the neutral zone
vol.6 issue 6
6.06
Content
News and Updates
News from the Front
-Domestic Violence & Mediation
-General Sessions mediation
-Collaborative Law comes to Knoxville
Welcome to Isabell Huie
CMC Blogs
Legal Language
TVMA Minutes
Mediation Toolbox
E-mail
from Eva!
Quid Novi?
News and Updates:
TVMA
News and Dates
Board meeting, Saturday, June 3, 10am,
Riverdale School
(Wayne Whitehead)
TVMA met in May to hear from the
Honorable Kay Kaserman, long-time referee of Knox County Juvenile Court. She spoke about the uses of mediation in Juvenile Court, specifically in dependency dispositions, but also custody and visitation. TVMA will not have program meetings June-August, but will be planning a big fall "kick-off" meeting, possibly with a well-known and dynamic speaker---stay tuned to the website and to email announcements.TVMA's new website is up and running and looking mah-velous, dahling! Check it out at www.tnmediators.com Also check out the Calendar for 2006.
Knoxville Bar
Association dates:
ADR Section:
Events will always be held at
Butler, Vines & Babb, 2701 Kingston Pike,
Knoxville, TN,
on the NW corner of
Kingston Pike and Concord, at 5:30-6:30pm on the first Monday of the
month. They each have been approved for 1 hr CME/CLE.
$20 for KBA members; $30 for
nonmembers. ($5 extra the day of the event.)
Note the location change and the
price increase, both of which begin in 2006.
"Ethics & Mediation" Speaker: Howard Vogel, O'Neil, Parker & Williamson, 5:30-6:30pm, Approved for one hour of Ethics CLE Credit
Lunch
and Learn at Calhoun's on the River, at 12 noon ($35 members, $50
nonmembers):
Thursday, June 8, "Biggest
Mistakes in Mediation: Do's and Don'ts of Representing Clients in
Mediation,"
featuring Bruce Anderson of Anderson, Reeves & Herbert, and Elizabeth
Meadows of Jones, Meadows & Wall, June 8 at 5:30-6:30pm.
If you would like to make an
announcement to our mailing list about something to do with mediation,
please send it in by the first of the month to our emails (below).
Be
sure to look up our new mediation friends in Nashville at
Tennessee Association of Professional
Mediators! Check out their
listings of
Rule 31 mediators and their other helpful resources...
Check out a website
called DiscoverET.org.
CMC is listed under Civic & Interest Groups in both "Mediation" and "Social
Action" categories.
Catch the Metropulse
editorial on conflict resolution in the Knox County schools by Barry
Henderson. CMC's peer mediation program is recommended as a good way
for the schools to address bullying, harassment and other student disputes.
CMC is a Community Shares Affiliate! Please plan ahead for the 10th annual Brewfest on October 14, 2006. Sign up with us now to volunteer at this wonderful event.
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In May I had the pleasure of attending my first mediation conference as the director of CMC. I traveled to Poughkeepsie, NY, for a three day conference at Vassar College on the provocative topic of Domestic Violence and Mediation. Almost 200 mediators and domestic violence advocates attended from all over the country. The conference was hosted by the local community mediation program, Mediation Center of Dutchess County. The mediation program much like CMC's, is a community-based program which mediates for people without regard to their ability to pay. They get referrals from the courts involving parties who are or were "intimate partners", married or not. For the last four years, all these referrals have been put through a protocol designed to identify potential mediation cases where domestic violence is a factor. The special protocol was designed through a collaboration between the mediation center and the domestic violence center. Just to be clear about what is meant by domestic violence: it is a pattern of COERCIVE behaviors that may include some or all of the following: physical abuse (i.e., battering and injury), psychological abuse, sexual assault, social isolation, deprivation, intimidation, and economic abuse. The goal of domestic violence is to establish and maintain power and control. The behaviors are perpetrated by someone who is or was involved in an intimate relationship with the victim. Domestic violence may include partner abuse, child abuse, elder abuse, abuse in gay or lesbian relationships, teen dating violence, and abuse between any family members. Although some victims are successful in escaping an abusive relationship after the first assault, most abuse is recurrent and escalates in both frequency and severity. A victim's access to food, clothing, money, friends, transportation, health care, social services, or employment may be restricted by the abuser. The abuser may harm children, other family members, friends, pets, personal belongings, and the family home. That said, the goal of Dutchess County collaborative mediation program is to move forward with the mediation when the victim wants to mediate after receiving a thorough safety assessment and creating a "safety plan" for the mediation. The safety plan allows the victim to communicate with the mediators confidentially ahead of time about the way the abuser controls and escalates. The victim is the most knowledgeable and observant person in that respect. The mediators use that information to balance the power in the room, something they are trained to do in any mediation. The victim's voice is honored and the process of breaking the cycle of violence has begun by "honoring the victim's voice." CMC staff and volunteers are looking forward to more collaboration with our local domestic violence community, law enforcement, and the newly opened Family Justice Center. We've recently trained four domestic violence advocates as mediators; the advocates can better understand mediation, both to assess cases, and to sit in mediation with victims when appropriate. They can also help train our staff and volunteers. We look forward to training and education between mediators and advocates, creation of screening and assessment tools and protocols to ensure safety, and working with families to model an empowered way of resolving conflict and breaking the cycle of power, control and violence.
