Mums, Dads and Kids against Sole Custody

Judges don't like critisim when their harming your kids

2007-04-21T14:50:00.000+10:00

It occurred to me one of the main reasons fathers get done over in the FC when they are self represented is the criticism they express of the harm being done to their children.

Judges don't normally get exposed to criticism and any sort from anybody and tipically react with vengeance.

The problem doesn't exist in other courts. ...only when they are denying you your right to protect your children.

I criticised the court incessantly and they banned me from having any contact with my child . That'll learn me ! eh?

Kind regards
Simon

Finland it seems is no better.
This from Pertti

The chief judge of the Finnish Supreme Court, Leif Sevon, said once on TV that judges are so used to criticism they won't let it affect the decision making. What naive rubbish, what shameless arrogance to say so!

The truth is the judges wrongly use of power without inhibitions, whenever they are offended - and without any offence. I had lost my trust in the legal system which I told openly in the court room on the 15th March 1999. I still remember the recoil of the chief judge, Leena Korkalainen, at my words. Her later decision was: visitations 3 times a year, 90 minutes a time and with supervision in a shelter home. She is partly free of responsibility, since the social workers (who hated me) suggested that arrangement first.

(The decision is still in force; alienation began from that year on. Now my daughter Arla is in public custody living in a "first home" for kids in urgent need of care. Very soon the order for permanent public custody will be given, of which I have been informed. I have seen my daughter several times, we live in a small place, but she has not exchanged words with me. The social workers now emphasize the father must be back in the girl's life, the mother relation is broken in pieces, something must be done to restore the father relation. My daughter is 15 on the 6th June, FIRST NOW these poor folks get alarmed! My case is a PAS case; my daughter is reluctant to see me.)

Yes, judges do revenge!

Pertti Ruha

Hyvinkää, FINLAND

Steve's story - Queensland Australia

2007-02-28T22:34:00.000+11:00

This is my story. It is a honest and true account of how my ex-wife alienated me from my only child. I have never neglected or even smacked my son. Up until October 2006 my son and I had a very positive, affectionate, communicative and loving relationship. Our divorce was also very amicable. I moved out of the family home in January 2004, under the strain of her extremely interfering, negative and trouble making parents who would openly devalue me to my son. They would stay at our family home for 6 to 7 months of the year causing mayhem in the marriage, they then followed their daughter from England and eventually moved in permanently. 'A' is a bright, articulate and very funny little boy, aged 12 1/2 as of February 2007.

How can a once loving 'mutual' relationship be reduced to the father being told I can't speak to, write to, email to, telephone, or visit my child. if I try to contact him I will be served a legal order prohibiting me from making any contact. This happens to fathers across Australia - why? because Mothers are usually the carers and they can influence the child to the point it becomes too hard for the child to deal with and the child makes a choice, Mom or Dad, at which point the Mother proclaims it is the childs choice and not hers. The child then defends the abusing parent and rejects the targeted parent. The mother may wish to control or hurt the father, or they want the father removed from their lives, they use their own children to do this. Let's get one thing straight, this is CHILD ABUSE. Make no mistake, no confusion or misunderstanding ....this is child-abuse. It has to be accepted as child-abuse by

Solicitors
Barristers
Family Report writers
Judges
Parents
Psychologists
The Media. They are pretty much ignorant of PAS
Politicians
Teachers
fathers
Counsellors
Carers

Parental Alienation Syndrome will become widely accepted as disgraceful abuse of children, it will be outlawed

The Aim of my story

To bring awareness of the horrors of Parental Alienation to the world
For PAS to be crime and accepted as such in society
The presumption of equal parenting for fathers

The Story so Far

I received a letter from the Child Support Agency on October16th 2006 which stated that my ex-wife had requested to them that I cease paying her any more money as from that date. I thought this was a strange request so I rang her and asked why, she replied that she did not like me knowing her private income (approx $80.000 +)

How did this come about

I picked 'A' up for our day together at the end of October. He asked if we could play soccer and basketball first so we went to the park and did this. We then went for lunch and to the record store. We found we had an hour to spare so we stooped at a horse show we were driving past, in the adjoining field was a cemetery. We walked, holding hands through the cemetery at 4pm, talking and laughing as he made fun about my 'outie' belly button having it's own gravitational pull. We went to the car where his mother was waiting and as he got in her car he said "Ive had a great day Mum:. I hugged him and off they went.

In mid November she rang at the last minute to cancel my visitation. (Canceling at the last moment was something she did frequently) They were going on holidays 2 weeks later, which meant I would not see him for 6 weeks. I rang her and arranged to see him for a few days when they got back on December 15th 2006, she agreed to this, and even suggested it. That day came and I got no answer when I rang them over 10 times, no replies to my 6 emails and 6 texts asking for her or him to ring me and sort out my visitations. I considered they might have left the country, or moved interstate. After 4 days she rang me and said"Get Over Him" he does not wish to see you any more, she was cold and being very unemotional, she said I was harassing her. It was like she was a stranger and I had never known this person for the last 20 years. I begged her to participate in encouraging our relationship and to see him, to which she replied "I will do what 'A' wants, not you".

I asked to speak to him and he came on the phone and was like a totally different child, he copied her words but was stumbling all over the place and suddenly the phone went down. I have not seen my son since Early November. Where was that boy who had arranged to go go-karting with me when I saw him next?..how can this happen?

I was stunned and speechless and in shock. Three days later I received a solicitors letter stating I had severly distressed my son by walking through a graveyard at 4pm, I had made him take a cross off his neack (total lies) and had denegrated his mother (again lies)

My Son has Disappeared from view, I am grieving for my son. He is being abused by a vindictive mother

Losing a child is a massive blow and one that brings horrific grief and feelings of loss. I have endured disbelief, shock , anger, sadness, terrible feelings of injustice and loneliness. There is no closure to this, I may not be able to see him but he is still there in my heart all the time. This is torture and mothers that perpetrate this Parental Alienation show little kindness for humanity or maternal feelings for their child. The only empathy they feel is for themselves. This is similar to a sudden death and as my ex-wife said "just get over him". Society as whole seems to have a poor grasp of Parental Alienation and the mechanisms of PAS that can make a child turn against their father who they very recently had a loving relationship with

Bereavement Without End

The death of a child is indisputably one of the most incredibly horrible tragedies one can imagine. Whether by sudden accidental circumstance, or by a more lengthy cause as in illness, the loss of a child is undeniably painful to experience.Painful to the parents, parents to the family, and painful to anyone related to the child.

Never knowing the laughter of that child again or the tears, the joys and the accomplishments is a pain no parent should ever have to endure, and yet it happens. No one is to blame. It just happens. Imagine the same pain and the same sense of loss, with one exception-the parent is very much aware that the child is alive.

The effects of Parental Alienation Syndrome are very similar to the loss of a child due to accident or illness. For the parent who has been alienated from their child, the bereavement does not end. How do we know? Each alienated parent separately, and all of us collectively have lived with both the cause and the effect of Parental Alienation for countless years. Like a terminally fatal childhood disease, Parental Alienation rips the innocent child from your arms slowly. You witness the suffering. You witness the effects. You can feel the impending doom is inevitable, but you are powerless to do anything about it. You try remedy after remedy hoping that one will finally rid your child of the "disease". You work like a person possessed in order to finance the efforts, and when the final blow comes, it is emotionally devastating. You question yourself. You blame yourself for the loss. You tell yourself you should have done more. The very sad part of the story, is it is not unique. There are hundreds of thousands of children and parents affected by PAS.

We beg of those with the power to make people aware of this devastatingly horrible phenomena, to please do all they can to educate people on its effects, and to change the laws to protect the innocence of the children involved. Only then can we truly hope to keep children safe from the harmful side effects that are inherent with Parental Alienation itself. It's killing the spirit of family everywhere.

The real victim

My son may or may not get to have a dad and he will lose the positive influence I had in his life.

If you can find the time and the interest please read my story. Contact me if you want to ask any questions on 0433 537 270 or 61+7+5593 8660

The tender years doctrine - the root of Family Court child abuse

2007-02-01T23:18:00.000+11:00

Child Psychology in Family Proceedings

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D5w2qfB6bo&mode=related&search=

Family Law Changes Fail

2006-12-06T16:05:00.000+11:00

Posted by: "John Flanagan" jef02@hotmail.com jef0042000

Fri Dec 1, 2006 12:05 am (PST)

Hi
I have been following a case in the Family Court over the past few months. The custodial mother was seeking to totally remove the custodial father from having any contact with the non-custodial father (previous contact was 37 per cent) . I went along to the final part of the hearing in the Family Court last week. The judge has had some considerable experience in family law. At a previous part of the hearing, some months before, the judge had even mentioned the new section 65DAA of the Family Law Act (i.e the judge has" to consider
equal time or substantial and significant time". I was quite hopeful that the new legislation may have an impact on the way the Family Court thinks. I even half expecting to see some changes in the way the Family Court deals with the new Family Law legislation. (Silly me) I was wrong In the interim period, the judge made interim orders that the father was to have some contact. The mother continually ignored the orders and
refused contact. The judge realised that the custodial mother was not Going to give contact to the father under any circumstances. The only alternative option that the judge had was to reverse contact. In that way, both parents would have had contact with the children. However the judge was not game enough to do this. As result, the mother has sole custody of the children and the father has no contact whatsoever - not
even telephone contact. Until the Government legislates for a
rebuttable presumption of equal time shared parenting we will continue to have no fairness in the Family Court.

Regards John Flanagan

Another dad and his kid cop it.

2006-11-29T17:56:00.000+11:00

Hi Simon, my story;

I cared for her 2 kids, our newborn and her with CFS for nearly 3 years. Then after 3 affairs by her I was off. I then had full custody for 11 months and mother not even allowed overnights. But then comes the false allegations so the FC will change the orders- a strategy from the book of female tactics when in Family court! 7 dissimilar ones in total incl the ususal child related ones and now every one of them has been disproven. Finally we can get to Trial now after just over 4 years but not before I lost my job as a teacher after 22 years thanks to her child related lies and she even came to my gig and got me sacked as a musician after making a scene there too.

$4500 worth of unneccessary supervised visits and losses to lawyers and loss of income up around $150000 so far. Our son is now obese, showing behavioural problems at school, has medical problems and has even been assaulted by his mother but she was allowed by the police to take him to the assault interview!!The mother has been found guilty 3 times by crim court for breaches of VRO's and for an assault on another adult.

This is the brief version too.

To cap it all off the mother was involved in the much publicised Wood abduction case where a Swiss mother adbucted her 2 children where she actually organised the passports for this Swiss mother and helped her leave Perth WA illegaly.

Still she has the primary care and still our son is very unhappy and not thriving in anyway shape or form.

Simon

Perth

Giving children a voice takes conflict out of divorce

2006-10-13T10:09:00.000+10:00

Amazing how dumb these "experts' are.
But why expose the kids to manipulation and fear.

Can you imaging how much pressure your little girl for instance is put under to support her mother.
Can you imaging the pressure that's brought to bear by phycologists brought in to treat the child's behaviour with the mother after daddy been removed from her life.
Sure most kids are going to want fairness ... and both their parents in their lives.
Wouldn't it be easier to make the exclusion of one parent by the other illegal?
and not to bring the kids in to demonstrate this simple truth.

Regards,Simon
vascopajama@dodo.com.au

On 12/10/06, gcpg wrote:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20563011-2702,00.html

Giving children a voice takes conflict out of divorce
Caroline Overington
October 11, 2006

DIVORCING parents often try to keep the children out of the conflict. New research shows it may be the worst thing they can do.

A report by child psychologist Jenn McIntosh shows that when children are included in the debate about a collapsing marriage, the outcome is better for both parents, especially fathers, and for the children.

Divorcing parents who were presented with evidence of the effect of their squabbling on their children - in the form of their child's writing or drawings - were less likely to end up in the Family Court, and their post-separation parenting plans became more durable.

"We suspected that children would benefit if they were being heard," Dr McIntosh said. "But the fact that fathers gained so much from the experience - we didn't expect that."

More than 140 families with 364 children participated in the study, funded by the Attorney-General's Department for the Australian Institute of Family Studies' October seminar.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock was behind this year's changes to family law, which require separating parents to at least attempt to negotiate at a Family Relationship Centre before approaching the Family Court, unless violence is an issue.

Dr McIntosh divided warring parents into two groups: the "child-focused" group, which received generic information about how conflict can damage children; and a "child inclusive" group, in which parents were given drawings and writing by their own children on how the collapsing marriage was affecting them.

The process had to be handled delicately, and by experts. "It's not just a case of sitting down with children and saying, so, how do you feel about Mum and Dad getting a divorce?" Dr McIntosh said. "That would be a terrible over-simplification."

But the result was clear: parents who were told exactly how their squabbling was affecting the children "quickly modified their behaviour".

"If you say to parents, 'Your conflict hurts children', that's one thing. But if you say to them, 'This is what your child is actually saying', that's a different thing," Dr McIntosh said.

"The level of conflict dropped dramatically. Parents seemed to get a wake-up call. They were moved by the things they heard from their children."

Fathers were more likely to see a parenting arrangement as "fair" after seeing the impact of conflict on their children.

It is not yet clear whether the "child inclusive" model will be adopted by the Family Relationship Centres. While it seems effective, it is also expensive.

But Dr McIntosh said the process "certainly encourages parents to think like adults," which is one of the things Mr Ruddock has been trying to achieve.

"It can help them push the domino over in the right direction, and while there is pain, grief, upset, they need to keep their eye on the ball, which is the children."

She said the "executive functioning" kicks in, "where they say, 'That's right, I have children who are dependent upon me' ".

"It seems to allow both parents to swallow the bitter pill."

© The Australian

Father talking about his custody problems

2006-09-23T14:49:00.000+10:00

i was on YOUTUBE today and found this, I am absolutely gobsmacked that this man so eloquently describes the living nightmare many many of us here are experiencing day in and day out.

Please watch and make your own minds up

leeahn1 wants to share the following video with you:

Video Description

Have a listen and please comment or share your story.

Personal Message

This video is awesome!

2006-09-13T10:06:00.000+10:00

MY FAMILY COURT STORY – Robert Martin Duff – Case heard:1990

[1582 words – about 2/3 salient facts (more or less) and about 1/3 commentary]

1. My ex-wife used to abuse our kids – boy: DOB 1978, girl: DOB 1980. She used to punch them, hit them about the head and use ‘implements’. On one occasion, when she had the children away at her mother’s house, she kicked by son such that he was left with blue and yellow bruising and caused bleeding.

2. Although my son was the principal victim of the physical abuse, my daughter was terrified by these beatings and used to call it, ‘when Mummy goes mad’. I had seen my daughter turn as white as a sheet from the top of her head to the tips of her toes just watching my son cop a beating.

3. I tried to get my wife to go to counseling but she denied that she had any problems and blamed me for her losing control. She also blamed me for the children’s bad behaviour although the children were always well-behaved when they were with me. In short, I was responsible for her bad behaviour, the children’s bad behaviour and, of course, my own bad behaviour.

4. The attacks on my son were escalating both in frequency and severity, with my wife still refusing counseling and seeing no other way out I decided to separate from my wife and a custody battle before Justice Cohen ensued.

5. The school counsellor at my daughter’s school, Mr Hamilton, had noticed some aberrant behaviour on my daughter’s part and had taken her into counseling. My daughter said that she would be more comfortable talking to a woman and so Mr Hamilton referred my daughter to a local family counseling service in the Blue Mt’s west of Sydney called Gunedoo.

6. My daughter had such a good experience at Gunedoo that my son also asked to attend – which he did although each had separate counsellors.

7. The children both said that they wanted my wife and I to stay together but if we had to separate they wanted to live with me.

8. The Gunedoo counsellors supported the children’s wishes to live with me since, in part at least, they had determined that the children ‘felt safe’ with me and did not ‘feel safe’ with my wife.

9. The children said that they wanted their Gunedoo counsellors to represent them in Court.

10. Robbie Flohm (who is now a judge in the FC) was appointed as the Children’s Separate Representative and Anne Ainslie-Wallace acted for my wife.

11. Ms Flohm and Ms Ainslie-Wallace combined to get an order to prevent the Gunedoo counsellors from appearing in court, on the grounds [pretext?] of ‘protecting the children’s privacy’ despite the children’s stated wishes that they wanted those counsellors to represent them. [I consider the actions of Flohm and Ainslie-Wallace in this matter to constitute a ‘conspiracy to pervert the course of justice’ and if I was Justice Cohen I would be extremely angry that they had done this in my Court].

12. I want to make it clear that my wife never denied the abuse. I suspect she didn’t want to raise it because she didn’t want details of it aired in court however I will probably never know if that was her reasoning or not. Apparently, according to my solicitor, not denying a formal allegation in an affidavit in a responding affidavit constitutes an actual admission which probably explains the allegations of abuse were so readily accepted by all parties including the Court.

13. The court ordered that we both attend a psychologist for assessment. Obviously, ‘my’ counsellor supported my having custody however even my wife’s choice of counsellor, Terry Colling, found me not only competent but preferable as a parent. He referred us to a psychologist Gisela (surname forgotten), for assessment, who also found me competent to parent. My wife refused to see the psychologist and had thereby refused to comply with a Court Order for which she was never even reprimanded. Note: neither Terry Colling nor any other counsellor involved in the process were qualified psychologists so that is why we were referred to Gisela.

14. The court counsellor at the time, Donna Bowen [who I think has now some considerable power in the court counselling system] recommended that the children be ‘split’, ie my wife be given custody of our daughter and I be given custody of our son. On split custody my daughter said to me, ‘that is the worst thing that could happen, the absolute worst thing – then I wouldn’t get anything I want – I wouldn’t get to be with you and I wouldn’t get to be with S.’ [her brother]. Split custody would have removed her from both her protector and her support – I can only gasp at Bowen’s failure to recognize this.

15. My wife claimed in Court that she believed I was incompetent to look after the children. I was not informed beforehand that this would be her argument for custody (and so it should have been inadmissible but it was allowed). Consequently I had prepared no defence for that argument and had no witnesses to refute that this was her true belief. Such witnesses I suspect would have been readily available in her family – although, I couldn’t say if they’d lie for her but I like to think they wouldn’t.

16. It did not even occur to me that she would claim that she believed that I was incompetent since she had left the children in my care for years while she went away and studied and had always looked to me to control the children when she had lost control of them.

17. My wife claimed that the children said they wanted to live with me because I had threatened to kill myself if I didn’t get custody. She had no witnesses to this threat because such a threat was never made. Despite this ‘the threat was treated as very serious by the Court, the counsellors and the seprep and was apparently generally, accepted as the true reason why the children said they wanted to live with me.

18. My wife did however threaten to shoot me with both children as witnesses – the judge however dismissed this as, ‘just something one says during an argument’ despite the fact that it did not occur during an argument. No-one else seemed to regard the death threat from my wife as a matter of any seriousness whatsoever.

19. Justice Cohen accepted that my wife was abusive but blamed me for my wife’s violence and handed custody to my wife who, with the only person who had ever protected the children removed from the house, continued to abuse the children.

20. My son is now a paranoid schizophrenic living homeless somewhere. I suspect my daughter was ‘forced’ to adopt my wife’s point of view to survive emotionally in my wife’s house. She became hyper-functional. She won the university medal and moved to Switzerland. She seems to have become the archetypal ice-queen. Neither of them have made contact with me in many years or given me the information necessary to contact them.

Commentary:

a) I believe I was swamped by the current tsunami of ideology that holds: women are victims and men are perpetrators. Everything else is incidental and the facts of the matter, whatever they happen to be, are simply moulded around that paradigm.

b) Even though everyone agreed that my wife was abusive – they universally blamed me for it. This deftly ‘flipped’ her role, transforming her from perpetrator to victim. It not only worked a flip on her role but mine too – I had been basically ‘a by-stander’ but now I am to blame, I am the perpetrator. And there you have it in one simple action ‘flipped’ into the mould: man is perpetrator – woman is victim – simple isn’t it? . Question: How often do you think a man would get away with blaming a woman for his violence with; court counsellors, children’s representatives and judges? Under this paradigm men are almost always held responsible for their violence while women are almost always excused for theirs.

c) Contrary to a lot of thought in the ‘men’s movement’ I don’t regard this as a ‘feminist paradigm’ and for a number of reasons. Firstly and most obviously, the judge was a man but I will come back to this in a minute because there is a more important reason. I was raised by the feminist and to adopt the attitude that: men are responsible for men’s violence but women are not responsible for women’s violence, is to imply that women do not have the same level of control as men.

d) This was actually the old patriarchs’ attitude and the foundation of their argument as to why women should not be allowed in positions of responsibility, ie because ‘they are not responsible for their own actions’. I believe Justice Cohen to be just such an ‘old patriarch’ and his unwavering support of this explanation highlights the fundamental counter-feminism of this argument.

e) To propose that men are not only responsible for their own violence but also responsible for women’s violence is an even more extreme version of the same prejudice. It implies not only that men control themselves and that women do not, but that men not only control themselves but that they also control women. This paradigm is so contrary to true feminism as to be mind-wrenching. It not only denies that women have just as much control over themselves as men do but portrays them as being ‘under the power of men’.

f) I know that many people who promote this paradigm regard themselves as feminists however this is not true feminism. It may advance a certain woman’s personal cause in a particular case but by seeking to make women ‘victims’ in every situation, they are actually denying the power, responsibility and intelligence that women like my mother fought so hard to get recognized.

Family Court system of Australia is a social disaster

2006-09-13T10:03:00.000+10:00

The devil is in the detail

In this account of my experience with the Family Court system in Australia, I have tried to keep to the point and be as brief as possible. Unfortunately, to give a clear picture of some of the many failures of the current system, it is necessary to describe incidents in detail. In my view, if one is not prepared to examine cases in detail, there is no point attempting to understand the problems.

Family Court - two years of anguish and escalation. Why not three months ?

After my separation and subsequent divorce, the Family Court process took two years to complete – two years of anguish which saw the relationship between myself and my ex-partner degenerate from a time when we would still hug each other, make jokes, and offer cups of tea, to one of bitter arguments and physical violence. I believe the Family Court system and Family Law industry is partly responsible for this escalation of conflict.

If nothing else, the length of a case in the Family Court is a major flaw of the system as it is bound to exacerbate the tensions and anguish. Why can’t a case be completed in three months or less ? Presumably this would be “in the child’s best interests.”

“My solicitor says I can get 70% and I want 70%”

In October 2002 I organised to meet with my ex-partner at the Dispute Resolution Centre. By my ex-partner's own account, she had contributed 45% of the assets (I maintained it was 24%). The mediators put it to her “So you would be happy with 45% ?” My ex-partner replied “No, my solicitor says I can get 70%, and I want 70%.”

This was the first of many examples of how the solicitor had managed to ‘up the ante’.

In the Family Court process there were three 'conciliation conferences'. Solicitor for my ex-partner, Eddy Lago (Cairns), undermined chances for reconciliation at two of these three sessions. In the first session, my position was that my ex-partner had contributed 24% of the assets. Solicitor Eddy Lago, acting on behalf of my ex-partner, wanted 70%. In the spirit of negotiation I offered 35% (and was prepared to go to 50%). The solicitor facetiously responded “Ok, we want 90%” - thus swiftly and effectively ending any prospect of a negotiated settlement.

(Solicitor Eddy Lago asked me straight after that meeting what my bottom line was and I told him 50%).

