One of our readers, Sarah, sent in this comment:
I am very interested in the new movie coming out [Jan 10th] exposing the unfairness of divorce court and putting a spot light on domestic abuse being perpetuated by it. I think 2014 will be a start of extreme momentum for Cry for Justice. Thank you Lord! Divorce Corp
Sarah submitted the comment on our New Users Info page but we are choosing to put it in a stand-alone post just to inform our readers. Here is what Jeff and I have to say about Divorce Corp at present. We may be able to give more of an opinion when the movie and book are released. Jeff: We will have to watch it closely however because this Divorce Corp group could turn out to be a tool of abusers to persuade people that the family court system is unjust to them — ‘them’ meaning the abusers who of course refuse to admit they are abusers and who put out the myth that they are just poor mistreated folk we ought to feel sorry for. In fact there are indications (see our fb post) that it likely is. But yep, 2014 is going to be an eventful year for ACFJ and all of us. We shall see what the Lord has in store! Me (Barb): We will have to be cautious about this Divorce Corp group just as we have to be cautious about any organization that claims to be shedding light on what is happening in family law courts or churches. Scrutinize them with wise-as-serpents eyes. If an organization is really doing what it claims to be doing, we will praise God and work with them. But if it is covertly working for the abusers, deliberately or ignorantly, then we call them on it. I recommend everyone watch the movie or read the account of how William Tyndale was captured by the Roman Catholics. Tyndale was living undercover in Europe because he knew that Rome wanted to stop him translating the Bible into English. Rome employed a dishonest, crafty, slippery man to inveigle his way into Tyndale’s inner circle by pretending to be a strong supporter of Protestantism and Bible translation. His phoney Christian facade was good and he subtly flattered Tyndale, and helped him out with money. He won Tyndale’s trust then betrayed him to the Catholics who arranged for their henchmen to grab and imprison him. Tyndale was burnt at the stake. But that did not stop the Bible being fully translated into English by Tyndale’s successors. YouTube trailer of the movie God’s Outlaw: God’s Outlaw: The Story Of William Tyndale (1986) I have also checked out the website of Divorce Corp and here are my observations so far:
- All the people on their About Us page are male.
- Looking at the list of videos on Divorce Corp’s YouTube channel there is not one title about domestic abuse. But there is an video about False Child Abuse Claims.
- Presumably they required money or good financial backing to have made a movie and book of this nature. This suggests they are not victims of domestic abuse because domestic abuse victims are often financially struggling and have diminished ability to raise capital due to the conduct of their abusive spouse or ex-spouse.
Here is a link that one of our FB readers sent (via Safe Kids International) — BoycottDivorceCorp.com. I have not the knowledge to verify all that is said on the Boycott Divorce Corp site, so my mentioning it here is not necessarily an endorsement of them and what they claim (or a caution about them), it’s just information for our readers about what some people are thinking about Divorce Corp.
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UPDATE Sept 2021: I have come to believe that Jeff Crippen does not practise what he preaches. He vilely persecuted an abuse victim and spiritually abused many other people in the Tillamook congregation. Go here to read the evidence. Jeff has not gone to the people that he spiritually and emotionally abused. He has not apologised to them, let alone asked for their forgiveness.
A Cry For Justice 
I’ll let you watch it first and wait for the review. I don’t think I could handle the aggrevation at this point. Way too many other things causing distress right now. Thank you for the warning signals.
This is troubling…. From your initial take and reviews here, it sounds like this is going to play well into the hands of abusers (and growing number of corrupt church leaders?…) Hope I’m wrong. But if it does, sadly, there will be little we can do about it. To spread the word to boycott the movie will actually do more harm by making some who would not have been interested to begin with to perk up, take notice, and go view the movie. Then, they, in their unquestioning and easily led mentality – missing the hidden messages and manipulation going on and the deeper issues – will become valiant crowd “criers” shouting (on FB and wherever else) what they have been manipulated into thinking by the false information presented (like those who quickly joined in crying “Crucify him, Crucify him!!” against Jesus…) ….
It will be “Father forgive them for they know NOT what they do….” all over again….
Again, I hope I’m wrong… But we must be ever careful how we approach our response…
Abusers love twisting the victims’ passionate calls for truth into appearances of lunatic defensiveness, and sadly they are all too often successful.
I’m with Brenda. I’m so tired of it all.
