A retired Aurora police sergeant faces criminal charges for raping his daughter and continually sexually assaulting her and his two adopted daughters, but he remains free from custody while his ex-wife is in jail for objecting to court-ordered reunification therapy meant to repair his relationship with two of his sons.
Her trip to jail occurs as such therapy and its potential harms are increasingly coming under fire in Colorado.
The treatment is used by family courts to settle custody fights. Services like those provided by Bassett use confrontation and exercises to deprogram a child’s rejection of a parent. In extreme cases, children have been sent across state lines to reunification camps with parents they reject, and they are barred from having contact with their protective parent.
The fuck
Forced Stockholm syndrome as therapy.
I don’t know why people are against it. You get used to it after a while.
/s
The reunification therapy costs $1,500 a month. Pickrel-Hawkins said she struggles to pay for the therapy. She said she and the children already are stretched thin, surviving on the $2,680 her ex-husband pays her in court-ordered support, though the judge said during one hearing that he believed the mother actually was earning money that she wasn’t disclosing.
That she has to pay for.
the mother has custody of the couple’s minor children, and they are living in a domestic violence shelter. She said that she has arranged for family members to care for her children when she goes to jail.
While living at a shelter.
The mother said she lost legal representation in the custody dispute after accruing $85,000 in legal bills, which she couldn’t afford. She was sentenced to jail without any representation from a lawyer.
Even when she doesn’t have enough for a lawyer.
The 17-year-old daughter claims her father, Hawkins, raped her when she was almost six years old and continually molested her throughout her childhood despite her protestations that he stop, according to court documents. The two adopted daughters also claim they were sexually abused, those documents state.
The oldest son also told a forensic interviewer he felt like his father tried to drown him in a pool in 2018 in Costa Rica, using police control tactics and holding him under water until he began to black out. The boy said he believed his father was vengeful because the boy woke up one night and confronted his father whose hand he claims he saw down the under garments of his sister.
Trying to keep them away from a man who absurd their kids for two decades and attempted to kill.
Absolutely nothing about this situation is justifiable, sane or decent. Fuck this cop, fuck this court, fuck this state, fuck this whole fucking country. Absolutely shameful in every regard.
Well that’s fucking horrifying… The only thing that got me through childhood alive was that the courts let me decide who I would live with. Why the fuck wouldn’t you listen to the kids? It’s there life on the line.
Seriously, the courts are heaping all of this blame on the mother when the kids repeatedly report physical and sexual abuse by their father.
Though the divorce judge found there was evidence that Hawkins had physically abused the oldest son, the judge said in his ruling that was “one instance that does not involve either of the two children at issue.”
Insane. The logic is nonexistent.
Ok dad, here is your court ordered hug.
How does stuff like this not end in suicide or patricide?
‘deprogram’…‘barred from having contact with their protective parent’.
This will be decades of lawsuits and millions of dollars.
This makes me genuinely feel unwell. Some people are just horrific.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapy-types/reunification-therapy
It’s a little more complicated than this conservative rag makes it out to be.
No. No it isn’t. Forced reunification to your abuser. You sick fuck. Go on and double down. Tell us all how that’s complicated. Raise your coward hand again.
Sure.
The deal is it’s not really about reunification with your abuser, in cases of severe abuse you wouldn’t be reunified with someone who wasn’t fit, you’d remain in the foster system. In cases of milder abuse, a judge has to weigh whether the parent might be rehabilitated or you’ll be better off staying in the foster system, which is always itself a risk, remember. Foster families are not always the best.
Reunification therapy is also for divorce cases though, where one parent has essentially poisoned the well against another with no real abuse being present.
So, uh, sorry for whatever happened to you, it can be a very difficult situation when a child has nowhere else to go. Depending on availability of foster families, a judge may be forced to sometimes make a difficult decision, it just depends on the circumstances.
edit: Oh, and do keep in mind, this publication is owned by the same people that run the Washington Examiner. It’s NY Post or Daily Mail-tier when it comes to accuracy.
Unless they’re all outright lying or the newspaper has made this up whole cloth, the facts of this case are fucking horrifying.
The father sexually abused his pre-adolescent daughter. This was witnessed by his son who says he was then held under water until he nearly blacked out.
