Parental Alienation (Canada)

Parents to share child custody in Switzerland

2011-11-19T14:23:00.001-05:00

Another country looks at the best interest of children and determines having contact with both parents on a relatively equal basis, just like in marriage, is appropriate. Please take note Canadian politicians and judges.MJM

The Local

Parents to share child custody in Switzerland

Published: 18 Nov 2011 11:38 GMT+1
Updated: 18 Nov 2011 11:24 GMT+1
Online: http://www.thelocal.ch/1802/20111118/

The Swiss government has decided separated parents should automatically have joint custody of their children except in cases involving the specific protection of the child.

When a couple splits or gets divorced, custody of their children will be shared without the need for a prior agreement or the approval of a judge.

Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga said on Thursday that the Federal Council considered the move obvious, since a child has the right to build an autonomous relationship with both father and mother.

All political parties, as well as fathers’ and men’s associations, welcomed Sommaruga’s proposal, which is widely expected top pass into law when voted on in parliament in the coming weeks.

But while joint custody is set to become the norm, a judge will still have to sign off on the suitability of both parents to take responsibility for their children. A parent may be denied custody for reasons including infirmity, a history of violence or absence.

Currently, when a couple divorces, one parent generally gets sole custody. If the couple is not married, the mother is the legal custodian. For now, joint custody is only possible if both parties sign an agreement on how they plan to distribute and share alimony and childcare.

The draft proposal also regulates the question of residency. If a parent wishes to move, either alone or with the child, he or she will need the consent of the other party. If there is no agreement, a judge will have to intervene to protect the well-being of the child.

Every year, about 14,000 children in Swizerland are confronted with their parents’ divorce or separation.

Meritxell Mir (news@thelocal.ch)

Interview: Oliver Canic, Croatian Association for Equal Parenting president (SETimes.com)

2011-11-01T17:03:00.002-04:00

This is eerily similar to most western democracies.

By Natasa Radic for Southeast European Times in Zagreb -- 27/10/11

Oliver Canic initiated and founded Croatia's first Equal Parenting Association. [Petar Kos/SETimes]

Two years ago, Oliver Canic founded the Association for Equal Parenting in Croatia. The group volunteers are mostly fathers trying to take a more active role in their child's upbringing after a divorce or separation.

The association is engaged in answering questions in the post-divorce and parenting equality issues, mostly from fathers, and some mothers. Canic talked to SETimes correspondent Natasa Radic about the need for equal parenting and its improvements in Croatia.

SETimes: What were the main reasons for initiating this project?

Oliver Canic: Every day I meet people who say they are being prevented from participating in their children's lives. The system in Croatia has been supporting a model where mothers usually gain full support of the system to push fathers away from children's lives after a divorce or break up between parents.

Fathers sometimes accept such status quo, but not frequently. We do not support either side. We think equal involvement of both parents in the lives of children after a breakup is necessary, where the children are granted their rights.

More: Interview: Oliver Canic, Croatian Association for Equal Parenting president (SETimes.com)

Sarnia Group Seeks Family Law Reform

2011-08-30T13:22:00.000-04:00

Below we have another group seeking Family Law reform starting in Sarnia. I wish them well. Hopefully they will align themselves with the Canadian Equal Parenting Council, a National umbrella group lobbying for shared/equal parenting change.

Vested interests in the Department of Justice and Attorney General`s departments within Provinces are resisting reform for shared/equal parenting and the following post I placed in the Ottawa Citizen today helps explain why.

MikeMurphy

1:04 PM on August 30, 2011

The Canadian Bar Association (CBA) is the main lobby group of Lawyers in Canada, yet they are not registered as lobbyists. They can have the Canadian Head of State as their main speaker, a member of the same lobby group, without any one giving it a second thought.

Last year in Ireland they had the Justice Minister do a speech where he was directly lobbied to not act on PMB-C-422 for shared/equal parenting. This same Minister acquiesced to this blatant attempt at lobbying by stating the government did not support it.

A definition of corruption is abuse of the system. We have a lobby group, the CBA, acting as a vested interest in protecting family law lawyers from the potential of lost business due to the enactment of legislation that would reduce their need, especially in court litigation.

I do not think the CBA is capable of reform without independent oversight. It will not come from the Legislative branch until we see fewer lawyers operating in that sphere as lawmakers. Only in the area of the law can we see such direct conflicts of interest, very similarly to the Canadian Head of states recent speech.

At least he told his colleagues they need to fix their very leaky roof.

The Sarnia Observer

Fix sought for family law

By SHAWN JEFFORDS, The Observer

Updated 1 day ago

Ontario's family law system is broken and a new group formed in Sarnia is lobbying the government for a permanent fix.

Canadians For Family Law Reform was founded in April by eight city residents who have been through the family law system. Two of the co-founders, Anna Moscardelli and Jim Canie, said the current structure turns spouse against spouse, often bankrupting both, as they fight over child custody and assets.

"The court system has developed these animosities between ex-spouses," Moscardelli said.

The group, which supports men and women, wants to see the government overhaul the family law system. A focus on mediated solutions, not long, drawn out court battles would be a good place to start, Moscardelli said.

"For me, it took seven years, 364 days from the time the original motion was filed until the final order came down," she said.

Moscardelli said she knows of a local couple who were married for four years and divorced, only to fight it out in the courts for 11 years before reaching a resolution.

Moscardelli's own lengthy court battle destroyed what was left of her relationship with her ex-husband and hurt their children.

"It's really the kids who lose out in all of this," she said.

The group would also like to see greater accountability measures placed on family law lawyers, some of whom draw out cases to make more money, she said.

"(Some lawyers) look at it like, they don't make money resolving cases," she said. "It's a huge moneymaking system."

Canie said the system also creates undue stress for families. His court proceedings have affected his health. He now regularly takes blood pressure medication and sleeping pills so he can rest at night.

"The stress is unbearable," he said.

Canie said people who can't afford lawyers find themselves lost in a pile of complicated paperwork.

Even those who can afford a lawyer sometimes can't find one to take on their case, he said.

"Individuals just don't know what to do," he said. "They don't know where to start."

The group will host a public meeting Sept. 8 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., at the Sarnia Library downtown.

They're encouraging people to come out and share their stories. The group has already sent letters to Attorney General Chris Bentley, Ombudsman Andre Marin and Law Society of Upper Canada asking each to take action.

"We need some change because the current system just isn't cutting it," Moscardelli said.

For more information log on to canadiansforfamilylawreform.com. The group is also on Facebook and Twitter.

http://www.theobserver.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3276561#.TltZwcl8e6M.blogger

The cause of UK Riots

2011-08-16T13:44:00.005-04:00

Melanie Phillips, as she often does, gets right to the heart of the underlying root cause of the London Riots. She says it far better than I have and its simple. Parents are at fault and more particularly single parent female families are ill equipped to handle teen boys. Shared equal parenting and stopping the incentive's to single female births will be a good start. What if we required these single mom parents to take out an insurance policy to pay for the future damage their children will cause?MJM

Goodbye to the Enlightenment

Published in: Melanie's Blog

An illuminating report on BBC Radio Four’s Today programme (0810) this morning said it all about the British riots. Some teenage thugs who were hooding up to go looting were asked why they were doing it. Maybe they couldn’t afford the trainers and other goods they were setting out to steal? Yeah, we can afford them, came the reply; but since the goods were there to be robbed, it was an opportunity that couldn’t be passed up. What about their parents? Did they know where they were? Yeah, came the reply, but the most they do is shout at me. And as for the police, well the worse that can happen is that I’ll get as ASBO (antisocial behaviour order).

Some of the rioters and looters are as young as eight or nine. I then listened to a spokesman for Manchester city council appealing to parents to ensure that their children are not on the streets tonight. Why can’t people see what is staring us all in the face? We are not up against merely feral children. We are up against feral parents. Of course the parents know their children are out on the streets. Of course they see them staggering back with what they have looted. But either they are too drunk or drugged or otherwise out of it to care, or they are helping themselves to the proceeds too.

The parents are the problem; as are, almost certainly, their parents and their parents too. Not that any of them necessarily even know who their parents, in the plural, are. For the single most crucial factor behind all this mayhem, behind the total breakdown of any control or self-control amongst the rampaging gangs of children and teenagers who are rioting, burning, robbing, stealing, attacking and murdering, is the willed removal of the most important thing that socialises children and turns them from feral savages into civilised citizens: a fully committed, hands-on, there-every-day father.

The rest here.

London Riots: The root cause: Social Engineering to give mom sole physical custody

2011-08-16T12:21:00.004-04:00

Many of us have been saying the two parent family as the bedrock of modern civilization is essential, and the Judiciry giving sole physical custody to moms, in Canada over 90% of the time, is resulting in generatuions of children lacking a moral compass, often inspired by a dad. The recent London riots have given rise to the proof of these assertions. Given we are unlikely to impact the divorce rate without governments encouraging families to stay together, getting equal/shared parenting is essential in order to keep fathers and infrequently moms in the lives of their children after divorce.

It's ironic the Judges involved in the prosecution of the looters are asking where the parents are. Some of these same judges may have been responsible for separating the children from their fathers and not enforcing access when he tried to see them.MJM

Now we have proof that abolishing parental rights and encouraging single-parent families was disastrous: the disaster has happened

What was done by design can be undone the same way. But will there be enough political determination to do it?

By William Oddie on Monday, 15 August 2011

A 12-year-old boy leaves Manchester magistrates court last week (PA wire)

Last Thursday, in an article snappily entitled “Why didn’t the looters’ parents know where they were? Why didn’t they teach them about right and wrong? Answer: society has undermined the family”, I quoted Fr Finigan saying that “For several decades our country has undermined marriage, the family, and the rights of parents… Now all of a sudden, we want parents to step in and tell their teenage children how to behave”, and Melanie Phillips pointing to “family breakdown and mass fatherlessness” as one of the principal underlying causes of the riots and looting of last week.

I concluded (and I don’t apologise for returning to this theme now: a lot more needs to be said about it, and now is the time to say it) that of all the things the government now needs to do, “it’s the married family which is the institution that needs rebuilding most urgently”.

I am as certain of that as anything I have ever written, and I’ve been saying it for over 20 years: I was saying it, for instance, when I was attacking (in the Mail and also the Telegraph) as it went through the Commons the parliamentary bill which became that disastrous piece of (Tory) legislation called the Children Act 1989, which abolished parental rights (substituting for them the much weaker “parental responsibility”), which encouraged parents not to spend too much time with their children, which even preposterously gave children the right to take legal action against their parents for attempting to discipline them, which made it “unlawful for a parent or carer to smack their child, except where this amounts to ‘reasonable punishment’;” and which specified that “Whether a ‘smack’ amounts to reasonable punishment will depend on the circumstances of each case taking into consideration factors like the age of the child and the nature of the smack.” If the child didn’t think it “reasonable” he could go to the police. It was an Act which, in short, deliberately weakened the authority of parents over their children and made the state a kind of co-parent.

There are, of course, many other causes for the undermining of the married family (which David Cameron says he now wants to rebuild). Divorce, from the 1960s on, became progressively easier and easier to obtain. Another cause has been the insidious notion (greatly encouraged by successive governments but particularly under New Labour – Old Labour tended to be much more traditional in its views on the family) that the family has many forms, that marriage is just one option, and that lone parenting is just as “valid” (dread word) a form as any other. If you thought that voluntary lone parenting should be discouraged, rather than (as it was) positively encouraged by the taxation and benefits system, you were practically written off as a fascist.

Well, all this relativist rubbish has now been comprehensively shown by its consequences to have been dangerous drivel all along; and I am discovering that to be able to say “I told you so” is under the circumstances not at all as enjoyable as I had thought it might be: any satisfaction is of a very grim kind.

But it is now beyond any doubt, and we need to say so now, to nail the lies that have been spouted for the last 40 years once and for all. The conclusive proof of the existence and the effects of the widespread breakdown of parental responsibility (even where there are two parents) and also of the catastrophic consequences of the encouragement of lone parenting was to be found on the front page of the Times on Saturday, in an article to which I can’t give a link since you can’t get it online. I will have to summarise and quote extensively.

The headline was “Judge asks: where are the parents of rioters?” and it opens as follows:

Parents who refuse to take responsibility for children accused of criminal offences were condemned by a judge yesterday who demanded to know why the mother of a 14-year-old girl in the dock over the looting of three shops was not in court.
District Judge Elizabeth Roscoe was incredulous when told that the girl’s parents were too busy to see their daughter appear before City of Westminster magistrates after she was accused of offences during the violent disorder in London this week. She said that many parents “don’t seem to care” that their children were in court facing potentially lengthy custodial sentences.
Her comments echoed those a day earlier by District Judge Jonathan Feinstein when he highlighted the absence of parents at hearings in Manchester. “The parents have to take responsiblity for this child – apart from one case I have not seen any father or mother in court,” he said.

The Times had been conducting an investigation into the cause of the riots, and interviews with young people and community workers on estates across London revealed “deep concerns about the lack of parental authority”. Youth workers said that mothers (presumably in such cases there are no fathers) are “too terrified of their own children to confront them and often turn a blind eye to cash or stolen goods brought home”. Lone parenthood, it emerges, is in fact a primary cause of the August riots (as they are beginning to be called):

An analysis by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) found that, among other factors linking the 18 areas worst hit by public disorder, is a high rate of single-parent families and broken homes.

And in an interview with the Times today, Shaun Bailey, a youth worker recently appointed as the Government’s “Big Society” czar, argues that childraising has been “nationalised”.

Of the defendants who appeared before magistrates in Westminster yesterday accused of riot crimes across London, half were aged under 18, but few parents attended the hearings, even though their children had been in police custody for up to two days.
One member of the court’s staff said: “I can’t recall seeing any of the parents down here”… A boy of 15 was accused of looting a JD Sports shop in Barking, East London. A 17-year-old student from East London was also accused of receiving £10,000 of mobile phones, cigarettes and clothing looted from Tesco. The items and small quantity of cannabis were discovered in his bedroom at the family home… community workers admitted that broken families often led to children taking to crime.

One youth worker, who has helped children in Lambeth, south London, for 20 years, told the Times that single mothers were often scared of their sons. “They would not challenge them if they came home with stolen goods,” the worker, who did not wish to be named, said.

“In some cases these young men steal more than their mother earns or gets in benefit. They become the father figure, the main earner.” Young men echo the lack of authority. “My mum can’t tell me what to do,” said Lee, 18, from Copley Court, an estate in West Ealing. “It’s the same with young kids. Most of their dads left early on and they don’t listen to anyone.”

There isn’t much more to be said: all one can do is repeat oneself. We now know what rubbish it is to deny that lone parenthood should be avoided wherever possible. As for marriage, study after study has shown that from the point of view of the child it is the best and most stable basis for the family. In the 50s, everyone, including governments of all colours, knew that marriage was the foundation of social stability: and a man whose wife stayed at home to look after the children didn’t pay any tax at all until he was earning the average national wage.

That whole dispensation was blown apart by the accursed supposed “liberation” of the 60s, and by political ideologies of various kinds, not least by radical feminism. There was nothing inevitable about it: it was done by deliberate political design. And what political design can do, political design can undo. It’s more difficult – much more difficult – of course and it can’t be done overnight. David Cameron, to be fair, does seem to see some of this (IDS sees even more).

But does he have the political determination actually to do it? We shall see. I am hopeful; I always am at first. But I greatly fear that as month succeeds month, even my own tendency towards sunny optimism will begin first to flag and then to die. And this time, I don’t want to be able to say “I told you so”.

Main article

Is greater equality occuring in the abortion debate?

2011-07-20T15:24:00.001-04:00

It's about time greater equality in the determination of the termination of life was addressed. MJM

New Ohio Abortion Legislation: Fathers Will Have Final Say

July 2, 2011

By Jeffery M. Leving

Legislation in the Ohio House of Representatives (House Bill 252) requires written consent from the father of an unborn child in order to perform an abortion. The bill will put to test the “it’s my body, it’s my right” notion of pro-choice activists by adding the rights of the father of the unborn child into the equation. Ideally, the decision of abortion should be a consensus between both parents, with both parties being involved in any decisions regarding the child.

This is a significant legal and social issue where parental rights are heavily unbalanced due to the fact that a father plays no role in a matter as critical as his unborn child’s life. If a woman decides to keep her child, the father is required to pay child support regardless of whether he wanted to keep the child or not, or face future jail time. A father currently has no say. Alternatively he cannot opt-out of parenthood, but a woman can: She can do so by abortion.

Under the Ohio Bill, a woman must have written consent from the father; if a woman is claiming rape, she must file a police report, provide other court documents or an official complaint of the incident. If the woman chooses to undergo an abortion in this case, the physician must have “reasonable cause” to believe the woman’s claim of rape and thus, perform an abortion. In cases where the father may be unknown, a list of all potential fathers must be submitted to a physician. They will all be contacted and summoned to a paternity test. If the father is not found, no abortion can be performed. The bill would turn abortion without a father’s permission or naming a “false biological father” into a first-degree misdemeanor with a maximum $1,000 fine. A second occasion of providing false information would be considered a fifth degree felony.

“When the fetus is viable, no person shall perform or induce an abortion on a pregnant woman without the written informed consent of the father of the fetus,” the bill text reads.

more here...

Tyndale: Great Britain needs to sort out the stinking mess of marriage, family law and divorce courts

2011-07-17T18:19:00.002-04:00

A good read on the sad state of marriage in the UK. A snippet follows:

Tyndale: Great Britain needs to sort out the stinking mess of marriage, family law and divorce courts

Jul 17 2011 by George Tyndale, Sunday Mercury

"It’s no coincidence that the demise of marriage has taken place against a background of rising numbers of couples “cohabiting.” New figures also show that almost half of all babies in England and Wales are born outside wedlock.

Can it be right that 46.8 per cent of babies are born to unmarried mothers? And what hope is there for future generations if the trend of having children with whoever you fancy goes unchecked?"

http://www.sundaymercury.net/news/columnists/george-tyndale/2011/07/17/tyndale-great-britain-needs-to-sort-out-the-stinking-mess-of-marriage-family-law-and-divorce-courts-66331-29056000/

Ontario couples now have to attend mediation before court in divorce

2011-07-17T11:41:00.001-04:00

A good first step at improving Family Law process.

Ont. couples must now face mediation before divorce

The Canadian Press

Date: Sunday Jul. 17, 2011 10:45 AM ET

TORONTO — Starting Monday, every Ontario couple hoping to end their marriage will have to attend an information session on alternatives to going to court and must meet for mediation before getting a divorce.

The new rules will help alleviate some of the pressure on Ontario's family court system and will save those hoping to get divorced time and money, said Chris Bentley, the province's attorney general.
"Going to court and having a court battle in family proceedings can be enormously costly, take a lot of time and probably most significantly be very emotionally damaging to children and to the two individuals," he said.

Couples will have to attend the information session before they can file a divorce case in court.
If they still insist on going to court after that, they will first have to attend a mediation session organized by the attorney general's office to try settling their differences.

Despite the two-step process, some in the legal community think the initiative isn't as effective as it could be.

Judith Huddart, a family lawyer and president of the Ontario Collaborative Law Federation, said the sessions don't advise those considering divorce about their options early enough in the process.
"I know how frustrating it can be for people to be told that they have other options after they've already hired a lawyer and started forward in a litigation route," she said.

While Huddart supports making the program mandatory at all courts, she said providing more information for couples when they are first thinking about divorce would be an even more effective way to get the cases out of provincial courtrooms.

The new program will only reach those who have begun the process of going to court, she said.

She estimated just getting to a first court hearing will often cost around $5,000 in lawyer's fees.

The province has been trying to fix that pricey problem by making more information about alternatives to divorce proceedings available online, said Bentley.

He added that he doesn't expect the new program will save his office or the courts any money.

The program is directed specifically towards saving time and legal fees for couples hoping to get divorced, he said -- although he hasn't been able to quantify those savings yet.

The attorney general's office will spend an extra $5.3 million a year making the program mandatory at all courts, bringing the total cost of the initiative to $8 million a year.

Those extra costs did not come from any additional funding from the provincial government, Bentley said. His office was able to redirect money from finding efficiencies in the other areas for which his office is responsible.

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20110717/new-divorce-rules-ontario-110717/

Fathers4Justice founder Matt O'Connor on Hunger Strike

2011-07-10T15:34:00.004-04:00

Fathers4Justice in David Cameron doorstep protest

Mr O'Connor is taking only water and lemon juice

A campaigner for fathers' rights has started a hunger strike outside the prime minister's house.

Fathers4Justice (F4J) founder Matt O'Connor, 44, started the protest outside the Oxfordshire home of David Cameron, a F4J spokeswoman said.

He wants Mr Cameron to honour pledges about grandparents having a right to see their grandchildren and over shared parenting.

