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Xx Ill Eagle 16 Ill Eagle
16 .. Aug 2001 .... ISSN 1466-9005 Ill16 p1 Ill Eagle for MPs Many thanks to Jerome Davis for
supplying Ill Eagle to MPs – Ed Double Squirt Letter in Ireland on
Sunday, sep00, by Michael Stephens, Pineview Grove, Aylesbury, Tallaght In the early part of this century, an
Alabama industrialist, David Edelman, forecast that increased mechanisation
of agriculture would result in "negroes becoming obsolete". He,
therefore, proposed that measures be taken to reduce or eliminate the negro
population in the USA as society (ie white people) would have no further use
for them. His inhuman comments were, quite rightly, condemned by many public figures
even in those "unenlightened" times. If anyone, in our modern, liberal, new
Ireland suggested that one section of humanity is now obsolete or redundant
because the rest of the human race can survive without them, one would expect
that such a sentiment would be utterly condemned by all right-minded people.
No doubt, if the group declared obsolete or redundant were black people,
itinerants, gay people or, most especially, women, the cries of condemnation
would be deafening. Yet, popular psychiatrist Dr Anthony
Clare, in his recent book, declares men to be redundant and no one raises an
eyebrow. His book, entitled Masculinity in Crisis, does nothing more than
repeat the same old anti-man rhetoric that we have been hearing for the past
20 years from misandrist feminists and their sycophants. Men are portrayed in this book as
inherently violent, totally confused and unable to come to terms with the
rapid changes in society. All men's problems and all women's problems are
caused by men and the mythical "patriarchy". In essence, Dr Clare
sees men as flawed versions of human perfection, ie, women. In his myopic analysis of society, Dr
Clare ignores the fact that men are, and always have been, the architects of
virtually all social progress. The overall contribution of women to the
evolution of civilisation is miniscule in comparison. If he looked around at the reality of
men's lives in the 21st century, he would see that the vast majority of men
are totally at ease with their place in society and, as in the past, making
valuable contributions in every walk of life, including the nurturing of
children. It is true that some men are finding
life difficult as evidenced by the suicide statistics. But if commentators
like Dr Clare wish to make an intelligent contribution to a debate on men's
place in society, I would suggest that they first free themselves from the constraint
of having to tailor their utterances to the demands of the great tyranny of
our times, ie feminism. [I first met Stephens at Amen in Eire in
sep00. His letter exactly matches my comments on The Squirt in Ill Eagle
aug00, p1- Ed.] Out for the Count -
Andrew Stephen, Sunday Times Magazine,
14jan01, p37/43 -
.... Al Gore .... needed to employ a $15 @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Ill Eagle
16 .. Aug 2001 .... ISSN 1466-9005 Ill16 p1 ‘Wave’ Dad banged up with Murderers - Kirsty Turner, Sunday Independent 8apr01 in Ill
Eagle 15, p1 2aug01 From Mark Harris Dear Ivor, Can I please place a very big thank you
in the next "Ill Eagle" to everyone who supported me during my stay
at HMP Pentonville. I am totally convinced the pressure upon the family court
Judiciary-who, let's face it, have little respect nation-wide anyway - played
a major part in my release. I am still in total disbelief as to what
Madness Munby did in sending me down for such things as trying to bribe the
mother into complying with a Contact Order (4 months), giving my children
their birthday presents on a contact last year (4 months), driving near their
home in hope of seeing them between contacts (6 months consecutive to the 4
months) while working as a driving instructor, but also his total disregard
of four very good Court Welfare Reports and eighteen (yes, 18) Social Service
reports of observed Contact between 1994 - Oct 2000, ALL of which detail my
kids happy at contact. Unfortunately, we had the Official
Solicitor involved, who in my experience
simply does not ever support contact if the mother opposes it, so
therefore sends a Child Psychiatrist (why on earth we had one of them when
no-one ever claimed any of my three kids were mentally ill, I'll never know)
to interview the kids in the mothers presence, and therefore gets them
dissenting against contact, so then Mad Dog Munby could then elevate this
version of the kids wishes to the forefront, and disregard the 22 good
welfare reports. I tried to appeal this on 2 July, but
Sloss and Thorpe dismissed my appeal as it was Madness Munby's
"discretion" to disregard the contact reports by a total of two
CWOs and five Social Workers, in favour of the Corrupt Child Psychiatrist (Dr Hamish Cameron, 2 Kings
Ride Gate, Richmond, Surrey) who never saw a single contact. Therefore, although endless Perjury by
the mother is accepted and encouraged, bias reports-against the father of
course-are often passed through and accepted "on the nod", in my
case GOOD welfare reports are simply disregarded in favour of the mothers
wishes-just get the kids interviewed in front of her! I have now gone back to Mad Dog Munby
with my youngest's latest school reports, this is the first year she has not
had any contact at all. All her previous reports (she's 10) describe her as
"a popular member of the class", "polite and helpful",
eager to please", etc. This year's now describes her as "very
disruptive", "attention seeking" "very silly at
times" and "often falling out with her peers". The only change
to her life in the last year has been no contact with me at all. Interests of
the child, Munby style! Let's see what his reaction to her reports in my application to restore
contact will be-is he man enough to admit he got it wrong? I won't hold my
breath. THE THORPE PROTEST I will post a copy of the Wiltshire
Gazette article from our demo on 21 July, and his response via the Lord
Chancellors department. As can be seen, they/he are defending their position.
But I do wonder just how much longer they will hold out before wanting to talk
to us. We shall see, the next protest, August 18, Somerset! If Madness Munby ignores or dismisses my
application to restore contact based on the adverse school report, I intend
holding a series of vigils outside his Manningford Bruce home (Frith Copse, Manningford
Bruce, nr Pewsey, Wiltshire) in due course. Anyone interested in coming along would
be more than welcome. Press have already shown an interest, and I do intend
to leaflet his village inviting the
residents along to discover what sort of man lives in their village, with the
lure of soft drinks, crisps, sweets and snacks for all those who come along. His anger in Court just five days after
the excellent protest outside his London home in April, I think, shows this
nature of action - to the very doorstep of their exclusive homes - is a very
effective weapon of hope to bring eventual justice to the unjust and corrupt
family courts of today. All any father wants is the same status
as mothers new man; a presumption that you are fine to live with/spend time
with/look after your kids UNLESS you actually do something wrong. Just why
should (as in my case) I live with my kids until the eldest was almost 7,
then in the space of just 2 hours (the time it took my ex to clear my home of
possessions and children while I was at a Football Match) I have then had to
go to Court over what is now 120+ times just to prove (unsuccessfully on the
most recent) that I am good enough to just see them? Yet her new man moved in, and has never
been interviewed, checked out, or even observed with my kids, although THORPE
himself found (Court of Appeal, dec95) that he had indeed ASSAULTED them in
breach of orders not to. And, of course, to this day, still lives with them.
What we must all continue to do is ram home, time and again, the injustice,
farce and corruption that goes on every day in these Family Courts. The shift
AWAY from contact has got progressively worse since Sloss became President of
the Family Courts. Increasingly, the rarity of positive welfare reports are
consistently rejected by the current breed of hostile feminist/wimpish male
Judges coming though the ranks since Sloss's appointment, but negative
welfare reports are followed, consistently. It is painfully obvious that since Sloss
took charge (and backed up by the aggressive Mrs Justice Bracewell in the
role as chair of the children act advisory committee) that ANY form of
contact order is unlikely if the Court think the mother will become
problematic over it. All we seek is the same status as the
mother's new man/men-that being a simple presumption you are fine with your
kids UNLESS you actually do something. If it's good Ill16 p2 enough for the mother's new plaything,
then it's sure good enough for fathers. We have press attention, the vast
majority of the public perceive the Family Courts as bias to the mothers, we
must, now the Judiciary are panicking, take them to the CORRUPTION that goes
on, every single day up and down the Country, of perfectly good men being
denied the right to be fathers to their kids for no good reason at all. We
have right on our side, there are enough of us to bring about change, it's a
simple case of us ALL being sufficiently motivated to do something - Join the
protest movement. More information as to future protests,
call me 01752 346395. - Mark Harris. 2aug01 Ivor, Demo in Somerset this coming
Saturday, Aug 18, which means it will probably have happened by the time
illeagle comes through. However, Candlelight vigils are planned outside a
number of Judges houses on 25 Sept at 8.30pm for 1/2 hours. We are doing one outside Sloss' in
Exeter, perhaps you could seek support for ones outside Bracewell's
(Somerton, Somerset), Thorpe's (Seend, Wiltshire), HHJ Hamilton (Coventry),
and at least one London vigil (Probably outside Lady Justice Hale in N1). You can put my number as a contact if
you want, and I will put interested parties in touch with local
organisers. - Mark Harris. 12aug01 From Judge Munby's
ludicrous (Harris) Jail Committal order; www.ivorcatt.com/18152.htm For instance; "....4) On 26 April
2000 he did hand birthday presents to (middle) and (youngest) during the
session of contact and without the presents first having been approved by
Plymouth City Council thereby breaching paragraph (h) of the order,...."
" (2) for each of his said contempts 2,4,5. and 8 above the
Contemnor Mark Dean Harris do stand committed to Her Majesty's Prison at
Pentonville for a period of 4 months or until he shall be sooner discharged
by due course of Law ...." As my favourite barrister said to me, the senior Family Court
judges come from Planet Zog. – Ed The Abuse of Power Patricia Hewett, The Abuse of Power, pub. Martin
Robertson 1982, p93; "The ability of the courts to extend the law of
contempt in unexpected, indeed absurd, directions, was amply illustrated by
the Harman case. Harriet Harman [now deputy to the Attorney General], legal
officer of NCCL .... The Divisional Court and the Court of Appeal both held
that Harriet Harman had committed a serious contempt of court .... the govt refused
to accept an amendment to the Contempt of Court Bill to reverse the Harman
decision. ...." Also see p88; "Perhaps the most
difficult consequence of secrecy to identify accurately is the manipulation
of information [by Munby] which such a system permits. The cloak of secrecy
is not evenly woven. Ministers [and judges] are only too willing to pass out
to receptive journalists the official [Munby, ignorant] version of [Harris
criminal[ events, knowing that their versions cannot be set against the background
studies .... But the cloak is wearing threadbare." [1982! Sloss secrecy
is well out of date. - Ed] Parents take access fight to judge's home - Jill
Crooks, Devizes Gazette & Herald,
26july01 Divorced and separated parents fighting
for access to their children took their protests to the Seend home of a
senior judge at the weekend. About 35 parents holding placards took
part in a demonstration outside the home of Lord Justice Mathew Thorpe, one
of the country's most senior appeal judges on Saturday afternoon. The parents had come from London,
Cambridge, Plymouth, Bristol and Wiltshire. They have all been battling with
the courts for access to their children. As they stood outside the driveway to
Lord Justice Thorpe's house they shouted "children need both
parents." Protest organiser Mark Harris, and Tony
Coe, both members of the Equal parenting Council, knocked on the judge's
front door to deliver letters outlining the concerns felt by parents about
the way family courts are run. In the drive was a white L-registered
Volvo 440 car. The shutters on both ground floor widows were drawn. No one
answered the door so Mr. Coe posted the letters through the judge's letter
box. The protest continued for a few minutes
outside the drive and as the protesters dispersed, two police cars pulled up,
but there was no trouble. Lord Justice Thorpe had been invited to
the Bell inn in Seend to discuss the problems, but did not attend. Mr. Coe, the President of the Equal
Parenting Council, said that family courts were not carrying through the
ruling contained in the 1989 Children's Act that parenting should be shared. He said: "The key point is that one
parent is being excluded for no good reason. If there is abuse or violence
going on then of course there should be limitation of the parent's role, but
we are talking about ordinary, loving, devoted parents that are being
excluded from their children's life. "Why is it that one parent has all
the say? The other parent has the right to make an application to the court
but the other parent can keep saying no and it can go on for months and
years. "If the system doesn't value the
other parent (the parent who is not living with the children) then the
children will think that. From the point of separation we need to treat the
parents equally." Mr. Coe dubbed the protests outside
judges' homes the "judicial education programme." He added:
"Not everybody agrees with the approach we are taking and I fully
understand that view. "But we have to make these people feel
a little uncomfortable because the process makes our lives and our children's
lives uncomfortable." Richard Day, a 50-year-old father of two
teenage daughters, has been fighting the Child Support Agency and the courts
for the past seven years. He says as a result he has suffered financially and
emotionally and sees his daughters no
more than twice a year.... "We are reasonably minded people.
We want what is best for our children and we need a system to be doing the
same. If judges are not doing their jobs properly they should be
sacked." Lord Justice Thorpe, 62, has been an
appeal judge in the family division on the High Court since October 1995. His first marriage ended in divorce in
1989 and he remarried in the same year. He has three sons. He was unavailable for comment about the
protest outside his home in Seend.... A nasty piece of work It may be worth pointing out that the
nasty feminist who sent Mark back to jail when he lost his appeal was none
other than Justice Hale who, a decade ago, when she was Mzzz Brenda Hoggett,
said; "Family law no longer makes any attempt to buttress the stability
of marriage or any other union. It has adopted principles for the protection
of children and dependent spouses which could be made equally applicable to
the unmarried. In such circumstances, the piecemeal erosion of the
distinction between marriage and non-married cohabitation may be expected to
continue. Logically we have already reached a point at which, rather than
discussing which remedies should now be extended to the unmarried, we should
be considering whether the legal institution of marriage continues to serve
any useful purpose." - email from Brian Robertson. 19 June 2001 23:26 A rider to the Mowbray Editorial, below.
Crucially, research shows that whereas the mother's role is
"touchy-feely", compromising, soft, that of the father is as
described in Mowbray's speech. ("Wait till your father comes
home!") Poodle-man judges connive with radfem judges to force those few
men they do not evict from their homes and children, to improperly play the
mother's role, particulerly in the courts, thus destroying for their children
the fatherly, upright example which protects them from lapsing into drugs and
other loose behaviour. When a mother commits perjury it is less damaging to
her children than when their father does. It is the persistent encouraging of
perjury and of breaches of court orders which feminises the family courts and
undermines fathers. - Ed Ill p3 Editorial .... My dear dear lord, The purest treasure mortal times afford Is spotless reputation; that away, Men are but gilded loam or painted clay. A jewel in a ten-times barr'd-up chest Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast. Mine honour is my life; both grow in
one; Take honour from me, and my life is done: Then, dear my liege, mine honour let me
try; In that I live, and for that will I die. -
Mowbray's Speech, Richard II, Act 1, Scene 1. The great crime committed by Sloss,
Thorpe, Hale and the rest of the anti-social rogues at the top of the Family Division
is their continuing to inculcate a climate of perjury. They caused their
junior judges to encourage perjured libels against fathers in order to
validate the confiscation of fathers' children and property. This was a crime much greater than
theft, as we see in Mowbray's speech. Has Sloss ever bothered to consider the
impact on a father when he finds that a judge in a secret court is so keen to
believe any ridiculous allegation against any father? The clergyman caught up
in the Orkneys scandal told me that a false charge of sexual abuse goes to
one's innermost soul. These judges have been playing with fire. Of all
people, because of Cleveland, Sloss ought to know. What she learned in
Cleveland makes her failure to clamp down on perjury in her family courts all
the more inexcusable. Those who commit such high crime must
not be allowed a hiding place. Until today, they have been inaccessible
because of the weakness of a small number of men controlling the Men's
Movement. Now that the collaborators have been brushed aside, the rogue
judges stand exposed. They have to be got rid of as soon as possible, and
replaced by an honest judicial system, or no system at all, so as to bring an
end to the damage these irresponsible, vindictive judges continue to inflict
on our children's image of their missing fathers. Ivor
Catt 21july01 When a judge tries the shrink ploy As in my divorce, which pre-dated the
film One flew over the cuckoo's nest, judges may connive with a divorcing
wife to pretend that her husband has psychiatric problems. This is one way
for a judge to validate his expropriating the father and cutting him off from
his children. In my case, my wife launched a posse of three shrinks at me,
including mad shrink Bryan Robinson, who remained desperate to drug me for a
year, but fortunately failed to do so. So the judge had to invent other
ruses, and still took my home, all my assets and my children. I found some good material which far
more succinctly than I can, give reasons to tread this ground with great
care. I also think this may assist you when
dealing with a court calling for "psychiatric reports". Here is the link: http://mentalhelp.net/perspectives/articles/art090620004.htm and The Rhetorical Paradigm in
Psychiatric History: http://www.enabling.org/ia/szasz/vatz2.html Damned if you do ... - Nicci
Gerrard, Observer, Review,
22apr01, p1 One in three women has had an abortion
and 92% of us agree with the right to choose.... [Two full pages on the subject of
abortion. Fathers did not enter into the subject. I think they first appear
briefly half way through the second page;] .... I told my boyfriend, and he said;
"It's up to you." That made it more difficult, because he was
involved, and the decision wasn't so completely obvious.... .... Every so often a man will try to
stop his partner having an abortion, and we enter the jungle of moral issues.
Should men have any legal rights over the potential child? Over a bundle of
cells inside a woman's body? A few weeks ago one such case hit the
headlines. Stephen Hone .... [total number of words about Hone/Hansell, just
over 100 - two column inches.] .... One of them had been raped by her
husband, who wanted her to give him a child. [That was the total appearance of
fathers in a two page article. - Ed] ManKind and Ill Eagle
can be reached at:- 1). Suite 367, 2 Lansdowne Row,
London W1X 8HL. www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/
3)
Email Head.Office@mankind.co.uk The Editor, Ivor Catt, 121 Westfields,
St. Albans AL3 4JR, England. ( 01727 - 864257 Email ivorcatt@ electromagnetism.demon.co.uk ) The M6 Protester Family Life in Britain
- 2001 Mark Harris is the divorced father who is prevented from seeing
his children. But Jason Biddulph is a married father and he is also prevented
from seeing his children. Both have tried all legal means and have been
jailed for their pains. Jason Biddulph and his wife have had
their children taken off them by Birmingham Social Services - itself under
review by the Ministry. Their crime was firstly being poor, secondly to be
poorly educated, thirdly to be made unemployed (after an industrial accident)
and fourthly to be overwhelmed by the complexities and bureaucracies that
implement our social laws and regulations. His only way out was to protest.
His protest was to threaten to jump onto the busy M6 Motorway in Birmingham
on May 10th 2001. The children had been whisked away to an
undisclosed destination by Social Services. The children's grandparents
(paternal and maternal) had been denied contact or any visits. Even the children's
mother, Mrs. Biddulph, had been refused contact and visits. This has all the
hallmarks of a stitch-up. Jason appeared handcuffed before Judge
McCarthy in Wolverhampton County Court. It was the first anniversary of the
death of his 3-year-old daughter Paige - the incident which triggered the
massive Social Services (SS) over-reaction. Meanwhile Social Services had already
put all his children up for legal and permanent adoption. Members of SS staff
had been to the Biddulph households to collect momentos and family photos to
give to the children as they grew up to remind them of their parents and
grandparents, who would most probably be dead when the children reached the
age of majority. Jason's barrister asked the court for a
psychological report to be carried out. Immediately the judge, very
surprised, said; 'But that will take about 8 weeks. Why do you want him to
remain in custody for another two months? He's been there for a month
already'. This was an obvious display of sympathy from him. The smears against this husband of many
"convictions" printed in the newspapers prior to the trial hearing
were scurrilous. They relate to his prosecutions for shoplifting - the only
items ever stolen were clothes and nappies for his children. For months he awaited trial nursing
broken ribs and rope marks around his neck - not from his attempted jump but
from the police who came to "rescue" him, and protect him from
self-harm and who "gently" lowered him but who actually injured
him. No family member has been allowed to photograph his injuries (B'ham Six
?). When so many families are falling apart,
do Social Services really need to add one more to that number, or to justify
their own employment by tearing apart an intact family? Yes. Read Baskerville
on their need to justify their jobs and income levels. – RW From The
Times Thursday 17 May 2001 : Law report Jobseekers' allowance sex bias unlawful COURT OF APPEAL Hockenjos v Secretary of State for
Social Security Before Lord Justice Aldous, Lord Justice
Tuckey and Lord Justice Kay Judgment May 2, 2001 The statutory scheme of the Jobseekers'
Act 1995 was to provide protection against the risk of unemployment. The Act
therefore fell within the Equal Treatment Directive which prohibited
discrimination on the ground of sex, whether directly or indirectly. The
Court of Appeal so Ill16 p4 held in a reserved judgement in allowing
an appeal brought by a separated father, Eugen Herman Hockenjos, against the
dismissal by Mr Commissioner Goodman on May 2, 2000 of his appeal from the
social security appeal tribunal which had dismissed his appeal from the
adjudication officer, holding that he was not entitled to an additional
amount in respect of his two children who stayed with him for different but
approximately equal parts of the week, as they did with their mother who
received child benefit. Comment by EH: The
COA has now instructed the Social Security Commissioner to finally hear
arguments that it is unlawful when a parent (nearly always the father) who
has parental responsibility (as defined in 89/UK/ Children Act) gets excluded
from obtaining child additions and Family Premium increases when temporarily
dependent on Social Security Benefits. What will be considered is the question
of whether direct linkage of Dependants Allowances to receipt of Child
Benefit has a disproportionate impact on fathers when compared to mothers. I
say linkage to receipt of Child Benefit creates Indirect Discrimination and
that such linkage is in breach of European Law Directive 79/7/EEC. No adjudication of the claim that
indirect discrimination operates has been made to date. The COA ruling merely established that
Income based Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) is a scheme that falls under the
orbit of EU Directive 79/7 (council directive which makes it unlawful for EU
countries to operate Social Security schemes for the unemployed, sick and
disabled if such a scheme has elements of direct or indirect discrimination
on the grounds of a claimant's gender). Dr Pelling's record To: Ivor Catt Date: 18 July 2001 14:03 Hi there, I think it is about time that I
personally put on record the credit owed to Dr Pelling for what he has done
in my case which recently made the headlines. See the write-up in The
Times: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,200001-202923,00.html
For the last three years Dr Pelling has
worked brilliantly developing with me the fine legal arguments. Not only
that, but he was also extremely supportive when I got emotionally tired of
fighting a case which has tremendous opportunity to do much good for fathers
and their children. Dr Pelling dealt with all the paperwork, he photocopied
for me, he prepared bundles, he even walked to the court to file necessary urgent
paperwork, and most importantly: it was Dr Pelling who acted as my
representative on five occasions as the case wound its way through the
appeals process. Without Dr Pelling it would not have been possible to fight
my case. And for all that work and committed help he received the princely
reward of about one dozen London
Underground travel tickets when he came to see me! The only reason why Dr Pelling's name
does not appear in the Court of Appeal write-up is because the rules of court
prevented him from addressing the court himself. Thus I have to say: All
credit is owed to him is huge. Hope the myths that hold Michael as
anything other than a committed fighter for father and children's rights are
soon laid to rest - I hope people would recognise Michael for what he is:
namely a tireless fighter for civil liberties and human rights, and doing a
great job. I also should put on record that FNF was
not able to help me with my request with either statistics or names of
persons. Given that FNF has been around for 25 years their inability to
assist me with details on people who have (like I had) a shared residence
order was most disappointing. FNF failure also is a pointed why it's time for
a massive shake-up. I wish FNF people would judge Dr Pelling
on the basis of his record. Then they would be able to see that when dealing
with matters of law, courts, procedures,
Dr Pelling is the most knowledgeable person of all the people who want
to get a fair deal for fathers. I think when the Old Guard FNF trustees
wanted to chuck him out of FNF it may have been because they simply could not
handle it that there is someone who can actually achieve results without
going along with disempowered fatherhood rituals which Old Guard FNF is
encouraging fathers to accept. If you need more info please feel free
to contact me - Eugen Hockenjos Secret Courts I studied the case which Pelling took to
the European Court of Human Rights quite a lot, leading to a 5-2 judgement against
him. It is very wrong that people are trying to cite cases when Pelling
loses, to argue that when he loses, he damages fathers and their children. The dissenting judgement by the Greece
and the Lithuanian(?) judges is very important, and will be the basis on
which we (= Pelling) goes forward. Years ago, John Campion told me that
Europe, like the UK, was heavily feminised. Now radfem dogma is full of
inconsistencies. Pelling needs to go to these lengths to tease out these
inconsistencies. In any case, I hope the recent Hock
victory against the Secretary of State in the Appeal Court (great credit for
that going to Pelling), and the recent Pelling victory against FNF in the
High Court, will stop these innuendoes against Pelling's excellent work in court,
very much to the benefit of fathers and their children. Pelling's ability and
dedication is far greater than we deserve. – Ed Women's Quarterly -
summer01, no. 28. The Journal of the
Independent Women's Forum. www.womensquarterly.com info@iwf.org
p25; ....when choices and other factors
are included, women earn 98 cents on a man's dollar. Feminist organizations
like to claim that the wage gap is much wider, painting a bleak picture of
the status of women. Crittenden notes that the IWF arrived as the 2-cent gap
by comparing young childless women and men. [This is what I do at www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/04074
. This maps very well onto; ".... the pay gap between women and men is
largely a result of family responsibilities. The earnings of single childless
women, on average, are over 95 percent of those of single, childless men: but
married mothers earn, on average, only 60 per cent of the pay of married
fathers." - Patricia Hewitt and Penelope Leach, Social Justice, Children
and Families, pub. IPPR, 1993, page v." Ms Joshi, North London, has gone
further by inventing the concept of "lifetime earnings". Women need
to have their lifetime earnings made up to those of men because they do not
earn when mothering. A rough estimate puts their lifetime (mothering) loss at
£200,000. The obvious solution is to impose a man tax, payable only by men.
