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I have read the many entries on my Fathers4justice post.
It would be useful to have some answers to the following questions.
1.If the present system is not satisfactory what system do people think would work better in cases where parents can't agree?
2.What is the right balance between fathers rights, mothers rights and the child's rights and how do we assess that?
3.Are there any models in other countries which people think work better?
Short answers are best. You can always refer me to other sources if necessary.
re what can be done to even the playing field for fathers.for a start there should be a provision for some kind of funded legal representation for the dad also.often until things are sorted the childrenremain with the mother as the dad often believes it his for him to proove he is the more caring parent.where as the mother can just sit back and be defended by a legal aid certifcate without needed to try too hard.yes the dad may be working but often earning far short of what he will need to legally fund himself in the long run and if(as is my case)5 years down the line and succesfull,there are many stalling tactics that can be used to blead the self funded dry and force submission and/or even false accusations which the dad will have to go to court to defend his self,which is more cost ,yet the mother may continue to persue every avenue because its all funded for her.i wonder how many really good dads have lost thier children because they simply cannot afford the court battle?i suggest some sort of equal funding no matter what or both parties self represent,otherwise with the current system its always dad whom looses out unless he has real sufficient funds and even then at the end of it all he will be nearly broke as i am,and its just coming out of my childrens mouths straight into solicitors pockets when you look at it.what do you think clive?
Clive, I'm not sure if you are talking about married couples here (why do couples marry?):
(1) The guilty party in divorces ought to be the ones who risk losing custody of the children and the lions share of the spoils, not the innocent party.
(2) If more of the onus was put on the guilty party maybe this would help balance and assess (2) - and set a better example for the children.
(3) Apart from the American model, I'm not aware of other models. Britain ought to do what is right for British people and its culture and religions and not have to copy other countries and cultures. Churches ought to be consulted and have a big say (and maybe even a role) in these issues - if they don't, what is the point in marriage and other blessings? Maybe prenuptial rules and agreements are needed upfront so that people know what they are getting into when they are tempted to err - especially when they have children.
Ingrid: What do you mean by "guilty party"? Guilty of what? Divorces are more complex than ascribing guilt to people and really it is not the role of civil law to make a moral judgement on people's private lives.
I am a humanist married to a Hindu. Why should the Church of England have any say in my marriage? If the Church is to have a role in divorce (which it doesn't believe in anyway), then perhaps sharia should be introduced for Muslim marriages and divorces, allowing Muslims to divorce in accordance with Islam.
I think the law as it stands is fine. The problem is enforcing it. The courts need to ensure that those with custody of children following separation don't vanish or leave the country (either before or after a settlement) and don't obstruct their ex-partner's access to the children. This applies for both men and women. There are plenty of men who have fled abroad with their children, making it very difficult for mothers to ever get a chance to meet their children, let along fight for access and custody in foreign courts.
Dan:
To your "leave the country" I would be tempted to add "leave the area". If a couple are married, or otherwise living as a couple, and one of them wants to get a new job in a different part of the country, they'd have to discuss it and come to an agreement.
The onus should certainly be on a parent who is moving away to consider how both parents are going to continue to play a role in their children's lives. This applies whether it's the custodial or non-custodial parent that wants to move. I don't think "non-custodial parent can spend 10 hours every weekend on a train" is a very satisfactory solution.
I'm a little wary of waving laws around in this kind of thing though - as we'd be going a long way down the slippery slope of constraining personal liberties. Divorcing parents should have to discuss this kind of thing when they talk about access arrangements etc., though, and should be invited to make binding commitments not to move more than, say, an hour's travelling time away from the other parent as part of the divorce settlement.
If you're going to chose to have kids (and rape aside, it's always a choice - it's not a secret where they come from) you need to accept responsibility for them, which means constraining your actions in a way that wouldn't be necessary if you didn't have children.
Shared Residence is the answer. All the time. In every case. When a couple with children split, if it ever comes to court (which it shouldn't - what happened to the Non-order order?) a shared residence order should be made. If a shared residence order was made IN ALL CASES, then neither mother nor father could flout the order. Some other mediator could be involved, but the courts should not be getting themselves in the heart of these problems - lets face it, in most cases the judges are as much to blame as the mothers.
Steve: And what about cases of domestic violence? Or when a couple have split because of an affair? Is it reasonable to expect the parents to share residence? I think this is possibly one of the worst options. The fact that a marriage has broken down probably indicates that it is in the child's interests that the parents are not together.
See inserted answers:
Family Courts
1.If the present system is not satisfactory what system do people think would work better in cases where parents can't agree?
> Instead of a backward looking system that trys to fix problems already established, we need a forward looking system that sets expectations up front before attitudes and beliefs become entrenched.
2.What is the right balance between fathers rights, mothers rights and the child's rights and how do we assess that?
> The rights of the child are indeed paramount, and Article 12 of EU law already states this. Unfortunately the UK doesn't comply to EU law when it comes to family law. Parents have rights which should also be honoured, but these rights are not at odds with each other. If we are to resepct the childs rights to have relations, and be cared for by both parents, then we must set that in law, by having a legal equal presumption to aprenting. This neither overrides a childs rights, or reduces the rights of parents.
3.Are there any models in other countries which people think work better?
> Florida have a good model, but no way perfect and there are better solutions to be adopted. The UK is now poised on the brink of change, thanks to Fathers 4 Justice. In a climate of change anything is possible, unless the powers that be, vetto change and dismiss all valid input. The Constitutional Afffairs Committee reviewing if Family Courts are efficient is an example of the blind leading the blind.
F4J have a Blueprint for Family Law reform, fit for the 21st Century and brings together best practice principles, research and policies, which if adopted would answer most of your concerns.
1. Contact orders need to be enforced - the situation where court orders can be flouted with impunity cannot be allowed. If parents cannot agree then any solution must be non-sexist(at the moment there is a huge mother bias) and should reflect the actions of the parents. Several house-husbands have lost residency of the children as courts assume that men work and women look after children.
2. The child's rights must be paramount, as the 1989 Children Act states. However courts have interpretted this as what is best for the child is what is best for the mother. Fathers can also be good loving parents, but the courts do not recognize this. I am sure the courts will deny this - but since they act in secret will the truth ever be known? However the effects of PAS should also be recognized.
3. The model in Florida works well. There are 2 main differences - early intervention and enforcement of court orders. The green paper wants to take the early intervention without the enforcement of court orders!
Also please note that the green paper gives women a box to tick if they have subject to DV. This is sexist as DV is also committed by women. And there is no proof required, not even to civil standards. This is against Magna Carta.
I look after my children 4 days per week, my ex-wife 3 days. I have great concerns about how she looks after them - various health concerns. I would like to go to court to get residence as it would be in the best interests of the children but I know I will not get a fair hearing. Why should my children suffer because of courts which are antiquated and sexist?
Clive,
In answer to your questions on the Family Courts:
Q:If the present system is not satisfactory what system do people think would work better in cases where parents can't agree?
A: Fathers 4 Justice has outlined in detail the legislative and institutional reforms which we believe will resolve in one fell swoop most (and hopefully all) of the ills of the current system.
Our proposals are laid out in the Blueprint for Family Law in the 21st Century which we published and presented to Downing Street on the occasion of our Father's Day protest in June this year.
The Blueprint was, I believe, also included in our submission to the Constitutional Affairs Select Committee inquiry which is currently ongoing into the family courts. As a member of this committee, you ought to be in possession of a copy of the Blueprint, and if you are not I will be happy to rectify the oversight (which probably lies with the secretary of the committee, rather than with us).
For the benefit of the media and the general public, we shall be publishing an electronic version of the Blueprint in the near future (by the end of December, I hope), and this will be made widely and freely available for download on the web, so that everybody can see the substance of the arguments which underpin the high-profile protests.
Q: What is the right balance between fathers rights, mothers rights and the child's rights and how do we assess that?
A: The problem is that the current system, which purports to serve the 'best interests' of children, does nothing of the sort, and it is wreaking devastation on the lives of many thousands of children, parents, and grandparents every year, including many who don't register on the radar of court statistics..
What we have at the moment is a huge, vastly expensive family court infrastructure which is engaged in trying to answer a question - 'Who is the better parent?' - that it should not even be asking in the first place, and it is making a complete pig's ear of doing so: through a combination of inept, ill-trained and complacent professionals, rampant institutional prejudice against men (not unlike the insitutional racism uncovered in the Met by the MacPherson Inquiry), and unreflecting adherence to an extremely spurious set of assumptions about what constitutes the welfare of children following separation - foremost among these being the doctrines of the 'primary carer' and the 'stable home base', both of which have become received wisdom and yet have little scientific credibility. The paint-by-numbers thinking of family court judges, CAFCASS officers, and the legal professionals, allied with the aforementioned prejudice, is immensely destructive.
Parents and grandparents should have rights as well as children. It's a no-brainer: there should be a presumption that, unless there are compelling reasons otherwise, both parents should share equally in the upbringing of their children following separation or divorce.
That presumption would eliminate overnight the overwhelming majority of the traffic which is currently clogging up the family courts, and which is preventing them from executing their real responsibilities competently. The family courts should limit themselves to the protection of children and parents (of either gender) where there are genuine and well-founded welfare concerns, and they should be doing it transparently and professionally (neither of which is the case now).
A presumption of equal parenting post-separation is not going to bring the heavens crashing down, as some of your ministerial colleagues and certain journalistic commentators are suggesting (the Biblical myth of 'wisdom of Solomon', with its lurid imagery of babies being ripped asunder, is usually invoked to scare the living shit out of everybody). As your goverment is so fond of reminding us, the majority of separating parents do sort out arrangements for the children without recourse to the courts, and most of them will come to some kind of shared parenting arrangement which involves the children enjoying two homes and moving freely between the two. This may not be ideal in all cases, but it is infinitely preferable for a child to have two loving homes (and, after all, home is where the heart is) than to have one perfectly decent, equally devoted parent marginalised from their life, which is what happens as soon as the family courts are brought into the equation.
The state does not intervene in the shared parenting arrangements which are the norm between most seaparating parents, so why do the family courts dictate (contrary to the intent of the 1989 Children Act) that sared parenting is unworkable and inimitable to the welfare of children?
The supposed intractable hostility between warring parents, which is usually cited as the raison d'etre for the courts, is engendered by the system itself: the family courts provide such powerful incentives for one parent (Mother, invariably) to exclude the other, that that is what is happens. It is not that these parents are not capabable of working out arrangements perfectly sensibly between themselves: it is that the family courts infantilise parents and put them at loggerheads. It's analagous to the argument that over-generous welfare state provision generates dependency.
This is why the problem has been getting progressively worse under Labour (reflected in year-on-year rises in applications to the family courts of between 10 and 20 percent). Whilst parents do, of course, share some responsiblity for this, the problem lies first and foremost with the system and with the culture which has become engrained in the family courts (and which has subverted the intent of the 1989 Children Act, incidentally).
Q: Are there any models in other countries which people think work better?
A: Dave has mentioned Florida, but there are also parts of Scandinavia. Denmark introduced 50/50 parenting in 2002, although we don't know very much about it.