Mr O'Connor, from Hampshire, said he would stay as long as possible.

He also wants Mr Cameron to retract comments he made describing some fathers as "runaways".

Mr O'Connor said: "The idea is to carry on for as long as I can - even if I am hospitalised."

Mr O'Connor said his only intake would be water and lemon juice.

http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7605128616297486753#editor/target=post;postID=3527340468654501100

Premier showing of 'Guilty Until Proven Innocent' A Father's Perspective

2011-07-07T20:39:00.000-04:00

Many who’ve seen Janks Morton’s new documentary GUPI, have positively commented on the film and how it captures the essence of fathers experiences in family court. From custody issues to child support to access interference to false abuse allegations the film portrays family court through fathers’ eyes.
You are cordially invited to attend the premier showing of 'Guilty Until Proven Innocent' on July 26, 2011 at the Avalon Theater in Washington, DC. If you can’t be there in person you can still participate and help make the evening a tremendous success.

Please read on and learn how you can be part of this history making event. There will be a panel discussion after the film with Janks Morton and several other special guests.
Tickets are reasonably priced at $10.00 each. If you live in the area and can attend go to www.gupifilm.com and order online.   Here is a flyer you can download and print or circulate via the internet to let others know about the film.

Help Reach Congress
If you're not in the area, you can still be a significant part of this night. We want as many people from Capitol Hill to see the movie as possible. If you are not able to attend, buy a ticket(s) for a legislator. Next week an invitation will be hand delivered to the office of each legislator when someone who lives outside the local area purchases a ticket. We will start by inviting each state’s two Senators and then extend the invitations to members of the House of Representatives. You can see exactly how many members of your federal delegation (Senate and House Reps) are in Washington at this link. Order tickets here.

Become an Event Sponsor
Each individual who purchases 10 or more tickets, will be recognized as a premier co-sponsor and be listed in the event program and on the ACFC website.   All you need to do is enter the number of tickets you want in the quantity box on the order page and press the update button. We’ll use your state and zip code information to determine which legislators to invite.
Please purchase tickets as soon as possible.   Invitations to Congress need to be distributed early next week.

Use this Coupon when Ordering

On the order page enter PREMIERSH-OFFER (make sure to include the - ) in the coupon box and all shipping and handling costs will be waived on your ticket order. If you are attending in person, print out your email confirmation and bring it with you to the theater, that’s your ticket. For those who have sponsored tickets for legislators, we will have that record on hand.

The Avalon Theater is located at 5612 Connecticut Ave. NW Washington, DC 20015.

Please email questions to gupifilm@gmail.com

Thanks in advance for participating, let's pack the house.  Help spread the word by forwarding this message to your family and friends.

There has been a significant amount of shared parenting and family law activity recently. We'll send an update soon. Stay tuned.

ACFC

Lesbians dissolve partnerships more than Gays in U.K.

2011-07-07T12:02:00.003-04:00

It will be of interest, over time, to see how this shapes up. In heterosexual marriages in Canada the wife starts divorce proceedings in 75% of cases. When we have two women who are partners we may well be able to see that females have expectations not necessarily tied to reality in terms of the partners they choose. As an observer of human nature it has some degree of scientific curiosity for me.MJM

ONS: gay 'divorces' up by 44%

Lesbian couples are twice as likely as gay men to separate, according to new figures showing a 44% rise in the number of civil partnerships that were dissolved last year.

Ministers are considering granting same-sex couples full marriage rights Photo: ALAMY

By Tim Ross and Roma Wells

2:56PM BST 07 Jul 2011

85 Comments

Almost 50,000 same-sex couples have formalised their relationships since civil partnerships were introduced in December 2005.

During 2010, 6,385 civil partnerships were registered in the UK, 100 more than in 2009, the Office for National Statistics said.

However, as growing numbers of couples register their partnerships, the number splitting up has also risen.

Last year, 509 civil partnerships were dissolved across the UK, an increase of 44% since 2009, when 353 couples separated.

In order to obtain a dissolution, a couple must have been in either a registered civil partnership or a same-sex partnership recognised abroad or 12 months.

more here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8623150/ONS-gay-divorces-up-by-44.html

also here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/women-lead-men-in-samesex-unions-ndash-and-in-separations-2308892.html

Hunger 4 Justice in the UK

2011-06-27T10:04:00.000-04:00

Hunger4Justice

Fathers 4 Justice Founder to Hunger Strike at Cameron’s Home Email your support to office@fathers-4-justice.org The founding father of Fathers 4 Justice will begin the first ever hunger strike for fathers rights in July on the 10th anniversary of Fathers 4 Justice, outside the Witney home of Prime Minister David Cameron. 44 year-old father-of-three Matt O’Connor from Andover, Hampshire will launch his ‘Hunger4Justice’ protest at 9.00am on Sunday 10th July after he has delivered a personal letter to the Prime Minister’s home. The hunger strike is a direct response to the Prime Ministers comments at the weekend in which he labelled fathers as ‘runaways’ who should be treated the same way as drink drivers. He will forgo all food until the Prime Minister retracts his remarks and adheres to written pre-election commitments made to Fathers 4 Justice to reform Britain’s Secret Family Courts which the group say he has reneged on.

O’Connor will be based in a support vehicle during the hunger strike with a team led by Dr Nadim Safdar who will advise on his condition during the strike and run a social media campaign from the site. Mr O’Connor met with Bill Cash MP in Parliament on Wednesday 22nd June to discuss the Prime Ministers comments and asked him to pass on his announcement on to Mr Cameron. Bill Cash was the first MP O’Connor had met to discuss the issue 10 years ago this month. Fathers 4 Justice say O’Connor’s decision is a highly personal one, rooted in his Irish heritage where hunger strikes have been used throughout history to highlight injustice. Said Campaign Director Nadine O’Connor, “Matt O’Connor was devastated by what he considers is Cameron’s betrayal of children and families and his demonisation of fathers on Fathers Day in a cynical piece of dad bashing which will appeal to the largest constituency of floating voters, single mothers.”

“He also believes the ‘Big Society’ initiative is a sham and that far from creating a strong society, the polices of the Conservative led coalition are actively destroying it.” “On the 10th anniversary of forming F4J, he wants to bring his personal message home; from his home, to Cameron’s home, from father to father. It is the antithesis of previous Fathers 4 Justice protests, stripped of humour and costumes.”

“He believes fathers have been reduced to the status of cashpoints in a country where 1 in 3 children grows up without a dad.” “Given the denigration and demonization of fathers like him by the Prime Minister, he doesn’t believe he has any alternative other than to risk his life for a cause he believes passionately in.” Fathers 4 Justice say O’Connor’s 12 goals are:

1. A full retraction of the Prime Ministers Fathers Day Statement.

2. New statement made recognising the most painful cut of all is that of fathers from their children and that tens of thousands of fathers are denied access to their children in this country by our secret family courts despite having legally binding court orders to see them.

3. To publicly support those fathers struggling to see their children and recognise the catastrophic damage done to society by mass fatherlessness and the fact that 1 in 3 children is now fatherless.

4. The Prime Minister honours his explicit, written, pre-election commitments to Fathers 4 Justice with regard to family law reform with the utmost urgency.

5. Give ALL parents AND grandparents a right in law to see their children and grandchildren which the Conservative led coalition currently denies them.

6. Sets up an immediate independent public enquiry into the Secret Family Courts chaired by Sir Bob Geldof and the scrapping of the existing and discredited Family Justice review panel.

7. That the enquiry considers ALL areas of family law including the retirement of the current Family Division of the Judiciary and the creation of an open, transparent and accountable system of family justice based on reconciliation not conflict and secrecy.

8. Sets up a ‘truth and reconcilliation’ commission to investigate serious allegations of child abuse by the system, the failure to keep records on the outcomes for children, the use of violence on children authorised by Judges, Cafcass and NYAS to make them comply with court orders and the cover up of serious allegations of child abuse by professionals working within family law.

9. Introduce the principle of ‘equal parenting’ and mandatory mediation together so that both parents are treated equally in the eyes of the law and establish contact denial as a criminal offence as serious as non-payment of child support.

10. Recognition that the demonisation and denigration of fathers in society is profoundly damaging to young boys, causes serious emotional harm to them and is diametrically opposite to his ‘Big Society’ idea.

11. Recognition that fathers are not simply cashpoints and that child support should mean emotional and financial support, intertwining rights with responsibilities.

12. Support marriage through the tax system, not by words, but by genuine tax reforms so that the system does not encourage divorce and separation as it currently does and where many couples are £600 a month better off living apart than together and pay a third more tax than other European countries.

In Australia - WHY ARE COWS MORE IMPORTANT THAN CHILDREN?

2011-06-26T12:16:00.001-04:00

As in Australia the misplaced chivalry of the Judiciary and the Political class continue to cater to mom without regard to the impact on children at losing their biological father as a parent. In Canada mom gets sole physical custody in over 90% of cases with dad being sentenced as a 14% visitor if mom doesn't alienate or act as a gatekeeper.MJM

MEDIA RELEASE | June 27th 2011

WHY ARE COWS MORE IMPORTANT
THAN CHILDREN?

Dads on the Air | www.dadsontheair.net

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Listen live on 2GLF 89.3FM in Sydney
or online via live streaming at www.893fm.com.au/On-Air
or in MP3 format at www.dadsontheair.net
or in MP3 format at www.dadsontheair.net

On 30th May 2011, the community, media and Government were outraged, when confronted by the cruelty inflicted on Australian cattle in Indonesia, and it brought immediate Government action. Within days a whole industry was closed down and a valuable export trade was stopped in its tracks.

Three days earlier on the 27th May 2011, the Government released the ABS Family Characteristics Survey 2009-10, which indicates that since 1975 almost 24% of Australians have been denied meaningful contact with their biological families, as a result of deep-rooted Family Law policy failure. Yet now one month later, we have still not seen one word in the press and there is not a sign of any community, media or Government outrage.

Instead a deafening silence greets the news of crippling emotional cruelty being inflicted on Australian children and their powerless families. It would appear the health and wellbeing of the nations' cows is much more important than the health and wellbeing of the nation's children and families.

ABS Family Characteristics 2009-10, compared to 2006-07

Summary of Findings

There were a total 5.0 million children in Australia in 2009-10.
(4.8 million in 2006-07)

1. NUMBER OF CHILDREN AGED 0 TO 17, WITH PARENTS LIVING ELSEWHERE.
Just over 1 million or 21% = 1,050 000 in (2009-10)
(Just over 1 million or 22% = 1,056 000 in 2006-07)

2. NUMBER OF CHILDREN WHO SPENT HALF OR MORE NIGHTS WITH THEIR NON-CUSTODIAL PARENT = only 3%. (4% in 2006-07)

3. There were 441,000 non-custodial parents, the vast majority 81% were Fathers.
(82% in 2006-07)

Using the benchmark definition of “meaningful” contact to represent a child spending 20% or more nights per year with their non-custodial parent, it reveals the following disturbing result:

Of the children who had little or no “meaningful” contact, with their non-custodial parent.

* 45% of children never stayed overnight with their non-custodial parent. (47% in 2006-07). This includes 24% who rarely or never saw that parent.	= 472.500
* 19% of children spent less than 10% of nights with that parent. (19% in 2006-07).	= 199.500
* 15% of children spent more than 10% but less than 20% with that parent. (14% in 2006-07).	= 157.500
* Total number of children who had little or no meaningful contact with their biological non-custodial parent. (844.800 in 2006-07).	= 829.500

This is a slight variation of less than 1.5% over the previous period (2006-07), calling into serious question the effectiveness of Australia’s 36 year old Family Laws and demonstrates the failure of our Family Courts to protect the rights and safety of the nation’s children, and now accumulating into affecting almost 24% of all Australians.

It indicates just 2 out of 10, or 20% of children from separated parents, continue to enjoy ongoing meaningful contact with their non-custodial parent, as per above definition of “meaningful.”

It also means 8 out of 10, or 80% of Australian children from separated parents, are being denied meaningful ongoing contact with their biological non-custodial parent.

As a consequence, there were 352,000 non custodial parents, who had little or no meaningful contact with their biological children living elsewhere. This in turn caused an estimated 1.5 million extended family members to also be denied meaningful contact with their biological families.

All of the above results reveal a crippling, social fallout, from deep-rooted Family Law policy failure, which raises some serious questions. If we consider the above outcome as actually being in ‘The Best Interest of Children’, then perhaps we need to urgently take a very close look at that definition.

Media contact: Peter van de Voorde - Dads on the Air, Australia – June 27, 2011 ©
www.dadsontheair.net - 04-28648691 – dotafeedback@gmail.com

For more information about Dads on the Air, click here

Lay judgments about child custody after divorce.

2011-06-24T17:21:00.000-04:00

Lay judgments about child custody after divorce.

Braver, Sanford L.; Ellman, Ira Mark; Votruba, Ashley M.; Fabricius, William V.

Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, Vol 17(2), May 2011, 212-240. doi: 10.1037/a0023194

Abstract

In a pair of studies, we examine lay people's judgments about how hypothetical cases involving child custody after divorce should be resolved.

The respondents were citizens called to jury service in Pima County, AZ. Study 1 found that both male and female respondents, if they were the judge, would most commonly award equally shared custody arrangements, as advocated by most fathers' groups.

However, if the predivorce child care had been divided disproportionately between the parents, this preference shifted, slightly but significantly, toward giving more time to the parent who had provided most of that care, consistent with the Approximation Rule advocated by the American Law Institute.

Moreover, respondents judged that the arrangements prevailing in today's court and legal environment would award equal custody considerably less often, and would thereby provide much less parenting time to fathers, than the respondents themselves would award.

Study 2 found that respondents maintained their strong preference for equally shared custody even when there are very high levels of parental conflict for which the parents were equally to blame, but awarded substantially less time to the culpable parent when only one was the primary instigator of the parental conflict.

The striking degree to which the public favors equal custody combined with their view that the current court system under-awards parenting time to fathers could account for past findings that the system is seriously slanted toward mothers, and suggests that family law may have a public relations problem. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/law/17/2/212/

From the Huffington Post

Robert Hughes, Jr.

University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Professor of Human Development

How Does the Public View Conflict in Custody Decisions?

One of the main reasons that judges do not automatically award equal parenting in custody decisions is because of their concern about the conflict between the parents and the harm it will do to the children. In previous work, (see blog post on this work) researchers at Arizona State University found that the general public generally favors custody decisions that award both parents equal time in custody decisions, but many custody battles involve conflict between parents. When conflict persists among divorcing parents, most judges and custody evaluators have recommended against shared parenting in order to keep children out of the conflict.

In this study, Braver and his colleagues wanted to find out how the public thinks custody decisions should be handled in which there is conflict. (See Psychology, Public Policy and Law, 2011).
To examine these questions, the researchers developed hypothetical cases that described a low conflict scenario and two types of high conflict scenarios. In the low conflict case, the parents were described as reasonably good parents who are involved in the children's lives. There were two types of high conflict cases, one in which both parents were described as extremely angry at each other and fight in front of the children. In the second case only one parent was angry. Half the time this was presented as the father and half the time as the mother.

These cases were presented to citizens who had been summoned to serve on a jury panel in an Arizona community. About 250 people participated in this study. The participants were given the hypothetical cases, and then asked to imagine themselves as the judge deciding these cases based on the merits of the cases and what was best for the child. In each case they were asked how much time the child should spend with each parent.

In both the case of low conflict and high mutual conflict, the participants in this study favored awarding both parents equal time (about 65%). This finding indicates that almost two-thirds of the public still favors equal parenting time even in cases in which there is continued conflict. There was not complete consensus on this arrangement however. The remaining one-third of the participants were more likely to favor having the children live with the mother and reduce the amount of time that the dad got time with the children. This group of participants favored awarding more parenting time to the mother in conflicts in which both parents were described as angry and fighting.

When the cases were presented in which one parent was described as the cause of the conflict, then participants recommended that the parent causing the conflict should get less parenting time. The participants did not differ in their judgments about mothers and fathers. Regardless of whether it was the mother or the father was the source of the conflict, participants thought they should get less time with the child if they were angry, fighting and causing conflict.

These views of custody in high conflict divorces run counter to the views of most professionals. When families are embroiled in conflict during the divorce, they recommend that children be given primary custody with one parent. This is based on the evidence that conflict between parents is one of the most damaging factors in children's well-being during a family breakup. Professionals assume that the parents will not be able to resolve their conflicts resulting in the children being continually exposed to angry, bitter altercations. The findings in this study indicate that the general public does not hold this view. The researchers conclude, "Family lawmakers need to confront that equal custody enjoys genuinely great popularity among the citizenry."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-hughes/how-does-the-public-view-_b_877174.html

Barbara Kay: Stop denying fathers their rights

2011-06-15T10:06:00.002-04:00

The CPC at their recent convention finally got around to modifying their policy as follows. The lower of the two clauses below has new wording added: "and/or shared parenting, "

This is a step forward but I get the impression from this and our CEPC President's recent contact with the PMO they don't understand the difference between "shared" and "equal" parenting. Shared could be divided as 90% mom % 10% dad. Joint is a legal fallacy which states mom gets sole physical custody but dad has some legal say. In practice this does not work. Possession is 10/10 of the law.

We will continue our lobbying effort to get a government bill for equal parenting. There are two main opponents. Feminists and Feminist who are lawyers, in addition to the Canadian Bar Association (CBA), who of course have a vested interest in the winner take all status quo as they will lose business.

Those who think feminists are all about equality haven't read some of their misandric briefs full of mendacity and misleading statistics, some imported from similar feminist briefs in Australia, who do have a watered down shared parenting law. In fact Tasha Kheiriddin a colleague of Ms. Kay at the National Post uses some of those same spurious statistics to oppose equal parenting. Google the name of Pamela Cross for the lead Feminist Lawyer who uses ideology not fairness in her role fighting Equal Parenting.

I was a stay-at-home dad for 10 years running, and a damn good one, until my heart was torn out by the gender apartheid used in the social services/justice system that cares not one whit for good fathers having equality in parenting even when they were the parent who raised the children. They also cannot care for the newly fatherless children.

I was watching "The Game of Thrones" on Sunday and one of the players tried to explain the pain they felt. To paraphrase: "It was like someone tore out my heart and then squeezed it before my eyes." It summed up, in a short phrase, what it felt like to lose my children as a legal parent and the squeezing was done over a period of 4 years by the court system and their apparatchiks until a Judge decided I was stronger emotionally than my ex, therefore there was a power imbalance and I was unfit for equal parenting. He did what most chivalrous judges do, and yes it is misplaced chivalry even by conservative judges, in Canada without any reference to what is really best for children. I went from a full time legal dad to a visitor of 3 hours a week and every other weekend, which is the standard sentence for fathers who are guilty of nothing more than being male.

The system will adapt despite the misandry by feminists like Pamela Cross and her legal cohorts and the vested interests of lawyers represented by the CBA.

The Conservative party of Canada recently modified section 69 of their policy on shared parenting to the wording in the lower version.

RESOLUTION A – 051

EDA – Oshawa; Whitby-Oshawa; Ajax-Pickering; Pickering-Scarborough East; Durham; Northumberland-Quinte West; Haliburton-Kawartha-Brock; Peterborough

Section K – Social Policy (MODIFICATION)

69. Shared Parenting

The Conservative Party believes that in the event of a marital breakdown, the Divorce Act should grant joint custody, unless it is clearly demonstrated not to be in the best interests of the child. Both parents and all grandparents should be allowed to maintain a meaningful relationship with their children and grandchildren, unless it is demonstrated not to be in the best interest of the child.

69. Shared Parenting

The Conservative Party believes that in the event of a marital breakdown, the Divorce Act should grant joint custody and/or shared parenting, unless it is clearly demonstrated not to be in the best interests of the child. Both parents and all grandparents should be allowed to maintain a meaningful relationship with their children and grandchildren, unless it is demonstrated not to be in the best interest of the child.

Barbara Kay Jun 15, 2011 – 7:30 AM ET | Last Updated: Jun 14, 2011 4:36 PM ET

Shania Twain recently published a memoir detailing her anguish at her ex-husband’s affair with her best friend. In the end, Shania found happiness with the friend’s betrayed husband, by her account a straight-arrow guy, a terrific father to his own daughter and a much-admired step-father to her sons.
She writes, “What attracted me to Fred was his selflessness. He was going through the same agony as I was — maybe even worse, because as a father, he would have to battle his soon-to-be ex for the right to see his own daughter. At least that was something I never had to face.”

Reflect on Shania’s words a moment, and perhaps you will be struck, as I was, by this statement’s lack of critical introspection or even indignation.

