitant to credit mothers' abuse claims. When alienation wasn't raised, judges credited these claims 41% of the time, Meier found, and 26% of the time, mothers lost primary custody.

For the 222 mothers whose spouses accused them of alienation, the picture was even grimmer. Women who alleged abuse and whose husbands accused them of alienation lost custody half the time — twice as often as women who weren't accused of alienation.

To Meier, one of the study's most staggering findings was how rarely mothers branded with the scarlet "A" were believed. In cases where mothers alleged child physical abuse and fathers cross-claimed alienation, judges credited mothers a mere 18% of the time, she found. And in the 51 cases where mothers alleged child sexual abuse and fathers claimed alienation, all but one mother was disbelieved.

For a father accused of child molestation, Meier concluded, "alienation is a complete trump card."

'The whole world is watching'

In January 2022, three months after losing her children, Montes chanced upon a sickening discovery.

In a cloud storage account she'd once shared with Winenger, she said, she found thousands of his photos and videos, including explicit images of their three shared children. She loaded them onto a thumb drive for the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, whose investigation into Winenger had never closed.

Within days, Winenger was arrested. He was soon charged with 19 felonies, including possession of child pornography and 14 counts of committing forcible lewd acts against a child, Robert.

He pleaded not guilty and was released on bail, his access to the children suspended. Because of the no-contact order he'd previously obtained against Montes, the children landed in a county shelter. Winenger's defense attorney, Patrick Clancy, declined to comment on Winenger's behalf, saying he doesn't try his cases in the press.

Suddenly, the custody dispute was transferred to juvenile dependency court, which meant Ratekin was no longer presiding. The new judge ordered the kids into their mother's care while the case was pending. On February 18, they came home.

At first, Montes said, the two youngest children were so scared of being taken again that they couldn't sleep in their rooms. She set up a big mattress on her bedroom floor.

Meanwhile, Joan Meier was using her research to make inroads with policymakers.

She'd worked with colleagues to draft a federal law that would incentivize states to protect children from abusers during custody disputes. They named the bill Kayden's Law, after a girl in Pennsylvania whose father murdered her during a court-ordered visit. During negotiations over reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, the child's congressional representative, Brian Fitzpatrick, got Kayden's Law in.

The legislation, signed into law on March 15, 2022, sets aside up to $5 million a year for grants to states if, among other measures, they mandate training for custody judges on abuse and trauma and prohibit them from ordering treatments that cut children off from a parent to whom they are attached. If enough states comply, the law could spell the end of the reunification programs.

Last summer, California was the first state to consider such a bill. It was introduced by state Sen. Susan Rubio of Los Angeles County, a survivor of domestic violence herself, after she heard from mothers who'd been accused of alienation and children who'd been sent to reunification programs.

Rubio's bill set off a battle that has since spread to statehouses around the country. Steinberg, the alienation therapist from Los Angeles, was a vocal opponent, arguing that men would be rendered powerless against false accusations. She was joined by fathers' rights groups and by the Parental Alienation Study Group, which was simultaneously pushing hard to discredit Meier's study. (Two prominent members of the group authored a studyconcluding that her findings could not be replicated, which Meier then rebutted.) After Rubio's bill passed the assembly unanimously last August, she was forced to withdraw it in the face of intense opposition from state judges over the training mandate.

Then, last October, the momentum shifted. That's when Maya, the 15-year-old from Santa Cruz, told a custody judge that her mother had abused her and her brother. The judge, Rebecca Connolly, didn't believe her and ordered the children into Steinberg's program, cutting off contact with their father. The graphic video of the children being seized on October 20 was quickly viewed millions of times.

In response to an interview request, an officer of the Santa Cruz County Superior Court said Connolly could not speak about pending cases. Maya's mother has denied the abuse claims in court. Her lawyer, Heidi Simonson, declined an interview, citing court orders pertaining to "privacy and confidentiality."

On the heels of the viral video, a coalition of activists — many of them mothers accused of alienation — organized protests around the country. The first took place October 28 outside the courthouse where Maya had just testified. Standing on concrete risers and facing the building, a pack of Maya's friends demanded her return. "The whole world is watching!" they shouted. Protests also erupted in Michigan, Kansas, and Utah.