My ex-partner ended up winning 68% of the assets at the Final Hearing, however 40% of this, it is estimated, was spent on the solicitor's and barrister's fees, implying that she received about 41% of the assets.

“We were just about to send out a car to pick you up”

In June 2003 I went to pick up my toddler son on my day of contact (informal agreement made in the Family Court). My ex-partner said she wanted me to come an hour later in future. I agreed saying I would return our son an hour later. My ex-partner replied that our son must return at the regular time. My ex-partner was unilaterally changing the amount of time I would spend with my son. Even so, I suggested as a compromise - ok how about half an hour later ? My ex-partner began yelling at me – “No I can't trust you, you’re not having him” and attempted to take him from my arms. I said “No, it is my day to have him” and I turned and began walking to my van about six metres away. My ex-partner began pulling at my shirt and scratching my arms. I fended her off using my palm on her forehead, but she persisted. She was between me and my van. I gave my ex-partner a single barefoot kick to the shins. My ex-partner jumped back and yelled that she was going to take out a restraining order against me.

At home, still shaking from the incident, I rang the Domestic Violence Hotline. They advised me to make a report at the local police station. When I arrived the police officer said to me “Good thing you came in because we were just about to send out a car to pick you up.”

I felt like I was the perpetrator of the violence though I knew I wasn’t. The main difference in our stories was that she said that I kicked her in the groin (rather than the shin) and she fell to the ground. Naturally, she had no grazes or any marks as her version was untrue. On the otherhand, I had significant bloody scratch marks on both my upper arms.

At this point I should have taken out a Domestic Violence Order (DVO) against my ex-partner. However, I was unfamiliar with what a DVO was. Secondly, I was being made to feel like the guilty party. Thirdly, in retrospect, taking out a DVO against my ex-partner would have worked in her favour because, as I was told in the second ‘conciliation conference’ – any signs of conflict between the parents means that Equal Residency cannot be granted.

This is one of the many ludicrous aspects of Family Court policy. This policy gives an incentive for the mother to create conflict. And it happens !

The police officer never asked me if I would like to take out a DVO against my ex-partner. He suggested instead we all have a meeting, which we did. Asked why she attacked me, my ex-partner said that I was running on wet grass with our son in my arms and that she was afraid I would slip over with him. The police officer concluded from this that I must have been running up the street (which my ex-partner agreed I was not doing). He said the story didn’t make sense because I was only a few metres from the van and there would have been no space in which to run. He said there were no grounds for a DVO to be taken out against me.

At that meeting I asked my ex-partner to detail the agreement of shared care we had reached at the Family Court a couple of weeks previously. The police officer noted it down. When my ex-partner unilaterally reduced access from three days a week to two the following week, I rang the police officer. He told me to see my solicitor as there was nothing he could do about it.

Here is another ludicrous policy of the Family Court: Residency is often based on precedent – Who has been caring for the child mostly up to this point? My ex-partner would likely have been briefed on this by her solicitor. It is likely my ex-partner was reducing my access in order to achieve a better outcome in the Final Hearing. I could have kept my son for an extra day while he was in my care but this would have created huge conflict and my son would have suffered. Residency outcomes should not be based on precedent as this policy is geared to cause conflict.

“He said it with a smile on his face”

At the second “conciliation conference”, I presented a written account of the incident where my ex-partner attempted to snatch our son from my arms and deeply scratched my upper arms, as I knew the incident would be raised.

I had no solicitor as I had decided to represent myself. *

The Deputy Registrar, Gilbert Victoire, criticised me for producing this account of events. Why ? - I do not understand to this day. He criticised me for other things such as taking my son to the police station. (As it turned out, had I not taken him to the police station he would have been with me anyway when the police car arrived to arrest me on the strength of my ex-partner’s complaint lodged by telephone…)

I believe the agenda of the Deputy Registrar was to minimise the number of cases that go to Final Hearing and that his strategy was to lean on and intimidate the weakest party. Since my ex-partner had her solicitor with her, he decided to lean on (read ‘bully’) me.

I also produced a letter from a former partner (14 years together) who stated that in all that time, I had never hit her, nor even pushed her - ie I had never been violent in any way. Eddy Lago, solicitor for the mother then said to me “How did you get that out of her ? Did you beat her up as well ?” Speechless, I turned to the Deputy Registrar, Gilbert Victoire, to see if he was going to respond to this blatant provocation. The Deputy Registrar Gilbert Victoire turned to me saying “He said it with a smile on his face” as if somehow that made it all quite acceptable.

The presumption that if there has been any violence, the male must have been the perpetrator and the female the victim, is all too prevalent in our society and it is very frustrating if you have taken care to avoid violence (the single barefoot kick to the shins was the only act of violence – though in self defence – in two relationships spanning 20 years), yet you have been the target of violence by female partners (including deep scratches, and slaps and punches to the face).

* My previous Legal Aid solicitor, Wendy Lehmann, in the first conciliation conference gathered around an office table, seemed more intent on pressuring me into submission than advocating on my behalf. (Some months later I overheard her complaining to a colleague about having to take on Legal Aid work). Solicitor Wendy Lehmann would not put forward my offer to the other party, merely present me with their position. When I put my offer forward myself to get a process of negotiation and compromise going, I was told I was out of order – only the solicitor could speak!)

Serving documents on the solicitor

As a self-representing litigant, I went to the offices of the solicitor for the mother, Eddy Lago, to serve papers and attain a signature in the box marked 'Solicitor's signature.' The receptionist notified the solicitor that I had documents to serve, then turned to me saying “He'll be right down”. I waited 30 minutes, then ducked outside to put more money in the parking metre. When I returned, I went upstairs to the office of Eddy Lago and informed the secretary outside his office that I just needed a signature and I’d be off. She informed Eddie Lago and then told me I had to wait downstairs. I told the secretary that I would wait outside his door until I received the necessary signature. The solicitor Eddy Lago came out and shouted at me to wait downstairs. I repeated that I only needed a signature and I’d be off, and until I received the signature I’d remain exactly where I was. The solicitor went back inside his office, then reappeared about 15 minutes later saying that he'd rung the police. I told him that I wasn’t concerned about the police – that I just needed the signature and I’d be gone.

I waited for another 15 minutes outside the office of Eddy Lago, meaning I had waited one hour in total. Eddie Lago then reappeared from his office. “Come downstairs with me” he said. I went with him downstairs where I expected he would sign the Proof of Delivery form in the box marked “Solicitor’s signature”. However, solicitor Eddie Lago told me once again that the police were just about to arrive and that I had no right to abuse his staff. I responded that I had not abused any of his staff members and just required a signature, (noting to myself that the police were taking their time in arriving).

Eddy Lago then informed me that he was not required to sign the box, and that the receptionist at the front desk could do it. I told him that a lot of trouble could have been avoided had he said this in the first place.

The solicitor went upstairs and I went to the receptionist at the front counter and asked if she could sign the Proof of Delivery “signature of Solicitor” box. The receptionist knew nothing of this and rang upstairs for solicitor Eddy Lago who returned to the foyer. The solicitor Eddy Lago, about 6'3" in height, then proceeded to stand over me and shout at me telling me to leave the premises, and that he owned these premises. I told him (again) in a calm voice that I just needed a signature and I would be gone. The Office Manager appeared and asked what was going on. I explained that I just needed a signature and asked if he was able to sign. He said no. I took his name as a witness of delivery and left. I believe the solicitor Eddy Lago was again deliberately trying to provoke me so that I would take at swing at him (or some other imprudent response), and use it against me.

The solicitor, Eddy Lago, wrote an Affidavit which he submitted to the Family Court for the Final Hearing. In it he falsely describes how I was abusive to his staff.

Solicitor Eddy Lago arranges a meeting

The solicitor Eddy Lago arranged a meeting between me, himself, and my ex-partner to get me to affirm claims by my ex-partner of bills she had paid during our relationship. We examined supermarket dockets and other minor expenses totalling about $400. The meeting ran for four hours and would have cost my ex-partner about $1000 in solicitor’s fees.

Interim Orders

At the third conciliation conference in late 2003, I asked the Deputy Registrar why I was not able to see my son on weekends, especially since he has a half-sister who was at school during week days, (and who is absent during school holidays when she visited her mother), and since my ex-partner did not allow me to have my son for overnight contact. The Deputy Registrar put this question to my ex-partner. She responded “Because I work! and weekends is the only time I can see him.” Remembering something from a previous conciliation conference the Deputy Registrar asked her “But don't you also have Thursdays off?” My ex-partner replied “Yes, but that's when I have to do my shopping !” Irritated with her response, the Deputy Registrar slammed his book closed and turned to me saying “you should seek Interim Orders.”

This was the first I had heard of “Interim Orders”.

So I spent many many hours preparing an application for Interim Orders. When the matter was finally heard the judge ruled “Because the Final Hearing is imminent, we will not change the current pattern of contact.” The judge described the Final Hearing as ‘imminent’ even though he could not set a date. The Final Hearing occurred 12 months later.

Playing the DVO card

Having failed to get a DVO against me when my ex-partner attacked me the first time round, she succeeded in getting a DVO against me the second time, strategically just two weeks before the Final Hearing.

The incident occurred on Christmas Eve 2004 (my son was now 3yrs old). I had care of my son on Christmas Eve and I was scheduled to return my son to his mother at 6.30pm. In the afternoon I attended a Christmas party with my son (the first Christmas or New Year celebration with him since the separation in 2002). It was a big party and my son was having a lot of fun with his/our friends (big and small). There was lots of gourmet food, a dad dressed as Santa, a Christmas tree and lots of presents to open. At 8.15pm my ex-partner rang telling me I was late and demanded I return our son immediately. I told her I would be there in half an hour (ie 8.45pm), given that I would have to locate my son in the party, say goodbye to people and drive over there. At 8.30pm my ex-partner appeared, grabbed my son and began walking away. My first reaction was to walk the other way, but then I felt the need to say goodbye to my son, particularly as I was going away for two weeks.

I caught up with her and stood in front of her saying I wanted to hug my son goodbye. She attempted to go around me. I put my arms around my son to give him a hug. My ex-partner screamed for her boyfriend (6’ 3” – same height as the solicitor !) who came and grabbed me by the shirt ripping the sleeve. They walked toward the gate and I walked with them trying to talk to my son. The boyfriend said “You had better not hit me or I will take you to court.” I wasn’t threatening him in any way and thought his comment odd. I said “I am not going to hit you Gary though nothing would give me greater pleasure.” At that moment, (away from the party) he gave me a clip on the head (open palm). Surprised I said “you hit me you bastard !”. I went to give him a similar (open palm) clip on the head. He blocked it and punched me in the mouth. I retreated to the house and saw in the mirror that I had a bleeding lip.

I went away for two weeks. When I returned I was served with a summons to appear in court on a charge of Domestic Violence. No police officer had asked me what had happened. The matter had not been investigated before charges were laid. I understand this is standard practice.

I visited the Cairns Regional Domestic Violence Centre where Amanda, the executive officer there, having heard my account of the incident, advised me to “Accept the charges without admission of guilt”. She added “The charges have been brought by the Queensland Police. No one has ever won when the charges have been brought by the police.”

I was told by Amanda and others – “Don’t worry about DVO charges. They are very common and not necessarily regarded as serious.” But they should be regarded as serious shouldn’t they ? Was this just another ploy to get me to submit to and streamline a DVO production line prone to costly congestion ?

Another women’s activist argued “well [the DVO charges] stopped the violence didn’t they ?” This logic is disconcerting. If the ends justifies the means and who actually perpetrated the violence, or whether there was in fact any violence, doesn’t really matter, why not lay the DVO charges on just the women instead of just the men ? – or at least both parties…

Some weeks later I was in the court waiting room with four other men and a woman. The woman was the last to arrive. An advisor, presumably from a women’s support organisation, approached the woman and asked if she required assistance, which she did and they disappeared into another room. In the courtroom, my ex-partner also had an advisor. No such services were available to me or any of the other men.

I accepted the charges without admission of guilt. On hindsight I thoroughly regret this decision. I feel I was intimidated into doing so. I wrote the judge an eight page letter, to which she responded that I needed to approach my local MP as there was nothing she could do [about distinguishing false DVOs from legitimate ones].

How is it that I was charged with Domestic Violence because I was two hours late returning my son from a Christmas Eve party ? I had not hit anyone, I had not even threatened anyone or used abusive language (other than the mild instances described above) – yet I was hit and had my shirt ripped ? How is it that charges can be laid without even interviewing the accused beforehand ?

Final Hearing – father “inexperienced”

Justice Carmody comes across as reasonable and even-handed. He gave the impression that he made allowances for the fact that I was self-representing.

However, Justice Carmody made some bizarre statements and unreasonable judgments.

He stated that the I was inexperienced as a father ! - even though I had actively brought up a 14 year old daughter and currently had fulltime care, and, as was reflected in the Family Report, she is a positive, thriving, well-adjusted teenager. In fact, I had much more experience than the mother !

“Global assessment”

In the property settlement he took into consideration dubious evidence of shopping grocery bills paid by the mother, and a scrappy and barely legible notebook of supposed expenses. He did not tally the items where a major arithmetical mistake had been made, and accepted as evidence a bank deposit slip which had been filled in but which had not been stamped or separated from the butt. It was obvious my ex-partner was desperately trying to demonstrate that she had contributed as much as I had (changing her story in the process which was evident from previous statements) which she obviously hadn’t. He ignored completely that over $5,000 had been received by the mother in Family Tax Allowances to which both parents were entitled, and that this amount should be taken into consideration when calculating who had spent what. Because I hadn’t kept shopping grocery bills from four years prior, it was assumed I hadn't bought any !

The judge did not take into his calculations my ex-partner’s superannuation because it was concluded that “it would be a long time before she would benefit from it”. I wonder if the same sort of reasoning would have been followed had the superannuation belonged to the father.

Justice Carmody awarded 68% of assets to the mother even though she had contributed only 24%. He said “This is a global assessment and I am not required to, and will not provide a breakdown for this figure.” Not even a justification for this decision was given.

Allegations of sexual abuse

The Affidavits of the my ex-partner and her mother contained allegations (strong insinuations) of sexual abuse by me toward my son. The insinuated allegations are false. Having such false allegations made against you is extremely distressing.

In my case I was very lucky to be able to demonstrate they were false. I imagine in many other cases fathers are not so fortunate. This is not to say that real cases of child abuse do not occur (by both mothers and fathers). However, we just tend to ignore the problem of mothers making false allegations with impunity.

My ex-partner agreed, during my cross-examination of her, that her allegations were very serious. I then asked why she had not raised these serious matters during her interview with the Child Psychologist who was writing the Family Report. She replied that she didn’t have enough time. I held up a copy of the Family Report which showed that the interview had lasted 1hr 45 mins. I would have pressured her to admit that she had fabricated the allegations except I was concerned the judge might think I was bullying her as it was already plain to everybody by her blushing and body language etc that she had lied, and in fact committed perjury. When the maternal grandmother later, in a rambling incoherent response to a question, began talking about sticking pencils up the bottom, the judge, thankfully, demanded that she only speak to what was in her Affidavit.

The judge, however, made no comment to my ex-partner for having committed perjury – not even a slap on the wrist.

I must say here that I am grateful that the Child Psychologist, Marilyn Venus, (a committed feminist), had obviously not prompted my ex-partner during the Family Report interview, or asked leading questions such as “have you ever been concerned about the father’s behaviour toward the child ?” I imagine the Child Psychologist had read the Affidavits prior to the interview. It shows that there does exist some level of integrity sometimes.

At this point I should also say that staff at the office counter of the Family Court (Cairns) were always friendly, patient, and made an effort to be helpful.

“In the Child’s Best Interests”

Even though the mother works fulltime and is on call some nights and weekends, and even though the father was available to care for the child any time and all the time, and even though the child had a sibling at the father's home, it was deemed in the child's best interest to locate the child with the mother.

One of the justifications of the Family Court giving sole residency to mothers has been that the father is working full time and the mother is available to look after the child. Here we see the double standard of the Family Court and the bias against fathers in action.

“WHEN I STAND YOU SIT !”

During the Final Hearing I was not reacting quickly enough - that is immediately resuming my seat the moment the mother's barrister, Josephine Willis, stood up and interjected. After a couple of reminders, Josephine Willis turned to the me, and at a distance of approximately 50cm, shouted loudly in my face “WHEN I STAND YOU SIT ! YOU GOT THAT ?! WHEN I STAND YOU SIT !” I was speechless and I did not respond. Rather I later approached the barrister Josephine Willis and calmly explained that as I had never been in court before, much less self-represented, I would try to remember as best I could, but that I may forget again.

It was obvious that the behaviour of the barrister Josephine Willis was deliberately provocative, and was a form intimidation. It was like the provocative behaviour of the solicitor Eddy Lago. Justice Carmody witnessed this aggressive outburst but said nothing.

The truth is that it would not be unreasonable for a person to respond aggressively to such an outburst. Such provocative behaviour by solicitors and barristers (particularly toward self-representing litigants) should be condemned by the Court, rather than be accepted as a fair tactic.

Solicitor Eddy Lago was also present at the Final Hearing. During the barrister’s cross examination of me, he sat staring at me with a piercing look as if to say “how could you have done this ?” More psychological intimidation. Finally I remarked “What is this Eddy ? Is it a staring contest ?” He gave a half smile, turned his eyes away momentarily before resuming his piercing stare.

There were other examples of psychological intimidation which I will not go into here. Perhaps one should just shrug this off as courtroom theatrics? I say psychological intimidation is regarded as a form of Domestic Violence, and it should not be tolerated when solicitors and barristers do it also.

Awarding costs against the Respondent

Justice Carmody ordered the Respondent (ie me) to pay $5,000 towards the legal fees of the Applicant. This was despite the fact that:

1. I had made written offers for settlement and the mother had made none.

2. Residency orders were closer to what I had sought than what the mother had sought.

3. that generally Respondents do not have to pay legal fees of the Applicant.

Eddy Lago, solicitor for the Applicant had argued that I, the Respondent, had drawn things out so the two-day Final Hearing was longer than it needed to be. I pointed out that cross-examination of the father (me) by the mother's barrister was significantly longer than my cross-examination of the mother.

I rang up to find about the procedure for appealing against these costs. I was told that I would need transcripts of the Final Hearing which would cost me about $3,000 ! I was also told by the Family Court in Brisbane that a board of Family Court judges would hear the Appeal and that “Appeals are rarely successful because the judge’s decision is usually discretionary, and other judges do not like to overturn discretionary decisions.”

Sort it out yourself

In my Orders Sought I asked that pick-ups and drop-offs of the child be reciprocated - ie each parent do their own pick-ups such that drop-offs are eliminated. Justice Carmody didn't see this as a reasonable request and ordered that the father do all pick-ups and drop-offs.

I asked that the mother use the child's surname as described on his birth certificate (the father's surname) rather than changing it to her own, to avoid confusion as to which name our son would be listed under at school, with Medicare etc etc. Justice Carmody suggested that this was one issue that in the new spirit of cooperation, the father and mother could resolve amongst themselves. One year later this issue has not been resolved. Surely the Court is there to make decisions when no agreement can be reached by the parties.

An easy obvious fair general policy solution would be for boys to take the surname of their father and girls to take the surname of their mother.

“I expect by then you two will be able to sort things out yourselves”.

The Family Report was based on meetings of the Family Court Child Psychologist, Marilyn Venus, and the mother, and then the father. My 14yr old daughter was also required for an interview, though the child's maternal grandmother who was looking after my son most of the time while the mother was working, was not required to be interviewed.

The Child Psychologist sat in the corner of a small room observing and taking notes while my son and I 'interacted'. Similarly this took place with the mother. This is such an unnatural situation in which to ‘objectively’ observe ‘typical behaviour’ between a child and a parent, and yet so much hangs in the balance with this half hour 'observation'. One can easily walk along a plank located one metre above the ground, but suspend the same plank between two buildings 100m above the ground and the result is quite different.

Nevertheless, the interviews and observations went smoothly. In the Family Report, the Child Psychologist Marilyn Venus recommended a three stage increase in contact with the father. Marilyn Venus said to me following the release of the report “I didn't go all the way to Equal Residency because I felt I'd intervened enough, and I thought that by the time he [our son] goes to school, I expect you two will be able to sort things out for yourselves.” What a huge ill-founded assumption this was considering the mother was willing to fabricate sexual abuse allegations amongst other blatant untruths in her Affidavits to minimise my contact with my son.

It also puts all the onus on me to achieve reconciliation. Why ?

I asked the Child Psychologist why the Family Court granted Equal Residency in so few cases. She said “You have no idea of some of the fathers we have come through here.” “Are so many of them so terrible ?” I asked. “Oh no, most of them are very good fathers” she responded. “So why is Equal Residency granted in less than 5% of cases ?” I continued. The Family Court Child Psychologist, Marilyn Venus, did not respond. She looked at her notes, shuffled her papers and changed the subject.

The judgment of Justice Carmody

In his Contact Orders, Justice Carmody followed the recommendations of the Family Court Child Psychologist. He was only going to make orders until the beginning of 2007 which would have meant both the father (me) and the mother would be posturing for the next two years preparing for the next round in the Court. The judge had given me some excerpts from the Family Law Act to read during the lunch break. One part of the Act is a recommendation - when making orders, consider orders which minimise the need to return to Court. I pointed this out to the judge. Justice Carmody seemed irritated. However, in his Final Orders he put in a fourth contact stage beginning in 2007 and continuing indefinitely.

I pointed out to the judge that while stages one to three were progressively increasing contact, his stage four would reduce contact and that there was no apparent logic in this. Justice Carmody responded that when a child starts school, both parents have less time. I responded that even taking this into account, the child would have less percentage contact with the father. The judge replied irritably “well I'm not going to change it now !” Easy for him to dismiss but his sloppy decisions can have a major impact on our lives and relationships for the next decade or more.

We were handed a copy of the Orders for perusal. Eddy Lago, solicitor for the mother, approached the father after about five minutes saying, 'Well we're finished. Are you finished ? We should go back in.' He was obviously pressuring me to agree. However, I took my time reading over the Orders.

I noticed that the judge had deviated from the recommendations of the Child Psychologist by ordering pick up at 7.30pm rather than 7.30am. The judge, again irritable, remarked that that was just a 'typo.' 'Typo' it might have been, but had I not pointed it out at that moment it most likely would have become irrevocable.

Forget about Child Support

I believe one of the reasons my ex-partner wishes me to have minimal time with my son is simply as a punishment, an act of malice. I believe a further reason is that the more contact I have with my son, the less Child Support I am required to pay her. Worse, if we had Equal Residency, which I was seeking, my ex-partner may have to pay me Child Support (due to her higher income).

I do not wish to receive any Child Support from my ex-partner (unlike my ex-partner, who has complained I am not giving enough to her). I would like to sign a Parenting Agreement stating that if we had Equal Residency, neither of us would seek Child Support from the other. However, as my ex-partner knows, such a condition would not be recognised by the Family Court. So I have no way to guarantee my ex-partner that I would not claim Child Support (as she is currently doing), whereupon I would be able to remove one of the barriers to her agreeing to Equal Residency. This is another example of the counter–productive nature of Family Court policy.