Why is it that Shania accepts with such fatalism that the custody of her daughter will never be at issue, whereas this selfless man will have to “battle” for access to his child? Because that is the way things still are in family courts in the West, and even celebrities with the clout to arouse public outrage have absorbed the received wisdom that if one parent resists shared parenting for any reason whatsoever — it is usually the mother, and the reasons can be trivial or non-existent — the mother is awarded sole custody. (In reality, nobody is awarded anything through such judgments; on the contrary, one parent and his children have been taken away from each other).

In 1995, 49,000 American men were primary caregivers to their children. In 2010 154,000 men were. Pampers is now using fathers in their diaper ads. Almost 10 years ago, in a sample of 32,000 parents, Health Canada found that working fathers and mothers spend virtually equal time on child care.
So gender convergence is the rule for non-divorced parents, and equal parenting is now the rule for divorces that don’t go to trial. Why is it not the presumptive norm for those that do go to trial, after which mothers get sole custody nine out of 10 times?

It is clear to any disinterested observer who immerses himself in the subject that almost the only opponents to equal parenting are misandric ideologues and those financially invested in the family court system itself, which would see a drastic reduction in revenue from the professional gold mine all-or-nothing custody battles represent.

Reliable surveys tell us that over 70% of Canadians want a presumption of shared or equal parenting in law (in the absence of abuse). But family courts have not caught up with reality. Many judges are still in thrall to stubborn myths: that men demand custody rights to punish their ex-wives or to avoid child support; that they easily disengage from their children; or that awarding men equal rights represents a “patriarchal backlash” (even though few men ask for sole custody, only shared) and children do just as well with one parent as two. Wrong on all counts.

Edward Kruk, associate professor of social work at the University of British Columbia, has been studying the changing role of fathers and the problems of father absence for 30 years. His latest book, Divorced Fathers: Children’s Needs and Parental Responsibilities, illuminates the tragic toll on fathers first removed from their children’s lives by a biased legal system, and then unsupported by a social services network that is almost wholly indifferent to fathers’ rights and feelings.

According to multiple studies, displaced fathers are overwrought at the loss of contact with their children. They are far more likely to become depressed or unemployed. Worse, suicide rates amongst fathers struggling to maintain a parenting relationship with their children are “epidemic.” Divorced fathers are more than twice as likely to kill themselves as married fathers. But since men tend to suffer in silence, the depth of their despair goes unnoticed.

Kruk calls the crisis of father absence — for both fathers and the children they are torn from — “one of the most significant and powerful trends of this generation.” Children now form primary attachments to both parents. Losing their father’s active participation in their lives is enormously consequential. Trustworthy research demonstrates that children deprived of a meaningful father role are at far greater risk of physical, emotional and psychological damage than those actively parented by their fathers. Children fare better with equal parenting even where there is conflict between the parents; it is only child-directed conflict that hurts children.

Kruk’s findings reveal that ironically, precisely because they have taken on equal responsibility for parenting before divorce, men who lose their parenting role now suffer far more grievously than they used to 20 years ago when he wrote his first book, Divorce and Disengagement. He argues for a paradigm shift, away from a rights-based discourse to a framework of “responsibility to needs,” in which both children’s needs and parental and institutional responsibilities to them would be enumerated.

Kruk rather poignantly asks: “Why are parents with no civil or criminal wrongdoing forced to surrender their responsibility to raise their children?” and “Is the removal of a parent from the life of a child, via legal sole custody, itself a form of parental alienation?” Good questions, especially since equal parenting has been part of the Conservative policybook since the party’s rebirth. What’s the delay? Over to you, Mr. Harper.

National Post

Posted in: Full Comment, Social Issues Tags: Barbara Kay, child custody, court, courts, custody, divorce, Family Law, fathers, fathers rights, Shania Tawin

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/06/15/barbara-kay-stop-denying-fathers-their-rights/

False Allegations in Australian Family Law Disputes

2011-06-14T13:14:00.001-04:00

Family Law Legislation Amendment (Family Violence) Bill 2011

Submission to Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs

by Prof. Patrick Parkinson, University of Sydney

Excerpt:

There is now a very widespread view in the community that some family violence orders are sought for tactical or collateral reasons to do with family law disputes. People have become very cynical about them. A national survey conducted in 2009, with over 12,500 respondents, found that 49% of respondents agreed with the proposition that ‘women going through custody battles often make up or exaggerate claims of domestic violence in order to improve their case’, and only 28% disagreed. While it might be expected that men would be inclined to believe this, 42% of women did so as well.

The view that some family violence order applications are unjustified appears to be shared by state magistrates in New South Wales and Queensland. Hickey and Cumines in a survey of 68 NSW magistrates concerning apprehended violence orders (AVOs) found that 90% agreed that some AVOs were sought as a tactic to aid their case in order to deprive a former partner of contact with the children. About a third of those who thought AVOs were used tactically indicated that it did not occur ‘often’, but one in six believed it occurred ‘all the time’. A similar survey of 38 Queensland magistrates found that 74% agreed with the proposition that protection orders are used in Family Court proceedings as a tactic to aid a parent’s case and to deprive their partner of contact with their children.

In research that our research team recently published on the views of 40 family lawyers in NSW, almost all solicitors thought that tactical applications for AVOs occurred, with the majority considering it happened often. In another study based upon interviews with 181 parents who have been involved in family law disputes, we found a strong perception from respondents to family violence orders (both women and men) that their former partners sought a family violence order in order to help win their family law case. This is a quote from one of the women in our study. Her former husband, who we also interviewed, sought an apprehended violence order (AVO) to keep her away from the house after she had left it. She said this:

I thought this is ridiculous. What’s he giving me an AVO for? I haven’t done anything to him. I haven’t hit him, kicked him. We never had any violence in our marriage. Why have I got an AVO? And apparently the AVO was ... you can put an AVO on someone and say that they’re violent, and the only way you can get a child off their mother is because they’re violent. And that’s why I think he gave me the AVO.

The belief that family violence orders are a weapon in the war between parents is fuelled by the fact that judges are required under the Family Law Act to consider such family violence orders in determining the best interests of the child. The proposed clause in this Bill takes the law back to what it was before 2006, without any explanation for why Parliament should reverse its previous decision at least to limit the provision. It really doesn’t matter whether this belief that family violence orders are used tactically is true or not. The fact is that the perception is out there and it is held by state magistrates and family lawyers, as well as the wider community. The retention of this provision in the Family Law Act simply fuels the suspicion that family violence orders are being misused. This is damaging to the credibility of the family violence order system and the courts.

The second reason why the requirement to consider family violence orders ought to be removed is that this serves absolutely no purpose. Yes, the court needs to know about the existence of a current family violence order in order to consider how to frame its own orders (s.60CG), but that is dealt with by requiring people to inform the court of such orders (s.60CF). Why consider them again in deciding what is in the best interests of a child (s.60CC(3))? The court is already required to consider the history of violence. What does it add to require the court also to consider a family violence order? The impression given by the legislation is that these orders are somehow evidence that there has been violence. However, that is a misunderstanding.

Family violence orders have absolutely no evidential value in the vast majority of cases. This is because, in the vast majority of cases, they are consented to without admissions. The hearings in these uncontested cases are very brief indeed. Prof. Rosemary Hunter, in observations in Victoria in 1996–97, found that the median hearing time for each application was only about three minutes. Applications were typically dealt with in a bureaucratic manner, with magistrates being distant and emotionally disengaged. To the extent that applicants were asked to give oral evidence, they were typically asked to confirm the content of their written application, and very little exploration of the grounds for the application took place.

Dr Jane Wangmann, in a recent analysis of court files in NSW, reached finding very similar to Hunter’s. In her observations of AVO matters in 2006–7, she found, like Hunter, that cases were dealt with in three minutes or less. She also noted that the information provided in written complaints was brief and sometimes vague. It is hardly surprising, then, that judges in family law cases draw no inferences from the mere existence of a family violence order. This has been the clear view of family lawyers for the last 15 years. Indeed, in the research we recently published on the views of 40 family lawyers in NSW, none of the lawyers who responded to the question believed that judicial officers gave AVOs much consideration in determining parenting disputes. Judges, they indicate, want to evaluate the evidence of violence itself, not the fact that another court has made an order about it by consent and without admissions.

Download the full submission in PDF format by Prof. Parkinson:

https://senate.aph.gov.au/submissions/comittees/viewdocument.aspx?id=f6c1e09d-3367-4ed1-b0da-aed26481ea59

Parental Alienation Awareness Day 2011 - Barrie, Ontario

2011-04-28T12:16:00.000-04:00

Family law issues take their toll

By CHERYL BROWNE, SPECIAL TO THE EXAMINER

Updated 2 hours ago

Tyler Self says he's basically given up on the judicial system.

The 48-year-old father of two says he hasn't seen his children, who live in Orillia with their mother -- his ex -- for two years.

"I've almost given up on the way it (the courts) operate. They don't give the fathers a chance to speak," he said, minutes before a few dozen people and children began blowing bubbles to mark Parental Alienation Day at Barrie's Centennial Beach, Monday.

Self was just one of a dozen parents who've lost touch with their children through divorce.

Around the globe, countries including, the U.S., Germany, Australia, Sweden and Canada were drawing attention to parents involved in desperate custodial battles they feel are drawn out in the family law courts.

Paulette MacDonald, organizer of the waterfront meet, encouraged the adults and children to blow the iridescent soap bubbles across the park, in memory of Sophia and Serena Campione, Barrie children who were drowned by their mother, Elaine, during a vicious custody battle.

With signs reading 'Kids Are For Sharing' and a banner across the playground fence that read 'Love is for Everyone', MacDonald read the proclamation from Mayor Jeff Lehman, who proclaimed April 25 as Barrie's Parental Alienation Day.

In part, it reads, 'Parental alienation deprives a child of their right to a loving relationship with both parents, and interferes with a child's mental and emotional development.'

"This is in honour of all of the children around the globe," said MacDonald. "Children are as fragile as the bubbles. We cannot, and should not, contain the bubbles.

"One of the first solutions is that the divorce act has to reflect mandatory equal shared parenting," said MacDonald.

A federal summit report written in 1998, called For the Sake of the Children, had 48 recommendations about divorce and custody issues, including mandatory mediation.

"But it's trapped in a political merry-go-round," she said, adding that the government has to "smarten up" and put the interests of the children above the interests of the legal industry.

According to reports by the court services division of the Attorney General's office, there were more than 313,000 divorce cases in 2008. With lawyers charging up to $600 per hour to serve as mediators, difficult settlements and custodial disagreements can get expensive fast.

Erich Jacoby-Hawkins, the federal Green Party candidate in Barrie, was at the event with his daughter, an avid bubble-blower.

"I'm proud to be involved in this event," he said. "Clearly, if we're going to build strong communities, we've got to have strong families."

Jacoby-Hawkins said upwards to 50% of marriages end in divorce, and while the original intent of no-fault divorce introduced in 1985 was well-intentioned, a quarter of a century later, the court system has become dysfunctional and arbitrary.

"Children are typically isolated from one parent, as well as grandparents," he said, adding bankruptcies often occur, there are child support and spousal support problems, as well as exorbitant legal costs.

"When a family has to spend $50,000 on their divorce (custody) expenses, it's time to reform the divorce act," he said.

"The average divorce/custody in Canada takes three years and most of that is in delays (in the courts)."
"We should be looking at this as not a family breaking up, but a restructuring of a family, that includes the grandparents and other family members," he said.

news@thebarrieexaminer.com

http://www.thebarrieexaminer.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3095366

Parental Alienation Awareness Day - Alberta

2011-04-26T12:14:00.001-04:00

What about the children?

Posted by Chris Salomons - Red Deer Advocate - April 25, 2011 8:18AM

2 Comments

Of all the people on earth, none are easier to influence than children. In James Clavel’s book “The Children’s Story”, we find out that with just a little sweetness, and in a controlled setting, that in just minutes or even a few hours, children can be convinced to abandon or discard previous ways of thinking. They can even be taught to reject the parents that have brought them up.

A child has no defense, such as discernment, against an adult with an agenda, especially if that adult is one that the child has come to trust. But sad to say, it happens all too often, especially in parents that have become estranged.

At the kitchen, we serve many parents who are in that position of estrangement or are divorced, either through abandonment, addictions, violence, or any other of a multitude of reasons. This already is bad enough, but in many of these situations the children become the weapon of choice in the battle that ensues in a failed marriage. That either one of the parents should try to influence a child against the other parent is already reprehensible, and the damage to both the child and the affected parent is irreversible and many times permanent.

Recently I learned about a group that is trying to put a stop to this practice. PARK (Parental Alienation Risks Kids) is a support group that seeks through early detection, education, and professional help, to change this offensive behavior.

As much as I feel that it is the kids that are harmed the most, there is no ignoring the fact that the alienated parent is also severely affected. To have had a child and then to lose that child through separation or divorce is extremely hard, and it tears out a portion of your heart like nothing else. Then to add to that injury, if a child is influenced against the other parent in any way, shape, or form, the pain can and has in some cases driven people to violence.

Without casting blame, this support group hopes to educate parents not only on how to recognize this behavior, but to end it and or how to cope with it.

In my mind, any group that sets out to improve life and especially life between estranged families, is worthy of recognition. Evidently the mayor of this great city thinks so as well, and has declared Monday, April 25th as Parental Alienation Awareness Day.

As I see it, this is a GOOD thing

—Chris

http://www.albertalocalnews.com/reddeeradvocate/opinion/blogs/street_tales/What_about_the_children_120609019.html#

Alberta Parental Alienation Organization presents: Up Close and Personal

2011-02-15T10:53:00.001-05:00

Up Close and Personal

with

Dr. Richard Warshak, Ph.D

Thurs Feb 24 @7pm

The Blackfoot Inn, 5940 Blackfoot Trail SE

($25pp in advance - $30 at the door, 6pm)

Dr. Warshak is an internationally recognized expert on Parental Alienation and author of “Divorce Poison: How to Protect Your Family from Bad-mouthing and Brainwashing”. His work has expanded our understanding on how to prevent and treat Parental Alienation behaviours. Join us for his lecture, followed by a Q&A. Order/Pay online - albertapaao.blogspot.com Sponsored by: Parental Alienation Awareness Organization - Alberta #228, 10654-82 Ave, Edmonton AB T6E 2A7

Blog: albertapaao.blogspot.com Telephone: (406) 565-4594 Email: albertapaao@gmail.com

The Law Times: Debate fires up over presumption of joint custody

2011-02-07T20:41:00.003-05:00

Most of the old, and some nasty arguments still prevail in the debate about presumptive equal parenting. Some take the maternalistic view that only mom can nurture a young child but there is no scientific proof of this. Attachment theory was shown as not valid some time ago. Perhaps one should do a longitudinal study of lone parent dads and Gay men raising small children. Tell Elton John and his partner he has the wrong plumbing to nurture. As a former stay-at-home dad I will stack my nurturing capabilities with any woman on earth.

Others raise the bogus argument of child support claiming dads are just cheap skates. What they fail to register is the illogical and fallacious nature of the argument. A final child support award will be based on the relative incomes of the two parties and the time they share with the child. A dad making more money will still pay child support in a 50-50 relationship. In addition, dad will be paying for the support of his child directly, while in his care not through another spouse or a third party, like FRO in Ontario. In other words when the child is with him he will be purchasing all the requisite items required that mom would buy in the current maternal only lone parent child custody regime.

This regime, across Canada, gives mom sole physical custody in over 90% of cases. What if we were dealing with a targeted affirmative action group rather than men? Society would not stand for such blatant discrimination. Those who argue otherwise are just enabling the transfer of wealth from dad to mom as an excuse for not sharing a child. This is just another form of child abuse and gate keeping separating a biological child from the most important male role model in their lives.

The divorce act is gender neutral but judges routinely award sole custody to mom, as described above. Discretion needs to be removed as they have proven they cannot make judgments in keeping with the Act.

Others bring up the fallacious argument of abuse. PMB-C-422 now on the order paper, albeit far down the list, clearly states it is for fit parents. It also includes great flexibility in the amount of time. A presumption is 50-50 but couples who cannot do this will work out reasonable time frames based on their abilities and work life. We currently have a situation with mom as custodial parent farming out the child to a non-parent while she works. If not working she is collecting child support and many other public subsidies and is a burden on the State. The largest consumers of welfare in canada are single moms.

Shared parenting allows mom to get training and productive work.

Intimate Partner Abuse is relatively equal in Canada http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/110127/dq110127a-eng.htm and some studies show it is initiated by the female, particularly in the 20-30 year age cohort, at a 71% rate in non-reciprocal violence. Most studies also show mom is most likely to kill or maltreat a child and this is unrelated to the amount of contact.. http://victimfeministcentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/mothers-commit-vast-majority-of.html

Where presumptive shared parenting has been in place it shows divorce rates have dropped and an overall reduction in the use of court facilities. It certainly has more positive outcomes for children who do not want to give up a loving parent who is consigned to be a visitor.

My first comments, above, were off the cuff and from memory but these are a more thorough analysis of comments made in the piece against shared parenting.

A rebuttal of assertions by the anti-equal parenting Lawyers

I want to first congratulate Garry Wise on his astute observation on a reduction in cases going to court. Add mediation to the mix plus shared/equal parenting and court resources can be used for real matters that need to be before the court. Issues like child custody, and divorce itself, are less matters of law and more human, interpersonal relationships full of emotion. There is little logic found in this affective process by the litigants.

Edward Kruk is a wise person and has done extensive research on shared parenting with some emphasis on the positive outcomes for children. For those interested in reading his full report a PDF is here (101 pages) http://www.fira.ca/cms/documents/181/April7_Kruk.pdf, and the Executive Summary here. (9 pages). http://www.fira.ca/cms/documents/179/April7_Kruk_Summary.pdf This should be required reading for all Judges, social workers, court associated mental health workers, and Lawyers for starters.

Barabara Landau takes the usual Victim Feminist approach to custody that currently exists and is the sure fire way for mom to get custody. Mom says dad is abusive and substantive proof is not required. False accusations are part and parcel of custody battles today. The current mantra is men are abusive, women are benign and never the twain shall meet. Judges, full of chivalry and misplaced honour decide they will not take any chances and cease dads parental involvement and make him a visitor. This starts the road to many negative consequences for the children.

The real world data are compelling in stating the true story. Stats Can just released the most recent data on Family Violence http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/110127/dq110127a-eng.htm and as was the case in preceding surveys it shows near parity in terms of gender participation. "Of the nearly 19 million Canadians who had a current or former spouse in 2009, 6.2% or 1.2 million reported they had been victimized physically or sexually by their partner or spouse during the five years prior to the survey. This proportion was stable from 2004 (6.6%), the last time the victimization survey was conducted, and down from 1999 (7.4%).

A similar proportion of men and women reported experiencing spousal violence during the five years prior to the survey. Among men, 6.0% or about 585,000, encountered spousal violence during this period, compared with 6.4% or 601,000 women." Keep in mind this is also over a five year period.

In other words 94% of men and 93.6% of women were not affected by Intimate Partner Violence. For the tiny minority of those who are affected perhaps the court process is the way to determine the outcome using, not "he said", "she said", but real evidence.

Barbara Landau claims she is a mediator but how can someone mediate with pre-ordained views such as she espouses? Its perplexing and troubling. Mediation by definition is " one that reconciles differences between disputants. I'd say she already has her mind made up and pity the man involved in her sessions

Jane Murray is confused about Equal Parenting. We don't call it joint custody anymore which is a legal fiction providing mom (in 90% of cases) with physical custody. Possession of the children is 10/10ths of the law except in the very rare cases where the parties can sit down and mom relinquishes control over her ex. Courts rarely punish mom for withholding custody. Child custody and child support is about control of mom over dad post marriage. Might I suggest she, and others who are confused about the definition read PMB C-422 located on the Parliamentary website here. http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Docid=3995880&file=4

SUMMARY

This enactment amends the Divorce Act to replace the concept of “custody orders” with that of “parenting orders”. It instructs judges, when making a parenting order, to apply the principle of equal parenting unless if it is established that the best interests of the child would be substantially enhanced by allocating parental responsibility other than equally."

It is much better to debate with informed participants rather than those who are guessing at definitions.

Landau finds it rare for couples to come up with a plan for 50-50 parenting. She also clearly shows her lack of experience and insight. She is thinking inside the current box not of an entirely different approach. Parenting Plans should be compulsory.

She also puts forth other canards such as stage of development and child temperament. If we were to listen to these old and stale arguments then every parent contemplating using day care would need a certificate from a competent authority to declare the child is not anxious or intemperate for those strangers at Day Care centres licensed or not. Most children are very robust at changing locations otherwise we would not have most parents in the work force of both genders. Parent's who care about their children will, in the end, work out the best arrangements knowing they are working from positions of equality rather than control by mom.