Reunification therapy would be appropriate years down the line, if this all turned out to be some kind of misunderstanding. Forcing them into a room with their abuser, forcing them to show affection towards someone they have highly complex feelings of fear, loathing, and love for, is abuse.
And that’s all without the mother’s allegations of the therapist’s behavior. The judge is a piece of work too, weasel wording his rulings. He noted CPS can make rulings based solely on the one child’s account as a way of discounting their findings. Completely ignoring the fact that there is corroboration. And then says the abuse was only proven for the older kids. So the younger ones are fine.
In what fucking country do we put children back into an abuser’s orbit/care/house because they haven’t been proven to have abused that kid yet, just other kids, exactly their age.
The fact that you’re trying to defend this by going after the news organization and sharing the WebMD of psychology is telling. The facts of the case are horrifying and you know it.
I am not arguing about this case. I definitely see problems here, and I find it odd that the therapy is being performed by some christian group as well.
My issue is the article’s portrayal of the therapy. The question I responded to was about the therapy, not this specific case, so I’m talking about the therapy more broadly, and not this specific case. This specific case is either grossly exaggerated or some extreme fluke. Like I said, in cases of severe abuse, reunification therapy is inappropriate.
I also don’t trust the publication, important details can be left out or exaggerated to make something more rage-baity, and I could not find any corroborating news. Regarding being horrified by it, it’s very hard to horrify me with anything on the internet that isn’t old and established, I stay very suspicious of the entire thing.
Much like abusers going after kids, judges who give orders like these aren’t doing it in a vacuum. They’ve done it before and they’ll do it again. Look up Kayden’s Law. (You know why it has a kid’s name on it) Using the courts and this therapy to re-abuse children is prevalent enough Congress had to pass a law restricting its use. Some of the stuff in the law is exactly what the article alleges on the broader scale. So it’s obviously happened.
You not wanting to believe it is just another in a long line of people deciding not to believe victims when they come forward.
I fully support reasonable restrictions on the therapy, no question. What I do not support is lumping every instance of it all together into one perceived abusive framework, when that is not the full story. There’s both bathwater and a baby here, in that there are legitimate uses for the therapy that are not abusive or enabling further abuse. These are fine.
This was a good clarification and I understand the point of your original post. I was a dick and I apologize.
No worries. I do fully empathize with why this upset everyone so much.
A parent does not have a right to affection from their children. Isolating from abusive people is a healthy reaction. Forcing this kind of therapy is itself abuse.
Usually. There’s two exceptions that I’d acknowledge. One is where abuse simply was not present, which does happen sometimes due to divorce, which young children can’t always understand.
The second was when abuse was minor and something the offender might be able to overcome after themselves undergoing treatment, and there are no other family that could take the child. If there is a shortage of foster parents as there often is, it can be preferable to try to reunify over just sending the child to grow up in a shelter.
Note, I’m talking about the therapy more broadly, not this specific case.
No. There is no right to force another human to feel something for you. Period.
Sure, but you’re not trying to force positive feelings, you’re trying to break down negative feelings that may not be based in reality.
That’s the same thing. Especially when much of reality where personal relationships are involved is subjective.
No, it isn’t at all. If you have an arachnophobia, treating your fear is not making you like spiders. Simply addressing the aversion. Nobody properly engaging in the therapy is trying to brainwash kids into loving someone, just reducing the aversion.
Check something more rigorous about the topic, don’t just use news articles of cases of failure and unethical choices to form your full opinion. You know damn well how the news is, what they profit from, how times where the therapy actually went well because it was used appropriately will not be reported. And social media isn’t much better when it comes to factuality.
The Psychology Today article I posted properly cited its sources.
his ex-wife is in jail for objecting to court-ordered reunification therapy meant to repair his relationship with two of his sons.
Yeah, because top priority when encountering a piece of shit incestual paedophilic rapist, is to reunite him with the children he set aside while he preyed on the others. 🤯🤬
Be it a system or an individual - abusers defend abusers. It’s always projection in self defence, it’s why they’ve constructed an elaborate conspiracy theory about secret paedophile rings run by the rich and powerful, yet when someone rich and powerful (and white and straight), and those who serve them, acts in direct defence of a paedophile, they look the other way.
The judge who made this ruling, along with everyone who enabled it, need to have their hard drives searched and the children in their lives questioned and potentially removed for their safety. I don’t have a single doubt in my mind that if they did this, they would find at least one more paedophile.