With the population equally divided, this means that each man should pay a
further £100,000 in tax, which will be about £2,500 p.a. during his working
life, to be given tax free to an equal number of women. Thus, the after-tax
income of a single working woman, for fairness, will be £5,000 p.a. more than
that for a man, married or unmarried. Margaret Jay has been agitating about
lifetime earnings. Jay and Joshi please note. Jay believes that only pay
parity will free women from bondage. All I have done is roughly work out the
numbers necessary to meet her vision of pay parity. Jay will like the
side-effect, that single women will not marry. Her marriages were rocky. -
Ed] p30; Many govt agencies proudly trumpet
their partnerships with feminist groups. .... [One] including [the dreadful]
NOW and the National Committee on Pay Equity - the latter organisation that
uses misleading data about the gender wage gap to call for more regulation of
the economy on behalf of women. [The present initiative, to increase
single women's pay (by exploiting the low earnings of married women), will
push that of single women above that of single men, and make young men even
more unmarriageable. One reason will be that the financial penalty for both
women and men who marry will increase.
iwf have assembled ten major statistics which have been falsified by
radfems throughout the world. One, of course, is Stinko's "one in
four" lie trotted out by Jay and Livingstone. - Ed] p7; There is a widespread belief that
sexual abuse of children is endemic to society. This is a relatively new
notion. In fact, it can be traced to a particular moment in history: April
17, 1971. On that day New York Radical Feminists,
a group that at its height boasted no more than 400 members, held a
groundbreaking conference in New York. .... It was Rush's conclusion that
electrified her audience: "The family itself is an instrument of sexual
and other forms of child abuse," Rush declared. She added that this
abuse "is permitted because it is an Ill16 p5 unspoken but prominent factor in
socializing and preparing the female to accept a subordinate role .... In
short the sexual abuse of female children is a process of education that
prepares them to become the wives and mothers of America." Many women at the gathering had
backgrounds in the New Left of the 1960s. They felt their male comrades had
exploited them, relegating them to making coffee, typing, and sex. Now they could show that feminists had
uncovered the great American secret: Behind the picket fences, hidden by
those starched suburban curtains, fathers were raping their daughters to
prepare them for their proper role in society. Beyond racism, imperialism,
and capitalism lay the true root of evil - patriarchy .... Catherine
MacKinnon, the law professor who helped develop the legal definitions of
sexual harassment, announced (absent any evidence) that 4.5% of all women are
victims of incest by their fathers and, if brothers,, stepfathers, uncles,
and family friends are thrown in, the figure rose to 40%. "In
fact," wrote MacKinnon, "it is the woman who has not been abused
who deviates." Seemingly scholarly studies by feminists-with-credentials
such as Harvard psychiatrist Judith Herman bolstered the case for widespread
incest. Herman dedicated her 1981 book, Father-Daughter Incest, to the women
"estimated by us to be millions, who have personally experienced
incestuous abuse." No wonder Andrea Dworkin wrote that, for a woman, the
home is the most dangerous place in the world! .... According to Herman,
Freud simply could not confront the reality that incest "is an
inevitable result of patriarchal family structure." .... [IWF, in which Christina Hoff Sommers is
a key player, is the backlash against the man-hating, anti-family, massively
federal funded NOW. Better late than never. ] The first 80 pages of Catherine A.
MacKinnon, Towards a Feminist Theory of the State, pub. Harvard UP, are
entitled; "Feminism and Marxism". Erin Pizzey's friend Cools said
she had a major influence in the drafting of Canadian legislation. Erin, our
28oct00 conference speaker, says that feminists are marxist. Now see nasty
Hale, back on p2. 'Who Stole Feminism ?' by
Christina Hoff Sommers. - Review
by Antonia, a reader
from UK, 22may01 Ivor, Next I'll try to get a copy of her 'The
War Against Boys' and review it. Brilliant expose of gender feminism. This book is unique. It exposes the
myths propounded by gender feminists about women's oppression and victimhood,
but without preaching. The author has a very lucid style, and goes for an unusual
tactic as far as feminist writers are concerned, which is to hunt down
important statistics. Sommers relentlessly hunts down the sources of widely-quoted
statistics about women (1 in 4 are victims of rape, 150, 000 women in the USA
die of anorexia every year, etc.etc.) - statistics which have been publicised
by gender feminists. They are false and therefore profoundly misleading to
the general public. They are also very damaging for public policy. This is
what interests me most about this book. I wish someone in the UK would write
a book like this, because these issues never get thrashed out in the open
like in the US, and they really need to be. Intellectually, Sommers scores
best in this book on debunking 'feminist epistemology', the erroneous view
that philosophy and science done by women elicits a different set of methods.
This is very insulting to female academics, most of whom do not agree with
the philosophy behind gender feminism. Gender feminists have tried to promote
things like feminist philosophy of science and even mathematics, which is
ludicrous but also, again, an affront to those women who do exceptionally
well in these fields. As a woman I cannot help think that one of the driving
forces behind gender feminism is a secret jealousy of those women who have
succeeded academically, socially and politically without it. That is why
these people are so infuriated by Sommers' book and have to resort to being
so rude about it. So, all in all, this book is a very challenging read,
whatever you think of the various types of feminism. Hurling abuse at it will
only serve to further confirm its conclusions. Lessing lashes out - Louette
Harding, You, Mail on Sunday,
12aug01, p10 Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook was
seen as one of the 60s' great feminist novels. Yet these days Lessing has
nothing but scorn for the women's movement, and says that it is men who are
undervalued. .... She has won .... the prestigious Asturias prize .... and
will be going to the presentation. .... 'every journalist will say, "You
have been fighting for the rights of women ...." and I will patiently
say, "No, I haven't." But it's a waste of time. I fill a need.'
.... She reserves her scorn for the women's
movement, likening its early days to a little girl ripping off her knickers:
'The great figures of that time do have a pretty exhibitionist streak.' There
followed a period 'when they were so heavy and pompous and they couldn't say
anything without rubbishing men. It was a religion. They had a faith and you
couldn't attack it. You couldn't make jokes, God forbid.' She believes the pendulum has swung so
far that 'old-fashioned love is in defiance of the spirit of the times. It is
hard to defend. I know several people who are rather guilty and apologetic
about the fact that they have a totally satisfactory love going on.' .... ' Women do give up a great deal for
their children but of course so do men. It's not noticed when men do it. I'm
trying all the time to combat this automatic women-here, men-there business.
We're always assuming we're so different, but I'm wondering .... I don't
think we are.' Appetite for family destruction A little-noticed commission is beginning
work in Virginia that has major implications nationwide for both families and
governmental ethics. Every four years, each state is required to review its
guidelines for child support. In Virginia the outcome may be less remarkable
than the process. The last review in 1999 was a classic
case of the foxes guarding the hen house. The review panel was selected by the
director of the state's Division of Child Support Enforcement (DCSE), and at
least 10 of the 12 members derived income from the divorce system: two
judges, four lawyers, a feminist, an enforcement official, two custodial
parents, and a legislator. All these
people have a stake in encouraging divorce and criminalizing fathers and
therefore in making child support as onerous as possible. "By virtue of
the Director of DCSE deciding its make-up, conflict-of-interest concerns are
both evident and also reflective of much larger improprieties." The words are from the minority report
of Barry Koplen, the lone representative of parents paying court-ordered
child support.... 2001 A request for volunteers A survey of male victims of domestic
violence by female partners is being conducted by Dewar Research with the
help of Dr M. George of London University. Men who have experienced violence from a
female partner during the last five years are invited to write or contact
Dewar Research at 'Constables', Windsor Road, Ascot, SL5 7LF, or tel/fax
01344 621167; or email Dr. George at m.j.george@qmw.ac.uk giving their name, postal address,
telephone number or email address. No expenses will be faced by volunteers,
and confidentiality is guaranteed. "ANC trio 'plotted to murder Mbeki' - Tim
Butcher, Telegraph, 26apr01, p17 ".... three senior members of the
ruling African National Congress were accused of plotting to kill President Thabo
Mbeki .... who has looked increasingly under threat after a series of public
policy gaffes over Aids and Zimbabwe. .... Mbeki refused to deny that his
life was being threatened ...." ["The [AIDS] Industry has to destroy
Mbeki. There is so much money at stake ...." - Ill Eagle 11, oct00, p4] Ill16 p6 William Hetherington This man needs your help! Highlights of the William J. Hetherington Case A case of false accusation by a wife
against her husband during a bitter custody dispute. Help is needed now! Wil is in a Michigan prison on a
Criminal Sexual Conduct (CSC) conviction. His wife claimed that he had raped
her. The case was a matter of "he said/she said". Wil has been in
prison, now, for more than 14 years. During all of that time he has
constantly maintained his innocence. - Ill Eagle 15, may01. For latest
update, go to www.ncfm.org/will.htm
Women's unit 'failing in its role' - Sarah
Womack, Telegraph,
9aug01, p10 A scathing assessment of the govt's
women's unit and its work was published by the Equal Opportunities Commission
yesterday. It said the unit, which would cost
taxpayers £2.3 million this year, had failed to meet key criteria set down by
Labour, which included clear aims, .... "On occasion there has been tension
between promoting a family-friendly policy and a woman-friendly one. The
govt's support of the former and hostility to the latter generated an
ambivalence regarding the women's unit." .... widespread criticism of
Baroness Jay .... criticised after spending £100,000 telling women looking
for work to visit the Job Centre or look in the .... papers. [Do we see here that EOC radfems can
casually write their propaganda that the family oppresses women, and then a
female (radfem?) journalist puts it in the Telegraph? - Ed.] "'I am so angry about the rude way
she treated me, making me feel like a worm, that I wrote saying so and posted
it through her letterbox....' - Sally Soames, Sunday Times photographer, on the
Labour peeress Baroness Jay" - Sunday Times, 12aug01, sect. 4 p10. The Russian Effort to Abolish Marriage When the Bolsheviki came into power in
1917 they regarded the family, like every other 'bourgeois' institution, with
fierce hatred, and set out with a will to destroy it. 'To clear the family
out of the accumulated dust of the ages we had to give it a good shakeup, and
we did,' declared Madame Smidovich, a leading Communist and active
participant in the recent discussion. So one of the first decrees of the
Soviet Government abolished the term 'illegitimate children.' This was done
simply by equalizing the legal status of all children, whether born in
wedlock or out of it, and now the Soviet Government boasts that Russia is the
only country where there are no illegitimate children. The father of a child
is forced to contribute to its support, usually paying the mother a third of
his salary in the event of a separation, provided she has no other means of
livelihood. http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/26jul/russianwoman.htm The
Atlantic Monthly July 1926 The Russian Effort to Abolish Marriage "Men took to changing wives with
the same zest which they displayed in the consumption of the recently
restored forty-per-cent vodka." by A Woman Resident in Russia ..... The question whether marriage as an
institution should be abolished is now being debated all over Russia with a
violence and depth of passion unknown since the turbulent early days of the
Revolution. Last October a bill eliminating distinctions between registered
and unregistered marriages and giving the unmarried consort the status and
property rights of the legal wife was introduced in the Tzik, or Central
Executive Committee. So much unforeseen opposition to the proposed law
developed that the Tzik decided to postpone its final adoption until the next
session, meanwhile initiating a broad popular discussion of the project.... Full text at www.ivorcatt.com/17148.htm Beatrix Campbell In 1983/87 Beatrix Campbell co-authored
a book Sweet Freedom with Anna Coote. Coote is one of the close Harriet
Harman - Patricia Hewett trio. ("Over the past twenty years Patricia Hewett,
Anna Coote and I have developed our ideas together" - Harriet Harman,
The Century Gap, 1993, pvii.; Patricia Hewett, About Time ...., 1993; "I
want to thank my colleagues at IPPR, .... Anna Coote .... Harried Harman ....
gave me helpful comments ....") Thus, Bea's extremely nasty hatred of
men is close to the centre of the Blair government. [Elsewhere, on TV, Bea Campbell
announced that she was lesbian. Her attacks on heterosexual men (below) clash
with the statistics, which say that 35% of paedophiles are homosexual,
although homosexuals make up less than 2% of the population (Ill Eagle 10,
p2). However, some sources claim that lesbians despise gay men.] Unofficial Secrets - Beatrix
Campbell, pub.
Virago 1988 p23 "[Dr Buchanan said;] 'A child's
vagina is not made for abuse, it doesn't dilate. So for abusers who want
orifices the anus is the place. They've been at it for years. Abusers will
abuse anything - holes in the floor, their own children, anybody else's,
anyone or anything.' "In the 1970s Buchanan's
consciousness had been raised by reading feminist texts like Shere Hite's
studies of adult sexual relationships. ' .... the pressure women felt and all
those for whom there was no pleasure in sex at all. It was shattering. Sex
was designed for chaps. Male attitudes play a major part in abuse: pressure,
coercion, threats.'" [At our 28oct00 conference, Lynette Burrows told us
that when on TV with Shere Hite she, and secretly the men present, found
Shere totally ridiculous. This demonstration via Bea of her influence close
to Blair's Cabinet tells us that Lynette is wrong to ask us to laugh Shere
off. Nasty, false propaganda is circling around Blair. - Ed] p153 "The men's movement. What made
the Cleveland case so remarkable was not so much the number of referrals as
the mass dissent from the diagnosis. Not in 100 years had patriarchal society
been so profoundly and publicly confronted by the scale of men's sexual abuse
of children. Male sexuality was the problem, but in the great sex scandal of
the 1980s that had become almost unsayable." p164. ".... whether professional
men have children .... doesn't make any difference - they don't care for them
anyway, someone else does .... men's irresponsible fatherhood is material to
our social world ...." [Bea sees the Cleveland sex abuse as
inhering in male sexuality, particularly that of fathers. Fathers assert
patriarchal power by violence and sexual abuse, or else the threat of them.
Thus it makes good sense that this govt's agents cut off as many children from
their fathers as possible. The very low statistics on father violence and
father sexual abuse caused falsifier Stinko to switch talking (in the
dreadful Yllo 1988 book Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse) about a woman's
horror of the threat of violence, which threat lasts longer than actual
violence. (This whole fraud collapses under the suppressed stat that women
initiate more violence than do men. {Ill Eagle 3, p8} ?He was going to hit
me, so I hit him first?) Anyone wanting to dismiss Stinko should bear in mind
that Margaret Jay, close to Blair, promotes this Stinko idea of Fear of
Violence. Even though she also quotes Stinko's false "one in four"
stat, Jay can avoid facing the music when 1 in 4 is discredited by switching
to Stinko's Fear of Violence. These women are deeply disturbed, anti-social,
evil, devious, and close to Blair. - Ed
Also see www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/18154.htm] From the last Ill Eagle, p11 ["Also, the organisation is
irrationally biased against homosexual men. This prejudice is reflected in
the pages of Ill Eagle...." .... I wrote to Aiden as follows; "29mar01 What we need is your
definition of 1. Homosexual 2. Homophobe" "27mar01 I would be grateful if you
cited the locations in Ill Eagle
where you have found evidence of homophobia. - 27mar01" I wrote that I would like to add these
clarifications to his piece in Ill Eagle. (draft Ill Eagle sent to Aiden on 16apr01 and 8may01). In apite
of his excellent speech to us on 28oct00, we have to conclude from his
persistent refusal to define his Ill16 p7 terms (above) that he is out of his
depth. Confusing buggery with holding hands is like confusing a deep sea
diver with someone who takes an occasional shower. The fact that this
silliness is rife does not justify it in gifted scholar like Rankin. David S.
Green, in Civil Society...., pub. books@civil-society.org.uk
, 2000, p40, wrote; "One of the urgent tasks of our time is to repair
the damage caused by 1970s nihilism and to recover the use of a shared
vocabulary" - Ed] Later, Aidan promised me an article
outlining his views on homosexuality, but he has not delivered. I will try to
fill the gap by quoting from Green. The Sexual Dead-End - by
Stephen Green, pub. Broadview, sep1992 p1 ".... the head of a local human
rights agency was asked on American television, just before a gay rights
measure was debated, whether she thought there really was no moral difference
between giving special protection to people who happened to be born black and
giving special protection to those who had made a voluntary choice to commit
sodomy with other men. 'Why' she announced, 'Gays would never do that!'"
[S.G. quoting R G Magnusson] p11 [Quotes survey of homosexuals by
Ebbeson et al., "Sex Habits ....", Archives of Sexual Behaviour,
vol. 13 no. 4, 1984, p294; "Of the 240 persons who provided information,
95% had been involved in anal intercourse ...." [See Ill Eagle 8, may00, p4] Whereas on p92 he has 7% having had a
fist up their rectum, on p93 the figure is 41%. p101 "The rectal spincter of
homosexuals who allow other men's penises, hands and arms into their anus
gradually loses its ability to contain waste. The subject becomes incontinent
and dribbles at inconvenient times .... a sanitary towel becomes a necessity
.... 'fisting', which is the insertion of the fist or forearm into the rectum
and colon was .... almost unknown in Kinsey's day .... 'fisting' causes, at a
minimum, rectal trauma .... It can also rip the intestine .... and allow
faecal matter into the abdominal cavity. Immediate surgery may prevent
death." [At this point Green does not mention
that amyl nitrites, or poppers, are used to relax the spincter, which is much
tighter than the vagina. Duesberg believes that since poppers are
immuno-suppressant, they are the main cause of AIDS. Root-Bernstein's 1993
book gives further less serious immuno-suppressant aspects of the lifestyle
of some homosexual communities . In FYC (fameduc@aol.com
) bulletin no. 89, 1997, Dr. Stammers correctly interpreted Cameron et al.
in Omega, Journal of Death and Dying,
vol29 no.3, 1994, as giving an expectation of life for gay men as a
staggering 30 years less than that for normal men. Curiously, he has now
backed away from his previous correct evaluation towards only 10 years or so
shorter lifespan for gays. When a leading Gay attacked Chris Smith for
wrongly saying in the Commons that one was born with it, saying that in fact
one had a choice, he did not go on to say one could choose between life and
death! - Ed] p323 "Robert Bly has been difficult
enough for the liberal media to understand and his thesis is already awkward
for commentators to accept. Application of his work to the psychological
deficiencies of homosexuals would tip him immediately into political
incorrectness and obscurity. "According to Robert Bly, there has
been no coherent masculine response to feminism, which recognises only two
types of man, its favourite Aunt Sally of macho-man, and the approved
vulnerable new man. Bly asserts that the hard-drinking, womanising bully is
most certainly not a valid role model for a man, but then neither is the
wimpish - or 'soft' - new man, who throws out the baby of masculinity with
the bath water of macho man." p337 "The pro-gay stance of the
unions was as a result of pressure from the National Council for Civil
Liberties, which had since the mid seventies had its very own well
established Lesbian and Gay Group. One Barry Prothero was appointed to be its
full time gay rights officer in 1980, again inevitably during the tenure of
Patricia Hewitt and Harriet Harman. ["Patricia Hewitt, General Secretary
of the NCCL for the past seven years ...." - back cover of P Hewitt, The
Abuse of Power, pub. Martin Robertson 1982] Mr. Prothero's qualifications for
this post included being a member of the Gay Activists Alliance and having
shared a home with Paul Crane, the 'gay' lawyer, Stephen Gee of the
pro-paedophile Gay left and John Lloyd, co-founder of [pro paedophilia]
Paedophile Action for Liberation. [We see lesbian Bea working hard to
smear heterosexual fathers with child sexual abuse, while at the same time
she has a strong link via Hewitt and Harman (through Prothero, whom Hewitt
appointed, and who lived with a paedophile) to pro-paedophilia activism by
homosexuals! Bea sees the heterosexual males' main ambition (but not the
Gays'!) as being to bugger. What does Prothero's flatmate Gee enjoy? - Ed.] When love fails By Bettina
Arndt, The Age (Melbourne) 4
August 2001 http://www.theage.com.au/news/state/2001/08/04/FFXEX9OUWPC.html
"Our darling Greg died of a broken
heart," announced the death notice placed by his mother and sister when
federal MP Greg Wilton killed himself last year. Wilton's death attracted massive
publicity, highlighting his marriage break-up and loss of his children as
events precipitating his drastic action. Three weeks earlier, Wilton was
found in a distressed state in a car with his two young children. Wilton, 44, was well aware of the
vulnerability of men in his situation. Three years earlier he gave a speech
in parliament commenting on a report on youth suicide, pointing out that the
group at greatest risk of killing themselves were adult men. "From the extensive research (of)
the last five years ... it becomes apparent men kill themselves due to an
inability to cope with life events such as relationship break-ups of the kind
(I) myself have suffered," said Wilton, whose first marriage had ended
in divorce. Each year in Australia, more than 1000
men aged 25-44 take their own lives. The rate of suicide among these adult
males is more than twice the teenage (15-19) suicide rate. While the male teenage suicide rate has
been stable for the past decade, the rate for adult males has been rising
since the 1970s. Most of them, like Greg Wilton, are casualties of family
breakdown. A Queensland study of 4000 suicides found
more than 70 per cent were associated with a relationship break-up. The
study, conducted by Professor Pierre Baume, who is now at Monash University,
showed men were nine times more likely to take their lives following a
break-up than women. In the 1990s we spent more than $31
million on youth suicide prevention. Yet no federal suicide funds have been
targeted at the males showing the most consistent rise in suicide rates. The
plight of these men has only just made it on to the national agenda. This month our peak suicide prevention
body - the National Advisory Council on Suicide Prevention - for the first
time is considering national initiatives addressing this risk group. A series
of meetings is being held between state and federal suicide bodies, plus expert
panels, to determine how to reach these men. Professor Ian Webster, chairman of the
council, names this group as the priority facing his committee. "It is a
real problem for us. We are trying to determine how best to approach it. I don't
feel that as yet we have any clear way of engaging with this risk group or
deciding how to appeal to them." Webster said his committee is likely to
invite key research and interest groups to propose new initiatives, an
invitation welcomed by Chris Cantor, a Queensland psychiatrist who has spent
the past six years researching and writing journal articles drawing attention
to the unmet needs of this risk group in suicide policies. Cantor, who conducted some of his
original research with Baume at Griffith University's Australian Institute
for Suicide Research and Prevention, believes the link with relationship
breakdown is critical. His own research shows the risk of
suicide is far higher for men in the period following marital separation -
the suicide risk among separated men was 18 times that of separated women -
but, after divorce, the rates for men declined to three times those of women. Baume's data also points to the
separation period as the critical risk time. "The real risk is within
four to six weeks of the separation rather than after divorce. Men are most
vulnerable immediately after rejection," he said. Cantor questions whether the first weeks
are so vital but feels this issue needs exploring. He would like, through the
Family Court, to track families from the point of Ill16 p8 separation through to six months
post-divorce, with regular interviews of both parents and children to measure
mental health, depression and suicidal tendencies. From his previous research, Cantor
suspects that loss of meaningful contact with children will emerge as a major
risk factor for suicide. His research shows women with children are less
likely to commit suicide than similarly aged women without children. "It seems highly likely that most
of the suicide problems associated with separated men may relate to child
access problems. The research suggests that some non-custodial mothers may be
in the same boat," he said. Overseas, other researchers are reaching
similar conclusions. Augustine Kposowa, associate professor of sociology at
the University of California at Riverside, analysed data from the National
Longitudinal Mortality Study and found the risk ratio for divorced men is 8.6
times the rate for divorced women. He, too, is convinced the key factor is
men's loss of their children. "Even with visitation rights, a man
may not get to see his children. He's already experienced loss of love
through the break-up of the relationship and then he faces the loss of his
children. This drives some men, especially in the early stages of separation,
to come to the conclusion that life is not worth living," said Kposowa,
who is researching the role of the court system and loss of custody in the
heightened suicide risk for divorced men. Edward Kruk, social work professor at
the University of British Columbia in Canada, has conducted research in both
Britain and Canada on the impact of divorce on fathers. He found that, after losing daily
contact with their offspring, the fathers in his study passed through a
grieving process similar to that of parents whose child has died - 61 per
cent described mental health difficulties they had not experienced prior to
the divorce, including suicidal tendencies. Meanwhile, in Australia, an organisation
supporting separated men is gathering data that demonstrates worrying
suicidal tendencies in separated men. MENDS (Men Exploring New Directional
Strategies) programs have been running for more than six years, recently with
Commonwealth Government funding. Psychological evaluations of more than 500
men attending the programs show most of them fall into the highest risk
category for "suicidality" - showing thinking processes and
behavior known to precede suicide. MENDS has evidence its programs - based
on education and the group support provided by men sharing similar
experiences - have a significant effect on suicide risk during the critical
separation period. But the problem is how to reach
separated men who are floundering on their own. The founder of MENDS, psychologist Owen
Pershouse, believes he has a possible answer: "Between 30 and 40 per
cent of calls we get following up publicity about MENDS come from women. They
are mostly mothers, sisters, sometimes a work colleague or even the ex-wife.