Rubio introduced a new bill, with modified judicial training requirements, in February. A similar bill passed both chambers of the Colorado legislature in April. One in Montana died in committee; its sponsor, Sen. Theresa Manzella, said she was up against a "deliberate distribution of misinformation" by opponents, including attorneys who use parental alienation as a legal tactic.

Montes said she's "cautiously optimistic" about Winenger's criminal trial, set to begin in June, and she hopes for an imminent victory in her custody case. Five years of legal bills have left her in debt and on food stamps, she said, but she considers herself lucky all the same. Almost every day, she talks to mothers who remain severed from their children.

Mothers like Kelly D., whose children were sent to Linda Gottlieb's reunification program in New York.

Kelly last saw her younger son, O., early on a Monday morning. It was a warm, sunny day, and she dropped him off at his best friend's house so they could shoot baskets before school. She hugged him, told him she loved him, and said she'd pick him up in the afternoon. Then she drove to court for a hearing.

That was six years, six months, and 24 days ago.

The reporting for this story is part of a forthcoming documentary from Insider, Retro Report, and Type Investigations.

If you are experiencing domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence hotline at 1-800-799-7233.

Read the original article on Insider

[rarepears]

For the Wei Wuxian becomes Shen Jiu’s shizun idea, I bet there was a point where Shen Jiu, seeing how easily his new teacher rose the dead and beating about Wen Ning, said “Teach me to do it so I can reunite with my Qi-ge.”

Wei Wuxian: Huh? Oh yeah sure let me make some inquiries-Uh, ya sure he’s dead?

Which leads to the pair tracking Yue Qingyuan down and Shen Jiu ripping his ass a new one for leaving him instead of the canon way of murder and chance reunion. Yue Qingyuan is immediately chugging vinegar seeing how close his Xiao Jiu is with this rogue cultivator who’s all awkward smiles and laughter.

And shut will hit the fan when Wei Wuxian keels over when his soul is yoinked into Mo Xuanyu’s body and Shen Qingqiu is going to storm into the Great Abyss to steal a world ripping sword, he’s getting his shizun back damnit!

To be more accurate, Wei Wuxian isn't going to say "you sure he's dead". Instead, he's going to bring his cute student grave robbing because they need a dead body.

Well, if you want to be more technical, Wei Wuxian is still going to need Yue Qi's soul or it will just be a dead body obeying commands, not anything like Wen Ning who has independent thought and emotions.

Wei Wuxian does want to help Shen Jiu ensure that Yue Qi's spirit is at peace however! No resentful Yue Qi ghost hanging around please!

[#if wei wuxian was shen jiu's demonic cultivator teacher au]

[soon-palestine]

JVL Introduction

The Presidents of three leading US universities were falsely accused of condoning anti-Semitism on their campuses in a highly partisan ambush in front of US congressional hearing in December. Now the Columbia President, Minouche Shafik, is being summoned and 23 of her Jewish faculty are urging her not to give in to attempts to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism and to defend academic freedom at her campus.

They strongly contest assertions that antisemitism is rife at Columbia. They accept that many students are unsettled by the intensity of debate around the Gaza catastrophe but being uncomfortable is far from being discriminated against or threatened.

They deplore the recent actions of the University’s management to use disciplinary processes to clamp down on protest and see this as an abandonment of Columbia’s record of confronting smears and slanders levelled against staff and students and committing to free inquiry and robust disagreement.

MC

This article was originally published by Columbia Spectator on Wed 10 Apr 2024. Read the original here. Jewish faculty reject the weaponization of antisemitism

by 23 Columbia and Barnard faculty, Columbia Spectator

Dear President Shafik,

We write as Jewish faculty of Columbia and Barnard in anticipation of your appearance before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on April 17, where you are expected to answer questions about antisemitism on campus. Based on the committee’s previous hearings, we are gravely concerned about the false narratives that frame these proceedings to entrap witnesses. We urge you, as the University president, to defend our shared commitment to universities as sites of learning, critical thinking, and knowledge production against this new McCarthyism.

Rather than being concerned with the safety and well-being of Jewish students on campuses, the committee is leveraging antisemitism in a wider effort to caricature and demonize universities as hotbeds of “woke indoctrination.” Its opportunistic use of antisemitism in a moment of crisis is expanding and strengthening longstanding efforts to undermine educational institutions. After launching attacks on public universities from Florida to South Dakota, this campaign has opened a new front against private institutions.

