Santa Fe “life coach” Ray Lopez runs small groups for men in troubled relationships, in the hopes of introducing “alternatives to violence.” Lopez breaks the ice with his own story, starting with his “dysfunctional alcoholic family, blah blah blah.”
Lopez’ anger reached its peak approximately 18 years ago when he slapped his 3-year-old son. His wife gave him an ultimatum, and he began taking therapy seriously.
He’s familiar with abusers’ excuses, like she slapped me before I punched her. “It’s blatantly not true that women are as violent as men,” Lopez says, referring to a common refrain in the DV denier movement. However—this is where lines blur, and Lopez jokes about getting “into trouble”—he says “women can manipulate much better than men.”
Though not always politically correct, Lopez’ frank approach has likely improved a few lives. He acknowledges that some relationships are unsalvageable because of both parties—a notion that raises a taboo subject.
Some court reformers believe family violence won’t improve without abandoning two cultural assumptions: that marriages should be preserved, and that children benefit from contact with both biological parents.
“One reason the fathers’ rights groups are so effective is they’re tapping into these mainstream ideas that divorce is bad,” Dragiewicz says.
Yet despite claims by fathers’ groups, courts are anything but a tool for female vengeance.
“If you look at patterns, [courts rule] very much in favor of fathers and against mothers,” lawyer Barry Goldstein, co-editor of the forthcoming research compendium “Domestic Violence, Abuse, and Child Custody,” tells SFR. (Goldstein provided the earlier statistic about domestic abuse in disputed custody cases.)
Family court codes and procedures do not reflect advances in the social sciences, he says.
“Thirty years ago, the focus was on physical abuse. What we understand now is that domestic violence is a tactic men use to maintain control, to continue to make the major decisions in the relationship. Most of the time it’s not physical,” Goldstein says. “It can be a raised eyebrow. It can be economic.”
Most people would agree the legal system has overreached if a raised eyebrow constitutes a crime. But that is not Goldstein’s argument. Rather, he says, courts misunderstand the role of violence and, just as importantly, the implied threat of violence in abusive relationships. As a result, police, prosecutors and judges don’t know how to distinguish a one-time mistake from an escalating situation.
“In most [dangerous] cases, there’s something physical, but he doesn’t need to keep doing it, because she knows what he’s capable of. The courts don’t see that,” Goldstein says.
“Fathers’ rights” advocate Glenn Sacks is a fan of Joshua Gonze, and vice versa. Sacks is the listed contact for an anti-child-support site founded by Gonze.
Santa Fe may have a bigger problem. The courts never see what the police don’t report.
When Leticia López called 911 on Aug. 18, two Santa Fe Police Department officers came to her home. It was the fourth time SFPD had responded to an incident involving her and Gonze. The Aug. 18 report, by Officer David Webb Jr., describes a “domestic disturbance” in which “not battery, nor assault took place.”
Webb’s description doesn’t jibe with the petition López filed the next day, in which she described being threatened with a knife and witnessing potential abuse of a child.
“They didn’t believe anything I said,” López tells SFR. She claims Gonze ran down the block from their home to meet and speak with police before they interviewed her—by which point, they’d been convinced her story was unreliable.
López calls the officers’ conduct “extremely inappropriate,” for instance: “They said I shouldn’t be fighting over 50-50 custody,” she says. (It wasn’t Webb who criticized her parenting decisions, she says, but another officer whose identity remains unknown.)
Officer Webb did not return a message.
A few months later, inside a courtroom on a cold December morning, López sits only feet away from Gonze, but never meets his eye.
He has agreed to a four-year restraining order, which bars him from coming within 50 yards of her in public, or from buying a firearm. Gonze also agreed to an apology.
“I recognize that my domestic violence petition harmed Leticia and [our daughter],” Gonze says, reading the prepared statement. “I acknowledge Leticia is a good mother and loves [our daughter].”
The hearing officer asks if the statement was coerced.
Gonze hesitates. “No,” he says finally.
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“Yes,” Gonze says. “I owe Leticia an apology for everything that happened.”
López tells SFR she hopes Gonze will change his ways. “I know this marriage has been a nightmare,” she says. “Josh has begun the process of self-examination. He’s begun to apologize and make amends. He has a lot of work to do.”
Approached by SFR after the hearing, Gonze says he settled the dispute for the sake of his daughter. He declines to elaborate but says, “Since you didn’t identify yourself as a reporter, I don’t think you should say anything in the paper about my case.”
SFR’s reporter did identify himself. Gonze did not return subsequent email and phone messages seeking comment on the events described in this article. SFR
In the past 2 1/2 years, I have seen how the Judicial System treats father's based on "heresay, false accusations, outright lies, and the polluted verbage given by the mother. I personally witnessed the Judge and "his" employees tell the father that he did not need to file a counter motion. The father's motion presented compelling evidence of physical, emotional, and verbal abuseand attempted murder of the mother against her infant child. The mother got drunk at a party where she "happened" to have forceably taken the infant. An eye-witness stated that the child had an accident or was somehow injured. The mother knew she was responsible for injury to the child on night of the party and at other times in the family home. Under the careful direction of the mother's contacts at CYFD, the lies continued and subsequently parental rights were taken away from the father, after the mother and her contacts made several attempts to have the father incarderated under false allegations. The mother is the one who is the abuser who suffers from very low self-esteem, has had bouts of depression, rape, abortion, suicide attempts, has made threats of killing all family members, history of abuse by both her parents, I could fill books about this family. I know about this family because it is my family. People have told me, well what does that say about you? It says I am aware what "mental illness" can do to families; I've studied mental health and lifed it for close to fifty years. When you see your own family members falling into this category, you make excuses, look the other way, pray, anthing to make the ugly truth go away, but it doesn't. What has kept me sane is my close spiritual faith, my friends, my therapists, my doctors, help groups, and medication. In short, you do everything possible to life a decent life. In vast contrast to this, family members who exhibit their illness in fits of rage, controlling and manipulative behavior, refuse to believe that there might be a need for "mental therapy," stating that there is NOTHING wrong with them, it's other person who has problems; they refuse to see doctors claiming that their knowledge far surpasses that of any doctor, refuse medication claiming that the doctors and pharmacies want to make money off of prescribed medication. There is no reasoning with people who are incapable of being reasonable, they will pretend to be reasonable in front of the courts, law enforcement, and witnesses, then they go and do what they please because they lack a moral conscience, like the people at CYFD, and those people who believed a cunning, manipulative, spoiled child, rather than the honest words of a father. It was in mandated therapy where I learned that the child's father was the one who was being abused by the mother. I could hear the mother tell the father "I told everybody all about you, they know everything, you're in trouble and they are not going to believe you." She said all this after drinking alcohol all day at one of her drug & alcoholic friends home, then returns being physically and verballly abusive. Now who do you think the abusive parent really is. Someday the lies will surface and those who contributed to the physical, emotional, mental, and sexual abuse of these innocent children, will surely feel the karma coming back at you one way or another. As long as there is one candle the light of truth will never be extinguished. CYFD went above and beyond to cause mental, physical, and emotional anguish to the child's father, who loves his child and was a major caretaker and focal point in his child's life. Because people lie - children die.
To be published at a later time, a book on how an abused child grew up mentally aware but morally bankrupt. How she lied to the world to avoid a life of incarceration or being institutionalized, and how she got everyone to do her bidding. Mentally Ill or Demonized.