Chris Brown: A Tune No One Can Afford to Play

According to the site "E"On-Line, in what they hype as "exclusive," they claim Rihanna and Chris Brown may come together again to sign a duet during an "American Idol broadcast on the same stage?  There is also a quote from Rihanna's manager saying it's not true.  But is it true?

Are the powers that sell records and book concerts testing the waters to get a pulse on the public's reaction?

Remember, Chris Brown brutally beat Rihanna on February 15, 2009, just over three years ago.  The picture we all saw around the globe was horrifying. Rihanna did not surface much or give interviews with the exception of the hour long interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC's Prime Time to discuss what happened.  The beating was the first felony charge for Brown, he was sentenced to community service and probation until 2014.Since the beating, he's been in various altercations of sorts with his temper, but has so far remained free from a jail cell.

Although Chris Brown was not sentenced to jail time, he has been sentenced by the public court of opinion for his criminal behavior.  Just recently Brown performed at the Grammy's but not without public outcry.


There are a lot of fans asking to give Chris Brown another chance.  That Brown was only 19 years of age when he beat his then girlfriend Rihanna.  For someone like Chris Brown, it's not likely he will change anytime soon.  Once angry and violent, it always escalates into angrier and more dangerous.  This is a pot on a stove ready to boil over at any given time.

Teen Dating Expert and Columnist Susie Kroll said on her site earlier today, 

"about the rumors surrounding Chris Brown and Rihanna getting back together and the dangerous ramifications to our teens. We know that abused women and girls often return to the abuser several times, sometimes putting themselves in lethal danger. To do this while the public is watching sends extremely bad messages, and, yes, it comes with the territory of celebrity, just like the big black Bentley Brown drives. Chris Brown and Rihanna are role models to millions of teens and tweens all over the world, they could have made several responsible decisions after the incident, but neither seems to have done that."

There is a responsibility with being in the spotlight especially when the audience is made up of mostly teenagers.  There is also a responsibility from the media to not fuel this garbage in an attempt to get traffic or ratings to your sites.  Domestic Violence is a serious crime, not to be used on national stage, treated and promoted like a reuniting of a once popular circus act.

There is nothing entertaining about attempted murder!

Related articles

• Is Chris Brown Melting Down? (susiekroll.com)
• Chris Brown & Our Inner Toddler (neilschori.com)
• Why We Should Ignore Chris Brown and Rihanna (theroot.com)
• Rihanna And Chris Brown's Friends Don't Want Then To Get Back With Each Other (lukewilliamsgossip.wordpress.com)

The Susan Murphy Milano Show "Time's Up!" Thursday 2/2/2012 at 2pm ET

Everything Old Becomes New Again!

From her visit with Pastor Neil Schori, in the same church where Stacy Peterson confided in him, Susan Murphy Milano and Neil Schori assisted several women in the completion of their individual safety plans and the all important, Evidentiary Abuse Affidavit.©

As Pastor of Naperville Christian Church,  Schori has had the opportunity to be more than just a Pastor giving a sermon each Sunday and teaching the lessons of the Bible to his congregation.  Neil’s works go far beyond the pulpit, and as a young, well versed individual, he speaks to those who may not otherwise hear his messages.

Neil has devoted much of his time and talent, not only with providing aid to Haiti, but also advocating and assisting victims of violence within his community. He is listed on the National Registry as a Certified Trainer on Document the Abuse (documenttheabuse.com) and is available to train for first line responders in the E.A.A. Model of Approach.  Neil is currently organizing others in the faith based community to embrace the issue of intimate partner violence and urging them to take a larger role in it’s prevention by reaching within each church and community to provide the simple, but effective procedures as seen at Document the Abuse.


Listen Live at www.herewomentalk.com

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Susan Murphy Milano has worked with victims of violence for over 20 years following the death of her mother at the hands of her police officer father who brought the violence of the streets of Chicago home each day. Green to the gills on how the “system” worked, Murphy Milano hit the streets vowing to change the way the world looked at victims of violence and improving on services and procedures available to women like her mother.

One of those surviving victims from the past will join the show to discuss how she was badly beaten and left for dead. One of several very high risk cases that were passed to Susan Murphy Milano as a last resort, Jackie Keys will recount what it was like back then, in the early 90′s, what she was taught to do to survive and move into a new life, free of violence and the abuser who attacked her.