As for the mother and kids, I hope they sue the state or the court or whoever it is they can, and win millions to pay for the new life they’re going to need to build for themselves and therapy they’re going to need for the rest of their lives (never mind compensation for the obscene miscarriage of justice of locking her up).
piece of shit incestual paedophilic rapist
Pro tip for concise writing: this can be simplified to the word “cop”.
I mean, ACAB, but there are plenty of piece of shit incestual paedophilic rapists who aren’t cops, and I don’t see why they should be excluded.
The judge who made this ruling, along with everyone who enabled it, need to have their hard drives searched and the children in their lives questioned and potentially removed for their safety. I don’t have a single doubt in my mind that if they did this, they would find at least one more paedophile.
I think it’s just the legal system protecting cops, like it always does.
Sure, there’s that, but it’s only part of a much bigger problem (that is why society at large allows cops, and other figures of authority, to get away with shit to the point where it’s a cliche. The problem is the patriarchy and the rape culture it cultivates).
Fair point!
A guilty system recognises no innocents.
There is absolutely no place in a modern culture for oppressive ideologies like conservatism. Conservative judges protect oppressive (abusive) fathers while oppressing (abusing) the women and children.
This has always been the way of conservatism. Always.
I think another part of the problem is who is attracted to positions of power and why they are attracted to those positions.
If someone wants power to fix things, they’ll tend to have other motivations that will conflict with the pursuit of power because they don’t intend to use that power for their own gains.
But if someone wants power to abuse it, then their personal motivations and pursuit of power line up. Not to mention how much easier it is to sell an idea when you don’t care what the truth is.
This has always been the way of conservatism. Always.
I have relatives in a rather conservative setting where swearing in presence of women is very bad, swearing at women is just dangerous, beating women is, well, not acceptable. Rape (with people knowing about it) means surrendering to the law is the rapist’s best option.
Christianity differs in various places of our planet and so on.
It’s still annoying to explain to my aunt that a single F-word in an article doesn’t mean it’s not worth reading further. I have not been successful in that, too.
I hear you. I used to
resentdespise religion. But then I spent time around progressives who happened to be Christian. They behaved in exactly the opposite ways conservative religious people are known to behave. I’m from the south. We just don’t see that down here. It really caused me to think about the effect of conservatism on religion.I think the more conservative a person is, with or without religion, the more cruel, inhumane or sociopathic that person is. One can accurately determine a person’s level of conservatism just by observing the severity of these traits. Religion seems to amplify these conservative traits, but it doesn’t always predict them in my experience.
Immoral people try to coerce any ideology to support them. As in “throwing something at the wall and hoping it sticks”. As in “many statements contradictory between themselves”.
That’s how Israelis play conservatism, for example. If most people interested in conservatism and Christianity are that, then the most visible conservatives/Christians will be such people.
I think conservatism just doesn’t have much to attract sincere people in most settings.
The issue often is that, just because it’s outwardly frowned upon, it doesn’t mean it won’t happen behind closed doors.
Which isn’t to say any of your relatives are bad people, but a culture where speaking up is frowned upon encourages victims to hide their abuse.
but a culture where speaking up is frowned upon encourages victims to hide their abuse.
It’s not. It’s a different part of the world with a different kind of conservatism.
I wrote and deleted an anecdote, point is - it’s not a Western atomized society, extended family and friends and various other social ties play a bigger role and all of those help the victim more than the abuser in such an event. Unless we are talking about some hopelessly poor village.
Frankly if those ties would work the same in Western “conservative” settings, those would probably improve over time.
The state and congressional districts seem somewhat blue, FWIW.
Aurora’s city council and mayor are conservatives, as is the judge in this case and the Christian “therapist” that is abusing the boys. Every ounce of abuse related to this case comes from conservatives.
Quick question because you have a .world account as well, is the heart next to the up/down voting coming from .world or the app I am using (Jerboa)
It is off putting to me to put a heart next to articles like this, I don’t “love” anything about the events that took place, but I want it up voted for the content.
I’m a different person, but also from lemmy.world and I don’t use an app. I don’t see any heart heart symbol around the voting buttons. It’s probably just your app.