Landau also brings forth another feminist construction about the parenting connection. If we were to believe that I would today have sole physical custody of my children as I was the stay-at-home parent for the first 10 years of their development. All mom has to do is make false allegations of abuse and take a run to the local women's shelter, even if she was just found out to have committed fraud in the family business. I can attest men and dads are very versatile and most take an active role in parenting. Landau would probably be the first to complain dad makes more money than mom and it might be true because dad works longer hours, at more dangerous work and doesn't have as many paternity leave options with his employer.

Buccci believes in equality post divorce only if there was equality before the marriage ended. Even if this was adhered to more men would have 50-50 or 60-40 or 70-30 custody than now exists. I don't think she has thought through the premise. What she is saying is if Dad had to work so many hours to support the family he is unfit for equal parenting post marriage even though he had it during the marriage. In other words his parenting was not of a substantial type to warrant a continuation of his involvement later. She is clearly stating dad is to be penalized for working hard to support the family and pay an unequal amount of child support as he may not have been available for the kids as much as mom. Modern research extinguishes this argument but it persists.

Let me put Bucci's assertions another way. If there is unequal parenting, by her definition, during the marriage and one parent is, therefore, punished post divorce by not having 50-50 with the children will she also agree that the parent who worked the hardest monetarily to support the family, and sacrificed to not be with the children as often as a result, gets to keep the money earned for themselves rather than as support. After all unequal should be fair to both parties - shouldn't it? Can we see the holes in her argument yet? The reader can no doubt think of many analogies.

Keep in mind PMB C-422 starts with a 50-50 presumption but parents can work out what is best for their particular situation. it does not pre-suppose a one size fits all mould. it may turn out to be 80-20, 70-30, or 60-40 but it is important to note the best interest of children is to have both fit parents in their lives on an ongoing basis. It ought not be a tug of war, winner take all approach which harms the kids.

"Lawyer Kristen Bucci of Zochodne Bucci in Thunder Bay, Ont., isn’t in favour of true joint custody, which she defines as joint decision-making. In her experience, it works only in rare cases. “At the point of separation, there is a lot of animosity. You need two people to talk calmly, rationally, and in the best interests of the child, and that rarely happens in real life.”

Kristen Bucci needs to read Edward Kruk's paper referenced above. For her to make a statement such as she has belies real world experiences with Equal Parenting. This method of dispute resolution reduces friction before and after the divorce.MJM

Proposal would fundamentally change approaches to post-separation parenting

By Judy Van Rhijn | Publication Date: Monday, 07 February 2011

A fundamental change to the very basis on which post-separation parenting is viewed is being urged by some members of the legal and mental-health professions while others fiercely oppose the idea.

‘Generally, there is a parent and an assistant parent. How does a judge make those two positions coincide?’ says Kristen Bucci.

In fact, the introduction of a presumption of continued joint custody after separation is a measure that provokes strong opinions on both sides of the argument. Garry Wise of Wise Law Office in Toronto says that bringing in a presumption of joint custody would be an “across-the-board” approach to family law reform that would reduce the number of cases coming before the courts.

“This would be the biggest solution of all. What we do not have is a legally sanctioned culture of joint parenting at the federal level under the Divorce Act or the provincial level. We have an anachronism of a custody/access-based system that evolved one or more generation ago when one parent was at home and one parent was working.

Almost all families now do the parenting together, and we have an arbitrary, artificial concept of best interests of the children that is so pliable and subjective that you can read it every which way.”
With a presumption in place, Wise says the first message couples would get from courts and legal practitioners is the expectation of shared parenting.

“The discussion would begin differently. It would set the stage for more cases to settle in a way the parties themselves feel is appropriate and equitable. With that culture combined with mandatory mediation where the parties narrow the issues and resolve more issues that affect the ability of the parties to parent, we’d be well on the way to forging a new culture after separation.”

Wise compares the idea to the introduction of the child-support guidelines. “It was unfair to certain parties and fair to others but it established a new status quo and took almost all the cases off the table. I’d propose something equally radical.”

The issue was given an airing in a lively debate at the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts Ontario conference in October. Edward Kruk, an associate professor with the school of social work and family studies at the University of British Columbia, presented the case for a rebuttable presumption of equal or shared parenting responsibilities, with the opposite view being given by lawyer Martha McCarthy.

Kruk has become one of the most vocal supporters of a presumption and favours a transition from shared parenting in a two-parent household to shared parenting in two different households. Kruk believes the “winner-take-all” adversarial approach through sole custody isn’t working for either children or parents and that change is urgently needed.

His numerous papers emphasize the negative effects on children with absent fathers and the positive impacts on children of shared custody arrangements compared to sole custody situations. He also notes there’s decreasing parental conflict in joint custody families as compared to an increase of such problems over time in sole custody families.

In his presentation, he varied his basic proposal for a presumption by coupling it with a rebuttable presumption against shared custody in cases of family violence and abuse, as proposed by the National Association of Women and the Law.

His published opinions say this would apply in proven cases involving a criminal conviction in a matter directly affecting the parenting of the children or a finding of a child in need of protection by a child welfare authority. Kruk proposes that the much more stringent standard of child in need of protection be applied before removing a parent’s legal custody rather than the test that looks to the best interests of the child.

Wise is in favour of putting the onus to prove that a presumption is inappropriate on the spouse who doesn’t agree. “If legislation said the starting point is joint custody, and the onus is on the parties to provide evidence that a different arrangement is in the best interests of the children, it would be difficult for a parent to ever satisfy that,” he says.

This is precisely what worries Toronto lawyer and mediator Barbara Landau, who was present at the debate and strongly disagrees with the proposal. “Where there is an onus, it is often on the victimized party to disprove it,” she says. “It makes for a potentially much more adversarial situation. If a parent thinks a situation is inappropriate for a shared arrangement, they have to go to court and argue against it.”

Landau believes there’s a lack of understanding of the difference between joint legal custody, where parties agree to consult with each other on significant decisions, and joint physical custody, which involves having the children 50 per cent of the time.

This is echoed by other practitioners. Jane Murray of Burke-Robertson LLP in Ottawa is concerned about the various interpretations of joint custody.

“There would have to be a clear definition of exactly what you’re presuming or there would be a lot of litigation around the definition,” she says, noting she believes a presumption is unnecessary. “There is already a direction in the Divorce Act that one of the factors be maximizing the child’s time with each parent.”

Lawyer Kristen Bucci of Zochodne Bucci in Thunder Bay, Ont., isn’t in favour of true joint custody, which she defines as joint decision-making. In her experience, it works only in rare cases. “At the point of separation, there is a lot of animosity. You need two people to talk calmly, rationally, and in the best interests of the child, and that rarely happens in real life.”

With respect to shared physical custody, Landau finds it’s rare that people come up with a plan for 50-per-cent sharing of physical custody. “You need geographic proximity because the children attend school and have friends in the neighbourhood.

You need co-ordination and you need availability. People must have jobs that allow them to be available to have the children that much. I see people who have to be at work from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Their plan is to leave the children with a caregiver when the other parent is at home.”

Landau adds: “You also have to consider the stage of development and temperament of the child. Do the children take to change easily or do they suffer anxiety over the smallest changes? There is a need for stability, security, and a reasonable routine.”

Landau also stresses the need to look at the parenting connection before the separation. “Some parents who are asking for 50 per cent have never looked after the child on their own except for maybe 20 minutes while someone went to the 7-Eleven. You need to build up the child’s comfort and confidence.”

Landau also stresses that the level of communication between the parents needs to be respectful so the children aren’t travelling back and forth between war zones.
Bucci, meanwhile, believes parents need to prove they were equally involved in parenting prior to separation. “One partner says, ‘Yes, I was absolutely equally involved.’

The other partner says, ‘Absolutely not. I did the majority of the decision-making.’ Generally, there is a parent and an assistant parent. How does a judge make those two positions coincide?”
Bucci, in fact, finds a lot of litigants get very hung up on a particular label. “So many parents want joint custody but are not really prepared to put in the work.”

Landau places the blame for this situation squarely at the feet of the child-support guidelines. “The question of equal time is contaminated by the supposed 40-per-cent rule of child support. Virtually every man wants 40 per cent of the time in the mistaken belief that they won’t have to pay child support.

I call it the faint-hope clause. If you took away the 40-per-cent rule, there would be a lot less fights over the percentage of time.”

Landau believes most cases start with a presumption that it’s in the child’s best interests to have a full relationship with both parents in any case. “A judge has an overriding responsibility to deal with each case in an individualized way, and that doesn’t preclude joint physical or joint legal custody.”

http://www.lawtimesnews.com/201102078228/Headline-News/Debate-fires-up-over-presumption-of-joint-custody

In OZ: Shared custody remains a problem

2011-02-02T12:02:00.001-05:00

Note the arrogant comments by the reporter pretending to quote lawyers and the academic from the University of Sydney "family law expert Patrick Parkinson agrees that the notion of equal time can give a false sense of entitlement to parents."

When one sees comments like this from an academic you know they think "ownership" of children is a matter for the State to decide, rather than the two people who created them. It is socialist, collective thought.

Lawyers, according to the reporter, think dads have an edge on property division and child support without any evidence to substantiate it, yet the overall thrust of shared parenting has not changed.It appears as though moms get sole physical custody in over 80% of cases despite the fact they are the most likely to kill or maltreat the children, and the literature which shows tremendous negative outcomes for children in sole custody. Mythology dies as hard in OZ as it does anywhere else in western democracies. Feminism's demonizing of men still prevails.MJM

Brisbane Times

Susanna Dunkerley

Children in separated families continue to spend more time with their mothers despite law reforms aimed at promoting shared parenting.

The Australian Institute of Family Studies tracked more than 10,000 separated parents who split following the Howard government's 2006 family law reforms
.
The changes were designed to encourage 50-50 parenting arrangements, while increasing services to help parents reach custody agreements out of court.

But since the reforms, shared parenting arrangements have increased only slightly and at a similar rate to that post reforms.

The study shows about 16 per cent of children have a shared care arrangement, most commonly a 35/65 split in favour of their mothers.

But 80 per cent continue to spend most nights with their mother, and eleven per cent don't see their father at all.

While mothers continue to be the primary carers, the number of custody cases ending up in court has dropped by 22 per cent since the reform.

The majority of people involved in the family law system, including judges and parents, believe the changes have been an improvement on the old system.

Lawyers, however, remain divided, arguing that the changes have been complex and favour fathers in relation to property settlements and child support payments.

They are also concerned fathers expect equal custody arrangements, regardless of the interests of the child.

University of Sydney family law expert Patrick Parkinson agrees that the notion of equal time can give a false sense of entitlement to parents.

"It's only one of many options that can work, depending on the circumstances," he told AAP, noting in many cases sole custody arrangements are needed.

"It may actually prevent judges from making the hard calls they ought to."

Professor Parkinson points out that Australia is lagging behind other developed countries when it comes to shared parenting arrangements.

But he says the barriers are not legal, but social and economic.

"A lot of people try shared care but it doesn't last longer than a year," he said, explaining parents often need to find cheaper accommodation away from their children.

Labor has proposed amendments to the Family Law Act, which Professor Parkinson says will only make a difference "at the very margins".

The draft laws incorporate a UN convention on children's rights, which would compel the court to consider protecting a child above custody rights.

http://news.brisbanetimes.com.au/breaking-news-national/shared-custody-remains-a-problem-20110201-1abbm.html

© 2011 AAP

Real Women of Canada: FEMINISTS HAVE ACQUIRED ANOTHER ACCESS TO TAXPAYER’S MONEY

2011-02-01T16:26:00.002-05:00

Is the underfunding of male issues rampant discrimination or is it just a matter of men not thinking it is required or not knowing it exists? Based on some of the titles shown my guess is the audience for reading these documents is minuscule and the trustees of the grant money are not very particular to whom they give funding. Clement needs to start looking at his budget as we are going to enter into an era of austerity in the not-too-distant future.MJM

FEMINISTS HAVE ACQUIRED ANOTHER ACCESS TO TAXPAYER’S MONEY

Feminists howled with rage in September 2006, when the Conservative government cut their advocacy and research funding, doled out to them for over 30 years by the Women’s Program at status of Women Canada. However, REAL Women has discovered that feminist research is still thriving in Canada on the taxpayer’s dollar. Barrels full of money are being handed to feminists by Industry Canada, under its Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) formed in 1977 to fund “levels of research excellence in Canada”. SSHRC website states it “encourages the deepest levels of inquiry”. It funds many fields such as anthropology, literature, religion, history, early childhood education, human rights, family planning, family law, language, women’s studies, and gender studies. The SSHRC has an annual budget of $659 million (up from $93 million in 1995). It is administered by federal government bureaucrats together with representatives from several universities across Canada. SSHRC has given grants for many, many feminist research and gender studies, over the years. For example, since 1998 SSHRC has funded 1,494 research projects in the area of gender issues and 1,792 on women’s issues.

As an example, the feminist organization Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW) which had been funded by the Status of Women for 24 straight years was given a $1 million grant in January 2010 from SSHRC for a “Fem North Net research project”. Despite this huge grant, CRIAW craftily appeared before the House of Commons Status of Women Committee on May 26, 2010 moaning its loss of funding from the Status of Women. Sunera Thobani (former president of the feminist umbrella group, The National Action Committee on the Status of Women) received $57,035.00 between 2003 and 2006 from SSHRC to study “television representations of women in the war on terrorism”.

Feminist professor Angela Campbell of McGill University received $70,000 from SSHRC between 2006–2009 to interview the “wives” of polygamous Winston Blackmore at Bountiful B.C. She testified at the polygamy challenge now being heard before the B.C. Supreme Court, that these women led happy, healthy lives, and that polygamy should be decriminalized. In cross-examination, however, Professor Campbell admitted that she had done little fact-checking on the women’s stories, nor inquired whether they had been instructed by their “husband” Blackmore to do the interviews. Some research.

Centre for Feminist Research at York University, Toronto, received $145,742 to study “Women’s Human Rights, Macroeconomics, and Policy Choices”. This centre also received a grant of $401,537 for a project called “Women, equality, and fiscal equality: gender analysis of taxes, benefits, and budgets”. Recipient of this grant, Kathleen Lahey, professor at Queen’s University, spoke before the House of Commons Budget Finance Committee last fall basing her arguments on this research paper. REAL Women also appeared before the same finance committee but with a brief that was written without financial aid by the government.

The thousands of other grants include: Implementing the feminist vision: case studies of four feminist organizations; Queer conceptions: re-shaping cultural meanings and experiences of reproduction and sexuality in Canada; Lesbian families challenging the public school system; Queer women on the net; Motivations and emotions of women in pole-dancing classes; An intergenerational study of Montreal queer and feminist performance artists; Transmasculine parenting experiences; Multi-scalar forms of feminist organizing; The politics of body hair... gender and religious identities in Middle Eastern salons; and an analysis of Vancouver’s strip-tease industry 1945-1975.

A serious in-depth review of funding for “women’s” and “gender” issues at SSHRC is long overdue.

www.realwomenca.com

Please write to Tony Clement, Minister of Industry, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and your MP, to request SSHRC stop funding these absurd feminist studies.

Their addresses are as follows:

Your M.P.House of Commons, Ottawa ON, K1A 0A6

Hon Tony Clement                            Rt Hon Stephen Harper
Minister of Industry                          Prime Minister
235 Queen Street                            80 Wellington Street
Ottawa ON K1A 0H5                         Ottawa ON K1A 0A6
Fax 613-992-0302             Fax 613-941-6900

Since 1998 SSHRC has funded 1,494 research projects in the area of gender issues and 1,792 on women’s issues.

Ontario Family Law and its dysfunctional apparatchiks

2011-01-25T15:25:00.001-05:00

Canada Court Watch has a series of videos on matters relating to citizens and their interactions with the Courts, particularly the Family Law regime, AKA as FLAW. This mechanism for resolving family disputes is very dysfunctional and very sexist. The following video gives you some insight into the relationships between the welfare system, known as Ontario Works in that Province, the role of its functionaries, and the government collection agency called, oxymoronically, the Family Responsibility Office (FRO) - (it is a sexist agency targeting almost exclusively men). These agencies interact with judges and Lawyers purportedly working in the best interest of children, a phrase that has no legal meaning, and is used ad nauseum without regard to consequences for the children.

What causes dads to be absent?

2011-01-07T15:36:00.003-05:00

The following are my observations on the below article discussing why Hollywood rarely gets the story right.

There is a billion dollar plus industry tied to Divorce and the parallel asymmetric war against men, particularly dads. Misandric Feminism has portrayed women as perpetual victims at the hands of, based on their description of us, evil and abusive men. It has gone on for over 40 years and now is entrenched in the culture.

Men are the last frontier for ridicule and we white men, according to the feminists, are the worst of the lot. We white males of privilege (WMOP) apparently control everything and not only hold women back but minority males as well. This is taught in feminist and minority run sensitivity classes. If anyone sees a minority male as an incompetent idiot or being assaulted in a commercial let me know.

Females do about 80 to 85% of the shopping for intact families and more if they are single. It makes marketing sense to reach them because they control the money. Its an interesting conundrum for the feminists who say we men control everything - is it not? Therefore, men (as common culture would have you believe) who are interested only in drinking beer, watching football, and driving their truck are a niche market for those products specifically "manly". (note the satire).

In Canada, courts award mom sole physical custody in over 90% of cases and this starts a pattern of behaviour that is negative for the child, and eventually will see 50% of dads out of touch with their children completely. They just give up trying to see them as they are constantly faced with a series of events trying to stop them, including gatekeeper, move away, and alienating moms. These moms are abusive to the children by denying a relationship with 50% of their DNA, and don't care about the negative impacts of dad not being around, only their selfish motives for revenge. Yes, there are some dads who take off, and moms too, but they are a tiny minority. Common culture wants you to believe dads are not necessary but impacted children and science says otherwise.

Other dads who continue to see their children are further marginalized as the children approach and grow through their teens. When the kids get to adolescence they care little about either parent most of the time. Friends are their main preoccupation. This means those dads who kept trying to see the children get to see them even less. It’s very uncool to go to a movie and sometimes even shopping with a dad. Mine get a tad embarrassed at water parks as I am handicapped (loss of left arm) and scold me if I appear too clumsy at boarding some tube rides. A father might be able to coax them away on holidays but all he has become and can do is the role of the Disney Dad. Trying to be a real dad which includes coaching to give them a moral compass can be perilous and result in them not wanting to see him at all for periods of time. No attempt at using discipline if they cross a boundary can work well most of the time given they can opt to not see you or want to return to their mom's immediately.
The author's figures on “one out of three kids is considered "fatherless” may be low. About 40% of children are now born in the USA out of wedlock to single moms. The dad will be sought for payment of support but little else. Baby making can be a way to getting a living from the taxpayers and the dad – even if he isn’t the biological father. The latter can happen through a variety of methods including falsifying information. These are called dead beat moms and they are growing in number.

Where shared and equal parenting has been introduced Divorce rates have gone down and more dads can stay in the lives of their children. Eventually society will understand the single mom model is a failure and not in the best interest of children.

In Canada we have Bill C-422 languishing in Parliament. Write your MP to get it passed for the sake of the children.

Leave it to a feminist Sociology Professor quoted in the article, Andrea Litvack, to speak gobbley gook then point out a fictional family on a TV show as representing the real world. I watch the show but often have to turn my head away at some of the antics of the prissy gay couple. Her bottom unspoken line is dad's are unnecessary.MJM

Absent dads – Hollywood rarely gets the story right

KATE CARRAWAY

From Friday's Globe and Mail

Published Thursday, Jan. 06, 2011 3:54PM EST

Last updated Thursday, Jan. 06, 2011 4:03PM EST

7 comments

Judging from the depiction of fatherhood in most movies, you’d think all dads are simply a variation on three stereotypes: a bumbling but lovable idiot, a distant workaholic or a nutcase. And that’s if he’s even around.
In Sofia Coppola’s film Somewhere, which opens today in limited release, a bored, womanizing movie star named Johnny Marco, played by reputed real-life womanizer Stephen Dorff, is left to care for Elle Fanning’s Cleo, the adolescent daughter he rarely sees, in the days before she leaves for summer camp.

More related to this story

Somewhere is not unlike Ms. Coppola’s other beautifully shot movies about beautiful girls (Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette). But her new film is centred ona father who is, except for their week of video games and burgers, as unavailable to Cleo as he is preoccupied by strippers and sex. The sympathetic take on the relationship between Johnny Marco and his placid daughter is sweet, but far removed from the reality of most children of absent fathers.

The problems that affect the increasing number of children without dads (or with dads who drop haphazardly in and out of their lives) and the profound social issues they generate have been documented in many studies, most of them based in the United States, where one out of three kids is considered “fatherless.” The U.S.

Census Bureau notes that children who grow up without fathers are five times more likely to be poor. And the Journal of Adolescent Health reported last fall that upper-middle-class girls without dads are likely to experience early puberty, which has been linked to early drug use and sexual activity. Fatherlessness is routinely stated to be a major predictor of criminal behaviour and poor health. Boys who grow up without fathers have a greater likelihood of repeating the pattern.So why are so many films and television shows casual about bad dads?