Along with Jackie Keys from the past, Tracey Murphy makes another appearance relating present day procedures, lack of resources, and the overall climate in assistance for victims of abuse.  Tracey will talk about what helped her and her children get out of an abusive relationship and what she’s doing today to keep her family safe from the abuser.

imaginepublicity.com

'Tis the Season to be Safe in Your Home'

Every year my mother made a big deal about Christmas from planning out what color to make the eyes on the gingerbread cookies, to the day she, my brother, and myself would go downtown to Marshall Field’s department store for our annual Santa visit and photo. The bright lights and holiday decorations lining downtown store windows and street lamps always made me forget, if only for a moment, our lives were anything but bright and hopeful.

I have to give my mother credit, as difficult as our daily fight for survival she created happy memories for us. Sometimes, the holiday did not turn out as planned and we ended up on Christmas morning in the emergency room as she received medical attention from injuries caused by my father. My little brother and I viewed stuffing every pocket in our coat and pants with candy canes while at the hospital as a cool thing. Instead of opening presents, we went back to the house with a cup of hot chocolate and whip cream prepared with love.

Hope was always a magical illusion it did not matter if it was Christmas or not. The days and months always felt as if they were continuous in a never ending road of unpredictable behavior by a man authorized  to carry a gun and a badge to protect the streets of Chicago, while hiding behind the closed door of our home like a coward, terrorizing his own family. In our house you told time by the changing of seasons and what you needed to wear before heading out the door. During the holidays it was the one time of year that I didn't wish anything from the Sears catalog that would arrive sometime after Thanksgiving. If Santa was real, perhaps he would find us a nice safe place like I remembered watching in the movie Miracle on 34th Street, where we could hang our stockings behind a tree tacked to the wall and live happily, far away from my father, forever.

Growing up, my brother and I never really counted on much.  Making plans for anything was wishful thinking. More than fifty years later, I have no closure, just an acceptance of the violent events that would eventually hijack my mother’s life. The last memory of her is 10 feet away from the oven where we baked Christmas cookies, throughout the kitchen her blood spilled over onto the once bright yellow pattern on the floor tiles where my brother and I once sat anxiously waiting for the Christmas cookies to finish baking. In the bedroom; a couple hundred feet away, dead from a self inflicted gunshot, my father.  Although not visible to the human eye, there is a tattoo etched deep inside as it is for all those whom survive homicide; a permanent scar from a battle I would rather erase from my memory.

The effects of the violence would follow me into my own world as an adult, a secret I kept hidden from friends, colleagues and relationships. Suddenly, my secret was out, unwillingly I was a victim and a survivor of a life I did not ask for nor chose as my life's journey. In 1988, my parents divorced and the holidays were around the corner. My mother and I spent the Christmas holidays together, the first without my father and the last one with my mother.

Abruptly, in 1989, after their deaths, I left a successful business career for a world that provided little, if any, hope or assistance to abuse victims and their children.

I did not realize when I began working with victims of intimate partner abuse my world would be an important life raft for safety in keeping others alive. Over a decade of running a national agency and providing direct services, I began to incorporate strategies like no other in the country, as social service agencies were not familiar with the battleground I knew intimately.

Service providers and agencies layered by politics and paperwork with government forms and numbers instead of thinking outside the box; a box that never belonged there in the first place if lives were to be saved.

This rigid box of "rules and restrictions" is what often kicks the safety and services of a victim to the streets and back to the violence. Yes, a woman returns to the abuser numerous times before she leaves but it’s also because the family courts and services are either limited or dysfunctional.

Far too often services are based on income either too much, too little or there is not enough funding available for what is required. Ironically, the funding issues in my world were never an obstacle in keeping victims alive. With little or no resources, each person I assisted did not die. Instead, they moved forward with their lives, most went back to school to obtain degrees others found paying jobs as the sole support of the household turning their lives around minus the threat of violence. I think it was because I took the time with them, something I noticed from the  onset that was not happening when a victim reached out for help.

I learned from being in the trenches and providing hands on services combined with making time to explain to victims-- meant the difference between life and death. I would go beyond the sterile basic information and red tape of guide lines set by funders and various government agencies, people who were and continue to do so today, more concerned with tabulating stats of human lives that amounted to nothing more then entering useless garbage into a data base that had nothing to do with safety or leaving and never returning to the abuse or the system for help. One cannot effectively assist a victim of intimate partner by sitting behind a desk when they have never left the comfort of their offices, when they have never been inside the real world of sheer terror and violence that victims endure daily. Often placing victims in something labeled a shelter, government funded that does not in many ways meet the needs of victims. As I have always said like our own DNA no two cases of abuse are alike.

The days of placing a bandage on intimate partner violence, as though it were a boo-boo, are over. When a system does what it has always done, the results will be the same. It did not work out for women like my mother, unable to speak today, because they were silenced in the prime of their lives, murdered in cold blood.