Kind regards to all who have troubled to read this,
(Dr) Graeme Cook
F4J Wales Web Co-ordinator (and Ellen's daddy)
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FATHERS-4-JUSTICE www.fathers-4-justice.org
Fighting for Truth, Justice & Equality in Family Law
** F4J Christmas Protest 2004 **
** Saturday 18th June 2004 in London **
See Tom Wontner's 'Super Hero Dads', a short movie
portrait of F4J, at: http://www.ukscreen.com/screen/95
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As a non member of fathers4justice, but in my capacity as someone interested in abusive behavior, I should like to point out that very often, the "implacable mother" who refuses to cooperate with court orders, is displaying typically abusive behavior. This behavior is not picked up by family court officials and "experts" because they are woefully badly trained and /or are unduly influenced by women's advocates.
Abusers seek control of others through threats, violence or the destruction of their victims self worth.
Female abusers often resort to abuse by proxy. (Abusing their victim by angering others and turning them against the victim). 'Abuse by proxy' often involves using the system as a blunt instrument to attack their partners. Family courts are ideal for this behavior.
Another form of abuse by proxy is turning the children minds against the partner by repeated denigration of the absent partner. This is an evil and disgusting form of abuse that is all to often unrecognized by the family court system, presumably because of a lack of understanding of the way abusive people operate. (See The Anatomy of Abuse by George Rolph http://www.dvmen.org/dv-20.htm )
The present family court ethos of always erring in favour of the mother may well be condemning a huge number of children to live with an abusive mother. Another point to consider is the amount of men who try very hard NOT to resort to the courts or police when they and/or the children are being abused by a female because if they do, the family court system will simply hand the children to the abusive mother and the father will no longer be able to protect them. (I run a help line for men who are being abused and I hear this all the time).
I think it is vital that if judges in the family courts are going to be involved in domestic abuse issues and make decisions that could have a huge effect on the lives of the people involved in such allegations, a number of very important caveats need to be in place to try and ensure that accurate and careful judgments are made. I would recommend the following points for consideration.
1. Judges and other family court staff should be trained to recognize abusive behavior in BOTH sexes. This training should NOT be carried out by special interest groups (such as Women's Aid and Refuge) in order that a biased and one sided political viewpoint of domestic abuse be avoided.
2. When a accusation of domestic abuse is made it should be referred to the criminal system in order that a strict burden of proof be applied to the allegations. At present, an accusation that needs no evidence can be used to discredit the character of an applicant (usually the father) and to sway the opinion of the judge.
The civil 'balance of probability' approach is far too lax a system to decide such a serious allegation. It should be born in mind that an allegation of abuse can have huge consequences on the life of the accused and should not be treated lightly. It can cost the accused a loss of social standing, loss of employment and vilification in the press. Even if found to be untrue the stigma of a false allegation may remain for many years.
Domestic abuse is a criminal act therefore these issues should be settled in the criminal courts.
If the allegation is found to be false then the party who brought the false allegations should be punished to the same extent as the innocent person would have been if a guilty verdict were found. They should also lose all rights to anonymity as this will discourage them in future and alert society to their activities. (There are many 'serial abuse accusers' out there who are able to benefit from laws giving them anonymity.) This would dramatically reduce the level of false allegations almost overnight. This approach would also be effective in cases of false rape and child molestation cases.
There may also be a case for removing the child temporarily from the care of both parents until the abuse allegations have been investigated. (Giving them to grandparents may be an option but care should be taken. Abuse by proxy often means using family members to abuse another). I advocate this because if the abuse allegation is untrue, then the parent making it is guilty of abusing the other parent (and possibly the child) and should not be in charge of a child. On the other hand, if the allegation is true, then the accused parent should not have the child either. Until these things are investigated and resolved the child cannot be safe with either parent because the courts cannot know which is the guilty party.
3. If an abuse allegation is untrue or proven then the guilty parties should be allowed ONLY supervised access until such time as they have been cleared by the psychological services to be a safe and reasonable parent. This means giving the family courts or contact centers power to refer abusers for compulsory and independent (i.e., Not abuse industry led) treatment.
4. There is huge concern among men that domestic abuse, sexual molestation or marital rape allegations will be used by abusive women as yet another tool in their armory to disenfranchise fathers and keep them from their children. The family courts must take their responsibilities to protect the innocent very seriously.
The perception today, is that the family courts are more interested in protecting the mother at all costs and this is blinding them to faults of some of these mothers. For the family courts to be fair and impartial it is important that judges, police, welfare officers and others involved, recognize and understand that some mothers, as well as some fathers, are abusive. This in turn means that they must listen to, and take account of, views other than those expressed by women's advocacy groups. While there is little doubt that Women's Aid and Refuge do valuable work, they are not the only groups working to end domestic abuse and account needs to be taken of men's groups experiences working in these areas for a balanced and non biased overall picture to develop of the problem.
On this issue I keep reading that parents should keep out of the courts and be encouraged to settle the matter between them. This kind of comment shows a complete lack of understanding of why matters come before the courts at all. In virtually all cases the courts assistance has been sought because the resident parent has refused contact with the children. The parent with all the rights and all the contact has no incentive for mediating and possibly losing some. If someone illegally took possession of my home or other belongings I might ask for this to be returned to me and if refused I would seek recourse from the law. No one would condem me for not reaching agreement with the thief - it would be clear that the thief was in the wrong. Why are non resident parents seen as being agressive or awkward in trying to gain access to that which is the most treasured - their child?
This attitude is obvious in the many newspaper articles that have commented on David Blunket's application for contact with his child.
He has requested contact and this has been refused - the alleged stepfather stating that he is not interested in mere biology. Many of the commentators agree with this stance and believe that Blunket should do the decent thing and back off. This flies in the face of everything any right minded person knows about how individuals feel. Research into the feelings of people who have been adopted has led to adoptees having the right to know about their parentage and being able to try to contact their parents. Recent TV programmes showing celebrities tracing their family background shows the interest we all have in this. Has there ever been an example of anyone trying as hard to trace the family tree of a step parent?
The truth is that the child's best interests should be paramount and that should mean that the courts - if necessary - should do all that they can to ensure that the child has the basic right of knowing and benefiting from the love of both parents unless it is proven to criminal standards that a parent might be a danger to that child.
Children do not always know what is best for them. They sometimes don't want to go to school or take unpleasant medicine - in these cases adults do know what is best and will overide the child - quite rightly. It is wrong that in our family courts children who have become estranged from a non resident parent because of the actions of its mother and the delays in the court system should then be able to say whether or not he/she wishes to see dad. That child cannot know how far reaching the effects of that decision will be on himself or others and is usually responding to the known wishes of the resident parent on whom he relies.
A lot is said about fathers who shirk their responsibilities in supporting their children. There is a law in place to deal with this and, unlike the lack of enforcement of contact orders, it is used.
When this government were first seeking office a lot was said about the balance of rights and responsibilities. Rightly so. In these cases, however, Fathers have only responsibilities - no rights at all.
Both Margaret Hodge and Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss have said that in the most intractable cases there is nothing the courts can do. In these cases (as well as being a green light for a vindictive resident parent to be intractable) the father is usually told to go away - send cards and letters and hope that when the child is grown up he will contact dad again. Effectively the child has been completely removed from the care of its father. In public law cases if this was the outcome the state would not add insult to injury and require the parents to pay for their child's maintenance. Nor should it in these cases. I believe it would concentrate the minds of both the judicary and the resident parent if loss of contact meant loss of money. Perhaps there should be a study to find out if the 'dead beat dads' who are reluctant to pay maintenance are also dads who have been denied contact, I believe that to be largely the case.
I hope that if he is found to be the father of Kimberly Quinn's children, David Blunkett will be able to establish contact with them. I hope too that Margaret Hodge Lord Filkin will learn from this case and see how unlikely it will be for mediation to work and how quickly allegations have been made against this man with the sole intention of discrediting him and making him appear to be bullying and causing harm to the mother. This is the reality for thousands of men for whom this nightmare is carried out behind closed doors.
Christine Stigner
Politicians and their feminist "sistas" drug, steal, abuse and destroy our children's self worth. We have had enough! The father's role os to protect his family and provide for them. We are not going to stand by and watch a small group of ideologically driven wierdos destroy any more children and relationships. Either you stop it or we will stop it for you. Either way, to paraphrase Pink Floyd, "Hey! wierdos!....leave our kids alone. All in all your just a...nother sad little fool!"
http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/u-v/usher/2004/usher120704.htm
Ritalin, Demokrauts, Batman, and Santa Claus
December 7, 2004
by David R. Usher
The current issue of the Economist features an article about troubled
British youth worth noticing. The article, "Behave, or Else", attempts to
pretend that drugs and governmental parenting substitutes are a substitute
for fatherhood in classic Euro-feminist fashion.
In this shallow analysis, troubled British children aren't getting enough
kiddie dope - only .3% of British children are being given ritalin as
opposed to America's 6-7% of children. In their minds, all Britain needs is
more paid mothers in schools dispensing pocket-rockets to each other's
children, and things will slowly get better -- maybe.
Pointing the finger at the success of American pharmaceutical lobbyists and
feminists in destroying the family and covering it up does not change the
fact that the majority of children with misdiagnosed ADD / ADHD are children
of divorce who didn't have problems previously.
Instead of having relatively-secure intact families with an invested mother
and father who are available when needed, children become lost in a war over
who owns them. Children normally become chattel of the mother and dragged
around like couches or war trophies; grotesquely fawned over, ignored, or
intensely fought over as asset-magnets in the game of divorce.
Of course, the last thing feminists want to acknowledge is that divorce
derails child development, confidence, and feelings of security. It
immediately removes half the parental love available to the child, and
places the child in the middle of a terrorist war against their father. The
army of Parents-as-teachers, psychologists, psychiatrists,
day-care-advocates, schools, and Guardian-ad-litems rush in to label the
child defective to legitimize the insane drugging of children of divorce.
I can say this from my own personal experience. At age five, growing up was
a difficult, full-time job. Kids have much to learn. Maturing into a world
that is quite complex is an awesome task. And most of them do not have the
emotional skills to handle the A-bomb of divorce, much less watch a living
parent destroyed in front of their astonished eyes.
In May, 2000, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and
the Workforce was informed about this problem. The Chairman, Michael Castle
lead off the committee hearing by stating "Our witnesses can provide a more
thorough explanation, but the symptoms of children with ADD/ADHD can include
inattention and restlessness, which may simply be youthful rambunctiousness,
or it may be that the child is acting out in response to serious stressors
like divorce or neglect, or it may be that the child does have ADD/ADHD".
He went on to note that the number of children ages 2 to 4 who were
prescribed psychotropic drugs, including Ritalin, increased by 50 percent,
that drugging children does not address the root problem, and that some
children were becoming drug dealers selling Ritalin in grade schools. And
there are no long-term studies regarding the efficacy or effects of turning
children into junkies.