Andrea Litvack is a professor of social work at the University of Toronto. Asked why absent fathers are something that Hollywood rarely gets right, she says: “It may not translate well because it’s a very complex issue. There are many combinations of factors that impact on anyone’s situation.”

Except for the disapproving glare that Cleo gives her dad over breakfast after a starlet spends the night, their relationship is portrayed as fun and undemanding. Whatever feelings she has about her father aren’t discussed. The other side of this Hollywood habit of diminishing an issue is that thorny social problems are sometimes exaggerated, which is no more plausible than Ms. Coppola’s withdrawn approach.

Paul Moore, who teaches sociology at Ryerson University, says that depicting a social problem “is a form of exposure even when it isn’t realistic.” He says that sometimes issues have to be glorified to work onscreen. This is especially true when it’s something that the audience may still be figuring out. Dr. Moore cites the 1979 classic Kramer vs. Kramer as an example, and says that while it was “revolutionary for its depiction of divorce at the time, we would now see it as utterly melodramatic.”

It’s unlikely that Hollywood will change its depictions of absent dads any time soon, but innovative ideas are out there to help combat the problem. Two years ago, Tom Matlack co-founded the Good Men Project, which includes a book, a magazine and a not-for-profit foundation dedicated to at-risk boys. Mr. Matlack says: “One of the core problems with manhood in America is that so many children grow up without fathers.”

He felt that no one was really talking to boys about issues such as death, divorce, war and sex, and when he speaks to audiences in places ranging from private schools to prisons, “jaws drop.” Mr. Matlack wants to make being an engaged and active dad appealing. “What a mother gives a child is obviously essential, [but] I think what a father gives a child is equally essential and different,” he says. “Every boy is asking themselves a question, ‘How do I be a man?’ and they’re looking for role models, mentors, clues.”

Prof. Litvack points to ABC’s hit sitcom Modern Family as an example of how much the family unit has changed in the past 50 years. “We have to stop thinking of the mother, the father, the two children, the white picket fence as the norm,” she says, and that in many families an absent father is “not necessarily perceived as a negative thing.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/family-and-relationships/absent-dads-hollywood-rarely-gets-the-story-right/article1860456/

Is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Beverley McLachlin, a radical Feminist or suffering from early onset Alzheimers?

2011-01-04T14:02:00.001-05:00

Real Women of Canada sent out the following release over some of the less cogent and potentially misandrous comments of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. To say she is a sexist feminist is fair, based on her single gender only opinions. I pity men who are appealing sexist court decisions based on Family Law having to deal with her.

Media Release

Ottawa, Ontario
December 7, 2010

Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin – was she confused or just presumptuous?

http://www.realwomenca.com/page/mediareleases.htm

Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin may have confused her role as a judge in her recent speech to the feminist oriented North-South Institute when she made a proposal to include women’s impact assessment in future international trade agreements. Previously this was solely the role of legislative policy workers and elected MP’s.

Modestly admitting that she was not a “trade policy person” she nonetheless believed herself qualified to provide the advice to government officials on trade.

Alternatively, if Chief Justice McLachlin wasn’t confused, she then must believe that her appointment as a judge provides her with rare insight and understanding that transcends that of the experts in the field, who would benefit from her guidance. If such is the case, her comments were only an extension of the remarks she made in another speech, in December 2005, that judges may base their opinion on unwritten norms “even in the face of enacted laws or hostile public opinion.” She reached this bizarre conclusion on the belief that judges have a “judicial conscience [which] is founded on the judges’ sworn commitment to uphold the rule of law.”

There is also a third possibility for the comments of the Chief Justice – namely, that she threw all caution to the wind in her speech in pursuit of her feminist concerns promoting the cause of women. If this were not the case, why then was she not equally concerned about the rights of men, children, the aged and the poor in trade agreements?

Regardless of the reasons for her agitation on behalf of women in her speech, Chief Justice McLachlin has displayed a remarkable lack of judgment and common sense. This discredits her personally as well as the judiciary.

For Further Information Please Contact:

C. Gwendolyn Landolt
National Vice President
(905) 731-5425, (905) 889-1993

Diane Watts
(613) 236-4001
Researcher

Another Female Killer gets a Gender Discount

2011-01-03T11:38:00.000-05:00

My Letter to the editor at the National Post.

Dear Editor:

Re: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/case+fuels+debate+over+domestic+violence/4051267/story.html

Based on the slim evidence in this article, which quotes heavily from Shelter workers, but not real experts on DV who are neutral in the war against men, this couple have all the appearances of having a mutually violent relationship, possibly fuelled by an addiction. In this case it might well be alcohol. Some women in shelters are addicts, based on anecdotal evidence, seeking refuge from mutually reciprocal violence or are violent against their partner.

Take note this women started beating the man when he was unconscious. Does that sound like a person defending themselves? DV studies done with scientific rigour clearly show the mutuality of aggression between partners is equal. In a study done by the CDC it not only showed equality but it showed that in many cases 71% of non-reciprocal violence was initiated by the female. I would direct you to the link below to get some real scholarship on DV equanimity. Harvard Medical School and the American Psychiatric Association published a major national study in the U.S. that found half of heterosexual domestic violence is reciprocal and that: "Regarding perpetration of violence, more women than men (25 percent versus 11 percent) were responsible. In fact, 71 percent of the instigators in nonreciprocal partner violence were women." http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/42/15/31-a

Other studies clearly show women are injured far less often when they do not initiate DV against their stronger male partner. The issue of women only acting violently in defence is a myth perpetrated by sexist researchers with an agenda. One of these researchers, whose work is used extensively, testified Karla Homolka was a battered wife. We all know how much credibility that argument has. Those of us who have been attacked with weapons by a partner know only too well self defence is a rudimentary argument, at best.

There are many credible researchers in Canada who can provide scholarship on DV including Dr. Don Dutton, UBC, Dr. Grant Brown, a Lawyer and PhD, from Edmonton, Dr F. Christensen, UOA, Edmonton, Dr. Anthony Synnot, Concordia are those that come to mind immediately. There are many others.

This woman will likely get into another violent relationship and someone better be watching over her children. Thank goodness the Crown is sensible enough to appeal.

Mike Murphy

Tamsin McMahon, National Post · Monday, Jan. 3, 2011

After a night of drunken revelry that escalated into a violent street fight, Crystal-Dawn MacKenzie grabbed a knife from her neighbour's kitchen, yelled "I'm going to kill him" and stabbed her common-law husband in the collarbone.

If the knife had moved just a centimetre in either direction, Patrick Andrew Thomas likely would have lived, a pathologist later testified. But the 29-year-old bled to death on a downtown Saint John street.

Eight months later, Ms. MacKenzie walked out of a New Brunswick court a free woman after a nine-woman, three-man jury in Saint John acquitted the 28-year-old mother of three of second-degree murder, accepting that she had finally snapped after years of abuse at the hands of Mr. Thomas.

The Crown filed an appeal last week, a rare move for a jury trial. Prosecutors are arguing that the judge erred in his definitions of murder and self-defence and that Ms. MacKenzie had alternatives to killing her husband to escape his violence.

"Of course she had other options," said her lawyer, David Kelly. "But she had been drinking and that impaired her judgement."

The case has riveted the community and polarized opinions about just how far a battered woman can go to defend herself, an argument that has raged since a landmark 1990 Supreme Court of Canada ruling found women could use a history of abuse to defend themselves from murder charges.

People were surprised that Ms. MacKenzie didn't face any consequences for killing her partner, such as family violence counselling or community service, said Nancy Porter, executive director of Coverdale Centre for Women, a women's shelter that neighbours Ms. MacKenzie's apartment.

"Has the jury sent the message that if you're in a situation of family violence it's OK to bump off the other half ?" she asked. "I can't imagine the Crown would be on some kind of witch hunt."

Ms. MacKenzie's acquittal has renewed public criticism of the battered women's defence despite overwhelming evidence that women are far more often the targets of domestic homicides than men, said Deborah Doherty, executive director of Public Legal Education and Information Service of New Brunswick. Ms. Doherty has studied 20 years' worth of domestic homicides in the province, which until recently had all been committed by men and many of which were murder-suicides.

"Certainly there seems to be people who wrote comments when she was acquitted that it's just another sign of bias against men in relationships," Ms. Doherty said.

"But in terms of domestic homicides, three out of every four victims are women. Yes, women are killing their partners, but it's much more uncommon. It's much more likely that women are the victims of serious domestic violence."

Ms. MacKenzie's rocky and often violent four-year relationship with Mr. Thomas was played out in detail at trial as the judge asked potential jurors to excuse themselves if they had strong feelings on domestic violence.
A friend testified he once saw Mr. Thomas sitting on Ms. Mackenzie when she was pregnant and punching her in the face. Others told the jury they saw Mr. Thomas bite Ms. MacKenzie, call her names and smash her head into tiles. The jury saw two years of police photos of Ms. MacKenzie bruised and battered and in 2009 Mr. Thomas pleaded guilty to assaulting Ms. MacKenzie. Although he was ordered not to go near her, he breached his probation three times.

Still, a social worker told the court that although she was concerned about the domestic violence complaints, she had never removed the couple's children from the home.

In the early hours of March 15, the couple was coming home from partying at a Saint John bar when Mr. Thomas passed out on the steps of their building. Witnesses said they saw Ms. MacKenzie trying to wake him up by smacking him in the head.

It escalated into an argument and then a physical fight. Ms. MacKenzie grabbed a broom and ran at Mr. Thomas in the street. He put her in a headlock and began to choke her.

When she broke free, neighbours heard her say "I've had enough, I'm going to kill him," before she ran for a kitchen knife.

"I just didn't want him to go in the house because my kids were in there," Ms. MacKenzie testified. "I knew if he went in, that would be the end of me," she said.

It was Ms. MacKenzie's pledge to kill her husband that has left some applauding the Crown's decision to appeal her acquittal.

"They need to say enough is enough — it doesn't matter what gender you are if you commit murder, it should be treated a murder," said Ed Hoyt, founder of the New Brunswick Children's Equal Parenting Association, which held a Christmas Eve protest outside the Saint John family court.

That argument ignores a huge body of research that shows women and men often kill for very different reasons and under very different circumstances in relationships, Ms. Doherty said.

Men often kill their partners in the midst of a breakup, often out of jealousy and control. Women mostly kill within intact relationships, often to protect themselves and their children or because they see no other way out of the abuse.

"If you read all the literature on battered women, they tend not to see the other options," Ms. Doherty said.
"Even if they go to a neighbour, they think he's going to follow them. There's no hope unless they kill him."

Although courts have been doing their best to understand the plight of abused women, the acquittal risks setting a troubling precedent, said Coverdale shelter's Ms. Porter.

"In the world of domestic violence, nothing is right."

National Post with files from the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal
tmcmahon@nationalpost.com

Male victims get lost in domestic-abuse data

2010-12-28T11:11:00.000-05:00

By Jon Aerts

Capital News Service

WASHINGTON — When Adele Freeman fired five .38-caliber bullets into her boyfriend in 2000, she contributed to an often-overlooked statistic within the sometimes-deadly world of partner abuse: namely, that more than one-third of all homicides each year connected to domestic violence are perpetrated by women.

"Men can be victimized in the same way women can," said Laura Martin, the Calvert County, Md., state's attorney who helped secure Freeman's first-degree murder conviction in 2002. "And it's not just the violence. It's about control, dominion, power," she said.

The fact of female abusers and male victims is often lost in the discussion of domestic violence. In fact, women's advocates have used selective statistics — the same federally funded survey that found women are equally as abusive to men — to bolster their plea for funding and services.

That absence of attention to the men's side of the coin has contributed to an imbalance of services for men who are victimized in abusive relationships.

"This is the best-kept secret on family violence," said Murray Straus, a sociologist who led the commissioned survey in 1975, and again in 1985 with the same results. "There is a tremendous effort to suppress and deny these results."

No one disputes that when physical violence occurs, women are prone to more serious injury than men; however, Straus and others caution that this should not obscure the fact that about a third of men sustain injuries, or are killed, from partner violence.

Bill Hall, of Adam's House, a health and wellness center in Suitland, Md., agreed. He called domestic violence an "equal opportunity" issue that often gets overlooked by the 24 or so women's advocacy centers throughout the state.

"It's kind of hard to find programs that cater to men and boys," he said. "Most of the agencies I know of refer men to us ... as abusers."

Each Monday night, he and his wife, Stacie, counsel two groups of some 30 women and 65 men. Within each group, about 70 percent have been court-ordered to attend the 90-minute-long counseling sessions, aimed at curtailing future violent behavior.

In dealing with those who've punched out girlfriends and choked wives, socked boyfriends, stabbed exes and even shot at spouses, both Halls agree that domestic violence is anything but a one-way street of male-on-female violence.

"Most women who abuse in the relationship [do so] because they feel pressured and don't feel that they can communicate any other way," Stacie Hall said. "Because he's just not listening, and [men] are much bigger than we are."

But other advocacy groups ignore female-on-male violence.

Take one particular bullet point from a brochure sponsored by Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence, a state advocacy coalition backed largely by federal funds: "Every 15 seconds a woman is battered in the United States by her husband, boyfriend or live-in partner."

To Michaele Cohen, the nonprofit's executive director, that statistic sounds about right. "There are male victims, of course, but the majority of victims who come forward are female," she said.

Cohen said other data suggesting that men suffer from equal rates of violence are unreliable.

"That methodology is very controversial because, you know, you're saying that every hit is equal and you're not taking into account context," she said. "I think you have to look critically at those studies."

Yet both sides of the debate are actually looking at the same studies: that 1975 survey, updated 10 years later, that revealed nearly identical rates of abuse by men and by women.

Cohen did not know of the connection to the statistics in her group's brochure, but said anecdotal evidence supports their contention.

"I don't really want to quibble about the particular stats," she said. Instead, Cohen pointed to the "huge number" of female victims she sees in need of assistance each and every day.

"I'm not relying on statistics. I'm relying on 30 years of experience."

That reliance on nonscientific data is no shock to Richard Gelles, who co-authored the 1975 and 1985 surveys with Straus.

"People cherry-pick their numbers for advocacy studies," he said. "This is what advocates do, and that's not sad. What's sad is policymakers don't create evidence-based policy."

Gelles, dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania, offered up the Violence Against Women Act as an example.

Since 1994, the federal law has doled out some $4 billion to states — dollars aimed at eliminating domestic abuse, stalking and sexual assault through increased financial, legal and housing support to women. The act has also upped the penalties against offenders and more closely knits prosecutors, judges, police and victims advocates to the effort.

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee last May, Gelles said the law, which is set for reauthorization in 2011, mostly ignores services and resources for male victims of abuse.

"No other federal legislation dealing with an aspect of family violence, including child maltreatment, sexual abuse and elder abuse, singularly focuses on one sex," he testified.

So what of services available to men?

Laura Dugan, a public-policy expert and associate professor at the University of Maryland, said you might not know of a need for men based on the services available to them.

"All of these service providers, they do not let men on their premises," she said, recounting a case she was familiar with in which an alcoholic wife was abusing her husband. "She really abused him. And he had nowhere to go."

In Maryland, the House of Ruth, one of Maryland's largest domestic-violence service providers, will assist men, but active outreach efforts seem in short supply.

"We also work with men," said program development director Cheri Parlaman, referring to an abuser intervention program

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2013743521_domesticviolence26.html

Another abusive parent rewarded with custody despite proven Parental Alienation

2010-12-17T14:13:00.003-05:00

We are getting snippets of a complex case as shown below in Kirk Makin's G&M report. A link to the actual case law is provided after my comments.

Firstly, judges and lawyers are decidedly incompetent to deal with such complex personal relationships. They might know the law but divorce is less law and more emotions. The system tells us we need lawyers to end our relationships and we hire the most expensive people on the planet, save a few, at our most vulnerable emotional state in history. These very first steps are bad for us and particularly so for children.

Secondly, courts, particularly judges, are completely and utterly biased toward females. This judge just rewarded the mom for emotionally abusing her daughter so much she hates her father. Think of the issues this child is facing now and when she is an adult because of the manner she has been shaped to hate 50% of her DNA. She will become, on a balance of probabilities, in need of or incarcerated by the state in the future. The mom's family apparently threatened the dad and intimated bad things could happen (death) through a biker gang thug. What was the incompetent judge(s) doing while the child abuse and threats were occurring. If it was dad doing this the judge would have issued restraining orders and had him thrown in jail.

There are about 280 divorces occurring each workday across Canada. This is but one selected by Makin because it has "colour" and he apparently likes and empathizes with the "poor" judge. The government , both Feds and Provincial have set up Family Law to be as adversarial as is civil and criminal law. The tragedy is we are dealing with fragile emotions of adults and the frailties of children who want to love both parents barring abuse. This child, because she shared 50% of the DNA of a parent she hates, will likely become self loathing. Mom has said part of her is a deadbeat and a dick head and they are likely not the worst of it.

Bill C-422 is in Parliament and is an instrument to offer a rebuttal presumption of equality for both fit parents after divorce. It deems both parents as equal unless proven otherwise. This can allow for a reduction in acrimony and get the government out from making arbitrary and often incorrect decisions pushing people over the edge. Equal parenting, where implemented, reduces divorce, acrimony, emotional child abuse, and other negative outcomes for children.

The actual detailed decision is here. You can download a PDF once there.MJM http://www.canlii.org/en/on/onsc/doc/2010/2010onsc6568/2010onsc6568.html#_ftnref33

In family court, a judge turns to ridicule to defuse the rage

KIRK MAKIN

JUSTICE REPORTER— From Friday's Globe and Mail

Published Thursday, Dec. 16, 2010 8:51PM EST

Last updated Thursday, Dec. 16, 2010 9:47PM EST

Faced with warring ex-spouses besieging one another with threats and verbal abuse and dragging their children into it too, Ontario Superior Judge Joseph Quinn resorted to the only tool he had left – a highly unusual verbal roasting.

“Paging Dr. Freud, paging Dr. Freud,” Judge Quinn began a recent judgment that has gone viral in the family-law community. “Here, a husband and wife have been marinating in a mutual hatred so intense as to surely amount to a personality disorder requiring treatment. The source of difficulties is hatred: a hardened, harmful, high-octane hatred.”

More related to this story

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Selected quotes from Judge Quinn's decision

Judge Quinn’s 31-page decision boils over with the frustrations of a family-law judge who is called upon time and again to referee bouts between couples who were once in love. He even takes a shot at family law itself, saying that spousal support is “the roulette of family law – blindfolds, darts and Ouija boards being optional.”
And he anticipates criticism of his tone: “The parties repeatedly have shown they are immune to reason.

Consequently, in my decision, I have tried ridicule as a last resort.”

In a novel twist, Judge Quinn granted the wife, Catherine, sole custody of the feuding couple’s 13-year-old daughter. However, he ordered Larry to pay Catherine just a dollar a month in spousal support.

Judge Quinn expressed disgust with the way Catherine has induced her daughter to detest her father. “The harm is irreparable,” he said. “Generally, it is unwise to place an immature 13-year-old in charge of her life. Here, however, Catherine and [her current partner] have engineered an alienation that is so complete as to leave the court with no feasible option.”

Toronto lawyer Phil Epstein, an expert in family law, describes Judge Quinn as a respected jurist who was justified in ridiculing the couple. “I’m sure there will be some who criticize Justice Quinn for this,” he said.

“But others will say that sometimes you have to step back and laugh at the foibles of mankind.”

Family law judges spent their time dealing with inflamed litigants whose stories are “highly conflicting and replete with inappropriate behaviour and misconduct,” Mr. Epstein said. “They use the courtroom as a forum for all the wrongs that have been done to them in their marriage. It is not surprising that some judges try to find a better way to help resolve their problems.”

Alternating caustic gibes with amusing observations, Judge Quinn portrayed Catherine – a 36-year-old school caretaker – and Larry, a labourer, as vile, foul-mouthed creatures who had burned through an enormous amount of police and court time waging their futile blitzkrieg.

He said that they cannot attend their son’s ball hockey games without erupting into loud conflict, and that Catherine once tried to run over Larry with a van. “This is always a telltale sign that a husband and wife are drifting apart,” Judge Quinn remarked dryly.

On three occasions, a niece of Catherine’s who is engaged to a Hells Angels biker called Larry to warn him that he would be shot dead, Judge Quinn said. “On Oct. 18, 2007, a nautical theme was added,” he remarked. “According to Larry, ‘Catherine’s sister-in-law yelled out her window that I was going to be floating in the canal dead.’”

Judge Quinn said that Larry, 38, possesses “a near-empty parenting tool box,” and was fond of venting his anger by sending Catherine insulting text messages and giving her ‘the finger’ as he drove by her home. “A finger is worth a thousand words and therefore, is particularly useful should one have a vocabulary of less than a thousand words,” Judge Quinn added.