Kangaroo Court

My ex-partner was advised by her solicitor as early as October 2002 that she would most likely gain 70% of the assets if she went to Court. She won 68% of the assets. After an immense amount of time was spent by both parties producing documents demonstrating financial contributions to the relationship and including, for example, supermarket dockets from four years prior, and unstamped bank deposit slips, and after simply ignoring much of that documentation and giving an unjustified discretionary ‘global assessment’ it seems that the final outcome was in fact a virtual foregone conclusion. It appears that this was a Kangaroo Court.

Given that the mother was working fulltime and was on call some evenings and weekends while the father was available to look after the child fulltime if necessary; given that the father already had sole custody of the child’s half-sister, and given that the Child Psychologist had presented a three stage plan of increased contact with the father (to six days and four nights a fortnight) on the basis of a positive Family Report, it seems as though the judge reluctantly conceded the Child Psychologist’s recommendations.

Had I not had these exceptional circumstances in my favour I feel sure the judge would have ordered the standard second weekend contact, plus the cynical three hours contact after school one day a week which judges now add in the face of mounting evidence of the damage to children from being alienated from a parent (and despite the evidence that children respond better to block contact, not fragmented contact).

How can you split a week ?

To my constant amazement, I was asked by Family Court officials on a number of occasions – how did I think Equal Residency could work since my son was too young to be away from a parent (read ‘mother’) for a whole week. And how can you divide a week in half ? (there being an odd number of days in a week).

Well couples do this all the time, the most obvious plan being that you alternate four days (father) and three days (mother), and then three days (father) and four (mother).

You are left with the feeling that the culture of the Family Court is unimaginative, devoid of lateral thinking, and with an inability to think outside the square.

Do you actually believe the Family Court amplifies conflict?

During the Final Hearing I argued that it would be better to have Final Orders that could give finality to the Family Court process rather than orders which would require us, the parents, to return to the Court two years later, because the adversarial Family Court process amplifies conflict, and we need to resolve conflict. Justice Carmody was unable to fathom this argument. “Do you mean to say that if two people come to the Family Court and there is no conflict between them then the court will create conflict ?” he asked. I responded “If two people come to the Family Court it usually means that there is already conflict between them. But the way the Family Court operates means that solicitors will search for ammunition, and that there will be more accusations and counter-accusations as a result”. It seemed he just could not comprehend what was blatantly obvious to me from my own experience of the Family Court system. It is structured in ways which amplify and generate conflict.

This obvious fact is extremely serious because one of the most important factors in a child’s life is some sort of reconciliation, forgiveness, cooperation and harmony between the separated parents to heal the huge rift of divided loyalties and love the child has for both parents. The dynamics of the Family Court system together with the Family Law Industry tend to amplify conflict and can produce resentment meaning there is never any sort of reconciliation between the parents leaving many children emotionally scarred for life.

The new Family Relationship Centres (FRCs) are an admission and recognition that the current adversarial system is fundamentally flawed. But the FRCs will not work because the Family Court’s quirky policies and gender-biased laws have not changed.

Afterword

It has been said that men often have trouble letting go of issues after divorce, and they harbour resentment for years even to the point of obsession, unable to move on. My detailed account above could be interpreted in this light.

I therefore hasten to assure the reader that though I am extremely disappointed with the Family Court system and the Family Law industry, and though I have become a committed activist as a result of my experience (which I know is not nearly as unjust and outrageous as other cases I have come to learn about), I have indeed moved on. I am very happy with my life, and I have a relatively positive engagement with my ex-partner with regards to our son, (who thankfully has been protected from much of the pain of the separation and anguish of the Family Court process).

In the same way that any political activist must fight for justice and a more enlightened system - for years if not decades, I too must keep arguing my case along with thousands of other activists here in Australia. So please consider this before reducing and relegating my account to some negative male stereotype.

Geoff H.

Another battle for shared parenting

2006-08-27T17:42:00.000+10:00

Another battle for shared parenting - damn shame there's so much money in restricting time with Dad.
Please go to http://thefamilycourtphenomenon.blogspot.com/ for dicussion of why mothers get so easily talked inot to stopping their children seeing their Dad.
______
Outcry

Hi,

I dont contact very often but my Hsband and I have a mediation meeting with his ex and her new partner tomorrow. We have court orders in place that are 7 years old. We have broached them about shared parenting. I have two step kids that are 8 and 6. They both would like to spend more time with us. We now have 3 of our own 5 4 and 10 mths.

She has flat out said no. She and her husband also have a 4 yr old. We have had a pretty good relationship up till now always been able to sort stuff out. This is different. She has told the kids no way is it going to happen and has told them that we want to keep them forever. She asked them what they wanted and my stepson said he wanted to spend more time with us. She told him to move in with us and burst into tears. She has also told them that their 4 yr old will be lonly and is making them feel responsible for him.

I dont want to ruin the kids with a big court fight but I also think that they will be beter of if we have week on week off access. Their are also a few small incidents that we have issues with like sending my stepdaughter to school with headlice stuff in her hair or not brushing hair properly so their are huge knots or taking them out on delivery runs until 9.30 at night. We would like them to be part of normal family routine and have a normal relationship with them instead of trying to push it into every second weekend.

My oldest goes to the same school as his bro and sis and so I know theirs no geographical probs. I think maintenance or loss of is a big part of it but you cant say that can you.

Regards

Liz

PS wish me luck

Senator Dan Sullivan MLC Western Australia - Hansard

2006-08-27T11:52:00.000+10:00

RUSSELL WOOD-MAYA WOOD-HOSIG - CHILD CUSTODY
Grievance

MR D.F. BARRON-SULLIVAN (Leschenault) [10.00 am]: My grievance is to
the Minister for Community Development and is on the behalf of the
two children of Mr Russell Wood and Mrs Maya Wood-Hosig. Both their
10-year- old-daughter and eight-year-old son are Australian citizens.
Both were born in Western Australia.

Mr Wood and his wife split up, and the custody of their children
became a matter for the Family Court of Western Australia. At the
time both parents lived in Western Australia, and both had access to
the children.

A few years ago, Mrs Wood abducted the children, and, using false
passports, took the children to Switzerland. That was her second
attempt to abduct the children. After applications were made to The
Hague, the children were located in April 2003. However, the mother
then hid the children from the Swiss authorities. After the mother
refused to cooperate and return to Australia, the Wood children were
eventually detained by the Swiss authorities and placed in an
institutionalised home in Switzerland's for a year until they could
be returned to Australia.

Upon arrival in Australia, the Wood children were not returned to
their father and their father's extended local family, as one might
have thought, but were placed in the care of the Department for
Community Development.

This arrangement, which was supposed to be temporary, was due to the
children's perceived problems with the English language. I am
informed that the Swiss judge who personally escorted the children to
the aeroplane expected that the children would be returned to their
father after a short while. However, it soon became clear that the
Department for Community Development did not agree with the court and
would not support the return of the children to their father. The
department did not develop a reunification plan for the family, and
nor did it develop a schedule for handover to the father, who has
been allowed only four hours a week of strictly supervised access
since April 2005, although more recently a more liberal overnight
contact arrangement has been calculated.

In the first week of July amendments were made to the federal Family
Law Act. Those amendments were made just days after the family court
judgment in this case. Amazingly, just days before the amended
federal law came into effect, Justice Penny of the Family Court of
Western Australia ordered that the children be returned to their
mother in Switzerland. It seems that decision was made on that date
quite deliberately to ensure that Mr wood could not benefit from the
new shared parenting, or father-friendly, components of the amended
Family Law Act. Although there are a number of serious concerns about
the court's decision, I am focusing today on the department's role in
this matter.

Throughout all that time, Judge Penny never met and interviewed the
Wood children herself.

This makes it all the more important to know the role of the officers
of the Department for Community Development in this matter, what
advice they gave the judge, and how they influenced the judge's
decision.

Justice Penny set a deadline for the children deportation of 1
September. That is less than one week away. That means the Wood
children will not even be able to spend Father's Day with their
father here in Western Australia.

The Shared Parenting Council of Australia advises that there is firm
evidence that at least one, if not two, employees or consultants of
the Department for Community Development, among the string of some 23
employees or consultants who have been involved in this case, have
committed serious breaches of procedure. Concerns have been raised
that these officers conducted a seemingly personal vendetta of
revenge for allegations made about the department by Mr Wood in his
mountain of affidavits.

If the minister's department had evidence that Mr Wood had harmed his
children, or posed a risk to them, this would be a valid reason to
keep him at arm's length from his children, or allow him only
strictly supervised access. However, despite allegations from Mrs
Wood-Hosig, the Family Court judge has repeatedly determined that Mr
Wood has committed no offence.

An officer from the Department for Community Development, Ms Gurner,
told the court that the department's actions were because, as she put
it, "Where there is smoke there is fire." This appears to have been
sole reason given by the Department for Community Development for its
extraordinary actions in this matter.

Minister, was this really the basis for keeping the Wood children
away from their parent for 19 months? Was this really the reason for
depriving the Wood children of direct contact with their father,
except under strict supervision for just four hours a week? Was this
why the Wood children were shuffled between six foster homes rather
than allowed to enjoy the love and comfort of their natural parents?
Why did the Department for Community Development, or the judge, never
explore the option of bringing the mother back to Australia so that
the children could be brought up in a shared parenting environment,
with ongoing and direct access to both parents?

I understand that the department placed the children in foster care
largely because it believed they did not have an adequate command of
the English language. I have in my hands a DVD of the daughter's
recent birthday party. It shows clearly both children thoroughly
enjoying themselves, with lots of friends and extended family
members, and - guess what - they both speak fluent English!

The first priority in matters such as this must always be to protect
the children. If there is indisputable evidence that a parent has
harmed a child or poses a risk to a child, or if there is another
overriding, serious and proved concern for a child's safety or
welfare, every caution must be taken. Conversely, in the absence of
such evidence or any reasonable explanation, and considering the
court's rejection of such allegations, there can only be one
conclusion. That is that officers from the Department for Community
Development deliberately contrived to try to prevent Mr Wood from
developing a normal relationship and strong parental bonds with his
children in order to jeopardise his chances of gaining fair access to
his children through the Family Court.

In so doing, the actions of these departmental officers have caused
two children, both Australian-born citizens, to be taken to another
country, far from their father, most likely never to see him again in
person during the remainder of their childhood years.

Yesterday I gave the minister six questions about this matter. The
minister's answers will enable us to determine whether the department
acted properly, or whether its officers acted in a biased,
destructive and vindictive way. If the latter is the case, I strongly
suggest that the minister has no option but to suspend the officers
and psychologists concerned and instigate a thorough and independent
investigation of his department's handling of this case.

I would ask that the minister answer the six questions, and then
provide further advice as he sees fit with regard to this matter.

I have a letter from Senator David Johnson to the federal Minister
for Justice and Customs calling for action to be taken in relation to
the passport fraud. A lot of people hope that ultimately that will
lead to extradition proceedings. I seek leave to lay that letter on
the table for the remainder of this day's sitting.

[The paper was tabled for the information of members.]

MR D.A. TEMPLEMAN (Mandurah - Minister for Community Development)
[10.07 am]: I thank the member for Leschenault for raising this
grievance with me. The member has highlighted a number of issues and
concerns. I am a little concerned that the member has also identified
certain people by name. I need to highlight at this point that, as
the member mentioned in his grievance, a decision had been made by
the Family Court of Western Australia that the children be returned
to their mother in Switzerland. This decision has been appealed by
the father's legal representatives. Accordingly, my advice is that I
cannot go into too much specific detail about the complexities of the
case - this is a complex case, as I am sure the member appreciates -
because that appeal is still before the court. My advice is that the
judge has made it very clear that until she makes her final decision,
the issue that she is considering should not be a matter for public
discussion.

I acknowledge the seriousness of this case, so I am not trying to -

Mr D.F. Barron-Sullivan: I am well aware of what Justice Penny has
said. She has said that she does not want this matter to go to the
media. She is obviously hoping the whole thing is kept quiet before
the kids are taken off to Switzerland. However, no court proceeding
is under way at the moment, so that does not prevent this Parliament
from discussing this matter.
<008> P/1

Mr D.A. TEMPLEMAN: I am very mindful that I do not want to prejudice
any decision that may be made by the Family Court in this matter,
particularly as it has now been appealed.

This case is an example of the complexities that occur when, for
whatever reason, relationships break down. This is a particularly
difficult case because, when this relationship broke down, one of the
parents decided to go to another country. Conflicts that arise
between parents muddy the situation, and the animosity between
partners can cause a great deal of grief for not only their
relationship but also, of course, the most important people in this
case, the children.

The new Children and Community Services Act emphasises that decisions
about children must be made in their best interests, and sometimes
the desires and aspirations of the parents conflict with the needs of
the children. The new legislation also makes it clear - I need to
highlight this to the member and others in this place - that the
voices of the children should be heard when decisions are being made
about their lives. The legislation contains provisions that ensure
that that happens.

Mr D.F. Barron-Sullivan: Can I point out that that is an incredibly
important point, yet the justice of the Family Court never met or
interviewed these children. That is why it is so important to
understand the actions of your department, because those actions
influence this case like nothing else. Had the judge spoken to the
children, we may have seen a different situation.

Mr D.A. TEMPLEMAN: That is true, but it is not my responsibility nor
the responsibility of the department to direct the judge's
determination. The member is aware that under our legal system it is
the judge's determination and direction that has to be carried out
under the law.

I understand the member's point that the judge - in his view and the
view of others - should have attempted to discuss the specific issues
of this case with the parents. I do not have a great problem with
that point of view. However, in the context of this case, the
department could not have directed the judge. When this matter comes
to appeal recommendations will be made.

Mr D.F. Barron-Sullivan: We are running out of time. There is one key
question: does your department have evidence that Mr Wood posed a
risk to the children or that he has harmed them? That is crucial.

Mr D.A. TEMPLEMAN: When I received the member's question yesterday, I
sought advice. Because of the complexities of this matter and
because, to be honest, a number of issues have been highlighted to
me, particularly in regard to the children and their responses, this
is a very serious case. I take very seriously what I need to do for
the member to ensure that the member's questions are answered. I will
organise an immediate briefing on this case as a matter of priority.

I will make sure that one of my staff attends that briefing so that
that person can respond to me directly. I will ensure that a senior
manager of the department also attends that briefing. The member has
highlighted the father's concerns specifically, and he must have his
interests heard. I will organise that briefing for the member as soon
as possible.

Mr D.F. Barron-Sullivan: Thank you, minister; that is much
appreciated.

Rubens' story

2006-08-10T15:39:00.000+10:00

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

Unemployed father denied sole residence of his son

2006-08-01T12:07:00.000+10:00

In McMillan v Jackson (1995) 12 an unemployed father denied sole residence of his son because the trial court considered him a poor role model for his son was found to be the victim of gender bias. The child was originally handed over to his maternal great-grandmother whom the trial judge said may well wear the pants in her family.

It goes without saying that the child’s respect for his father as a role model will be immeasurably heightened if he perceives his father as the parent who is supporting him from his own exertions’ his decision also said.

The Full Court upholding the father’s complaint of gender bias ruled that it was wrong for one of its judges to say the child in question was at risk of welfare dependency because his father chose to be a full-time parent rather than a wage earner. The judgment found the trial judge‘s pre-conception that a father should be out working to support his son rather than staying at home to look after his day-to-day needs, played a significant part in the determination of the case. 13

In addition, the trial judge had failed to notify the father of his views during cross-examination. The appeals court noting that it had the obligations and responsibility to reflect community standards and opinions subject to the Family Law Act 1975 found that the judge was out of step with community values. 14

The Sunday Telegraph in 1996 15reported on a residence case where the mother made a sexual abuse allegation about the father towards the child. Justice Joseph Kay found the mother to not be a believable witness and that she would try to deny any meaningful relationship to the children with their father. He further found that her behaviour was positively destructive to the emotional needs of the children and would psychologically harm them. He then awarded her sole residence because the husband lacked instinctive insight into the needs of children.

12 McMillan v Jackson (1995) FLC 92-610. See also, Sheridan and Sheridan (1994) FLC 92-517; In the Marriage of Kennedy and Cahill (1995) FLC 92-605 (judgement raised a reasonable apprehension of bias as trial judge did not disclose the existence of an intimate relation between herself and the solicitor acting for the wife).

13 ibid at 82,085

14 ibid

15 Sunday Telegraph (9^th June 1996) p 82

"Stories" NZ /Canada

2006-07-29T18:20:00.000+10:00

The following accounts were forarded by Jim Baily of New Zealand's http://www.handsonequalparent.org.nz/

INTRO:
Below is what they are doing to good Canadian Fathers. And many other Fathers in several other countries-especially the USA. And so close to Fathers day too. Glenn is one of ours and is one of the emerging heroes in the struggle for our most basic of rights. And this is all happening in front of the very eyes of a disbelieving and apathetic public. And an indifferent media. I call it a 'creeping fascism. Glenn is one of 1,200 of us a year going to the new "debtors prison" in Ontario and the liberals in Ontario have promised to make it worse for us. Already they have changed the rules to sentence us to 6 months instead of 3 and have mobilized more resources to ensure we are punished for refusing to accept or allow their continuing oppression.

And the people going to jail in such numbers are just Dads. Just plain 'ol hockey Dads who loved and love their children so much and only wanted to be Dads and watch a bit of hockey. Instead they are being treated like criminals. I know how it feels I am fighting it right now. Imagine those of us who will be in jail this Fathers day too. I wish I was one of them. I might just as well be anyway. Every day is a prison for me now. And I am sure the food is not much better. And I am but one.

Glenn is my new hero. He is out of jail courtesy of his Mom and Dad. Not all of us can count on that support or be so lucky.

I myself faced 30 days in Ottawa jail last September. I prepared myself to go and would have gone too. I was quite ready and had packed my belongings and issued a list of things to so to friends in the event of incarceration. I even had my old watch on and had prepared my Will. I was prepared to die in there. I beat the rap but lost my house. Just like everything else I once owned and had. I still wish they had sent me to jail. It would have been a badge of honour to wear in this modern day fascist state called Canadian society. You know the one where the Conservatives are in charge but the liberals are still in control of the legal-police-justice system ?

Glenn showed tremendous courage in doing this and he went quietly and in acceptence of his fate at the hands of overwhelming, power and tyranny. I didn't even know he had gone to jail. But he refused to bow to the system. There are those who say that this is the only way to defy the 'authority' that oppresses and persecutes us. Indeed it is the way of Gandhi and Mandela. If anyone out there thinks that this cannot happen to you then think again.

I just wish we could know who exactly is in jail this weekend so we could visit and comfort one. And take him a pack of shaving blades or a chocolate or something. Or maybe share a joke or a tear.

Jeremy Swanson

From Glenn

Hi all,

I am out of jail after a week and would have stayed there for the full 30 days, however, not only did my parents in their 70's have to look after my two kids that I have shared custody of, they also somehow managed to come up with the $10,000. they wanted.

I do not no how they did it and have not had the strength to ask.

I have very mixed emotion about what they did as it is my oldest daughters grade 8 graduation next week and wouldn't want to miss that for anything and I know that my elderly parents, in the retirement years do not have the resources to take this kind of hit.

My time in jail provided alot of lessens, some that should not have been so surprising:

1. If a Crack dealer gets a 30 day sentence, he only serves 20 Days and they're back on the street, this is standard. Father serves his full 30 days. Even the guards could not believe this, nor the inmates.

2. 1/2 of the inmates that I was with came from homes without a father.
One of which
told me that it was him and his 2 sisters all of which have different fathers, he is 23 years old and still yearns to find out who his father is. He said that it has effected him horribly his whole life and shows me "love" and "hate" tattooed across his fingers.

3. There was 50 inmates in the "range" I was in. I could not help but wonder, with 80% of those inmates being under 30 years of age and 50% of them coming from fatherless homes, that's 20 out of the 50. How many of them may not have been in there, if over the past 30 years there were laws that encouraged an equal involvement of fathers in their lives. Maybe 10, thats a ratios of 1:5 and considering how many inmates the state is currently holding, at a cost of $200. a day.

Keeping in mind that most of them are in there for drug charges and it seemed that it was crack cocaine in most cases and they did seem to be showing the negative effective of the use of crack, their stories seemed genuine.

The 23 year old that I mentioned in #2 was in for possession of a small amount of marijuana. He certainly, although dropped out of school when he was sixteen, was an intelligent guy and definitely did not show the same jittery symptoms of the ones that were in there for crack. It was horrible to hear how not knowing who his father, and not having a father figure in his life had such a negative impact on his life. He did have an indication who his father might be and is going to try to locate him. His fear over the years has been the possible rejection.
When I left the I wished him the best of luck and truly hope all works out for him and that some of the hate and fear that he has felt for the past 23 years can be eased by connecting with his father.

I just thought I would share this with you all and when the family law is change and horrible stories like this are a thing of the past, it will all be worth it.

Good to be back for now,
Glenn
Toronto, Canada

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Story 6 - Re - ? - BOTHERED Story

Family Court destroys Father / Daughter relationship

We meet in 1984 and married the same year. Our daughter was born in 1990 and we separated in may 1995

During our marriage and because my wife wanted a career I resigned my position and we brought a business, which would enable myself to be able to spend more time with our daughter.

When we first separated we had shared custody off our daughter no problems not that I saw any, after months my wife took my daughter away accused me off sexual abuse and that my daughter would be in danger in my company if I was not supervised. The lawyer I had at the time said we would go along with what they want). I continued to see my daughter for the rest of the year including week at xmas always with supervisor of course.

Early 1996 I was served at work with exparte order accusing me of sexual abuse and violence This stopped me from seeing my daughter. After a few weeks we were able to get a hearing in the family court where I got 2 hours a fortnight in supervised facility which did not happen for over 8 weeks(because of the incompetence of my daughters lawyer C4C), as we are all aware that time away from daughter starts a breakdown in the father daughter relationship

A three-day hearing was held in July resulting in the continuation of supervised access supposed to be for six months. During the hearing the Judge was critical of the psychologists report, and stated in his Judgement that my daughter was at no risk from me.

Notes;

The psychologist had dealings with me before as I ran business close to her office and we did not like each other,

Because of the acrimonious relationship with my wife's lawyers and that we had caught my daughter’s lawyer lying about the supervised access (on two occasions) my chances of having fair hearing were zero.

We decided not to appeal the hearing, as it was only six months until a review and it would save money. But alas the system let me and my daughter down the review did not happen to after 12 months. I had no money to have a full hearing so my lawyer and I decided not to submit evidence at the review. Even the court appointed psychologist had recommended that I have normal access, Supervised access was again ordered.

Because of all the problems of no money, chid support etc, I. decided to leave and seek employment overseas. I returned home to NZ 1999. Because I had remarried I did not want the expenses of a full hearing and I was not going back to supervised access we went to mediation which resulted in normal access every second Sunday There were no problems of any sort until I refused to go back the same mediator, My daughter stopped coming in late august 2000, and we started proceedings in the family court, but I was arrested and charged assaulting and abusing my daughter. By time these charges got to the high court there were 9 charges of unlawful and attempted unlawful sexual connection with my daughter, I was found not guilty on all charges .As a result of the above I do not see my daughter and because of the costs of a hearing and chid support I have agreed to my wife’s new husband adopting my daughter.

The family Court did not fully investigate all the facts.

The appointed lawyer let my wife take my daughter and put her into a private church school without my consent.

The court appointed psychologist organized the family counsellor who helped bring the charges that were clearly false.