Women notice what's happening to men they care about. They are the ones to
target." Baume agrees that women may provide the
key to reaching these troubled men. He believes the ultimate solution lies in
long-term cultural change, teaching boys that it is not unmanly to express
their feelings so separated men don't end up so isolated. But, given the
reticence of the typical Australian male to admit he's in trouble, Baume
believes the answer lies in harnessing the power of women to get men to talk
to them. Women like Alice. That's not her real
name, but as the mother of a 23-year-old who has just attempted suicide,
Alice naturally wants to avoid publicity. Her son is reeling from the loss of
his two-year de facto relationship. The couple has a three-month-old baby. "This girl is his whole life. He
feels life isn't worth living without her and his new baby," said Alice,
who luckily works in New South Wales community services and was able to
quickly obtain good psychiatric help for her son. Her nervousness is
increased by the fact that three years ago her son attempted to hang himself
when his first major relationship came to an end. Listening to this mother talk about her
son's dependency on these two young women, one wonders how often broken
relationships feature even in youth suicides, when young men suffer the loss
of that first taste of intimacy after emotionally constrained years of male
adolescence. Clearly relationship breakdown isn't the
whole story in the worrying increase in male suicide - there are numerous
other relevant factors, such as substance abuse, mental illness, and
unemployment. But given the evidence suggesting it could be a key factor, at
least it offers policy makers somewhere to start. What Baume, Cantor and Pershouse are
suggesting is public campaigns drawing attention to the fact that recently
separated men are high risk. If we can run youth suicide prevention campaigns
encouraging young men to look after their mates, why can't we teach our
community to watch out for men who have lost their families? Cantor, who suggests workplace
initiatives may be effective, believes these men may be an easier target than
youth, being more mature and aware of their responsibilities to their
families. Bettina Arndt is a staff writer. [Like Wilton, I was high profile
Establishment (Sir Clive Sinclair had just given me £500,000 for my computer
invention, to much media acclaim,)
when I divorced my wife. Six weeks later, to suddenly find myself a
pariah, under attack by all arms of the Society that I had so recently been
at the centre of (police, psychiatrists, social workers, lawyers, 'friends',
all my relatives,) was traumatic. Although society's attack on young men and
on fathers is similar in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, NZ, the situation is
marginally worse in Canada and Australia. This explains why the first research
into a taboo subject should be done, and should then even be published, in
those two countries. As the crisis deepens, the censorship will finally fail.
However, there are still some years and a lot of deaths to go first before
these dreadful women like Stinko, Jay and Bea lose their grip on research
funding and on the media. - Ed] Widowers Benefit Changes How to obtain more than the Act states Sexual Discrimination over Death Benefits
As from April 9th 2001 the law will change with the implementation of
the Welfare Reform and Pensions Act 1999, to the effect that widowers will
become entitled to the same state benefits as do wives losing their husbands.
Previously, men were denied these benefits, which amounted to clear sexual
discrimination in gross contravention of Article 14 of the European
Convention of Human Rights.
However, whilst husbands losing their wives before the 9th April 2001,
will, thereafter, receive the same benefits as do widows, they will not
receive those benefits backdated to the date of death. SO THE UK GOVERNMENT
REMAINS IN BREACH OF THE ECHR FOR THE PERIOD PRIOR TO APRIL 9TH 2001.
The Government have demonstrated their readiness to hold up their hands
to the charges in that they have offered privately to a number of widowers
who have sued them in the European Court of Human Rights settlements that
amount to payment in full backdated to the date of death.
It would seem that the Government will provide the monies that
widowers are entitled to under the ECHR, but only to those who are prepared
to present an application to the European Court.
Anyone wishing to consider pursuing a backdated claim can register at
the web site www.TheClaimRoom.com Epistemologies Feminisms, ed. Sandra Kemp and Judith Dquires,
OUP 1997, p142 .... these feminst epistomological
frameworks tend to share a critical stance in relation to rationality,
objectivity, and universality, asserting the significance and legitimacy of
emotional, politically engaged, and particularistic ways of knowing" p9 was ad for ManKind 2001 conference,
see http://www.ivorcatt.com/2001.htm Only some of the Sloss slease from pp10,
11 http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/zbbsloss1.htm http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/17134.htm Ill16 p12 Father Facts From the internet on 29july01. For the
full text, see www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/17137.htm
This is a nine page compendium of
statistics on the outcome for children who are cut off from their father. The
outcome is worse than for those children who are cut off from their mother.
Many of the bad effects of cutting a child off from its father propagate down
through later generations. In the end, when the crisis has become
grave, judges will bow to these statistics, and give up trying to make mother
custody work. Having proven total incompetence in imposing shared parenting,
they will switch to father custody. I hope that fathers with custody will
behave better than mothers with custody have behaved.
Sexual activity. In a study of 700 adolescents, researchers found
that "compared to families with
two natural parents living in the home, adolescents from single-parent
families have been found to engage in greater and earlier sexual activity."
Source: Carol W. Metzler, et al.
A myriad of maladies. Fatherless children are at a dramatically
greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness, suicide, poor educational
performance, teen pregnancy, and criminality. Source: U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services
Drinking problems. Teenagers living in single-parent households are
more likely to abuse alcohol and at an earlier age compared to children reared
in two-parent households. Source: Terry E. Duncan, Susan C. Duncan and Hyman
Hops
Drug Use: "...the absence of the father in the home affects
significantly the behaviour of adolescents and results in the greater use of
alcohol and marijuana." Source: Deane Scott Berman
Sexual abuse. A study of 156 victims of child sexual abuse found that
the majority of the children came from disrupted or single-parent homes; only
31% of the children lived with both biological parents. Although stepfamilies
make up only about 10 percent of all families, 27 percent of the abused
children lived with either a stepfather or the mother's boyfriend. Source:
Beverly Gomes-Schwartz, Jonathan Horowitz, and Albert P. Cardarelli
Child Abuse. Researchers in Michigan determined that "49 percent
of all child abuse cases are committed by single mothers." Source: Joan
Ditson and Sharon Shay
Deadly predictions. A family structure index -- a composite index
based on the annual rate of children involved in divorce and the percentage
of families with children present that are female-headed -- is a strong
predictor of suicide among young adult and adolescent white males. Source:
Patricia L. McCall and Kenneth C. Land
High risk. Fatherless children are at dramatically greater risk of suicide.
Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Suicidal Tendencies. In a study of 146 adolescent friends of 26
adolescent suicide victims, teens living in single-parent families are not
only more likely to commit suicide but also more likely to suffer from
psychological disorders, when compared to teens living in intact families.
Source: David A. Brent, et al.
Confused identities. Boys who grow up in father-absent homes are more
likely that those in father-present homes to have trouble establishing
appropriate sex roles and gender identity. Source: P.L. Adams, J.R. Milner,
and N.A. Schrepf
Psychiatric Problems. In 1988, a study of preschool children admitted
to New Orleans hospitals as psychiatric patients over a 34-month period found
that nearly 80 percent came from fatherless homes. Source: Jack Block, et al.
Emotional distress. Children living with a never-married mother are
more likely to have been treated for emotional problems Source: L. Remez, "Children Who
Don't Live with Both Parents Face Behavioral Problems," Family Planning
Perspectives (January/February 1992).
Uncooperative kids. Children reared by a divorced or never-married
mother are less cooperative and score lower on tests of intelligence than
children reared in intact families. Statistical analysis of the behavior and
intelligence of these children revealed "significant detrimental
effects" of living in a female-headed household. Growing up in a
female-headed household remained a statistical predictor of behavior problems
even after adjusting for differences in family income. Source: Greg L. Duncan, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn
and Pamela Kato Klebanov
Unstable families, unstable lives. Compared to peers in two-parent
homes, black children in single-parent households are more likely to engage
in troublesome behavior, and perform poorly in school. Source: Tom Luster and
Hariette Pipes McAdoo
Beyond class lines. Even controlling for variations across groups in
parent education, race and other child and family factors, 18- to 22-year-olds
from disrupted families were twice as likely to have poor relationships with
their mothers and fathers, to show high levels of emotional distress or
problem behavior, [and] to have received psychological help. Source: Nicholas
Zill, Donna Morrison, and Mary Jo Coiro
Fatherly influence. Children with fathers at home tend to do better in
school, are less prone to depression and are more successful in
relationships. Children from one-parent families achieve less and get into
trouble more than children from two parent families. The Consortium for the
Study of School Needs of Children from One Parent Families
Divorce disorders. Children whose parents separate are significantly
more likely to engage in early sexual activity, abuse drugs, and experience
conduct and mood disorders. This effect is especially strong for children
whose parents separated when they were five years old or younger. Source:
David M. Fergusson, John Horwood and Michael T. Lynsky
Troubled marriages, troubled kids. Compared to peers living with both
biological parents, sons and daughters of divorced or separated parents
exhibited significantly more conduct problems. Daughters of divorced or
separated mothers evidenced significantly higher rates of internalizing
problems, such as anxiety or depression. Source: Denise B. Kandel, Emily
Rosenbaum and Kevin Chen
Hungry for love. "Father hunger" often afflicts boys age one
and two whose fathers are suddenly and permanently absent. Sleep
disturbances, such as trouble falling asleep, nightmares, and night terrors
frequently begin within one to three months after the father leaves home.
Source: Alfred A. Messer
Disturbing news: Children of never-married mothers are more than twice
as likely to have been treated for an emotional or behavioral problem.
Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Poor and in trouble: A 1988 Department of Health and Human Services
study found that at every income level except the very highest (over $50,000
a year), children living with never-married mothers were more likely than
their counterparts in two-parent families to have been expelled or suspended
from school, to display emotional problems, and to engage in antisocial
behavior. Source: James Q. Wilson
Fatherless aggression: In a longitudinal study of 1,197 fourth-grade
students, researchers observed "greater levels of aggression in boys
from mother-only households than from boys in mother-father households."
Source: N. Vaden-Kierman, N. Ialongo, J. Pearson, and S. Kellam
Act now, pay later: "Children from mother-only families have less
of an ability to delay gratification and poorer impulse control (that is,
control over anger and sexual gratification.) These children also have a
weaker sense of conscience or sense of right and wrong." Source: E.M.
Hetherington and B. Martin
Crazy victims: Eighty percent of adolescents in psychiatric hospitals
come from broken homes. Source: J.B. Elshtain The full bibliography, with full details
on sources, is five times as long. See www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/17137.htm
p4; "The single most distinguishing
feature of feminist scholarly work has been its overtly political nature, and
feminism's commitment to material change has played a significant role in
undermining traditional academic boundaries between the personal and
political." - Feminisms, see our p8 endpiece. Ill16 p13 From: Lakritz, Naomi < LakritzN@TheHerald.Southam.ca
> To: < ivorcatt@electromagnetism.demon.co.uk
> From: Lakritz,
Naomi < LakritzN@TheHerald.Southam.ca > Date: 19 June 2001 15:37 Ivor:
Here is the column you wanted: Happy Person Day, dads Naomi
Lakritz, Calgary Herald,
17june01 Happy Father's Day, dads. Would you like
a tie or another pair of socks? You can have anything you like, as long as
you don't ask to sit at the table with the other half of the human race.
Recently, the National Association of Women and the Law, along with the
Ontario Women's Network on Custody and Access, threw a hissy fit and said
they will boycott the federal Justice Department's national consultations on
custody legislation because - gasp! - they'd have to sit at the same table as
fathers' rights groups. What are they afraid of - that the guys
might burp or scratch themselves in some inappropriate place?If only it were
that simple. Instead, the phrase "fathers' rights" is an oxymoron
to people like OWNCA member Ghislaine Siroris who complains that if men are
included in the seating arrangement, it doesn't demonstrate a clear
commitment to women's equality. It would be nice if the strident
feminist element would make up its mind once and for all whether biology is
destiny. They'll lobby long and loud for a
national day-care system because professional carers are better than moms any
day, but when it comes to child custody, suddenly their view is that nobody
can do it better than mom. Seems biology is indeed destiny, but only when it
suits their purposes. The women also objected to the
"gender-neutral" language in the Justice Department documents that
had been prepared for the hearings. Didn't they just spend three decades
emasculating the English lexicon and forcing everyone to convert to
"chairperson," "spokesperson" and "personhole
cover" on pain of being carted off for sensitivity re-education? And now
that they've gelded the grammar as systematically as a farmer might a litter
of piglets, they're still not happy. Oh, brother. Oops. Oh, sibling. Much as these women would love to think
they can reproduce by parthenogenesis and grow a child from an unfertilized
egg, they can't. Much as some obviously believe it would be far more
efficient to cuddle up to a turkey baster than to acknowledge that men's role
in parenting is larger than just providing sperm, they can't do that, either. When women like these set out to carve
up the language into person-words, they also tinkered with meanings. Equality
now means whatever gives them an edge over the guys and women's rights are
synonymous with a self-serving agenda that is strikingly similar to the one
they accuse men of using for thousands of years to oppress women. "Women's organizations believe the
outcome of this consultation will jeopardize the rights and safety of women
and children," yaps NAWL spokesperson Bonnie Diamond. Maybe her organization should change its
name to the National Association of Women ARE the Law since that appears to
be their premise. Is there a species on the planet more
unjustly maligned than fathers? Used-car salesmen get a better rap than dads
do. Fathers are abusers, bullies, deadbeats, child molesters and all-around
sexist clods who have a lot of gall wanting a relationship with their
children once the initial moment of conception is over. If these matriarchy-uber-alles groups
want to boycott, girlcott or personcott the public consultations, then the
hearings should get underway without them. Why bother coaxing these crybabies back
to the fold when all they have to say on the serious issue of changes to the
federal Divorce Act is "gimme"? These organizations speak only for
themselves. They certainly do not speak for those of us who will have no ties
to gift-wrap this Father's Day because the hard-working, decent, honourable
guys who were our dads have passed away. We will not allow them to be
insulted. Pull up a chair, all you fathers, and
join in the debate. You have every right to be there. Falsely accused pair win judgment - Valerie
Richardson, Washington Times, 4aug01 Six years after a police child-sex-ring
investigation spread terror through the rural apple-picking community of Wenatchee,
Wash., those wrongly accused of holding satanic rituals involving rape and
molestation are finally starting to see the money. On Tuesday, a Spokane County jury
awarded $3 million to a Wenatchee couple, Honnah and Jonathan Sims, caught up
in the now-discredited sex-ring allegations. The award is the largest to date
in a case that has been compared to the Salem witch trials of the 17th
century.... The latest award brings to about $6
million court-ordered damages stemming from lawsuits brought so far by dozens
of plaintiffs seeking to clear their names and pin the blame on the Wenatchee
police department, the Douglas County Sheriff's Office and the state Child
Protective Services. The Wenatchee case is considered the
largest of several child-sex-abuse investigations since 1980 that have since
been found to be based on coerced testimony from children. The jury foreman
in one Wenatchee trial called the probe a "witch hunt," and the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer described it as a "thoroughly discredited
investigation." Still, winning monetary damages hasn't
been easy, even for those who spent years in prison on false charges and saw
their children placed in foster care. Before the Simses could win the award,
they first had to change state law.... "She [Honnah Sims] was scared. She
didn't know when she was going to be arrested, and people all around here
were being arrested," said Mrs. Hrycenko. "She shipped her child to
live in Kansas so the Child Protective Services wouldn't take him. Then she
went to jail and was strip-searched, and we didn't feel that was
appropriate." .... Most of the accused were women. Many
were poor and uneducated, and a few were considered mentally handicapped.
Many saw their children placed in foster care or sent them out of the state
to avoid having them taken away by authorities. All of the accused have since
been freed from jail, either because they were acquitted by juries or because
they agreed to plead to lesser, unrelated charges in order to win release
quickly. The urgency of the case led to the
creation of Innocence Project Northwest, a pro bono, legal-aid organization
begun by lawyers and students at the University of Washington Law School.
Lawyers affiliated with the project were instrumental in winning the release
of many Wenatchee clients. Representatives for the city and county
could not be reached for comment. Full text at www.ivorcatt.com/17144.htm Also see www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/18154.htm
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/front/2001/0614/fro3.htm
Domestic violence more likely from women - report By Padraig
O'Morain, Health and Children Correspondent Women are more likely than men to
perpetrate domestic violence, according to new research on Irish couples who
seek marriage counselling. The report, published yesterday, also
found that domestic violence was one of the less important factors in
marriage breakdown in the largely middleclass group studied. It was produced by a team led by Dr
Kieran McKeown, who has a distinguished reputation in social research and was
commissioned by Marriage and Relationship Counselling Services, one of the
main counselling organisations in the country. In a survey of 530 clients of MRCS, the
researchers found domestic violence occurs in almost half (48 per cent) of
all relationships which are sufficiently troubled for one or both partners to
seek counselling. Where there is violence, about one-third
(33 per cent) inflict violence on each other, "while female-perpetrated
violence occurs in about four out of 10 couples (41 per cent) and
male-perpetrated violence in a quarter of couples (26 Ill16 p14 per cent) leading us to conclude that
women are more likely than men to be the perpetrators of domestic
violence", the report's authors say. They say the findings "do not tell
us anything about the severity of the violence involved, the context, reasons
or initiation of the violence or the extent of injuries resulting from
it". They cite research from the US, Britain,
Canada and New Zealand which, they say, shows that the "prevalence of
domestic violence among men and women, both as victims and as perpetrators,
is broadly similar for all types of violence, both psychological and
physical, minor and severe. In addition, both men and women are about equally
likely to initiate domestic violence and seem to give broadly similar reasons
for doing so. "However, it needs to be emphasised
that the outcomes of domestic violence in terms of physical and psychological
injuries tend to be considerably more negative for female victims than for
male," they add. International studies suggest
"domestic violence probably occurs in about 10 to 20 per cent of all
heterosexual relationships - with considerably higher prevalence rates for
younger cohabiting couples - and tends to be severe in about one-third of all
cases". Dear Padraig A few words from Amen re the MRCS study
as discussed on the telephone this evening. .... These findings come as no surprise to
those of us who work in Amen and vindicate what we have been saying for the
past three and a half years. In the light of these findings there is an
urgent need to radically reform public policy in relation to domestic abuse
and to provide the same level of support and services for male victims of
domestic abuse as is provided for female victims of domestic abuse. Public policy is predicated on the
premise that women are the only victims of domestic abuse. Other than the
services voluntarily provided by Amen there are virtually no other supports
for men and their children who are suffering at the hands of violent and
abusive women. The findings of the survey of over five
hundred clients of the MRCS, namely that women are more likely to perpetrate
domestic abuse, concur with all reputable studies in other countries. Let us now move to a platform where we
can examine the dynamics of domestic abuse in a more sophisticated way
instead of the crude gender-based paradigm which currently depicts men as
devils and women as angels. Mary T. Cleary Co-ordinator, Amen (Eire) 086 6013448 www.amen.ie ...and in the home, the gender gulf is
highlighted by a new study - though it's not all doom and gloom Home truths for middle-class marriage Sunday Independent, 17june01 A new survey shows women more likely to
initiate violence than men, but it's the survival of the marriage that most
concerns those seeking help, writes Patricia Redlich Wives can be violent too. In fact, women
are more likely than men to instigate domestic violence, at least in
troubled, middle-class marriages, according to research on couples seeking
marital counselling. But that violence is not what concerns
them most. The real damage to the relationship is done by criticism, insults,
failure to listen, and, particularly on the part of men, avoidance of
conflict, either by walking away or blowing up. Social researcher Dr Kieran McKeown
surveyed 530 clients of the Marriage and Relationship Counselling Service,
one of the main counselling organisations in Ireland. The majority of these clients came as
couples, but a sizeable minority, namely four out of 10, were individual
partners, mostly women, seeking help with an unhappy marriage. They were
generally in their late 30s, married around 13 years, had children under 11,
were financially secure, often dual earners. The men tended to work long
hours, and the couples were not only unhappy but seriously stressed. Marital unhappiness, it seems, is vastly
more stressful than unemployment or poverty. Violence was part of the disharmony in
around half the marriages. In four
out of 10 cases, the woman assaulted her husband, in three out of 10 cases
they assaulted each other and in 2.5 out of 10 cases the men were the
aggressors. But all the couples argued that the
violence was not the issue. Nor was unfaithfulness, which occurred in one in
three of the troubled marriages.
Unfaithfulness was more likely to be a husband's prerogative, though
not exclusively so, and was almost invariably known to his wife. That said,
when women did stray, they were better at hiding it. There was widespread dissatisfaction
expressed by women seeking help about the sharing of housework and childcare.
But when these were investigated, the level of dissatisfaction bore no
relationship to the actual amount of help that husbands gave. Which suggests
that housework and childcare have replaced sex and money as the symbolic
arena for marital battles. That's what modern, well-heeled, unhappy
couples fight about. But just like
sex and money, it's not the issue. Criticism, particularly by wives;
insults; not listening to one's partner; and refusal, usually by husbands, to
discuss problems, affected nine out of 10 who attended counselling and it was
these issues which pained couples most. For such behaviour sets up a
seriously destructive and alienating pattern of non-communication, described
by the researchers as the "demand-withdrawal" syndrome. The typical scenario is one where a wife
uses criticism as a means of demanding change. Her husband then withdraws and
either ignores the demand or responds with angry confrontation. All this
might be all right except for two crucial factors. Men can't handle
criticism, not because they're nasty but because they are vulnerable. And women can't handle either withdrawal
or confrontation. For they want closeness and togetherness. Laid out like that, it sounds like women
start the spiral into unhappiness. But that's not necessarily the case.
Often what happens is that women see problems earlier because they are less
likely to avoid emotional issues. Men's avoidance behaviour, in other words,
is not ignited by their wives, but part and parcel of their emotional
baggage, or their emotional make-up, depending on your point of view. This, however, should not be confused with
a lack of commitment. "Men are less distressed and more committed to
their relationships," the report found. And women, as either part of their
emotional baggage, or their almost biological make-up, seem to be more
affected by marital problems than men.
They take them more seriously, find them more distressing, feel driven
to fix them. The "demand-withdrawal" scenario, in other words, is
the classic chicken and egg dilemma, the task of counselling not to apportion
blame but to help clients cut through the vicious circle. In simple terms that means she has to
stop criticising and he has to stop avoiding. Counselling, it seems, can help,
although for details on counselling outcome in this Irish survey, we have to
wait for the next stage of this report. International research, however, shows
that the clients, rather than the counsellors, are the ones who determine
whether counselling is effective or not.
It is the strength of the couple, rather than the skill, or
theoretical orientation, of the counsellor which ultimately decides on the
fate of a marriage. "Good counsellors, therefore, built
upon the existing strengths and resilience of the couple, and, above all,
restore faith and hope in the couple's own capacity to overcome their
problems," the report concludes. Such faith and hope are not misplaced.
For love is alive and well: the fact that couples are seeking help is as much
testimony to this as any statistic about happy marriages. (pto) On the surprising results of
research into domestic violence Ill16 p15 The two sides of domestic violence Brenda
power, The Sunday Tribune,
17june01 THERE'S a women's refuge close to where
I live and I pass it several times a week - from the top deck of the bus you
can see in over the barbed wire-topped walls to a colourful playground in the
garden of the large, fortressed building.