Catherine gave her children “advanced animosity-tutoring,” and repeatedly denied Larry access to them, Judge Quinn said. He said that on one occasion, Larry and his daughter were thrown out of a McDonald’s restaurant because she was yelling that he was ‘a deadbeat.’

“This is language she would have learned from Catherine,” Judge Quinn noted. “They are the result of persistent, behind-the-scenes brainwashing by Catherine.”

He said that Catherine also warned the children several times that if they attempted to telephone their father, they would go to jail. She also once text messaged her daughter while she was on an access visit with Larry to ask: “Is dickhead there?”

Judge Quinn said that he foolishly called a four-month hiatus during the trial in the hope that Larry and Catherine could benefit from mediation. “It is touching how a trial judge can retain his naivety even after 15 years on the bench,” he said.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/in-family-court-a-judge-turns-to-ridicule-to-defuse-the-rage/article1841568/

Another comment I made on the G&M site:

After reading the comments I find it interesting and very disappointing that people think this Judge is an appropriate person to make decisions about peoples lives. It is patently obvious to the Judge the child was emotionally abused by the mom to hate the dad. Psychological abuse is a bruising of a person's psyche and takes a very long time to heal, if ever. A more learned and reasoned Judge, The Honourable Justice John Gomery of Canada stated, “Hatred is not an emotion that comes naturally to a child. It has to be taught. A parent who would teach a child to hate the other parent represents a grave and persistent danger to the mental and emotional health of that child.”

He made this observation in a decision in 1991, one of the first public recognitions of Parental Alienation in a Canadian Family Law Court. He awarded the target mom, with custody, as dad was the alienator in this case but the damage was already done. The mom subsequently moved to Texas and to this day still works with alienated children.

Let me posit the question to those supportive of this incompetent judge. If the child was physically abused and the bruises were visible, in the same manner the daughter's attitude toward her dad is visible, would you then support the judge sending the child back to her abuser. I think not, but why do you think this clown, and clown he is, is so spot on otherwise. Words have meaning and the mom in this case is an abuser of the worst kind. She is tearing her child apart emotionally and the daughters relationship with men will be flawed to say the least and perhaps she will continue the cycle with her own children.

The child should be taken from the mother and given therapy and allowed to have a better relationship with her father, if it’s not too late. At 13 there is still hope.

His pathetic attempts at humour in denigrating the parents, who may not be the sharpest knives in the drawer, is because of the adversarial system the judge works in and supports, along with his colleagues in the bar.

Single fathers feeling trapped in one-sided system

2010-12-02T18:28:00.002-05:00

This reporter gets the issue that affects 10's of thousands of fathers across Canada. We have, on average, about 280 divorces each working day many involving custody issues. Lawyers for dads know full well mom will receive custody and tell dads to cut their losses and take the standard 14-15% visitation or face at least a $10,000 bill for a custodial trial.

Mom's in Canada get 90% of sole physical custody, child support and often alimony. Child support has a degree of spousal support built in. Dads are often then controlled by mom who has him over a barrel. She can stop access with impunity, move away and unless dad has lots of money to go back to court he is both estranged and alienated from his child(ren). This is clear child abuse but goes unenforced by today's breed of misanderous judges.

Eight dads a day kill themselves across Canada unnoticed for the most part because they are men. Many do this as a result of Family Court gender apartheid. Every now and then one takes others with him as an act of despair.

Family law is highly biased and needs to change. Bill C-422 is a first step in this to obtain shared and equal parenting for fit parents. With both having legal custody if the other withholds access it can be construed as kidnapping.MJM

By Gerard Creces

Posted 1 day ago

Single fathers lose more than the stereotypical house, car and bank account.

They lose their families, their confidence, and in some cases, even their means of making a living. What's more, any success they have is garnished without prejudice.

The stigma of the deadbeat dad, the father that is never there for his kids, still remains as strong as ever, though a large part of what perpetuates it is a social justice system that assumes fathers as providers, breadwinners and supporters, without needing support themselves.But what happens when, in order to meet those obligations, the father's standard of living suffers greatly?

What happens when failing to meet those obligations results in not only punitive family law measures, but the degradation of the individual who is suffering to make ends meet?In all the cases of fathers interviewed, not one said they regretted contributing to their children's wellbeing. Not one wanted to be free of their familial obligations. All they wanted, they said, was a little fairness, be it the chance to see their children or the ability to have some say in how their money is being spent.

All Mike wants is some accountability.

Every month, he pays $800 for child support. He travels back and forth to Bayfield for work, pays auto and life insurance, gas, groceries and rent, and on $18 an hour, it doesn't leave much left for living. On top of that, he said, are equalization payments that are anything but equal. These are above and beyond child support, paying for things like sports, extra-curriculars and dental.

"There are two sets of braces I have to put out for now. I'm looking at 8,000 to 10,000 dollars," he said. "And I'm looking at 75 per cent because she only makes minimum wage.

"I'm not saying I don't want to pay or deserve to pay, but where am I going to get that money?" Mike had to go to St. Vincent de Paul when he had an abscessed tooth that he couldn't afford to take care of.

Mike said he has been back and forth with lawyers, however, he firmly believes the court system is not the way to deal with families. It is costly, adversarial and does more to divide than to rehabilitate families, he said.

On top of that, the system places penalties on fathers that only help to hasten the decline of the "deadbeat dad". If Mike is unable to make his payments, the law makes it even harder to do so by taking away his means of getting to work.

"There's the threat of having my license pulled because I'm not paying other things," he said. "How am I going to get to work? It's like a kind of vicious circle… like dogs chasing you around."

Mike doesn't qualify for Ontario Works – he makes too much money. However, 75 per cent of his paycheck is gone after deductions, support payments and bills, leaving him 25 per cent to live on. His $18 just became $4.50. Ontario Works works out to $3.50.

Mike's situation is different than most. He called 911 for himself, after an argument with his then spouse. The police came and Mike waited for them outside the home. Even though he acted in what he thought his own and his family's safety, he was handcuffed, taken away and segregated from his wife and children while Children's Aid workers interviewed his kids.

The result was devastating for Mike.

A one-year peace order meant he couldn't even talk to his family unless through a lawyer, and with no home and no contact, things, he said, inevitably worsened.

At the St. Vincent De Paul in Goderich, Mary Barry sees first-hand the effect of poverty on single people in the area. Nearly half of all food bank users are singles – a figure she said is alarmingly high.

"Even though we knew it would be high, it was still shocking to see it in black and white," she said. "Of all the people we serve a staggering 45 per cent are singles. This is both men and women, young and old… just living alone."

But, if you are out of work, have no transportation and live in a rural area, life is tough.

There is nowhere for men to go; no shelter to take them in, no services or resources for them.

The maximum a single adult can receive from Ontario Works is $585 per month. The average rent in Goderich for a one-bedroom apartment hovers around $650.

"Where in Goderich are they living?" Barry asked. "They can't pay rent, hydro, or heat and they certainly don't get to eat. And if they have a car, forget that idea."

She said most clients seek help near the end of their EI. By that time, she said, even if they do get Ontario Works, there is little to look forward to.

"You've got three months before your homeless," she said. "You have to find someone who will let you stay on their couch."

"The OPP told me the best they could do was drive me to London for shelter," Tom recalls. "I had no vehicle and no transportation."

Tom and his then girlfriend had a falling out worse than most. A domestic assault left him with severe injuries to both his back and his jaw and unable to work. After both he and his girlfriend were charged in different assaults, she was granted custody of their son while he was put out in the street.

Since then, he has completed parenting courses, attended group counseling sessions and even went through the Children's Aid – all in an effort to regain access to his son.

But, it has been a battle every step of the way.

In his case, the mother of his child refused to sign a consent form, and as she had care and control of the child, there was nothing he could do. He's scared to fight back, because any sort of aggression will only make his case worse.

"The worst part is, I've been there as a father," he said. "But even my lawyer tells me to keep my mouth shut and bite my tongue. I never tried to argue – I just want access. I eventually had to call the police to get it."

Now, he only wants to see his son regularly again, but it is getting increasingly hard, as the mother moved away from Huron County in direct contravention of their agreement.

Tom collects disability pay, earning $630 a month.

His rent is subsidized, however, after hydro, gas and food are factored in, there is little left to live on, and nothing for his child.

"It's not where I want to be," he said. "If I want to get clothes for (my son) I can't do it."

With no money for transportation, he was/is at the mercy of the courts, who ordered that the child's mother deliver the son for their weekly visits. However, with no means to provide, Tom said even those visits are growing less and less.

Heartbreaking is how he described seeing his access go from a weekend together to just five hours on Sunday afternoon. How long will that last when the mother "can't afford" to bring the child to Goderich.

"I try to be a good parent and I get my son taken out of the county," he says. "What if he gets hurt? I can't just up and go to him now."

Not only that, but being on disability means no more bike rides, no more making lunches together and no more sleepovers. Rather than receive benefits to help him care for his son, his access becomes more restricted, he said.

However, he is not in a financial position to combat the agreement, and so is relegated to a diminishing role.
However, it's not only finance that can limit a father's access to his kids, but the length of the court process itself.

Phil has taken his ex to court multiple times for violating their visitation agreement, and the longer the process takes, the more profound the eventual estrangement from his son. After years of court hearings and thousands of dollars in legal fees, Phil has finally been granted visitations again – though in a limited capacity.

"My access is cut back so they don't devastate the child, since I haven't been around," he said. "At this point, I'm just glad to be reconnected, but I feel my rights have been violated.

I feel my kid's rights have been violated. And I can't get that time back."

The worst part, Phil said, is that he has a court order to see his son, however, he is powerless even if the mother of the child continues to violate the agreement. Rather than the courts making the mother obey the court order, he said, he has to go through the whole process from the beginning. He said fathers currently fighting for visitation rights should know it's not an easy process, even if you already have the law on your side.

"The mother can deny access until you go to court, basically," he said. "It took me nine months to reach an agreement the first time, but it could take a year after that to actually start getting access.

"Even though I have a court order to see this child."

His advice to fathers is to get into court as soon as possible and pay the money to get all the necessary documentation from a lawyer. Duty Counsel, he said, is ineffective if any sort of legal documents are needed.

When he needed his child support payments adjusted, he said, the only way to make it happen was to buy software from a lawyer for paperwork he feels should be available to the public. If a father is taking free legal representation, he said, chances are he isn't able to afford the necessary documents.

"Even the courts can't produce the documents you'll need," he said. "I feel that to be unfair."

However, no matter how many obstacles society puts in the way of non-custodial fathers, Phil said there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

"Don't give up," he said. "Even if it is taking that long. You will get somewhere eventually, even though you may be fed up with the time it takes."

In 1995, Andrew Renouf of Markham devastated the country when his suicide note grabbed the attention of the national media.

A single father who was cut off from his daughter for four years, Renouf's suicide note described a situation where his paycheck garnishing left nothing to live on. By the time his pay reached his bank account, he literally had 43 cents to his name.

Too 'rich' for welfare and too poor to sustain himself, Renouf chose suicide.

"I would have preferred to die with more dignity," he said.

In his eulogy, Rev. Alan Stewart summed up not only Renouf's situation, but that being faced by men across Huron County, Ontario and Canada.

"The access that mother and father have with their children, aside from obvious abuse, should not be determined by the issues that the mother and the father have with each other. Each parent can say that we are having problems with each other, but we both love you very much…

"It takes years to recover from taking sides, and that same taking sides sabotages future relationships when those children become adults."

http://www.goderichsignalstar.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2870703

National Post: Criminal Code should not be changed to include ‘honour killings’: symposium panel

2010-11-30T19:41:00.001-05:00

“Is this inherently a cultural thing? Yes. It’s a culture of patriarchy. It’s not a South Asian or Muslim culture.”

The feminists are in denial. They looked at their Duluth Wheel of Patriarchal oppression used in all DV shelters and said its those bad men and has nothing to do with culture. So all you white guys you are now being blended in with the primitive cultures of extreme Islamists, Hindu's and Sikhs. Be prepared for more misandry based on these cretins.

This is nothing more than a whitewash of primitive cultures and another feminist hive creating new myths about patriarchy implicating all males.

"Woman are revered", one of the participants says. What a load of absolute crap. Are they the women following two steps behind their man, some wearing tents, are they the girls aborted because some South Asians prefer males, are they the ones unable to pray with their man, are they the approximate 20,000 women killed world wide in dis-honour by a culture of contempt for women?

How can anyone have any respect for the feminists running these DV shelters when they continue to try and foist pure unadulterated nonsense on the unsuspecting public. It is no more than misandry wanting to put all men into a category of patriarchs trying to oppress and kill women.MJM

Kathryn Blaze Carlson November 30, 2010 – 6:08 pm

RICHMOND HILL — So-called ‘honour-based crimes’ should not be viewed as distinct from mainstream violence against women and the Criminal Code should not be amended to include a separate ‘honour killings’ charge, a panel agreed at what was believed to be the first-ever symposium on the subject in York Region.

“When you use the term ‘honour crimes’ the way we do in Canada, it becomes a way of saying ‘those barbaric practices’ done by ‘those barbaric cultures,’ as if the West’s hands are somehow clean,” said panelist Farrah Khan, a therapist with the Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic. “Is this inherently a cultural thing? Yes. It’s a culture of patriarchy. It’s not a South Asian or Muslim culture.”

The panel — which featured self-proclaimed Muslim feminist, social worker, and beauty queen Tahmena Bokhari, and which also included Det. Christina Baker of York Regional Police, lawyer and activist Zarah Danani, and Anita Khanna, of the Council of Agencies Serving South Asians — agreed that the term ‘honour killing’ wrongfully suggests so-called honour crimes are somehow different from the crimes of yore
.
“I think it’s important that we don’t buy into the hype: We’ve got to stop creating legislation — as is going on around the globe — that targets Muslim people,” said lawyer and panelist Zarah Danani. “It’s fear-based hype finding its way into the law because we have a right-wing Conservative government.”
The symposium — entitled Honour Based Violence and the Canadian Context and hosted by the Sandgate Women’s Shelter of York Region — drew 50 or so mostly female community members, activists, and social workers to Richmond Hill’s Elgin West Community Centre.

Although ‘honour killings’ — widely understood as culturally motivated killings carried out by relatives in order to “cleanse” the family name and restore the family’s so-called honour — remain relatively rare in this country, several high-profile cases have sparked heated discussion about what event organizers called an “upward trend” in honour-based violence in Canada.

Just this month, an Ontario Superior Court judge decried the “extremely reprehensible” mindset behind so-called honour crimes, and sentenced a Scarborough man to five years in prison for speeding his minivan into his teenaged daughter, her boyfriend, and his son-in law. The Tamil man had disapproved of his daughter’s boyfriend, who was of a lower Sri Lankan caste.

The notion of ‘honour killings’ is most often associated with the Muslim community, though Canada and the United States have also seen many cases involving Sikhs and Hindus.

Ms. Danani lamented that there is an element of Islamophobia in “how these things keep getting labeled,” and said that the use of the term ‘honour killing’ is simply a bid to muster a new “phenomenon” out of an age-old offence.

“When you create a new term, you get to create a phenomenon,” she told the crowd, who shouted and clapped in agreement from their chairs in a multi-purpose room at the community centre. “You get to take it out of the everyday, and make it sound new.”

“Honour killings need not be placed ‘out there,’” echoed Det. Baker, adding that amending the Criminal Code would be a “bad idea.”

Whether Ottawa will amend legislation to include ‘honour killing’ is yet to be seen; speculation reached a fever-pitch this past summer.
In July, Rona Ambrose, Minister for the Status of Women, told a news conference in Mississauga that the government was “looking at” adding a separate charge. Later that very day, however, her statement was hastily rejected by the Justice Department.

The Criminal Code flip-flop came on the heels of a Frontier Centre for Public Policy report, which said “honour/shame codes are rife” in the non-Westernized segment of Canada’s South Asian community.
Still, Jehan Chaudhry, executive director of the Sandgate Women’s Shelter, said on Tuesday that “there is no room for discussion” as to whether so-called honour crimes — when perpetrated by members of the non-westernized South Asian community — are at all distinct from domestic violence.

“Whether it’s a brother killing a sister, the victim at the end of the day is still a woman — there’s no other way to look at it,” Ms. Chaudhry said in an interview. “What I know of Islam, what I know of Sikhism, what I know of Hindu, there is no room for ‘honour-based violence.’ Women are to be revered.”

The symposium — which offered Urdu, Mandarin, Farsi, and Tamil interpretation — convened almost precisely one year after the Conservative government released a toughened-up citizenship guide that explicitly condemned “barbaric cultural practices” such as so-called honour killings.

Posted in: Canada, Posted Tags: Domestic violence, Honour killings, Symposiums

Mom gets conditional discharge for abandoning 3½-year-old to go drinking

2010-11-29T15:47:00.000-05:00

If this was a dad would he now be in jail and being painted as a monster as opposed to this slap on the wrist? Note the incompetent and neglectful mom wants to get custody back. The poor child if that ever happens. Shared parenting needs to be the default and when dads are allowed to stay in the life of their child they will be better protected.MJM

Sick child home alone

By STEVE BRUCE Court Reporter
Sat, Nov 27 - 4:54 AM

While Joanne Victoria Lawson was drinking at a bar one night, her 3½-year-old daughter was home alone with a fever — vomiting, wandering around the darkened apartment, banging on the door and crying for her mommy.

The building superintendents heard the little girl’s screams over a two-hour period and finally let themselves into the apartment. After finding the child unattended and leaving messages on the mother’s cellphone, they called police.

Lawson, 42, pleaded guilty earlier this year to child abandonment and received an 18-month conditional discharge Thursday in Halifax provincial court.

The events of March 20, 2008, cost Lawson custody of her daughter, who now lives with her father in Cape Breton.

Lawson has stopped drinking and abusing drugs, is responding well to medication for adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and hopes to eventually regain custody of the girl.

"It was a horrible thing I did," the Dartmouth woman told Judge Carol Beaton.

"I don’t have the words to describe how I feel every day when I wake up and I don’t have my daughter, and it’s from my own actions — actions that I quite simply don’t remember.

"It’s something I live with every day."

Lawson said she worked to keep her emotions under control when she spoke to experts about her actions. Those people interpreted that as a lack of remorse, causing the prosecutor to have concerns about having agreed to propose a conditional discharge.

"Everybody seems to think I don’t have a lot of remorse for this incident, which is absolutely not true,"

Lawson said, fighting back tears. "I know exactly what could have happened and it scares the hell out of me.

I love my child very much."

Court was told Lawson drank a bottle of cheap red wine at her apartment on Layton Road in Halifax before calling a cab to take her to a downtown watering hole shortly after 8 p.m.

When police entered the apartment at about 10:30 p.m., the bathtub had about 15 centimetres of water in it.

It appeared Lawson had used the tub to wash vomit off her daughter’s clothes earlier in the day.

The woman returned home intoxicated at about 2 a.m. and was upset at the superintendents for what they had done.

Lawson had made tentative arrangements for a babysitter that evening but forgot to follow through on them, defence lawyer Margaret MacKenzie of Nova Scotia Legal Aid told the court.

"She loves her child and was devoted to her child," MacKenzie said of her client, who works as a cook.

"She admits to screwing up big time that night. There’s no doubt in anybody’s mind that alcohol was the main player and (the child) suffered as a result of that."

The Crown proceeded by indictment on the charge, which meant the maximum penalty was five years in prison.

Crown attorney Susan MacKay said it was fortunate that Lawson lived in an apartment building and not in a house, where the child’s cries might have gone unheeded by neighbours.

"This incident is very serious," MacKay said. "I would hope that this criminal process . . . will have a positive impact on Ms. Lawson’s future behaviour."

MacKay said a medical checkup found that the child was suffering from a bug of some kind but was otherwise in good health. There were no signs of any previous abuse and the dwelling was clean and well maintained.

Lawson had no previous criminal convictions and, by pleading guilty, accepted responsibility for her actions, the prosecutor said in recommending the conditional discharge to the judge.

"I think she’s getting a bit of a break and I hope she knows it," MacKay said. "It would be a very different circumstance today if further trauma had come to that child."

Lawson will be on probation for 18 months, with conditions that she abstain from alcohol and drugs, participates in counselling for substance abuse or any other issue identified by her sentence supervisor, and performs 50 hours of community service. She also can’t have contact with her daughter unless it’s through lawyers or in relation to a family court order.

If she fulfills the conditions, the conviction will be discharged and she won’t have a criminal record.

"This was a situation that had the potential for real disaster, over and above the seriousness of what did occur," the judge said in adopting the recommended sentence.

"One shudders to think what could have happened to (the child), left alone at 3½ years of age. She could have aspirated on her own vomit. She could have fallen into the bathtub. . . . She could have come into contact with matches.