 In other news:
We have decided to institute a new program to recruit volunteer civil
mediators who have already taken a Rule 31 Civil training and would like
to volunteer in our
General Sessions
Court Mediation Program.
We think its a great way to practice mediation skills and give back to
your community through volunteer work.
If you are Rule 31 trained, attorney or non-attorney, and would like to volunteer to be a co-mediator with CMC, please give me a call at 594-1879 or email me, jkittrell@2mediate.org. For these volunteers who have already had an approved Rule 31 civil mediation training, we plan to hold a short 4-6 hr training session to go over our co-mediation 6 step model, as well as the court forms and protocol. Our civil mediations---landlord-tenant, fee for service disputes, unmarried or family personal and real property division, to name a few.--- take place in the morning three days a week (M-W) in the Old Courthouse. CMC provides volunteer mediators for approximately 500 mediations each year in General Sessions Civil Court, primarily to self-represented litigants. Ordinarily, CMC trains volunteers in a basic 35-40 hr mediation training; the new volunteer then observes several mediations and is mentored through several more. We plan to hold another basic training for new volunteers in the Fall, dates to be announced soon. Visit our website to download an application.
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news
Welcome to a New CMC Board Member!
sabell Huie
We'd like to introduce our new board members, Isabell Huie.
Isabell is a native Floridian who graduated from Florida A. & M. University and received a Masters of Science from the University of Tennessee in 2001. Isabell has over twenty years of experience in insurance claims mediation and subrogation. She has served on several boards within the metropolitan Knoxville area and is currently mediating hurricane losses in the gulf coast area for senior citizens. She also has training in workplace and school violence prevention! Welcome, Isabell...we look forward to working with you throughout your term.
We would also like to welcome to our mediation community JOHN SELSER, J.D., who is the new director of Anderson County's Community Mediation Services. John is an experienced mediator who has worked with the Maine state court-referred mediation program and was also working with Community Mediation Services in Augusta. He's originally from upper-East Tennessee, graduated from UT College of Law, and was pleased to come home to be closer to his 91 yr old mother. Ann Sides is the retiring Executive Director at CMS. She leaves to volunteer full-time with an exciting new program to conduct victim-triggered mediation between violent offender and victim or surviving family members.
CMC and CMS are looking forward to collaborating in many ways throughout the next year!
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Our staff email addresses:
Jackie Kittrell: jkittrell@2mediate.org
Sharon Upshaw: supshaw@2mediate.org
Jen Comiskey: jcomiskey@2mediate.org
Annex: cmcjuvct@2mediate.org
General info: mediate@2mediate.org
Our postal address:
Community Mediation Center
912 South Gay, Suite L-300
Knoxville, TN 37902
Our telephones:
Gay Street: (865)594-1879, voice; 594-1890, fax
Annex: (865)215-6570, voice; 215-6465, fax
By Don K. Ferguson
(A volunteer mediator and author of the "Grammar Gremlins" column that appears in the News Sentinel every Sunday.)
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forthwith
Forthwith "is a fuzzy word with no pretense of precision," according to Bryan A. Garner in his Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage. "The writer who intends a precise meaning must beware." Garner adds, however, that forthwith can be "a usefully vague term."
Dictionaries of general use say forthwith means "at once; immediately."
Tennessee Valley Mediation Association
PLEASE VOLUNTEER TO HELP US BE EVEN BETTER IN 2006-2007 YEAR!
List of TVMA Committee:
Monthly Meeting Committee-enlisting presenters, communicating with Judy for the application of CLE/CMEs for each month, set up and break down of each meeting (including snacks and refreshments).
Special Events Committee-will open and close each year (Fall and Spring) with special events planning and organizing.
Public Relations Committee-this committee will work closely with Monthly Meeting and Special Events committees as well as the Speaker's Bureau getting out the public service announcements in a timely manner. They will also attempt to engage and support local reporters to write articles about mediation and conflict resolution in local papers and coverage in broadcast media.
Speaker's Bureau Committee-community outreach with Power Point presentation to organizations and groups around East Tennessee
Website Committee-oversee and supply website content, develop and maintain guidelines for website usage by working closely with Richard Ward, our Webmaster.
