Misogynistic
bullies don't deserve justice - What
if lone mothers in Cinderella costumes attacked politicians to get the
Child Support Agency to secure decent support?
More bravado and bullying
by the lads from Fathers4Justice. First they invaded a conference on
family law in Devon where Jonathan "Jolly" Stanesby of F4J
handcuffed Margaret Hodge, the minister for Children, and held her
for 40 minutes. Not funny, Jolly. Then they warned of pre-Christmas
mayhem for their 10 "most wanted villains", including Charles Clarke
and Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, the highly regarded family court
judge who will not meet them.
Now they have turned on the BBC and the
presenter Fiona Bruce because she fronts a documentary to be
broadcast tonight that looks into allegations that some of the key
members of the F4J defence force are convicted perpetrators of
violence against their former partners. F4J "accuses" Bruce of being
a supporter of Women's Aid, which helps such victims - a revealing
objection, don't you think?
The makers of the "Families at War" programme,
part of the Real Story series, say there is no generalised
slur on the campaign itself, but a rout of self-made martyrs is not
easily persuaded out of monomania and, anyway, this is not what this
campaign group has come to expect from its friends on newspapers and
in television.
Like fond parents of spoilt children, the media
mostly excuses and delights in the capers of F4J, perhaps because
there are a significant number of separated media fathers who feel
an instinctive bond with these chaps who make a spectacle of
themselves, dressing up as Batman - boys who never grew up and who
expect us all to bow to their demands. Some feminist journalists too
have fallen for the loveable rogues, describing them as the new
suffragettes. To equate the struggle for universal voting rights
with these bounders is blasphemy.
I wonder if the nation would so generously
empathise with young Muslim men if they handcuffed David Blunkett
and threatened Jack Straw, to protest against their victimisation by
the iniquitous new anti-terrorist laws? And what if lone mothers in
Cinderella costumes attacked politicians, intimidated judges and
journalists, stopped traffic and created deliberate chaos to get the
Child Support Agency to secure decent financial support for their
children from absent fathers?
Intolerably large numbers of these custodial
parents live in poverty and misery while the fathers avoid payments
and the CSA lurches from one wretched crisis to another.
The chief executive of this enforcement body has
just resigned after its computer system failed to deliver, leaving
mothers (and some lone fathers entitled to financial support from
working mothers) with no way of getting what they are legally owed.
What have F4J to say about this issue? I can guess: the demands of
the CSA are yet another bit of state oppression in their lives, the
unspeakable tyranny that forces them to pay up for children they
helped bring into the world.
Many of us who oppose and despise F4J's tactics
are keenly aware that post-separation anguish is tragically suffered
by too many fathers. There are indeed mothers who violate all
agreements and provoke constant aggravation with the non-resident
parent in the hope that the contact will eventually cease, thus
emotionally amputating the child from the father and, unforgivably,
from loving grandparents who have done nothing to deserve such
punishment.
Some of my own acquaintances are among these
vindictive mothers. In one case, one wife told me she was getting
her husband to pay for a massive house renovation before chucking
him out and bringing in her young lover to live with her and her
three young children. She did too. And now the father is left
begging to see his kids while paying for their private education and
everything else she demands. But he hates F4J because the image they
have promoted of themselves is so offensively misogynist.
Saner and more temperate fathers' groups, such
as Fathers Direct, are not; mothers and fathers are treated with
equal respect. These groups work hard to dispel the myth that all
separations end in ugly hate and wars. (F4J mocks their
girliness.)
In a government green paper, Parental
Separation: Children's Needs and Parent's Responsibilities,
evidence is produced to show that more than 80 per cent of separated
parents are happy with the access arrangements that they have worked
out. Most lone mothers say they would like more involvement, not
less, sometimes even women who have been terribly treated by the
fathers.
Among the women who block or reduce access, a
number do so because they are genuinely trying to protect their
children. F4J gets very cross about these "recalcitrant mothers" and
condemns Lord Justice Thorpe who has decreed that mothers can
intervene in arrangements if children are getting anxious or
depressed.
It is alarming to witness F4J imposing its
uncompromising conditions on the law, society, politics, family life
and the national conversation. Anyone who opposes them is given the
treatment. The MP Clive Soley, for example, who has criticised these
self-pitying warriors, gets regular warnings on the internet. One
message says: "Watch yerself you wouldn't want to wake up one
morning and find the BNP has stolen your seat."
This campaign has succeeded in getting the
majority of Britons to believe that most departed fathers are
desperately seeking justice in a cold world and that the only policy
that will give them redress is an automatic 50-50 share in their
children's lives. Family law is complicated and fraught, necessarily
so. There cannot be absolutes, and in the end it is the children who
have got to matter more than super-petulant parents.
In new research carried out by Young Voice,
children of divorced parents are interviewed about their lives from
the point at which the parents parted. The law may stress the best
interests of the child, but in reality the thoughts and desires and
needs of children are too often drummed out by noisy adults. Read
their words and you get a glimpse into how different each child is
and how they change too - happy one year seeing both parents then
adamantly refusing to pack and repack and transport their
lives.
Sarah finds it hard that there are such
different rules in the two households she has to live in. Her mother
doesn't talk to her dad about money but moans about it to her, and
that gets her down. Jason didn't want to live with his dad, who then
locked him up and blamed his mum. Rachel feels that "whoever you
live with you have ups and downs, whether they are your dad's
partner or your dad's frog".