In such a grey and ominous setting it is a rather poignant sight, as
is the occasional glimpse of young children in school uniforms trotting up to
the heavy doors of the refuge to ring the bell and wait for admission. These reminders of the purpose of the
building, of the misery and disruption and mundane concerns of families
sundered by domestic violence - kids still need somewhere to play, schoolwork
still goes on - never fail to pull me up short. That refuge is a very uncompromising monument to a truism that
is as unshakeably rooted in the national consciousness as the foundations of
that big grey building on the main street of a busy suburban village. Men are violent, women and children are
their innocent victims. I've never heard any man I know express
discomfort at the sight of it, even though I imagine that women would be far
quicker to voice resentment if evidence of the bad behaviour of a few of
their sex was so baldly advertised in a very public place. I can't quite see
a refuge for battered husbands openly operating between the gourmet shops and
the bistros of a fashionable suburb. And yet men certainly flee violent
homes, and new research on troubled marriages last week revealed that women
are almost twice as likely to initiate domestic violence as their partners. It's just that men are slower to
challenge stereotypes about themselves, less vigilant than women in
confronting images that demean and undermine them. It may be that they fear appearing weak if they keep on carping
about sexist notions and perceptions, that the idea of a battered husband is
just too humiliating for many men to stomach, that it seems a waste of time
to battle against the consensus that casts men as aggressive, crude sexual
predators when it's so firmly established as an everyday reality that a
battered women's refuge rarely merits a second glance. But in not challenging these
stereotypes, in failing to be dismayed by the sight of such a sorry building
and in neglecting to highlight the reality of domestic violence, they are simply
providing comfort for the few men who are guilty on all counts. The most remarkable thing about the
research on domestic violence, was that it was not commissioned by some
support group for lone fathers or men in violent relationships. It would certainly
have been trashed and denounced as hysterical sexist if it did, though, so
it's probably just as well that the figures came from a distinguished
research team commissioned by the Marriage and relationship Counselling
Services to study Irish couples seeking marriage counselling. The research found that violence occurs in
almost half of all relationships which are troubled to the point where the
parties seek counselling, and of that violence, 41% was initiated by the
women, compared to 26% by the men. It's not as if we're talking about a few percentage points
either way - the gap is so huge that it can't have gone unrecorded by the
various third parties dealing with incidences of domestic abuse over the
years, like doctors, Gardai, counsellors, lawyers. But any time the suggestion of female
violence has arisen in the past it was swiftly shot down by groups working
with abused women and children, and they always point out that, whoever
starts it, the consequences of domestic aggression are still more serious for
women than for men. Nevertheless,
these figures shift a significant element of the control, if not the blame,
for domestic violence onto some of the women involved. You don't need to be a crack psychologist
to predict that if a man is struck, however feebly, his first instinct is to
strike back - just look at the footage of John Prescott versus Egg-Throwing
Lout - and that instinct will be all the harder to control if he's got drink
on him. Yet all the wisdom on domestic violence,
all those harrowing Christmastime ads with voiceovers of brutish exchanges,
all insist that the man is inevitably the unprovoked aggressor and, even
though these new statistics suggest they've always had ample basis to
challenge this perception, men are slow to tackle it. They are also much slower than women to
tackle negative and demeaning images in advertising, which again, perpetuate
a particularly condescending and unhealthy view of relationships between men
and women. I can't remember which
washing powder runs that nasty ad about the poor chap who comes in from
working in the garden and is forced to strip on the kitchen floor in front of
his wife's sniggering chum, while the two women giggle over a smutty innuendo
about his physical attributes, but I wouldn't buy it if I could - not, at
least, until the same advertiser runs a similar campaign featuring men making
crude jokes about a vulnerable women's body, of which there is a fat
chance. They'd be swamped under a
barrage of complaints and chastised by the Advertising Standards Authority,
but nobody gets particularly exercised when the object of ridicule is a man. Even the sexual harassment legislation,
much in the news these days, is arguably another product of unchallenged
presumptions about male and female roles.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the topical matter, a man's career
has been destroyed and he will be forever tainted with the stigma of 'sex
pest', when a far more equitable framing of the law would just outlaw
bullying, harassment and abuse of power, regardless of the gender of the
parties involved, and leave any element of a sexual threat, to the proper
jurisdiction of the criminal courts.
But 'sexual harassment' is implicitly a transaction in which the male
is the perpetrator and the woman the victim, since it'd be a rare and brave
man who'd take such a case against a female employer. It will be interesting to see the
fall-out from those domestic violence statistics. They are striking enough to suggest that some interest groups
[Paedophiles, Stinko, Margaret Jay, Mayor Livingstone, Bea Campbell,
MacKinnon, Dworkin, gays and lesbians, radfems] have been capitalising on the
enemy's reticence and promoting a version of events that suits their purpose,
which does nobody any great service. If women are truly responsible for
instigating most domestic incidents, even if they then come out the worst of
it, this must be honestly explored if the problem is to be tackled, and not
just covered up because the men are too dispirited to protest. [This is a first in two ways. 1. Woman
journalists round the world have taken the Eire research figures as valid.
This is what was needed, from women, for them to retain our respect. 2. The
last paragraph above is the first time a woman journalist has suggested an
evolved conspiracy by man-hating radfems and others to smear men in general
using false statistics like Stinko's. However, one swallow doesn't make a
spring. Many young men still have to die. "Thanks to their conniving with
radfems, women are at the Last Chance Saloon in their quest to save parity of
esteem, carefully constructed over centuries, now to be lost for a long time.
One Melanie Phillips, one Erin Pizzey, one Senator Anne C. Cools and one
Patricia Morgan cannot save the respect that women are losing. - Ill Eagle
9 June00 - Ed] Results of previous violence research suppressed by radfems in Eire
govt Full text at www.ivorcatt.com/17145.htm From: Roger Eldridge; This is strong talk
but never underestimate the people in power. In Ireland here after the second
very successful World Conference on Domestic Violence hosted by Amen ( www.amen.ie ) the Department of Justice
initiated a similar research project to enquire into the true nature and
extent of domestic violence in the Western societies. That report was presented to the
Minister last June. It is now 12 months since he received it and no word has
emerged of its contents other than to say (not unlike what has happened in
Canada; do these people keep in touch?) that there would be a period of
'internal' consultation. One suspects that the results offer such
a condemnation of the policies that the government have followed that it is
taking a long time to come up with a good excuse for having ruined so many
lives in the past and (one suspects) wanting to continue without any
significant change into the future. Roger Eldridge, Co. Roscommon, Ireland,
eldridgeandco@eircom.net (pto) http://www.mensactivism.org/article.pl?sid=01/07/13/2047227 Ill16 p16 The Battle for Men's Rights in Scotland By ManKind member Douglas Rome
<douglas-rome@lineone.net Full text at www.ivorcatt.com/17145.htm Dumfries, Scotland Embattled men in Scotland have won
crucial new rights in the teeth of bitter opposition from the Scottish
matriarchy. The Scottish Executive - the new devolved government in Scotland
- has started an inquiry into women's violence against men. For decades, feminists have insisted
that domestic violence is inflicted exclusively by men on women. Now, after
unrelenting pressure by the men's movement, the Executive has been forced to
concede otherwise. Announcing the inquiry to the Scottish Parliament in
Edinburgh, the social justice minister (and feminist ) Jackie Baillie said
(through gritted teeth) that the results should be known by early next
year.... It is not known yet who will lead the
probe or how far-ranging its research will be; but campaigners for men's
rights have made it clear that if the inquiry team works to a brief dictated
by the feminist agenda, they will not accept its (predictable) conclusions.... Also see www.ivorcatt.com/17149.htm Some dads wronged by paternity laws, critics say - Penny
Owen, Staff Writer, The Oklahoman,
5aug01 http://www.oklahoman.com/cgi-bin/show_article?ID=730471&TP=getarticle
.... a man learned he had a son eight
years after the boy was born. After $15,000 in legal bills and another
$20,000 paid in a child support settlement, the father and his current wife
say they have yet to meet the boy, now 22. Or the case in Anadarko, where an Army
retiree learned that he wasn't the father of the girl he had raised for 10
years. The news didn't come until the girl turned 17. But that didn't exempt
him from owing $23,000 in back child support. Nor has child support been stopped for a
man in Atlanta, who said he learned he wasn't the father of the daughter he
had raised. Fed up with the system and realizing he wasn't alone, Carnell
Smith started a Web-based support group, Citizens for Paternity Fraud ( www.paternityfraud.com
). The site is geared for fathers who feel
wronged when it comes to support for a child they either thought was theirs
and learned otherwise or who never knew the child existed. Interestingly, some of the biggest advocates
of changing child support laws are the current wives of the fathers they say
are victimized. These women say their pocketbooks, livelihood and own
children suffer because of unfair or antiquated laws that favor mothers who,
as one put it, connive to "change fathers in midstream," depending
on who can pay. In Oklahoma, a bill pending in the House
of Representatives proposes new, more father-friendly legislation that would
help both men who learn they are fathers years after the fact and those who learn
they are not. House Bill 1077 is authored by state
Rep. Lloyd Fields, D-McAlester, who personally was ordered in 1997 to pay
$26,000 in back child support after a messy and drawn-out battle involving a
daughter and divorce. The bill, in essence, would allow any
man to challenge paying child support if a paternity test proved he wasn't
the biological father. As the law stands now, a husband who has served as
father to a child in a marriage for two or more years is liable for child
support, even if the parents divorce and a paternity test proves he isn't the
father. That part was inspired by state Rep. Jim
Glover, D-Elgin, who said he was contacted by a man in his district who was
being forced to pay child support on two children, even though paternity tests
proved he wasn't the father. The reason he remained obligated, Glover
said, was because he was married to the mother and put his name on the birth
certificates. Unless the law changes, he will pay child support until the
children turn 18, Glover said. The mother is now living with the biological
father. "If you're not the father, why
should you pay child support? There's just nothing fair about it," said
Glover, who added that HB 1077 passed in the House twice, but was killed in
Senate committee. The bill also would not force a man to
pay back child support for a child he never knew existed. As it is now, said
Ray Weaver, the director of child support enforcement for the state
Department of Human Services, anyone found to be the father of a child, even
if he didn't know it, can be liable for child support up to five years before
the discovery. The whole issue of child support,
paternity and liability is a mess at best, and each case has its differences
and complications. One side, loaded with women as well as men, complain of
mothers who trick men into fatherhood while knowing they aren't the fathers.
The other side argues that families come first and scientific findings
shouldn't destroy a child's understanding of who its parents are. Paternity testing is now highly accurate
- and 28 percent of the men tested for fatherhood in 1999 and 2000 were
proven not to be the father, according to the American Association of Blood
Banks and Oklahoma's human services department. Some, like Norvell Gattison, didn't learn
until years after the fact - 17, to be exact. Gattison's wife said her husband married
the mother of a 2-year-old girl because he was told he was the father. They
divorced when the girl turned 12, and the relationship with his ex-wife
deteriorated further. In the end, Gattison owed $23,000 in back child
support, which is being garnished from his Army retirement check. More painful, however, was learning the
truth. Gattison's wife, Marilyn, said the
mother blurted out the truth when the daughter was 17, prompting Gattison to
take a paternity test. Both father and daughter were there when the letter
arrived with the results. "I opened the letter and looked at
him and said 'You're not the
father,'" Marilyn Gattison said. "And they both started crying. It
really hurt both of them." The father-daughter relationship has
since been damaged because of subsequent fights over child support between
Gattison and his ex-wife. At least Gattison had some relationship
with his daughter - unlike the husband of Pat Conrady of Fairview, who
learned he had a son after an old girlfriend's husband was arrested for child
molestation and thrown in prison. Conrady said when the mother applied for
social assistance, she named her husband as the father. He then got a bill
for back child support. When he said he wanted to meet the son he never knew,
Conrady said the mother disappeared, only to reappear years later, again
wanting back support. They nearly went bankrupt fighting the
case and finally gave in by agreeing to a $20,000 settlement - which, with
legal bills and all, ate up their own childrens' college fund and put them in
debt. To say Conrady is bitter is an
understatement, and she knows she's not alone. "They write him off with this other
child as a deadbeat father and it's not like that. He never had a chance to
be a father," said Conrady, who described her husband as a devoted
husband and provider with the same job for 22 years, who always supported the
children he knew he had. She says her husband willingly would
have supported the new-found son as well, had he been able to develop a
relationship with him. "They're destroying other kids and
other marriages just to get money for these women whose marriages didn't work
out and who want to change fathers in midstream," Pat Conrady said.
"Our kids are all out of the house now, and we should be at the point
where we can travel and enjoy life a little bit, and we can't because we have
this debt to pay off." On the other side of the argument are
those who say the past is simply catching up with men who knowingly took a
risk, however long ago. "That part, 'I didn't have any idea
I was the father' bothers me a little bit," said Weaver of DHS.
"Everyone knows how children are conceived. And if you don't remember conceiving a child, I don't think
it's harmful to society to have a genetic test to remind you that you did
conceive a child." Weaver also pointed out that recent
legislation has tried to get absentee fathers more involved in their
children's lives by such things as providing work retraining for those who
can't afford child support. Studies have shown that the more fathers are
involved in their children's lives, the more likely they are to pay support. Some, however, say legislation is too
little too late. Gattison, the Army retiree, lost his commercial driver's
license, private investigator license and fishing license because he owes
back child support. No doubt laws have cracked down on so-called deadbeat
parents. More than just the fathers are affected,
too. Strapped for cash because her husband
couldn't work, Marilyn Gattison said she applied for food stamps - and was
turned down because of the back support owed. "I said, 'You're telling me I have
to tell my husband to leave the home in order for me and my child to
eat?'" Marilyn Gattison said. "I'm just having a hard time. I don't
know what law can make a man pay for a child that's not his. And if DHS has
all these resources, why can't they go after the real father? "The sad part about it was, when me
and him got married, we decide to adopt a child - and now we can barely
afford it." Also see www.ivorcatt.com/17146.htm Ill16 p17 http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/07/25/fp8s3-csm.shtml
The Christian Science
Monitor Opinion: Letters Wednesday, July, 25, 2001 Fearing divorce, men eschew marriage The July 17 article "Vow or
never," was interesting, but failed to point at the principal reason
there are so few marriages. Men are becoming increasingly aware that they
have no rights at all in marriage - nothing, just responsibility,
responsibilities that will continue after their wives divorce them, which
they are very likely to do. Men don't want to raise and love
children, only to have them stolen away, along with their financial
capability of having a reasonable life or indeed any chance of ever having
children again.... Alan Carr, Chelmsford, England System failure Julie
Wheelwright, Guardian, 9may01 If you can't agree with your ex about
custody and access, a complete stranger will decide what's best for your
kids. The government is investing in a new family court service, but will it
make any differenc You're a mother with young children and
your marriage has broken down. The
children live with you and see their father regularly, but your
ex-husband, on the recommendation of a family solicitor, has issued an
application for residence. As the date for your hearing looms, a teacher at
your son's nursery remarks, as casually as she can, "I received a letter
this morning from the probation service about your child." You thought
this process was within your understanding but, at that moment, you realise
that nothing has prepared you for this. Soon after, the court welfare officer
(CWO) charged with making an independent assessment of your children visits
your home. You are on a knife-edge - this complete stranger, a criminal
probation officer with no guarantee of specialist training with children,
holds the future of your family life in his hands. He alone will recommend to
the courts how often you see your children, where they live and with whom
they spend their holidays. In the majority of cases, the CWO's
recommendations are accepted. Before you appear in court, you will be
under enormous pressure to reach an agreement - a form of negotiating that
puts a premium on compromise for its own sake, while the children's best
interests run a poor second. If you come before a judge, he will be free to
make whatever recommendations and whatever personal comments about your
appearance, behaviour or parenting he sees fit. Finally, if the judge decides
not to uphold the plans for your children that you have fought for, costs may
be awarded against you. There are no guidelines for contact, no way to appeal
against decisions and no proper system for complaints. There are countless
such stories from parents throughout the country of disagreements that result
in either one parent having limited or no access to their child or a
vindictive ex-partner continuing needless legal proceedings. If it isn't
every parent's nightmare, it ought to be. Approximately 70,000 children a
year are put through a system which one campaigner, Oliver Cyriax (a
solicitor and writer who represents Information on Probation Officers in
Welfare Work), has described as "rotten to the core". But now the government has created a new
body with a £72m budget to take over all responsibilities relating to the
welfare of children and families in courts. Earlier this year, there was
welcome acknowledgment from Lady Justice Butler-Sloss, president of the high
court's family division, that the old system needed reform. "It's very
important for the families to make [the new organisation] work," she
told the Family Law Bar Association, "and to have the chance to have an
infinitely better system than we have had." The Children and Family
Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass), which came into existence on
April 1, is poised to overhaul the whole process for families in dispute. Or
is it? A Day-Glo orange sign provides a lurid welcome to Cafcass's sparkling
offices in London's Victoria. But the fact that Anthony Hewson, the
organisation's chairman, has agreed to meet me is a step towards dismantling
the secrecy that surrounded the old Family Court Welfare Service (FCWS).
"We are confident that we can make a difference to families and
children," he says. "Families are important, courts are important,
but children are our primary focus. This country doesn't have a very good
reputation for listening to children." He explains that Cafcass has been
in touch with the NSPCC and NCH Action for Children; there may be forums for
children in future, and he admits there is a need for better research about
how to minimise the trauma of a breakup for them. This information might form
a basis for changes that would feed directly into how the newly renamed
"court and family reporters" (who replace CWOs) go about their job.
Diane Shepherd, chief executive of Cafcass, says the organisation has a team
working with "stakeholders" to draft new national standards. "We'll come to our own views about
whether a lot of these systems and procedures that envelop people's lives are
in the child's best interests," says Hewson. "I'm quite sure they'll
discover that some of them are not." Among ideas to deter separating parents
from taking their disputes to court, Hewson is investigating US schemes where
parents are shown a video about the likely impact upon their children.
"If we provide a better way of hearing children's views, then perhaps
parents will think more carefully about whether they are going to march into
adversarial activity." He also mentions a joint initiative by the Lord
Chancellor's Department and the Legal Services Commission, due to start in
October, designed to encourage mediation and counselling as alternatives to
legal action. Another innovation would be guidelines
for child-parent contact, since there are wide variations: from non-resident
parents who never see their children to those who have alternate weekend
contact with half of all holidays and midweek overnights. Changing the
culture within the probation service may therefore prove a Herculean task.
David Lye, the former Cafcass project director, wrote a letter to Welsh Assembly
minister Owen John Thomas earlier this year in which he admitted: "The
services that provide advice to the courts have always resisted [guidelines]
on the grounds that each case involves different circumstances and unique
individuals." But without guidelines, many parents and campaigners
believe that there is endless potential for dispute over the degree and
circumstances of contact. Although Hewson's proposals are
potentially good news, many parents are understandably cynical about how much
will really change. "These disputes are exacerbated by the existing
system and those in the system never listen to parents who come to them for
help," says Scott Bradfield, an academic who brought a complaint against
the FCWS in 1999. Diane Shephard insists that Cafcass is open to parents'
views, but Bradfield is not convinced. During a Cafcass internet chat in
early April, he says, some messages from parents were blocked: "Any
criticism of the service was prevented from being aired." Dina Rabinovitch, a writer who gained
unprecedented access to the family judges and courts, says that honest CWOs
admit their job is virtually unworkable. "An adult whom the children
have never met goes into a room and asks these children, at a complicated
time in their lives, questions about 'Mummy's house' and 'Daddy's house', and
then writes a report which purports to represent those children's views.
Anyone who has children knows that getting an accurate picture of children's
feelings is a subtle business - and, in fact, may not be anybody's business
at all, at this intensely private time for children." For Rabinovitch, the adversarial court
system will never be the right place for these issues. As Kate Green, chair
of National Council for One Parent Families points out, mothers often end up
making compromises over contact arrangements simply to prevent costly and
painful legal action. Green adds that Cafcass should spend part of its
research budget on investigating what arrangements work best and how conflict
might be minimised. "What we are all aware of,"
says Green, "is that, where there is a relationship with a lot of
conflict, that will continue after a break-up, and the family needs support
at every stage." Meanwhile, at the Cafcass offices,
Anthony Hewson contemplates the Ill16 p18 challenge that he faces in bringing
credibility to a system that, according to its critics, such as Tony Coe of
the Equal Parenting Council, has blighted a generation of families. "I
think Cafcass is only a new sign over the door of the old service," he
says. "But the glimmer of light is Anthony Hewson." [mid july01] The 'friends' on the Left are to blame for Bradford By Sin
Simon (Electronic Telegraph)
News: We were overwhelmed say Bradford riot police It is fitting to begin, in seeking
explanation for what's been happening in the mill towns of the North, with E
P Thompson's Making of the English Working Class. That great masterpiece hums
with the early industrial life of the very places now plunged into
convulsions. Bradford, Burnley, Oldham and Leeds have 71 page references
between them. Yet the following distinction drawn by Prof Thompson in his
passage dealing with riots remains pertinent today: "In 18th-century Britain riotous
actions assumed two different forms: that of more or less spontaneous popular
direct action; and that of the deliberate use of the crowd as an instrument
of pressure, by persons 'above' or apart from the crowd." As a
revisionist Left-winger writing in 1959-63, Thompson's thesis was that
historians had too often favoured the latter interpretation of riots, thereby
devaluing the notion of the riot as a positive response to working-class
disfranchisement, poverty and alienation. Forty years later, the positions have
reversed. The general assumption of the liberal establishment is that riots
must necessarily be an outpouring of tensions so seethingly underlying that
they were always bound eventually to boil over. My first premise is that this
is not true here: the recent events have tended to be caused by the cynical
intervention of outsiders, and would not have occurred were it not for that
manipulation. True, "you can't agitate a man on a full stomach"; it
is no coincidence that these riots were in Manningham not Mayfair; but that
was neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition. My second point is one that has been
neglected by the media: the most effective agents provocateurs have not been
the neo-Nazi Right but the revolutionary Trotskyist Left. I know this for
sure because what they succeeded in doing in Bradford on Saturday and
elsewhere in previous weeks, they failed to do in my constituency on the
final Saturday of the general election campaign. A seemingly innocuous sentence from the
front page of yesterday's Observer (one similar to which was carried by the
rest of the media) conceals the sinister truth: "Two people were stabbed
and 80 police officers injured after a protest march against the National
Front turned violent." Not by the National Front, you will note, but
against it. Decent people, reading such a sentence,
may fail properly to examine what it means. They might well assume that
concerned citizens naturally want to march against the National Front, that
the phenomenon is similar to the food riots of the late 18th and early 19th
century which, according to Thompson, were "legitimised by the
assumptions of an older moral economy", being "popularly regarded
as acts of justice, and their leaders held as heroes". What happened in Erdington, in which a
National Front and a Trotskyist Socialist Alliance candidate were standing,
was that the National Front initially threatened to march down the High
Street. Local reaction was so uniformly appalled that the threat was
withdrawn. However, the local Anti-Nazi League - exactly the same handful of
militants who made up the Trotskyist Socialist Alliance, but with a different
letterhead - absolutely refused to cancel its planned
"counter-demonstration". It was now to be a "celebration"
that the streets had been reclaimed from the fascists. And on the day that the NF march was
supposed to have taken place it was the ANL, not NF, supporters who poured in
from outside wearing balacavas and frightening people. It was against them
that the shops pulled down their shutters and the riot police lurked warily.
Fortunately, the NF was nowhere to be seen, so there was no one for the
Trotskyists to fight, and there are greatly fewer young Asians to be incited
in Erdington than there are in Bradford so, after a while, the militants
left. Given that the recent riots have been
such a fillip for the neo-Nazis - giving them publicity, exciting fear and
xenophobia and thus promoting the recruitment which is their prime objective
- one might have thought the supposed anti-Nazis would recognise their own
leading role in bringing it about as counterproductive. Such thinking ignores
the ruthlessness of revolutionary socialists. For them, there is no
difference between the proto-fascist skinhead youth and the Bangladeshi
militant: there is only one working class, only one class struggle. Cities on
fire. Police under siege. Oppressed urban proletariat rises up against the
agents of the boss class. They love it. Which is sickening, because the only way
they can get these mini-revolutionary kicks is by cynically playing the race
card. After all, they constantly invite people to meet, march, protest and
generally overthrow the decadent institutions of capitalism. And they are
constantly, roundly and spectacularly ignored. In Erdington, after fighting a
vigorous and vocal campaign, they polled less than the National Front, which
fought no campaign at all. (Neither got 700 votes.) The only way the revolutionary
Trotskyists can get a response is to go into Asian communities and frighten
people with the spectre of neo-Nazism. And in so doing, the Trotskyists -
deliberately and for their own purposes - give the fascists a credibility
they don't deserve. Yes, the NF "starts it" by turning up in Asian
communities. But the Trotskyists are the catalyst without which these terrible
conflagrations would not occur. The NF is a pathetic and puny group of
stupid and cowardly hooligans rarely capable of more than getting drunk,
shouting idle threats and scuttling away. They're so disgusting, on the other
hand, that their mere existence in the pub around the corner is bound to
inflame the passions - when stoked by professional agitators bused in from
outside - of young Asian men whose economic condition gives them every right
to feel neglected and resentful. As the summer swelters on towards
autumn, I implore such men to pause and reflect. It's not the fascists you
need protecting from. They are just rubbish that will blow along the gutter
to the next place if you pay it no mind. It's the other strangers who kindle
the pyres, the ones who say they are your friends, but who have the same
interest as the Nazis in seeing you burn your streets down. Like the
fascists, they will be gone by morning. Sion Simon
is Labour MP for Birmingham Erdington Newcomers aren't to blame, it has always been bad here - Alison
Coggan, Express, 9aug01, p6 .... Glasgow's troubled Sighthill estate
.... "It's not the asylum seekers," said the woman, who was too
frightened to give her name. "It's all the gangs of young men roaming
about. I've lived here for 35 years. I used to go to the bingo at night but
I'm too scared now." .... Its young men have fought with
rival gangs from nearby .... Now, the differences in skin colour and
culture mean gang warfare has been re-branded as racism. .... "It's not the asylum seekers we
want rid of. It's the hooligans and drug addicts," .... [This maps well onto my ideas, and those
of our repeat speaker Geoffrey Ben-Nathan, that we are seeing a rite of
passage. See http://www.ivorcatt.com/zb038.htm
http://www.ivorcatt.com/18136.htm
http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/0acv115.htm - Ed] First enforcement of access order From: SEAN KELLY < noddi@esatclear.ie > 12July01 JULY 11th: A Co. Kildare single father a who has been denied access to his
daughter by his ex girlfriend, brought a prosecution against her for denial
of access, breach of an access order and for contempt of Court to the
(criminal) District Court in Naas Co Kildare. Ill16 p19 The evidence was laid before the judge
in OPEN court, how she had opposed his access application, how she had made
false allegations against him, how he finally won access to his child despite
every obstacle she vindictively put in his way and finally how she had
persistently denied him his Court Awarded access for other reason than she
wanted to punish him. He presented a diary showing how he had been denied
access on 81 separate occasions this year. Judge
Murrough Connellan convicting the accused, warned her that her
behaviour was unacceptable and he fined her £200 or 5 days in jail. This is a new departure for the
Judiciary and only modesty prevents me from making a possible link between
the outcome of this case and recent Father's Day protests. There has always been an unwillingness
on behalf of Judges to enforce Access Orders so that fathers could have some
level of "control free " relationship with their children. One client of mine had been through the
mill for 7 years of social workers, child psychologists, (all of whom
initially viewed him as a pariah), and 3 section 20 reports, his vindictive
alcoholic wife point blank refused to allow him to see his children. After he
had paid the Mortgage (for the home where she lived with a succession of
boyfriends) all other bills and his maintenance, he had £27.oo to live on
every week. He filed in court to have his access order enforced. The Judge
played a blinder he said "Oh you have a very good case Mr. XXXX"
"But I think I will reopen this entire case and order another section 20
". By doing this he very skilfully
AVOIDED the issue. The reality of this action was, however, that my client
was further denied access to his children indefinitely. That was 18 months
ago he still had not seen them and they are totally poisoned against him by
her lies and twisted mental state. Another client went before a judge to
have his access order enforced: the Judge said: "Do you really want me
to put the mother of your children in prison?" The man replied: "I
want you to simply uphold the Law"
"But by doing that you are asking me to imprison this woman"
Said the Judge "I want you to do your job and uphold the Law"
replied the frustrated man, "Do not presume to tell me what my job is or
I will hold YOU in Contempt! " replied the Judge, "Case
dismissed" ....... Again another
COP OUT. Let us hope that this judgement of new
appointee, Murrough Connellan, is a first step by the Judiciary in addressing
the anti male/ pro female gender bias that is ubiquitous, in not only in the
family Courts but in all aspects of the law. A bias that upholds and supports
a cultural paradigm of the "Madonna" female "victim" the
"Ogre" Male . Let us hope that this will bring under control the epidemic of
belligerence, non-compliance and implacable hostility of custodial mothers,
who, oppose the concept of responsible Shared Parenting by using innocent children
as vindictive weapons of leverage to copper - fasten their positions as power
brokers in family break down situations. [Who wrote it? - Ed.] A number of sources assert that the US
black family was complete (father mother children) until early last century,
when the welfare state destroyed it. Thus, it was the state, not slavery,
which destroyed the black family. Now the white family is following the same
path. - Ed http://www.dadi.org/1stdaout.htm First, Remove the Fathers Gerald L.