Why do I say this? I knew a teenage boy - a child of divorce with major
divorce-related problems. Ritalin turned in into "Max Headroom" - with a
striking head-jerk - and an unconrollable nervous "Beavis and Butthead"
laugh. He didn't like what Ritalin did to him and refused to take it. The
drug-dealers switched to Zoloft and several other mood-altering chemicals -
experimenting on him over several years. The only thing it did was to
convince him that he was indeed mentally-ill. He didn't begin progressing
until he refused to take any drugs at all, moved out of the mother's house,
and began to build a real life starting from scratch.
If Vioxx is a problem for Merck, it would seem to me that drug manufacturers
who knowingly sell unproven drugs to Demokrauts randomly experimenting on
live children, under no controlled studies or FDA approval, would be facing
tremendous product liability suits. I would think that psychological
"professionals" abusing children under color of "best medical practice"
might well have substantial malpractice liabilities on their hands,
particularly from children they damaged. Now, here is something useful that
hungry trial lawyers could do.
Now, let's cut the chase. Perhaps half of all children are being denied
their natural right to have a loving father in their lives. Irresponsible
divorce (an entitled feminist activity) is the driving social problem.
Politicians in Great Britain, the U.S, and other democratic societies must
remember that antifamily feminism's main political goal since 1970 has been
to destroy marriage and end the social role of husbands in the family. They
have been largely successful. And every social indicator measuring the
well-being of women and children has declined substantially. It is quite
reasonable to hold feminists responsible for this.
I will take fathers over drug dealers any day. Any politician or policymaker
who thinks otherwise is a threat to the most fundamental right in any
democratic society - the right to raise one's own children. If feminists
want divorces for irresponsible reasons, we should show them the door and
let responsible fathers raise the children. Restoring responsibility to
marriage is the answer.
Those who pretend that simple acts of civil disobedience are somehow an "act
of violence" are feminists who conveniently wish to end free speech. It
truly sad that fathers are so disenfranchised in Britain that they have to
visit Houses of Parliament as Batman and Santa Claus to even be noticed.
Feminist socialism in western societies has failed. In fact, that's the
daily buzz on the streets. Just bring up the subject with just about anybody
you run into. No western government can avoid this fact and remain credible
any longer.
Minister of Children's Affairs Margaret Hodge should have the door wide open
to Fathers 4 Justice. Any politician serious about reducing burgeoning
child-neglect and behavioral problems has a duty to do so.
In fact, Santa Claus and his cadre of courageous expat-fathers who really
care should be given the podium in the House of Commons and allowed the next
forty years to propose pro-family legislative reforms to end the dilemma
that Solomon (and nobody else) can resolve any other way.
David R. Usher
David R. Usher is a Legislative Analyst for the American Coalition for
Fathers and Children, Missouri Coalition.
Reforms needed to family courts are I suggest as follows:-
1;- Abolish secrecy in family courts giving either parent the right to make their names and case details public (as are rape victims) so that they can openly protest against injustices.
2:- Abolish forczd adoption ie if a parent opposes it in court .It is never "unreasonable" for a mother to withold consent
3:-There should be an initial presumption that parents going to court to try and recover their children from care or proposed adoption love them and should succeed.
4;-Parents should always be allowed at least weekly telephone contact with children in care.
5;Legal aid should be automatic for parents in danger of losing their children.
6:- Hearsay evidence should be inadmissible, and children old enough shuld testify in court not on manipulated videos !!
7:No baby should ever be taken from a sane mother that has never harmed it ,and financial rewards should not be given to Local authorities for arranging adoptions of children under4 years old
I forgot number 8 because although I sympathise with fathers4justice the plight of mothers deprived of babies taken for adoption at birth against their will is far more urgent.
8;- When couples separate the partner not awarded custody should have the right to have the children for the dates that correspond to half the school holiday periods at Summer, Easter, and Xmas. Family allowances should be claimed by that partner, but only for the period during which this privilege was exercised ;with penalties for fraudulent claims.
Look when you have a moment at my most unusual site www.secret-courts.com or www.forced-adoption.com and you may be surprised.
I have read with interest the questions and answers given by the committee investigating the family courts.
There are several issues which do not ever seem to be addressed.
1. Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss and Judge Mumby in a recent judgement have said that in the most intractable cases there is nothing that the courts can do. Margaret Hodge has repeated this. Is this a satifactory state of affairs? Are not those who are charged with the duty to reach a solution in the best interests of the child failing in that duty by making such a statement? Is this not a green light for a hostile resident parent to cling on to the bitter end in the sure knowledge that her tenacity will prevail? Since the resident parent has contact throughout this battle she has no incentive in speeding up the process and can use the delay to denigrate the non resident parent - the child then, when his views are sought may well say he does not want contact. What he really means is that he does not want to be at the centre of a conflict. This is the crux of the situation that NR parents find themselves in. Why have no questions be asked that seek to address this?
2. Why is it always assumed that the only reason that a mother may have to prevent contact will be DV or some other danger to the child. Perhaps the committee could reflect a little on the very public battle between Kimberley Quinn and David Blunkett. Why does she want to prevent contact? Because she wants to live her life without the inconvieniance of David Blunkett seeing 'her' child.
Often mothers will have new partners and will not want their ex in the way preventing the bonding they hope will happen with the new man. Other women act out of vengence. The father may be with a new partner and the mother is hurt and angry. The last thing she wants is to lose her child to this woman too. The mother may also be angry at her reduced standard of living. In all these scenarios her most powerful weapon is to prevent contact with the child. Of course she will not say that to her solicitor or to the court - she will use reasons that they will be more likely to take notice of - DV, drink problems, unreliability, unpredictable behaviour etc etc. It is dishonest of the professionals interviewed not to have even alluded to this and it is appaling that not one interviewer asked about these as reasons for contact being denied instead of asking solely about DV. This is the anti male bias in evidence about which mens groups complain. It may not seem relevant to you but in fact an understanding of why contact is being denied is central to establishing solutions.
3.In all the questions about DV why was one not asked about false allegations of DV and abuse. What would those solicitors suggest as a means to prevent false allegations? The committee will now never know. Would penalties for proven false allegations or perjury help to stop the delays caused by courts investigating these allegations?
The investigation into family courts is a complete waste of time and tax payers money if issues such as these are not addressed.
Christine Maxwell
I agree, Christine.
The intellectual level of the committee hearings so far has been that of the average saloon bar debate, entirely anecdotal and unsupported by any academic research - a complete waste of time, another squandered opportunity.
Hilton Dawson, as usual, harps on about DV against women, completely ignoring the empirical evidence that DV is an equal-opportunity crime. CAFCASS has made much of a 2002 NAPO study which showed that 24% of a sample of 300 residence/contact cases involved admitted or proven DV but completely ignored the fact that allegations had been made in 77% of the cases. If the allegations could not be proved on the Family Court's abysmally low standard of proof ("more likely than not", rather than the more stringent criminal standard of "beyond reasonable doubt") then it's probably safe to assume that they were false.
In Ireland, false allegations of this nature are an individual offence http://193.178.1.79/ZZA49Y1998S5.html In Britain, it's not worthy of discussion.
One paragraph of perjury in a witness statement is all it takes to turn a decent dad into a vile wife-beater/child-abuser and, with every thing to play for, and nothing to lose, mothers perjure themselves every day.
Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, the queen Jurassic judge, displays a complete lack of understanding or empathy by condemning, as unreasonable, fathers who insist on their exact entitlement of time, quite ignoring the fact that to a father and his child serving a not untypical long stretch of 1 hour/month in a Contact Centre, every minute of their time together is precious and irreplaceable.
Philip Moore of the FLBA disengenously suggests that the massive levels of court user dissatisfaction (admitted in the Govt's Green Paper http://www.dfes.gov.uk/childrensneeds/) stem entirely from delay.
Finally, let's not forget that the committee resolutely set its face against hearing evidence from F4J - the single biggest fathers group in Britain (0-12,000 members in 2 years!), changed its mind only after the back-stage intervention of Bob Geldof, and then flip-flopped back again after Margaret Hodge, the so-called Children's Minister, was quite properly the subject of a citizen's arrest in Manchester for the offence of aiding, abetting, counselling and procuring child cruelty contrary to s.1(1) of the Children & Young Persons Act 1933. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4025335.stm
Failure to ensure a paternal right to contact is a breach of Article 4 of the European Convention on Contact Concerning Children http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/Commun/ChercheSig.asp?NT=192&CM=8&DF=16/12/04&CL=ENG which, unsurprisingly, the UK has not yet signed or ratified!
Michael Cox
It is wrong to deprive fathers of contact with their children,but it is FAR FAR WORSE for social services to take babies at BIRTH FROM SANE MOTHERS WHO HAVE NEVER HARMED THEM, and put them out for adoption They do this to obtain large financial rewards from the government under public service agreements for massively increasing adoption figures;(Kent got £23million for an increase of 150% !!).Courts are so secret that even after losing a child parents cannot reveal their own identities to complain of injustice,risking prison for contempt(unlike rape victims who can reveal identities if they choose)
If parents cannot agree then that is not exactly a crime but it does not come naturally to resort to court. Much time can be lost coping with the grief of losing your children, attempting to persuade the mother to compromise, and writing solicitors' correspondance. So, whilst court is there to assist unagreeable parents, by the time many go to court the enmity and the damage is already done. It is therefore vital when agreement cannot be finalised that fathers are made aware of using court to force the intransigence and technical procrastination of mothers and their solicitors.
I underline, it is too late to go to court, when the positions are dug in and reinforced by all the private and state paraphenalia gravy train.
Also as stated here already shared residence is the way ahead.
The law on custody and access has been superceded; the law on residence and contact must now also be left behind so that both parents have residence. [if my child resides with me only one night a week then he still resides with me]. Afterall that is what 50/50 alludes to.
However it is not just laws that need changing, before fathers can live with their children again without resorting to sheriffs and judges saying so, there must be a groundswell change of hearts and minds. It must become normal for mothers who unjustly and unlawfully withold children from their fathers to be shamed and humiliated.And mothers who behave this way, who cannot be helped with therapy must become the minority.
Despite its popularity divorce, marital break-ups and separation are still taboo, things which people dont really like to talk about, and those fears are transferred directly to the children.
? What is the balance between mother, fathers and childrens rights and how doyou assess that ? This is simple stuff - parents love their children. Children want, love and need their parents. Divorce and separation must not be allowed to break these bonds any longer. Just because little Johnnie's got a new step parent doesnt mean his father can be wiped out like dirt. you know this comes back to huant all concerned and the wider family unit. Continue to ignore the pleas of fathers and the rights of the child at the risk of birthing a new non parent non father society. All those happily married parents will find their lives being ruined by the offspring of separated parents who disagree over the childs right to enjoy both parents. Stamp out this crime against society know bring down the government, civil disobedience and arrest mothers who abuse their children.
Dear Mr Soley, For ease of reading, my points summarised as follows:
1.accusations of DV etc should be proven to criminal standards and penalties applied for false accusations.
2.More inquisition required as to why mothers prevent/deny contact. The Quinn/Blunkett scenario is typical - father deleted as now unwelcome accusations and delay results = estrangement from children for fathers.
3.claims of how many contact orders granted should be challenged - how any of these are for indirect contact? How many replace previous orders that have broken down?