CYFS

My young unmarried sister became pregnant with the result that her little boy lives with my wife and I and we treat him as our son. CYPS will not let us adopt him because they say I am guilty of abusing my daughter and he would not be safe with me, You have got to laugh, he been living with us all his life, and they not done anything about itI hope this can help I am quite happy to appear in person if required and present all documents to back up what I have stated.

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Story 5 - Re - ? - BOTHERED Story

REF NS 1

This case is an example of the madness of family court. The mother is dishonest about new relationship being behind separation. She uses the Father’s hostility on discovery of the relationship to apply for protection order and stop father’s contact with the children So far the case has involved section 9 counselling (three times), 9 judicial conferences, 2 Mediation conferences and three full hearings. Legal costs to parties exceed $80,000. Court proceedings have made process lengthier and more convoluted at each step. Parties now totally estranged although the children now have equal shared care week-on week-off with parents.

My wife spoke to me in early February about wishing to end our marriage. We talked and planned an amicable separation with her leaving the family home. She denied there were any third parties involved even after a name was suggested to her. It has since been found that she had begun a new relationship several months earlier. We separated and the children stayed with Father. In late March Father was stressed from the new relationship being flouted in his face and with the animosity surrounding the break-up. He planned to leave town for a while and the children spent a weekend at their Mum’s new house. An argument occurred on transfer of the children about care of the children’s pets. Father went to leave, Mother restrained father from leaving, Father assaulted by Mother in front of children, Father proceeded directly to the Police station to report assault. No charges are laid but Mother takes a protection order out against Father . Children are included in Protection Order. Mother acknowledges in affidavit that this is only incident of violence in 20-year marriage.

Father foolishly consents to supervision of child contact and delay in hearing his defence against protection order. This is done for sake of children. Mother makes three complaints for breach of order over fathers telephone contact. District Court Judge makes non-association with children a condition of bail and ex-parte interim custody order given to Mother by Family Court . Father changes plea to guilty to have cases immediately heard and to re-establish contact with children.

Father makes another non-violent breach of order by alleged trespass onto Mothers new home. Father refuses bail because of non-association clause with children. Father held in Police custody awaiting trial for five weeks. Father please guilty and suspended sentence given.

Huge bitterness between Mother and Father has fermented during this process. Father’s anger has increased and he is incensed at interference in his parenting by the court.

Father fires his family court lawyer in favour of self-representation. Progress being made since then. Interim custody discharged and temporary shared custody established. Equal shared custody agreement finally confirmed . Protection order discharged 5 months later.

Father had a professional business. The business closed and failed totally shortly after separation. Father now has four convictions for breach of protection order not having appeared in any court prior to these events. Father and Mother now totally estranged and hostile towards each other. The Father now considers court system totally prejudiced and has lost respect for authority such as courts and Police.

The Children have been emotionally harmed by process and animosity generated. Mother acknowledges spending over $20,000 on legal expenses; Father has spent in excess of $30,000 Lawyer for child (three different L4C in this case) have claimed over $30,000 of taxpayers money as well.

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Story 4 - Re - Hamilton - BOTHERED Story

“Initiate a full enquiry into the Family Court system” Petition

I am seriously BOTHERED!

My name is Wayne, and as you may be aware, I am walking to Wellington to present a petition to parliament seeking a full enquiry into the Family Court system. First, consider why 'any father' would undertake such a feat.

I cannot speak for any other “disgruntled father”, a name inappropriately given to shattered dads fighting for their children, but I can speak on behalf of my son and I about his interests and the life that I built for him and which has been stolen away.

It was a Monday late in February 2004. I received a letter from the Golden Key International Honours Society inviting me to become a member, based on my A+ average achievement in my first year at university. My partner seemed to be very proud of me and told me that she loved me. Our 8 month old son had undergone heart surgery less than four weeks earlier, and the successful operation, his fast recovery, my invitation to the Honours Society, a beautiful partner who I believed loved me and even the awesome weather at the time left me feeling euphoric. It was the happiest I have ever felt.

The very next day my partner arrived home from the salon that she “doesn’t work at in any capacity”, and told me that she was considering going away for the weekend with a male client. She asked me how I felt about her going away with this man. I didn’t know what to say apart from asking her to make sure he knows that we are in a committed relationship with a baby boy, to ensure that his intentions were honourable, and for her to agree that she will not take our son along. The euphoria I felt the previous day was replaced with hurt and confusion. I was shattered! Over the next few hours my partner used a form of psychological abuse to bait me into an argument, and soon I made a stand. I asked her stop treating me like a slave, and reminded her that I have got feelings, and that we have a young child to consider. She picked up my son and started walking around the house with him, not allowing him to see me. She told me that she hated me. I reminded her about what she said the previous day. She laughed and said she was pretending, and that she had never loved me, or even liked me. We had met on 18 February 3 years earlier, and I quickly realised that the timing was perfect for her to leave me and make a claim on my home, and return to her comfortable life receiving the DPB while working part time at the salon that she “doesn’t work at in any capacity”. She left her husband days after getting her citizenship, so I was extremely worried.

The next day I found a lawyer and initiated Family Court proceedings. I was terrified that my partner would leave and take my son at a very serious stage of his development and heart operation recovery. I applied to the Family Court in good faith, and believed that the applications and orders where for emergency only, because at that stage I was still in love and didn’t my family to break up.

On the Thursday of that week, the mother simply made a false complaint to the police, saying that I had ‘physically abused her’, and even though the officers accepted that the complaint was false, that the mother’s erratic and hysterical behaviour could be post natal depression, and that it was me, my son’s primary caregiver, who packed everything for my son, including medications, clothing, toys etc, they escorted her away to a woman’s refuge (refuge from what?). The police would not allow me to comfort my screaming son, who had been taken out to car in the street, and also wouldn't allow me to say goodbye to my son. It was clear that as a man, I was a second rate person, and the relationship I had with my son had no value in the eyes of the police. My son and I had virtually never been apart for the past four months, while the mother was working part time, had way less contact with our son, and never even called him by his name, instead always refering to him as 'the baby'. But because I was a man, the police simply didn’t believe me, and left me in a crying heap on the floor.

I didn’t see my son again for 3 weeks, and only after a conference during which an access agreement was made. But the mother ignored this agreement.

It is now 2 ½ years later, and I am still waiting for a custody hearing. The mother’s team of 2 lawyers and 2 barristers have constantly used lies and dirty tactics to destroy me; the mother has constantly used control and alienation to attempt to destroy the relationship between my son and I. The mother has breached court orders four times, yet the judges haven’t even blinked. I breached a court order once, but a judge signed a Warrant to Uplift the day before I even breached the court order!

None of my family members have ever been interviewed by any one associated to the court, and neither have any of the hospital nurses, doctors or Plunket nurses who had regular contact with my son and I before my partner took my son away.

A Consent Agreement made during a judicial conference was altered before the Court Order was posted out (I have a ‘draft’ copy proving this); the psychologist’s list of documents attached to the back of her report does not include my most important affidavits, which I filed in the Family Court not once, but TWICE!; the mother’s lawyer has obstructed justice by getting the mother to sign an affidavit including information she knew nothing about, and latter amended it; the mother’s lawyer also lied to the police, telling them that I swore at the judge (registrars agree that I didn’t); the mother admitted in court that most of the statements in a sworn affidavit were lies, yet the judge said in her decision that I ‘failed to discredit’ the mother, and allowed her to take my son to a communist country outside the Hague Convention. At the commencement of a Stay of Execution Hearing, a Barrister (who has recently been appointed as a judge!) slid his submission along the desk towards me in front of the judge. The jusdge thanked him for his submission, commenting on how well it was put together, and then said "I trust Mr Pruden has read it". He said "no, I've just given it to him now". The judge looked at her watch and said that due to time constraints, we'll have to proceed with the hearing anyway. This is still just the tip of the iceberg!

Most importantly; the mother swore in her very first affidavit that we both cared for our son equally full time, she had no concern for my care of our son, and that she didn’t know who the better parent was. Since I was not working part time before separation and was at my son’s side 24/7; hadn’t committed immigration fraud; married a paedophile to get citizenship; left a vulnerable young girl in the care of a paedophile who was later imprisoned for allegedly abusing the girl; and have never been found to have lied in court or legal documents; then it would stand to reason that I am a better parent and influence on my son, who is always excited to se me, but often cries and clings to me when he sees his mother. This of course will slowly change as the alienation takes hold, which the courts are also ignoring.

Why have my son and I waited 2 ½ years for a hearing!

My patience has officially expired. It infuriates when I read speeches and articles by supposedly learned professionals who support the misguided notions that children don’t need fathers and that there is no bias in the family court. It will not be until there own children are stolen away by this evil secret society, that they will finally see sense and support our calls for change.

This is why I am walking to Wellington!

Notes from JimBWarrior,

Wayne has almost finished his book about the Family Court and hopes to finish the final chapter after his presentation to Parliament and to release the BOOK on FATHERS Day at the "FATHERS Day' Picnic on Parliament grounds.

Soon there will be a link to the petition for you to read - Copy - Sign and Post to Wayne - The link will also give a progress report as he walks to parliament. Please join him for a mile or 2 if you can and sign his petition while he is walking - maybe offer a drink - a snack - a comfortable bed, to rest his weary bones.

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Story 3 - Re - North Shore City - BOTHERED Story

Bury my heart in the Family Court:

I left my violent second husband March 2004, he had previously been convicted of assaulting me, and he had also been having an affair for? 4 or 5 months with a work colleague of his. He had also been abusive to my older children, both physical and verbally.

We did a separation agreement, organised a financial settlement, I bought a new house as we agreed that because I wanted a house with a garden I would move.

Everything went well until March 2005, with alternate long weekends, I had a new partner by that time, on a weekend away in March 04 in the Bay of Islands, my son, age 3, jumped into a river at an animal farm and was fished out quickly without any serious consequences.

On return home I phoned the local swimming pool, my ex was aware that his name was on the waiting list at that pool; I was very pleased to find out that there was a vacancy for swimming lessons and booked him in. I telephoned my ex with 5 days notice and discussed about the lessons, I said, I did not mind who took him, I was flexible, so long as he learnt to swim. The next thing I knew I got an enforcement of access order and that is when the nightmare started. We had a hearing about that and nothing was resolved.

By the end of June 05, I was at breaking point, my business partner said she could not work with me because of all the stress from my ex, my emails were tampered with, he had contacted my sick Mother in the U.K., who had had a heart attack, my first husband, old friends, my new partner had been stopped and harassed on several occasions, ( my new partner then left me, saying my life was too stressful ) My brothers wife had died suddenly and unexpectedly, also one of my closest friends (it turned out they both had brain haemorrhages ! ) my Mum had another heart attack and I had a serious problem at work that was probably my fault due to an error of judgement.

I took an overdose, not to die but to put me to sleep for a long time, my children found me, phoned for an ambulance, and I was admitted to the local mental health unit for 5 days for my own safety.

I had barely been home when I was served with an interim custody order without notice; my ex had filed at the court without my knowledge saying I was mad. I then learnt that I not only had to fight depression but fight to get my son back.

After several months of supervised access, that was changed to unsupervised, then to 50/50 care at mediation. In September 05.

There were then months of stress, hand overs were full of harassment, abuse, both physical and verbal, I asked for a protection order that was refused on defence in December 05. The Judge ruled that he was allowed to stand in my street so long as he did not knock the door; I fail to see the difference between the stress levels of the two scenarios.

My older children were stressed out and fighting with each other. I was so depressed.

In October 05 I had surgery to repair my right ankle, (it was severely Arthritic as a result of a serious fall 15 years earlier) I felt better in my self and thought this would be a good thing to do before I returned to work.

I developed Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, (which means that the nerves to my ankle have been damaged during the surgery, it now looks as if it may be permanent damage, ACC have accepted my claim as an injury as a result of treatment) The pain is so intense, it is constant and so debilitating, I can barely function as normal with limited walking and driving ability, the evenings are the worst, when I am tired.

I have had every treatment going, some have increased my depression, some have affected my daily functioning ability, and I am now waiting to see a Neurologist.

On 14th March 06, I was so unwell, I took a new medication, for pain, which was a heart drug, which inter-reacted with my anti-depressants and the glass of wine I drank (yes, I know stupid move, but I was so unwell) I was admitted to Hospital, he obtained details of my admission ( I don’t know how ).

Again he filed for an Interim custody order without notice, for the second time, I am now forced to do supervised access again, but this time at Barnardo’s, he will not allow my adult children to be supervisors or a Nanny or any other supervised access provider. Apparently he has all the say, as he is now the day to day carer.

I defended this Order but because I got so upset in the Court, the hearing was stopped and the Judge ruled against me.

I have analysed my Lawyers and realised that the service had changed once I altered to Legal Aid, there service is poor and advice inaccurate and unsupportive.

I realised that I could not walk away from my son, so I have now decided to represent myself, no one told me I could do that or tell me how to function in a Court environment, I had to find out the hard way that you are not allowed to cry or they think you are mad.

My older children 23, 20, and 16 are devastated by the loss of their little brother, they are allowed no contact with him at all, my ex will not allow it, they have been an integral part of my little ones life until now, we have applied for leave to apply for a contact order, but that will take months if at all.

I have written to Helen Clark, The Minister and The Ministry for Justice, my M.P. Murray McCullay, The Privacy Commission ( he did obtain my medical records without permission ) Peter Boshier, The Midwifery Council ( we are both Midwives ) and Simon Maude at The Law Society no one will help or stop this state funded child abuse.

The Supervised access is for me only, twice a week, I have to drive to Mangere, even though I can barely walk in order to see my son, my older children dearly wish to come with me but are not allowed, they are so distraught by all this.

I have to sit and be “supervised” with my own child as though I am a sex offender or violent. I am not allowed to be alone with my little one or take him to the toilet!

If this is fair and just then I am living on Mars.

I support my older children as best as I can through this, they feel that they are being punished, but the stress of having my son removed from me because of his the lies my ex filed at the Family Court, my injured foot, my depression, my mother is about to die and being unable to work at present is unbearable.

The Men’s support group have welcomed me even though I am not a man, their fight is with the dysfunctional system of the Family Court that ruins families...

I proved that his allegations were false with three different items of medical evidence, if you cry at the Family Court they just decide that you are mad !

Apparently Judicial Mediation is the next thing to look forward to.

I don’t know how much more I can take……………………….

From a desperate mother who has been “thrust to the wolves” of the Family Court.

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Story 2 - Re - Manukau City- BOTHERED Story

Since my split with my ex, I had wanted a 50-50 time with the kids. I also organised for her to have access with the kids even when she actually had no access during the protection order.

Before I went into court, I had suggested that a 50-50 spilt arrangement for shared custody be in place. A week on and week off arrangement seems the most appropriate situation. However my ex rejected that because se had nothing to lose by going to court. She had either the present arrangement or at worse a 50-50 arrangement.

She came out on top with all that she wanted and more. The judge however didn't see it that way, and rules for the mother, He turned my interim dad to day care custody around and ordered my girls to stay with their mother for the week and I have 3 of 4 weekends.

This is quite unsatisfactory because I was coaching my girls for their school work and o had been sending them to school for the past year. Now that she is with the girls, I am only concern that they will not be able to perform their best at school without coaching.

How can a judge turn our lives around overnight? Fe should not have the right knowing that he gave me day to day custody due to the fact that their mum was a violent person towards me. Even though she is not violent towards the girls, he should at least ordered a 50-50 arrangement.

This is another gender biased case.

Leon Tang E Security Ltd
P.O. Box 86-087Mangere East
Auckland

mob (021) 635 800
tel/fax (09) 278 1919

Email: esec@esecurity.co.nz
Web: www.esecurity.co.nz

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Story 1 - Re - Waitakere City - News years eve 2002 - BOTHERED Story

The Craig and Louise Martin Story

13 days of torture and torment by CYFS that led to baby Patricks death

Most of what is contained herein will be able to be supported by documentary evidence and there may be references to this documentation. Some of the events I will relate have no supporting evidence never less they are truthful, to the best of my recollection and supported by common sense and logic

We have a wealth of evidence to prove wrongdoing; in fact we have enough evidence to at least show that there are grounds for up to 13 criminal offences to have been committed by the department, by the caregiver and by the police.

Patrick was born on the 12th of January 2002. Louise had some difficulty with feeding Patrick and like a lot of first time parents we experienced difficulties that were unexpected. Patrick ended up having a bout of gastro enteritis and spending a week in starship hospital. Because of these issues Louise ended up somewhat stressed and eventually in a state of postnatal depression. It became clear to us both that we needed some support, we needed some sort of help. We had learned at our antenatal class how to identify the signs of possible postnatal depression. We had learnt that 1 in 3 women who have given birth end up with some form of stress and that 1 in 10 end up with depression.

Having identified the signs, unfortunately our circumstances didn’t allow us to reach out to our family for help. This didn’t mean that we weren’t capable parents and because of our lack of family help we went to the organizations that are there to help us. We were put in contact with the maternal mental health group, the support being given by them turning out to be nothing short of hopeless. The level of communication that Louise received about what she could do to help, herself with the depression and the stress was absolutely disastrous.

The woman that we ended up with for support, Sharon Milgrew had personal issues, specifically with me, whether it was personality conflict or what ever it was she basically ended up treating us as if we were a burden. She did not carry out her legitimate duty of helping, supporting and providing care for a woman in need. Louise exercised her right after a period of time of being treated by Sharon Milgrew, requesting under the health code of rights a change of caregiver.

The response of this woman was petulant. She stormed out of the room and left a message on our answer phone to say no one is available to treat you for several weeks. Basically, all support Louise was supposed to be getting was dropped. This woman took it personally that we weren’t satisfied with the level of care.

A couple of days after this on 3rd May, Louise had an incident with Patrick. A minor incident. Patrick was having difficulty feeding. Louise gave him a minor shake and ended up hugging him for the next half an hour because she felt guilty about it. At no stage did we ever deny that there was anything going on in the house that didn’t need some kind of support. Possibly our parenting skills needed help. The incident was so minor that when I got home from work, Patrick was happily playing in his bedroom. The level of shake that Patrick received had no malice behind it, no intent behind it, and was not a deliberate act to harm him.

The incident was so minor it was less than what a trained respite worker would do to get Patrick’s wind up, it was less than what he would do when he was playing in his bouncenette. Because there was no intent or malice behind it, we did what we thought was the right thing. We contacted the Maternal Mental Health people again and asked them to do what they were supposed to be doing for Louise when we first approached them in February, treat my wife and help her, and that she had given Patrick a shake. I mentioned it, the reason being to highlight the level of stress that she was under and to emphasize the lack of support and care she was getting.

They then turned around and informed CYFS, which they are apparently legally required to do so. Waitemata Health admitted that the level of care could have been better but they didn’t have the resources to provide that care while Louise went through this difficult period. Waitemata Health suggested that CYFS would be able to provide assistance. We were assured that CYFS did not just take children. They only take children that are at risk, that are being abused, that are being neglected. Other than that they provide services within the community that support people that need that extra little bit of help

I was reassured that that is what they would do for us. By 8th May, medical professionals that had been involved with our care got together and met with Lorraine Sheffield and Michelle Boyd of CYFS to discuss our case. During that meeting, information was passed across to them that we can prove was falsified and manipulated by CYFS in their report of that meeting. We can prove that through common sense and logic again and supporting evidence that we have gained form Waitemata DHB who had gone back to their staff and said did you ever say this. The staff said no or that’s been misreported or that’s been taken out of context. Combine that with the other information in this report by CYFS, we can show that there was a deliberate act by CYFS to paint a false picture of what was happening in our home.

At the end of that meeting, the medical professionals that had an intimate knowledge of our past, were led to believe by CYFS that an agreement had been reached that the Maternal Mental Health services would cooperate with CYFS to give Louise the correct treatment that she needed and Patrick would stay in the home because it was a low risk situation. Waitemata DHB said that it was a low risk situation and they have records to show it was a low risk situation. CYFS told Waitemata DHB directly that Patrick would stay in his home and Louise would get the support and help she needed. That is the impression that Waitemata DHB walked away with. Documents that Waitemata DHB recorded after the meeting clearly showed that they believed that Patrick was going to stay in the home.

After that meeting, two CYFS social welfare workers came to our home but we were not there so they left their card. The next day on 9th May, an arrangement was made to meet the social workers at our home at 11 o’clock. At this meeting, the behavior of the social workers could only be described as very strange. Unlike what you’d expect of social workers if they had any concern about the safety of the child. When they came into the house they sat on the couch. They didn’t ask to see Patrick, ask about his living conditions and had no interest in him whatsoever.

You’d expect that if they had any concern for Patrick’s safety they would have wanted to see him immediately. One of the social workers sat and listened while the other one took notes. I would be the first to admit I was somewhat excited when I started retelling the story of how Louise had been treated by the Maternal Mental Health Service, how we had been mistreated by the CAT team on several occasions and that now Louise was severely depressed.

Involvement of the CAT team and the Maternal Mental Health was entirely because of the post-natal depression. I was telling this story to Michelle Boyd and Mark Postow and I was upset because of the way that my wife and my family had been treated or rather the lack of treatment that they had been receiving. I was extremely concerned for their wellbeing and this probably came through in the tone of my language when telling them how frustrated that I was about the lack of care and service.

During the whole of this time they never asked to see Patrick or his living conditions at all. Louise said,”Well you’re here about Patrick and do you want to see Patrick” and the response was, quote: “If you want.” Unquote. Patrick came out and we sat him between the two social workers. Patrick was sitting on the couch he would look at me and giggle, which he often did at other times because of the close bond between us. Mark P just glanced at him and Michelle Boyd, for some reason, reached over and lifted his elbow up and went back to scribbling her notes and completely ignored Patrick.

All they ever wrote in their notes that day having seen Patrick was, quote: “baby sighted.” Unquote. They never saw his room, they never saw his living conditions, and they never asked how we cared for him. They focused purely on the incident of 3rd May. And they asked loaded questions. Mark Postow demonstrated how he thought the shake might have happened. He never actually asked Louise for a demonstration. He demonstrated and then Michelle Boyd wrote down the notes. All this behavior seemed a little bit strange to me but I accepted that this is what they were supposed to do and that they were here to help us. It got to the point that Louise and I were so much at ease with what they were offering and how they were going to support us that they said, quote: “no, no, no, there is no need to take Patrick. We will institute community support for you.

Get you to sign a contract and we will do everything we can to help you.” They actually promised that to us.

They suggested that Louise had Patrick go to Starship hospital just as a precaution to check out that there is nothing wrong with him. We knew that there was nothing wrong with him but we were happy to do what they suggested. Mark Postow and Michelle Boyd took Louise to Starship hospital. Patrick was checked out at Starship hospital and everything was fine. All of Patrick’s records show that not only was he a healthy and happy little boy, he was ahead of development for his age. If Patrick had been neglected or abused in any way there would have been a physical or an emotional reaction to it. However at Starship hospital nothing was found.

The fact that Patrick was ahead of his development shows that’s how much we took care of him, how much we loved him. All the information showed that everything was fine. The information from the Waitemata DHB had said they he should stay in his home, the medical information from Starship hospital had shown that there was nothing at all wrong with Patrick. The information that we had provided about Patrick showed that he was at no risk and I was, at that stage, considered an adequate protector. CYFS actually record that in their notes.