Mediation Toolbox
Tennessee child support guidelines have changed (Again!). The changes will take effect later in June. The revisions are available online but without any analysis for those who do not want to read through 55 pages of the Tennessee Code. Please stay tuned for more information. The current child support guidelines/income shares are explained in an FAQ here.::
:: An interesting and informative website on Tennessee Divorce Mechanics from a Memphis law firm.
:: Judges as Coaches An unexpected but very compelling conclusion that judges teach parties valuable lessons by teaching a respect for "the game"---society's rules---and teaching about the need for teamwork in their life. This article is written by a state circuit court judge who is a member of the Positive Coaching Alliance.
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Resources about Children in Mediation
Highlights of the 2004 National Youth Gang Survey.
:: Sexual assaults by children on other children
:: Children of a Polygamist Sect This is a series of articles in the LA Times about the recent capture of Warren Jeffs, a leader in the fundamentalist LDS sect in Utah and Arizona. The link above takes you to the last article in the series, but links to the previous three articles are provided on that page. You will have to register (free) to get access to the online paper, but its a good series about a fascinating subject. I read Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer last year about the fanatical Lafferty brothers involved in a fundamentalist Mormon domestic abuse and spousal murder---actually, murder of a brother's spouse. The book also includes a fascinating history of the Mormon church and Joseph Smith.
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Federal Court ruling on whether it is constitutional for a state to forbid gay adoption
Finstuen v. Edmundson (pdf file) is a recent Oklahoma court case where a federal judge declared a state constitutional amendment invalid and unconstitutional which tried to forbid Oklahoma state courts from recognizing same sex couples adoptions. The judge found that the amendment violated the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the United States Constitution, the Equal Protection Clause and parties substantive due process rights. He observed that the Amendment to the Oklahoma statute was passed to allegedly “halt the erosion of the mainstream definition of the family unit and to protect Oklahoma children from being targeted for adoption by gay couples across the nation and to ensure that children are raised in traditional family environments.”The judge wrote that “the Amendment targets an unpopular group and singles them out for disparate treatment. . . . Thus, to the extent the Amendment has a disparate impact on homosexual individuals seeking recognition of out-of-state adoptions, it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution and must be set aside.”
The judge also ruled that because the effect of the Amendment is to interfere with the parent Plaintiffs’ rights to make decisions related to the care, custody, and control of their children, Plaintiffs have established the Amendment infringes on a fundamental right. Furthermore, the defendants failed to produce evidence showing a compelling state interest to be served that justifies the infringement by the state on the fundamental right.
:: In a related story, the US Senate Judiciary Committee approved a constitutional amendment which would ban same-sex marriage, 10-8, along party lines. Several Republicans voted for it, including the chair of the Committee, Sen. Arlen Spector, because they would like it to have a debate and airing in the Senate. It will now go to the full Senate for hearings and a vote. It is not expected to pass. In order to become an amendment to the US Constitution, the amendment would have to get 2/3 of the votes in Congress and 3/4 of the states. At least 12 states have passed amendments banning gay marriage while two — Vermont and Connecticut — have legalized civil unions.
:: Tribal Domestic Violence case law, prepared by Tribal Law and Policy Institute, is a compendium of cases designed to help tribal judicial officers understand how domestic violence cases have been handled by various Native American tribal jurisdictions.
:: M
ediationLawFirms.com
I think I get it, but Is this how they really want to describe a mediation service to a consumer?
:: National Institute for Advanced Conflict Resolution (NIACR) has a useful website, providing "find a mediator" listings. This month, they also list the Top 5 mediation 'blogs! NIACR's 2005 Book of the Year is The Handbook of Dispute Resolution, ed. Moffit and Bordone.
:: Mindfulness Comes to Harvard Law, a recent article from Steve Keeva's column on his website, Transforming Practices.com The webcast of the Harvard ADR conference, with Dr. Leonard Riskin is here.
:: Very interesting art gallery!
Some of our favorite civil mediation "war stories" involve neighbors and dogs, but this is the first time we've heard about a cat fight with a real cat...If this were a Knox County case, our General Sessions mediators would've been able to help, most definately!
Owner
Opts to Stand Trial, Rather Than Death for Lewis the Cat
New York Lawyer
May 3, 2006
By The Associated Press
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. -- The case of a Fairfield cat that is accused of viciously attacking several neighbors is going to trial. Ruth Cisero, owner of Lewis the cat, Tuesday withdrew her bid for special probation because she would have had to allow Lewis to be euthanized.
Cisero withdrew her application for accelerated rehabilitation and instead pleaded not guilty to second-degree reckless endangerment and elected a trial by jury.
Residents of the neighborhood of Sunset Circle claimed they had been terrorized by Lewis.
The neighbors said Lewis' long claws, along with catlike stealth, have allowed the cat to attack at least a half dozen people and ambush the Avon lady as she was getting out of her car.
More than 500 "Save Lewis" T-shirts have been sold to raise funds for a defense fund for Cisero and a Westport lawyer has volunteered to be the cat's lawyer.