4. What is the level of satisfaction for the alleged 90% of fathers who have made informal arrangements?
5.Why should fathers have responsibilities but no rights?
Christine Maxwell
To Ian Josephs, I agree that if this has happened it is heartbreaking and wicked, but why is it 'far, far worse' than if a father is removed from his child's life and denigrated to such an extent that reconcilliation may never be possible, whilst meanwhile, he is still deemed to be responsible for that child's maintenance? Don't fall into the anti-male bias trap that is so prevalent in society today. Both are equally awful and can only be addressed by reform and openess in the family courts.
Christine Maxwell
My comments run as with our submission to the select committee enquiry:
Family Justice: THE FAMILY COURTS
This submission is taken in four key areas:
Whether the judges have power:
Before the question can be answered with regard to the powers available to the judiciary it is important that there is recognition of whether the present powers that are available do create the gender bias that exists presently.
We have not seen a single Act elected by parliament that indicates that fathers, children and grandparents should be treated differently from mothers, yet this is precisely what happens. There is no gender bias in the law.
On the question of powers available to the judiciary unless we accept the connotation that the presently administrators of family law are gender biased one finds it amazing that the judiciary is not hesitant to use its vast array of powers against fathers, children and grandparents and yet are reluctant to use those same powers against mothers who openly flout the rule of law with the blessing of the judiciary, CAFCASS and Social Services/ Police where involved.
Examples of what we mention above:
In a very recent case, a Court of Appeal LJ recognised the father had a case and described the mother as “I incline to the view that it was deliberately done to give him notice at the last possible opportunity in order to make it as difficult as she possibly could for him to mount any sustainable defence to the consequences of her actions. It was a deplorable bit of behaviour. She should be ashamed of herself..…and, because I think that she should read it, reflect upon it in the deep dark hours of the evening, and ask herself whether this degree of hostile conduct to the father is in fact beneficial for her children ..I am very critical of the mother. Her conduct was at the lowest level totally inconsiderate… It was inconsiderate, it was discourteous, it was unfeeling… It was not the way that decent parents behave to each other. At worst, it was thoroughly deceitful… It was a deplorable bit of behaviour. She should ashamed of herself.”
This LJ further recognised the Courts were biased but then refused the leave to Appeal on the grounds that the three LJs who would sit would refuse his Application.
In a much more recent case and I quote ‘‘It may be on the face of the papers we have, we would have no difficulty believing that at al, but if you sincerely believe that the judiciary is partial and biased in hearing family cases….for the purposes of this preliminary point we accept that the Applicant genuinely believes judges in this country to be partial and biased, as he has said and as I have already referred to.’’ And yet once again the Application was dismissed.
In another very recent case where the Law Centre has been involved the father who had consistently complained that he had grounds to believe his children were being abused suddenly found himself at the receiving end whereby denying the children contact humiliated by the Police to give DNA and investigated in-depth by the Social Services. At a subsequent Court hearing it was found by using the Data Protection Act that the mother had abused the children and social services had kept quiet and yet the father is still being denied access to his children.
Further examples include:
A judge inventing a hearing that had never taken place in October 2000 in order to put more conditions against the father. Accepting a social worker under oath as stating ‘I can tell if someone is emotionally unstable over a mile away, I do not need to see them, I can just sense it.’ Denying a child’s daytime wetting even when presented with three years of paediatric notes to prove it and a Court of appeal judgement denying the father contact because although the mother’s parenting was poor it might undermine the mother’s relationship with the children.
Another father criticised for not singing to the children whilst in the bath in order to criticise his parenting skills and using an allegation of domestic violence from one year prior to the taking of a child into care in order to justify the Local Authorities actions.
In another case the judge believed a mother who had already been criticised for being deceitful and although he could not find the order in the court file which the mother (again untruthfully) stated had been made but had not in fact been made in order to justify actions against the father.
Examples of these are (bearing in mind there is no allegation of abuse against these fathers)
In one incident outside Court 32 on the 23rd January 2003, Honourable Mr Justice Singer was loudly heard saying to a child, “If you don't go with your Mum, I'll put you in a place where you can't see your Mother or your Father - How do you like that?".
He was assisted by Mrs Susan Cheesley, the Acting Deputy Tipstaff and a CAFCASS officer Mrs. Raleigh (http://www.home.ican.net/~kidshelp/Suspended-Page.HTML). These are not uncommon scenes as most children will tell anyone who listens to them. In this case, the child had been badly beaten by his aunt (a social worker) and mother - police refused to intervene, nor did the court.
There are other examples where one can see that contact cannot take place because of judges and these are as follows:
Dame Justice Hale: in a case where a father was appealing an earlier decision of only one hour contact per month, concluded that 'this appeal is unmeritorious'.
Judge Catlin: a) when a mother refused to obey an order for shared residence, he ordered the cessation of all contact between a father and his two sons in response to unsubstantiated charges of abuse; b) at a subsequent hearing 12 months later, when all charges of abuse had been dismissed by the investigating officer, he ordered 1 hour of contact between father and son per month.
Mister Justice Sumner: ordered costs against a father who sought summer holidays with his child.
Mister Justice Johnson: ordered a father declared a vexatious litigant for seeking more than one overnight per fortnight with his 5-year old son. Upheld on appeal by LJ Thorpe.
Mr Justice Sumner: 'It is simply not on' for any parent to return a 3½ year old child home as late as 6 pm on a Sunday.
District Judge Kenworthy-Browne: A child of 3 'will have developed no Christmas associations with the father, and even if he has spent Christmases at the father’s home, he will not remember them. As such, he will not expect increased contact with his father over the holidays.'
District Judge X (case pending): ordered the cessation of all contact between parent and child, with no review, 'in order to try to move forward and restore the relationship.'
Judge Segal: cancelled after 30 minutes a full hearing at which the father sought any summer holidays and rescheduled it for after the summer. Upheld on appeal.
District Judge Lipman: ordered that a father be allowed only 2 weeks of holiday (out of a possible 13) per year: "You have the midweek contact (3 hrs per week) instead of this."
District Judge Hindley: dismissed a father's application to phone his 7 yr old daughter on Christmas morning calling it 'too disruptive - she would be opening her Christmas presents.'
Judge Milligan, to a parent who had been unsuccessfully trying to see his child for 2 years: 'This is a father who needs, in my judgment, to think long and hard about his whole approach to this question of contact and to ask himself sincerely whether in fact he seeks to promote it for his own interests dressed up as the child’s interests.'
District Judge X (case pending): ordered that a father who had not been allowed to see his children for 4 months should have his case deferred for another 4 months pending investigation of an unsubstantiated 1972 domestic disagreement from a previous marriage.
Mr Justice Cazalet: in hearings spaced over 2 years 1) ordered end of Friday overnights on grounds that the child had to rest after school, and 2) ordered end of Saturday overnights on grounds that she had to rest all day Sunday before school on Monday.
Deputy District Judge Pauffley, in raising a father’s contact to 18 hours per month after 1½ years of litigation: 'What will never be helpful is for the father to see his contact in terms of mathematical division. Apparently he is running at a disadvantage of 999 to 1… the court does not look at it in those terms.'
District Judge Thomas, in reply to a father who had been cut off from all contact with this three children for six months: 'And I see that you would like me to grant an Order that the mother file a statement to show good reason why there should not be normal contact. Well, I’m not going to do it!'
Judge Calman ordered that a father, who lived within 300 yards of his son’s primary residence, should never answer the door when his son rang.
Rt Hon Lord Justice Thorpe, in rejecting the appeal of a father who wanted to cross-examine a Court Welfare Officer (whose evidence prevented him from seeing his children), affirmed that 'there is no right of cross examination of Court Welfare Officers.'
Mr Justice Wilson, acting against what he called 'the deep wishes and feelings of three intelligent, articulate children,' ordered the end of all direct contact with their father. Upheld on appeal by Butler-Sloss, LJ.
Judge X (case pending): after repeat applications about serial breaches of a contact order since early 2001, ordered that the issue be reviewed in late 2002.
Mr Justice Munby ordered the end of all direct contact between a father and his three children while noting that the mother 'wished the children could have contact with the father. She said there was no need for all this litigation. The children should see the father.”
Judge Segal postponed a full hearing in order to obtain a Court Welfare Officer report on two parents who had brought no charges of misconduct against one another by stating: 'Well, I think both parents have fallen over backwards to avoid causing the child any sort of harm, but a child always suffers when a marriage breaks down . . . You see, it is possible to kill with kindness by doing too much.'
Mr Justice Sumner reproved a father who had made one application to the court over two years of litigation, and sought more than twenty-six nights of contact with his child per year: 'You feel better because you can put pressure, you can bring everybody to court.'
Judge Turner, in reply to a parent who sought to question a Court Welfare Officer’s report:
'That confirms my suspicions. This is what members of the public do when they disagree with the recommendations. I believe that its totally wrong that members of the public can challenge Judges and Court Welfare Officers. Officers should not be subjected to it. There is a procedure outside the Court about making a complaint against the Judge. Members of the public should not have the right to make complaints.”
Judge Agliomby, on refusing overnight contact for the third consecutive year: 'The point that struck me most was that the very first question the father asked the mother was whether they might not get on better if she let him see the child.'
Judge Lamdin dismissed a father’s request (after three years of litigation) for any overnight contact with his six year old on the grounds that 'the child is growing up knowing his father, and that what we are talking about, i.e. overnight staying contact, is something quite different.'
Judge Kenworthy-Browne, known by the staff at First Avenue House for repeatedly bringing his dog to court, rebuked a litigant-in-person for not wearing a tie.
Senior District Judge Angel misinformed a complainant that 'there is an unrestricted right of appeal' in contact cases. (There is, in fact, little if any right of appeal.) When this was brought to the attention of the President of the Family Division, her office replied that she 'considered the matter closed.'
Mr Justice Munby sentenced a father to four months in prison for giving his children Christmas presents (a bike, a camera and a walkman) during a scheduled contact meeting.
Upheld on appeal by Thorpe LJ and Butler-Sloss LJ.
Judge Goldstein, after a father filed a complaint against him, ordered all contact between that father and his children stopped for three years. Overturned on appeal by Butler-Sloss LJ, who described the judge’s behaviour as 'outrageous.'
Judge Plaskow rejected a father’s request for overnight contact with his 4-year-old, and ordered court costs against him, on the grounds that the child might require a special diet.
Judge X (name withheld by litigant) told a father who sought more than 2 hours contact with his young child per fortnight that 'it may well be that the father is being too possessive.'
Judge Agliombi warned a father who was arguing that costs should not be ordered against him because the mother was depriving their child of a father: "If you go on like this you stand in great danger of never having staying contact with your son."
Judge X (case pending) ordered that a father, who had waited seven months for a full hearing without seeing his children, be permitted for six months to write them no more than one card/letter every three weeks, without any direct contact.
Judge Lloyd ordered that an ordinary father be permitted to write his child once per fortnight on the condition that the letter’s contents be reviewed by an officer of the court.
