Cradle My Love: A documentary about domestic violence

A Message To My Readers: 

Dear readers and supporters, I wanted to take out the time to thank you all for following my blog, commenting, sharing, and being so encouraging all the time. It really means a lot to me and I pray that I have inspired, encouraging, and helped some of you in many ways. Today I have decided to have a guest blogger, this is the first time since I have started this blog that I've ever had a guest blogger. This young lady at 19 years old has inspired me and I wanted to allow her to use this platform in order to inspire you as well. Miss Jeanine Strother entered a film contest and decided to do a documentary about domestic violence. It  touched my heart to see her at young age raising awareness for a cause that is very close to my heart and I am sure all of her hearts. Jeanine did not get picked in the final round but she is still eligible to win in another contest. On behalf of Jeanine I would like to ask you all to please watch the documentary and share it on Facebook or Twitter. Feel free to leave comments or encouraging words for her.

God Bless you all,

Nicole C. Lofton
Founder of F.A.C.E. I.T.
http://www.faceittoday.org


Miss Jeanine Strother discusses "Cradle My Love"





I created Cradle my Love, in early January 2013, for the Girls Impact the World Film Festival Scholarship. I choose to attack domestic violence in my film because I feel that many people are affected by it. Everyone has heard the stories of people being harmed and abused by their relatives but I wanted to take them into that world. I wanted to show people how dangerous being in a domestic violence relationship can be. My goal is to get more people to speak up and stand up for them selves and others.

Many people fear reporting their abusive partners because they do not want to make them mad or they fear life without them. However, domestic violence victims never know how far their abuser is willing to go until it is too late. My film shows a woman who never told anyone about her husband’s abusive ways because he installed so much fear into her. In the end he kills her. I want people to walk away from my film understanding that domestic violence is a life threatening issue and no one should ever have to deal with. At the end of the video the main character sends a message out to women; letting them know that they are people. She wants them to know that they are very precious and they should never allow others to degrade them in any way, shape or form. I also wanted people to walk away with a resource that they could go to, right away, if they or someone they knew were experiencing domestic violence. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is a 24 hour hotline that can help victims of domestic violence.

The Girls Impact the World Film Festival Scholarship has a peoples choice award, which is based off of the number of votes by viewers. To vote for ‘Cradle my love go to the link below and under the video click facebook like and tweet the link. When I found out about this portion of the Scholarship, I wanted to reach out to as many people that I could. Although, I really need this scholarship for school and it would mean so much if I received it, the most meaningful part has been the responses. It has really touched my heart that ‘Cradle my Love’ has inspired and affected so many people. I have received messages from survivors of domestic violence, current victims of domestic violence and family members of victims that have not survived. They have all thanked me for “giving a voice to those who can not speak.” I hope that my video, most importantly, inspires people to escape abusive relationships because life has so much more to offer.

http://connecther.org/gitw/galleryview/id/137




Comments

  1. AnonymousJanuary 29, 2013 at 11:08 AM

    powerful

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nina ShapiroMarch 7, 2013 at 2:13 AM

    Mental Health Counselor Douglas Bartholomew

    Stripped of Domestic Violence Cases

    By Nina Shapiro Wed., Mar. 6 2013 at 6:00 AM 12 Comments

    Last January, we wrote about the anti-male bias many people perceive in family court. Part of the story dealt with a veteran mental health counselor named Douglas Bartholomew, who provided a damning court-ordered assessment of a man accused of abusing his wife--an assessment one judge said was the worst he had seen in his 22 years on the bench.

    Thanks to a Department of Health action just made public, Bartholomew will no longer conduct such assessments in domestic violence cases, once a mainstay of his practice. The assessments are key to family court cases because they often determine whether someone (usually a man) accused of domestic violence can see his children and under what conditions. And as we we reported last year, allegations of abuse are common, and sometimes used strategically, in contentious divorce cases.

    The case that led to a DOH investigation concerned a man dubbed in our story as "Richard." In his report, Bartholomew said that he couldn't determine whether Richard had assaulted his wife. Yet the counselor described the man, a successful engineer, as suffering from a variety of obscure-sounding psychological problems, including an inability to describe himself and his son in an "I-Thou manner." Bartholomew judged that the man posed "some risk of further psychological abuse" and recommended he go through a domestic violence treatment program.

    Last fall, the DOH released a statement of allegations against Bartholomew that called the counselors assessment "unprofessional and biased." For one thing, the counselor had opined that the abuse allegations made against Richard were merely the "tip of the iceberg" without any "supporting evidence," according to the DOH statement.

    The DOH statement also noted that the counselor spent much more time interviewing Richard than his wife, something that you might suppose would lead to a favorable outcome for Richard. But the husband's point of view did not exactly come across in Bartholomew's report, in part because the counselor misquoted Richard, according to the statement. Richard described his wife as exhibiting various controlling behaviors, but in Bartholomew's assessment, the behaviors were mysteriously attributed to Richard.

    Bartholomew has not admitted any of the allegations. But he has agreed to something called a "stipulation of informal disposition," which was made public by the DOH last week. That stipulation is responsible for stripping Bartholomew of domestic violence cases, meaning he can neither write assessments for the court nor testify as an expert witness. Bartholomew can continue to practice as a counselor, but he must be monitored for at least two years, according to the stipulation. He is also obligated to refund Bartholomew the money he charged Richard when assessing him.

    Bartholomew has not yet responded to a request for comment. But in an interview last year, he painted himself as a victim of a "homegrown hate group of men ...whose stated intention is to destroy the [domestic-violence] intervention system."

    As for Richard, he declares himself pleased by the result. "I wasn't expecting this level of severity," he says, adding that he hopes counselors will get the message that there can be consequences for falsely portraying men as abusers.

    http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2013/03/mental_health_counselor_dougla.php

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJune 13, 2013 at 3:18 AM

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