Rowles 7/30/01 First, remove the Fathers. It's not
Shakespeare (First, kill all the lawyers) but it is a drama that rivals
Oedipus in its parallels and impact. It started out as the "Great
Society" and, 30 years later, became the "Welfare State". In that same span of less than one
generation, the black family was decimated and the State became parent to 70%
of its black children. How was this accomplished by the Great Society? Simply
by throwing money at black women for having more babies and, "no man in
the house". That was the basic tenet of the welfare contract. "We
will support you and your children at subsistance levels as long as you
remain unencumbered by the male parent." "A woman (And her child) needs a
man like a fish needs a bicycle."; sayeth the State, parroting the
Women's Movement. Across this nation today, the burgeoning
prison industry is populated by more than 50% black males, even though the
black population of the United States is hovering in the neighborhood of 14%
(about half of whom are females - making the proportion of imprisoned black
males even more pronounced). From the professional experience of working
within a State prison population, I can attest to you that 85% of these males
grew up without a father presence, or even knowledge of who he might be. Has there ever been a more dramatic and
clear-cut outcome in any social science study? Is this not validation of
countless contemporaneous scientific studies that have pointed to the many
real threats to fatherless children? These studies have grown more numerous
in recent years, but this is merely a reiteration of what had been discovered
more than fifty years ago in the period following WWII. Social scientists of
the Forties detected a social disruption caused by the removal of the vast
numbers of American males to foreign shores. Those who had married and left
children and wives behind returned to find wives that had become
symbiotically attached to their children and more invested in their maternal
families than their own nuclear one. But no one seems to be listening, or
taking the information seriously. A columnist contacted me the other day
asking for a data source demonstrating "how a marriage helps kids".
I reported back to this individual, somewhat tardily and apologetically, on
some of the most powerful outcomes obtained by various authors and
researchers. And the response was: "Not too late, but not too useful,
either. This is typical of lots of the data I've seen, five years or more
old. I'm looking for the freshest data and best example of how marriage helps
kids. " This was stunning. Validity was being
judged by recency if not immediacy, not content nor scientific rigor.
"Lots of data", no acceptance. I'm reminded of the adage - For
those who would hear, no explanation is needed; For those who would not, no
explanation is sufficient. An astute observer, Rev. Jesse Lee
Patterson (President of B.O.N.D.) recently observed: White Americans are afraid to deal
"straight up" with this issue for fear of being called racists, and
as a result, this wicked government takeover is now spreading into the
mainstream. We are now beginning to see the dissolution of the family, open
mockery of the man, and fathers being removed from their homes via false
accusations of spousal abuse. The love of the family is being drained away. Rev. Patterson proposes to "Rebuild
the Family By Rebuilding the Man." And not a moment too soon, particularly
if that primarily involves rebuilding the image of men and fathers - not just
reiterating more recrimination. The growing power of the State over the
family is becoming near total. Just this past Friday (7/27/01) the State of
Oregon assumed just such a totalitarian stance. The Seattle Intelligencer
announced "the Children's Plan by Kitzhaber". Under this plan "All Oregon parents could have
their first-born children screened for medical and social problems under a
state-funded program signed into law by Gov. John Kitzhaber yesterday. ...
Kitzhaber, a former emergency room physician, says more screening of children
for possible developmental risks, such as a parent's drug or alcohol abuse,
can help reduce juvenile crime, failures in school and other social problems.
... The measure "sets Oregon apart from the rest of the nation in terms
of our vision, our commitment and our resolve toward helping children,"
Kitzhaber said before signing the measure, HB3569." And just exactly what happens when the
State finds that these parents fail to meet its criteria? And what will be
the criteria? Substance abuse? Spousal abuse (based on whose report and what
evidence)? Practice Christian religious beliefs? Own a firearm? Raise their
children with basic moral and ethical beliefs - and spanking? Demand that
their children take responsibility for their actions? Refused a trip to
Disneyland? Tens of thousands of American children
are being removed from their parents' homes for just exactly such
"justifications", to be raised by States throughout the Union. And
at least in one case I know of, sent to Disneyland on taxpayer dollars. Are you shivering yet? Is Oregon merely
the vanguard in reaching the "final solution" to the "parent
problem"? (For those the same age as the columnist who contacted me,
this is the wording used in Hitler's Germany to justify the onset of the
Holocaust. Just substitute the word "Jewish" in place of
"parent".) Once again I will call upon the
un-minced, un-spun message of Rev. Patterson to suggest the answer to this
potentially virulent State takeover of the family: "I have attempted to show the level
of destruction that the United States government, and now the United Nations,
is capable of achieving by simply removing the father from the family
equation. Understand that the black family, as it exists today, is a living
microcosm of this destruction. In order to change the hell that has taken
over our once-noble nation, we must first put fathers and mothers back
together, take back the authority (over) our children from the government,
reaffirm a strong belief in God and country, get the United States out of the
United Nations, and say "hell, no!" to the U.N.'s Convention on the
Rights of the Child." Amen Reverend; A-MEN |
|
Ill Eagle 17 Ill Eagle
17 .. Oct 2001 .... ISSN 1466-9005 Ill17 p1 Hamilton vows to seek sex assault law change Neil Hamilton has vowed to try to change
the law to counter false accusations of sexual assault. In his first speech
since being cleared by police of sex abuse allegations against Nadine
Milroy-Sloan, Mr Hamilton said he would leave no stone unturned. Mr Hamilton told a meeting of the men's
civil rights organisation, ManKind, in Euston, central London that there is
an epidemic of false accusations of sexual assaults. He said: "I'm not
just going to wash my hands of this case and go back to Mr Hamilton said he
would use "the contacts that we have in Parliament and the media"
to attempt to change the law. Mr Hamilton said there was "a very
disturbing trend" of people who think "there is gold in them thar
lies". "There is now, as the world knows, the opportunity for any
gold-digger to come forward and make a set of false allegations against
somebody who has a high profile." Mr Hamilton told how he and his wife
Christine feared that the allegations might have been that they were part of
a sexual assault that happened at five o'clock in the morning, as that might
have been very difficult to disprove. Story filed: 13:19 Saturday 15th
September 2001 Copyright (c) 2001 Ananova Ltd ________ The objects for which the Company (i.e.
ManKind) is established for charity status ("the objects" clauses)
are:- a/. the alleviation of hardship and
distress, in particular amongst those suffering such hardship and distress a
result of break-up of marriage and family. b/. the protection and preservation of
men's health both mental and physical in such ways as the company shall
decide. c/. the prevention of discrimination
against males on the ground of sex so far as such discrimination is
unlawful". ------------------------------------------- The writer Doris Lessing thinks men are
having a hard time. Well, all I can say is it's about time -
Germaine Greer, Sunday Times, 2sep01,
sect.4 p10 You don't know how difficult it is being
a closet heterosexual - David Bowie, ibid. 12yr Old Males are a "threat" My wife recently attended a training
session where some of the DV shelter feminazis presented this interesting
fact. Apparently there are NO DV shelters
in the Puget Sound, Washington State area that will take in women that have
male children with them aged 12yrs or older. The reason, my wife was told; "They
are a threat. They represent revictimization". Regards; Bluelytes@hotmail.com 18sep01 Open Day at Royal Holloway College Subject:
Stanko Today 13-Oct-01 the Royal Holloway
College, Egham, Surrey, discovered a number of individuals protesting about
false domestic violence statistics. Prof Elizabeth Stanko, who promotes the
1-in-4 domestic violence lie and is based at the Royal Holloway, was
unavailable for comment. The college was holding an 'Open-Day',
but immediately leaflets began circulating to prospective students within the
college their security forces decided that they were having a 'Closed-Day'.
Evidently the Marxist-Feminist Polit-bureau had learnt nothing from their
Polish comrades and elsewhere about the difficulties of closing down Samistat
style leafleting. Most Universities regard Open-Day as a
chance to show round would-be students, and members of the public, who want
to know more about their activities. Most Universities are quite open about
their activities and are only too happy to engage in debate with members of
the public. Not least they see this as a public duty towards the very people
who fund them through their taxes. The Royal Holloway college, by contrast,
had employed a massive security presence. Far more prevalent than one could
expect at Heathrow airport. It became very clear that here was a University
that would tolerate: no debate, no alternative views, and not even the
peaceful distribution of leaflets. The result of the colleges' purge was that
the protesters were relegated to the front gates and forced to make use of a
loud-hailer, and posters, in order to
contact would be students and voice their concerns. Many people going in and
out of the gates took leaflets and expressed interest in the issues being
raised by the protesters. A large number of students came forward to take
leaflets and make enquiries. The attempt at femi-cleansing of distributed
leaflets also failed. Apparently some of the 'SammysDad' leaflets made their
way into the Royal Holloway suggestions box. The UK is following the lead of highly
feminist Universities in the USA and Canada in the onward march of feminism.
In Canadian Universities for example female students who attend women art
history courses are shocked to discover they receive training in lesbian
masturbation techniques using vegetables see http://www.escape.ca/~scruples/uw/main.html
. These organisations are intolerant of any alternative viewpoints and
lifestyles such as: two parent families, and hetero-sexuality. Indeed the
Royal Holloway was showing worrying signs of this trend today. In the college
'Bedford Centre for the history of Women'
a library a poster advertised a Postgraduate Seminar on 17-Oct-2001
"When a Woman Speaks the truth About Her Body: Ethyl Smyth, Virginia
Woolf and the Challenges of Lesbian Auto/biography". Do parents really
want their children to be educated by a University that promotes hatred of
the opposite sex? This battle will no doubt move off into
cyber-space. The femi-nazi government will need all of their wimin-only
candidates to push through the legislation for the femi-equivalent of the
'car clamp' on campaigners computers and the introduction of new 'thought'
crimes. The Royal Holloway student helpers were
at all times extremely polite and helpful. The security guards however would
have felt more at home in commie Poland. Elizabeth Stanko can be contacted at:
b.stanko@rhul.ac.uk Photos of the protest can be seen at: www.lbduk.org in
the history section. From: Brian
Robertson brian@coeffic.demon.co.uk From: Brian Robertson to Ivor Catt Subject: Hubble Bubble Date: 15 October 2001 22:14 Whilst joining in on the fun of the
open-'coven' day at the Royal Holloway there were a few issues noticed: Bedford Centre for the history of Women
Library stocks books overwhelmingly by extreme feminists. These books and
titles can be checked out at www.rhul.ac.uk and doing a search for the
library. Some examples of the Library feminist authors with number of titles
in: S. Orbach [3], G. Greer [8] F.
Weldon[6], G. Steinem [1], A. Dworkin [2], C. MacKinnon[2] just one such example of
hate-male; "men are Ill17 p2 biologically aggressive; their fetal
brains were awash in androgen; their DNA, in order to perpetuate itself,
hurls them into murder and rape." - Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War
Zone, p. 114 The same History of Women library was
not open for the open-day. Why not I wonder? Could this be because of a
policy of concealment? Were they embarrassed about this library? Did they
think the library would be attacked by an enraged dad? The University has a 'safety policy' of
no female rooms being on the ground floor. So when a burglar breaks into a
male room, and disturbs him sleeping, and the student gets his head kicked
in, and is injured for life, then that's OK then? Postgraduate Seminars pushing the
Lesbian agenda e.g. 17-Oct-01 (above founder's library). "When a woman
speaks the truth about her body: Ethyl Smyth, Virginia Woolf and the
Challenges of Lesbian Auto/biography". Note that it was male-only security guards
who were defending this feminist establishment. Surely the sisters with their
infinite superiority over men would have been an infinitely better choice?
Cluck cluck. A wonderful Man's Hour interview
covering the protest can be heard at; http://www.geocities.com/menshour/p06n.smil The next protests at RHC open-days will
be: Sat 16-Mar-2002, Wed 19-Jun-2002
- Mr M. Mouse False Allegations 10oct01 Dear Mr Catt, Thank you for the copies of e-mails,
which I read with interest. At the moment I am trying to get as many people
as I can to look at the processes that lead people to be arrested and
convicted, rather than individual cases. I believe that the processes are open to
abuse, and that by simply tape recording the witnesses' statement much
concern would be alleviated. I am trying to form an all-party group
for the falsely accused, but the vast majority of MPs are very reluctant to
join, concerned I guess that they might be seen to be supporting abusers.
Please encourage your MP to join my group. Try to reassure him or her that we
are essentially interested in the process that leads to conviction. Claire
Curtis-Thomas MP Member of
Parliament for Crosby Warren Farrell Dear Ivor, re 15sep01 There is nothing that prevents our sons
from growing up without feeling shame, guilt and like second-class citizens
more than the lace curtain of censorship that prevents their life experience
from being aired equally to women's. When both our sons and daughters are
being deprived of their dads because we are not exposed to how important to
children dads are, we are leaving the next generation with a "father
wound" (similar to the wound of economic security many depression dads
still feel no matter how rich in fact they are). No research has impacted me more than
the research on the lace curtain of censorship that encompasses the
government, media, helping professions and academia. Getting that published
in Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say made me realize how difficult it is
for men to speak up so anyone can hear. Your conference, by unwrapping
censorship, is exposing the world to a present it must give itself. That
present is half of who we are. Warren Farrell, Ph.D. 13 Sep. 2001 Amen To:
Ivor, Robert and colleagues. We in Amen wish you well with your
conference and fully support the good work you are doing in addressing the
many flawed and damaging aspects of the Family Law System. We are disappointed to learn that Lord
Mayor Ken Livingstone and the GLA have launched an initiative on domestic
violence which is based on an outdated and discredited paradigm. This
initiative is certain to fail in its stated objectives of preventing and
reducing domestic violence as it perpetuates the myth that women are the only
victims and men the only perpetrators. Amen's experience and all reliable
research show that domestic violence is a 50/50 phenomenon. In Ireland, recent research, carried out
for the Marriage and Relationship Counselling Services (MRCS) in Ireland,
showed that women are, in fact, more likely than men to perpetrate domestic
violence. This report, based on a survey of 530 clients of MRCS, found that
where domestic violence occurs mutual violence accounts for 33% of cases,
female perpetrated violence accounts for 41% and male perpetrated violence
for 26%. The Department of Health and Children
has also carried out research, to be launched shortly, which will also
vindicate the MRCS research and the experience of Amen. In the light of the
findings of this research the Government has provided a grant of £50,000 to
Amen to run an Awareness and Development Campaign this year. We are at
present having consultations with the relevant Government authorities
regarding mainstream on-going funding to enable Amen to expand its services
in future years. From the information available on the
GLA initiative it would appear that the political establishment in the UK is
even more entrenched in the erroneous propaganda based stereotypes than their
counterparts in Ireland. Conferences such as yours, which challenge such
attitudes, are vital so that the truth emerges for the benefit of families
and society generally. I regret that due to circumstances beyond my control I
cannot be with you. Again I wish you every success in your endeavours. -
Sincerely, Mary T Cleary, Amen, sep01 Men in hiding http://www.shethinks.org/articles/an00084.cfm from
http://www.shethinks.org/index.cfm sep01 NEW REPORT: "Hooking Up, Hanging
Out, and Hoping for Mr Right - College Women on Dating and Mating Today" .... .... There appears to have been a
reduction in male initiative in dating and courting on college campuses.
Recognize that the burden of dating and mating should not fall on women
alone, and that there is a need for greater male initiative. Recognize that socially defined
courtship is the historical pathway to marriage. When it comes to inherently
social acts such as romance and marriage, social rules do more than restrict
individual choice, they also facilitate it. The absence of appropriate
updated social norms, rituals and relationship milestones leaves many young
women confused, and often disempowered, in their relationships with men. The Institute for American Values (IAV)
conducted the research and prepared the study for the Independent Women's
Forum (IWF). For more information, contact Kate Kennedy or Ivy Stewart at
703-558-4991 [IWF info@iwf.org is the
backlash against the dreadful NOW in the USA. Their ideas are similar to
ours, but sometimes take us further, e.g. in their journal femina, june01,
pp4,7; "Women actually earn 98 cents on the dollar when factors such as
age, education, and experience are taken into account." - Ed] CSA refunds 'dad' after DNA test http://www.htvwales.com/news/ 17oct01 A bachelor from Cardigan is getting a
£30,000 refund from the Child Support Agency after a DNA test proved he was
not the father of a baby. Gerard Bradbury has been paying up to £100 a week
for seven years after a brief affair with a woman who then claimed she was
having his child. It is only the second time in Britain
that a man has overturned a maintenance order after a DNA test proved he
could not have been the father. Mr Bradbury decided to pay for the £200 test
because he could barely afford the payments from his £400 a week wages and
had a "nagging doubt" about being the boy's father. He said:
"There must be hundreds of men throughout the country in my situation
and I would urge them to have a DNA test. If the baby is yours then you grin
and bear it and pay up. But I think a lot of men are being taken for a
ride." Gerard is due to get the refund - plus
interest - in the next few weeks. CSA officials will decide whether the mother
will have to bear the cost of refunding the money. [Nice to know our taxes
pay for female fraud. - Dave Ellison] Also at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/wales/newsid_1604000/1604281.stm
Ill17 p3 Editorial Censorship Ex-Minister Neil Hamilton was only one
among a bevy of excellent speakers at our 28oct01 conference on censorship. The
conference was video recorded, as was last year's. In these recordings, we
have a capital asset on which we can draw for many years. Following the excellent initiative from
the West Country, targeting rogue judges' homes (which led to our activist
member Mark Harris being jailed), I am grateful to Brian Robertson for
extending our range to targeting radfem academics who falsify statistics.
Colleges like RHC, which continue to harbour staff who falsify their research
results, are especially vulnerable on their Open Days, when we can warn
potential students and their parents against studying there. We also need to
approach their Ethical Standards Committees, and also the University Grants
Committee, to try to cut off their main funding at source. The £63 millions
p.a. ESRC, www.esrc.ac.uk/ , which supplies Stinko with millions of pounds of
government money to falsify statistics in her attack on men, also needs to be
subjected to pressure. gordon.marshall@esrc.ac.uk is in charge of their complaints
procedure. See www.esrc.ac.uk/personnel/complaints.htm
ManKind and Ill Eagle can be reached at:- 1). Suite 367, 2 Lansdowne Row,
London W1X 8HL. www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/
3)
Email Head.Office@mankind.co.uk The Editor, Ivor Catt, 121 Westfields,
St. Albans AL3 4JR, England. ( 01727 - 864257 Email ivorcatt@electromagnetism.demon.co.uk ) Prone to Violence by Erin
Pizzey Suppressed and boycotted by feminists,
on-line edition at http://www.bennett.com/ptv/index.shtml It is now back in print. Commoners' Publishing Inc., ISBN
0-88970-103-2, 5.5x8.5", 134 pp
quality paperback, $19.95 The Radfem Quagmire Now that radfems are so powerful, we
need to analyse them in depth. Below, we see how inconsistent they are on
whether they want to confuse or not confuse objectivity with subjectivity.
They are polemicists, not reformers, and so incapable of handling power
constructively. That is what makes their wielding of power so destructive. Epistemologies 1 Feminisms, ed. Sandra Kemp and Judith
Squires, OUP 1997, p142 ".... these feminist
epistemological frameworks tend to share a critical stance in relation to
rationality, objectivity, and universality, asserting the significance and
legitimacy of emotional, politically engaged, and particularistic ways of
knowing" - quoted in Ill Eagle 16, p8 2 ".... patriarchy never announced its
real purposes .... declaring god and nature made women subordinate to men -
by endowing men but not women with .... reason, logic ...." - Marilyn
French, The War Against Men, pub Hamish Hamilton1992, p10 These blatant contradictions in radfem
propaganda are prolific. Being such a mess makes radfems destructive. - Ed 3 "Gender feminists have tried to
promote things like feminist philosophy of science and even mathematics,
which is ludicrous but also, again, an affront to those women who do
exceptionally well in these fields. As a woman I cannot help think that one
of the driving forces behind gender feminism is a secret jealousy of those
women who have succeeded academically, socially and politically without
it." - Antonia, Ill Eagle
16, p5 [However, Antonia does not explain why
very successful women like Baroness Margaret Jay attack men so viciously.
Perhaps it is Jay's reported lack of intelligence which incenses her, rather
than her lack of success. - Ed] 3-year limit for claims of abuse - Frances
Gibb, Times, 10july01
Victims of child abuse should have no more than three years to bring a
claim after reaching the age of 18 unless courts give them special
permission, the Law Commission recommends today. The Government's law reform watchdog proposes
an overhaul of the law on the time limits for bringing civil claims. The
present law, contained in the Limitation Act, 1980, varies according to the
type of claim and can be anomalous and unfair, the Commission says. It wants
to rationalise the time limits so as to make sure that once people know of a
reason to bring a claim, they cannot delay without good cause. Professor Hugh Beale, the Law
Commissioner responsible for the project, said that the proposals would
modernise the law and make it more rational, transparent and, as far as
possible, uniform, striking a fair balance between claimants and defendants. Question Tonight I had a phone call out of the
blue. It was a Jason Carmichael, aged 39. He'd
heard ManKind helped men in trouble. His father aged 63 committed suicide in
1999 after being accused by a girl (aged 18) of rape. He was a security
guard. An ordinary family man trying to make ends meet. His father was
arrested and given police bail. It took 5 months for forensic evidence to be
processed but this was 2 months too late. After 3 months of waiting his
father committed suicide. Police did a DNA, a fingernail tests and semen
test. He was not linked - i.e. negative. It was the girl's mother that
pressed and pursued the matter of rape. The police complaints procedure was
not much use. He had no luck with solicitors. He has had no satisfaction from
police, legal aid or victim support. He's still grieving the sudden and
unnecessary loss of his father. He has not fully recovered. He still feels people
looking at him. (Area - Newcastle, Morpeth, 1999. Stockport). What does he seek ? Compensation,
explanation, apology ?. Who knows ? He doesn't. - RW, 21sep01. Letter from our Treasurer Dear Mr. Blunkett [Home Secretary], Your comments on the right to freedom
from hatred reported on television two days ago interest me. They remind me
of the comments of the Prime Minister regarding Kosovo. He was talking of the
crime of taking fathers from their families. In Britain fathers are being taken every
day from their families. We do not shoot them. We are more subtle. Secret
courts allow women to tell lies and flout court orders. Men, in Britain, are subject to
vilification and hatred. The government is at the fore-front of this process.