Under-resourced family courts have to deal with
these fragilities and with other problems of abuse, neglect, drug
addictions, poverty and family relationships. Sometimes the courts
do very badly; other times they manage incendiary situations
sensitively. One change that would help to diffuse conflicts would
be to open up the courts, so they are not shrouded in secrecy and
easily maligned. With the surge in divorces, this is an
imperative.
By now, I will have been posted on to the F4J
website as yet another man-hater, an enemy to be pursued and brought
into line. Maybe next they will start to mock kidnap their opponents
and show them on a video, just for a laugh, just for the
publicity.
Comments to:
y.alibhai-brown@independent.co.uk
Reponses:
"Misogynistic bullies don't deserve
justice" by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
The Independent Monday 22nd
November 2004
I find it a shame that this 'Journalist' continuous to
waste everyone's time by her feeble attempts to
downgrade the plight of many thousands of Fathers, and
Families throughout the UK and elsewhere who have been ill
treated by very well known abuses of Family Court
proceedings and due process of Law.
She fires umpteen bullets in any direction but misses the
target every time. We can all be accused of being ignorant in our
lives, or bias, or indeed fanatical at times when affairs of the
heart are involved, but more-so when the lives of innocents are
manipulated or destroyed by those thought to uphold human
dignity.
May I remind this lady who waxes lyrical on this subject
that the real culprits and proper subject of her verbosity should be
the legions of so called Family Lawyers who promote an adversarial
system for mere profit. Us Fathers are not fighting for 'Our Rights'
ONLY, but for our 'Childrens Rights' to Two parents as is their
birthright. The Children are the focus here, and deservedly so no
matter what the sins of the past by either party. Please get
it right in future.
The Independent
Tuesday 23rd November
2004
Sir: Why does Yasmin Alibhai-Brown persist in peddling
the notion that Fathers4Justice is a misogynistic organisation
(Opinion, 22 November)? As a woman who has been involved in F4J
since the early days of the campaign, I find the proposition not
only laughable, but profoundly offensive. While F4J is, by the very
nature of the injustices it seeks to redress, male-dominated, it is
not remotely anti-women in either its intent, expression or internal
culture.
Wives, partners, grandmothers and other female
relatives and friends constitute a substantial proportion of F4J's
active supporter base and are engaged at at every level within the
organisation, in fundraising, in
administration and in protest.
We are not involved because we are the unwilling or unwitting dupes
of our overbearing men folk, but because we too are victims of a
cruel and institutionally prejudiced family law system which abuses
thousands of children every year by depriving them of perfectly
decent, loving parents and their extended families.
The media
and the public in general have no difficulty in recognising that F4J
is not anti-women, but simply pro-equality. By implication equality
in parenting will curtail certain privileges unfairly enjoyed by
women under the current family court regime. I suspect that it is
this which really
alarms Alibhai-Brown.
TRACY H.
Women4Justice
Manchester
Dear Yasmin
Alibhai-Brown,
Children who have contact with their
fathers following a family break-up suffer fewer behavioural
problems, academics have said time and time again. Youngsters who
have a close relationship with their natural father after their
parents split up are likely to be less disorderly, anxious or
aggressive. Researchers discovered that children who had infrequent
or no contact at all with their non-resident fathers were more
likely to externalise and internalise problems. Professor Judy Dunn
from the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College, London, analysed
data collected from 162 children whose parents had separated over a
two-year period. Of those children, 18% had no contact with their
father, and 16% had contact less than once a month. The research was
part of the continuing Children Of The 90s project based at Bristol
University, which has been monitoring the progress of 14,000
children in the Avon area since 1991. The findings were published in
the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Prof Dunn said:
"There is a practical message here - parents should make a great
effort to get on well after they split up. "They should put their
differences behind them for the sake of the children.
The more contact there is the better
the outcome for the children." Researchers interviewed all 162
children (initially at an average age of eight and a half) about
their relationship with their mothers, fathers and stepfathers. The
mothers were asked to report on children's behaviour, on whether
they were aggressive or delinquent (externalising behaviour) or
withdrawn, anxious, or depressed (internalising). Prof Dunn
said: "This research is the best kind of thing to support the case
of some desperate campaigners who want more access to their
children. "Our findings were unequivocal: more frequent and more
regular contact was associated with closer more intense
relationships with non resident fathers and fewer adjustment
problems in children." Prof Dunn noted that the amount of contact
between a child and a father was related to the relationship between
the parents.
She added: "This underlines the
importance of parents developing a good working relationship over
children's issues and of keeping any problems in their own
relationships separate from their parenting." The research showed
there tended to be less contact between children and their fathers
if the mothers had been relatively young when pregnant.
David Mortimer. MANKIND
Dear Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
Neither
bullies, nor misogynistic. It is a civil rights movement of
victims of the "Family Courts" where no justice is
provided. The violence, bulling, anti-father decisions take place in
secret courts, behind closed doors. The network of
child-professionals collaborating in the process are simply hostile
to fathers, consider them as useless and worthless. Gender-equality
in family matters is non-existent. Fathers are rightness beings.
Long way to go!
Matthäus Huber, B.Sc.Education
.gif){kind=logo}