Before leaving Starship hospital, Mark Postow sat with Louise in a room, without the presence of Michelle Boyd, and said that; “we’d like to put Patrick under a temporary care agreement”. Louise asked, “what is a temporary care agreement?” Mark Postow replied that it is an agreement between the caregiver - the parents - and CYFS to take the child into temporary care and protection for a period of 28 days. Louise neither agreed nor disagreed. All she said was that “I’ll have to talk to Craig about it.” Louise cried all the way home, very quietly, but when Michelle and Mark could hear her, Mark P turned up the car stereo. This made Louise feel worse so she cried a little harder and Mark turned up the stereo again. When Louise arrived home she walked inside to me where I was busy in the kitchen.

I asked Louise what’s the matter and she didn’t know how to answer. Mark P walked in behind and called out and the first thing that he said was, not “Craig we need to talk, we would like to enter into a temporary care agreement.” The first thing that he said was, quote: “Bad news Craig, we’re taking Patrick.” Unquote. Mark never mentioned the temporary agreement to me at any time.

My immediate reaction was “over my dead body.” Louise took Patrick down the other end of the house. I basically told these people to fuck off. They asked me could I guarantee Patrick’s safety. I said that I could guarantee his safety and he is perfectly safe in this house and will remain safe in this house. You people were supposed to help us, not rip our family apart. They said “so long as we have a guarantee about Patrick’s safety, then that is fine.” They went away and then later that night they came back with six policemen to serve a place of safety warrant on us. It was extremely truamatic and nothing less than a home invasion, the police were not willing to listen to us. I was barricaded in the kitchen while a policewoman took Patrick from Louise’s arms. Patrick was asleep in Louise’s arms and she had intended to check that the car seat in the social worker’s car was suitable for Patrick and if it was not so she was going to give them Patrick’s car seat. But she was cornered in the hall and the policewoman removed Patrick from her arms.

After Patrick was taken, I had a migraine so severe that I was taken to North Shore hospital. The staff thought that because of the severity of my condition that I had a bleed inside the brain and took x-ray’s to establish that this was not the case. Next day, in a traumatize distressed and excited state; I made a comment that anybody hurts my wife and my child, somebody is going to die. That amazingly ended up in my records and everything that they have used against me happened after the fact that Patrick was taken. My normal natural human reactions they’ve used against me.

Now this is the way that the mental health act works and this is part of the problem. Natural human behaviors and reactions to certain situations that have been considered natural human behavior and reaction since the beginning of time are now labeled as mental disorders. What they didn’t say was that if they hadn’t taken Patrick I wouldn’t have these reactions in the first place.

The night that they took Patrick we rang the CYFS office and informed CYFS of baby formula that Patrick needs because of his feeding difficulties.

Louise went to see Patrick the next day and CYFS put another note in their file to say that the baby was uncomfortable around Louise without including the facts. Patrick became distressed when he saw his mother because he was given his bottle by a social worker to be fed. It was too hot. They ended up giving him a hot bottle that would have burned his throat with the wrong formula in it. Louise said “I’m not going to feed him this, it will burn his throat.” So the social worker went away to cool it down. Patrick had seen the bottle and thought that he was going to get fed. When he didn’t get fed, he became upset. Patrick had been taken the night before and Louise was under stress. It’s a well known fact that babies can sense the stress of the parents and he would have reacted to that stress.

Louise asked the caregiver what type of formula she had used but she was unable to answer and they had the incorrect teat on the bottle. It was a size suitable for a one-year-old, not for a baby five months old. . CYFS also turned up one hour after they told Louise that she would be able to see Patrick. Louise had been waiting and became very angry and agitated. The car seat that they were using for Patrick was also not the appropriate seat for a child of his age

When I was released from hospital, Louise and I engaged a lawyer. Pamela Williamson of Davies Law. It became very clear within a very short period of time that she was on the side of CYFS. She didn’t represent us properly at all. She asked us to write affidavit that was basically conciliatory towards CYFS and to admit to have done things that we hadn’t done. Another person advised us, that when we do the affidavit to tell the truth, so we re-submitted our affidavit to Pamela Williamson. She said that she wasn’t prepared to represent us anymore. As she didn’t wish to follow our instructions we were happy to change to another lawyer.

We engaged another lawyer and were prepared to fight to get Patrick back with no strings attached. We wanted CYFS out of our lives and to leave us alone. The day after we employed him, I called the bank to get a bank loan because we had been told that the cost would be in the region of $10,000 over the next 6 months. The reason for borrowing this money is because this lawyer did not take on legal aid cases. The day after we employed this lawyer, we had a visit from 4 policemen; a social worker and two people from the mental health organization who had been informed before we had that Patrick had died. They turned up at 4 o’clock in the afternoon on the 22nd May and said that he’d died. The distress that we have suffered is beyond any description, beyond any words.

In the period of time that CYFS had had Patrick they had never informed us of how he was being cared for, never told us about anything what was going on with him. Through the employment of a private investigator and the use of the official information act we have since been able to find out what happened to Patrick.

Having looked at all the information looked at all the disparities in that information it appears as though we were set up to have Patrick taken from us from the very beginning. Having seen the falsified information, having gone back to talk to the people from Waitemata DHB, having noticed the contradictions, compared notes, it appears that all they were concerned with was to remove Patrick.

Since Patrick’s death we have gathered so much information that we can show that they manipulated and falsified evidence and how they managed to get a place of safety warrant based on the information that they had is beyond me. The place of safety warrant was not obtained from a judge but a normal everyday citizen who just happens to be a JP.The place of safety warrant claimed that there was a child in our house at risk of, or was being abused emotionally, physically or mentally – they had no evidence of that. Social workers walked into court and sued for custody Exparte. The affidavits of the two social workers were acts of perjury. We can prove beyond any doubt that they have perjured themselves.

We have been to our MP and parliamentarians from other parties. None of them have showed any interest in helping us. I managed to speak for a couple of minutes with Helen Clark in Tauranga. I asked her how it is possible for an organization to take children without cause and allow them to die and then turn their backs on us. We have written to the CEO of CYFS who has not asked to see any of our information. They basically came back to us and said that CYFS have done nothing wrong. We wrote to the Prime Minister and she wrote back to us supporting the CEO of CYFS. We wrote back to Helen Clark and said how is it possible for you to support the CEO of CYFS when you haven’t heard our side of the story, or sat down for five minutes and thought about how is it possible that a child taken from a place of safety and placed in another situation that was supposed to be better than we could provide ends up dead thirteen days later. Helen Clark has basically told us to go away.

In a copy of the caregiver’s statement she refers to the fact that Patrick was constantly crying. He went from being a happy little boy to this baby who constantly cried and grizzled. Imagine what was happening to this child, who loses the only things in his life that at an instinctual level make him feel happy and secure. His mother, his father, his environment and his routine. CYFS did not even put together a care plan, which they are required by law to do immediately.

Patrick was 70 grams lighter from the day he was taken on the 9th of May to the day of his autopsy on the 22nd of May. Factor in his growth rate that he should have been achieving, then Patrick effectively lost half a kilo in weight. Any pediatrician or nutritionist will tell you that if an infant doesn’t grow at all within a few days, then there’s something seriously wrong. Patrick did not gain over 400 grams that he should have. CYFS were feeding Patrick the wrong formula base (Even though they had been told the night he was removed) and never changed that formula base when we told them. We only found out on the 16th May that they were feeding him the wrong formula so we informed them of the correct formula that he should have been on, and they did nothing to change it. They couldn’t even get his basic feeding arrangements right.

The caregiver has lied to the police in her statement. She told police that she had six children in her care at the time of Patrick’s death. We now know through information we have received that she had 12 children in her care. There is no way in the world that she could have provided the emotional and physical support that Patrick would have needed. She openly admits to acts of neglect and abandonment in the police statement and nothing had been done about that.

Patrick’s death has been put down as a cot death. If that were the case, then he would have been one of the first babies that was crying when he died.

According to the Caregiver’s statement she came home at five past 12, went in and saw Patrick. Patrick was crying at 12:30. She went out and made Patrick a bottle and he was still crying a couple of minutes later. She then went back to Patrick’s bedroom with the bottle and found that he was dead. Why was she unable to revive him?

The pathology showed that there was no reason, such as failure of an organ, a blood clot etc., so he simply just stopped breathing. This means that if she turned up a couple of minutes after he stopped breathing as she has stated, it should have been fairly easy to revive him. She couldn’t revive him! There is evidence that he was moved after his death. He was rolled over onto his stomach to suggest that he had suffocated. There is no evidence of asphyxiation.

The caregiver called an ambulance a few minutes after finding Patrick dead and she claimed she carried out CPR. One of the ambulance officers noticed that there was some strange blood pooling on Patrick. Down the front was completely pale and down the sides it was red. According to our information and our knowledge, for that blood pooling to happen, Patrick must have been moved after he died. It must be surely grounds for re-investigation.

What we have concluded has happened is that the caregiver has gone out and Patrick has been left alone. Because of the trauma and stress that Patrick had been through, he has had a reaction, had stopped breathing and nobody has been around to help him. The caregiver came home, found Patrick dead and has made up her story to cover what has happened

We have been to the police and made our concerns known. We have pointed out to them the anomalies in the caregiver’s statement and that surely these anomalies and our concerns should warrant a re-interview. The police have shown no interest.

How CYFS managed to get a place of safety warrant, we can only assume two things. One is that they don’t need any evidence to get a warrant. If it is incumbent on the police to show just cause when they seek a warrant how is it possible that CYFS can gain a warrant? Or is it that CYFS can go and get a warrant and, in effect, act as if they’re above and beyond the law,

If CYFS do have to show just cause, then considering all the information that has been provided to them, the only way they could have possibly provided information that allowed them to get a place of safety warrant was to falsify the information. We have the proof that they have carried out two acts of perjury in the Family Court to support their claim for custody.

Proof that they failed to provide the necessities of life, which is a criminal offence. We can prove acts of negligence and abandonment on behalf of the caregiver. Proof of negligence on behalf of CYFS not ensuring Patrick’s safety. Patrick was the only baby in the house that was not in a safety sleep. The caregiver has said that in her statement.

Patrick was happy, healthy, safe and nurtured in this home. He was taken from his home and placed in a position of risk, specifically emotionally and by doing so they did it by force and this is assault.

Given that they gained the place of safety warrant by deception then that makes it null and void. They have gained entry to our home under false pretences. They took somebody out of this house against their will and without the legal grounds, and it doesn’t matter what the warrant says. It can be shown that the warrant should not have been granted because it was granted through deception and dishonesty; therefore it’s null and void. The conclusion must be that he was taken by an act of kidnapping and it was against his will and the will of his parents. This little boy lost everything that he had in his life that kept him happy and stable. He was traumatized and distressed over the next 13 days, as described in the caregiver’s statement. Constantly crying and screaming and frustrated. He was not fed properly. As a result, he had a physical reaction resulting in his death. Had he stayed in his home, the day that he died, he would have been at home in his cot, in his safety sleep, he would be checked on a regular basis. If what happened to Patrick had happened at home then we would have been able to do something about it and he may have still been alive today.

Based on the premise that Patrick was taken from a place of security and safety, placed in a position of risk and ended up dying – this then is grounds for a charge of manslaughter.

The day after Patrick died, Susie Sligo, who was apparently the manager of the Waitakere CYFS office, stated that they had serious concerns for Patrick’s safety. Information that had been given to them showed that there were no serious concerns and that all they had to do was provide Louise with support. That they had serious concerns was a lie.

Secondly, she has said that they have capable social workers that make judgement calls based on the information.

A judgment call should be based on and support the information that is available. CYFS took the most extreme action possible, not for a little baby that has been burned or beaten or neglected in any way, but for a baby that was healthy and happy and thriving so therefore their judgement call should have been for him, Patrick, to stay in the home.

Thirdly, one day after Patrick’s death, Susie Sligo said that there was no wrong doing by workers in her department. How is it possible for her to make that statement when the investigation had barely got off the ground?

Steve Maharey has lied to the public. He said on the 3rd November that he comes down very hard on social workers that do not do their job properly. At a minimum we can prove that they did not carry out a care plan and keep him safe. Yet we have had no response from Steve Mahary and he hasn’t even bothered to contact us. We have written to the CEO of CYFS and Waitemata DHB and copied this letter to Steve Mahareys office. Maharey’s office said that they acknowledge receipt of our letter and they will get back to us but we have never heard another thing.

CRAIG and LOUISE MARTIN

News years eve 2002

Martin, C & L

Ph 09 813 3647

My Message to Federal Magistrate Kate Hughes-she is discraceful! PLEASE READ

2006-07-26T10:12:00.000+10:00

(Identity withheld through fear for child)

My Message to Federal Magistrate Kate Hughes-she is discraceful! PLEASE READ
Federal Magistrate Kate Hughes,

It is with sincere consternation and fear for the future of our
children and our society that I find myself writing to you.

I have for the first and hopefully last time, had the regrettable
experience of being an observer and participant in the Australian
Family Law System, Namely the Melbourne Federal Magistrates Court.

I have been supporting my friend through this
horrible process for almost twelve months now, and as I am not
directly involved in the matter I believe I have been able to observe
with a reasonable and objective eye.

You cannot be acting in the best interests of the child if you do not
also incorporate and consider the father's right to be a father, be a
parent to the child.in conjunction with the child's inalienable right
to be fathered, to build a meaningful and sustainable relationship
with his paternal parent.

It is neither acceptable nor logical to alienate one from the other.

It is incumbent upon you to be realistic, not tokenistic when
considering the best interests of a child.every kind of meaningful or
important relationship that exists in the human realm requires
significant and on-going interaction to take place.it takes time and
that time is essential.

Judges dictating one or two days a week for father-child interaction
are simply ignorant, ill-informed, out-of touch, retrogressive and in
part at least, are responsible for the adverse effects it inevitably
imposes on the child. Research clearly shows that judgments of this
kind directly impact on suicide rates, alienation of child to father
and contribute to school delinquency, drug abuse and emotional
problems.

The best interests of the child are not met if Judges and courts
continue to deliver judgments that clearly disadvantage the child,
the father and their relationship.a relationship that will
significantly impact upon and shape the future of the child. This is
undeniable injustice and should not be tolerated by our society. It
is an act of gender discrimination in part, conducted in a maternally
biased and farcical courtroom. It shows a fundamental ignorance of
true justice, the child's best interests and the significance and
value of the father-child relationship.

Ms Hughes, in your deliberation of the [name withheld] Contravention
hearing you have blatantly delivered injustice to the child and his
father.

In delivering your judgment you relied heavily and unfairly upon the
Affidavit and oral testimony of the wife and her witness. You gave
minimal credence to the husband's evidence in his oral testimony and
Affidavits and you did not adequately consider pertinent issues of
the child's bi-racial heritage.

One does not require a law degree to conclude from the written and
oral evidence brought before you that the mother's actions were
intentionally provocative, controlling in the extreme and simply
misleading. Her actions directly contributed to the events that
unfolded on the [date withheld] 2006, to which your
decision was based upon.

Ms Hughes, you display an appalling lack of insight and understanding
of the evidence that was presented to you.

In your judgment you site as "controlling behaviour", the father
returning a pair of shoes to the mother that the child did not want
to wear. Your judgment and pertaining comments rely purely upon
assumption. And your assumption is incorrect. Your lack of insight
and understanding in this instance is simply astounding.

If you knew the child and his character or gave appropriate credence
to the father's testimony in court, you would not find this
controlling at all. The fact is that the child often makes it clear
when he does not want to wear particular shoes. He clearly and
assertively says "no shoes papa.shoes off papa.shoes off" or "no
shoes [name withheld], shoes off.shoes off please" and he will attempt to remove
them himself. Furthermore, if you have children you would know that
this is common behaviour for a two and half year old child.

In relation to this you reminded the father, Mr [the father], that the
child is only two and not linguistically capable of negotiating the
language required to make it clear that he did not want to wear those
particular shoes.the child was over two and a half at the time and
you should know that a child of that age is perfectly capable of
using such language.

In your deliberation you have failed to adequately consider the
impact on the father of the wife's on-going irresponsible and self-
indulgent parenting.

It is glaringly obvious that there is a shared-responsibility for the
events that took place on [date withheld] 2006 at
[place withheld]. What you fail to comprehend and
acknowledge is the fact that the mother's display of anger is passive
in nature and is directly linked to her dissatisfaction with the
marriage and relationship breakdown, whereas the father has long
moved on from the relationship, his anger is not expressed passively
and is directly linked to his genuine concerns about the health and
well-being of his son. You sight the father as verbally abusive
towards to the mother's friend who came along to handover, but fail
to give equal weight to the harassing behaviour which the mother's
friend inflicted upon the father. There is an obvious gender bias in
your views and findings.

I have discussed this matter and your judgment with colleagues,
academics, law professionals and lay persons. The overwhelming
consensus is that the decision you have handed-down in this instance
epitomizes all that is faulty and unjust in the family law system. We
all agree that your decision is precisely representative of the many
ill-considered and paternally discriminatory judgments that clearly
adversely effect father-child relationships.

Many of my colleagues and friends including myself are separated and
share the care of our children equally. We all concur that there is
no justice to be found in the family court system, and as such, we
have all, in our wisdom chosen not to make use of this unbalanced,
uncaring, unintelligent, unsatisfactory and sub-standard system. The
realty is that there is very little public confidence.

Chief Justice Murray Gleeson in an address on "The State of the
Judicature" (Law Institute Journal, December, 1999 p. 67at 71) stated:

"The most important measure of the performance of the court system is
the extent to which the public have confidence in its independence,
integrity and impartiality".

The courts and the judiciary realise that there must be public
confidence in the courts or the legitimacy of the courts is
challenged. In a speech by the Chief Justice of Australia to the
Australian Bar Association Conference in New York, the Chief Justice
commented:

There is now a broader concept of accountability recognised by the
judiciary. That is, in order to maintain public confidence in the
courts, the judiciary and court administrators have to be responsive
to criticism where that criticism is justified.

I truly believe that you, Ms Hughes have been mistakenly appointed to
the position of federal magistrate. I now professionally and
publicly call for your resignation.the delivery of such injustice
cannot be tolerated by those whom you serve, the Australian people.
This injustice forced upon both father and son is an affront to the
collective intelligence of our society.

You have unfairly and unjustly penalized the child and his father.
Depriving the child of meaningful and acceptable contact with his
father is disgraceful to say the least. The child has been used to a
twenty-four hour period of contact, weekly with his father, interim
orders made by Federal Magistrate Phipps in 2005. You have reduced
this essential father-son interaction time to a six-hour period. This
is unquestionably detrimental to the child's emotional welfare and
development. Moreover, you have not appropriately or passably
considered pertinent cultural issues that are inextricably part of
this child's life. Your ignorance of these issues of culture,
ethnicity and race are simply staggering.

Furthermore, the changeover venue you chose is excessively distant
from the father's home. The driving time from Williamstown to Narre
Warren is more than one hour. When you consider the driving time
involved, effectively the child now only has four hours a week to
spend with his father. This is disgusting and intolerable. I truly
hope that you will have the same situation imposed on you and your
children (assuming you have them) during your lifetime. Only through
experiencing such an unwarranted and intolerable situation yourself,
will you properly understand the reality and true consequences of it.
Your decision is in no way considerate of the best interests of this
child.

In the face of serious allegations of sexual abuse of his son while
in the mother's care (raised by [the father]) you chose not to
address this matter, one which clearly requires immediate attention.
Instead, you chose to set the next hearing for September, which
leaves this matter unaddressed for an obviously unacceptable length
of time. Your decision and handling of this matter has left the child
in a potentially unsafe and harmful situation. Had the situation been
reversed and there were allegations of sexual abuse of the child
while in the father's care, I have no doubt that appropriate actions
would have been facilitated expediently.

Ms Hughes, I understand that you have a duty of care to this child.
You have acted without due care, diligence and attention; you have
not acted in the best interests of this child. Your actions have
placed this child at further risk. Your actions are reprehensible and
you must be held accountable for such negligence and incompetence.

We, the Australian public must be provided with an accountable and
transparent method of recourse when inexcusable judgments such as
this are imposed.

The court appointed Child Advocate:

The court appointed Child Advocate has also played a contemptuous and
dubious role in this process. The Child Advocate, represented in
court by Mr Holte, is motivated by personal interest and certainly
does not show that he acts in the best interests of the child. He is
clearly not acting impartially. It was obvious from the outset that
Mr Holte was disenchanted and uncomfortable with the fact that the
father was self-representing. Some of the behaviour I observed Mr
Holte display towards the father was condescending, juvenile and
unprofessional at best.

An official letter of complaint compiled and lodged by Mr
Aschendorff, in regard to Mr Holte's unprofessional conduct, has
conspicuously affected the attitude and stance of the Child
Advocate. Again, it is clear that personal agendas have taken
precedence over the best interests of the child in this process. If
this procedure is to be seen as fair, just, impartial and
transparent, it is imperative that the court appoint another child
advocate, one who is capable of fulfilling the role honourably and
impartially.

Ms Hughes, your deliberations and actions have unduly penalized a
young father and caused damage to the long-standing and mutually
essential relationship between father and child. In court on the
final day of the contravention hearing you relied wholly on Mr
Holte's assertion that the [name withheld] Contact Centre was only 20-30
minutes drive from the father's home in [place withheld]. This is simply
a false statement. The drive time from the father's home to the
Contact Centre is more than one hour, one way. If traffic is heavy
it takes over one and a half hours, one way.

[father'sname withheld] right under the law to receive a fair and just
hearing has certainly been denied. I am aware that Mr Aschendorff
intends on appealing your decision and I unequivocally support him.
It is however truly unfortunate that he must engage in this process
in search of real justice. It is an unnecessary strain on him and
his child.

Your judgment in regard to the wife having a reasonable excuse for
breaching [name withheld] interim contact orders and suspending contact
with the father, are fundamentally flawed. Again, you did not fairly
nor sufficiently take into account the long-term and on-going actions
of the wife. It is clear in Affidavit and oral testimony that the
wife's actions were calculated, intentionally malicious and a
deliberate attempt to distract from issues she did not want to
address, namely issues of child safety, welfare and emotional well-
being.

Clearly, the husband's underlying stress and anger stems from the
wife's choice to ignore the father's concerns of suspected sexual
abuse of the child by the wife's brother-in-law. I observed the child
cry and scream almost every week when it was time to return to his
mother. This took place for over thirty weeks. Surely you have a
duty of care to the child to adequately consider and give weight to
the fact that a two and a half year old child becomes so overtly
distressed when he realises he has to go home with his mother. There
is obviously something untoward occurring in this situation. This
fact warrants serious and immediate attention. You have failed the
child once again.

The farcical conduct that I observed this court engage in blatantly
sacrifices the investigation and acquisition of the truth, and
instead, indulges in legal competition and the pursuit of personal
agendas. How can this possibly create an environment where the
child's best interests are paramount? It simply is not possible.

Both the system and you Ms Hughes, as the deliverer of judgments,
have dismally failed this young child.

Yours Truly,
[name withheld]

DANGER - school counsellors, psychologists and psychiatristS

2006-07-09T15:22:00.000+10:00

The, school counsellors, two psychologists and one psychiatrist, all of whom opposed my contact on the grounds that my ex would not be able to cope, are typical of whats available to lawyers to exclude fathers.

They certainly did a number on me. Of course where they really get you is with letting you squirm as you realise how powerless you are to stop them.
Their comments in court can be demonstrably in conflict with their earlier statement, making it completely apparent that they take a dim view of your criticisms of their treatment of your child (this is where representing your self can be a huge disadvantage).