The prospect of Rep. Elise Stefanik, a member of congress with a history of espousing white nationalist politics, calling university presidents to account for alleged antisemitism on their campuses reveals these proceedings as disingenuous political theater.

In the face of these coordinated attacks on higher education, universities must insist on their freedom to research and teach inconvenient truths. This includes historical injustices and the contemporary structures that perpetuate them, regardless of whether these facts are politically inexpedient for certain interest groups.

To be sure, antisemitism is a grave concern that should be scrutinized alongside racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and all other forms of hate. These hateful ideologies exist everywhere and we would be ignorant to believe that they don’t exist at Columbia. When antisemitism rears its head, it should be swiftly denounced, and its perpetrators held to account. However, it is absurd to claim that antisemitism—“discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews,” according to the Jerusalem Declaration’s definition—is rampant on Columbia’s campus. To argue that taking a stand against Israel’s war on Gaza is antisemitic is to pervert the meaning of the term.

Labeling pro-Palestinian expression as anti-Jewish hate speech requires a dangerous and false conflation of Zionism with Jewishness, of political ideology with identity. This conflation betrays a woefully inaccurate understanding—and disingenuous misrepresentation—of Jewish history, identity, and politics. It erases more than a century of debates among Jews themselves about the nature of a Jewish homeland in the biblical Land of Israel, including Israel’s status as a Jewish nation-state. It dismisses the experiences of the post-Zionist, non-Zionist, and anti-Zionist Jews who work, study, and live on our campus.

The political passions that arise from conflict in the Middle East may deeply unsettle students, faculty, and staff with opposing views. But feeling uncomfortable is not the same thing as being threatened or discriminated against. Free expression, which is fundamental to both academic inquiry and democracy, necessarily entails exposure to views that may be deeply disconcerting. We can support students who feel real and valid discomfort toward protests advocating for Palestinian liberation while also stating clearly and firmly that this discomfort is not an issue of safety.

As faculty, we dedicate ourselves and our classrooms to keeping every student safe from real harm, harassment, and discrimination. We commit to helping them learn to experience discomfort and even confrontation as part of the process of skill and knowledge acquisition—and to help them realize that ideas we oppose can be contested without being suppressed.

By exacting discipline, inviting police presence, and broadly surveilling its students for minor offenses, the University is betraying its educational mission. It has pursued drastic measures against students, including disciplinary proceedings and probation, for infractions like allegedly attending an unauthorized protest, or moving barricades to drape a flag on a statue. Real harassment and physical intimidation and violence on campus must be confronted seriously and its perpetrators held accountable. At the same time, the University should refrain whenever possible from using discipline and surveillance as means of addressing less serious harms, and should never use punitive measures to address conflicts over ideas and the feelings of discomfort that result. Where the University once embraced and defended students’ political expression, it now suppresses and disciplines it.

The University’s recent policies represent a dramatic change from historical practice, and the consequences are ruinous to our community and its principles. In the past, Columbia has periodically confronted attacks against pro-Palestinian speech, ranging from the vile slanders against Professor Edward Said to the reckless accusations from the David Project. But where for decades the University stood firm against smear campaigns targeting its professors, it has now voluntarily accepted the job of censoring its faculty in and outside the classroom.

Columbia’s commitment to free inquiry and robust disagreement is what makes it a world-class institution. Limiting academic freedom when it comes to questions of Israel and Palestine paves the way for limitations on other contested topics, from climate science to the history of slavery. What’s more, students must have the freedom to dissent, to make mistakes, to offend without intent, and to learn to repair harm done if necessary. Free expression is not only crucial to student development and education outside the classroom; the tradition of student protest has also played a vital role in American democracy. Columbia should be proud of having participated in nationwide student organizing that helped secure civil rights and reproductive rights and helped bring an end to the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa.

We express our support for the University and for higher education against the attacks likely to be leveled against them at the upcoming congressional hearing. We object to the weaponization of antisemitism. And we advocate for a campus where all students, Jewish, Palestinian, and all others, can learn and thrive in a climate of open, honest inquiry and rigorous debate.

Many members of our University community share our perspective, but they have not yet been heard. Columbia students, staff, alumni, and faculty can sign here to show your support for this letter’s message.