It can therefore be seen from the above that it is the judges and not the powers of the judges or the law that is the issue as opposed to much orchestrated currently held views, often quoted in the newspapers, by judges and leading family law solicitors that the Courts do not have sufficient powers.
We would remind the Committee that there is no statutory bar on the power of the Court of Appeal. Tsai V Woodworth Judgement delivered on November 23rd 1983 and reported in the Times on November 30th 1983, before Lord Justice Dunn and Lord Justice May, it was stated ‘’ In respect of the exercise of a judge’s discretion, one should go back to the locus classicus; Evans V Bartlam where lord Atkin said at page 480: Appellate jurisdiction is always statutory: there is no restriction upon the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeal: and whilst the appellate court in the exercise of its appellate power is no doubt entirely justified in saying that normally it will not interfere with the exercise of the judge’s discretion except on grounds of law, yet if it sees that on other grounds the decision will result in injustice being done, it has both the power and the duty to amend it. It would put the Statutory provisions at nought if the Court of Appeal in proper cases did not exercise its jurisdiction without the necessity of showing that the requirement of the Wednesbury principles were satisfied.’’ Yet the judiciary ignore this simple point and appear to have stopped dispensing justice.
After all, we have seen that the judges do send mothers to prison for breaking the law in the case of a child truanting from school and the newspapers openly publish the names of the children and mothers concerned.
The reasons for all this is that whilst in family courts the cases are heard in-camera. The judges having powers of refusing McKenzie friends particularly in the cases of fathers whilst mothers are assisted by Lawyers and Barristers more often than not funded by the State. The arguments put forward by the Government and its agencies that mothers are poor and therefore they require legal aid do not stand up to scrutiny. In reality where the mother is not only given one legal aid but two legal aid awards against a father who is on the same benefits and also suffers from health ailments, he is still being refused any legal aid and/ or legal representation.
One of the single biggest obstacles we have found is that the judges instead of accepting that they have faulted in the argument and put the matters right then carry on to cover-up their misuse of powers and there is no-one to scrutinise their actions even when it is brought to the attention of higher Courts or the DCA.
Are families getting the service they deserve?
A simple short answer is not only are the families not served well but neither are the Community and the nation as a whole. In particular the Government, judiciary, support agencies and the police have an inbuilt gender bias. An example of this can be seen on the issue of Domestic violence (DV) which mothers often use liberally and in which all the above named fall over backwards to support the mother. In truth according to Home Office 191 study, the British Crime Survey and other studies from both here and abroad there is no significant difference in the number of male and female victims abused by their partners. Yet, all forms of media portray the women as the victim. This action has a significant effect on the way the judiciary operates and the way the judiciary relies on CAFCASS whose trade union (the National Association of probation officers- NAPO), who asks their officers to collude with the mother as all women suffer abuse in the Patriarchal society, provide anti-heterosexual training to their officers and are plainly biased against men, fathers and heterosexuality as outlined in their ‘equal opportunities policy.’
There are examples that when males state that they have been abused neither the Police will record such an event and judges will go out of their way to refuse to accept evidence.
All of this is best described by Lord Laming in the case of Victoria Climbie that he had difficulty understanding how easily other professionals easily believe the wrong-doer, in most cases mothers. The excuses and reassurances appear to have been too readily accepted by the so called professionals. Such behaviour of professionals was commented upon by Lord Lamming in the Climbie Inquiry – “Marie Theresa Kuoto (the aunt and primary carer) had been abusive to the child, however, her explanations were believed by the professionals involved”.
Further on the question whether families are better being served one has to look further afield and ask if the decisions of the judges and the Courts have destructive influences on the children e.g. self-harm, suicide, teenage pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse, delinquency/ criminality, poor school attendance, lack of self-esteem, low confidence, underachievement, emotional and psychological problems and/ or metal health problems and poor relationship problems as adults.
On the question of delay the biggest argument put forward by the judiciary, family court solicitors is that there is not much funding hence resulting in delays. Our experiences do not support this and to the contrary the delays are gender biased yet again.
In cases involving the mother often the Courts will bend over backwards not to hear any Applications brought by fathers and then the Courts come up with the very novel thought that there has been delay and hence the father cannot continue with the contact and suddenly contact centres come into play. This is known where the mother is recognised as deceitful, making false allegations and/ or in cases where the mother has been known to be the perpetrator of abuse.
Sadly however, if a mother were to make an allegation which is not only manifestly false but defies common sense the mother can get a hearing within the week and if need be on an ex-parte basis contrary to law.
Our experience states the question of delays can be best addressed if there was a greater accountability of the judiciary, court services (who are a law unto themselves and the other State agencies. CAFCASS Officers in private law should have no involvement with child abuse/ domestic violence since they are not a statutory body for child protection. Only the NSPCC, Social Services and the Police are.
At the present moment with all the secrecy surrounding it there is effectively no accountability and as in another recent hearing a CAFCASS officer stated that she was there only for the mother and when it was pointed out ‘What about the best interest of the child?’ the judge ignored this and accepted the CAFCASS officer’s position.
Conclusions
As we wrote to the LCD on numerous occasions since 1996, we believe in order for there to be greater transparency and accountability not only must the Courts be open to the public with the usual restrictions in place, but both sides of the argument must be allowed to independently tape, electronically the proceedings of the day and/ or any other proceedings/ investigations.
In this we are supported in that we have evidence to show that Court transcripts/ orders have little in common with the reality of the hearing and when brought to the judge’s attention are often dismissed. We also similarly have evidence to show where CAFCASS will often lie in order to gain advantage for the mother.
As in both these examples there is no single body that can oversee or investigate these matters. We also proposed since 1996 that when legal aid be given to one party it must also be give to the other party to ensure equality of arms.
We accept the principle that the granting of legal aid is not a right. Whilst there is no automatic right for legal aid or legal representation, nevertheless the European Courts took the view that under Article 6§1 of the Convention determination of civil rights and obligations as set out in Golder v UK in 1975 Series A No. 18 p18§36, it will not be possible for an Applicant to have effective access to Court where such assistance is indispensable by reason of complexity of procedure or the type of case.
On the question of right to legal aid or representation the court it was also pointed out that the key principle governing Article 6 is fairness and the Court concluded that the parents in the case of P, C & S v UK did not have fair and effective access to Court as required by Article 6§1.
Finally, the role of the legal aid board and their accountability is central to the whole issue of family court proceedings and there should be a greater accountability by an independent Authority and not independent as meaning the same officers investigating themselves. This also raises the question of the Legal aid franchises, the awards given out by the legal aid board, often yet again resulting in compliance with the gender bias prevalent.
In our opinion the destruction of families and communities in the last twenty years has been socially engineered by the same people who are to date in control and whom to date have little understanding of the complexities of families and communities or willingness to change.
Dear Clive
What do you think should happen if a social worker is proved to have mislead a family court and her own department.
Christine, It is wicked for mothers to stop fathers from seeing their children in defiance of court contact orders but I STILL say it is far worse for literally thousands of mothers to have babies they have never harmed taken from them at birth for adoption;Why? because
1:- The baby is deprived for at least 18 years of BOTH natural parents,brothers sisters grandparents etc. 2:- A baby needs a mother more than anyone else in at least it's first 3 months of life ;Fathers cannot breastfeed !!3:- When the baby is taken for adoption it disappears for good. parents do not know where it has gone or who it is with and no court actions for contact are possible 4:- Mother are too crushed by events to form any kind of protest group equivalent to fathers 4justice; That is why wicked social workers who literally steal babies not just from one parent but from both should go to prison; "following orders is no excuse !! IAN JOSEPHS
Men are discriminated against in almost every area of life. We cannot rely on the loony left to even begin to redress the balance for mens rights as they are obsessed with womens rights alone. It would appear to be against the interests of men to vote labour in any general election until such a time as some semblance of sanity is returned to left wing politics. The following report is an incomplete document describing "some" of the terrible, biased and sexist social forces working against the interests of men. Something that Mr Soley, as a man elected to serve ALL of his constituents should be addressing. However, blinded by dogmatic ideological attitudes Mr Soley and every other Labour MP cannot be relied upon to seek redress for males in the UK.
The report below can be read here: http://www.coeffic.demon.co.uk/descrim.htm
Discrimination against Men
Men are discriminated against in the following areas:
Health - Circumcision - Suicide - Domestic violence - Local council - Public libraries - Radio - Newspapers - Advertising - Marriage - Lifestyle Opportunities - Family courts - Parental Alienation - Mother-headed households - Education - Politicians - Passports - Taxes - Pensions and benefits - Safety - Defence - Employment - Criminal law - Wealth - Men
Health
Men die on average 7 years earlier than women. Before the age of 65 Men are three times as likely to suffer heart disease and twice as likely to die from lung cancer than women. Women visit their doctors around twice as often as men, and women form the majority of patients treated in hospital. It seems men can do more to help themselves as they leave serious medical conditions too late by not visiting the doctor. Men makeup the majority of accident and emergency cases. More men drive and for longer distances so they are involved in the majority of road traffic accidents. Since men work in dangerous occupations they suffer the majority of industrial accidents. Men drink three times more and smoke at a slightly greater rate than women. Men do seem to have a built-in self destruct mechanism, and although nearly all medical advances have been made by men, it seems the last person that men will help are themselves.
Screening programs are provided for women related cancers such as breast and cervical cancer. However there is no screening of equivalent cancers affecting men such as prostate and testicular cancer. This is very unfair because deaths from prostate cancer are almost as high as deaths from breast cancer and 6.7 times higher than deaths from cervical cancer. The bias is further tilted because research spending overwhelming is in favour of women cancers. The most up to date health targets for the UK include: B1 - reduction of breast cancer by 25%, and B2 - reduction of cervical cancer by 20%. There is not even a mention of prostate, or testicular cancer targets. Men need to demand that more is spent on male health and prevention programs.
Health leaflets published by the NHS and other groups are available in doctors surgeries. Many of these leaflets target women only issues such as breast and cervical cancer. Visitors to doctors surgeries in the UK will be hard pressed to find even a single leaflet targeting men only conditions. Some of the leaflets are obviously persuing an 'agenda' . The leaflet 'Your Health: A guide to services for Women' published by the Department of Health has a whole page on Domestic Violence: "Domestic violence includes emotional, as well as sexual or physical abuse of women in their homes by partners" it then goes on to give the phone number of Women's aid and Rape crisis lines. This is classic 'male-bashing' in it's purest form. The leaflet makes no mention that serious studies into this area have shown that women are more likely to commit domestic violenceagainst their partners or children. The leaflet contains no phone numbers to help men who experience domestic violence, or to help women who are abusive or violent to their male partners.
Circumcision
Circumcision of females has been against the law in the UK for many years however circumcision of males is still widely practiced. The principle organisation whose aim is to educate about the harmful effects of circumcision of either sex in the UK is called NORM. It is reported by NORM that 30,000 male circumcisions are being done each year in England costing the NHS around 10 Million pounds/year. NORM believes that only 1/40th of all these operations are necessary, they believe that an intact male is less likely to disease, injury, and psychological problems. A mother Marilyn Milos reported this:
"I didn't know what my sons had endured until, as a nursing student years later, I saw the surgery for the first time. Nothing could have prepared me for the experience of watching a new-born baby, strapped spread-eagle to a plastic board,scream helplessly as the doctor tore the baby's forskin from the head of his penis (an attachement that is normal in infancy), crush and then cut the foreskin lengthwise, insert the circumcision device, crush the foreskin around, and finally amputate it. The piercing screams were so devastating that I began to cry uncontrollably. The doctor looked into my face and said. 'There is no medical reason for doing this'!"