As we enter the year 2012, know that the death toll across the country for those who lose their lives because of intimate partner violence does not have to be a predictable outcome in some hardwired data base, ultimately marked by a cemetery headstone as in years past. A child no longer has to acompany their mother to the emergency room on Christmas morning filling their pockets with candy canes in a cold waiting room as medical staff stitch their mothers head or set a broken limb and sent back out into uncertainty and fear that the next time they might not be so lucky.

In the New Year I would like everyone who reads this to join me in ending the abuse. How, you ask? Each time a news story about a victim who was killed comes across your facebook page or you read about a case in the Huffington post, AOL News, Google, News vine, USA Today, the Examiner, Forbes, The Washington Post, New York Times or see it on Nancy Grace, Fox News, Good Morning America, MSNBC, the Oprah Show, Dr. Phil, NPR Radio or any number of news programs send them a brief paragraph about the book Time's Up and that these cases no longer have to be tragic. That women such as Susan Powell, Stacy Peterson, Jacque Waller, Michelle Parker, Venus Stewart, Angel Downs, Renee' Pernice, Kathleen Savio and others if killed their words will speak from the grave in a court a court of law. The person responsible will be arrested.

The upside is that this book saves lives. The mothers, sisters, girlfriends and children currently living in fear who live in harm’s way each and every day need this book the most. It is up to us to see that the information and knowledge is in their hands.

And to ensure every domestic violence agency, court building, library, church, community center, hospital, business and school has a copy of the book Time's Up: A Guide on How to leave and Survive Abusive and Stalking Relationships. And for a domestic violence provider, social worker, first responder, government agency, school, business or individual who says that cannot afford it? You cannot afford not too!

Time's UP !!!

www.documenttheabuse.com

• Other Stories on the Evidentiary Abuse Affidavit:
• 
  http://courtwatchbrevard.org/drupal/?q=node/176  (example of site using EAA)
  
  
  http://www.forbes.com/sites/crime/2011/10/30/new-technology-for-domestic-violence-and-stalking-victims/
  
  
  http://www2.scnow.com/news/grand-strand/2011/nov/15/cell-phone-app-help-domestic-violence-victims-spea-ar-2692274/  (media Evidentiary Abuse Affidavit) 
  
  
  http://www.wgntv.com/news/coverstory/wgntv-evidentiary-abuse-affidavit-new-tool-gives-abused-women-a-voice-in-courtroom-20111109,0,2614298.story (Media on EAA)
  
  
  http://www.okcfox.com/newsroom/top_stories/videos/kokh_vid_4220.shtml (Media)

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Susan Murphy Milano is a staff member of the Institute for Relational Harm Reduction and Public Pathology Education as a educator and specialist with intimate partner violence prevention strategies directing prevention for high risk situations and cases.


A national trainer to law enforcement, training officers, prosecutors, judges, legislators, social service providers, healthcare professionals, victim advocates and the faith based community and author.. In partnership with Management Resources Ltd. of New York addressing prevention and solutions within the community to the workplace. Host of The Susan Murphy Milano Show,"Time'sUp!" . She is a regular contributor to the nationally syndicated "The Roth Show" with Dr Laurie Roth and a co-host onCrime Wire. Online contributions: Forbes : Crime, She Writesproviding commentary about the hottest topics on crime, justice, and law from a woman’s perspective, as well as Time's Up! a blog which searches for solutions (SOS) for victims of crime

www.imaginepublicity.com

Topeka City Council Votes to Decriminalize Domestic Violence

Today, the city council voted to legalize domestic violence in Topeka, KS. You read correctly, domestic violence is now legal in the city of Topeka.

Those who opposed in the final vote were:

• Denise Everhart
• Richard Harmon
• Larry Wolgast

The City Council members who said the lives of victims and they children have no importance, not in their city anyway:

Dan Stanley- Interim City Manager

Mayor Bill Bunton

• Karen Hiller
• John Alcala,Deputy Mayor
• Sylvia Ortiz
• Chad Manspeaker
• Bob Archer
• Andrew Gray

The Councils email address and contact numbers are here in case you wanted to send an email: http://www.topeka.org/cityofficials/

To read more on Topeka go to today's "Time's Up Blog":

http://timesupblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/topeka-kansas-successfully-votes-making.html

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Susan Murphy Milano is a staff member of the Institute for Relational Harm Reduction and Public Pathology Education. She is a specialist with intimate partner violence prevention strategies and high risk cases and available for personal consultations through the Institute. She is also part of the team at Management Resources Limited of New York.

Susan is the author of "Time's Up: A Guide on How to Leave and Survive Abusive and Stalking Relationships,"Moving out, Moving on, and Defending Out Lives. Susan is the host of The Susan Murphy Milano Show, "Time's Up!" . She is a regular contributor to the nationally syndicated "The Roth Show" with Dr Laurie Roth and a co-host on Crime Wire.