Sincerely,Debbie Becher, Barnard College Helen Benedict, Columbia Journalism School Susan Bernofsky, School of the Arts Elizabeth Bernstein, Barnard College Nina Berman, Columbia Journalism School Amy Chazkel, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Yinon Cohen, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Nora Gross, Barnard College Keith Gessen, Columbia Journalism School Jack Halberstam, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Sarah Haley, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Michael Harris, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Jennifer S. Hirsch, Mailman School of Public Health Marianne Hirsch, Faculty of Arts & Sciences (Emerita) Joseph A. Howley, Faculty of Arts & Sciences David Lurie, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Nara Milanich, Barnard College D. Max Moerman, Barnard College Manijeh Moradian, Barnard College Sheldon Pollock, Faculty of Arts & Sciences (Emeritus) Bruce Robbins, Faculty of Arts & Sciences James Schamus, School of the Arts Alisa Solomon, Columbia Journalism School

The 23 authors of this letter are Jewish faculty members of Barnard College and Columbia University. This letter derives from a much longer one by these same 23 faculty sent to President Shafik on April 5.

[spikezonebby]

Hi again, sorry i mess it i hope it is right now ^^, a request for song fics could you with tfp optimus prime with the song Shawn Mendes, Camila Cabello - Señorita with a fem!human!reader, genre to Romance?

Senorita - TFP!Optimus Prime/Fem!Human!Reader

Word count: 1,672

Your first meeting had actually been entirely an accident. Optimus knew some humans had an affinity for vehicles, and you were one of them. Even a Prime can only take so much fawning over his grill, rims, or decals before he gets flustered and ends up blowing his cover.

That set the tone pretty well for how your entire relationship with Optimus was going to go. The other Autobots treated their leader with all the grace and dignity deserved of a Prime, but you never let the great title dictate how you treated Optimus. You weren’t ever afraid to speak your mind or ask questions. You questioned his commands, not to undermine him but to genuinely understand and clarify. 

You seemed to find everything Optimus said fascinating, and when he’d watch you he could see the inner gears of your mind chugging along. Picking apart his words and always seeming to know exactly what was on his mind, even when he himself wasn’t entirely sure. You were the probing sort, someone Ratchet often found meddlesome and too-like Miko, but there was a grace to your inquiries. 

Optimus was, perhaps, somewhat shy to admit that he liked it when you asked about his past. Especially when you would ask about the moments that weren’t so great or grave, like his walk home in the evenings from the Hall of Records or his favorite small pleasures. There was something warm, familiar, even humbling to the idea that your two lives weren’t too different.

You used to work at a bookstore and did its inventory, spending hours organizing piles upon piles of books. He would spend cycles listening and sorting through videos and audio files to archive them in their appropriate places. You’d stop on your way home and get a donut and coffee. He’d occasionally indulge and get himself a slice of chrome-alloy cake.

Optimus did not consider himself a poet, nor any other kind of lyrical savant, but he would describe the closeness he felt to you as… magnetic. He found his gaze drawn to you in the room, your laugh made his spark skip in his chassis, and even the persistent hum of the matrix seemed more at ease around you. 

He wondered if, maybe, you knew what you did to him. It certainly seemed like you knew when you’d come close to him and lay on the lower portion of his chassis, just beneath his windshield. It seemed like you knee when you’d find a quiet moment to rest with him in his seldom-used quarters, your whole tiny body level with his face. For someone who could fit in the palm of his servo, you liked to make your physical presence known and tangible. 

He couldn’t say he minded. In fact, that was a thing that brought quite a bit of distress to the poor Prime’s mind in the moments that should be peaceful. The longer he knew you, the more enthralling the pull became. He found himself wondering if you’d hate it if he curled his servo around you, cupping you between his digits like a treasure. He thinks about the scent of your skin and the warmth of your body, should you finally close the distance between them.

You were human. You were fragile. Leaders weren’t built to have fragile things, but protect them regardless.

But he still wanted you. Enough to forgo the logical sense he had to distance himself and instead, let you keep invading his space and his mind. He couldn’t bring himself to stop this.

Not when you invited yourself into his quarters, shimmied your way up to the space on his berth right beside his neck cables and jaw, and built your own little nest of blankets and pillows there. Not when you had so much faith in him, and talked to him about all of the soft things he thought they’d killed in this war.