Male circumcision has as little benefit as removing someones eyelid. Few human rights organisations help, indeed the UN has been heavily criticised for campaigning against female mutilation but doing nothing to help males UN criticised for doing nothing against male mutilation
Suicide
The suicide rate for men is 3.7 times that for women. The suicide rate for young males has shown an alarming increase in recent years. There has been a growth of 70 percent in suicides of young men below the age of 21 years.
Domestic Violence
BBC Here and Now MORI Poll
All serious studies into domestic violence show a roughly equal balance between the genders. Some studies have shown that there is a higher rate of domestic violence amongst lesbian than heterosexual couples. A poll undertaken by MORI and commissioned by Here and Now had these main findings:
One in five (18 percent) of men have been victims of domestic violence by a wife or female partner as opposed to 13 percent of women by a man.
One in nine women admit to having used physical aggression against a husband or male partner (compared to one in ten men)
14 percent of men say that they have been slapped by a partner (compared to 9 percent of women)
11 percent of men have had a partner threaten to throw something heavy at them (compared to 8 percent of women)
Only 4 percent of women explained that their behavior (either verbal or physical) was because of drink or drugs (compared to ten percent of men)
Nearly half (47 percent) of women say that their behaviour (physical or verbal aggression or verbal reasoning) was because "it was the only way I could get through to him"
Working class men (20 percent) are more likely to have been subjected to physical agression by a wife or female partner than upper or middle class men (15 percent)
Here and Now's survey reveals that fifteen percent (6.3 million people) of the population say that they have been subjected to physical agression by a husband/wife or hetrosexual partner.
MORI interviewed a representitive quota sample of 1,978 adults in Great Britain. 1,865 of whom had ever been in a personal relationship with the opposite sex.
Field work was conducted from 17-21 November 1994 in 150 constituencies. All interviews were conducted face to face in home employing a self completion technique. Data have been weighted to the known profile of the British population.
Erin Pitzey
Following is a quote from Erin Pitzey (received in a personal email) who as the founder of the world's first women refuge should be qualified to comment. She said:
"...it saddens me that we even have to have a women's movement and a men's movement but really there was no choice. I couldn't stop the feminist movement from hi-jacking my work in London at my refuge in Chiswick. They wanted funding and my work, twenty-five years ago - as the first refuge in the world seemed heaven sent for them. No matter that I told them that out of the first hundred women that came into Chiswick sixty-two were as violent as the men they left. I couldn't get any coverage for the truth. 'All men are bastards and rapists' is the only truth that the women's movement were prepared to hear....Now, with the help of this evil movement father's role in family life seems to be irrelevant....."
These seem to be very wise words but Erin received death threats from women just for standing up and speaking out against anti-male hatred propaganda.
Social Work 1987
This work from:
The truth about Domestic Violence: A Falsely Framed Issue by R.L. McNeely and G. Robinson-Simpson
Social Work 32(6)485-490 1987
"Yet, while studies consistently show that men are victims of domestic violence as often as are women, both the lay public and many professionals regard a finding of no sex difference in rates of physical aggression among intimates as 'suprising, if not unreliable, the sterotype being that men are agressive and women are exclusively victims.'"
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology
This work from:
Prevalence and stability of physical aggression between spouses: a longtitudinal analysis by K. O'Leary, J. Barling, Arias, Ilena, A. Rosenbaum, J. Malone and A. Tyree
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 57(2):263-268, 1989.
This report notes that 31% of men and 44% of women in a study reported that they aggressed against their partner in the year before marriage. Eighteen months after marriage, 27% of the men and 36% of the women reported being violent towards their partner.
Washington Post by Armin A. Brott 1994
This information is a precis taken from an article that appeared in the Washington Post July 1994 by Armin A. Brott. The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence estimates that more than half of US married women (over 27 million) will experience violence during their marriage. Asked where these figures came from Rita Smith the group's coordinator, told me the figures were only "estimates". From where? "Based on what we hear out there". Out where? Battered women's shelters and other advocacy groups. When there is a sensational story to run, common sense and intellectual honesty are rarely taken into consideration.
Even those who have a public responsibility to be accurate on these issues sometimes falter. According to Donna Shalala, Secretary of Health and Human Services, for example, 4 million women are 'battered' each year by their male partners. But where did she get her figure? From a 1993 Harris poll commissioned by the Commonwealth Fund. Two percent of the 2,500 women interviewed said they had been "kicked, bit, hit with a fist or some other object". Apply that to the approximately 55 million women married or living with a man and you get a total of 1.1 million. So where did the other 2.9 million come from? They were women who said they had been "pushed, grabbed, shoved, or slapped". That's a form of abuse, to be sure, but is it what most people would call battering?
By far the worst distortion of the numbers of battered women comes from Miami talk show host Pat Stevens, who appeared on a CNN show called "OJ on the Air" in June. She estimated the true number of battered women is 60 million. No one bothered to tell Stevens that 60 million is more than 100% of all the women in the entire country who are currently in relationships with a man.
Probably one off the best studies on domestic violence has been in the US. Murray A. Straus, head of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire and Richard A. Gelles, a sociologist at the University of Rhode Island, who have been tracking spousal abuse for over 20 years, have come up with what are widely believed to be the most accurate estimates available - the National Family Violence Survey (NFVS) sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health. This survey found that 84% of American families are not violent. In 16% of families that do experience violence, the vast majority takes the form of slapping, shoving, and grabbing. Only 3-4% of all families (a total of about 1.8 million) engage in severe violence: kicking, punching, or using a weapon. Straus and Gelles estimate that about 188,000 women are injured severely enough to require medical attention. That is a horrifying number of victims, but it's a far cry from 4 million, or 18 million, or 60 million.
Another common myth about domestic violence is that 95% of the time, women are the victims and men the perpetrators. Straus ad Gelles found that among couples reporting violence, the man struck the first blow in 27% of cases; the women in 24%. The rest of the time, the violence was mutual, with both partners brawling. Straus' latest findings , released earlier this month, that men's violence against women - even as reported by women- has dropped 43% between 1985 and 1992. Over this same period, in contrast, reported assaults by women against men increased by about 28%. The 95% figure comes from the US department of Justice, which collects data on the number of reports of domestic violence. Department studies have shown that men report all kinds of violent victimization 32% less frequently than women.
A Justice Department study released earlier this month showed that 41 percent of spousal murder victims were male. Battered women's advocates claim that those women who kill their husbands do so only out of self-defense. But in an extensive study of women imprisoned for murder, Coramae Richely Mann, a researcher at the Department of Criminal Justice, Indiana University/Bloomington found that only 59% claimed self-defense and that 30% had previously been arrested for violent crimes. A recent Los Angeles Times article quoted Justice Department sources, reported that women who kill their husbands were acquitted in 12.9% of the cases, while husbands who kill their wives were acquitted only 1.4% of the time. In addition women convicted of killing their husbands receive an average sentence of only six years, while male spousal killers got 17 years.
So why are these statistics being battered? Not everyone who manipulates data does so for personal gain. Some are simple trying to get people to sit up and pay attention to the plight of battered women - a truely important goal. Is it OK to lie shamelessly if your cause is a noble one?
On the one hand Congress is about to pass the $1.8 billion Violence Against Women Act which, among other things, will fund toll-free hotlines, battered women's shelters, and education and training programs. It's certainly possible that none of this would be happening if advocacy groups stuck strictly to facts.
On the other hand Members of Congress, seeing a golden opportunity to appease a large block of voters, have chosen a quick solution rather that attempting to correct their constituents' misapprehensions. The violence Against Women Act, for example, doesn't devote a nickel to the same kind of special protection for men. Women too, are being hurt by the lies. Having fought so hard to be taken seriously and treated as equals, women are again finding themselves portrayed as weak and helpless. Worst of all, the inflation of domestic violence statistics produces a kind of ratchet effect. The same people complain that no one listens if they don't exaggerate only find it that much more difficult to get people's attention the next time around - which in turn seems to justify another round of exaggeration. Eventually, the public either stops listening altogether, or finds the statistics too absurd to believe.
Professor John Archer
A psychologist at University of Central Lancashire and president-elect of the International Society for Research on Aggression. As Archer has shown in a recent analysis of data from almost 100 American and British studies, women are more likely than men to initiate violence against their spouses or companions and are more likely to be aggressive more frequently. Most violence is tit-for-tat. Nor is it the case that women attack men only in self-defence. Among female college students, for example, 29% admitted initiating assaults on a male companion.
Local council
UK Public swimming pools run by the council have women-only swimming pool sessions. They are able to avoid the attention of the sexual discrimination act by claiming that this is to avoid embarrassment. In addition letters of complaint to the pool managers usually get a reply that there are pregnant women, or women from ethnic minorities, who may be embarrassed in a mixed swimming session. The first point is that during these sessions male life-guards are still employed. Secondly that there is little evidence at least in Cambridge pools of pregnant or Asian women especially using the pool during these sessions. The third point is that when in the pool the only thing that can be seen is someone's head so that the effort may be better spent in providing screens by the pool-side for women to enter and leave the pool and special women-only swimming lanes. The fourth point is that barring men is an apartheid measure.
If women are able to make the case that they are the victims (victimhood) and that men are the abusers (male-bashing) then what follows is that women are disadvantaged and therefore need special support (entitlement). For example Cambridge City Community Welfare and Development Plan 1995 says:
"Disadvantaged groups include the unemployed and low paid, ethnic minorities, women, people with disabilities, lone parents and pensioners, those living in overcrowded conditions and lacking amenities".
We can therefore expect priority spending on women and lone parent groups, and this is indeed the case. In addition because women are 'victims' they are then entitled to women-only swimming pool sessions, women-only car parking, and women-only library sessions and these already exist is various cities in the UK. We can compare the spending on men-only and women-only groups in Cambridge UK using 1992 and 1996 annual grant figures:
Women /Lone parents (read mothers) 1992 1996
Women's Resource Centre (training and other) 176K 0.25M/year(estxx)
Women's refuge centre (choices??xx) 60K (estxx) xx
Choices (Incest counselling) 26.9K 5040
Rape crisis centre 500 1146
Corona House (Women's hostel) xx xx
Women's aid 20.9K xx
Lesbian line 960 xx
Women and homelessness 14K xx
Gingerbread (lone parent i.e. mother) 1000 12.9K
Black women's support group - 19250
Women-only swimming pool sessions xx 575K(Parks)+498K(abbey)
Social services dept (xx women's groups) 1.0M
Social services/Health cmte (xx women's groups) 2.5M
Men
Cambridge Friend (Gay men) xx xx
Public Libraries
Libraries are beginning the apartheid practices of excluding men. Libraries do this by having women only library tables, or women only library days. However these services are paid for by revenues that we all pay for. In Leicester, the County Council is being legally challenged over this issue, and taken to court. The council will be contesting this issue in court so demonstrating a deliberate will to impose this discrimination.