I had one guy, Melbourne's Vincent Papalao - who promotes himself as being an advocate of shared presenting, declare that "there was something toxic" in the relationship between myself and my daughter. This after earlier reporting on the the worm bond we had. His word is God. Cross him, as I did by trying to stop him carrying out a fourth Family Welfare report on my daughter and us, and you're a gonna.(he seemed especially miffed that I'd got the Victorian psychology Board to intervene). Finally he agreed not to harass my daughter further - but only after she broke down in despair in his office.

In an earlier report he had suggested that the was two possible solutions - more contact on the basis that it's denial was distressing my daughter or ii) no contact while my daughter was subjected to therapy to address her anger (she was 6 at the time). Just how popular that sort of pronouncement makes him with the lawyers, I wonder. It stalls the case and ensures exclusion continues while more reports are done.

He also used a strange parody to suggest I was blaming others when it was really me that was at fault.He declared that when you point your finger there is two fingers pointing back at yourself. !, I was staggering to see the Judges approving nods as she considered the notion, while Justice Carter looked at her fingers. It was just one more scene that could have been lifted from Alice in Wonderland ("Off with his head").

I was just about to say that most people here know how these guys operate . I realised that this is largely untrue . You don't find out till after you've or someone your know has been through it. Its like lambs to the slaughter, unless you can muster the support of expert witnesses that are prepare to protect your child and you from what is, essentially your x's efforts to exclude you.

I often wonder about the guys that its happening to. I regret that we have been so powerless to warn them. I wish I was warned. Once you case centres on the psychological evaluation of your child and their contact with you, you can kiss your "substantial or meaningful" contact wit them goodbye.

The other psychologists a South African Mr Steven Osrin - declared that my X would "shut down emotionally" if my daughter was allowed to see me.

The school counsellor (I forget her name she know works for Ballarat Grammar) ) but was extraordinarily hostile. A lot of school have these now. It's moved from the cane to being sent to the school counsellor. Some how I think I'd prefer the cane.

The psychiatrist Dr. Entwisle suggested that I didn't listen to anybody else, when I argued that his assessment of me were biased and contradictory to a Professor of psychiatry Prof. Brendan Holwill. Needless to say he didn't like it when I refused to go back to him.

I've posted this post through F4J anonymously to avoid potential for further intimidation from these practitioners, After all no doubt they could be wheeled out again, anytime. But I guess arguing for any of them to be disqualification should succeed now that they have done the deed (after final hearing).

I doubt that they want to take me on in court for deformation because what I am saying is demonstrably true, and I think its my right to warn people of the danger these men represent to children. Besides why would they bother - their power is in the control of your access to your child. There always new ones coming in the door.

I look forward to when fathers can find out about these guys so they can defend their children and them selves. Knowing this in advance would at least make people realise how the respect they show these guys can be the determining factor.

Kind regards
Simon

My fight for every father

2006-07-07T12:02:00.000+10:00

This is an amazing story. It illustrates what a father must go through to stay involved with his children if his ex allows lawyers to make the arrangements ...and if matters ever are resolved its because the parents decided to make their own decisions. After all, until the laws are changed to protect children from parent exclusion, there is no limit to a lawyer's power to denigrate and destroy a child's father (or sometimes a mother) if they are being funded.
(Outcry)

My fight for every father
By TESSA CUNNINGHAM, Daily Mail

08:28am 4th July 2006

It cost his home, his job and his freedom. But this week Simon won
the right to see his daughter AND a £20,000 battle to reveal the
details of the case. Now, other parents can lift the secrecy that
too often mars family courts:

Exchanging proud glances as they cheer daughter Esti on at her
school sports day, Aneta and Simon Clayton look like any other happy
couple. As Esti reaches the finishing line, Simon whoops for joy and
Aneta runs to hug their daughter. Esti, seven, looks the picture of
contentment.

Indeed, seeing the happy family it's hard to believe these devoted
parents are actually divorced. It's even harder to believe that just
three years ago they were embroiled in a custody battle so vicious
it hit the headlines when

Simon, driven to breaking point by their bitter feud, fled abroad
with Esti. Police launched an international manhunt and overnight
the couple's domestic tragedy was being played out in the newspapers
and on television. Weeping Aneta gave a string of interviews,
begging for Esti's safe return. Police blanketed European holiday
spots with 'Wanted' posters. Holidaymakers were urged to report
sightings.

Finally, after six nailbiting weeks, Simon was arrested at gun-point
in Portugal. After two months in a squalid Faro prison, he was
extradited to Britain to stand trial. He pleaded guilty to child
abduction and was jailed for nine months. By that stage the warring
couple couldn't even agree on the time of day.

One would have thought their relationship would be completely
unsalvageable. Far from it. They now have a model divorce. And their
extraordinary agreement over Esti could serve as a template for
other divorced parents. Until now, family court proceedings have
always taken place behind closed doors. But after winning a landmark
ruling in the High Court last week, both Simon, 44, and Aneta, 32,
can talk about their ground-breaking arrangements.

The judgment will have far-reaching effects and now mothers and
fathers whose children are taken away from them - be it by ex-
partners or social services - will be able to ask for media coverage
of their plight. 'Ours was just an ordinary little case at the
outset,' says Simon. 'But it got totally out of control once lawyers
got involved. My story should be a warning to every parent. I'm
elated I can now expose the hell our family suffered. I had to keep
on fighting for all the men like me, men who have lost their hope.'

He believes that by putting what were effectively secret hearings
into the open, injustices can be exposed or prevented. Not only do
the Claytons share every aspect of Esti's care equally, the child
even has her own bill of rights - of which more later. She's
encouraged to love both parents equally while they promise only to
look for the good in each other. A tall order for most parents - let
alone for this couple.

Parent charter

After three years of hell, it's a charter made in heaven - but it
wasn't forged without sacrifices. 'I lost my home and my job and ran
up legal bills of more than £20,000,' says Simon. 'It's affected
every aspect of my life. I'd love to remarry and have more children,
but while this was going on, how could I commit?'

Simon was working as a pilot when he met Aneta, who now lives in
Brecon with her new partner Terry, during a stopover in Warsaw in
May 1997. 'She was working in the bookshop of the hotel and we got
talking,' he says. 'We bonded very quickly. She was pretty and
vivacious with a stunning figure and beautiful long brown hair. We
seemed to have a lot in common. We both love reading and simple
pleasures such as walks in the country.'

Simon returned to his cottage outside Hay-on-Wye. When Aneta
followed for a holiday shortly afterwards, their romance rapidly
intensified. 'With hindsight it was all too fast but, as Aneta
didn't have a visa to stay in Britain, the pressure was on,' says
Simon. 'We married in December 1997 and within three months Aneta
was pregnant. 'It was a happy accident. Women admit their body
clocks are ticking. Well, men's can too. I've always wanted
children. I had an idyllic childhood in North Wales, where my father
was an architect and my mother a housewife.'

Aneta had enjoyed a traditional Roman Catholic childhood in a small
Polish town - her father was a policeman and her mother also a
housewife - and was delighted to be a mum. Esti was born on December
28, 1998. 'Her birth blew me away,' Simon says. 'As a pilot I had
enjoyed an enchanted life. I travelled the globe and even spent a
year as a private pilot for the rock group Iron Maiden. But nothing
compared to the exhilaration of being a dad. I knew I'd been given
the greatest gift — and the most important job on earth.'

Determined to spend time with his new family, Simon quit his job.
The couple set up a bookshop in Hay-on-Wye so they could spend
quality time with Esti. 'We did everything equally. I changed at
least as many nappies as Aneta,' Simon says.

Unravelling marriage

But, while they were united in adoring their baby, their
relationship quickly unravelled. Struggling with the language and
isolated in their country cottage, Aneta felt lonely and bored. Soon
they were rowing constantly.

In April 2000, when Esti was just 16 months old, they separated,
divorcing two years later. At first things were amicable. Simon
stayed in the marital home so he could maintain the business. Aneta
and Esti moved into a rented home nearby. They agreed to share
childcare.

'We were devastated that our marriage was over. The last thing we
wanted was for Esti to come from a broken home,' says Simon. 'But
despite all the sadness, I was convinced we could stay friends. We
hadn't had affairs. We hadn't been violent. We had simply fallen out
of love.

'I assumed we would have a civilised divorce and organise childcare
as we'd always done - equally. We were such good friends I even
helped Aneta pack and drove her to her new home.'

To help arrange their divorce both hired lawyers - a decision that
within months was to turn their relationship into raging warfare.

'The second you hire lawyers you throw petrol on the problem,' says
Simon, who not surprisingly now campaigns for fathers'
rights . 'Little niggles get magnified. Solicitors want to make
money - it's in their interests to keep the dispute going.

'We would have silly tit-for-tat rows. If I was late to pick Esti up
one day, Aneta might punish me by being late the next time, but left
to our own devices we could have worked that out. Instead I'd
receive an insensitive, rude letter from her solicitor reprimanding
me. Then my lawyer would send her one. I don't blame Aneta and I
know she doesn't blame me. We were pawns.

'But the toll on my health was terrible. Every morning I'd feel sick
to the stomach when the post arrived - wondering what horror I'd
find next.'

Despite all their problems, Esti was still sharing half her time
with each parent. However, as the couple couldn't agree the finer
details, their lawyers advised a court hearing. And it was then that
the situation rapidly deteriorated. Aneta was advised to seek sole
custody of Esti, allowing Simon regular contact. She was told this
was standard procedure for mothers.

'The bottom fell out of my world,' says Simon. 'Esti was three-and-a-
half. All her life we had shared her care equally. She had two
bedrooms, two sets of clothes and two lots of toys. She had the best
of both worlds. At my home she played with her ferret, Fifi. At
Aneta's she played with Barbie dolls.

'But my lawyer told me that any decision would be entirely down to
the judge. Our little girl's future was out of our hands. Anything
could happen.

'From that moment I never slept properly. Every time I saw Esti I
wondered if it would be the last happy time we'd enjoy. It was a
living hell. I kept begging Aneta to sort things out between us but
she wouldn't listen.'

Eventually, Aneta became so tired of Simon's anguished letters that
her lawyer advised her to cut off all communication. And then, on
April 9, 2003 - just a week before a final court hearing to decide
Esti's future - Simon made his fateful decision.

Vanished

He booked a one-way ferry ticket from Portsmouth to Caen, in France,
and vanished with Esti, then four.

When Aneta arrived three days later to pick Esti up, she found the
house deserted and a note from Simon saying he had gone on holiday
for three weeks to spend some quality time with their daughter. She
was distraught.

'I feel very guilty about it now,' admits Simon. 'It was a moment of
madness. But I never intended to alarm Aneta and I certainly wasn't
kidnapping Esti. I just wanted to get away with her and clear the
air.

'I love travelling. In the past, I'd taken Esti backpacking around
America and North Africa, but relations between Aneta and me had
deteriorated so badly, I knew it would be utterly impossible to
agree holiday dates without months of lawyers' letters.

'Aneta knew I'd been planning a holiday in Europe. She also knew I
only ever booked one-way ferry tickets. It never occurred to me
she'd imagine I had abducted our daughter.'

That wasn't how Aneta saw it. She appeared on TV, begging the public
to help return her daughter. 'If you know where she is, please
contact me. Esti's missing me. It's time for her to come back home,'
she sobbed.

Driving through France, Spain and Portugal in his VW camper van,
Simon claims he was oblivious to the distress he was causing Aneta,
or the manhunt back home. But surely he must have known how
distressed the child's mother would have been. Moreover, having said
he'd be gone three weeks, he remained on the Continent for twice
that long. Who knows if he would ever have come home, had he not
been spotted by a British holidaymaker in a tiny fishing village in
the Algarve.

Esti was paddling in the sea when police pounced. 'A policeman
smashed me to the ground and stuck a gun in my head,' says
Simon. 'It was like something out of Miami Vice. When he told me, in
broken English, that I was being arrested for kidnap, I was in
shock.'

Simon was bundled into a police car. Esti, still in her wet bathing
suit, followed in another car. At the police station Simon was
allowed a final goodbye before Esti was whisked off to spend the
night with a social worker before being reunited with Aneta. Simon
wasn't to see his daughter for 12 months.

'Standing in the police station, saying goodbye, I was determined
not to scare Esti,' says Simon. 'I cuddled her and brushed her hair -
it was still matted from the sea.

'For the only time in her life I lied to her. I said that I was ill
and needed to go to hospital and that she would be spending the
night with a kind lady. Her lower lip wobbled but she tried to be
brave for my sake. I thought my heart was going to break.'

Simon spent the next two months in a cell at Faro jail. 'The
conditions were like a scene from Midnight Express - three of us
were banged up for 20 hours a day in a cell barely two metres each
way. Our toilet was a bucket in the corner.

'There was no fan and the heat reached 50 degrees. I thought I was
going to die. I'd never even had a parking ticket. I was in a
hellhole, all because I loved my daughter.'

Devastated by the distress he'd caused Aneta, Simon sent her a
letter of apology. But she was so angry, she didn't even respond.
Extradited to England after two months, Simon pleaded guilty to
child abduction and was sentenced to nine months in jail. Taking
into account the time he'd served in Portugal and on remand it meant
spending another two months in prison.

'I kept thinking I'd wake up and find it was all a dream,' he
says. 'I could have beaten someone half to death and had a lighter
sentence. But I was advised to plead guilty to save the stress of a
full-blown court case which might have involved Esti being called as
a witness.

'In jail, conditions were utterly terrifying. The queue for
methadone - a heroin replacement for addicts - was longer than the
lunch queue. I couldn't sleep at night for the howls of inmates half-
crazed as they went cold turkey.

'I blocked my mind to Esti. I didn't have a single photo of her in
my cell. I knew if I thought about her, I'd go to pieces. It was a
living bereavement.'

Homeless and jobless

Simon was finally released on December 1, 2003. He was homeless,
jobless and with a prison record. Now he faced a further custody
battle to gain access to Esti.

Finally, in April 2004 - a year after last seeing her - he was
allowed a few hours with her. But he was banned from being alone
with her in case he tried to abduct her.

'Esti had grown three inches. I'd missed her fifth birthday and
Christmas so I'd brought her loads of presents - a doll's house and
set of farm animals,' he recalls. 'She was really shy at first. I
started talking about her pets and gradually she warmed.'

But Simon was still determined to fight for shared care. His hopes
seemed slim, but in July 2005, Simon and Aneta found themselves at
the High Court in Cardiff for a final hearing. Against all the odds,
over two days the couple thrashed out an agreement.

'It was actually Aneta's barrister, Anthony Kirk QC, who suggested
it,' Simon says. 'Until then we'd been at loggerheads. But he helped
us draw up an agreement which put Esti first and acknowledged that
we both loved her and both agreed it was in her best interests to
have a mum and a dad in her life.

'For the first time, Aneta and I could see we were on the same side -
working for our beloved daughter. It was a minor miracle.'

'Bill of Rights'

The couple also agreed a special 'Bill of Rights' for Esti. She's
encouraged to love both parents equally and both parents promise not
to use her as a pawn in any disagreements.

'I couldn't believe we'd done it,' says Simon. 'Afterwards Aneta and
I even had a meal together. The bitterness evaporated. It's been a
year now and our arrangement works like a dream. Esti has separate
bedrooms and full sets of clothes at both houses, which are 23 miles
apart. She spends one week at my house, one at Aneta's.

'We are flexible. My father died a few weeks ago from a heart
condition. Aneta willingly agreed Esti could come to his funeral
although it was during "her" time.

'Esti has two very different worlds. At my home she goes riding and
for long walks. I don't have a TV so we read a lot. At Aneta's she
enjoys shopping and catching up on the soaps.

'Despite our terrible history, Esti is remarkably unaffected. She's
self-confident and outgoing with a wicked sense of humour. Most of
all, she feels deeply loved.

'Aneta and I talk regularly. When Esti has a doctor's appointment we
go together. My only anger is with lawyers. Countless parents -
usually fathers - suffer as I have. But our case shows there can be
a better way.'

..another horror story

2006-07-07T10:25:00.000+10:00

Hi All,

I just wanted to share this with all members and readers.

I am a single father, now of 38 years of age.

I have a daughter of 15 of which 11 years I have been denied access to her or even her location. Even though I took out various orders through the joke which is called the family law court.

When myself and my ex split she told child welfare services that I beat her so she could get assistance to move out whilst I was at work stealing my daughter in the process.

I am a loving father and the whole small town of around 500 people in which we lived was appalled at what had happened as it’s a small town and everybody knows everybody.

As I was the one that was her primary care giver when myself and the ex were together..That’s right I changed nappies. fed her..clothed her..everything you image a mother does I did as her mother was not the least bit interested in her welfare or life.

Her mother was more interested in doing nothing all day like watching movies and gambling. There were lots of days where I would come home from work and she had not even been fed or changed etc etc.

Unknown to me she took my daughter so she could get over half of my monthly wage to gamble and god only knows what else. Unknown to me she then dumped my daughter with her grandparents for 11 years and continued to receive child support, none of which the grandparents received.

By chance I saw her grandfather walking in the street in Perth just recently. He then started crying and apologizing for what had happened as he knows that his daughter (my daughter’s mother) is not fit to be a parent. I raised this point early on in the court and with CSA to which they laughed in my face without even meeting my ex.

As the whole of her own family knows that she is not a fit parent, my disgust at the system was apparent and still is. Its all about the welfare of the children until it affects the mother it seems.

All I ever asked for was a fair go and if the court system or CSA had listened and met us the outcome would be far different I would hope.

Anyway the grandfather arranged a meeting between me and my daughter behind the mothers back as she decided a few months before I found them that she needed my daughter to look after her kids from another relationship which were also neglected for years.

I met my daughter and it was an emotional and joyous time as you could imagine. My daughter then proceeds to tell me that she was placed in quite a few dangerous situations by her mother for the few years that she had her anyway, which I wont go into here.

Anyway needless to say that my daughter found out about the 11 years of lies and deceit that her mother was responsible for as told to her by her mothers own family (not me)and the kid hates her own mother with a passion, which may be justified but sad to see.

As I write this my daughter has moved in with me and we are looking at a new school for her and sorting out what she wants to do with her life. She has an IQ that is in the top ranges and tells me she wants to be a lawyer, probably in the family law court or similar ;)

I have had the chance to be reunited my my daughter through chance, and the system got it horribly wrong in my case and thousands of others that’s for sure. I even had someone at child support apologize to me if you can believe that as she had met both me and my ex.

I will never get those years back with my daughter, but I am luckier than most in the fact that I survived and did not kill myself as thousands of others in Australia have done.

I had just about given my hope of seeing my baby again, and would like to extend my wishes to all good single fathers..yes that’s right..there are lots of good ones and say to them that their kids will find out the truth in the end and eventually change the law themselves as its hurts the child as much as the single father to be without each other. And without each other I mean the biological father as this makes all the difference to the child no matter what mothers or anybody else may say.

Regards,

Richard

This email may contain personal, confidential or legally privileged information including information subject to privacy legislation. Any confidentiality or privilege is not waived because this email may have been sent to the wrong address.

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This is what my daughter got... becuase they wanted to hurt me.

2006-07-03T20:29:00.000+10:00

"No face to face or telephone Contact - no written contact save a card - to be vetted by the mother at Christmas or on birthdays ...despite their being no issues of abuse or violence. And you'd been told it didn't happen!

Will you do what you can to stop this from going on? - as I understand it does all too frequently.

Will you work to change the Laws to protect children from what has been done to my daughter?

After six years of legal efforts to maintain the weekend fortnight regime minimum the FC allowed my daughter to be with me, I have just received my second set of 'Final Orders' (the first ones were breached by my ex-partner and therefore discarded).

The final 'Final Orders' stipulate no face to face or telephone contact.

The Reasons For this Judgement were essentially, that:

i) any contact I might have with my daughter could cause her physiological damage; and

ii) any contact between my daughter and I would be too distressing for my ex-partner.

Justice Carter (the Judge) determined that I was argumentative and uncooperative and that this was supported by the fact that I had arguments with the psychiatrist and psychologist (no attention was given to the arguments - just that I was argumentative), both of whom maintained that the problem was that I wouldn't listen. Both concluded that I therefore must behave in the same manner with my daughter (despite reams of evidence to the contrary).

Justice Carter also pointed to the fact that I had made numerous complaints about lack of co-operation, bias and misrepresentations of the Child Representative and the excessive use of psychiatry and psychology to obtain legal objectives (which finally ended in my daughter breaking down in the psychologist's office).

All my complaints to all relevant official government and legal bodies have been officially dismissed despite the Child Representative's misrepresentation being evidenced by court transcript.

Sexual abuse allegations (two of them were made).
My daughter was forced to endure months of therapy and counselling, some of it to learn "protective behaviour". The abuse allegations were found to be without basis although it was deemed my discussions with my then three year old daughter about washing her private bits were deemed to be inappropriate. There was no recognition of the distress the allegations caused my daughter or I, or how they aligned the school teachers and DHS staff against me (other than to suggest I was paranoid).

I have been 'restrained' from writing or speaking to my ex-partner or any involvement in affairs relating to my daughter's medical issues or schooling unless the doctor(s) and/or teacher(s) are happy to provide relevant information.

I have been restrained from approaching my daughter's house or school.

I have been restrained from approaching or communicating with the Child Representative whose on-going Legal Aid funding has been assured by Court Order (Legal Aid has funded him for about four years now).

I am allowed to send a card and a present on my daughter's birthday (but these are to be vetted and rejected by my ex if she finds them 'inappropriate").

Cause the child distress, then use this distress to cause more
The terrible truth of the divorce industry is that a father can always be excluded from his child's life if the mother is wealthy or determined enough.

Why? Because the child finds themselves in the middle of the war and invariably become intensely distressed depressed and anxious. This in turn is used to argue that the father is the cause of the distress and the father must be removed to protect the child from ongoing distress. This is what happened in my case. I suspect it happens in every difficult case. Its the Family Court's "lay down masser". My daughter's complaints about what was being done to her, were blamed on me "involving her in the dispute" (how else would she have any idea of what is going on around her !!).

Can you do anything to stop this practice?

Most of these issues, including false allegations of child abuse arise as a consequence of the mutually exclusive policies and processes of the FCA. Once women are prevented from unilaterally excluding their children's fathers, once shared parenting has become the norm, mothers will not be inclined to make these allegations. There'll be no need.

Sexual abuse allegation are mostly the consequence of mothers becoming desperate. Desperate to regain the affections of children who have themselves become desperate and distressed about the way the mother treats their father and the unsatisfactory explanations they receive. Mothers that have been advised and assisted by everybody they have encountered to exclude the father. Unfortunately father exclusion is sold to them as both a solution and an means of empowerment. Not only by lawyers but by social workers and the DHS (I have no doubt that the new Family Relationship Centres will continue the policy)

Again I say this is the consequence of an abusive, mental and absurdly mutually exclusive system. An industry that relies on creating distress for children to win the exclusion of one of their parents. With shared parenting protected by law sexual abuse allegations would seldom occur.

THE SOLUTION

The solution to this nightmare and the awful harm it does to our precious children is amazingly simple. It’s what the vast majority of Australians have been telling the Government for years. Recent media polls on the issue of shared parenting again showed that the overwhelming majority of Australian - about 90% - want the carnage and abuse to stop.

These polls also show that this in not, as some powerful interest groups maintain - a gender issue. Australian men and women want the Family Court to desist from denying children the love care and guidance of their fathers.