"I could be here for an hour listing all the possibilities. All of the reasons that adults don’t leave children alone can be conjured up here to illustrate how some sort of success was snatched from the jaws of potential disaster."

Beaton said the court was essentially being asked to emphasize the positive changes Lawson has made in her life.

"That takes a leap of faith on the part of the court and on the part of the community," the judge said.
She urged Lawson not to do anything to abuse that faith.

( sbruce@herald.ca)

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Metro/1214225.html

UK Judge expresses concern over Family Law child access issues - finally

2010-11-25T16:49:00.001-05:00

A glimmer of hope. A UK judge finally gets the problem with access. Wonders never cease. Maybe there is hope yet for equal/shared parenting MJM

Judge backs angry fathers over contact with children

Call for sweeping changes to family justice system after 'shameful' court failures

Clare Dyer, legal correspondent
The Guardian, Friday 2 April 2004 10.58 BST
Article history

A high court judge yesterday launched an extraordinary attack on the family justice system for failing separated fathers and their children.

Mr Justice Munby, a respected judge of the Family Division, said he was going public with a judgment following a private hearing, while keeping the parties anonymous, because judges needed to "face up honestly" to the failings of the system so as not to forfeit public confidence.

He called for sweeping changes to the system after a father had to abandon his five-year battle for contact with his seven-year-old daughter following 43 court hearings in front of 16 judges. The "wholly deserving father", who last saw his daughter in December 2001, had left court "in tears, having been driven to abandon his battle for contact".

The delays in the case were scandalous, added the judge, who said he felt desperately sorry for the father, whose case was "far from unique".

The judgment follows a number of high-profile protests by fathers who accuse the family courts of treating separated fathers unfairly.

Mr Justice Munby said the last two years had been, from the father's perspective, "an exercise in absolute futility".

It was "shaming to have to say it" but he agreed with the father's view that he had been let down by the system.

The judge suggested that the way the courts dealt with contact applications might even breach the European convention on human rights, which guarantees the right to respect for family life, the right to a fair hearing within a reasonable time, and the enforcement of court orders.

He said he could understand why there was disappointment that a pilot scheme announced by the government this month to try to divert contact disputes from court only encouraged mediation rather than making it mandatory.

Fathers' groups have condemned the scheme as "doomed to failure".

The judge called for a new protocol for handling contact disputes, with every case allo cated to a single judge who would set a timetable for cases to be dealt with in weeks rather than months. Even serious and complex cases would be finalised in months rather than years.

In difficult cases, an independent social worker could be appointed who would be "on hand on Saturday morning to make sure that the handover takes place" or even act as go-between if the mother could not bring herself to meet the father.

Where mothers were determined to flout contact orders, a "flabby judicial response" encouraged them to believe court orders could be ignored with impunity, he said.

A judge might stipulate in an order for Saturday contact that the father's solicitor should notify the judge on Monday if there were any problems, so that the mother could be summoned to come to court on Tuesday and an order made committing her to jail, but suspended.

Then, "the mother can be told in very plain English that if she again prevents contact taking place the following Saturday, she is likely to find herself in prison the following week".

He said the mother in yesterday's case had obstructed contact with threadbare excuses and made groundless allegations that the father had frightened the child, forcibly fed her and threatened not to return her.
Despite the court rulings, the mother continued to obstruct contact until the father snapped and lost his temper with her in December 2001.

Mr Justice Munby said that although it was the father who made the first move that day, it was the mother who carried the legal, parental and moral responsibility for what happened.

The judge ended with a public apology to the father, who was described as a warm and caring man, and his daughter. "We failed them. The system failed them."

He added that the debate in the newspapers on problems in the family justice system made uncomfortable reading for the judges. "We need to take note. We need to act. And we need to act now."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2004/apr/02/childrensservices.uknews

Media List ~ 2010

2010-11-24T20:01:00.004-05:00

Major Newspapers

Victoria TIMES COLONIST, 2621 Douglas Street, Victoria, B.C., V8T 4M2, letters@tc.canwest.com, Fax: (250) 380-5353

Vancouver Sun , #1 - 200 Granville Street, Vancouver BC V6C 3N3 sunletters@vancouversun.com, Fax: 604-605-2522; labelled "Letter to the editor"

The Province, 200 Granville Street, Suite #1, Vancouver BC, V6C 3N3, provletters@theprovince.com, Fax: 604-605-2759, labelled "Letter to the editor"

Calgary Herald, P.O. Box 2400, Station M, Calgary, Alberta T2P 0W8, Letters to the editor E-mail: letters@theherald.canwest.com

Calgary Sun, 2615 12 St. N.E., Calgary, Alberta, T2E 7W9 Letters to the editor cal-letters@calgarysun.com Fax: (403) 250-4180

The Edmonton Journal, 10006 - 101 Street, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. T5J 0S1, letters@thejournal.canwest.com.

The Edmonton Sun, Suite 250, 4990-92 Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta, T6B 3A1, Letters to the Editor: Email mailbag@edmsun.com Fax (780) 468-0139.

The Saskatoon StarPhoenix, Street: 204 - 5th Avenue N. Saskatoon, SK, Canada S7K 2P1, E-mail: spnews@sp.canwest.com, Fax: (306) 657-6437

Regina Leader-Post, 1964 Park Street, Regina, SK, S4P 3G4, E-mail: letters@leaderpost.canwest.com, News Fax: (306) 565-2588

Winnipeg Free Press, 1355 Mountain Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Letters to editor use a web form R2X 3B6 News Fax Line: 697–7412

The Winnipeg Sun, 1700 Church Ave. Winnipeg, Manitoba R2X 3A2, Letters to editor letters@wpgsun.com. Fax to 204-697-0759

The Globe and Mail. 444 Front Street West, Toronto, Ontario, M5V 2S9, letters@globeandmail.com,

Toronto Star, One Yonge Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5E 1E6, lettertoed@thestar.ca, Fax 416-869-4322

The Toronto Sun, 333 King St. E., Toronto, Ontario, M5A 3X5 e-mail Letters to editor, torsun.editor@sunmedia.ca

The National Post, 1450 Don Mills Road, Suite 300, Don Mills, Ontario, M3B 3R5, Letters to editor web form http://www.nationalpost.com/contact/letters.html?name=Financial+Post+Letters&subject=FP+Letter+to+the+editor
Try also: letters@nationalpost.com

The Ottawa Citizen, 1101 Baxter Road, Box 5020, Ottawa, ON, K2C 3M4, Letters to editor letters@thecitizen.canwest.com

The Ottawa Sun, P.O. Box 9729, Stn. T, Ottawa, ON, K1G 5H7, Letters to the editor, email ottsun.oped@sunmedia.ca or fax to (613) 739-8041.

The Montreal Gazette, 1010 Ste. Catherine St. West, Suite 200, Montreal, Quebec, H3B 5L1, Letters to editor,mailto:letters@thegazette.canwest.com

Le Devoir, 2050, de Bleury, 9ième étage, Montréal (Québec), H3A 3M9, Letters to editor

Charlottetown, The Guardian, 165 Prince Street, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.C1A 4R7 Form on this web page: http://www.theguardian.pe.ca/index.cfm?pid=1455

Moncton Times & Transcript, 939 Main Street, P.O. Box 1001, Moncton, New Brunswick E1C 8P3 Form on this web page
http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/onsite.php?page=contact#C

Halifax, The Chronicle Herald, P.O. Box 610, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3J 2T2, Form on this web page
http://thechronicleherald.ca/services/email-staff.php?id=Letters

St. Johns, The Telegram, Village Shopping Centre, 430 Topsail Road, P.O. Box 5970 - St. John's, NL - A1E 4N1 Letters to editor
letters@thetelegram.com

Politicians

The Prime Minister: Harper.S@parl.gc.ca

The Minister of Justice & Attorney General: Hon. NICHOLSON, Robert (Rob) Nicholson.R@parl.gc.ca

Contact List for all Provincial Premieres: http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Parlinfo/Compilations/ProvinceTerritory/PremiersTerritorialLeaders.aspx?Language=E

Constutuenciy Offices of all MP's: http://webinfo.parl.gc.ca/MembersOfParliament/MainMPsAddressList.aspx?TimePeriod=Current&Language=E

Senate Contact list: http://www.parl.gc.ca/common/senmemb/senate/IsenAssist.asp?Language=E&sortord=N

The Legislative Assemblies of Canada: Unofficial list of links on one page but seems to be up-to-date as of April 27/09 http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/Web/Unofficial/Canadiana/legislatures.html
and here:
http://www2.parl.gc.ca/parlinfo/compilations/ProvinceTerritory/Provincialterritoriallegislatures.aspx

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Barbara Kay: When a mother is on trial, the father is the accused

2010-11-17T16:46:00.002-05:00

The tragic Campione case and the abusive manner in which the system treated the Father.

Here is what the hired gun lawyer for the killer mom said about the person who killed her two daughters.

"Her lawyer, Mary Cremer, argued that her client was a loving mother who struggled with mental illness." Is it any wonder few can believe what lawyers say.

What an oxymoronic statement. It is very common in Family Courts to raise false allegations of abuse. This is taught by unscrupulous lawyers and feminists , particularly those operating in DV Shelters. Loving moms don't kill their children but those with serious emotional instability do with greater frequency than biological fathers. http://victimfeministcentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/mothers-commit-vast-majority-of.html

We have a woman with some personality disorders. There is a cult of moms who have lost custody who call themselves "protective parents." My research and observation of them shows them to be a vile and destructive group of individuals who were abusive to their children. This one took the delusion to the extreme by killing her progeny. It is also the most extreme form of Parental Alienation where the parent tries to keep the children from the other through hate. What it all boils down to is the woman hated her hubby far more than she could ever love her children.

The actions by the courts in requiring Mr. Campione to use Supervised Access to see his children are part of the matriarchal controls present throughout Child Custody and Family Law. As much as he advised those in charge, especially the Barrie based Children's Aid Society, the children were in danger he was ignored. The belief is men are bad - women are benign despite the aggregated evidence to the contrary. Most CAS' are female run and highly biased against dads and highly favourable toward maternal custody. Some will spend 10's of thousands of dollars, as is Chatham-Kent CAS right now to remove loving dads from their children's lives.

They are not accountable to any one at this time except for their financials. The Ontario Ombudsman has no jurisdiction and the Minister, Laurel Broten, ignores complaints.

You can thank feminist mythology for this state of affairs. They believe and have convinced the Police, Judges, Lawyers politicians and social services that men are coercive abusers and women innocent victims.

If any one has read the details of this case and the actions of this woman you will be truly sickened at the depravity.

False Allegations of abuse against dads means sure fire custody. In contested custody cases local DV shelters and lawyers will offer oblique suggestions to moms, who may not have been abused, to place it in their affidavit to ensure custody and supervised access for dads. For some moms this is one more quotient of revenge. Perjury is commonplace in Family Court and never prosecuted. The lawyers and DV shelters know the ropes.

In addition, the DV shelter will require the mom to sign a non-disclosure agreement to ensure their advice doesn’t get into the public domain. Studies have shown family law related false allegations of abuse, some requiring protection orders, can be as high as 70%. The killer was following established protocols in the war against dads occurring every day across the country and supported by incompetent social service agencies like the Children’s Aid Society.

Approximately 280 Divorces a weekday across Canada

There is a very large and lucrative divorce industry in Canada. Discounting for weekends and holidays we see about 280 divorces per working day. Lawyers rake in billions and the social services, mental health segments also profit handsomely especially in contested custody cases.

Moms get physical custody in over 90% of cases. The judge in this case is typical. They receive training from a secretive organization called the National Judicial Institute. This training tells judges men are abusers and women benign. If a woman claims she is abused she is to be believed without any evidentiary standards. This judge clearly believes this very disturbed killer is believable despite the jury’s verdict. This judge is but one of many spouting the same drivel.

The myth of male only Domestic Violence and he myth of Patriarchal Oppression

The DV industry, the Judge and the CAS in Barrie who support the junk science in the Duluth Wheel of patriarchal oppression of women in Canada, outside of the real oppression by certain religious cults, can give no explanation for the greater degree of violence in Lesbian relationships as compared to heterosexual. Lie and Gentlewarrior surveyed 1,099 lesbians, finding that 52% had been a victim of violence by their female partner, 52% said they had used violence against their female partner, and 30% said they had used violence against a non-violent female partner. Finally, Lie, Schilit, Bush, Montague and Reyes (1991) reported, in a survey of 350 lesbians, that rates of verbal, physical and sexual abuse were all significantly higher in lesbian relationships than in heterosexual relationships: 56.8% had been sexually victimized by a female, 45% had experienced physical aggression, and 64.5% experienced physical or emotional aggression. Of this sample of women, 78.2% had been in a prior relationship with a man. Reports of violence by men were all lower than reports of violence in prior relationships with women (sexual victimization, 41.9% (vs. 56.8% with women); physical victimization 32.4% (vs. 45%) and emotional victimization 55.1% (vs. 64.5%). (See Patriarchy And Wife Assault: The Ecological Fallacy by Donald G. Dutton, Ph.D. Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia)

Domestic Violence in Canada Fact vs Fiction

Mrs. Campione based on her mental health profile and the fact she killed two innocents is far more likely to be the abuser not her husband. The judge, through his comments, showed a clear lack of knowledge on the abuse by partners of both genders, in this country. Family violence in Canada: A statistical profile, 2005. An estimated 7% of women and 6% of men representing 653,000 women and 546,000 men in a current or previous spousal relationship encountered spousal violence during the five years up to and including 2004, according to a comprehensive Statistics Canada report on family violence. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/Daily/English/050714/d050714a.htm

Keep in mind what you see in the paper is what is reported to police. The numbers above from Stats Canada are those based on surveys which are more comprehensive.

Unfortunately in Canada, and indeed most English speaking western democracies, this judge’s biases are widely held. This one just made it all too blatant in his remarks. As stated earlier 90% of physical custody in Canada goes to mom based on similar rhetoric, not fact, this judge espouses. Its no accident 75% of women initiate divorce because the evidence is clear they will win custody of the children, they will be guaranteed tax free income in a child support award of over $700.00 a month for two children if dad grosses close to $50,000.00 a year, no matter if mom makes far more than the newly removed father. That $8,400.00 being tax free is equivalent to over $10,000.00 if taxable. They may get alimony if they can create a sad enough story, including false allegations of violence, and they will get 50% of all assets accumulated during the marriage.

If 90% of something went to a single party – say jobs to white anglophones in the public service we would be shouting from the rooftops. It appears to be OK in Family Law to discriminate in a sexist manner against dads. Think about it and then wonder why many TV commercials show dads as bumbling idiots. We men accept it – well at least most do – but if we were to give an opinion on why so many bilingual francophones from Quebec dominate public service positions we have strong opinions, White males – actually in Family Law – all males are not in the back seat of the bus – they are kicked off.

Stong is an ex Liberal politician in the Superior Court of Justice. This Judge, therefore, does Family Law cases. No dad stands a chance in his court. He has to go.

This is but one of many Family Law cases where identity and gender politics play a role causing the worst of negative outcomes for children. Justice Stong evidenced his gender biased views in his remarks in effect blaming the dad - a victim - and excusing the vicious and evil mom. Stong is an ex-Liberal member of the Ontario legislature. A further tragedy is he handles Family Law Cases and no dad stands a chance for custody in his court. He should be removed but that will not happen. No federal judge has ever been removed for bias or incompetence. Children become the recipients of many negative outcomes with the sole custody model in Canada. Ninety percent of physical custody goes to mom in a sexist and biased legal system. Children would be far better of in a shared/equal parenting environment as proposed in Bill C-422. Get behind the bill and help prevent further tragedies. The kids will have both fit parents in their lives and be better protected.

I am always very surprised when I see statements like “How can a mother kill her children”. I have concluded these folks just don’t know the facts. These facts are clearly tabulated by some government agencies every year. In the USA for a very long time the evidence is moms are the most likely killers and abusers of their children. It ought to be no different in Canada except Stats. Can. does not break the figures down like the USA and Australia. In those countries they separate out the male parties as Biological Father and other. If you want the truth about moms being the most common killers and abusers go here for the data. The links in the tabulated evidence over many years will take you to the original source data. http://victimfeministcentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/mothers-commit-vast-majority-of.html The first graph shows the situation for Western Australia in 2006-07 where there were 21 child homicides. Mom killed 11, her new partner or boyfriend killed 5 and the biological father 5. So mom and her new partner killed 16 of the 21. A child is far less protected when the biological father is removed and this occurs hundreds of times a working day across Canada. Mom gets sole physical custody in 90% of cases. Dad, if lucky, gets 15% visitation but the new boyfriend sees the children 24/7.

November 17, 2010 – 10:31 am

REUTERS/J.P. Moczuls

A relative comforts Leo Campione (L) as Campione leaves a funeral service for his two daughters Serena, 3, and Sophia, 1, outside St. Peter's Catholic Church in Woodbridge, a Toronto suburb, October 10, 2006. The girls were believed to be murdered by his estranged wife Elaine in Barrie, Ontario, on October 4.

He just couldn’t leave well enough alone. Judge Alfred Stong, I mean, who presided over the Elaine Campione murder trial. Two days ago the jury brought in a decision of first-degree murder and a 25-year sentence against Elaine Campione, who freely confessed to drowning her two little girls in a bathtub, and who freely stated in a videotape that her motivation was hatred for, and revenge against her husband Leo.

The trial was over, But Judge Stong added comments after the verdict announcement suggesting that if had the power to overturn the jury’s verdict, he would. He said, “It is more than disconcerting to think that if Campione had not been so abused, so used and discarded as a person, her two daughters could still be alive…” Judge Stong was determined that even if it is Campione that gets locked up, Canadians would know that the real villain, morally speaking, is Leo Campione, the father of the dead girls (even though his alleged abusiveness was entirely based on his wife’s allegations and never proved), and it is actually the “discarded” Elaine Campione who is the victim.

Judge Stong felt such personal animus against the grieving father that he wanted to deny Mr. Campione and his parents their opportunity to read a victim-impact statement, standard practice even with mandatory- sentencing cases. He only relented under strong pressure from the prosecutor, who reminded the judge that the murdered girls had been “an extremely important part of [Mr. Campione's] life.”

The judge’s attitude is shameful. But what can you expect from someone who has been trained – literally, judges take structured learning programs steeped in feminist myths and misandric conspiracy theories – that women are never abusive or violent unless they have been driven to it by an abusive male. Judge Stong just could not get it into his head – he alluded to the “unimaginable facts of this case” – that a woman could kill her children without a motivation involving a controlling male that somehow drove her to the act.

Why did it not occur to the judge to blame the CAS? The CAS was well aware of Elaine Campione’s quixotic and alarming history. They knew that Campione had exhibited many signs of psychosis, that she had been hospitalized in psychiatric wards, believed people were out to kill her and kidnap her children, and exhibiting such bizarre and/or negligent behaviours toward her girls that mother-substitutes, including her own mother, had to be constantly parachuted into her household if it was to function at all.

Yet the CAS decided the mother was the “safe parent.” Mr. Campione fought like a tiger and indebted himself trying to wrest control of the children from a woman he knew to be unstable and a potential risk to them, but nobody listened to him. Why? Because everyone licenced to deal with family issues on behalf of the state – social service agencies, police, lawyers and judges – are trained in the same mythology about women as Judge Stong was. They are all singing from the same hymn book: trust the woman, suspect the man, even when the evidence screams not to.

Let a man raise his hand once to a woman (or not, but simply be accused of doing so), and he will be whisked out of his children’s lives for a year at least. You can be sure that if the father of these children had exhibited one-hundredth of the myriad clues to Elaine Campione’s potential risk to her children’s safety, the CAS would have eaten him for breakfast.

The “system” didn’t fail Elaine Campione. The system failed those two little girls by enabling a woman’s psychosis at the expense of her children. There is nothing “unimaginable” in this case at all. It has all happened before.

Everyone involved in this fiasco should be locked up in a room and forced to review the case of Zachary Turner, the thirteen-month old baby who was drugged and drowned in Newfoundland in 2003 by his psychotic mother, Shirley, while she was out on bail for the third time on charges of murdering Zachary’s father. And after that forced to review the case of Toronto baby Jordan Heikamp, who in 2001 was starved to death by his mother under the blind eyes of the Catholic Children’s Aid Society (no jail time) and Toronto baby Sara Cao, abused to death in 2001 by her mother Elizabeth. Christie Blatchford, who covered that case, said the mother (again no jail time) “was treated by the system, and in the main by the media, as a pitiful [woman], worthy of sympathy.”