Libraries are staffed mainly by women and therefore there is an automatic tendency to stock information that favours women. As an example the Cambridge main library information service has computer searches giving details of local groups. Entering the key word 'women' gave about 50 references, typing in 'men' gave 0 references. The library acted swiftly to correct this obvious gender imbalance. A second example was that the library had a 'women's issues' shelf but no 'men's issues' shelf. Again the library acted swiftly to correct this imbalance and with the help of donated books a men's shelf was soon available. This suggests that there was no real intentional bias and that maybe libraries are 'demand-led'.
Radio
Radio-4 the main national serious radio station has a women's hour, but does not have a men's hour. Although the women's hour program has moved beyond the mantra of 'all men are rapists and abusers' the program regularly features guests who are of this ilk. Equality must cut both ways. Controversial feminist views and skewed statistics are allowed onto the airwaves unopposed. Radio-4 therefore needs to also have a program where men are equally able to complain about women. Here is an example of how men's issues are mistreated by radio-4 on the Today program.
"...During yesterday's broadcast she (Anna Ford) introduced an item on the treatment of men during divorce cases. There were two participants: Elizabeth Woodcraft a feminist barrister, and Neil Lyndon, author of the uncompromisingly anti-feminist No More Sex War. Lyndon felt that the interview was rather skewed in favour of his opponent, who was allowed to talk for more than two of the piece's three minutes. After the broadcast he received a call from Today's deputy editor, Rod Little, agreeing, apologising and saying Miss Ford had been reprimanded...."
Sunday Telegraph 31-Sep-97
The BBC World service has traditionally had a reputation for excellence. The station features news and documentaries with reporters of world-standing such as Mark Tully and Misha Glenny. A recent drive is under way to feminise the world service (announcement: "calling all our women listeners" BBC 13-Aug-96) a new program called 'Everywoman' targets women listeners and copies the Radio-4 'Woman's Hour' practice of including a liberal sprinkling of male-bashing. New world service reporters such as Julliet Tindell now send back reports from Tokyo (BBC 26-Aug-96) where for example women are illegally imported into Japan to work in the 'entertainment' industry as prostitutes. According to the Japanese newspaper The Yomiuri Shimbun Mon Aug 12 1996 there are 160,836 male and 123,664 female immigrants staying illegally in Japan as estimated by the Ministry of Law (1-May-96). The men work in the so called KKK jobs. In Japanese KKK stands for dangerous, hard, and dirty, i.e. the jobs that no Japanese would want to do. The BBC program failed to mention anything about the fate of these illegal male immigrants. The program also failed to mention anything about men imported to work as male prostitutes. It is tempting to suggest that if immigrant women to Japan were being burnt to death in blast furnaces, or being trapped under agricultural machinery then we would soon hear about it from Tindell. This pattern of 'women-as-victim' reporting is increasingly repeated in many other countries by the BBC world service. The new correspondents have an obvious 'male-bashing' agenda and this is excluding the highly respected and experienced correspondents such as Tully and Glenny.
Newpapers
Newspapers regularly feature articles by such journalists as Polly Toynbee (Independent) that whine about men. The newspapers do have a press complaints body but these complaints will only be accepted if you are personally mentioned in the article or the complaint is perceived to be in the public interest. For example, one recent complaint the Press Complaints received was about two articles in the Yorkshire Evening Post: "Battle to free child snatcher-sentence on dad too harsh, says campaign" (8-Mar-96) and "Court ruling looms - Mum in fight for children" (4-Jan-96). The father and the mother both committed the same offence. They travelled with their children to another country against a court order. Same offence, different headline in the newspaper, and completely different tone in the body of the text The reply stated:
"....Only in exceptional circumstances a complaint from a third party may be investigated should the Commission consider that a significant issue involving the public interest is raised....the Commissioners do not find your complaint raises such an issue under the Code."
Obviously the fate of 45000 fathers who loose all contact with their children every year is not considered a significant issue. It is according to the press acceptable to present a mother as a heroine and a father as a child snatcher.
Advertising
Advertisements regularly feature men as foolish. The main aim of the advertisers is to appeal to women who control and make the majority of purchases. There has been a recent disturbing trend of using images of violence against men to sell products to young women (Sunday Telegraph 14-Sep-97).
The car company Nissan recently placed advertisements in women's magazines for a car called the Micra targeting younger women who make up 70 percent of the cars buyers. The heading was 'Hate Male'. The advertisement encouraged women readers to write in and get sent postcard pictures of a man who had been compromised by a women after he had borrowed her car without asking. The pictures are: A man bent in agony holding his crutch, a mans jacket in tatters with both the arms cut off, a male watch being fried in a pan, a man sleeping with half his hair and beard cut off, a women holding a can of opened dog food behind her back and in the background a man is sitting eating, a paper clipping lying on a table of the Bobbitt case entitled: a night to dismember, and a book with the last few pages cut out.
In an advertisement on television by Volkswagen a divorcing husband tries to claim that his VW car is worth a great deal more money than it really is. The wife discovers this overvaluation and gets her own back on the husband by "taking him to the cleaners". The wife is seen crowing over her victory and thanking VW for their cheapness. The husband is left standing at the kerb side and gets his clothes back from the cleaners torn to shreds (presumably by his wife).
A billboard advertisement for Lee jeans features a naked man lying on the floor. A woman wearing Lee jeans is shown with her stiletto above the man's buttocks. The caption reads "Put the boot in".
An advertisement for Wallis clothes featuring in women's magazines, shows men about to be killed because they are staring at women. In one, a man is about to have his throat cut because his barber is staring at a pretty girl.
Marriage
At present 75% of all divorces are called for by wives. The Emperor's New Clothes survey of divorce men found that a man pays £29,306 to his lawyers and transfers £57,966 to his wife of which she then pays £20,000 to her lawyers. Thus lawyers benefit by £49,306 on average per divorce.
If a man takes the step of marrying and has children:
He has a 50/50 chance of: divorcing, losing custody of his children and paying £87,272 (avg)
He will have a 1 in 3 chance of losing his home
He will have a 1 in 10 chance of loosing contact with his children for ever.
If a women takes the step of marrying and has children:
It is almost certain she will keep her children
She will also have a 1 in 3 chance of losing her home
Have a 50/50 chance she will benefit by £37,966 (avg)
Lifestyle Opportunities
Women have multiple lifestyle opportunities versus men's single opportunity i.e. work. At present women have the option to:
Work
Stay at home as a housewife
Stay home with children
Work part time and care for children part time
Family courts
Family courts have a powerful default of awarding custody to the mothers in 91% of the cases. This is regardless of the mothers conduct, or of her ability to support and care for the children. A great deal of research has established high correlation's between fatherless families and child poverty, family violence, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, school failure, and juvenile crime.
The ideal of maternal-preference originates from the period when two parent families were the norm. Marriage and children are great civilisers and motivaters for men. Women benefit from the man's pay check and from the male qualities he instills in the children. In two parent families the children are mostly cared for by the mother, but this is becomming less common. By contrast a mother-headed family is often far from ideal. For example, one of the best predictors of child abuse is the presence in the home of a boyfriend or step-father. Some studies have put the rate of abuse as 77 times greater in lone-mother households with a boyfriend / stepfather compared to families where both biological parents are present.
Family court judges are advised by Court Welfare officers who are supposed to make recommendations 'in the best interest of the child'. These officers often operate without a complaints procedure. Since a welfare report cannot be acknowledged as wrong it can only be right. A report that is by definition right can only be endorsed by the court, which as it happens sit in secret. It is almost impossible for fathers to appeal against bad decisions. Even appeals where there is outrageous justice against fathers are very rarely granted.
There is a widespread misconception that children get over the effects of divorce. This is not the case. There is much evidence that children from broken families are severely disadvantaged [Telegraph 01-Dec-96]. In some children these wounds never heal.
Parental alienation
If a child resides only with one parent and the other parent only has limited visiting rights then a process called parental alienation is possible. This is basically where the children are turned against the other parent. Since children are awarded custody to the mothers in 91% of the cases then the alienation is mostly against fathers.
A mother inducing alienation may say that the father is always harassing us with phone calls, always trying to bribe us with gifts and toys, or getting solicitors onto us. Inducing parents may often cut off the extended family as well. A common form of critism is how little maintainance money is given. Inducing parents often use baby sitters, with excuses like the non-resident parent can't see the children at these times because it is outside routine. The inducing parent would rather the child be with friends or neighbours or playing outside unsupervised than with the non-resident parent. An inducing parent will not forward school reports, school photographs or want the non-resident parent to go to school concerts etc. Inducing parents often wont cooperate in joint interviews or mediation and they are often blinded by rage and don't appreciate the emotional damage they are doing to their children. They are often convincing and are master manipulators.
Mother-Headed households
Lone mother households tend to be concentrated in inner city areas. The first male role model that a young boy growing up in such a household may encounter are the street gangs roaming the neighbourhood. By associating with such individuals and without adequate controls at home, a young man can gradually be drawn into a life of crime. Mother headed households tend to produce the majority of our criminals, and of our drug users. This is one of the principle reasons for the surge in crime rate both here and in the US. The rising crime rate has tracked the increase in the number of fatherless families. Many studies have found that that the presence of the biological father is a powerful protector against delinquency.
Children who grow up without their biological father do less well at school. The issue here is one of status and total control since the children are the automatic passport to benefits. Mother-custody is often a misnomer since the children are very often left with a childminder or with relatives. This is often the case even when the biological father is available and willing to care for the children.
Education
Our education system and especially our primary education system is betraying a whole generation of boy pupils [Mail 13-Sep-95]. A leading American educationalist Spencer Holland blamed in particular a lack of male teachers in primary schools. His quick fix solution was to send men into the schools to act as mentors and role models to male pupils. A recent International literacy survey found that more than a fifth of adults in the UK i.e. some 8 million people could not perform simple comprehension tests. This places the UK second to last, i.e. above Poland but below Germany, Holland, Sweden, Switzerland, US, and Canada (Mail 12-Sep-97).
There are 4.7 times as many female teachers in primary (aged 5-13 years) schools compared to male teachers. In secondary schools (aged 13-18 years) the teacher ratio is about even. It is often stated that there are no male teachers at the primary level because the pay is so bad. This is only half the story, there are now many unemployed male teachers. It is still an accepted predudice by men and women that the raising of young children is 'womens work'.
UK Schools have many barriers to involvement by fathers. Some fathers report that they are excluded by other mothers when they collect their children. The school timetable is not helpful to fathers who work, there are frequent holidays that may not coincide with the fathers own holidays. The school may often be sited an inconvenient distance away from where men traditionally work.
Access courses are 'back to work' initiatives for mainly mothers paid for by government. So while funding is being withdrawn from our brightest university students who now have to 'pay as they go'. Mothers receive free entitlement to be educated not once but twice.