“That’s Neocybex, right?” You ask, snuggled up beside his audial as he laid on his back, both of you looking on up at the data pad he had in his servos. He pauses in his scrolling through, balancing the stylus in his grip as he tilts the data pad further for you to read.

“Some of it is. Other parts, like here,” He scrolls down, “Are Primal Vernacular.”

“A different dialect or a different language wholly?”

“Neither. Primal Vernacular was the predecessor of the Neocybex all Cybertronians came to speak in modern times. When I was given the Matrix of Leadership and all of its knowledge, I was also gifted the ability to speak and read this ancient Cybertronian language. I find it easier, sometimes, to take notes in.”

You sit up a little, bracing yourself with a hand on his cheek vent. “So you’re the only one that knows how to speak it?”

“Most likely.” Optimus admits, somewhat sullen, “Even before the war, it was considered a dead language on Cybertron. Transcriptions existed of people speaking the language but as Neocybex became more common, it simply was lost to time.”

You hum, and leaning this close to them, he can feel the way the small sound rumbles up through your chest.

“Teach me. At least a word or two. Something I can remember.”

“You wish to learn Neocybex? I do not know if your organic vocalizer can reproduce the sound.”

“No, no! Primal Vernacular! The letters almost remind me of… Arabic. That’s a human language so, surely I can wrap my head around some of that.”

His spark warms at that, your enthusiasm contagious. It couldn’t hurt to attempt it, it would be a good excuse to brush up on his own pronunciation.

“Ṣdyq,” He begins. “It means ‘friend.’ And if you begin it with Rjl, it becomes ‘brother.’”

“Oh so it has different rules than Earth’s version of Arabic.”

“Yes. It is fascinating, is it not? That humans have taken such an old language and made it their own?”

“Yeah, it’s kind of nice in a way. Makes things feel less…” You fish around in your thoughts for the proper word, then hum. “Lonely. Yeah. So… Rjl… Ṣdyq… means ‘brother.’ How do you say ‘sister,’ then?”

Optimus’ lip plates quirk into the shallow shape of a smile, spark warmed by your botched attempt to match his pronunciation. 

“The translations of the words are different based on their cultural meanings. Cybertronians are very rarely forged with siblings, so ‘brother’ means something closer to ‘ally.’ A feminine version of the word didn’t appear until very late, when femmes started to become more prominent. It was very rarely used though, mostly due to the… intimate implications of the word. I once listened to an interview with a linguist on the matter and he theorized that it was coined initially by Megatronus Prime of the Thirteen, as a term of endearment Solus Prime. It’s ‘Ạmrạ̉ẗ Ṣdyq.’”

Now that has you fascinated.  Optimus often chose his words carefully, using them as a tool for peace and command just as often as he used his own two servos. With you, conversation came easier. Optimus only had a select few people whom he knew and trusted to allow him to talk so easily.

You stood up, keeping one hand against his jaw as you walked around him. He could feel you use him to steady your steps as you hoisted yourself up onto his neck cables. You were so light he hardly felt the pressure at all. Instinctively his servo came down to gently cup behind your back, fearing you might fall off.

“What are you doing?” He asks, but he doesn’t sound irritated. Worried maybe, curious mostly.

“I want to see the way your mouth moves when you say those words.”

It’s an innocent goal, he insists it is. A request to turn on his first level of cooling fans pops up on his HUD view. He almost denies it, then worries that he might grow too warm for you to touch. In the end he does allow them to kick on and wholly misses the way it makes you smirk.

“Come on, boss. Say ‘em.” You coax, resting your folded arms against his chin, “Please?”

Optimus looks down past his nose, examining your face as his fans cycle a little faster. Right, it would be rude to refuse you whatever small teaching aid he could offer. Even if it was unorthodox.

“Ṣdyq.” He says. You lean forward a bit, watching the way his lips move with every sound. “‘Friend.’”

“Uh-huh.”

“Rjl Ṣdyq.” You reach out and trail your tiny fingers across his bottom lip. Optimus loses his train of thought.

“Which means?” You prompt him, feigning forgetfulness.

“Ah, ‘ally.’” He can see the way you bounce a little when he swallows the thick lump forming in the back of his intake.

“Cool, cool.” When had you gotten so close to him? And it didn’t seem like you minded at all as you even used his servo balancing you from behind to boost yourself up and lay across the flat plane of his chin. 