The solution is simply to legislate to outlaw the removal of one of a child's parent by the other.

If the father is not arbitrarily, summarily removed, in the vast majority of cases the fight never starts in the first place. There is no fight because their is no excluded parent. THE ISSUE IS REMOVED. The problem fixed.

The method for resolution of this problem is also simple. The following MUST become written into the law to protect our children from the suffering so many of them are enduring.

"A presumption of equal parenting time, as a starting point, rebuttable only if child abuse can be substantiated, or if mutual parental agreement is reached for an alternate arrangement".

If anybody tells you that the solution can not be simple, that "one size can't fit all" - ask them why they would ever want to put a child though the living hell of having their father vilified and removed from their lives. Ask them what is complicated about NOT DOING THIS.

Yours faithfully,
SH
+61(0)3 5973 6933

Denied for 18 years

2006-07-03T06:29:00.001+10:00

Hello Everyone,

On July 2, 1988 our family was destroyed with the help of Paul Brun del Re.

For six long years, I fought hard in court to ensure that I would be part of our lives.
In 1994, I lost! You vanished! No forwarding address was provided, no telephone number was given and I had no means to contact you. No access!

Well, I really had no access for 6 years anyway! Even the Ottawa Police had to try to enforce court orders for access, since 1988, when you were hidden at Paul Brun del Re's house.
For years I searched, until 2002, when I found a web photo for "Nicole Brun del Re (Cook).

It would take another year to find a email address for "Cristina Brun del Re" aka Cristina Cook. The change of your names to Brun del Re, complicated finding you, and took nearly 10 long years.
Your mother re-married in 1994 and changed her name to Cecilia Davis, so your old address and telephone number were no longer in service.
By 2003, we made contact and you felt abandoned by me!

The truth be told, in July 1988, your mother stated to me "I will take the children and you will never see them again".
I really never believed the courts would allow such a thing to happen.
In 1994, I pleaded with the judge and told him of your mothers words "I will take the children and you will never see them again"! He did not believe that your mother would do such a terrible thing.
The past 18 years has proven otherwise!

Parental Alienation is a horrible condition and I have seen it affect thousands of families, worldwide.

I am so sorry that I was not allowed to be part of your lives. It is even more sad to see that Paul Brun del Re, Cecilia Davis and my you three, have started yet another legal action against me for libel.
Nicole, Lara & Cristina....you have been abused!
You have been lied to!
To involve you in a lawsuit against your father only proves PAS, but the truth we be out one day, and you will learn truly who your real father is!!! They say "the truth will set you free", well I will continue to tell the truth!

I guess my only chance to see you after 18 years will come in court.

So sad,

Your Loving Father...Denied for 18 years!!!

'Sorry' to man accused of sex abuse

2006-06-22T13:28:00.000+10:00

The following article in the Sydnet Morning Herald describes Mr Ginges' experiences after false sexual abuse allegations were used to sever his relationship with his children. As you can see he was ultimately able to expose the injustice and get some compensation and an official apology. However as a solicitor he was painfully aware that he was lucky, that most men wrongly accused had no hope of righting the wrongs.

The practice of one parent using sexual abuse allegations to deny the other access to their children continues to be a main stay of many custody litigations, especially those that go on for more than a few years (as they typically do if a father insists on resisting moves to limit his relationship with his kids). Custody litigations that don't involve alligations of some sort of abuse are almost unheard of. Drop in to any Family Law Court hearing and you will usually witness assertions of sexual abuse.

Petty the Family Courts doesn't recognise the damage and pain that the vilification and exclusion of one of the parents causes children - and protect them. It would, after all, be "in the best interets of the child" Seems they place more emphasis on their "erring on the side of caution" mantra.

'Sorry' to man accused of sex abuse-

By BETTINA ARNDT

Sydney Morning Herald 15/4/00

http://smh.com.au/news/0004/15/pageone/pageone02.html

Thirteen years after accusing a solicitor of sexually abusing his three children, the Department of Community Services has expressed its regret for the damage it caused to the man and his family.

Katoomba lawyer Mr Hal Ginges lost custody of his children and had no contact with them for more than five years as a result of the abuse allegations.

Now the department has admitted in court that its investigation was incomplete and unprofessional and that the conclusions reached by its officers were "not soundly based".

On Monday, the District Court in Sydney awarded a verdict in favour of Mr Ginges, who had sued the NSW Government for compensation for injury suffered as a result of the botched investigation. It is believed the department has paid him damages.

Mr Ginges says he was only able to pursue his claim because his children came back to him.

"Without them I wouldn't have been able to prove the whole thing was nonsense," he told the Herald.

It is the first time the NSW Government has made such an acknowledgment. A South Australian man once received an ex-gratia payment from the State Government for damages resulting from an incompetent investigation leading to sexual abuse allegations.

The allegations against Mr Ginges arose as a result of a notification in March 1987 to the Katoomba office of the then Department of Youth and Community services, now DOCS. The three children, Kieran, then aged 10, and his two sisters aged 8 and 4 had already been subjected to a sexual abuse investigation five weeks earlier when they were taken to Westmead Hospital by their mother, Ms Anne Morris, and her partner, Ms Leslye Chenery.

All three children declared no abuse had taken place, according to a Westmead Sexual Assault Centre social worker's report.

Kieran, now a 23-year-old arts-law student, told the Herald: "I couldn't work out what was the point of all this, but I was adamant in saying nothing had happened to me."The Westmead social workers found no evidence of abuse.

By the time of the department's investigation, Ms Morris had left the children with their father, who had long been their primary carer, to move in with Ms Chenery.

The investigation by department district officers Ms Christine Waterer and Mr Les Cormack described by the department as "brief and urgent" involved a four-hour interview with the two girls.

A leading Sydney child psychiatrist, Dr Brent Waters, reviewed the DOCS files to provide expert evidence for the District Court proceedings. His report described the investigation as "extremely coercive" and unprofessional.

Dr Waters strongly criticised the interviews for containing leading questions and failing to acknowledge the children's emphatic denials that any sexual activity had taken place.

The department's investigation was followed by yet another visit to Westmead, and all three children were medically examined. The Westmead social workers found there was no conclusive evidence to suggest any abuse had taken place. But the next day Mr Cormack confronted Mr Ginges and accused him of being a child abuser.

The department funded the children's move with their mother and partner to Melbourne, saying the children urgently needed "a safe place".

Ultimately, Mr Ginges's contact with his children was limited to supervised access, yet, according to Kieran, the children remained under pressure to say that they had been abused.

"We kept being taken to see people from DOCS and therapists who would further push the allegations and our weakness in not acknowledging them."

Kieran said that he made a decision to give in.

"Finally I decided that for the pressure to be removed I'd simply say something had happened, make something up."

Mr Ginges said Kieran made contact with him in 1992 following encouragement from a foster family he had lived with after leaving his mother's home.

By 1996 all three children were in Sydney, the younger sister with her father and the older with her father's mother. The children are now all very close to their father.

Ms Morris said she was very surprised by the department's decision. Ms Morris, who now lives in Adelaide and deals with child abuse matters for a women's health service, said she believed the DOCS investigation had been handled "extremely professionally and carefully".

The government statement announcing the settlement acknowledged that the department investigation "was not conducted in a complete and professional manner and that the conclusion reached by its officers was not soundly based".

It acknowledged the damage caused by the allegations.

"Following the investigation, Mr Ginges suffered the loss of his close relationship with his children for several years and also suffered at the time publicity adverse to his reputation. The department regrets the damage to Mr Ginges and his family."

Asked to comment, the department issued a statement saying child protection practices used by DOCS had changed significantly since 1987.

"DOCS decided it would not be beneficial to spend weeks in court defending practices which have long since changed and been improved."

The statement said the staff involved in the matter were no longer employed by DOCS. Yet this week Mr Cormack was working at the department's St Marys Service Centre. However, a DOCS spokesperson said Mr Cormack was a consultant to the department.

While expressing satisfaction at the verdict, Mr Ginges, whose work as a solicitor includes family law, voiced concern that sexual abuse allegations were often made vexatiously, and few men had been able to prove they were wrongly accused.

"Through my work as a solicitor, I know men who have lost their children to false allegations who never have the opportunity to rectify the damage done to them."

Kieran, who is studying at UWS Nepean, remains angry at the unprofessional intervention of DOCS and other professionals and the subsequent damage it caused to all their lives.

"It astounds me how these professionals can be so negligent. I find it abhorrent."

The best a man can get.

2006-06-19T20:54:00.001+10:00

I spoke to a barrister friend today (who incidentally despises Family Law Judges) . He thinks I did well - especiallyconsidering I saved all that money on representation - I was ordered to pay $24,000 to the the child representative who lied in court to stop me seeing my daughter, who embellished the X's sexual abuse alligation to get my daughter teacher to oppose my efforts to see my daughter, who pushed for more psychological examinations of my daughter despite two Judges directing that it was systems abuse, that she should not go on (it was her seventh psychological assessment, plus she had to go through a year of therapy with a psychiatrist at age 6 for her misbehaviour with her mother (for being horrible to me), who even obstructed contact when my X agreed to it I had raised these issues in an effort to ghet him disqualified but my application was dismissed.

In other words the fact that I was penalised for taking more of the courts time than would have been taken if I had representation was offset by what the representation would have cost (lawyer logic).

He then eloquently set out the only path available to me. I needed to demonstrate that
the criticisms of my character and personality were taken on board, that I
had learnt and improved - then I'd have a chance at supervised access. If the supervising
ladies said nice things about me, I could then embark on the slow process of graduated increases in
supervised contact, any increase coming by way of a new application in court, ultimately cumulating is unsupervised contact eventually - first a little bit - unless the child, my child starts doing poorly at school or misbehaves with her mother in which case I would be excluded again.

This is what happens to every child and every father if the mother want it to be. .

Petty Ruddock didn't do anything to change this.

Poor little kids. The thought of all the lies they must endure as part of
this process makes me feel sick inside.
The marvel of children is their curiosity, their innocence and their trust.
...telling them lies that leave them confused and sad is an awful thing
to do to a child - any child. To see that done to your own child is like a
stake through the heart.

I wonder how those amongst us that supported the Government's so called reforms can face this reality. How they can face the torment it represent to our most precious children.

Regards,
Simon
Phone: +61 (0)3 5973 6933
Mobile: 0414 415 693
vascopajama@dodo.com.au

Anonymous - Family Court Outcomes #1

2006-06-18T22:39:00.000+10:00

2004-05

Mother's solicitor argues father is mentally ill. Submission of Family Report and two psychological reports cleared father of any mental illness.

Final orders:

Father contact:

Alternate weekends Fri after school to Monday before school; each Wednesday during term time from after school to 7:30 pm; half of all school holidays - 29% of total time.

Mother contact: all other time - 71% of total time.

During the relationship father worked approx. six days a week to pay mortgage, wife worked one day per week.

Assets - house and superannuation:

Mother receives 68% of assets $370,000

Father receives 32% of assets $173,000

At time of settlement, $5000 of child support arrears were seized under a s72a application by CSA to the solicitors holding the property settlement.

Anonymous - Family Court Outcomes #2

2006-06-18T22:37:00.000+10:00

2004-05

Case took 20 months. Father paid at least $60,000 in solicitors' fees.

There was never any allegation of abuse or incompetence made against the father with respect to the children. Allegations of physical abuse against the mother were unsubstantiated and dismissed.

Father's contact: 22%

Mother's contact: 78%

"My case took approximately 20 months after continual adjournments for reasons unknown. Early on I had to defend myself against false charges of abuse against my former wife (AVOs). The judge eventually threw these allegations out. I had done nothing wrong and 2 child counselors had said I was a good father but strangely they (both women) wouldn't agree with my request for 50/50 access for my kids. They both said I wasn't the Primary Carer and they didn't believe in 50/50 Equal Parenting Time.

"After Justice Boland made an interim decision, that was actually illegal and actually a final decision, that the kids move with their mother to Victoria, I knew then I had little chance of seeing more of my kids. NB. Boland had assured everyone that the case would be given priority and it would be heard within 4 to 6 weeks in Melbourne. After about 4 or 5 weeks, I rang Melbourne to find out what was going on and they told me that they hadn't even heard of the case !! But as soon as they got 'wind ' of my appeal against Justice Boland's decision (I was going to represent myself after getting sick and tired of throwing money away on Barristers) I got a call from the Family Court that my case would be heard in about a week and the judge would be Justice Kay !!

"Justice Kay apparently had a reputation, the wrong sought of reputation. Unfortunately it proved correct. He wouldn't accept my affidavit and wouldn't give a proper reason. Again everyone agreed that I was a good father but it made no difference. Boland had done the damage and Kay was too weak to do anything about it. Even before I sat down in court, Kay started on me. He treated me like a criminal. I pulled him up numerous times on hypocritical mistakes and his obligations but it didn't make any difference. He set out to destroy me in his court and I suppose in the end he got his way. I wrote a letter of complaint, but unfortunately these complaints are heard by a fellow judge !! A joke. These judges answer to no one.

"I now see my kids only every second weekend from Friday night to Monday morning and half of all school holidays even though the counselor recommended I see more of my three young kids.!! I also have to do 90 % of all the driving (they live an hour's drive away). My ex-wife got 70 % of all assets even though she came into our marriage with very little. She has been rewarded for taking the kids away interstate from NSW while I was at work at our business. She also cleaned out the house and lied to the kids!! A reward for wrongdoing and all to the detriment of my three kids !!"

Anonymous - Family Court Outcomes #3

2006-06-18T22:33:00.000+10:00

2003-2005

Case took two years.

Children: one boy born in 2001

Final orders:

Father has six days and four nights contact per fortnight. This will reduce somewhat when the child starts Grade 1.

Father given 34% access reducing to 30% when school begins

Mother given 66% access increasing to 70% when school begins

Property:

Mother was given 68%

Father was given 32%

Mother had contributed 24% of assets according to the father's calculations.

Solicitor actively undermined negotiated settlement

Father and mother initially went to the Dispute Resolution Centre. By the mother's own account, mother had contributed 45% of the assets (father maintained it was 24%). Mediators put it to her 'So you would be happy with 45% ?' The mother replied 'No, my solicitor says I can get 70%, and I want 70%.'

In the Family Court process there were three mediation sessions. Solicitor for the wife, Eddy Lago (Cairns) undermined chances for reconciliation at two of these three sessions. In the first session, father's position was that mother had contributed 24% of the assets. Solicitor acting on behalf of the mother wanted 70%. In the spirit of reconciliation the father offered 35% (and was prepared to go to 50%. Solicitor Eddy Lago later asked me what my bottom line was and I told him 50%). The solicitor facetiously responded 'ok we want 90%' swiftly and effectively ending any prospect of a negotiated settlement.

The mother ended up winning 68% of the assets at the Final Hearing, however 40% of this it is estimated, was spent on the solicitor's and barrister's fees, implying that she received about 41% of the assets.

'He said it with a smile on his face'

Father went to pick up child on his day of care (informal agreement in the Family Court prior to Interim Orders). Mother says she wants father to come an hour later in future. Father agrees saying he will return child an hour later. Mother says child must return at the same time. Father suggests - ok how about half an hour later. Mother shrieks - 'No I can't trust you and attempts to take child from fathers arms. Father turns his back and begins walking to his vehicle eight metres away. Mother scratches father's forearms and pulls at his shirt. Father places palm on mother's forehead to keep her at a distance. Finally father gives mother a single barefoot kick to the shins so he can get child to the vehicle. Mother shouts that she is going to get a DVO.

Police officer organises a meeting. Mother's story that she was trying to take child from father because father was running away and grass was wet and father might slip over, doesn't add up. Blood from scratches on father's forearm still highly visible. Police officer says no grounds for a DVO.

At second conciliation conference, father presents a report of the incident, and also a letter from former partner of 14 years who stated that in all that time, father had never hit her, nor even pushed her - ie he had never been violent in anyway. Eddy Lago, solicitor for the mother says 'how did you get that out of her ? Did you beat her up as well ?' Father (speechless) turns to the Deputy Registrar Gilbert Victoire to see if he was going to respond to this blatant provocation. Deputy Registrar Gilbert Victoire responds to father 'He said it with a smile on his face.'

Serving documents on the solicitor

Father, as a self-representing litigant, went to the offices of solicitor for the mother Eddy Lago to serve papers and gain a signature in the box entitled 'Solicitor's signature.' Receptionist notified solicitor that father had documents to serve and said to father 'He'll be right down'. Father waits for 30 minutes then ducks outside to put more money in the parking metre. When he returns, he goes upstairs to the office of Eddy Lago and informs the secretary that he just needs a signature and he'll be off. She comes out of the office telling him that he must wait downstairs and solicitor will attend shortly. Father informs secretary that he will continue to stand outside the door until he receives the signature. Solicitor Eddy Lago comes out and shouts at the father to wait downstairs. Father repeats that he only needs a signature and he'll be off, and until he receives the signature he will remain exactly where he was. Solicitor goes back inside the office, then reappears saying that he'd rung the police. Father says he is not concerned about the police but just needs a signature and he'll be off.

Father waits for another 30 minutes outside the office of Eddy Lago, before he reappears. 'Come downstairs with me.' Father and solicitor go downstairs where father expects solicitor to sign the box entitled 'Solicitor's signature.' However, solicitor tells father once again police are just about to arrive and that father had no right to abuse his staff. Father responds that he did not abuse any of his staff members and just requires a signature, noting that the police are taking their time in arriving. Solicitor says he is not required to sign the box, the receptionist at the front desk can do it. Father says that a lot of trouble could have been avoided had he said this in the first place.

Solicitor goes upstairs and father goes to receptionist at the front counter and asks if she can sign the box. Receptionist knows nothing of this and rings upstairs for solicitor Eddy Lago who returns to the foyer. Solicitor, about 6'3" in height then proceeds to stand over father and shout at father telling him to leave the premises. Father says he just needs a signature and he will be gone. Office manager appears to see what the shouting (on the part of the solicitor only) is about. Father explains he needs a signature and asks office manager if he is able to sign. Office manager says he is not. Father gets his name as a witness of delivery of court documents and leaves. Solicitor writes an Affidavit which is included with other Affidavits in the case for child residency and property settlement. Father believes solicitor Eddy Lago was trying to provoke father so that he would take at swing at him, and thus be able to prosecute him, and use new evidence in his case.

Solicitor Eddy Lago arranges a meeting

(four hours discussing $400 worth of bills

Interim Orders

At the third conciliation conference, father asks Deputy Registrar why father can never see his child on a weekend, especially seeing he has a step sister who is at school during week days and goes to visit her mother during school holidays. Mother responds 'because I work, and weekends is the only time I can see him.' Deputy Registrar remembers from previous conciliation conference and says 'But don't you also have Thursdays off?' Mother replies 'Yes but that's when I have to do my shopping !' Irritated with mother's response Deputy Registrar slams his book closed and turns to father saying 'you should seek Interim Orders.'

So father spends many hours preparing an application for Interim Orders. When the matter is finally heard the judge rules 'because the Final Hearing is imminent, we will not change the current pattern of access.' The judge described the Final Hearing as imminent even though no date had been set. The Final Hearing occurred 12 months later.

Final Hearing

Justice Carmody comes across as reasonable and even-handed. He gave the impression that he made allowances for the fact that the respondent was self-representing.

However Justice Carmody stated that the father was inexperienced as a father, even though the father had brought up a 14 year old daughter and currently had sole residency, and had more experience than the mother.

In property settlement he took into consideration scrappy evidence of shopping grocery bills paid by the mother, did not tally the items where a major arithmetical mistake had been made, accepted as evidence a bank form which had been filled in but had not been stamped, nor had the main form even been separated from the butt. He ignored completely that over $5,000 had been received by the mother for Family Benefit and that this amount should be taken into consideration when calculating who had spent what. Because the father had not kept shopping grocery bills from four years prior, it was assumed he hadn't bought any.

Father was able to prove that sexual abuse allegations in the Affidavits by the mother and maternal grandmother were completely fabricated because the mother had not even mentioned these presumably serious issues during her meeting with the Family Court child psychologist who was writing the Family Report. When asked by the father during cross-examination why she didn't raise these serious issues with the child psychologist, the mother responded after a pause that she hadn't had enough time. When asked how long the meeting had gone for she replied that she couldn't remember. When asked again she said she though the meeting had gone for one hour. The father was able to show that the meeting had lasted one hour and 45 minutes.

Even though the father was lucky to be able to prove that serious allegations of sexual abuse were totally false, there was not even a word of caution from the judge or from anyone.

Even though the mother works fulltime and is on call some nights and weekends, and even though the father was available to care for the child any time and all the time, and even though the child had a sibling at the father's home, it was deemed in the child's best interest to be located with the mother. One of the justifications of giving sole residency to the mother has been that the father is working fulltime and the mother is available to look after the child. Here we see the double standard of the Family Court and bias against fathers in action.

During the Final Hearing the self-representing father was not reacting quickly enough - that is immediately resuming his seat the moment the Applicant's barrister, Josephine Willis interjected. After a couple of reminders, Josephine Willis turned to the father, and at a distance of approximately 50cm, shouted 'When I stand you sit ! You got that ?! When I stand you sit !' Speechless, the father did not respond. Rather he later approached the Barrister and calmly explained that as he had never been in court before, much less been self-representing, he will try to remember as best he can, but may forget again. It also occurred to the father that the behaviour of the barrister Josephine Willis was deliberately provocative, and constituted intimidation. Justice Carmody was witness to this extreme outburst but said nothing.

Justice Carmody ordered Respondent to pay Applicant $5,000 towards their legal fees

Justice Carmody ordered the Respondent father to pay $5,000 towards the legal fees of the Applicant. This was despite the fact that:

1. the father had made offers for settlement and the mother had made none.

2. Residency orders were closer to what the father had sought than what the mother had sought.

3. that generally Respondents do not have to pay legal fees of the Applicant.

Eddy Lago, solicitor for the Applicant had argued that the Respondent had drawn things out so the two-day Final Hearing was longer than it needed to have been. The father pointed out that cross-examination of the father by the mother's Barrister was significantly longer than cross-examination of the mother by the father.

The father in his Orders Sought asked that pick-ups and drop-offs of the child be reciprocated - ie each parent do their own pick-ups such that drop-offs are eliminated. Justice Carmody didn't see this as a reasonable request and ordered that the father do all pick-ups and drop-offs.

The father asked that the mother use the child's surname as described on his birth certificate (the father's surname) rather than changing it to her own to avoiod confusion as to which letter the child is listed under at school, with Medicare etc etc. Justice Carmody suggested that this was one issue that in the new spirit of cooperation, the father and mother could resolve amongst themselves. One year later this issue has not been resolved.

An easy obvious general policy solution would be for boys to take the surname of their father and girls to take the surname of their mother.

Justice Carmody gave 68% of assets to the mother even though she had contributed on 24% (according to the father). He said 'This is a global assessment and I am not required to, and will not provide a breakdown for this figure.' Not even a justification for this decision was given.

'I expect by then you two will be able to sort things out yourselves.'

The Family Report was based on meetings of the Family Court child psychologist, Marilyn Venus, and the mother, and then the father. The child's 14yr old step-sister was also required for an interview, though the child's maternal grandmother, with whom the child resides while the mother is working.