If you asked me fifteen years ago if I wanted to live in the United States, I would have jumped on the first ship to Staten Island in a heartbeat.
Nowadays I don’t even want to visit the country, and unjust bullshit like this is a big reason why. Y’all have a serious problem with allowing your police forces to do whatever the hell they want and argue “qualified immunity” for things that would land you significant prison time in another developed country.
I really question why there’s still a lifelong waiting list to apply for a visa to work in the US, when the state of the country is actually quite bleak…
The reason is because this fucked up shit doesn’t happen to the majority of people and the USA does actually offer a substantially better quality of life compared to many other places.
THAT SAID, yeah we have a lot of fucked up institutions in place that are authoritarian in nature (police) to uphold the status quo and ensure the money keeps making money.
Better quality of propaganda maybe, not life
If that was the only problem 🤗
This article has sooo much being said between the lines.
The mother, Rachel Pickrel-Hawkins, said the reunification therapy by Christine Bassett, a licensed marriage and family therapist, has been harmful, abusive and counterproductive
When the other party is there perpetrator of abuse and the one with power, it very often is detrimental to have some sort of mediation or therapy/counseling. Because the abusers very often are able to manipulate the story so they are the victims in need of most support/compromise/thoughtfulness/time/money/basically ANY conceivable resource in life and relationships they will exploit.
Now I admit I am more familiar with the medical side of things but this entire dynamic gives me pause because it is so psych 101.
To be clear, I mean the courts are absolutely failing this child and caretaker by allowing the abuser to have have access to the victim(s)
Though the divorce judge found there was evidence that Hawkins had physically abused the oldest son, the judge said in his ruling that was “one instance that does not involve either of the two children at issue.”
As far as information in the article, it sounds like the two kids in court-ordered Christian therapy are the only two the guy didn’t (allegedly) abuse.
But still, the whole thing is disgusting. These children should be protected from such an abusive garbage human. Their mother is doing the right thing.
You’re looking at this objectively as a medical practitioner…which is understandable, but way off.
What’s happening here is not even in the world of psychiatric or psychology based therapy.
This is 100% Christian religious based bullshit “therapy”. This can be done in Colorado with an “equivalent” graduate degree.
Even worse is if you’re engaged in the practice of “religious ministry” you don’t have to comply with any of the states licensure requirements as long as you don’t advertise or yourself as “licensed”. So in reality this “faith based therapist” probably is just some random person that works or volunteers at the church.
You’re so right. Your point deserves a lot more recognition than it got. Don’t shut up, don’t stop what you’re doing.
What the actual fuck America?! How can you JUSTICE SYSTEM do this to people. To children?!
Kudos to the mother. I hope her sacrifice is successful in keeping these kids out of these so called “therapy sessions”.
we don’t have a justice system, we have a legal system. Similar in structure, but different in purpose.
We have a legal INDUSTRY. Everything happens because the entity doing it has a profit motive.
This just hurts. A whole loving family being thrown under the bus to protect one cop. Therapist sounds like a piece of work too, there should never be unwanted physical contact during therapy. Evil.
Aurora makes a lot of national news, and usually it’s because of some absolute monster. What’s in the water over there.
is AuroraMan the new FloridaMan?
Ironically enough Aurora city water consistently wins awards for it’s quality lol.
I think the legitimate reason is that Aurora is a physically massive city, has lower housing costs than the rest of the metro area, and Denver has a habit of forcing its homeless population out and into Aurora. The police department is also an absolute good ole boys club who are all terrified of city residents to the point where they drive unmarked/undercover vehicles by default (at least it seems that way, I see so few marked police cars but whenever there’s a collection of cop cars with lights going the majority are the undercover)
Sauce: Current Aurora, CO resident. It’s not all bad
Anybody who says they can’t understand how somebody would become violent can understand instantly by reading this story.
I tried to think of something to say earlier but couldn’t - this sums it up very neatly.
Where is the fbi this needs an investigation
Fuck the law, just run. This is insane.
Fucking hell that was a hard read. I’m so pissed off and had to take several breaks to read all of it
That site’s got some next level paywall nonsense… got about halfway through the article in my Lemmy app, decided I wanted to share the link with someone, opened in Safari and it purposely replaces the content with some kind of automatic greek text.
It’s a shame, archive.org links tend to scare off old people…
Since I was there…
What? How can that be.
