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The Father I Am NEW! The Latest Newspaper article paints a picture of despair |
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Yes, I am working on a book. This website is designed to provide documentary support for the book and as a forum for blogs and reader input. Eventually I hope to post the thousands of pages in documents associated with our story. |
“Divorce can be a messy, painful affair, but for Patricia Long and Stephen Avery it was murder. Or nearly that. Long, 38, was
sentenced Monday to three years in prison for a thwarted attempt to hire
a hit man to kill Avery, her ex-husband, for $325, a minivan and the
promise of life insurance money she hadn't known she was no longer a
beneficiary to”.
Family Assault How about if I just tell our story, if I just lay it out on the table and let others decide to pull whatever lessons of morality they wish. Ultimately, this is a testament for the children, a record of events to provide a measure of peace and assurance. I do not wish them to hate their mother. I wish them to understand how her illness and the malevolence of the Machine created this chaos that is their lives. I wish them to understand and forgive the mistakes I made. There is no doubt I could have been a better husband and a better father. It is all here, all of the hot family topics, ready for a Lifetime movie -- except no one would believe these events, and no one could imagine the soap opera that is our lives being a work of truth and not a work of fiction. Marriage is a leading cause of murder in our society, or so it might appear to the casual observer. One out of eight murders involves the spouse or significant other. Our story is unique only in that when Patricia went out in that cold February night to seek my death, she failed. The second hit man she met with proved to be an undercover sheriff deputy who arrested her after trying to talk her out of my death for over an hour. Nor was this attempt a crime of passion, Patricia considered my death for over two years and actively planned it a week before her arrest. No Mercedes or SUV running me over in a hotel parking lot or lobby, no shooting me down in front of numerous witness or television cameras. This is a story of child abuse, unusual in that the children took matters into their own hands and stood up to the abuse. Our nine year old daughter reported the incident leading State Protective Services to remove the children from Patricia. Our daughter manipulating the situation to provide the opportunity to get to me and the authorities about her mother’s plans and actions before the situation deteriorated further. But, perhaps, after her younger brother was poisoned into an illness intended to provide evidence of child abuse on my part. This is a story of domestic violence, but the victim is a husband who refused to think of himself as a victim, thus creating the perfect environment for his wife’s continued abuse. “As long as she is hitting me and not the children, I can live with it”, I told my mother a year before I became aware of Patricia hitting the children. This is the story of a young woman’s mental illness, illness reaching back long before I met and married her. Patricia’s mental health, always fragile, collapsed when she removed herself from the loving supportive environment provided by her children and extended family. One of the questions the reader must decide for themselves is my love for Patricia. Did I ever love her? If I did, when did the love stop? Over twenty years since I first met Patricia and yet, I can not answer these questions, the events of the last five years cloud my soul and my ability to answer. And the Machine, I am going to say a great deal about the Divorce Industry which destroyed my family. The lawyers are an easy target and not really worth the effort. I will focus on the mental health profession and the Court Machine. Over thirty mental health professionals involved in our family over the last five years and almost every single one made the situation worse. The counselor who believed all men, including our thirteen year old son she counseled, were uncaught abusers. The psychologist who believed psychological testing provided all the answers to good parenting despite standards that denied this and laws in many states labeling such use of psychology criminal. I can not forget the social worker who called me a rapist in front of my child, my parents, and the media with no evidence other then Patricia’s representation. Many of these mental health professionals proved victims of Patricia’s intelligence and charm. Like other victims of con artists, they listened to Patricia because she told them what they wished to hear, what fit into their own beliefs and prejudices, what moved their own agendas forward. There is no doubt as to Patricia’s talent as a con artist. She made tens of thousands of dollars after our separation and before her arrest. She posted a website proclaiming her status as an abused indigent woman and collected donations via credit cards. She sold the community home without being on the title. She collected thousands of dollars in welfare, Medicaid, and other benefits while receiving over five thousand dollars a month in money and benefits from the community. And looping back on itself is Patricia’s mental illness. Patricia did not see herself as a criminal or a con artist. In Patricia’s mind all of her actions arose out of necessity after decades of abuse. The website address said it all – Determined2Survive.com The insanity of our Court Machine simply can not be believed by those who are without experience within the twisted halls of justice they created. Simply put, the lives of millions of children are impacted on a daily basis by decision made with less consideration given to any felon. David Letterman became a recent example of the Machine gone crazy as a New Mexico resident received a restraining order against the late night talk show host based on her representation that he had harassed her via mental powers. One of these court empowered hearing officers was quoted in the Albuquerque Journal and legal findings as saying that if an alleged victim felt threatened then the accused was guilty even if there was no evidence of domestic violence. The recent death of five individuals, to include two police officers, in Albuquerque, by a mentally ill individual gave rise to discussion about laws that would allow judges to order individuals into mental health treatment without formal commitment. Of course, divorce court judges assumed this power years ago, ordering children and parents into mental health treatment without even the courtesy of an evidentiary hearing. At best, the Machine is a Machine of shortcuts designed to keep the Machine from grinding to a halt. At worse it is a Machine where justice is accidental where everyone is assumed lying and there are simply no brakes. Recently, a case came to light in Albuquerque where a father paid child support for five years for a child he eventually proved did not exist. He finally established this despite the ‘mother’ hiring a five year old girl, with her grandmother, on the street outside the courthouse to pretend to be the daughter. Our court record is littered with such mistakes and rushes to judgment and I stand here in criticism as the ‘winner’. ‘Winner’, sums up the fundamental problem – how can a Machine built on conflict be trusted to decide the fate of families, of children? I argue it can not. Those who survive the Machine without significant conflict are those who bring goodness into the Machine and a determination to place children first. Unfortunately, this is not our story nor the story of an estimated twenty percent of all families churned through the Machine. The Machine lifted Patricia up and they entered into a dance of Chaos where it was not always possible to know who led and who followed. The progress of their dance could only been seen in the havoc they wrought. Ultimately, this is a story of a family, the families’ trials and tribulations and the responsibility of a father, a mother, and the State to the children. At one hearing I told the judge “Your Honor, ten years from now the children will look back at these events and how they impacted their lives. They will not look to yourself, the Guardian ad Litem, the mental health professionals, or even their mother. They will look back to me, their father, and decide if I protected them, if I did all that could be done to bring them through this mess. I alone will shoulder the burden of their judgment”. Children, here is Daddy’s defense. Here is my explanation for why I am The Father I Am.
© 2006 Stephen A. Avery |
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