He says your name softly. His data pad is forgotten in favor of clutching onto the tarp and padding on the berth beneath him.

“And what’s the last one?”

“Ạmrạ̉ẗ Ṣdyq,” When had he started to feel so breathless? Like his fans weren’t cycling enough air.

“Mmmhm… I like that one. There’s something about the way you say it. Say it again, please?”

“Ạmrạ̉ẗ Ṣdyq,” He says again, just so he can hear the joy on your voice when you giggle, “Ạmrạ̉ẗ Ṣdyq. And it means– mhm?”

Before he can even finish his statement, your small, warm lips press to his bottom lip, silencing him quicker and easier than even the sound of blaster fire. His servo cups closer behind you and he knows he should stop this, he knows he doesn’t deserve this, but you make it so, so clear you want to give it to him.

And in the end… who was he to deny his Ạmrạ̉ẗ Ṣdyq?

[abcd-adventures]

Ugh.

So, obviously, being a human, I screw up regularly at my job. That's to be expected, and it's usually fine. I have zero problems owning up to mistakes/missteps/misunderstandings/whatever. And, I think in relationships, it usually only makes things stronger when you go through those things and come out on the other side with a new understanding and stronger communication and bond. But yesterday...wow...I had this whole idea of this big therapeutic moment that I was going to have with this client and it went SO, SO BADLY...I mean were I watching it on tv or something it would be comedically bad.

I took one of my clients to the cemetery to visit his grandmother's grave yesterday. I could go into all the reasons this was a huge deal, but that's a whole other post. But, it's been something that was a long time coming and was supposed to be this big moment...annnnnnd we get there, and the cemetery is HUGE and it was one of those things where, of course, you THINK you remember exactly where you need to go, but then the place is a zillion times bigger than in your memory and everything looks kind of the same, so then it's overwhelming. Well, he remembered that they have maps there, so I volunteered to go in and request one since it was packed in the office and my client didn't want to walk into a room full of dressed up, grieving, white people. I finally get someone to help me and she looks up the name and is like, "No, we don't have anyone here by that name. Sorry. We have other cemeteries, maybe try there." The other ones are all the way across town. So, I go back out and talk to my client, but he is sure that this is the right cemetery, so then he goes in with me, and the woman immediately becomes WAY more rude and argues with him that he is wrong because her "system" could never be wrong, and I have to get him out of there before things escalate after he starts getting pissed and giving her some choice words and we start disrupting whatever is going on with all the well-dressed white people. We go back out to the car and he is shaking with rage and I look online and there's apparently a website called Find a Grave, and I look up his grandmother and sure enough, she is there at the cemetery we are currently at, and it has some code and even a PICTURE of the headstone. So, with phone and PICTURE in hand, we go back in. The woman is pissed at us at this point and hands my client a clipboad with a stack of papers on it that he is supposed to fill out for an inquiry?? And, he was...to be concise...like, "Fuck you and fuck that," and I asked to speak to someone in charge because the all-knowing internet is telling us his grandmother is in this cemetery and we are not filling out an inquiry, we just want a map!!!! So, the manager comes out and I show him the website and the photo and the code thing, and oh, magically, such a place exists! And, he brings us a map, but then he insists on ESCORTING US over there. I told him that was unnecessary, but he insisted, so then we get there and things are not in the best shape and this fucking guy is fussing around trying to tidy things up while my client is seconds from exploding and I was just like, "PLEASE leave. Thank you for your help, but please, please leave now and let us have a minute." Thank God he did as I asked. But, wow. what a nightmare. It took us an hour and fifteen minutes after arriving at the cemetery to get to the actual gravesite. Nothing therapeutic was happening at that point.

We did tidy up a little and leave her flowers, and we sat for a minute, but between the anger and frustration and the sadness and everything that was brought up by the whole...thing...it was just a mess, and he just wanted to leave. I felt HORRIBLE. I do not have a ton of experience with this kind of thing, but I have another client who we have been working up to visiting his son's grave, but now I know that I will 100% go by on my own first and make sure we know WHERE THE FUCK THE GRAVE IS beforehand so nothing like this happens again.

Were this to have happened a few months ago, I don't think this client would have come back to see me ever again. I'm very, very grateful that he was willing to give me grace and not hold this clusterfuck against me, but I still feel absolutely awful that it happened.