Women 'resource centres' receive generous local and EEC funding. For example the Cambridge Women's Resource centre currently receives 250K a year grant to offer training courses to women that exclude men. Many of these women-only courses are provided in areas of record male unemployment which is often three times the unemployment rate of women. Such apartheid practices in South Africa provoked an international boycott.
Politicians
The labour party has a shadow-minister for women but not a shadow-minister for men. Tessa Jowell the labour MP is quoted as saying "discrimination is wrong wherever it occurs". Fine words which are never backed up by action when discrimination occurs against men. Examples of double standards or bias from MPs are:
John Major (Con) the prime minister has a son who was reported to be involved in the breakup of a marriage of Mr Jordache (Standard 10-Oct-96). Before even the divorce was finalised the reports were of Mrs Jordache being welcomed into the household of John Major. Major has in the past campaigned on back-to-basics and family values. However there are no reports of him publicly speaking out and condemning the behaviour of his son in breaking up a marriage.
When Glenda Jackson (Lab) herself a single mother, was provided in 1994 with a briefing paper describing the discrimination against fathers in family law, she replied that she found the paper "an attack on women".
During a presentation of a 1000 signature petition to Anne Campbell (Lab) asking for release from prison of a jailed father and or equal rights for fathers to care for their children. She refused to sign the petition because the father had broken the law. The father had taken his daughter to the US. This was after the mother had abducted the daughter away from school and the family home, which was later sanctioned by the British courts. It was pointed out to Campbell three times that she could exclude the jailed father clause and still sign for the other father equal treatment clauses. Again she refused. She in fact sent a letter to about 120 of her constituents stating her reasons for not supporting the petition as because the father "had deliberately broken the law". However Anne Campbell did support Nicky Ingrams a drug taker who during the burglary of an elderly couples home in the US had taken them outside at gun point, had tied them to a tree and tortured them for about an hour before finally shooting them both in the head [Times 1-Apr-95]. The US sentenced Ingrams to the electric chair. Campbell wrote a letter to the Prime Minister [Times 4-Apr-95] and was reported to be seeking a parliamentary debate to help Ingrams [Times 31-Mar-95]. Now Campbell possibly believes that a drug crazed neighbour killer is a more deserving cause than a loving father who wants to stay in the life of his children. However 45 fathers and children have died so far as a result of suicide attributed directly to pressure from the Child Support Agency. Why is there only talk about 'responsibilities' and never any talk about the 'equal rights' of fathers to stay in the lives of their children. It is time to see that a father ordered out of his family and onto a lifetime of slavery can in some cases actually be a death penalty.
Judith Church (Lab) is the mother of two children who makes capital out of being a single parent. However her ex-partner of 12 years brought those children up while she was trying to get into politics. Now Church hardly lets him see them. The newspaper report quotes the father Peter Mitchell as saying "it's hypocritical" [Express 6-Oct-9]). Church has even hired a live in full-time au pair and is now refusing to allow Mr Mitchell to spend more than one night a week with their sons. It is amazing that Church brings in a hired stranger to care for the children when the father who wants to care for his children is denied by Church.
Rod Richards (Con) has a duty to help his constituents. However one father Dennis Williams has been shut out from the life of his daughter because of claims by his ex-wife [Express 20-Oct-9]). Richards has done nothing to assist this father despite a personal visit to his surgery and a worldwide fax campaign. However Richards does approve of helping persistent truants at Welsh schools by sending them on free holidays in Scotland. "It reflects our commitment to doing everything within our power to help authorities raise standards in our schools" (Telegraph xx find ref). These persistent truants are often the product of fatherless families whose father-expulsion Richards refuses to help. An effective way to improve behaviour in schools is to reduce the number of fatherless families. Richards also has been reported to be involved in an affair (xx) despite belonging to a party that has promoted back-to-basics and family values.
Passports
An unmarried man cannot apply for a passport for a child unless he has the permission of the mother. This means that an unmarried father is unable to take his own children on any foreign holidays.
A mother does not need the fathers permission to apply for a passport since nationality for children of unmarried parents is via the mother.
Despite repeated applications to the Equal Opportunities Commission, a body that has been specifically setup to redress descrimination, they have refused to assist in this matter.
Taxes
Men have to pay the majority of the taxes (men: 77B£/year women: 39B£/year) but benefit the least from these taxes especially since they die 7 years earlier than women.
Married men are especially discriminated against compared to lone parents. For every level of earnings a lone-parent with children has more left in her pocket than a married man with the same number of children who has to support one extra adult (P. Morgan: Farewell to the Family). This is because lone parents have earnings disregards and extra benefits.
Personal allowances can be transferred from the husband to the wife, but they can not be transferred from the wife to the husband.
Pensions and benefits
The retiring pension ages for men and women are unequal i.e. women retire at 60 and men have to retire at 65. This will not be corrected until the year 2020. Since women live 7 years longer than men it can be said that men receive 12 years less benefits for 5 years more work.
Widows are able to claim bereavement benefit, but there is no equivalent benefit for widowers.
Lone parents (i.e. mothers) have a number of benefits especially since many i.e. 60% do not work, they may be entitle to the following: housing benefit, income support, family credit
In this era of feminist's demands for equality they should get it. If men for example pay 75% of the taxes then they must get 75% of the benefits. Even more useful would be divide funds into two social pots. Then men pay into one social pot and women pay into another. This would then correct the unfairness that men die 7 years earlier than women.
Safety
Material published by women's groups and by the state use 'victim-speak' which present women as victims and men as abusers. As a result resources are diverted away from more needy areas to satiate the feminist demands. For example statistics show us that on the streets young men are the highest probable group to suffer attack, but we are always told that young women are the most vulnerable.
Defence
When it comes to the defence of the country, men are expected to sacrifice their lives for 'Queen and country'. During World War I xx men died, during World War II xx men died. In the interests of equality should we send only women into future battles until the same number of women have been killed as the men during the two world wars?
It is interesting to compare the financial treatment of a war veteran injured in the Falklands war by horrific burns, with the fact that laws have been changed to give women large compensations, from the Ministry of Defence, for the loss of earnings as a result of pregnancy when they have voluntarily entered into contracts of employment which regulate this.
The soldier, Simon Weston, was paid nothing in compensation except for his normal pension. The mother was paid £150,000 (typically) for unfair dismissal. In fact the total service personnel employer liability claim for 1994/5 was £14.3M with 298 settled claims where e.g. injury and damages could be proved to be the fault of MOD negligence. However the total refund given to the approximately 300 women who were pregnant totalled £50M.
Men and women have to comply with unequal physical training standards.
This story ran on page A21 of the Boston Globe on 08/27/97.
Eight good reasons to oppose women in the military, By Mona Charen, 08/27/97
Most of the opinion-shaping press has presented the spectacle of the Virginia Military Institute's first female cadets as a simple story of feminism triumphant. All people of good will are presumed to be rooting for the plucky little gals as they conquer one of the last bastions of male supremacy - the military. Here are eight reasons that the national consensus on this is wrong.
1.) The male-only tradition at military academies, as in the military services themselves until recently, is not a manifestation of male dominance or an attempt to keep women in second-class status (any more than all-women's colleges are expressions of female chauvinism). It is based on fundamental differences between the sexes that no amount of political pressure can erase.
2.) Men are physically stronger than women. If women object to that reality, their complaint is with God, not VMI. And while war has become more technological in recent years, physical strength is not yet irrelevant. Men are also more aggressive (though not necessarily meaner). Feminists deny this now, but remember back in the '70s, when they were arguing that the world would be so much less warlike if women ran things?
War is horrible, and it is devoutly to be hoped that mankind will someday transcend it, as we have outgrown child sacrifice and (nearly everywhere) slavery. But, until that day comes, do we not want the toughest, hardest, strongest, and most aggressive members of society to fight our wars?
3.) Men do not get pregnant or nurse babies. When a woman becomes an insurance adjuster or a CEO, a pregnancy does not represent a catastrophe. But a woman warrior cannot be pregnant. (That's why the abortion rate is so high on military bases.) Will feminists next argue that keeping babies out of combat constitutes discrimination?
4.) Introducing women into the military complicates morale and discipline problems. A military unit relies on camaraderie and loyalty. The rules against fraternization - widely misunderstood during the recent Kelly Flinn imbroglio - are intended to maintain morale by ensuring that no enlisted man has a close personal friendship with his commanding officer. Friendships can complicate the line of command. If your commanding officer orders you to ''take that hill,'' you must believe he is doing it for militarily sound reasons, not because he dislikes you or prefers to save your tent-mate.
How much more forcefully, then, can romantic love, sexual competition and jealousy affect unit cohesion?
5.) And then there is sexual harassment. In our ideological zeal to see women in the military, we have handed the sexual predators of this world a big, beautiful present. Putting young, vulnerable women into the hands of drill sergeants - who exert practically life-and-death control over their lives for a period of time - is asking for what we've got: An epidemic of abuse.
6.) Feminists are now attacking military life, claiming on the one hand that there are no relevant differences between the sexes that should exclude women and on the other that the trouble with the military is that it is too ''phallocentric.'' Which is it? The feminists do not want strict equality. If they did, they would be protesting the fact that at service academies, women are not required to meet the same training standards as men.
7.) The Israelis tried using women in combat but rejected the policy for several reasons. They found that men were trying to protect the women at the expense of fighting well and that the enemy was fighting harder to avoid the shame of surrendering to women. The culture of one's potential adversary is a relevant consideration. The United States is not likely to fight Canada.
8.) This is not the first time feminists have claimed - in a sensitive realm - that differences between the sexes are illusory. A generation ago, they argued that differences in sexual attitudes and behavior were merely artifacts of cultural conditioning. Women were as randy as men, they argued, and deserved the chance to prove it.
Twenty-five years later, feminists are refining that view. In fact, some have become so sexually phobic that they've defined any unwelcome approach by a man to be ''sexual harassment.'' Women are tough enough to fight wars but not able to handle a dirty joke? Hmmm.
Mona Charen is a syndicated columnist.
c Copyright 1997 Globe Newspaper Company.
We receive messages from individuals in the military like this one for example...
"I thought you might want to include a few facts that people might not realise about the forces:
Women are allowed to wear earrings. Men are not.
Men have to have the hair above the collar, and are not to have hair below the "middle of the ear", this rule does not apply to the hairstyle of women.
Men have to continually cover the posts of women while they are on maternity leave.
Men get no extra leave when their wives have babies.
To be fair there a some women who pull their weight but generally the forces are turning into a loony left organisation where you cant say boo to a goose. Sooner or later we are going to get a rude awakening and probably a great kick up the arse"!
Employment
Men in full-time employment work an average of 41.9 hours per week compared to women's 37.6 hours per week. More men than women work. However the unemployment rate for men at 14% is currently about three times the female rate. Traditional industries that have employed men are being closed such as mining and ship building. Nothing is being done to restore the wealth creating manufacturing industry, which would employ men.
Men also take on jobs that are hard, dangerous, and dirty. Industrial injuries at work are overwhelmingly of men. It is very rare to see women working as street cleaners or refuse collectors. These are the so called glass