Sound familiar? Plus ça change. When fathers kill, they are not assigned any motivation but their own evil impulses. When mothers kill, everyone in the system kicks into denial mode, and assumes the fault has to lie elsewhere – anywhere, as long as the woman doesn’t have to take responsibility for her actions, and can be offered sympathy. When fathers show disturbing tendencies, the system acts, or tries to. When mothers show disturbing behaviour, the system protects the victimizer.

Little Sophia and Serena Campione did not have to die. They were allowed to die because of a belief system that denies the truth of human nature. Both men and women are capable of aggression.

Statistically in Canada, mothers abuse their children more than fathers. When will our society really consider the “best interests” of the child rather than throwing them under the bus of a superannuated and pernicious ideology?

Barbara Kay: Debtor's prison for dads

2010-11-17T12:41:00.001-05:00

Welcome to the Gulag of the oxymoronic name of the Family Responsibility Office operated by a Liberal, feminist Lawyer by the name of Madeleine Meilleur. This woman is as much responsible for the death of men like Mr. Donovan as are her apparatchiks. The FRO operates like the former East German secret police called the Stasi and are responsible for a great many suicides of dads. They are, as are the politicians supporting this persecution of many loving fathers who cannot afford to pay, disgraceful exhibits of human kind.

Barbara Kay, National Post · Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2010

Last week Ontario announced it will begin impounding cars of fathers who fall behind in their child support payments. What, are mere licence suspensions not driving enough men to despair?

On Aug. 31 Paul Donovan, age 50, a reliable long-haul trucker, lay down beside train tracks near his home in London, Ont., and rolled himself into the path of an oncoming train. Most people would call it a suicide.

Not his common-law partner, Brenda Higgins. Ms. Higgins holds Ontario's Family Responsibility Office (FRO) liable for his death, and will launch a lawsuit to that effect.

Paul's ex-wife works, owns a home and drives a new car. Neither she nor their children -- today adults of 18 and 21 -- are, or ever were, impoverished. Paul had been paying regular child support since 1996. But during the trucking industry's recent hard times, Paul was temporarily unemployed, and missed two support payments.

Although he was soon back at work, Paul's commercial licence was suspended by the FRO. They refused to reinstate it without payment of $1,500 Paul hadn't yet earned. Their irrational licence suspension ensured he couldn't earn it. Ms. Higgins' scant income is only sufficient to support her three children. According to Ms. Higgins in a telephone interview, several pleas to negotiate the amount and schedule of payments with the FRO by Paul, his MPP and an ombudsman were rebuffed.

Bills mounted, but Paul's livelihood remained blocked. He couldn't afford a lawyer, and when he acted for himself a judge told him she couldn't help him. The FRO took him to court, petitioning for $10,000 or 188 days in jail. Appalled, Paul confided to Ms. Higgins he would rather die than serve such a sentence. Famous last words.

Every province has similar support-payment enforcement agencies. The FRO's Kafkaesque persecution of delinquent fathers is not unique to Ontario. These collection agencies are unaccountable, quasi-penal bodies. They hold powers to invade privacy without a warrant, and to impose criminal-level penalties for non-payment. But unlike defendants in criminal courts, FRO victims don't have the protections of due process.

I gained a fuller understanding of these inherently unjust agencies from a 2010 study in the Canadian Journal of Law and Society: "Punishing our way out of poverty: The Prosecution of Child-Support Debt in Alberta, Canada" by Nipissing University academic Paul Millar.

The privatization of child-support enforcement in the 1980s was conceived of as a means of reducing welfare handouts from the state. The initiative sprang not from politicians, but from legal academics who erroneously linked divorce to the impoverishment of women and children. The setting of guidelines was, according to Mr. Millar, "a judicially fostered social policy aimed at reducing poverty."

Imprisonment for debt is sometimes grouped with torture and slavery in human rights discourse, and was abolished here under the 1869 Debtor's Act as "not consistent with the morals of the day." Debtor's prison was only reinstated at the urging of radical feminist legal activists in the 1980s for one group: fathers behind on support payments.

In what Mr. Millar calls "inverted justice," Canada is one of a tiny handful of Western countries that jails men for an essentially civil offence without the procedural protections accorded real criminals, such as: the right to remain silent, the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty, the right to an impartial arbiter and the right to legal representation.

Reliable data demonstrates unequivocally that this regressive form of taxation disproportionately affects blacks, aboriginals and the poor, since the highest rates are reserved for those with the lowest income (under $20,000 a year). Moreover, so-called "deadbeat dads" can't declare bankruptcy. "Deadbeat dads" is, by the way, a terrible slur on the majority of dads who want to pay, but can't; women who deny fathers legal access to children are never jailed or called "deadbeat mums."

While out looking for Paul on the afternoon of Aug. 31, Ms. Higgins arrived at the scene of his suicide, not 50 metres from their home. Seeing the police cars and ambulance, she "knew" without asking. The trauma threw her into a suicidal depression resulting in a six-week hospital stay.

Tally: A healthy, responsible, productive man is dead, a partner devastated. Two middle-class children have lost a loved father, three children an engaged stepfather. At the time of his death Paul Donovan owed a measly $4,000 in child support.

Ms. Higgins can hear the trains go by as she struggles to sleep. Is there a winner in this story? If so, who?

The hidden pain: domestic abuse targeted toward men

2010-11-15T15:01:00.002-05:00

By Yvonne Dick, For The Calgary Herald November 15, 2010

Real men don't hit women, but sometimes women hit them.

Jason Chivers (whose name has been changed to protect his family) is a middle-aged Calgary teacher of average build. At home, his wife would engage in sporadic episodes of violence that Chivers won't talk about even now that he's left the marriage. At the time, despite the violence, he says he didn't want to leave because of his kids.

Research into the area of domestic abuse targeted at men indicates that men fear going to jail on false charges, the loss of their children, and having to pay for both the family house plus an apartment on just their income.

Yet when Chivers and his wife sought help, the counsellor's first advice was to just get a divorce.

"I spent a lot of time in the office, living there . . . for weeks at a time," says Chivers. "Eventually I got the divorce, but not until I had tried everything else first. . . . The whole system is a disaster for men."

Although it's not often talked about, abuse against men happens in households across the city, in numbers and types nearly the same as women: according to StatsCanada, in 2005, seven per cent of women and six per cent of men experienced abuse. The difference is, men don't tell.

Maybe that's not surprising when you consider that men often try to be the strong, silent types, raised to respect women, to rescue them from danger. Chivers notes they don't how to handle it when the woman is the danger.

Experts say that abuse can happen to anyone.

Like Roy Martin (whose name has also been changed), a local tradesman who admits he lost all control over his life. At the end, he says, he had withdrawn so far into himself that he didn't have a friend left. After one incident, with the red bruise marks still on his face, Martin and his wife went for help.

In the first session, Martin recalls, "the counsellor said to me, 'What'd you do to make her so angry she had to hit you?' "

According to an Alberta government booklet on preventing male abuse, the abuse can take many forms -- including pushing, blocking doors, threats, financial control, insults, lies intended to confuse, blaming, isolating, monitoring phone and e-mail communication, making fun of a person's body, forcing or pressuring him into sexual activities he doesn't want, and many others.

"Abuse is power and control . . . for the person perpetrating it," says Cheryl Krneychuk-Waddy, of the

Calgary Counselling Centre, adding that for the abused men, "there is a lot of shame, it's a question of their masculinity . . . victims and abusers come in every shape, colour, size, gender, age."

She says the couple may want help -- both for the abused and abuser. Counselling can be a lifeline.

"Usually if a man calls in, they'll be able to talk with a counsellor the next business day," says Krneychuk-Waddy, who holds a master's degree in social work.

Safety and confidentiality are always top priority. But in a crisis, men don't know where to turn. There are 43 women's shelters in the province. But if men are under 55 years of age or have kids, they can choose from just two shelters.

Laura Bakken is with the Community Crisis Society (Strathmore). "For men with children, there are really very few places they can go. If they are dealing with family violence, then it really helps to be in a place that has some understanding, and some focus on that, as opposed to going to a homeless shelter."

The Strathmore society offers one room, which can be used either for a man and his children, or for several single men.

Calgary has a four-bed, privately funded Men's Alternative Safe House Society. It provides a homelike setting in which men can come in from work, relax and be among men who know what they're going through.

Krneychuk-Waddy says that you can help the man in your life who tells you he's being abused -- or whom you suspect is being abused. For a start, don't confront his abuser, no matter how tempting it might be to do so. Do, however, talk to the man involved.

"Offer them a safe place . . . ask them what they need. Validate what they're saying," she says.

Bakken agrees. "Believe him, don't judge him, don't tell him what to do -- let him know you are there to support him no matter what decision he makes."

Both Chivers and Martin left their abusive relationships. Life went on for them, and they began to heal. A chance at a whole new life, where abuse is not allowed.

Martin has a final piece of advice for men who are being abused. "Start thinking about your own needs -- what do you need to make you happy?" Chances are that those needs include safety, security, respect and a feeling that you're loved. And that's well deserved.

Yvonne Dick is a central Alberta writer:
newsyvonnedick@gmail.com
- - -
Resources:
- - Community Crisis Society (Strathmore): 403-934-6634.
- - Kerby Rotary House Shelter (55+): 403-705-3250; kerbycentre.com.
- - MAS H:403-242-4077; familyofmen.com.
- - Counselling: 403-651-8075; calgarycounselling.com.
- - Men's Educational Support Association: 403-228-6366; mesacanada.com.
- - Men's Crisis Line: 403-266-4357.

The cult of single motherhood and their deadbeat status

2010-11-11T14:06:00.000-05:00

Letters to the Editor, November 11, 2010

According to Statistics Canada, over one-third of all children living in poverty in Canada live with a lone mother who earns zero income. At least half live with a lone mother who earns not enough income to support herself, let alone a child.

So why isn’t the government interested in rounding up all these “deadbeat moms” with the same vigour that it pursues “deadbeat dads”? It can’t be because they are all young, uneducated mothers of infants, who are incapable of working. In fact, the average age of lone mothers is 38. Moreover, lone mothers have higher educational levels than lone fathers. Yet lone fathers find a way to earn twice as much income as lone mothers, which is why child poverty is rare among lone fathers.

If our courts and our politicians truly cared about the best interests of children, they would make laws that (a) give custody to working dads much more often than at present; and (b) tell single moms to get a job or lose their kids. Is that too harsh? Then why are loving fathers routinely subjected to this inhumane treatment — dozens of times every day in Canada?
Grant A. Brown, Edmonton.

Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/11/11/todays-letters-jack-olivia-living-large-at-our-expense/#ixzz14zR9mRWV

I offered some comments on Mr. Brown's letter on the letters page as follows:

Mr. Brown's letter with respect to the bizarre new law in Ontario confiscating a father’s vehicle is instrumental in showing how our country, and this Province in particular, is turning into a gynocracy. We have multiple laws targeting men as unfit to be a custodial parent after divorce (but we seem to be OK before this happens), even though the Divorce act is Gender Neutral (it clearly states maximum contact for both parents is important).

Judges make up the rules as they go along awarding over 90% of sole physical custody to moms. Why? Judges receive training from a secretive organization called the National Judicial Institute. Within this training they are told men have power, women are victims and it is their job to ensure moms get the entitlements at the expense of men - and sadly - at the expense of the children. Dads seldom get more than a visitation schedule of 15%. Yet, mom's boyfriend gets to see them 24/7 setting in motion many negative outcomes for children that last a lifetime. These range from abuse to being killed as mom and her new partner are far more likely to bring harm to the child than dad.

Family Court Judges are, by far, the most negative and insidious social engineers in Canada. They deplore 50-50 shared custody for reasons already mentioned yet they then send the largest group of people into poverty by awarding sole physical custody to mom. Single mothers are then revered, but yet, they are the single largest group of deadbeats in Canada. They live off dad with alimony and child support, the latter of which is tax free but taxable to dad. This income does not show up on any statements, including from the CRA, as it is tax free. They collect welfare, live in subsidized housing and receive bonuses in the form of child tax credits. There are lots of incentives to work on yet they whine and complain about how hard done by they are. It is as though the system is set up to encourage single motherhood and cater to the whining.

Judges are responsible for billions upon billions of tax dollars to be input into the cult of single motherhood while, at the same time, denigrating the children’s biological fathers.

Want to save tax dollars, decrease poverty, and reduce divorce. Pass 50-50 equal shared parenting legislation and free up mom to get some further training and a job while allowing children to bask in the glow of two loving parents looking after their needs not the current acrimonious and adversarial system lawyers love. They make billions from it. Eighty percent of Canadians across all political stripes support Bill C-422 for equal shared parenting. The Canadian Bar Association and Feminist Lawyers like Pamela Cross and Tasha Kheiriddin don’t. Who is right? I’d vote for the 80% of Canadians.

The Minister's in the incompetent Liberal Government enacting these draconian laws are Madeleine Meilleur, a feminist Liberal lawyer, in charge of the Mom Stazi Police collection agency called FRO, who will enforce these laws. Laurel Broten is the Minister responsible for Status of Women and is also a Feminist Liberal lawyer and has at least $208,000,000 at her disposal for women's issues, none for men. Kathleen Wynne, Minister of Transportation has this on her books now as the person responsible for the safety on our highways. She is a pro-feminist sycophant along with her male colleagues in the cabinet who see this new law as useful in their war against fathers. It certainly is a highway safety issue to seize a father's car, which he likely needs to try and keep a job. All of the money taken from the father as a result of these rules will not go to his children. it will help employ more public servants.

An Ode to Family Court Judges

Barbara Kay: Courts get a new way to discriminate against fathers

2010-11-09T12:53:00.004-05:00

Madeleine Meilleur, a feminist liberal lawyer, (what a combination) is the Minister responsible for FRO. This is the oxy-moronically named Family Responsibility Office (Mom's Stazi Police) designed to be the official misandric arm of the Ontario Provincial Government currently ruled by the most incompetent Liberal government in Canadian history. In previous correspondence with her colleague Laurel Broten another feminist Liberal lawyer, to allow men access to DV assistance and counselling on an equal basis to females she used some cherry picked and bogus stats, supplied by her professional feminist staff in her Status of Women portfolio to deny my request. Keep in mind she is both Ontario's Official Feminist in Chief but is allied with Meilleur in the DV Industry the chief cause of radical feminists.

The feminists in charge of these gulags relish in the power they get over men on an official basis. Most men pay their child support. The smaller number of non-custodial moms are by far less likely to pay but you can bet it would be front page news if one of them were thrown into jail for non-payment. The MSM would be demanding changes because then the chivalrous and protective editors would finally see the stupidity of these laws. The vast majority of those who cannot pay are unemployed or underemployed after being laid off. Those who have cars or trucks often live in them under the circumstances as mom gets to stay in the family home in many cases, while collecting welfare, child benefits, and from hubby. Who’s the real dead beat here?

We have devolved to the 18th century including debtors prisons thanks to feminists like Meilleur and Broten and those kindly male sycophantic politicians who think they are being white knights. They are, in a manner, self loathing by thinking fathers are unimportant, when that in fact is scientifically, a malicious misandric myth. The gulag called FRO is the manifestation of misandry perpetuated by the political and judicial class. Mom’s get 90% of sole physical custody, ownership and control of the children to do with what she may, including denying access with impunity.

The Political class’ response is to create further impediments to dad earning a living through loss of license, jail, posting his picture for the world to see on a website, humiliating his children, and now impounding his vehicle. What morons we have in the Government and FRO. What do you get when a moron makes the rules for other morons? Chaos and the further denigration of men.

Some research notes with respect to child support:

“Studies show that the overwhelming majority of steadily employed divorced fathers pay their child support. While there are a few well‑heeled divorced dads who stiff their children, most non‑paying dads are either poor, unemployed, disabled, or incarcerated. According to a US Government Accounting Office report, two‑thirds of those fathers who do not pay their child support fail to do so because they are financially unable to do so.”

Source: Judi Bartfield and Daniel R. Meyer: "Are There Really Deadbeat Dads? The Relationship Between Ability to Pay, Enforcement, and Compliance in Nonmarital Child Support Cases," Social Service Review 68, 1994, pp. 219‑235.

Source: "Deadbeat Dad Image A Myth, Study Finds," New York Times, May 5, 1999. See: http://sharedparent.freeyellow.com/ddiamsf.pdf. Look for "Divorced moms reported."

Source: Cathy Young, Ceasefire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, The Free Press, 1999, pp. 206‑207.

Source: Kathleen Parker, "Deadbeat dads more myth than reality," The Orlando Sentinel, Jan 24 1999. See: http://www.dadi.org/kpdbeat2.htm. Look for "Census Bureau."

“Fathers have a much better record of paying court-ordered child support than mothers do.” When children were living with dad and support was ordered moms paid an average of 33% owed; dads paid an average of 62% owed. 13% of dads overpaid but not a single mom. Keep in mind the moms salary exceeded dads otherwise support would not likely be ordered.

Conclusion: When dads have the children, moms are far less likely to be ordered to pay support, are ordered to pay less, are less likely to pay it, and never overpay.

Source: John Siegmund, “Preliminary Analysis of the Database of the DC Office of Paternity and Child Support Enforcement” compiled for the Children's Rights Council, November 9, 1999.

Father and Child Reunion, Warren Farrell, PhD, page 179

Compiled by Glenn Sacks and located at http://www.glennsacks.com/blog/?page_id=1000 and Mike Murphy. MJM

Barbara Kay: Courts get a new way to discriminate against fathers

Barbara Kay November 9, 2010 – 10:40 am

GREG WOOD/AFP/Getty Images

Wait a minute ... a man with a stroller? You mean men are parents too? But why should men have access to their children? This is weird.

“They throw guys in jail for non-support all the time, and when they do, the guys serve the whole 30, 60 or 90-day sentence (the term keeps lengthening), even though cocaine dealers routinely get out of jail after serving half their time.”

Ontario’s Family Responsibility Office, which is responsible for ensuring that custodial parents don’t get stiffed for child support payments by the non-custodial parent, has a lot of power.

Starting Dec. 1, someone (read “father”) in arrears on their support payments can have their car impounded. That’s about the stupidest punishment for non-payment one can imagine, since most people need their cars in order to work. As Lloyd Gorling, a father’s rights activist put it, “How are you going to make support payments if you can’t get to work? If you can’t make support payments, does the government really think you’re going to be taking a taxi every day to work?”

If you’re going for irrational responses to non-payment, why not just throw the guy in jail –– but oh wait, they already do that. They throw guys in jail for non-support all the time, and when they do, the guys serve the whole 30, 60 or 90-day sentence (the term keeps lengthening), even though cocaine dealers routinely get out of jail after serving half their time.

In 2004 an FRO staff member didn’t bother waiting for a court date to review the financial status of an out-of-work truck driver. He just suspended his license because – hey, because he could, you see. But the guy couldn’t pay, because he had no job, you FRO idiot. He had no money to pay with, you FRO moron. He was looking for work, and the FRO decided that the best way to deal with a non-paying parent was to make it impossible to find a job so he could pay the support. Nice going, FRO. His suicide note lamented that he didn’t see any way out of his situation and had lost hope. And did anyone pay for that? Of course not.

The FRO is accountable to no one.

Let’s look at the bigger picture, though. What is the guy paying child support for? Yeah yeah, to support his children. But that means they are, you know, sort of his children, right? Not necessarily. The custodial parent, almost always the ex-wife, although supposed to grant agreed-upon access rights to the children’s father, can arbitrarily decide she doesn’t want to allow access, and for any old reason — oh sorry, little Jimmy has a play date, oh sorry little Emma has too much homework, oh sorry, I just don’t want to — can deny the father access. And does she pay for that? No. Oh, she might get a scolding from the judge, but there is no downside for her. No custodial mom has ever spent a night in jail or had her licence suspended for refusing her children’s father legal access to them. If they have, enlighten me. I have never heard of such an outcome.

You want to impose draconian punishments for non-support? Fine. But be rational about them. The arbitrary car-licence suspension is simply stupid. It punishes the children. But reluctance to punish children is the rationale for not jailing mothers who refuse access to fathers. Judges continually say they can’t put the mother in jail, because how would it look for the kids to see their mothers punished? One might ask the same question about their dads, no? Or does nobody care how it is for children to know their dads are in jail because they couldn’t give their mothers money? Rhetorical question. Of course nobody cares how a father’s suffering impacts on children, because only mothers’ suffering has the attention of family courts, police and the FRO.

If I were paying money for child support – and by the way, no custodial parent is obliged to say how she spends the money she gets for the children; she could be using it for spa days and nobody at the FRO would care – I wouldn’t be much encouraged to carry on with it if I never got to see my kids. It would occur to me that the state considers money more important to children than fathering. If the state feels that way, maybe society does too. Kind of an incentive-suppressant for fathers.

This story is about a lot more than car licences or what the appropriate punishment should be for failure to pay child support. Double standards abound in the custody industry. The FRO is a very scary agency characterized by way too much power, and far too little intelligence.

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