It uses selected statistics and sexually tilted legislation. It had a nasty
advertisement on Scottish television telling children to report their fathers
in the event of domestic violence. The campaign of hate against men is the
result of the biological lie of the Sex Discrimination Act. Biological
reasons for sexual differences are denied and other reasons have to be found.
Hence the fiction that women would have achieved had they not been oppressed
by men. Marriage, so it is claimed, is slavery for women. Now couples cannot
live together long enough to raise a family. Colossal damage has been done to
millions of children by broken families and never constituted families. But
the government promotes the fiction that all life-styles are equally valid.
It legislates to oppress men. You have been responsible for education.
Much of the cause of the failures of
British education result from denying mental sexual differences in the class
room and the damage done to children when their parents separate. The figures
showing educational achievement are lies. They have been fixed. Standards
have fallen not risen. But the establishment cannot even deduce correctly
from the fixed figures. That the girls appear to be doing so much better than
the boys is not proof of past feminine disadvantage. It is proof of sexual
differences inside the head. The girls always were ahead of the boys Ill17 p4 at school. We call it precocity and it
is a sexual difference. It is now well established that only
marriage provides the stability of parenthood necessary to raise happy,
achieving children. Loss of the father's constant presence results in failure
at school. high young male unemployment, underage pregnancies, drug and
substance abuse, crimes of violence, and many other social ills. The
government's role has been legislation tilted against the right of men to a
fair trial and its promotion of the "cause" of women. It encourages
anti-male invective. It encourages campaigns of hate and lies, telling its
own lies with selected statistics. Before you give another talk about
freedom, think about the tilted laws already passed and those in the
pipeline. Think about the man falsely accused of rape, who is deemed guilty
as soon as his name is published and his accuser is given anonymity. Think
about the false accusations of domestic violence encouraged and accepted in
the secret "family" courts. All these injustices are the result of
hatred of men by a few mad feminists of both sexes who have been allowed to
voice their hate unchallenged. Think about the denial of biological
differences which has caused all this. When you hear of underage sex and
teenage pregnancy think of sexual hatred. When crime and drug abuse soar,
think about false biology. When another school fails its Ofsted inspection,
if you have religious faith, think about the wrath of God. Do not address hate and other problems
in isolation. Freedom from official lies and freedom from law based on lies
are fundamental freedoms. If we ever get those freedoms the world will be a
better place and hatred of all kinds will be very much less. - Yours sincerely, T H Aldridge 4oct01 Please lobby your MP On October 2nd all MPs were given a copy
of the Family Policy Document and a copy of the CD/Video The Scandal of the
Family Courts. If you have read the policy document
(available from stephen.fitzgerald@lineone.net
) and agree with it, will you now lobby your MP and ask him/her to form a
cross-party group to reform Family Law based on the Family Policy Document
which, in summary, requests the following; * Equal Parenting - The principles of
equal parenting to be introduced as the first option for caring for children
after divorce or separation. * Risk assessment - Both parents to be risk
assessed to ensure their suitability to care for their children. This risk
assessment would be undertaken by CAFCASS (Children & Family Court
Advisory Service). * False allegations/perjury - Either
parent making false allegations or committing perjury to face criminal
charges. * Care programmes - Subject to a clean
bill of health, both parents to be obliged to develop a Care Programme for
their children with the guidance of a suitably trained Welfare Officer. * Sanctions - Either parent who
obstructs this process or subsequently does not adhere to the Care Programme,
to be denied equal parent status, leaving the other parent as the Sole Parent
with care. The parent obstructing the process would be obliged to apply for
contact. When you have seen your MP, will you
please notify us of the outcome by either: (Please include your name and
address and your MP) 1. email: stephen.fitzgerald@lineone.net
2. Phone: 01643 863352 3. Letter: The Coalition of Equal
Parenting, PO Box 28, Minehead, Somerset TA24 8YT Norman Scarth If anyone wants to write to Norman
Scarth (the 76 year-old pensioner who was beaten up by police and given a 10
year jail sentence) then he has a new address. You can find details on him if
you use the search engines and type in his name. Brian Robertson. [Norman Scarth telephoned me today. He
said he would be dead in a few months. He told me that part of the torture
was to continually move him around. At present he is at Dovegate, Nr. Uttoxeter,
Staffs. He said we should phone Carolyn Marsden, 01274 544871 for up to date
information. He says his earlier success in the European Court against the
British Establishment has made it vindictive. - Ed, 17oct01] What God has joined together .... - Stephen
Baskerville [Stephen spoke at our 28oct00
conference. This very fine, lengthy article about the rapidly growing Child
Protection Industry is at www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/1a168.htm
- Ed] This article is published in the
August-September issue of the Catholic World Report, a highly respected and
influential magazine of Catholic opinion throughout the world, and especially
in the US. This is an important development right
now, because the Bush administration is reaching out to Catholics, as
witnessed by the president's meeting with the Pope. National Public Radio recently did a very long story about the
administration's relations with Catholics.
It is also a breakthrough because of
what many of you have observed to be the churches' conspicuous silence over
the forced destruction of families by the state. Please show this to your priests and pastors and to your own
church newsletters or denominational magazines. You don't have to be Catholic (I'm not). Perhaps include a shorter essay of your
own with similar material. Letters can be sent to Box 1608, So.
Lancaster, MA 01561 or letters@cwnews.com . I also want to thank everyone who has
written letters, organized or signed petitions, and otherwise supported me in
my ordeal with Virginia. Even if I
don't respond to every show of support, I am certainly appreciative. The matter is far from over. Stephen Baskerville, PhD Department of Political Science Howard University Washington, DC 20059 202-806-7267 703-560-5138 Details on next article; http://family.telegraph.co.uk/family/main.jhtml?xml=/family/ 2001/10/15/fmdiv15.xml&sSheet=/family/2001/10/15/ixfmmain011013.html
'I fought for the right to see my son' Telegraph, 15oct01 After 26 court cases, divorcee Oliver
Cyriax gained fair access to his son. Now he intends to help others, he tells
Cassandra Jardine According to her memoirs, when Anne
Robinson lost the right to have her daughter living with her, the court
ruling left her in such despair that only drink could quieten her
"demons". She describes the courtroom - expensive, acrimonious,
divisive - as "the most inappropriate place for a situation like ours to
be settled". (One step at a time: Oliver Cyriax has now gained access to
his son. 'Last week I taught him to ride a bike,' he says.) That was 28 years ago. "Since then,
the situation has hardly changed," says Oliver Cyriax, a lawyer and
crime writer, who has been through a similar ordeal and has conducted a
one-man campaign to overhaul the legal system concerning custody of children
and access rights. He riffles through a photo album and produces a snapshot
of himself with a young girl on his shoulders. "That's my
daughter," he says. "It was taken on holiday at exactly the time
when I was deemed unfit to see my son." Reading Robinson's account, you get an
overwhelming sense that, in 1973, the arrangements regarding children of
estranged parents were haphazard. It wasn't her drinking that counted against
her - it was her ambition. The judge took against her nervous sneer
and her wish to work. Robinson felt that, as a woman, she was under pressure
to conform to the judge's view of feminine behaviour. While that prejudice
has, to some extent, changed, for non-resident parents - mostly men - it is
still an uphill battle to prove they are fit to care for their children. It
took Oliver Cyriax six years and 26 court hearings even to be allowed
reasonable access to his son, though he thought he had "a golden
case". Mixed memories: it was whilst on holiday with his daughter that
Oliver Cyriax was deemed unfit to see his son. "I had a good home, a good job and my
ex-wife hadn't even made any allegations against me - and yet the courts kept
refusing my requests." Ill17 p5 He is still so anxious about the courts
turning against him that he dare not name his son or allow the boy's face to
be seen in photographs. Remembering the low moments, when he feared he would
never be allowed to have his child for the weekend or let his daughter play
with his son, Cyriax is overcome with emotion. But he is a fighter and he soon switches
back into Rumpole of the Bailey mode, attacking Britain's "crass"
system for arranging the parenting of children after a break-up. "It has
created a lost generation," he says. It is not just his own situation
that enrages Cyriax. Files of similar cases line his living room shelves.
Tony Coe, who runs the Equal Parenting Council and has fought with partial
success to see his own four daughters, views Cyriax as a hero who has
"single-handedly created the climate for change". Many of those involved in the process
agree with Cyriax that radical changes are needed. Sue Bland, a partner with
solicitors Gordon Dadds, is shocked at what happens. "It takes months for a case to come
to court and, in that time, many parents lose touch with their children. Some
give up altogether. It's also expensive: it offers no support to a family
going through a difficult time and, if one parent is determined to prevent
the other from seeing the children, the courts are toothless." Cyriax believes the system achieves the
exact opposite of the intention of the Children Act. "According to the
Lord Chancellor's department, 'the Children Act seeks to encourage both
parents to share in their children's upbringing'. All the research shows that
children do best if they see both parents - yet 110,000 court cases each year
are brought by parents who are prevented from doing so." Hurt and angry
spouses may use children as pawns in a game of revenge - and the law, Cyriax
believes, helps them. "After a divorce, the parent with residence has
all the power," he says. "It makes no difference whether it is a
woman or a man - the system creates a tyranny. The other parent's only right
is to go to court to apply to see his or her child. And the law as it stands
upholds the wishes of the resident parent." Cyriax, who now advises others on handling
their cases without a lawyer, has helped hundreds of supplicants who find
themselves treated not as concerned parents but as troublemakers.
"Anything can be held against you. If you are five minutes late, you are
irresponsible. A child who falls asleep on the way home is overtired; one who
doesn't is too lively and therefore neglected. One man was accused of
'bribing' his son by giving him a pen in front of the court welfare officer.
Another was told he was trying to set up a rival home because he bought
toys." Over the eight years since his son was
born, Cyriax, 50, has become radical in a way that still surprises him. In
the early days, he felt bewildered and depressed by the endless personal
criticisms during the hearings. Anything from a smile that looked like a
sneer to a tendency to ask too many questions might harm his case. But, as one court hearing followed
another, Cyriax rallied. His sense of humour and intellectual outrage gave
him the courage to carry on: "I'm lucky, I'm a trained solicitor: I can
express myself and I have just enough money to live on from the books I've
written." But what really kept Cyriax going was
his relationship with his daughter, Holly, now 16. He and Holly's mother
split up when she was an infant and Holly has always lived with her mother.
But from the start, she spent holidays and weekends with her father, without
the courts becoming involved. "She has two parents who love her, support
her and live within the same envelope of friends. As civilised separations
go, the results couldn't be better. Everyone speaks well of one another. She
can't see the gaps." A few years after Holly's birth, he
married and his son was born, but the relationship didn't last. "It's
sad, but not unusual," says Cyriax. When he parted from his wife, he
wanted a similar relationship with his son to the one he had with Holly. He
assumed that the courts would support a father's wish to play a part in his
child's life. He soon learnt otherwise. By the time his
son was two, Cyriax was on his fifth hearing and was seeing him for only a
few hours a week. Every extra minute had to be fought over. "There are
no guidelines for reasonable access," he explains, "and the law
treats every case differently, even though there have been 500,000 roughly
similar cases in the past 10 years." At times, he was branded a vexatious
litigant. "I was in danger of losing everything, but I had to keep
edging forward. I knew that if a child is allowed to stay for the night, you
are nearly there." Eventually, nights led to weekends. Now
Cyriax can take his son to school, and his two children can play together.
The key to success lies, he thinks, in the court welfare officers' reports.
"Who are these people passing judgement on parental fitness?" he
wondered. Investigation revealed that they are probation officers, used to
dealing with criminals, who are given "no more training than traffic
wardens" for their delicate work. Furious, Cyriax started an organisation
called Information on Probation Officers in Welfare Work (INPOWW). He wrote
countless letters to MPs, judges and the Lord Chancellor's department,
demanding information on guidelines and a complaints procedure. Victory came this April, when
responsibility for access cases was moved from the Probation Service to the
Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS). In its
chairman, Anthony Hewson, Cyriax has at last found someone within the system
who admits there are faults. To Cyriax, the solution is simple. After
a break-up, reasonable contact should be the norm - except if a parent is
violent or unstable - and parents should be expected to comply. Such a system
already exists in America, where parents are made aware that they are hurting
their children by preventing them from seeing the other parent. The word "Support" in
CAFCASS's title gives Cyriax hope that the new body will take a more positive
approach to a situation that affects some 25 per cent of British children.
But he fears that change may be slow, since the same court welfare officers
have been re-employed and there are still no guidelines. Fighting court cases does not help
wounds to heal. Enforced co-operation, even if that goes against the grain,
can be more palliative. Cyriax has found this himself: now that he is seeing
his son every other weekend, during half the holidays and once midweek, a
transformation has occurred. "My son feels as though he has a second
home with me," he says. "Last week, I taught him to ride a
bike." More surprisingly, his relationship with
his ex-wife has blossomed since their child became a shared joy, not a
battleground. "She's charming. I can see now why I married her. She
rings me up and we swap anecdotes about our son. If I forget to send him back
with his socks, instead of being terrified that it will mean the end of
access, she'll say, 'That's nothing, last week I forgot his shoes'." INPOWW, 4 Cardross Street, London W6
ODR, email: olivercyriax@aol.com Nurture the boy, save the man http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,7-2001282346,00.html
This is the first mainstream article in
a major British newspaper that specifically links fatherlessness with the social
ills and problems we have been trying to get across to Gov't and to the
media. – RW from
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/
Solicitors linked to quarter of SFO cases - Chris
Blackhurst, Independent,
11sep01 Solicitors are suspects in a quarter of
cases under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office, it was disclosed
yesterday. Rosalind Wright, head of the SFO, chose
the opening full day of the annual international conference on economic
crime, held in Cambridge, to launch a withering attack on lawyers, accusing
them of assisting and encouraging organised crime.... [A lawyer named Strange died, and his
friend asked the tomb-stone maker to inscribe on his tombstone, "Here
lies Strange, an honest man, and a lawyer." The inscriber insisted that such an
inscription would be confusing, for passers-by might think that three men
were buried under the stone. However he suggested an alternative: He would
inscribe, "Here lies a man who was both honest and a lawyer." That
way, whenever anyone walked by the tombstone and read it, they would be
certain to remark: "That's Strange!"] Ill17 p6 Clayton Giles President George W. and First Lady Laura
Bush The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC. 20500-0001 Dear Mr. President and First Lady:
My name is Clayton Giles and I'm a fourteen-year-old Canadian boy. By
the time I get to Washington, DC., on September 6th, 2001, I will have
travelled 3600 miles on my bicycle to see you. Along my way, I will have
spoken with thousands of children who have asked me to deliver a message to
you: "Please help us."
Thousands of American children are dying every year - not from a
disease or a disaster - but by their own hand. The second leading cause of
death in children my age is suicide and over three thousand American children
took their own lives last year. What could possibly drive a fourteen, a
twelve and even an eight-year-old child to commit suicide? How can children
so young find life so hopeless? For ninety-one per cent of these children,
it's the loss of a two-parent home and the confusion, frustration, anger and
depression that results from being thrust into a situation which they never
wanted, in which they have no say, and over which they have no control.
A court took my father from me when I was eight years old. They said
he did not "merit" access to me or my sister, Lindsay. In other
words, we were a good-conduct prize. Like so many children, I was victimized
by a legal system that sees children as sub-humans, as weapons in a battle,
and as prizes to be awarded to the victor. Luckily, I was reunited with my father when I was eleven
but those three years without him were the most horrible of my life. At
school I spent more time in the hall than in the classroom. I was
finally kicked out of school. I was constantly in fist fights. At home I
spent most of my time in my room where I often cried myself to sleep at
night. Suicide was always on my mind. My father never abandoned his struggle
to be with me, because if he had, I would not be riding my bicycle to
Washington. Like all those other poor children, I would be dead.
Mr. President, I and millions of American and Canadian children are
asking that we be treated with basic human dignity. We want the right to love
both our parents, without fear or guilt. We don't want to be used as pawns
and prizes in a battle that polarizes our parents and destroys their
financial ability to care for us. For this to happen, we need your help.
I have prepared a petition (attached) that calls for equal shared
parenting and children having a voice in divorce proceedings. I believe - and
many legislators, professionals and residents of your country who have signed
my petition also believe - that a presumption of equal shared parenting would
remove children as a prize and result in a significant reduction in the
animosity, duration and cost of divorce proceedings.
When our parents are encouraged to share us, rather than to win us,
our emotional and physical well-being will improve and the disgraceful legacy
of child suicide will be reduced significantly.
I plan to end my ride at the Zero Mile marker on The Ellipse on
September 6th, 2001 [Note: Moved to 7th]. I will remain in Washington until
September 12th, 2001. May I please personally present my petition to you
during that time period? Yours sincerely, Clayton Giles Journey for Kids On the road in America tel: 403-870-KIDS email: claytongiles@legalkids.com
website: www.legalkids.com When can I see my children? - Maureen
Freely, Times, 17sep01 The system for making contact arrangements
for children after divorce is deeply flawed and urgently needs to be
reformed. There is, to my knowledge, no law that
sets out the rights and wrongs of children's bedrooms. But there was a moment
12 years ago when I thought there must be. The occasion was a meeting with
the judge who was to grant me my decree nisi. He needed to make sure that my
then husband and I had made satisfactory arrangements for our small son and
daughter. Everything was going smoothly until he found out that the children
- then five and nine - were sharing a bedroom. Only for the time being, mind
you. We were in a short let. We were on the lookout for something bigger. But
from his reaction you would have thought that I was running a rooming house
for paedophiles. Did not I know that it was dangerous, unhealthy and
disgraceful for a boy and a girl to be in the same bedroom? As he boomed
away, I promised myself that I would never again put myself in this position.
That is why, during disputes with my
children's father about money, residence, schools and holidays, I have never
considered seeking justice in the family courts. Hundreds of thousands of
other parents have, though. Typically, they do so to resolve intractable
disagreements about contact. Inevitably, temperatures run high. But most go
to law in the belief that the court system is cool, balanced, dispassionate
and fair. They assume that the experts who assess them and their children are
themselves routinely assessed and, it goes without saying, that they really are
experts. And if these parents are not convicted train robbers, and if they
have never been convicted of child abuse or domestic violence, they assume
their right to see their children will never be in doubt. In fact, they have
no such right. Although the Children Act was built on the premise of shared
parenting, the only right it gives to parents is the right to apply to see
their children. In contact cases, parents do not get far
without the blessing and support of a family court reporter (previously known
as family court welfare officers). Typically, they came out of the probation
service, and arrived in the unit on secondment. Their induction into welfare
work was optional and cursory. As Alan Sealy, a former senior family court
welfare officer, said in a publicly circulated memorandum last year: "It
has never been expected that officers transferring to family court welfare
from probation would have any special skills in working with children and
families. Secondments have often been of short duration, leaving inadequate
opportunities for any development of expertise or sound experience." After some months in the job, the family
court reporter is sent on training courses which last for just "three
days after a certain interval and a further three days some months
later", Sealy says. "These training courses have inevitably been
in-house led". This shows in "the way in which the court welfare
reports are written". As Oliver Cyriax, a lawyer and long-time
campaigner for reform, points out, "parking wardens receive longer
training". Regarded by the courts as experts ["They are highly
experienced people and the Family Courts rely on their findings" -
"Justice" Thorpe, Ill Eagle 4, p1] family court reporters advise
judges on how often a non-resident parent can see his or her children. It is
customary for a judge to go along with their advice. And it is unwise for a
solicitor to challenge their findings: family court solicitors assume that
judges do not like it. There is precious little you can do apart from taking
another year out of your life to make another application. No complaints procedure exists. The
right to appeal is narrowly defined. There are no guidelines for post-divorce
contact for children. Furthermore, there are no case studies or data on outcomes
from the one million cases that have gone through the system so far. If all this comes as a surprise, it is
not your fault. There is next to no information about the workings of the
family law system in the public domain - and precious little available to
government agencies. Cases are secret, as are the "welfare reports"
made by the family court reporters. It is a contempt of court for anyone not
party to the case to see them. These measures are designed to protect
children and other vulnerable parties. Yet what they do best is to protect
the family courts from public scrutiny. It is estimated that the parents of
200,000 children go through this flawed system every year. In one case, the family
court reporter noted that the father had told his child that he preferred
Monopoly to Cluedo and that daisies smell better than bluebells. She saw this
as "taking the lead too much in contact" - a form of emotional
abuse, in her view. A parent who gave his child a pencil in the presence of
another reporting officer was seen as "trying to bribe his way in her
affection". Another parent was accused of "trying to set up an
alternative home" because he had bought his child a train set. A Ill17 p7 father who wanted to take his child to
see Granny in the Black Forest instead of Brighton, the destination preferred
by the family court reporter, was seen as domineering. In another case, the
family court reporter could find no reason why a child should not see more of
his father. She went on to say that "nonetheless, the mother must be
concerned about something", and advised that contact be limited to two
hours, once every six weeks. A father with no signs of abnormality had to
undergo three tests to prove that he was normal. This was then judged to be
inconclusive because he only "appeared normal". And if you think
that takes the biscuit, then just listen to the one about the family court
reporter who advised that a father should be denied contact with his deaf son.
The father's desire for contact was normal, she said. "But Tom was not a
normal boy." "There seems to be little
protection against the subjectivity of family court reporters," says
Caroline Bowden, a solicitor and mediator at the law firm Anthony Gold. In
her long experience of family courts, stories such as these all point to the
same systemic fault. Some court reporters are dedicated and conscientious,
she says. Neither is it true that they are out to disadvantage men. Another
family court solicitor who did not wish to be named, also insists that some
family court reporters are "excellent and creative in trying to find
solutions". But if they form a low opinion of you, your chances of
getting the outcome you want are slim. Bowden, however, thinks that they are
expected to take on more responsibility than any one person should have to
take, and to make difficult decisions without appropriate support. "They
go out by themselves," she says. "They make judgements about who is
the more creditable parent, who is good as a parent and how the child seems.
But there are no benchmarks or guidelines. There are not enough borders for
these people to work in." The question of training is paramount. No one
should interview children unless they have been thoroughly prepared. It is easy to traumatise a child, she
points out, and there is also the problem of the child who echoes a parent's
point of view. The core issue, says Tony Coe, president of the Equal
Parenting Council, is that family court reporters do not have a mission.
Their job should be "to support the child's relationship with both their
parents and, if that does not happen, to explain why". The current
system, he says, is "like the fire brigade turning up to the scene of
the blaze and writing a report about the building instead of getting a hose
and putting the fire out". It was thought that these issues would
be rectified in April when the service was taken away from the Home Office
and made part of the new Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service
(Cafcass). Anthony Hewson, its new head, is adamant that reform is essential.
But so far it appears that the same people are operating the service and that
only their titles have changed. When the service was launched, there was a
chance to transform the people, the ideas and the process, says Bowden.
"But it has turned into a medley of people who were already there
continuing to do what they were already doing." The first step, says Kate Green of the
National Council for One Parent Families, is to get a better picture of
family court outcomes as well as post-divorce family life. "We really
need to see what works and what helps." Only research can tell us if
flexible, case-sensitive guidelines might work, or how mediation can be part
of the picture. "There is a dearth of objective research and
information. We strongly urge the Government to make the investment,"
she says. Many others working with families after separation and divorce are
of the same opinion, as are a number of us who actually live in such
families. It is to give a voice to this
underconsulted consituency that a group of journalists (I am one of them)
have formed Families After Marriage. If nothing else, we have learnt an awful
lot about what works and what does not by practising on ourselves. There has
to be a better way. While some reforms will take a great deal of time, others
could happen now if the people at the top took them seriously and if the rest
of us understood what we can expect from the present system. As one solicitor
speaking off the record says: "It would be helpful if there was more
understanding of what the courts can achieve - and if people stopped
expecting justice and fairness." For more information on Families After
Marriage: FAM@aol.com [Maureen Freely's book What About Us?
discusses the betrayal of married families by the Women's Movement. - Ed]
[See similar Observer 21oct01 article at www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/1a169.htm
] To Maureen Freely; "When can I see my children?"
- Times, 17sep01 Your article emphasises the primacy of
research into Outcome. The old guard in CAFCASS persistently try to fog up
the meaning of the word. "Outcome" means the statistics on the
state of the children 5, 10, 15 years after the decisions were made. The 5
year results will be available quite soon (just over 5 years). Robert
Whiston, a member of CAFCASS, has a clear view of what the word
"Outcome" means. Its meaning must not be allowed to be corrupted.