Thanks so much for posting this. I was very curious about the divorcecorp movie and hoping that it was going to be a fair representation of what truly goes on in the family courts. It’s not looking good at this point (big sigh). I’ll wait to see what the “experts” here have to say once they see it 😉
My abuser met his second wife at a father’s rights meeting. She was there to support a friend. She died ( cancer) 12 years later, and I doubt that she ever questioned his version. What is your opinion on father’s rights groups.
“All the people on their about us page are male”. That’s a big red flag to me.
yeah I’m not getting a good feeling. If all the backers of this film are men too, and there aren’t any women victims involved at all, then we know what’s really going on. I’ve read some bad stuff about these supposed “father’s rights” groups too – they seem to be fronts for abusive men to further destroy their victims in the courts.
They’ve got the money – of course they will fashion this into a weapon for their war.
That’s what abusers do, after all.
The very name “father’s rights” raises a red flag. I mean, what rights are they after??The rights that parents have over their children, like naming, education, religion, etc. have never been under attack. What the fathers rights groups want are not really rights. Newsflash….Parents have no right to control their children…Parents have responsibilities and children have the right to have a meaningful relationship with both parents, if it is safe to do so. Most fathers understand this, but abusive fathers enjoy taking up a fight out of the perceived injustice that the mother they despise has more rights than them. Abusive ex-husbands cannot stand losing, and if they are not exerting power, then they feel victimized and hence the fight for their “rights”. It’s almost as laughable as disgruntled slave owners forming a white slave-owners rights group after emancipation.
Don’t forget that the Christian arm of the men’s rights blogosphere, is usually only a hairsbreadth away from the patriarchal women’s blogosphere, and thence to the likes of the Bayly brothers. The two communities are interconnected. So don’t be surprised if this gets trumpeted around in “Biblical manhood and womanhood” circles too.
I don’t trust men’s rights groups further than I can spit. My dad dabbles in their stuff and keeps coming back to the line that most domestic violence is a 50/50 split between men and women. If I prod him a bit he’ll sort of half-acknowledge that men commit more physical abuse/domestic terror, but he always circles back around to trying to make sure I understand that women can abuse too (duh). It’s sad because there really are male victims out there, but these men’s rights blogs bury them under a mountain of jerks…at the same time they act as if they’re the only advocates for male victims.
I know first hand about corrupt judges and lawyers and so far as I have had a chance to read on the site: BoycottDivorceCorp.com seems to be correct in what they are saying about the movie.
Further, if one backs off from letting others know how bad this movie is because it might make someone else want to go, then we fall prey to the same argument of why some pastors won’t say divorce might be ok in some circumstances because it might cause a stampede to divorce (which was discussed elsewhere in this blog site). Maybe instead of bringing up the movie, be ready instead, if asked about it, to direct people to the boycott site for information or to a different site explained below:
If one has any time at all go to the boycott site and click on the left about people like “Kate W. targeted… and her own ex not supporting this movie” or click on “Allred, Gothard, and Drew duped” just for starters (not that I like Dr. Drew at all as he is really about the ‘scent’-sational money scene).
On the justice side, Mariska Hargitay (and her husband) is striving to get the word out with “The Joyful Heart Foundation”
and it was pointed out to me that she was just on Couric and both men and women are involved in this so far ten year effort of getting voices heard about domestic violence and rape / sexual abuse connected to it (as Ps. Crippen has said under his Scott Johnson blog post: they go hand in hand). I have only just found out about TJH but so far it has been helpful information.
Also, Karen Winner
Divorced from Justice [Internet Archive link]
and informative info. and great quote by Lincoln at the end of the excerpt on her book “divorced from justice”.
Hopefully, Barbara or Jeff C. or someone else have had more time to check on all this.
If this movie is indeed an abuser-driven phenomenon, then two things are true:
1. The awareness movement has gained enough public attention to be considered a threat.
2. The movie itself can become to be a teaching tool to expose the cleverness of abusers.
AISIO —– BINGO!
I’m so glad we are talking about this. I saw the ad and was so in hopes of exposing the legal system that I wanted to get the word out…. if it was told truthfully. It makes me sick to think of it as being propaganda; it’s like being in the abusive marriage all over again: Half truths in order to gain power. They did say in their website that the “system perpetuates domestic abuse instead of seeing justice”. That was one way I started to hope. They named it when so many won’t. They are exposing the way lawyers will fight for you as long as the money is there and then strike a deal when it disappears… also true. The laws are out-dated and everyone is “equally at fault” in a divorce court even when they have a domestic abuse conviction in their hands. I’ve seen personally, illegal motions granted. I’ve seen abusive behavior ignored. So in one respect the movie is correct. It is corrupt even without the abuse cases.