The Child Psychologist also sat in a small room observing and taking notes while the father and child 'interacted'. Similarly this took place with the mother. That this is such an unnatural situation in which to be objectively observing child parent behaviour, and that so much hangs in the balance with this half hour 'observation' is disregarded. One can easily walk along a plank located one metres above the ground, but suspend the same plank between two buildings 100m of the ground and the result is quite different.

Nevertheless, the interviews and observations went smoothly. In the Family Report, the Child Psychologist recommended a three stage increase in contact with the father. Marilyn Venus said to the father following the release of the report 'I didn't go all the way to equal residency because I felt I'd intervened enough, and I thought that by the time he goes to school, I expect by then you two will be able to sort things out yourselves.' What a big assumption considering the mother was willing to fabricate sexual abuse allegations amongst other blatant untruths in her Affidavits.

The father asked the Child Psychologist why the Family Court granted equal residency in so few cases. She said 'you have no idea of some of the fathers we have come through here.' 'Are many of them so terrible ?' the father asked. 'Oh no, most of them are very good fathers' she responded. 'So why is equal residency granted in less than 5% of cases ?' the father continued. The Family Court Child Psychologist, Marilyn Venus, did not respond. She looked at her notes, shuffled her papers and changed the subject.

The judgment of Justice Carmody

In his Contact Orders, Justice Carmody followed the recommendations of the Family Court Child Psychologist. He was only going to make orders until the beginning of 2007 which would have meant father and mother would be posturing for the next two years preparing for the next round in the court. The judge had given some excerpts from the Family Law Act during to read during the lunch break. One part of the Act is a recommendation - when making orders, consider orders which minimise the need to return to court. The father pointed this out to the judge. Justice Carmody seemed irritated. However, in his Final Orders he put in a fourth contact stage beginning in 2007 and continuing indefinitely.

The father pointed out to the judge that while stages one to three were progressively increasing, stage four would be regressive and that there was no apparent logic in this. The judge responded that when a child starts school, both parents have less time. The father responded that even taking this into account, the child would have less percentage contact with the father. The judge replied irritably 'well I'm not going to change it now.'

We were handed a copy of the Orders for perusal. Eddy Lago, solicitor for the mother approached the father after a bout five minutes saying, 'Well we're finished. Are you finished ? We should go back in.' He was obviously pressuring me to agree. However, I took my time reading over the Orders.

I noticed that the judge had deviated from the recommendations of the Child Psychologist by Ordering pick up at 7.30pm rather than 7.30am. The judge, again irritable, remarked that that was just a 'typo.' 'Typo' it might have been, but had I not pointed it out at that moment it most likely have remained irrevocable.

Do you mean to say the Family Court process actually creates conflict?

The father argued that it would be better to have Final Orders that could give finality to the Family Court process rather than orders which require returning to the Court in two years time, because the adversarial Family Court process amplifies conflict, and we need to resolve conflict. Justice Carmody was unable to fathom this argument. 'Do you mean to say that if two people come to the Family Court and there is no conflict between them then the court will create conflict ?' he asked. I responded 'if two people come to the Family Court is usually means that there is already conflict between them, but the way the Family Court operates means that solicitors will search for ammunition, and that there will be more accusations and counter-accusations as a result.

one more fuitile letter to a Senator

2006-06-18T20:13:00.000+10:00

Dear Mr Stephens,

This is my desperate plea for all of you to consider the joy good health and success in life of children who enjoy the ongoing love guidance and care of both the parents after separation of their parents, and so avoid the conflict, distress and emotional devastation caused when one parent is empowered to exclude the other parent after separation or divorce.

International research studies overwhelmingly show that children who have suffered the substantial or complete removal on one of their parents suffer several times the incidence of low self esteem, depression, drug abuse, poor academic achievement, teenage pregnancies (girls) increased trouble with police (boys) mental illness, metal illness and suicide.

Children continually say they want to live with both their parents. They don't want one of them taken away. It is simply a lie to suggest otherwise. It is preposterous to suggest that children are harmed or destabilised by spending half their time with each of their parents. Moving from household to household adds excitement, interest, contrast and the love and guidance of the other parent. It is a joy for children, and a right. To say otherwise is a lie promoted by those that have a financial interest in the devastation caused to children when one of their parents is banished from their lives.

Unfortunately, for our children, the government relies on vested interests, including the Family Court, the Law Council of Australia, Relationships Australia, the Family Court's Institute of Family Studies among others, for its information and advice on issues relating to family law. The government allows these groups to misrepresent research on children's issues which, contrary to their representations has overwhelmingly supported the inclusion of both parents in children's lives.

All of these groups and organisations have made formal submissions to government opposing reforms that would allow children to enjoy the love care and guidance of both of their parents in their lives.

These groups would mostly be out of business if the government reformed legislation to allow children equal access and contact with both their parents.

The parent exclusion business is a multi billion dollar business, and therefore exerts immense pressure on government to maintain the status quo. The money is made because parents typically spend everything they have and more, to protect their children from the damage that mutually exclusive custody outcomes cause.

Ask anybody in the street, any grandparent, any sister, brother, any mother who hasn't been got at by Family Court practitioners, any media poll. They'll all tell you the same thing. The vast majority of people want children to be spared the trauma and damage caused by having one of their parents vilified and removed by the Family Court and its practitioners. Don't rely on vested interest for your information because they will support their livelihoods.

The best outcome for children under the current system is a weekend a fortnight and half holidays. Typically this gets reduced to a couple of hours in a "Contact Centre" or none at all during litigation. This is nothing short of a horror story for children.

I call on you to support an independent review of research, all of which has been submitted in the many enquires into Family Courts since its inception in 1975.

"Equal parenting responsibility" does nothing to ease the conflict caused by the exclusion of one of the parents. Nothing in the government's proposed legislation makes it harder for a lawyers to deny a child contact with both their parent.

The proposition that a Family Court should consider equal time with both parents is testimony to the Court's opposition to allowing children both their parents. What do you think it was supposed to be doing in the first place? The suggestion that it only has to do this when its in a child's best interests is blantantly dishonest because it fails to recognise that it is almost always in a child's best interest to have both parents in their lives equally.

The Family Relationship Centres proposed by the government do not address the damage done to children by the mutually exclusive policy of the Family Court and its practitioners. This initiative is a deliberate effort to avoid reforming the Family Court and the Family Law Act. The proposal is a ruse, a humbug. Whilst mediation between separating and divorcing parents is always helpful, the problems can not be solved until the Family Court and its practitioners are prevented from excluding one of a child's parents through a process of vilification of that parent.

Three hours at a Family Relationships Centre can not deliver a reduction of conflict through improved sharing of parenting for a fundamental reason - because Family Relationships Centres will be run my organizations who have publicly opposed improved contact with the otherwise excluded parent.

The proposed Family Relationship Centres have been promoted as a way of allowing separating couples to ovoid the Family Court. As a solution, ending Family Court support of summary and ongoing exclusion of one of the parent has been thrown out in preference to an experiment in counselling. Leaving the court to continue its destructive ways. Nothing has been done to change the law applying to summary and ongoing exclusion of one of a child's parents.

I suggest to you that the fix is VERY simple. As in many things the solution is to remove the problem. The problem is the forced exclusion of one of a child's parents.

Accordingly the fix is brought about by;

1. Insisting that laws are passed that protect children from having one of their parents summarily, and unilaterally excluded by the other, a situation that the court currently endorses,

2. Insisting on laws that make the summary exclusion of one of the child's parents illegal,

3. Insisting on laws that allow any excluded parent to apply for immediate relief by way of enforceable court order. A parent must be able to make urgent application to the Family Court for immediate relief from their exclusion if the other parent has been obstructed them from having equal contact with their children. In other words a reversal of the presumption that an excluded parent must mount a lengthy and often unaffordable legal campaign (more often than not against Legal Aid funded lawyers) to seek that which the court currently denies in almost all contested cases - equal involvement with a parent's children, by so doing preventing the excluding parent from arguing that the wrongfully established status quo of one parent being excluded should prevail - ie: equal time parenting for all parents who want to (and can) stay involved in and relevant to their children's lives must be protected by law.

4. Insisting that Section 121 of the Family Law Act is rewritten to make the Court and its practitioners fully accountable to the public. Section 121 should only afford protection from publicity for the child, unless such publicity is needed to protect the child from sharp practice of court practitioners or bullying from the court when an excluded parent objects to their child being abused by process.

The biggest benefit of this "fix" is that it prevents most custody battles from even starting - when there is no summary exclusion of one parent, in most cases there is no issue to be fought over.

The vast majority of custody litigation is caused by the courts endorsement of the exclusion of one parent, because any parent will do everything they possibly can to protect their children.

Current family law legislation must be reformed so that the Court's role is;

i) providing immediate relief for any parent that has been summarily excluded from their child's life,

ii) resolution of financial matters between parents that reflect both parenst role in their children's lives, and

iii) in rare situations protecting children where one parent can be shown to be a danger to their own children.

The bond between a child and both its parents should not be breached unless and only unless a court has found on evidence that a child's contact time with either or both their parents was seriously dangerous for the child (ie: in extreme circumstances) and not in circumstances where one or both parents had demonstrated a functional capacity before the separation or divorce.

The government's proposals should be rejected because they do not address the problems they purport to.

For the sake of our children I implore you to protect them from the damage caused by a money driven adversarial system that literally destroys lives.

Regards,
Simon

Family Law Reform - Letter to Attorney General

2006-06-18T18:58:00.001+10:00

Hi, still haven't got this Blog page fixed up the way I want it meanwhile however I thought I would post some of the letters I wrote in my desperate efforts to prevent the practitioners and courts from ejecting me from my daughter life - all to no avail.

This letter is among many that illustrate the utter hopelessness of trying to protect children from the abuse of the Family Court and its practitioners, who see their job as punishing and exclusding one of the parents. Sadly, the easiest way to hurt a parent is my hurting their child and this exactly what they do - knowinglyit seems.

I've removed the names to protect myself against the sectreacy laws that protect the Family Court from accountability.

Outcry

25/06/05

The Hon. Philip Ruddock MP
Australian Government
PO Box 1866
Hornsby Westfield, NSW 1635

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your response of 24 May 2005.

Please note however the issue is not the enforcement of Court orders. The issues I raised were the Child representative misrepresentations, and the disturbing fact that despite allegations of sexual abuse being found not to have substantiation the Family Court has instead relied on these representations in denying me ANY contact with my daughter for over a year now.

Needless to say the Family Relationship Centres have no barring on the courts interpretation of the law or its reliance on child representative solicitors that can act to destroy a child relationship a child would otherwise have with one of their parents. Your new FRCs may provide mothers the opportunity to avoid the devastating court process - sometimes, if the mediator doesn't have the typical anti father attitude social workers are well known to favour. However if no changes are made to family law and how the Court administers it, whats the point? Mediation sessions will be a means of reading the riot act. If father's don't like it - bad luck. Without changes in the Law, the court's attitude and its interpretation of the Law this measure will in the main be useless.

I will forward my complaints to the Office of Premier and the Hon Robert Hull. Your never know they may decide to break ranks and do something to protect my daughter. Given the refusal of the other state bodies to address these serious issues I won't be holding my breath.

You may be interested to know that I am in the middle of my final hearing, however after five day in court Justice Carter adjourned the case for six weeks whilst she went on her country run. Another six weeks of not knowing if my daughter is dead or alive! I am still restrained from talking to, writing to or seeing my daughter, whom I'm told the lawyer representing my wife, after years of being angry at her mother's attitude towards me, now says she hates me.

These judges have a litigious perspective that needs to see one of the parents as guilty, the other innocent. They don't get it!. A child's well being is dependant on a relationship with both parents. The court's role should be preventing one parent from excluding the other. Instead they do the opposite. They facilitates the exclusion of the child's other parent, empowering one parent to vilify, demoralise and often destroy the other parent.

The solicitor appointed by the court to be my daughter's Child Rep justified his obstruction of my contact with my daughters by saying he's "entitled to have a view". Given the outcome and the serious damage to my daughter's life, how can this be said to be in the her best interests?

The application of the adversarial legal system is against the interests of the child.

Clearly the laws have to be changed to address the ease with which one parent can sever a child's relationship with the other parent on teh advise of lawyers and various "professionals" under the existing Family Law Act.

I respectfully submit that to do nothing about this situation, where there is opportunity for remedy is tantamount to child abuse on a massive scale.

Yours faithfully,

Should I Apologize For Being Angry?

2006-06-16T11:13:00.000+10:00

Should I Apologize For Being Angry?
> By George Rolph
>
>
> I have heard it muted that men will never be able to pull
> together and fight as one, until they stop being angry at women. The
> reason given for this logic is that many other men will not join the
> men's movement if they think its made up of men who are angry at women
> because, their sense of chivalry will create in them an inherent need to
> defend women. While this logic is faultless, I wonder if its underlying
> premise is faulty. Allow me to explain.
>
> I agree completely that gratuitous rage at ALL women is bizarre
> and probably borders on the mentally deranged scale of social sanity, if
> it does not correct itself in time in the men affected. I also believe
> however, that Radical Feminism is infested with females who ARE mentally
> deranged because of their blind hatred for all things male. Having said
> that, I also believe that men have a right to be angry at those women
> who have, by various means, set out to destroy everything that those men
> hold dear.
>
> Now, if some guy (or woman)tells me that, because I am angry at
> the abuses I have suffered personally and witnessed against other men,
> he/she will not stand with me, my answer to him is a simple and direct
> one; Good! Go away, because you are not welcome. If the pain of your
> past fathers, present brothers and future sons, is less important than
> your old fashioned attitudes towards savage females, go be a Radical
> Feminist!
>
> I firmly believe that as men, we have to get real here and
> understand exactly what it is we are fighting; who the enemy are; what
> they have done and are doing to men; how they are doing it and what we
> have to do to defeat it all. There is a huge and growing roll of fallen
> men who have given their very lives because they have suffered massive
> personal and/or shared damage to their families, their finances and
> their reputations by females and hate filled female political
> philosophies.
>
> Men who, like my own father, have placed shotguns in their
> mouths. Men who have burned themselves to death in protests. Men who
> have jumped off bridges. Men who have starved themselves in hunger
> strikes. Men who have lost their sanity. Men who have been raped in
> every way imaginable by a savage, feminised system and become homeless
> drifters. Men who have gassed themselves in cars. Men stripped of their
> families, children and reputations. Men falsely accused of horrendous
> crimes who have preferred death to trying to live with such a stain on
> their character. Men who have watched helplessly as crippling child
> support payments have destroyed their ability to earn or keep a business
> running. Men who have been sent to jail for waving at their children in
> a passing car and so found themselves in breach of a no contact order.
> Men trapped in horrifying and savagely abusive relationships they cannot
> escape from or find any help to manage, because the system set up by
> women, for women, will not allow them in. Men being forced to pay child
> support for children they did not father. Men losing jobs because of
> invented sexual discrimination allegations. Men who, every day, have to
> read and watch incredibly insulting things said about their gender in
> endless press reports, magazine articles (often written by bitter
> females) on TV shows and in movies. In India , over a million males were
> forcibly castrated on the orders of a female premier. Just how damn
> patient do they want us to be?
>
> No matter how much those on the fringes of the men's movement
> (I.e. Internet radio commentators and journalists) think men's anger is
> somehow, uncivilised, many men have very good reason to be furious and
> its that fury that drives them on. What those detractors should be
> thankful for is the massive restraint those angry men are showing. Those
> men have every right to storm the courts and government buildings and
> start shooting.
> The fact that they do not is a testament to their incredible
> patience and wonderfully noble characters! Forty years of insults and
> assaults by women and feminised men is enough to make any man angry. For
> me, the problem is not so much the angry men, as the men who dont get
> angry.
>
> The assault against the male gender has long gone past the cafe
> chatting stage. Those who observe the mens movement and tut, tut at the
> rage they see and hear, as they sip their coffee in the Internet cafe or
> office canteen, should understand just how close to a world wide and
> massive male rebellion we are all coming. If it does blow up, it will be
> very ugly indeed. While that prospect is frightening and one that must
> be headed off if possible, it will not be done by side line commentators
> telling men to cool it. These men are not going to cool it. What must be
> done is to find constructive ways to channel that anger. That has to
> start with education.
>
> Know your enemy is the first rule of warfare and, make no
> mistake, this is a war! What is more, it is a war that MUST be won! Our
> enemy is not all women but some women and some men. The modern missiles
> aimed at men are bigotry, lies, deception, disinformation,
> misinformation; hate dressed up as equality, political propaganda of the
> worst kind and wholesale political manipulation of the populations
> around the world. All of these things are falsehoods and all are
> missiles of the mind. Therefore, the fundamental weapons of our warfare
> are truth, justice and personal integrity. Shields of the mind.
>
> The instrument of the weapons formed against men is Radical
> Feminism. Therefore, they are our enemy. The history of what they have
> said and done are our ammunition. Calling them to account socially,
> legally, morally and financially is our goal. That includes anyone:
> Journalists, judges, lawyers, publishers, politicians, TV executives,
> teachers, policemen and on and on, who have pressed these injustices
> onto innocent and helpless men and families for personal, political, or
> corporate advantage and gain. We have to make the supporters of this
> foul Radical Feminist political movement into social pariahs. We must do
> this as a warning that will sound loud and clear throughout history,
> that the likes of these vermin will not be tolerated again. Just as we
> did with that other bigotry called, Nazism.
>
> A friend of mine was in the army. I asked him, What would you do
> if you are on a battlefield and you see a women charging towards you
> with a gun and the intent to kill you? I would shoot her. No
> hesitation? I asked. Nope! None. He said, emphatically. OK. I replied.
> What would you do if you were in a corner at home and your wife was
> standing over you with an axe with the intention of burying it in your
> head? He thought hard before replying. Finally he asked, I cant get
> away? No. You are slumped in a corner and she has the axe raised. There
> was a long silence, and then he said, I would pray.
>
> Chivalry aimed at the wrong people will utterly destroy men who
> wont fight back. If they want to stand by and watch as vicious,
> politically motivated attacks destroy all they are and all they love,
> then they have no place in the men's movement at all. On the other hand,
> if they understand this is a real war, then they can shoot back with
> legal weapons and need not fear. The enemy has to be stopped and curling
> up in a trench and hoping, that if he is polite, she will not bayonet
> him with a false allegation or a new law designed to rip his life apart
> is, frankly, stupid! It was that attitude that got us into this mess in
> the first place.
>
> Violence is not the answer, but neither is Chivalry. This gender
> war is costing too many lives to be fought as if it was an 18th century
> battle between gentlemen. It isnt! Men did not start the war but men
> have to win it. The time has come to fight back with the best weapon we
> have... The truth! Sometimes the truth is a cruel weapon.
>
>
> I understand there are women in the men's movement who find
> men's anger difficult to deal with. Perhaps they have had too many
> compliant men around them for too long, I dont know. But those women who
> do join us had better not start to lecture us about how its so very
> important to be nice. Nice, will cost you your family, property,
> reputation and all you have earned, if you are male. If history has
> shown anything to men, that is it.
>
> Save your lectures for kindergarten kids. Dont make the mistake
> of talking down to us because, if you do, we will turn against you also.
> Roll up your sleeves and fight beside us or get out of the way. If you
> do that you are welcome, if not, then go away! There are not many social
> workers found on battlefields and we dont want to be mummied out of our
> anger thank you very much!
>
> Should I apologise for being angry? Hell no! I have every right
> to be angry.
>
> George Rolph grolph12@...
>
> Biography:
>
> George Rolph is a 52 year old male living close to the edge of
> London in the UK . He is a writer and a specialist in domestic violence
> and abuse issues. In particular, male victims of domestic abuse.
>
> George campaign for males against the extraordinary bias and
> bigotry they face in everyday life. His aim is to raise awareness of
> these things and encourage males to understand the truth about our
> history and rights.

Children's Interests Vs Vested Interests.

2006-06-02T13:47:00.000+10:00

Children's Interests Vs Vested Interests.
Should kids be allowed equal access to their dads after divorce?

The federal government proposed “Shared Parenting Bill”, being debated in parliament this week, is supposed to make it easier for children to enjoy the love, care and influence of both their parents and end the trauma and damage of the profitable business of excluding one parent by application to the Family Court.

Clearly conflict is against the best interests of children yet the Family Court and its ancillary practitioners promote conflict as an alternative to equal time parenting.

Unfortunately, lawyers that specialise in Family Law make their money from conflict not resolution. Typically intervention orders are used that turn the father into an instant criminal (punishable by jail) if he attempts to see his children outside the restricted times that have been dictated. Intervention orders handed out without the need to prove any wrong doing, typically start a process that causes tremendous harm to children, who as a consequence experience several times the incidence of underachievement, depression, mental illness, drug abuse, and suicide as they grow older.

Excluding any child’s father (or mother when it occasionally swings this way) through a process of false allegation, intimidation, and vilification represents emotional torture for the father, and, very serious abuse of the children.

The debate is about whether or not a child gets to grow up with the care and guidance of both their parents. Its not a debate between men and women, as we so often get told. It’s a debate between the “vested interests” - people who derive their livelihood from securing mutually exclusive custody arrangements for children on one side, and parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters - ordinary Australians that know children should be protected from harm and given every opportunity to succeed in life, on the other.

Unfortunately the vested interests are typically seen as experts and their views widely publicised by a media who is less willing to air the views of ordinary people who have no commercial interest in compromising children’s lives.

If parliament can deliver the commitment expressed by Prime Minister John Howard to reduce the epidemic of fatherlessness in our community, they will do so in defiance of lawyers and associated social workers and practitioners who profit from this misery industry.

They will succeed in replacing the conflict that is a living Hell for so many of Australia’s children, with a common sense solution that delivers happiness and fulfilment to the children, and their parents, neither of whom need be aggrieved.

If parliament again fails to reform the Family Law Court (it’s tried two times before), it should ensure that fathers are spared the suffering of expecting to be allowed to stay a part of their children’s lives, by publicly acknowledging the Family Court’s mutually exclusive policy on child custody arrangements, thereby allowing fathers to spare their children the torment of the process.

Simon Hunt (excluded father)
Mornington

2006-05-31T18:58:00.000+10:00

You know the terrible thing about all this is when the court finally allow me to speak with my daughter, which will be when she reaches adulthood, or if we're very lucky, in a supervised environment to monitor what is said, ....finally she will want to know the truth about what happened.

The terrible truth that I will have to tell her when we are finally allowed be Father and daughter again, is that all of this happened because her mother wanted it so.

Think about that for a moment. All the court assisted exclusion of me from her life only happened because my daughter's mother wanted it to happen. Because she couldn't cope with her daughters affection for her father.

If her mother suddenly decided to allowed her her father again it would all be over. The court would have no objection. It will only exclude me while my daughter mother wants me to be excluded.

The consequences of that will no doubt be the destruction of the relationship with her mother and untold ongoing grief and despair, as the opportunities in life pass her by.

Of course this begs the question of what the courts are doing assisting mothers to exclude fathers when they otherwise would have no interest in excluding them?

As I have said time and time again, the government need only amend the laws to ensure that one parent can not unilaterally, summarily exclude the other parent form a child's life, forcing the excluded patent and child to endure years of frustrations and limits on their interaction whilst spurious claims to justify the exclusion are investigated by various professions that profit from this misery. If and when the government finally does this, children will no longer have to suffer the trauma of having one of their parents excluded and vilified, of having to grow up in fear of losing their remaining parent, if they don't play along and join in the condemnation of their own fathers.

Regards,
Simon