Initially, the old guard in CAFCASS wanted it to mean whether the child
thought it was treated kindly during interview by the Court Welfare Officer,
and so forth. They will do everything to confuse and deflect my proposals
(below), because it institutes Accountability. My position is that results on
"Outcome" - later suicide rate by the child, school dropout,
teenage pregnancy etc. - can be used to institute Accountability. Thus, if an
excessive percentage of children under advice (to the judge) from one Court
Welfare Office later commit suicide, or become teenage pregnant, etc., then
that CWO is brought before a tribunal to justify the large figures. Lacking
explanation, his employment is terminated. This procedure could be used in as
little as six years to begin to weed out anti-social CWOs. Outcome for one region's CWO's could
also be compared with Outcome for another region's CWOs. We can also go
international with such objective statistics as suicide and teenage
pregnancy. Canada, Eire, USA, Australia, NZ are in more or less exactly the
same mess as England. Statistics on Outcome could also be used
to monitor the effectiveness of competing CWO training agencies. If those
CWOs trained by the Birmingham training agency ended up with a much greater
child suicide rate than those trained by the leeds training agency, the
training contract for Birnmingham would be terminated. Thus, Accountability could be instituted
at every level by means of statistics on Outcome. For this to work, we need
more than one training agency. My position is that CWOs should have the
implicit job insecurity (above) built into their employment contracts. Also,
I diverge from my allies in wanting more discretion for CWOs, a higher level
of education, to go with accountability and therefore insecurity based on
Outcome statistics. Generally, my allies want to more rigidly limit the
freedom of CWOs according to set procedures. I would rather give more
training (education), more in-service training (attendance at conferences),
more pay, more freedom, and make them stand by the results of their work as
demonstrated by Outcomes. This would make possible evolution towards better
methods; better and better advice to judges by CWOs. - Ivor Catt Joint Residence The Court of Appeal has overturned Joint
Residence Orders made by a lower court and substituted a Sole Residence
Order. The Court of Appeal has on occasion upheld a Joint Residence Order
made by a lower court. The Court of Appeal has NEVER overturned a Sole
Residence Order made by a lower court and substituted a Joint Residence
Order. I suggest that this would be the acid test of claims that the attitude
of the courts has significantly changed towards Joint Residence. Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss was the
judge who did more damage than any other to the will of Parliament over Joint
Residence orders - hardly had s.11(4) Children Act 1989 been enacted than the
judiciary did their best to nullify its effect. The recent case of Re D is
not proof of repentance on the part of the President. Said Dame Elizabeth,
with Thorpe LJ etc., is playing a big part in the Bath Global Conference on
Family Law & the Protection of Children, where judges and
"experts" and lawyers from all over the world will be praising each
other's legal systems and dreaming up more effective ways of controlling
family life - WHAT is FNF's official contribution to the protest movement
being organised at this Conference? Answer - NOTHING. Butler-Sloss is whose best buddy?
[Answer; Softon. - Ed] FNF's Newsletter McKenzie No.50
(distributed 5 September ) has a column (p.5) describing what the
International Conference is about and mentioning some of the great and good
who will be there, but there is NOT A WORD about the protests and
demonstrations planned. Still a member of FNF but not too proud
of it - Michael J. Pelling. 9sep01 Ill17 p8 This seems topical now, s we've decided
that there's an industry out there just waiting to be recognised - RW Save us from social workers on crusade - Donna
Laframboise, National Post (Canada),
12july01 .... Here in Canada, judges have
condemned social workers for taking sides when divorcing mothers have falsely
accused fathers of child sexual abuse. In one such case, an Ontario judge
concluded in 1994 that the Children's Aid Society of Durham Region continued
to argue in court that a father was guilty even after it had belatedly
realized he was innocent. (In effect, he was being punished for declining the
society's offer of a financial settlement.) That this was a dismal way to
serve the interests of the man's two daughters - who were supposed to be the
society's sole focus - seems to have escaped the social workers involved. .... In another false sex abuse case, a
Manitoba judge condemned a social worker in 1999 for, among other things,
glossing over serious concerns regarding a mentally disturbed mother's
ability to care for her daughter. In the words of the judge, the social
worker "was determined to stop [the father] from seeing [his daughter]
and it appeared that she would go to any length." The child suffered
terribly as a result -- to the point where, noted the judge, this
six-year-old "spoke of jumping out a window." Also see Canadian Senate Debates
17feb00. Lawyers conniving in false allegations during divorce proceedings.
Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Cools http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/0a116.htm Icons of feminism rue their legacy Donna
Laframboise, National Post, 27aug01 Amid the gushy sentimentality that
permeates the Hallmark store near where I work, amid the cutesy stuffed
animals and the guardian angel pins, a serpent lurks. It takes the form of a
3-by-4-inch gift book titled What Women Say About Men. Within its 70-odd
pages there's Lady Nancy Astor remarking: "I married beneath me - all
women do." There's Roseanne Arnold insisting: "A good man doesn't
just happen. They have to be created by us women." And Madame de Stal
declaring: "The more I see of men, the more I like dogs." Eight years after it first appeared,
this toxic little volume is still in print - presumably because it sells
well. Which helps explain why, at Scotland's Edinburgh International Book
Festival earlier this month, Doris Lessing became Britain's third prominent
female writer in as many years to issue a passionate plea on behalf of men
and boys. She is, she says, "increasingly shocked at the unthinking and
automatic rubbishing of men which is now so part of our culture it is hardly even noticed." Following the publication of her 1962
novel, The Golden Notebook, the now 81-year-old Ms. Lessing became a feminist
icon. But after watching the women's movement transform much of the Western
world, she says something went terribly wrong along the way. There are "many wonderful, clever,
powerful women everywhere. But what is happening to men? Why did this have to
be at the cost of men?" she asks. During a recent visit to a class of
10-year-olds, Ms. Lessing saw the female teacher "telling these kids that
the reason for wars was the innately violent nature of men. You could see the
little girls, fat with complacency and conceit, while the little boys sat
there crumpled, apologizing for their existence." Fay Weldon, the author of such novels as
Down Among the Women and Female Friends made similar remarks in a May, 1998
Harper's Magazine essay. While acknowledging the low status of women in
countries such as Afghanistan, Ms. Weldon says feminism has gone too far in
Britain, and that the pendulum "needs nudging back to a more moderate
position." Somewhere along the way, she says, the
"gender switch was thrown" and it became men who were
"slighted, condemned by virtue of gender to casual and automatic insult.
'Oh men!' say the women, disparagingly. Males hear it all the time, in the
workplace and in the home, at the bus stop and over the dinner table, and
suffer from it. No tactful
concessions are made to male presence. Men, the current female wisdom
has it, are all selfish bastards; hit-and-run fathers; potential abusers/
rapists/ pedophiles; all think only with their dicks, and they'd better
realize it." Ms. Weldon has little patience for
people who consider this fitting payback for the sins of these men's fathers.
" 'Serves the men right,' I hear the women say. 'We're glad if they
suffer a bit, after all those centuries! Give them a taste of their own
medicine.' Except, except!" she protests, "Feminism was never after
vengeance, simply justice ... 10 wrongs don't make a right. And since the men
seem too terrified to speak, or are too extremist to be taken seriously,
someone has to speak for them." A year later, that someone was Rosalind
Coward, a columnist with The Guardian and the author of books such as Our
Treacherous Hearts: Why Women Let Men Get Their Way. After devoting 20 years
of her life to feminism, Ms. Coward says she no longer finds it relevant. In
July, 1999, she told The Sunday Times she now feels "more concerned
about what [is] happening to boys and men." After watching her own husband and
others struggle through the economic recession of the early 1990s, Ms. Coward
says she realized feminism had nothing to say about men who didn't fit the
patriarchal oppressor mould. "Around me, I saw fathers who were very
hands-on and trying just as hard as women to work and be good parents,"
she says. "These men were making huge changes but they were being given
little credit for their efforts." While Ms. Coward says she has few
worries about her daughter's future since today's "girls are buoyed up
by a tremendous sense that whatever they do is new and positive," boys
are a different story. "My son, Carl, 14, and his friends face a much
more uncertain future. Boys are doing significantly less well at school than
girls. The old roles are gone and my son and his peers are thrashing around
in a new world in which they feel demoralized, the second sex." Feminism was never supposed to be about
beating up on little boys. When astute social commentators such as these
begin warning it has come to this, it's time to give the matter serious
consideration. Our Chairman appeals
for help for Donna. Non-PC journalists face a bleak future.
She is now out of work. See www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/donna.htm We want your baby Press Release - Immediate 8:00 p.m.,
August 31, 2001 Contact: Edgar J. Steele, Attorney at
Law tel: (208) 265-4153 102 S. Fourth Ave., Suite C fax: (208)
265-5329 Sandpoint, Idaho 83860 email: steele@plainlawtalk.com
MISSOULA, MONTANA - First, they took her
three young girls on an anonymous and unverifiable phone call that one looked
kind of sick. Then they moved heaven
and earth, trying desperately to take the baby she bore a month later, though
it was several states out of their jurisdiction. Then they had her arrested and thrown in a Montana jail for
"kidnapping" her own children. Now, she is about to give birth to
her fifth child and they are trying to snatch it, too, after which they want
to lock her and her husband away in prison for a long, long time. Pretty serious stuff. Must be a modern Bonnie and Clyde. "How many people have they
killed?" would be a logical question.
Well....none, actually. What have they done wrong? Their most serious crime: they loved their children. Their biggest
mistake: they trusted that truth
would find a way. Ruth Christine whiles away her time in a
Missoula, Montana jail, while Oregon officials move to have her extradited to
stand trial on charges that she helped to kidnap her own children. Ruth is counting the days until delivery
of her next child, too - anytime during the next couple of weeks. Oregon's
Services to Children and Families (SCF) has had its counterpart in Montana,
Child Protection Services (CPS), pay a call on Ruth and her doctor
yesterday. Nobody is to be allowed
into the delivery room except their people.
Immediately upon birth, the baby is to be taken from Ruth and handed
over to Oregon. No cuddling. No breast feeding. No bonding. No kidding. Edgar
J. Steele, an attorney based in Northern Idaho, with offices in Ill17 p9 California, has agreed to take the lead
in representing Ruth and Brian Christine in what has become a modern-day
David and Goliath story of citizens against a government seemingly out of
control. "They just refused to play
ball," said Steele from his office in Sandpoint, Idaho. "They must have seemed like easy
marks, apparent itinerants living in a bus with their three little girls,
parked not far from the public library in Grants Pass, Oregon." Ruth and Brian had chosen to spend a few
years traveling with their young family and earning a modest income from his
internet-based business dealings. He
would use public-access terminals, like those found in public libraries, to
conduct business. Apparently, somebody in Grants Pass
didn't think that was right, so he or she called authorities to say that one
of the little girls "looked dehydrated." She did look a bit under the weather, truth be told. It was
hot, being midsummer, and the little girl was just getting over an illness.
When authorities arrived, they found she had a bandaid on her forehead where
she had bumped her head while playing.
That was enough. By the end of the day, Brian had been
hauled off and booked for "child endangerment," the three girls
taken by armed deputies to a foster home and Ruth left dazed, penniless and 8
months pregnant, alone and confused in the converted bus which had served as
the family home for the past two years. Once Brian was released, he and Ruth
chose to fight the legal system on their own, spurning the offer of a
county-paid public defender. They did all the wrong things, according to the
system, just as people often do when they dare to represent themselves in a
courtroom. They didn't realize the stakes that were involved. They believed
that eventually truth would find a way and they would get their children
back. They were wrong. Along the way, Ruth traveled home to
Indiana to have her baby. She eventually left baby Olivia behind with her
mother and returned to Oregon to help Brian in the struggle to regain custody
of their three little girls. "We want Olivia, too," said
the Oregon officials, and began a marathon court proceeding designed to have
the baby taken from its grandmother, who had been appointed its legal
guardian, and brought to Oregon to be placed with a foster home. Only three
days ago, the Indiana judge that had become embroiled in the struggle laid
down the law: Indiana refuses to
allow Oregon to have baby Olivia. About a month ago, Oregon made it clear
to Ruth and Brian that they were never to see their children again, as they
were about to be adopted out. Desperate, the couple allegedly plotted to take
their girls and run away. They were tracked down in Montana, turned in by
those they considered friends. While Ruth sits in a Missoula jail, Brian
awaits extradition to Oregon from his cell in Billings, on the other side of
the state, destined to stand trial on a host of criminal charges stemming
from the alleged "kidnapping." Meanwhile, though the couple's newest
baby is about to be born in Montana, Oregon has convinced Montana authorities
to seize that child upon birth and transport it to Oregon to be adopted out
with the three older Christine girls. Steele pledges that the baby will not be
taken without a legal struggle. "Nor will the three older girls be
adopted out to strangers without a pitched battle of epic proportions,"
said Steele. "This case represents the modern trend of Big Brother come
to life in America. We have to stop it here or there will never be any
stopping government from taking anybody's child for any reason." "The criminal charges will be the
toughest," said Steele. Though the Christines' alleged acts were born of
desperation about never seeing their little girls again, the system just
won't allow that as a justification. In a very real sense, the system drove
them crazy, and now it wants to lock them up for doing the very things it is
itself guilty of having driven them to do. This isn't right and I hope that
we can get a jury that sees things that way. Meanwhile, we have our work cut
out, just keeping the kids from being placed permanently out of reach while
we deal with the criminal charges." While Steele is providing his legal
services pro bono (for free), he notes that there will be considerable costs
to expended in the Christines' defense, nonetheless, and asks that donations
be directed to the Christine Defense Fund, PO Box 1255, Sagle, Idaho
83860. Donations can be made via
credit card over the Internet by logging on to PayPal.com and directing
donations to steele@nidlink.com, with a notation for the Christine Defense
Fund. http://toogoodreports.com/column/general/deweese/082701.htm
A Different Kind Of Drug War Drugging America's
School Children - Tom
DeWeese < apc@americanpolicy.org
received 29aug01 There's a different kind of drug war going
on that doesn't get the kind of attention as the one in the streets of
America. In fact, those who are involved in a massive program of drug
distribution are highly regarded and very well paid. They are our nation's
teachers and the legions of "counselors" who have invaded our
schools. Their victims, like the street drug pusher, are the children who
will be returning to school after Labor Day. With considerable irony, many of these
children will pass signs on their way to school that proudly declare that
they are entering "a drug-free zone." The only problem is that
twelve percent of all American boys between six and 14 have been diagnosed
with "attention deficit" syndrome. They all take medications that
share the same characteristics as methamphetamine and cocaine. They and
others add up to an estimated seven million school children who are doped up
to the eyeballs in this manner. Other medications are prescribed for yet
another syndrome called "hyper-activity." This can constitute
nothing more than being fidgety or noisy. It really doesn't matter what kind of
behavior a child displays in class. If a teacher thinks they are a problem
for any reason, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders*
(DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association, has a list of more
than 300 syndromes that easily cover the situation. Twenty years ago, the DSM
only listed just over a hundred syndromes. Apparently, the entire nation is
filled with crazed children and adults, all requiring sedation. [* http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0890420246/toogoodreports/
] The truth, as many parents discover to
their horror, is that since 1965 the role of the teacher as the dispenser of
discipline in the classroom has ceased. Children no longer are concerned
about any rules of behavior because any real discipline is virtually
non-existent in our schools. It has been replaced with parents who prefer a
good lawsuit to a well-behaved child. Then, too, teaching methods have
changed dramatically downgrading the teacher to a mere
"facilitator" who allows students to learn on their own or be
taught by others in their classroom. The result is schools that are more like
psychiatric hospital wards than places where one can actually learn anything.
Thus, the need to drug any child who can't be conventionally controlled or
the child who cannot concentrate sufficiently due, as often as not, to the
distractions of unruly students. The situation has long since become so
bad that in 2000 there were lawsuits filed in California and New Jersey
accusing Novartis Pharmaceuticals of conspiring to create a "novel
medical diagnosis" (attentional deficit hyperactivity disorder) and then
cashing in on it thanks to the fear it created among parents. The drug of
choice is Ritalin. When ADHPD became an official disorder in 1987, there has
been an explosion of prescriptions. In 1995, physicians wrote six million
Ritalin prescriptions for children and adolescents. Last year, in testimony before congress
by the US Drug Enforcement Administration it was revealed that Ritalin has
the potential to cause psychological and physical dependence. To put it
another way, addiction! After a child has been on Ritalin for awhile, trying
to get him or her off the medication can lead to "apathy, long periods
of sleep, irritability, depression, and disorientation." Ill17 p10 Hallucinations, convulsions, and even
death can result from an overdose. Speaking for the DEA, however, Rogene Waite
said that Ritalin is still considered safe when prescribed for medical
reasons. The only problem is that teachers are not physicians, nor are school
counselors, the people most likely to "spot the problem" and move
it up the chain of command until mom and dad are told their child needs to be
drugged. The other "side affect" of
Ritalin and comparable drugs such as Prozac, is the fact that virtually all
of the students who showed up at school and began shooting their classmates
and the occasional teacher were taking these drugs. Eric Harris of Columbine
High School fame was taking Luvoc, an antidepressant. T.J. Solomon who
wounded six classmates at Heritage High School was on Ritalin. Shawn Cooper
who fired off two shotgun rounds in Notus, Idaho, was also on Ritalin. Kip
Kinkel was on both Ritalin and Prozac! Even parents who want to get their child
off of these so-called treatments find they are often blocked by the school
bureaucracy. When Jill and Michael Carroll of Albany, NY, grew fearful of the
side affects of Ritalin on their seven-year-old son, the Department of Social
Services filed charges against them for educational neglect! They were told
their son could be taken away from them unless they complied. This isn't an
isolated case; it goes on all the time. The parent who finds their child
targeted for mandatory drugging needs to be prepared to fight back with every
resource at their disposal. It used to be the worst thing that might happen
to your kid at school was a scraped knee. Today's schools are now places where
your child can be found to be suffering from any one of a laundry list of
so-called psychological syndromes and required to join the millions of others
on a drug program that may keep things humming in the classroom, but may also
produce long-term mental and psychological damage. - Tom DeWeese is President of the
American Policy Center. He is an advocate for individual liberty, free
enterprise, property rights and back-to-basics education. For over thirty
years Tom has fought against government oppression as a businessman,
grassroots activist, writer and publisher. The DeWeese Report, is the
American Policy Center's available via... < http://www.americanpolicy.org/deweese/main.htm
. Ireland to London 12th September 2001 The Right Honourable Ken
Livingstone The Lord Mayor of London Dear Lord Mayor, It has been brought to my attention that
you have recently launched an initiative intended to develop a strategy for
London on the issue of domestic violence. Having accessed information on this
initiative on the internet I am appalled that you should be party to an
initiative on domestic violence which is based on an outdated and discredited
paradigm. This initiative is certain to fail in its stated objectives of
preventing and reducing domestic violence as it perpetuates the myth that
women are the only victims and men the only perpetrators. Perpetuating such
dishonest anti-man myths, rather than dealing with the causes of conflict
within families in an honest and balanced manner, will only increase tensions
within families. Amen's experience and all reliable
research show that domestic violence is broadly a 50/50 phenomenon. Since
setting up Amen in December 1997 we have been contacted by in excess of
25,000 men and concerned members of their families from all over Ireland as
well as the UK, including London. In Ireland, recent research, carried out
for the Marriage and Relationship Counselling Services (MRCS), showed that
women are, in fact, more likely than men to perpetrate domestic violence.
This report, based on a survey of 530 clients of MRCS, found that where
domestic violence occurs mutual violence accounts for 33% of cases, female
perpetrated violence accounts for 41% and male perpetrated violence for 26%.
It should be noted that the majority (59%) of those interviewed were women
and also that the vast majority of women (85%) and men (94%) agreed with
their partner's response to this question, suggesting that the self reported
prevalence is quite reliable. The Department of Health and Children has also
carried out research, to be launched shortly, which will also vindicate the
MRCS research and the experience of Amen.
These findings concur with results from all other independent reliable
two-sex studies and surveys carried out in the UK, Canada and the USA.
(Details are available on the Amen website www.amen.ie
). Studies which portrayed men as
predominately perpetrators were not independent, neutral, balanced two-sex
studies. They were all predicated on the assumption that men are the
aggressors and women the victims; were based on interviews with women only;
did not make any attempt to establish the views or experiences of men and
were all carried out by or for people or organisations with a feminist ethos,
and a vested or ideological interest in promoting a distorted view of men as
inherently evil and violent and responsible for all domestic disharmony.
Hardly surprising therefore that such studies wrongly portray 'men as the
aggressors in the vast majority of cases'. Domestic violence is not just
a "women's issue". It is a
social issue affecting men, women and children and needs to be examined in
this context, otherwise it will continue to do damage to family systems and
create even bigger division within families. It is true that most of the recorded
complaints of domestic violence are made by women. However, the failure by
men to complain to the authorities does not mean that men are not also
suffering abuse in the home. Over the
years society has come to accept that women in abusive situations in the home
must be empowered to speak out about their plight and seek assistance.
However it is still not socially acceptable for men to admit that they are
being abused in the home. Men do not report the fact that they are being
abused because they know that if they do they will meet with ridicule, disbelief
and rejection. They will be described as 'wimps', told that 'big boys don't
cry' and advised to 'take it on the chin like a man'. Should they seek legal
redress they will be deemed to be perpetrators regardless of the evidence.
Records of complaints are not a reliable indicator of the prevalence or
nature of domestic violence. It is attitudes such as these which have kept
this taboo subject under wraps for so long. The sexist anti-man nature of
your 'initiative' will strengthen the barriers which prevent men from
speaking out and seeking help. Despite the claims made in the document it is
neither visionary nor inclusive. On a more positive note I can tell you
that the Irish Government and other statutory agencies have now accepted that
the consensus on which domestic violence was based in the past was flawed.
They now accept that men and women are equally likely to be victims and
perpetrators of domestic violence and are in discussion with Amen on how to
deal with the emerging truth. The old 'men are the perpetrators; women are
the victims' stereotype has now been totally discredited in Ireland and other
countries. It is difficult to believe that, in an allegedly sophisticated,
modern society, the GLA and the rest of the political establishment in the UK
are seeking to perpetuate such sexist, divisive and damaging policies and
myths. While, at the moment, I cannot do an in-depth analysis of your
document I note that on the cover you claim that 2 out of 3 men admit that
they would use violence on their female partner in conflict situations. Since
this is presented as representative of all men I would like to know the
source of that claim. It certainly does not correspond with our experience of
men. As an alleged liberal and champion of
human rights and civil liberties you would rightly condemn policies and
propaganda which sought to condemn a person or imply guilt on the basis of
the colour of their skin or ethnic background. But in your misguided
political correctness you feel free to promote a sexist initiative which
condemns men, simply because they are men. Most sycophants in the political
establishment are not prepared to face truths which challenge their
prejudices. It is much more convenient to wallow in trendy ignorance. Should
you wish to meet representatives of Amen to discuss this matter in greater
detail you can contact me at the above address. Yours sincerely, Mary T Cleary. Ill17 p11 NHCR, Norway COMMUNIQUÉ to THE 2001 WORLD CONGRESS ON
FAMILY LAW AND THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN AND YOUTH Bath, England, 20 - 22
September 2001 THE 2001 WORLD CONGRESS ON FAMILY LAW
AND THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN AND YOUTH MUST KNOW; IN the Nordic countries - each year,
millions of crowns are squandered and thousands of innocent families are
needlessly wrecked by dishonest social workers, incompetent child protection
officers and secretive administrative (family) courts. The Nordic Committee for Human Rights -
NCHR - For the protection of Family Rights in the Nordic countries is an
international organisation comprising of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.