A comment was submitted to this thread from a man who says his story was included in the Divorce Corp film. He wanted to say that the film does not focus solely on false claims of physical or emotional abuse but also focuses on abuse of procedure within the system. He gave a little detail about his court case. He said he found the Divorce Corp team to be very thorough in the way they researched the stories that were to be portrayed in the film.
He also said that
We are not going to engage much with this man’s comments other than to say this:
The term “father’s rights” has been coined informally. We believe the gendered nature of that term is appropriate given that the groups which get tagged with that name are composed mostly of fathers and divorced men (though they may have girlfriends and current wives as their allies) and they clearly advocate for fathers who experience divorce, not for mothers. There are other groups that advocate for mothers who go through divorce. Interestingly, the colloquial term for these groups does not usually point to the mothers’ “rights” but to their focus on protecting their children.
In these groups the members are not employees like police officers or firefighters, nor are they doing vital unpaid work like stay at home parents are. People form clubs, societies and voluntary associations because they share interests and experiences in common. They are free to join and to leave such groups, whereas most people aren’t free to drop out of employment or the vital unpaid work they do in society.
As a society we have realised that it is best to avoid designating someone’s gender in their job role, because the vast majority of jobs can be performed adequately by either sex. But with a free association like an interest group in which the members of the group are predominately of one sex and the activities of the group are focused on their shared experience as members of that sex, then it’s silly to claim that we shouldn’t tag the group with a name that denotes the gender of its members.
And and as well as ‘silly’, I would like to point out that this kind of argument — setting up false-parallels between unlike things and then using that ‘logic’ to press a conclusion — is the kind of thing that verbal abusers often do. I am not saying that the man who submitted this comment is an abuser: I make no conclusions about him personally. I am simply reminding our readers of a tactic that verbal abusers often use, so that readers can be more astute in recognizing that tactic when it is being used against them.
This is Divinely wild… I just bought the movie “God’s outlaw” 2 days ago (so 2 days before I read this, as I’m just now catching up on the blogs posted here over the last week)… had never heard of it, but was at the Christian book store and it caught my attention and so I bought it… haven’t watched it yet, but will make a point of trying to watch it sometime in the next week! love your sensitivity to the Spirit and the “coincidental” 😉 confirmation about the movie about William Tyndale… thanks for sharing
Lucky you, Bev. I haven’t seen it for years!
One of our readers passed on this link. Are You A Believer? [Internet Archive link]
Here’s a quote from it:
New to group, new to divorce, not new to being a thinking individual. Admittedly, I was very naive and like many (though I don’t know why) I believed in the ability of Family Court to effect a fair and mosly equitible split of marital assets and parenting involvement and RESPONSIBILITIES. It stands to reason the parent with the child full time, and the family home, should get a tad more of the equitible, for obvious reasons.
In my own case things got sticky with my child, once the court realized she was 15 1/2 when this case stared out as a way to secure a post nup agreement decision of ex spouse and I, to keep as much as the finances intact and protected from the courts greed, as much possible, while going on seperate ways as far as living arrangements.
This was an idea discovered by myself, and not well advertised anywhere as a possible to an expensive and animosity filled divorce in states without seperation laws. An attorney familiar with pensions plans and the US military should have realized that with these two financial factions, what I wished to obtain was impossible, My attorney, nonetheless while knowing he was going to generate a divorce…..played me long and hard as if this were possible, and any protection for me, from financial ruin from abusive and concerning behavior of my spouse, that upon his retirement only got worse, and worse.
What it has turned into has been the most degrading and abusive and financially stripped time of my life. I will never recover from the injustice, greed, and sadness that one could so reduce a fellow man or woman to such atrocities as seen in the courts of our land.
You have NO rights as a woman, particularly if you have given up empolyment to raise your children, yourself, daily as I have. Personally, I did not want to bring children into the world that I did not raise, daily, monthly and yearly. To me, unlike what many think, Marriage is God’s plan to secure security for the resulting of the union “by product”, children, PERIOD. I, thankfully, had that luxury….though women reproducing and geared for nurture of the young is a factor out of my or anyones personal control to “change” so that there is TRUE EQUITY.
I am appalled how any court, could order any form of removal of a NURSING babe from the mothers breast, so that a unable to nurse father could have his “visitation” equality. I say give him this “equality” when God gives him breasts with milk. If we did this to zoo animals, it would be considered cruel and unsual punishment if not animal abuse. God would laugh at the concept that his design can be “changed” by man to be not what it is.