The special probation offer with conditions was made at the insistence of neighbor Maureen Bachtig, who was reportedly attacked by Lewis Feb. 20.
In a letter to prosecutors, Bachtig said she would only agree to probation for Cisero if the cat were put to death.
One more animal reference
that is connected to the subject of mediation...
There is a wonderful article in recent
New Yorker magazine about human body language from the point of view
of a dog (and
Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan). The article is not online, but
if any of our volunteers would like a copy, let me know.
There is a voice inside of you,
That whispers all day long,
"I feel that this is right for me,
I know that this is wrong."
No teacher, preacher, parent, friend
Or wise man can decide
What’s right for you -- just listen to
The voice that speaks inside.
---Shel Silverstein
For those of you who know our German friend, Eva Wank, CMC's intern in 2005-2006, here is the latest e-mail from her world travels. She passed her bar exam with flying colors, has the job she always wanted waiting for her, and so took off on a tour to Indonesia with friend, Antionio. Don't worry, she's safe and sound in spite of "earth creaks", "vulcanos", and comodo dragons! We miss you, Eva...
Dear friends,
thank you for all the mails I got back from you. Antonio and me we have two more days in Indonesia and I am sitting in an Internetcafe so I will respond you when I am back home in Cologne.
When I look back we really spend a great time here in Indonesia. We have seen three different Islands and they were all beautiful in their different way.
The balinese people were very friendly wherever we went and they all tried to help us whenever we got lost.
Bali is the most touristic Island so you can always speak English, you get every food and you can have every comfort you want. On the other hand the balinese people are all very religious and one thing I really liked are the nice little offerings they make out of palmtrees, flowers and rice. And that is something they don't do only for tourists. They have a lot of ceremonies and if you leave the tourist places you can see a lot of other traditional things and eat in the local restaurants (that's usually plain rice, spicy vegetables and chicken or really spicy soup) you can see them working on their ricefields doing every work by hand in the hot sun.
We also spend some days on Flores to see a vulcano with three lakes in different colours. Flores is much more rough, the nature grows stronger there and there are just a few roads to travel cross the Island. These roads go all up and down, are very small and with a lot of holes. We spend almost two days in local busses to travel 200km. The people who live up in the mountains are much poorer, they live in simple houses without any furniture and all life happens next to the main road where they sit together or walk for hours carrying fruits and other things on their heads. So on Flores we had to speak Indonesian language and we didn't meet many tourists any more. When we went up the vulcano it was cloudy but we had a beautiful view on our hike back after sunrise. Another day we did a boat trip to Rinca Island where the comodo varans live (they are really like little dragons and it can be dangerous to come to close so I was really surpriced that our guide said he just started working on the Island two days ago and he is also afraid of the dragons - but we survived).
Than we took a ferry to Sulawesi. There we spend more than a week in Rantepao. The region is called Tana Toraja and it's famous for their really beautiful traditional houses with a lot of wood carvings. We also could join one of the funeral ceremonies where they kill a lot of pigs and waterbuffalows (on the day we came they just killed one buffalow and really a lot of pigs but I could sit and eat with one of the families and I did't have to wach them killing the animals). The ceremonie takes 3 or 5 days and the family waited for 6 years after the grandparents died until they had enough money to pay the ceremonie where they invite all the families from all over the Islands to be their guests. At the end they put the horns of the buffalows under the roof on the front side and you can always see if it's a rich family. It was really an experience and I liked that they all sit together with their families while these traditional ceremonies.
Than we did several bustrips to get further north and we spend two more weeks on a really small Island calles Kadidiri, one of the Togean Islands. There we lived in a basic bungalow at the beach. The food was included and so we had the meals a day with the other few tourists who were there specially for diving. That was also a great time. I didn't spend time on an Island like this before. The resort was called Paradise and that's what it was. White sand beach with palmtrees, tourquise water, a jetty that goes into the sea where we had incredible sunsets and a reaf with a lot of corals in front of the beach where I snorkeled for the first time. Behind the beach the jugle startet so we had dangerous snakes, cacurachas, big spiders and a little scorpion sometimes as guests in the bungalows so that was really adventure. Antonio and me did a trip to some other lonely Islands to spend a day there and we had a really good time, also with the other tourists who were all very nice.
Now we are back in Bali to spend the last days more comfortable and do some more trips on this Island. We also heared in the news that there has been a big earth creak on Java with a lot of dead people but if you don't watch TV there's no way to find out.
Even if there were the bombs in Indonesia where tourists were killed and even if they have a lot of conflicts between cristians and moslems we always felt save while we were traveling and it's hard for the locals that there are not so many tourists any more. I think Indonesia is really worth to be explored and maybe we can watch our pictures sometimes together.
I write again when I am back home. Looking forward to hear and read from you.
A big hug for you all
Eva