If you would like to schedule Susan Murphy Milano for training and interviews, please contact:ImaginePublicity PO BOX 14946 Surfside Beach, SC 29587 Phone: 843.808.0859 email- contact@imaginepublicity.com

Laura Ackerson: A Heated Custody Battle and Intimate Partner Homicide

Laura Ackerson, from North Carolina, walked away from a violent and controlling relationship. The father of her two children kept her from friends and family during their time together. As with most victims of intimate partner violence, she was isolated from the world, and she was in a heated custody battle.

The last time she was ever seen was on July 12, 2011; then in a blink of an eye taken away. Her life abruptly ended, and the news confirmed, when law enforcement traveled to Texas on a tip and retrieved parts of her dismembered body that were scattered in a pond.

This beautiful mother of two will never again be able to kiss her children good morning or tuck them into bed at night, ever again. Sadly, we don't have to look very far for answers in these cases of intimate partner violence who "suddenly" goes missing that leads to homicide.

Two people were arrested and charged with her murder, the father of her children along with the person to whom he is currently married. They planned out the murder, how she would be killed, to the rental of a Uhaul trailer driven from North Carolina across state lines to Texas. The names of these 2 people, in my opinion, have no significance. They are simply cold blooded killers.

The solution to these crimes, before they turn deadly, is a prescription that incorporates the support of communities and a nation. We do not view intimate partner violence as a crime, even though laws were passed in every state making domestic violence and stalking a crime. Victims lives were lost in order for the law to get passed in each state. This means the ink used to sign the legislation by Governors across the country had a cartridge filled with the blood of those who died. A lot of victims had to die for proposed bills to be passed into law, including my mother, murdered by her Chicago violent crimes detective husband on January 19, 1989.

Not a lot has changed since I began working with victims and keeping them alive. The exception is more lives have been taken. How is that possible when we have so much in place? Services, shelters and tough laws are not enough for the victims of intimate partner homicide in today's world.

Those who abuse and take the threat further to murder believe they, the abuser, are invincible; often playing a clever game of "catch me if you can." Personally, living for 18 years in a crime scene allows you to witness firsthand the silence of the crimes, the offenders and the dynamics that take place behind closed doors.

Isn't it rather strange that the victim is often the mother of their children estranged wife or former girlfriend? And, more often than not, they are going through a divorce or custody battle. Where are Lisa Stebic, Susan Powell, Gail Palmgren, Kelly Rothwell, Angie Denise Tucker, Kimberly Langwell, Ida Dean Richard, Rachael Conger, Tracie Resiner, Stacy Peterson, Michelle Rust, Sandra Travis, Mary Badaracco, Star Boomer, Venus Stewart, Patty Vaughhan, Hope Meek, Tabitha Franklin, Jeri Duvall, Karen Joe Smith or Jacque Waller to name only a few?

Each of the aforementioned are currently missing, in my opinion, victims of intimate partner homicide.

Approaches to this deadly epidemic must be implemented if lives are to be saved. When a system continues to do the same old thing, the outcome will not change. As it relates to intimate partner violence, the prescription can begin with a training to prosecutors, law enforcement, mental health professionals, judges, hospitals and the community. The methods being taught in conjunction with the information located in the book "Time's Up" is not only saving counties across the country tax payer dollars, it is saving lives.

Know that if you are in a relationship that has a history of violence, simply mustering up the courage to confront the person and say it is over, without the proper tools, can cost you, your life!

The book "Time's Up A Guide on How To Survive and Abusive and Stalking Relationship" is the prescription, if you will, that every person must obtain before they announce they are leaving. Below is an example from Chapter 4, one of many unique tools provided in the book. It is available onAmazon.com, or you can purchase via e-book or on a cd. If you have questions, the email address is: timesupforjustice@gmail.com

Before you decide that you have had enough and are ending the relationship create for yourself the "Evidentiary Abuse Affidavit" and video (shown below).

Evidentiary Abuse Affidavit by Susan Murphy Milano from the Book "Time's Up" from Courage Network on Vimeo.

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Susan Murphy Milano is a staff member of the Institute for Relational Harm Reduction and Public Pathology Education. She is a specialist with intimate partner violence prevention strategies and high risk cases and available for personal consultations through the Institute.

Susan is the author of "Time's Up: A Guide on How to Leave and Survive Abusive and Stalking Relationships," Moving out, Moving on, and Defending Out Lives. Susan is the host of The Susan Murphy Milano Show, "Time's Up!" . She is a regular contributor to the nationally syndicated "The Roth Show" with Dr Laurie Roth and a co-host on Crime Wire.