Unlike many, my ex and I (another myth I had believed, none of this was mine) had accumulated a hefty sized retirement account…which, after accessing us of net worth….the “family court” system saw as the prize. Sadly it was not our desire (mine anyway for certainity). to “wage war” or to be stripped of our income, and worth, and left in poverty (or close) by this proximity split and a division of our assets.
I will never know, but it appears the song of greed got to my ex and he played along with the power struggles, and then turned on me in the system. It would not suprise me as power and control seems to go with being a male with money, much like truly Christian men, can be seduced by the power of their evangelical TV broadcast empires.
The bible refers to “money as the root of all evil”. I say the evil is already there and money is the bait that brings it out.
I am in a better position than most, though my settlement, will never be the amounts stated in the mediated settlement arrangement. Everyone but me knew that at the onset, I was the declared “loser” by all. Why, nature of my sex, period. Like I said naive. I believed in fair not the trickery and withholding of information by the pension office putting me at mediation without any fairness or knowledge to know what I had to mediate with. All relevant and crucial information couldn’t even be obtained with a subpeona, apparently and the pension plan administrator should conduct the divorce, as her rule apparently overtrumps the divorce judge, the mediated settlement, and my attorney. The plan writes the qdro,(well the attorney MUST follow their specs or it won’t be approved and that is NOT in the equality realm at all, by design) apparently, so they should be the ones awarding settlement and writing the terms for the divorce, why even involve the court? Because then every one in the family court system can make money off of you and spouse. I was told no matter the award I would only get, x. PERIOD. They did not have to comply with the awarded amount in the decree. Could not, would not, EVER. Same of the US military. Perhaps a better lawyer representing me? Doubtful. They are federal our divorce court was state.
There was a complete and Total absence of relevant information, available to me or ANY attorney, these pensions are so well protected by FEDERAL laws, as is the US Military.that , even with an attorney involved, a good one, I suspect the outcome to “cheat” a naive and trusting spouse in the judical system would have or will be the same.
Actuary tables, codes, and formulas, any “trick” in the book to allow the serviceman or pension member to “cheat” you, and have contempt covered by math formulas. Of course everyone knew this but me, which in retrospect was by “design”. I was somehow operating under the mistakes impression that that with an attorney, that information which should have been mine for the asking as a spouse, would have certainly been made available to me as a divoricing spouse armed with an agent of the STATE, no it was not. Putting me at a severe disadvantage in discovering and knowing the specifics of total income and computations used to award, so that things were “equal”, in negotiations from the onset. He had the information on how they “cheat” women, who oft times are younger, I did not.
Ladies be warned, you are at the starting gate inequal, and you will never regain that status throughout the proceedure, and your child, well they are a commodity,or liability, in the eyes of the opposition, not a human being who loves both parentls. They are forever, changed and will never look at YOU, the same, if you inititated your release from tyranny. Expect to get it in spades in family court. I wish I would have known. I wanted to believe in reasonable, fair, and humane outcomes. I don’t anymore..
In the course of a 36 year marriage, with each year husbands earning and “stash of pension” grew, so did his power tripping……and abusive demeanor. Finally I was no more than a servant…..subject to all manner of economic abuses…..such as all purchases placed on my credit cards…….and all debit left with me to fend off…as they call our house nonstop.
If an attorney, also does bankruptcy avoid that as they will lose your divorce just to gain you as a bankruptcy client.
Ladies……..please be forewarned. You will not win, you will not get equalization, you will be held to toe the line and the ex abuser will be given the leeway to thumb his nose at justice for you, or your child. I am sorry I didn’t just cater to the mental, emotional and eventually physical abuse, to include at the last, ex cop, solider laying in the empited middle bedroom with his head against the wardrobe that contained all he needed to control me, liquor and a loaded gun under his head, as he lay prone everyday, refusing to leave the house even for his own tobacco,. It was at this point a heated exchange finally occurred and daughter threatned to call the police. Knowing what that could mean nowdays…I knew I had to remove him from us, to secure everyones security. I did not wish us BOTH to be arrested, by “equality” or have my teen placed in social services, all because I wrangled with the demons of dispair that must have taken hold in my husbands heart and mind.
Either way, it was a no win, no break even for me, or our child, why? My gender, still prohibts financial equity. I do not want total gender equity, as that is not possible under Gods design. Financial equity (need based depending on who gets what in other liabilities and assets) IS possible. Marriage is a contract with God and State. When that contract is dissolved, neither God nor State has any power to equalize, minimize the damage. Heaven help us all.