Taken into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood, Marriage, and the Family (Hardcover)

by Stephen Baskerville (Author)
Key Phrases: involuntary divorce, divorce machinery, divorce regime, Plundered Pops, Judicial Kidnapping, Washington Post (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Why is the American family in crisis? Taken Into Custody argues that the most direct cause is the divorce industry: a government-run system that tears apart families, separates children from fit and loving parents, confiscates the wealth of families, and turns law-abiding citizens into criminals in ways they are powerless to avoid.
Taken Into Custody explores:

• Why the "deadbeat dad" is not only a myth but a hoax, the creation of government officials and lawyers who plunder parents whose children they have taken away
• How hysterical propaganda about domestic violence is destroying families, endangering children, and making criminals of innocent parents
• The real causes of child abuse and how the abuse industry willfully ignores them
• What drives the rash of "parental kidnappings"
• How family courts operate as if there is no Bill of Rights, denying parents their constitutional legal protections

Taken Into Custody exposes the greatest and most destructive civil rights abuse in America today. Family courts and Soviet-style bureaucracies trample basic civil liberties, entering homes uninvited and taking away people's children at will, then throwing the parents into jail without any form of due process, much less a trial. No parent, no child, no family in America is safe.

About the Author
Stephen Baskerville, Ph.D., is assistant professor of government at Patrick Henry College and Earhart Fellow at the Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society. A graduate of the London School of Economics, he is the author of more than eighty articles on fatherhood and family issues and has appeared widely on national radio and television programs.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Cumberland House Publishing (September 25, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1581825943
• ISBN-13: 978-1581825947
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #93,052 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #4 in	Books > Nonfiction > Law > Family & Health Law > Children
  #4 in	Books > Professional & Technical > Law > Family & Health Law > Children
  #38 in	Books > Nonfiction > Government > Social Policy

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An incredible expose on all facets of the divorce/custody system, July 30, 2007

By	Bought Copies for My Three Daughters (Vienna, Virginia USA) - See all my reviews

The greatest civil rights abuse in the Western world today is the forced removal of children from their parents, usually their fathers, by family courts and social services agencies. Family courts in America and other democracies have almost absolute power to take away people's children without giving any reason, confiscate their property, and incarcerate them without trial, charge, or counsel. These courts operate largely in secret.

A virtual publishing blackout has protected this abuse, and until now no comprehensive exposé of this political underworld has appeared. Some fine books by authors like Sanford Braver, Warren Farrell, Jeffery Leving, Dean Tong, and Jed Abraham, have partially broken the silence with gently worded critiques of family law and policy, along with numerous self-published books that reach a more limited audience. But this is the first time a major publisher has revealed the full horror of what is taking place in America's family courts and government bureaucracies. Not only the systematic removal of children from fit and loving parents but the criminalization of the parents, often in complete defiance of constitutional protections and due process of law, is widespread and routine.

All assertions are carefully documented by a writer with scholarly credentials (PhD from the London School of Economics and professor of political science at Patrick Henry College). Baskerville not only describes what is happening but explains why, demonstrating the unaccountable power, conflicts-of-interest, and extremist ideology driving the most tyrannical governmental machinery ever to arise in the United States. As such, this book bears comparison with Michael Harrington's The Other America and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tremendous book that challenges one's views on family law, October 3, 2007

By	J. Ehrlich "I took back custody" (Midwest, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Had I not gone through the divorce system, I would have never believed what was written in this book.

It is very scary that in America, with no-fault divorce and no wrong even being alleged, that the government can strip a parent of custody. Criminals have a higher burden of proof and the right to a jury trial; fit, loving parents don't. The precident this sets from a legal standpoint should scare every American who cares about our country.

Most important, he shows that children are suffering at the hands of our judicial system. The "best interest of the child" is nothing more than a subjective slogan to plunder dads who have done nothing wrong and care about their children. I hope every judicial officer in the country reads this book.

In America, the opinion of a custody evaluator is almost never challenged, and if it is, seldom overturned. If you want to hear the bizarre reasons dads are stripped of custody, join a father's right's group. You'll be shocked. Pull the court files and you'll find that what they tell you is true.

We need a presumption of joint physical custody NOW. Divorce will decline, there will be less abuse, children won't be put in the middle.

The mean-spirited advocates who want to label men as all bad will diss this book, no doubt, but this book is spot on.

42 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Social Security Title IV-D - Scourge and Bane of this Country, October 14, 2007

By	Nataliya M. Vanosdell "tabsaw" (Maineville, OH) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It is about time that a book like this was published! Ever wonder why things happen the way they do in family courts across the country? Wonder why the custody of children usually always goes to the parent with the lowest income? Why custody always goes to the mother unless she voluntarily gives it up or is in prison? Why fathers can't seem to get more than about 35% physical time with their kids when both parents are fit and live close together?

Common sense and wisdom would dictate that, with all other things being about equal, the parent with an income significantly higher than the other would be better able to provide for and raise a child following a divorce - especially considering how expensive it is these days with the rising cost of college tuition, clothes, food, and extracurricular activities. But, then whey is it that it seems that the parent with the highest income is always the one made to pay outrageous sums to money to the parent with the lower income? And the courts will unabashedly tell us that a 'child must be maintained in a standard of living he/she would have enjoyed had the divorce not happened'. Please!

All too often, we run around examining individual cases in disbelief and outrage at the way father's are methodically ostracized and demonized in today's culture without searched for doing a 'root cause' analysis. This is similar to finding an apple tree and trying to determine why just about each apple we pick is poison and trying to determine this on an apple by apple basis. We MUST stop analyzing the apples and start looking at the tree trunk and its roots! THERE is where we will find the problem!

The poison is the TITLE IV-D and IV-E sections of our Social Security Law! It can be found by going to this link http://www.access.gpo.gov/uscode/title42/chapter7_subchapteriv_.html
It is United State Code (USC) Title 42 Chapter 7 SubChapter IV. You MUST read all the sections of these laws in their entirety and you will then begin to understand how every state in the union is PROFITING big time on the backs of parents going through divorce. They are profiting so big that if divorces stopped tomorrow, their state budgets would be in the RED big time!

And NO mainstream media outlet will TOUCH this! The so-called conservative big-mouths like Limbaugh, Hannity, and Savage will talk all day long about Hillary's 'SChip' program for child medical care (which is another joke), but they won't dare talk about what is already in place and is ruining this country from the inside. Most mainstream radio stations won't even let organizations purchase time on their stations to try to expose it! This is how well-kept the dirty secret is!

This book exposes this dirty secret, but I wish it would have gone into even more detail about it. For low level details, the best website I have found is www.laryholland.com. This person has done extensive research thru Freedom of Information Acts (FOIA) requests and has the 'goods' on them!

Hopefully, this book will serve as the catalyst that has been needed for so long that will finally expose the corruption in this nation's family courts and how the judges are ALL in on the profiteering! It is truly disgusting what is being allowed (and indeed approved) to happen in this country.

In 2006, Ohio collected 2.1 BILLION dollars in child support and spousal support payments! Because of this, they were able to obtain approximately an additional BILLION dollars from the Federal Government in incentives and block grants that can go into the GENERAL FUND! Basically, for every dollar the state claims as an enforcement expense, the Feds give them back $2. If you were told that for every dollar you spend remodeling your house, the government would give you back $2, can you imagine the remodeling that would start tomorrow??