Rubens' story

Do women own their children?
You would think so, if my experiences are anything to go by.

I’ve had the misfortune of being involved in two relationships that did not
last. Each produced one child. After 12 years of marriage, on the first
occasion, my wife and I drifted apart to the point where there was no more
purpose in continuing together. At least, that is how I felt and hence, I
walked out of the marriage.

We were building a house at the time, or at least I, was building a house.
We were short of real finances and therefore I was doing ALL the work in
building what was to be our future home. She sat back and read Mills & Boon
books whilst I worked two jobs and spent every spare time working on the
house.

When I walked out I said to her that I’d come back to finish the house and
she could then keep the lot. All I wanted was to see my then eight year old
daughter. There was no violence or anything approaching that. There was,
however, a lot of emotion and crying, etc., mostly on her part. These things
are never easy but sometimes one has no choice.

Two weeks later, I had a policeman at my door serving me with an AVO. I rang
her to see what she was up to and she said that I should just walk of their
life permanently and that I should forget seeing my daughter ever again.

To cut a story short. I hired a solicitor and promptly fired him when the
first bill was for over $1000 back in January 1991. I had access orders that
were never complied with and eventually I filed for full custody, as it was
then known. I got interim custody of my child in August 1991 and eventually
had full custody some 2 years later after an incredible amount of court
actions on her behalf accusing me of everything from sexual assault of my
daughter to putting her in moral danger and to not even ensuring her
cleanliness. All nicely funded by us, the taxpayers, through Legal Aid. I,
on the other hand had to run my own case without the luxury of such help.

Legal Aid felt I had no prospects of winning, not even after she hired a man
to kill me when she realised things weren’t going her way, and that man
actually shot me. She was charged along with her mother for conspiring to
have me killed. The only person to do any time was the gun man. And he only
did just over three years. There’s justice for you. Rob a bank with a gun
and get ten years, plan a murder and attempt it and because you’re a bad
shot, you get three years and a bit with remissions.

It WAS nice to prove Legal Aid wrong though

That was a time that took away whatever fight I had in me, or so I thought.

Jump forward 4 years and I meet a lady I thought I would try to build a life
with. I fell in love. We moved into a home together after a few months and
all seemed well, well, almost. My daughter and her did not exactly get on
like a house on fire.

Nonetheless, we managed to produce a child two years into our relationship
and all seemed well. My daughter, however, felt more more alienated by my
new partner and eventually decided that she would go and live with her
mother, who had not bothered to see her in the eight years our daughter
lived with me. Regretfully, I thought it was probably for the best as far as
my daughter was concerned.

We lasted as a couple another year or so. The strains of my daughter living
and the underlying reasons for her living put a strain on our relationship.
When we eventually separated I suddenly realised I had lost both my
children. To not be able to see them every day left such a void in my life I
thought it wasn’t worth living. I attempted to gas myself but I was
interrupted about an hour too soon.

Jump forward a couple of months and my now ex partner and I came to an
understanding that I should have as much contact with our boy as possible.
She promised me she would not be like my first wife and make contact
difficult.

She was true to her word for six years, to the point where I spent every
rostered day off at her home helping her with her various jobs, she worked
from home. I even trained her in the use of computers. She went from a
technophobe to one where she was running an E bay business.

More than anything, I managed to build a deep and loving relationship with
our son. In fact I probably spent more time with our son per week than a
normal father that usually leaves home as the children are having breakfast
and only gets home as the children are getting up from their dinner.

I was lucky that I worked mostly long overnight shifts. That meant that I
was rostered off on nine days every three weeks. It also allowed me to coach
my son’s soccer team even on days when I was working. That meant going with
little sleep on those days but it was worth every minute of sleep I missed
out on. So you see, I was as close a live-in father as a child can get.

There was another reason for my spending so much time with my ex partner. I
still love her and I was hoping against hope that one day we might rekindle
what we had. I never made a move towards that end because I never saw a sign
that such an approach would be welcome and I didn’t want to risk my
closeness to the people I loved so very much.

In June this year, things fell apart big time. My ex had just had an
operation and I was living there in order to nurse her through her recovery.
I heard her on the phone every night at nine and when I asked who it was she
broke my heart when she told me that it was a man she had met.

I knew the day would come but it hurt anyway. Despite it all, I told her she
was quite free to do that and that it really was something I was expecting.
It would change things a bit, in that I wouldn’t be able to spend so much
time at her home but as I lived close by, I would still see our son as
often, only at my place. She told me then that she had another short affair
with a sales rep that used to visit her home to sell her stock for her E bay
business and that she had taken our son to a dinner date with him on
Mother’s Day eve.

I had worked all that night and came to her house in the morning, about 8am,
and cooked her breakfast so that she had it in bed, gave her her presents
with our son and all that goes with mother’s day. Knowing what had gone on
the night before did not make me feel at all good.

My father was, and is, recovering from a bout of cancer at the time and I
was on my way to visit him at Port Macquarie the following weekend and was
going to spend a week with him, I was on annual leave. Before leaving, I
asked my ex to not introduce the new boyfriend to our son. I explained to
her that it wasn’t good, especially for boys, to see their mother go through
a string of boyfriends. I took a train to my parents on the Saturday morning
and she took our son to Darling Harbour that afternoon to meet the new boy.
She then took him on an outing with him again on the long weekend Monday.

When I found out, I called my son on Monday, I was angry and told her she
was in fact whoring around with our son and that it was immoral to do so. I
got back the following weekend to discover that the new boy had visited her
home bringing along presents for our son, the ‘Back to the Future’ trilogy.
She tried to tell me that he just happened to have the dvd’s in the car and
that it was only a loan. I wonder how many 45 yo men carry the ‘Back to the
Future’ trilogy in their car.

Things have got to the point where we now hardly speak and she negotiates
contact with our son through him, an eight year old boy! – I hear her in the
background saying things like it’s Saturday between 10 and 6 or nothing. She
drove him on a 600 klms round trip a couple of weekends back to a funeral
for the sister in law of a close friend of hers, someone she hardly knew,
even though she knew other members of the family quite well.

Our son had never met this woman and his mother thought that it was better
for him to go and see people he hardly knew mourning a death than to have
him spend time with his father. Last weekend, the Saturday or nothing
weekend. She took him to a dinner with her auntie, her husband and her
auntie’s friend, all people over 65 years of age. The occasion? Her auntie’s
sister had died and they had come down from the Gold Coast for the funeral.
The dinner was a farewell to the auntie. Another more desirable event for my
son to attend than to spend time with his father.

When told that she’s messing our son up and that I, as a joint custodian of
our son, did not approve, her response is I will decide what is best for MY
son.

So I ask again – Do women own their children?


I have asked for the standard second weekend contact from the court. In view
of the latest goings on though, I will be altering the final orders that I
will be seeking to shared residence. A week in each home is what I want. He
would still attend the same school, etc.

We will see then if the courts agree that mothers, by virtue of their womb,
are entitled to behave as though they own their children. Or maybe it’ll be
pointed out to me that by virtue of my testicles, I can’t decide what is in
the best interest of my child.

It'll be pointed out to me that it’s ok to take your child on dates with
what amounts to a new squeeze, to put it nicely, and to take him to funerals
and wakes instead of my spending time with him. It’ll maybe be pointed out
to me that an eight year old witnessing strangers mourning is less damaging
for him than to spend time with a loving father.

I’ll keep you posted.

Rubens