It was founded on November 30, 1996 at Christiansborg in Copenhagen, as a
reaction against the prevalent cases where the social authorities in our
different countries take children into public care, on what we deem as arbitrary
grounds. What is the NCHR? The Nordic Committee
for Human Rights - NCHR - is an international, non-governmental organisation,
free from politics and religion. It aims to: * Strengthen respect for basic human
rights and fundamental freedoms in the Nordic countries, based upon: ·
The UN Declaration of Human Rights; ·
The European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and
Fundamental Freedoms; ·
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. * Act resolutely to ensure that civil servants
who are found guilty of abuse of power or of violating their fellow citizen's
private and family life be brought to justice or before disciplinary bodies. * To create public opinion in order to bring about changes in
the present policies whereby residents in the Nordic countries appear to
suffer unnecessary interference in their private and family life. * Increase the rights and freedoms of
private individuals and their families. In pursuance of these aims the NCHR
works with cases where children are being or have been removed, and are being
kept from their families unnecessarily. We try to provide help and advice for: * Children who are being abused whilst
in the care of the social authorities; * Parents wrongly accused of offences
against their children; * Grandparents unfairly deprived of
contact with their grandchildren by the social services; * Any parents or children who need an
intermediary when dealing with childcare professionals. * Parents who, having placed their children
in care on a voluntary and short-term basis, find that they are unable to get
them back again (a too frequent occurrence when a single parent has a
temporary health or other problem). STATEMENT
OF FACTS 1 -
In the Nordic countries each year, thousands of caring and totally
innocent families are NEEDLESSLY destroyed by the States' well intentioned
but disastrous child care procedures. 2 -
In the Nordic countries each year, millions of crowns are squandered
by dishonest and poorly supervised social workers inventing reasons to
NEEDLESSLY take children into 'care'. The police and courts turn a blind eye
to concealed adoptions and illegal trading with children. 3 -
In the Nordic countries each year the States are NEEDLESSLY creating
thousands of juvenile delinquents who NEEDLESSLY grow up to be hardened
criminals. 4 -
In the Nordic countries social services, today, are the most dangerous
threat to private and family life our countries have ever known. The
child-care systems in the Nordic countries must be overhauled as a matter of
priority and an entirely new approach to procedures must be adopted. ·
Many child care authorities fail to carry out proper checks on foster
parents. ·
Few children in care complete their secondary education. Some are even
deprived of obligatory primary education and are mistakenly - or purposely -
labelled by the social services as being retarded. ·
Children in care are far more likely to be abused than those living at
home. ·
Events similar to Bjugn (Norway), the Bernt Stålbröst case (Sweden)
and the Bernt Lindelöf case (Sweden) are still being repeated to the
detriment of hundreds of families in the Nordic countries every day. Nothing
has changed. ·
The Administrative Courts are bogged down with thousands of trumped-up
cases brought by incompetent social workers fighting private battles against
"unqualified parents who foolishly think they know best." Many
social workers, because of their schooling, regard the family as being
basically dangerous and an impediment for the development of the child. ·
A medical condition known as ADD-ADHD is responsible for a
considerable amount of juvenile crime. Some child-care authorities recognise
the condition but they prescribe the wrong remedy: the children are taken
into 'care' in the mistaken belief that they are being 'emotionally abused'
by their parents ... their first steps to a life of crime. In the Nordic
countries each year, parents try to reclaim their children who have been
abducted by the social authorities and flee to other countries. ·
At least 50% of the adult population know at least one competent
family that has been needlessly wrecked by incompetent or dishonest social
workers, aided and abetted by the Administrative Courts. For this reason,
hundreds of thousands of parents are terrified of approaching the social
services for help - even when they are desperate for the assistance that
properly run social authorities should be able to offer. ·
The press, radio and television have failed to publish or to follow up
systematically the thousands of accounts of social services involvement where
things have gone drastically wrong - due to the activities of the social
workers - and where the victimisation of caring
families is Orwellian and almost beyond belief. ·
In the Nordic countries today, a lot of people have lost confidence in
the social services. Those who still believe that the Nordic states have the
right formula for protecting children at risk are completely out of touch
with reality. The truth is that the present systems in the Nordic countries
are woefully inadequate and are, in fact, responsible for more abused
children than any other source of abuse. ·
The European Court of Human Rights declared admissible the complaint
of Chief Dr. Bernt Lindelöf, (C.L., B.L., E.L. and H.L. against Sweden) who
was accused by the social services of sexually abusing his daughter who was
suffering from Rhett's syndrome. The handicapped child was unnecessarily
separated from her family and placed in foster care. The Administrative
Courts all found in favour of the social workers' actions against the family.
On June 20, 2000, Sweden reached a "Friendly Settlement" of 2,1
million SEK with the family. · The European Court
of Human Rights found Finland guilty of violation of Family Rights in the
Case of K & T v. Finland for taking the newborn baby into public care in
its verdict dated April 27, 2000 and its Grand Chamber decision of June 12,
2001. The verdicts of the European Court of Human Rights have not
changed the practices of the social services and the Administrative Courts in
the Nordic countries. Family abuse BY THE NORDIC STATES is a
breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. Unnecessary interventions
into people's private and family lives are not necessary in civilised,
democratic societies (Article 8). Family abuse BY THE NORDIC STATES is a breach of the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child. Children have the right to their
families and the right to be protected from economic exploitation. (Articles
16 and 32). Family abuse BY THE NORDIC STATES is therefore not acceptable! The NCHR hereby call upon The 2001 World
Congress On Family Ill17 p12 Law And The Rights Of Children And Youth
to demand that the governments of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden must
adopt the principles governing family life in the majority of the European
nations and the world at large where Family - the cornerstone of society - is
protected by law and the principles of closeness and subsidiarity are
guidelines for social work. Olofstorp, September 14, 2001 Ruby Harrold-Claesson Attorney-at-law President of the NCHR Tillbaka till Huvudsidan Till Artiklar Ivor, .... the fate of children taken away
from both parents by the social "services". I agree that modern
feminism is part of the problem, with its belief e.g. in Freud, which has
provided them with a terrible weapon, because Freud is a swindler and
everything in the field of psycho-analysis/psycho-dynamic psychology is
totally anti-scientific. Have you read Richard Webster's book "Why Freud
was wrong"? - Anyway, as far as people's motives are concerned, they are
probably partly the same in any hysterical trend, be it fear of witches,
belief in communism, nazism, or social "experts", namely a
combination of: being part of a popular trend, need of something to believe
in, need of attention, and dough. It ought to have been foreseen; with so
many thousands of social workers, psychologists, pedagogues and do-gooders,
and in societies which have too much money to squander of speculative social
construction, it was probably bound to lead to hyper-activity. Have you, by
any chance, read the article I have published on our web-site called
"The Attitude of social professions involved in the child protection
sector" in our section Articles on our English page? ................... To return to "motives": I
suppose you know about Stanley Milgram's famous study of one way of getting
people to do whatever the authorities order them to? Stanley Milgram (1974): Obedience to
authority: An experimental view New York: Harper and Row Of course that does not apply directly
to the question of what motivates feminist activists in general and in the
first place. I should nevertheless say it is relevant, since once they get
into this line of business they have no option but to continue if they don't
want to be thrown out. Especially in Sweden, but also in Norway, these
feminists with their hobby-horses are solidly represented not only in the
social services but in government departments and courts and many other
places of power. Marianne Skanland NCHR WORLD CONGRESS preliminary report 22
September 2001 19:52 Thanks to everyone who attended the
protest on 20 September. Particular thanks to our fearless
National Protest Leader, Mark Harris, for all the preparations and media
briefings. Matthew Mudge did a
fantastic job, and on the day, made the Equal Parenters' presence felt. He set up a table in front of the Congress
building and set out materials from the various organizations in the EQUAL
PARENTING COALITION. He had prepared EQUAL
PARENTING purple lapel ribbons - all v. professional, thank you so
much Matthew. Anson Allen brought the public address
system and the judge's costume. Peter
Weaving played the part of the judge - a visual that was mentioned by many of
the overseas visitors. He and
Margaret McClaren attended the protest despite having had a hard couple
of days in court securing a shared
residence order. They were both
exhausted after the hours of preparation and court room ordeal, yet they
still made the effort to attend. Michael Cox and many other prominent campaigners
came along way carrying banners bearing polite but powerful messages. These are the ones that do us good - the
disrespectful ones do the opposite, by the way, believe me! Forgive me for not mentioning everyone,
but this email is already too long, and I'm barely started. You were ALL brilliant! I was especially grateful to my wife,
Christine, for supporting the protesters outside while I attended the
conference itself. And it was super
to have the representatives from MATCH.
I can't stress enough how important it is for the excluded mums to
come out and show that this is not just a male issue. Oliver Cyriax, veteran campaigner for
the Cause, was a key member of the protest delegation. He handed out 200+ information papers to
conference delegates. DID WE DO ANY GOOD? Yes, yes, yes, yes! This conference was attended by top family
court judges and lawyers from all over the world. Most significantly, it was attended by the UK's top family court
judges. The impression our judiciary
were trying to give was that the UK was the model to follow. Without our protest outside, and our
influence inside the conference, the overseas guest would have left with the
clear impression that the UK had it right!!! The protest was mentioned at numerous
conference sessions. Many
overseas judges came up to me and
were fully supportive. The conference
delegates were overwhelmingly supportive.
There was comment about how well behaved the protesters had been. We got great media coverage locally on BBC
and in the press, better even than the event itself. I put our case at every opportunity,
many times by addressing the meeting.
Our position was supported robustly by a Canadian judge who spoke of
the importance of enforcing contact orders with determination. "Judges are too soft, she said. I tell them to bring their toothbrush,
cause they're going to jail next time. My contact orders are to be obeyed. Everyone knows it, so they obey
them!" Pretty obvious stuff,
isn't it, but not to our judges.....yet!!! The crowning glory came at the final
session (yesterday, Friday) I attended, which the Chair, another Canadian
Judge, opened by referring (a) to Maureen Freely's article [p6]
"When can I see my children?" in The Times (Sept 17) and (b) to the
protest outside. He said that they
had come thinking that the UK was the model to follow, but clearly it was not
working to everyone's satisfaction.
Wow! Did we ever make an
impact! Sending me as a delegate was a major
expense for EPC £750 approx. in direct expenses which it cannot afford; but
was it ever worth it! (Bear in mind, EPC does not charge a sub. nor do we get
a penny in public funding. Your kind donation, if you make one today, will
help make sure we can continue our good work at HQ. We are v. much in the red on this, so please don't assume
someone else will donate instead of you.) I had the chance to speak personally to
virtually every one of our top family judges. Lord Justice Wall told me EPC's was one of the most powerfully
argued submissions in response to MAKING CONTACT WORK. It had impressed the committee and would
be influential in their recommendations. I was thanked at the end by the
conference organizers for registering for the conference and participating
fully in the discussions. What a
turnaround! When I first arrived,
they had people follow me around to watch my every move! By the time I
left they were telling me how grateful they were for EPC's participation in
the conference. THE DOWNSIDE It was disappointing that other
like-minded organizations did not send a delegate to this conference, nor
members of their leadership even to join the protesters on the outside. What
an opportunity missed! The impression
given is that this is not a big problem.
It is only a few cases! That
is what they believe. If you want to see this problem fixed
within the foreseeable future, you simply have to come to protests. I know not everyone is comfortable with protesting, but it is
clear to me that they are making
their mark. How fast they work
is directly proportional to their size, it's that simple. There is much more I could say, but will
save it for my full report which will follow in due course. I wanted to get something out to you all
on my return from Bath (late last night). Once again, congratulations and many
thanks to all those who attended. If
you could not attend, please send a donation to help offset expenses. Best wishes, Tony Ill17 p13 Tony Coe, President, EQUAL PARENTING
COUNCIL Speaking Out for Children of Broken
Homes Direct Line 020 7590 2701 - mobile:
07768 366 100 Email: tonyc@EqualParenting.org "Children need BOTH Parents!" www.EqualParenting.org DONATION CHEQUES - please make payable
to "EQUAL PARENTING COUNCIL" and send to 38-40 Gloucester Road, London,
SW7 4QU - THANK YOU. UK CHAPTER - CHILDREN'S RIGHTS COUNCIL
OF USA Family law in disarray - Julian Fitzgerald, 22sep01 The 2001 World Congress on Family Law and
the Rights of Children and Youth (Sept 20-22) was meant to take place
concurrently with the United Nations Special Session on the Rights of
Children in New York, now abandoned for obvious reasons. It opened with Lady
Butler-Sloss, head of the Family Division, congratulating British lawyers on
what a fine job they are doing. Outside the conference venue, a gathering of
around thirty protesters, mothers, fathers and grandparents who have gone
through the mill of British family justice, are waving placards and shouting
"Children Need Both Parents." They stand as a noisy reminder of the
failures of the British family court system: their message to the 500
conference attendees, from 38 countries, ranging from Vietnam and Nigeria to
China and the United States is "do not base your system on ours." David Truex, chair of the UK host
committee for the congress, is an Australian lawyer now practising family law
in the UK. In our interview he emphasises that parental responsibility,
currently extended in the UK only to married fathers and unmarried fathers
whose application is accepted by the courts, should be extended to all
fathers, wed or unwed, as a matter of right. The burning issue for British parents is
that courts should uphold their rights of contact with their children. Mr
Truex explains that this congress covers a wide range of equally critical
issues, including the rights of children in war- and poverty-stricken lands. However, Professor Bolaji Owasanoye of
the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and Human Development
explains that from the viewpoint of a country which has daily experience of
these evils, the thinking is the exact opposite, stating "there is an
assumption that children's rights have nothing to do with parents, but in our
country the aim is to strengthen parents' ability to give their children
rights." He continues: "the job, the responsibility of public
institutions like courts and social welfare offices is to assist parents to
carry out their God-given responsibility of bringing up children. These
institutions are not supposed to hijack this responsibility." As jurists attending the conference pass
between protesters outside, they express wide accord with them on almost all
the grievances at failures in the system raised. A leading English family
barrister snickers quietly at a poster characterising one of his judicial
colleagues as "The Keeper of the Asylum." Over the megaphone,
Matthew Mudge, a family rights activist from Cardiff, enjoys fierce support
as he quotes a series of politicians and opinion formers. "'A child
needs the care and attention of both parents,' says Tony Blair. 'The distress
and damage done to children when parents separate can be reduced if they
retain strong and loving bonds with both parents' states Paul Boateng. Well,
Mr Blair, well, Mr Boateng, we agree with you. What are you doing about
it?" Implementation is key, both sides agree. As those inside the
conference embed themselves in the minutiae of bureaucratic procedure and
fine legal points, parents outside who have experience of the rough end of
the law demand equal parenting, a presumption that children will be able to
spend up to 50% of the time with each parent where parents are separated and
fail to agree upon the key issues. To them, without fundamental family
rights, the family court system which results in "150,000 divorce
orphans every year in England and Wales" will simply continue with
business as usual unless judicial discretion comes within a framework of
clear parental rights. Even Jack Straw, when Home Secretary, has said
"too many people in judicial positions protect their inefficiency and
sometimes their incompetence under the cloak of judicial discretion." As
Matthew Mudge puts it "going from a seven-day-a-week parent to a once a
fortnight parent can depend, quite arbitrarily, on the whim of the
judge." When the leading Australian judge
Stewart Fowler, also co-chair of the Bath Family Law Congress and his
colleague, New York Family Law judge Marjory D. Fields are interviewed, they
assert the principle of the "paramount interests of the child" as
the justification for judges taking decisions out of parents hands when they
fail to agree. Judge Fowler points out that the preambular passages to the
United Convention on the Rights of the Child mention the special position of
parents in relation to their children. Judge Fields is disparaging about the
concept of children's rights to both parents, saying that the issue is not
rights but responsibilities, although she is unable to clarify how parental
responsibility is to be exercised if one does not see or care for one's child
and this remains in the gift of the judge. Earlier, however, David Truex has
expressed interest in the favourable evidence beginning to accrue from state
legislatures, such as Oklahoma in the US, where presumptive equal joint
custody legislation was introduced in 1999. As more data feeds through, he
says, we will be able to begin to form an opinion about whether such
legislation can work in practice. In the meantime, few seem to be addressing
the fate of the millions of children and parents who have already lost each
other through the present system. The Outing of Radical Feminist Organisations For quite a while now, I have been
saying to myself, that there must be some kind of stealth conspiracy at work
here, and there is, if you look for it. Our society which has served us well
for the past near two millennia, has been turned on its head, by rejecting
all which has been morally correct, decent and just. As decent law abiding men/fathers
who have suffered injustices through our courts systems both civil and
family, we have all come to realise by now, that this system, which has been
conditioning us all from childhood, is nothing more than a well orchestrated
con trick, engineered to be biased against heterosexual males and fathers,
all in a space of a mere fifty years. How has this been allowed to happen? We
have allowed it happen by discarding our strong religious beliefs, which also
gave us our moral guidance. It's just like that well know saying;
"whilst throwing out the baby's bath water we have also thrown out the
baby". Since the beginning of our religious decline, the radical
feminists have been hard at work in destroying the nuclear family, and in
turn, they have managed to deny us all our human rights. In their next quest,
they took on the last bastion of Patriarchy, our religion. According to our
research, this too they have managed to infiltrate. They did this by gaining
an advantageous foothold in our Churches, where they are allowed to tinker.
They now dictate their debauched way of life, forcing us to accept such
abominations of the likes of abortion on demand and same sex marriages. For quite a while now, I together with
others such as Ivor, Brian, and Karl, have researched organisations of the
likes of The British Council, It has a annual budget of 400 million to fund
projects which promote leftist and radical feminist ideology; The Howard
League, with their "laissez-faire" attitude towards female crimes,
but staunch on domestic violence, which according to them is ONLY perpetrated
by men onto women; The Economic & Social Research Council, with an annual
budget of £72 million which helps fund radical feminist organisations, all
having links to the Women National Commission, which happens to be a link to
the Women Unit inside the Cabinet Office. At present I am involved with others in
the removal of a women's organisation within the Catholic Church which has
links with an organisation "Churches Together in Britain and Ireland".
This is a radical feminist church organisation which has done away with Our
Lord Jesus Christ and replaced it with a woman called "Crista".
They also support the abominations I have stated above. We are gaining Ill17 p14 momentum day by day in achieving our
objective, and once they have been removed we will move to the other
Christian Churches which have been infiltrated with these demonic radfems. At our last Conference, Ivor and myself
expressed the importance of researching all these suspect organisations. To
achieve this we need more people to be involved in research work. Guidance on
what to research can be given by Ivor, Karl, Brian and myself. Since Ivor is
heavily busy dealing with many different issues, the rest of us will be there
to assist, to process and to record the research. - Anthony Pace. childsbestinterest America has enemies in countries on the
other side of the world, with people who were raised from birth to be tough
survivors. It may be required for our
soldiers to go there and fight them.
It must be acknowledged many of our youth are not prepared for this. In previous generations a father was
there to teach his children needed skills.
With babies dads did rough and tumble play, and pushed a constant
stretching of abilities. In
adolescence they encouraged their children to participate and excel in
sports, how to work hard, and the safe and proficient use of firearms. Many American children do not have that
today. Pre-Sept 11 our country put
little emphasis on keeping a father in a child's life. Indeed family law for at least the last
30yrs has been set up to create homes without dads in them. We all know how the federal government did
this through welfare programs, and it continues today through family
law. The result is children raised in
front of a TV watching cartoons, with none of the skills needed to survive in
an area such as Afghanistan. Anyone who has children, especially of
high school age, should be giving a lot of consideration to this. Can teens you have or know jump out of a
hovering helicopter with a 100lb backpack, and march 20 miles? And do it as a group with tight
discipline? That's what American
teens may soon be asked to do. And
most will absolutely not be ready for it. Even if this current crisis is peacefully
resolved, as we pray will occur, the future certainly holds more
dangers. As such we must return to
practices where children are prepared for the future by their fathers. The place for this to begin is the
reforming of family law. There are
numerous rules and practices used by your state's judges which actually force
fit dads from their children's lives.
As we have found this is now happening to moms too. Increasingly no parent in the United
States can be secure from state intervention in the sacred relationship they
have with their child. Even married
parents. Childs Best Interest was formed earlier
this year to address this. We now
have as members; moms, dads, step-parents, an elected official, an author,
and grandparents. We need more good persons. Next year we will be submitting a number
of legislative changes to state legislatures. These bodies consists of many Honorable persons. They are however forced into doing some
things they would not like to. This happens
because special interests that pursue their own financial or ideological
needs exert undue influence. We must reverse the practices of the
last 30yrs which created single parent households. Children need to be raised with the input of both parents to be
complete. This is known to us, but
not to those inside our courthouses.
They thwart the will of the people and legislature. This is not tolerable when the result is
children being injured and placed into harms way. Very few persons today are protecting
the right to raise children. Please consider joining with us in this
most important task, which can be done through applications on our
website. For those not familiar with
this issue, we have training programs available to inform parents of their
rights under the state and United States Constitutions, and how to protect
them. May God Bless and protect our Children
in the coming days. - Yolanda Rogers, CBI Secretary Fax/Voicemail
(901)854-8314 http://childsbestinterest.org Psychopaths and Judges Hi Richard, .... The family courts
provide wonderful opportunities for covert psychopaths, who may be entirely
unaware of the secret hit they get from the exercise of power. Some may be
quite aware of their own excitement, although their level of understanding of
the reasons may be variable. Nor is this phenomenon limited to the family
courts. Lord Chief Justice Goddard used to have seminal emissions when
sentencing young men to death, a fact which only became widely known after
his death as a result of the disclosures of one of his junior officials.
Essentially, he was almost certainly a covert homosexual, excited by young
men but unable to cope with that. In sentencing young men to death, he could
marry his sexual excitement with his hatred of them for provoking that
excitement. Something similar happens in the case of killer paedophiles who
are sexually excited by children, and hate the children for, as they see it,
"causing" that excitement. Hatred of attractive women
("Harlot! Jezebel!") by
some celibate priests followed the same pattern. I have often thought the something
similar of various kinds of therapist who set themselves the task of changing
the internal lives of social predators, such as paedophiles and rapists. What
could be a more ideal cover for sadistic behaviours than making a social
predator, wriggling with denial, face the truth about himself? Life is full
of paradoxes. Sometimes the potential of psychiatry in this regard reaches
popular culture. In "Silence of the Lambs" the portrayal of
Hannibal Lecter as a psychiatrist using insight as a sadistic weapon (e.g.
his first meeting, in prison, with Clarice Starling) is a case in point. In fact, I think it the case that
supposedly high moral or religious standards can, in the hands of those not
accustomed to introspection and self-knowledge, lead directly to sadism. The
Spanish Inquisition was a case in point. Like you, I was a great admirer of
Thomas More, until I discovered that his religious convictions, for which he
ultimately paid with his life, had been responsible for the torture and
execution of large numbers of heretics, who had failed to follow the orthodox
Catholic line which he believed in. Remember, he was Lord Chancellor. That really
shook me up, as I had been very taken by Bolt's "A Man For All
Seasons", which was based on the eulogistic biography of More by William
Roper, More's son-in-law, who was himself a very committed anti-heretic! It
may be as well to make it clear that I certainly do not think this muddle was
about Catholicism in particular. It is more about human folly, and about the
application of doctrine in a ruthless manner. Perhaps we should not be
surprised. On the one hand we have human provenance and our current position
as top predator. On the other, we have the our capacity for developing
ethical social systems and empathy with others. Is it any wonder that we
sometimes end up using our comparatively massive cerebral cortex structures
to combine the two? Let us go and
torture and kill the heretic and the unbeliever in the name of the God of
Love. So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut was wont to say. What I say, is that if
there is a God, may he or she save us from our own confusion and hatreds. Unfortunately, however, it may be
impossible to avoid fighting people when they have created ethical systems
(such as certain aspects of modern feminism) as a way of expressing their own
aggression. How delightful to destroy someone by playing the innocent victim! Or the "omnipotent victim", as
Sean Kelly, with a characteristic felicity of expression, puts it. And it is
also necessary to challenge the practices of the family courts in a concerted
and organised way, which will inevitably sometimes cause embarrassment and
pain to family court judges who thought they were acting with the best
intentions, as Tony Coe, and anyone who actually gets to know these people,
ultimately comes to realise. Understanding, however, is not a substitute for
challenge and action. Indeed, an informed understanding should, in the
current nightmare scenario, be a spur to challenge and action. Warmest
regards, Peter Harvey < peterharvey@transformation.fsnet.co.uk 5sep01 Peter: I think your analysis was very
good. But I would like to add my voice to the others by way of constructive
criticism. I feel that you seriously underestimate the Ill17 p15 plain maliciousness of the system,
something that needs to be taken seriously. I had an email conversation last
year with a psychiatrist who dealt solely with psychopaths. I noted that it
seemed to me that many of the people I was dealing with in the court system
fit the diagnosis of psychopathy. This was her reply: "I am sure I know
what you are talking about when you say the "court systems", yes,
the "upper class" type psychopath works well within the domain of
the court/law. You will also find them among the police and practicing as
psychologists." The psychologist was pointing out, of course, that
"privileged" psychopaths by virtue of education and class are
attracted to certain professions in which they can cause pain under the guise
of legality and get away with it. This is a factor that I think needs to be
seriously taken into consideration. I suspect, from experience and the
experience of others, this is not uncommon at all. Second I think that you need to take
into consideration the role of misandry on the part of feminists in enacting
legislation and polluting the environment at large. Here is a link that
illustrates the point.
http:/www.pressdemocrat.com/opinion/columns/04close.html. This is not the
only article on the subject I have seen this week. There was another by a
professor from Harvard complaining about a "skewed" report on violence
against women in the JAMA. That report relates violence against boys. But in
the JAMA that section of the report is totally omitted. Further, you should
take a look at N.O.W.'s site and see their latest resolution to do with
Family Courts. In short I think your analysis is far too kind with regards to
Butler-Sloss and her ilk. You are attributing decency to people where there
is little or non. Anecdotally, being in California, I know quite a few
lawyers. San Francisco has more lawyers than the whole of Britain! Not one of
them will have anything to do with family law and their comments about
lawyers that do range from, "should be disbarred" to "The
bitch is a spitting cobra!" I don't know one that has anything good to
say about family law or lawyers that practice it. - Regards, Richard jigcho@webtv.net
[".... An important sub-class of
our male rulers resemble psychopaths more closely than they resemble normal
men ...." - Editorial in Ill Eagle 3, july99, on website at www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/illeagleeditorial.htm - Ed] George Gilder Review of George Gilder, Men and
Marriage, pub. Pelican Pub. Co., 1986, by Antonia. Fascinating introduction to a crucial
topic. George Gilder has written an
easy-to-read introduction to the underlying gender issues of our time. I am a
British reader so it was sometimes difficult to picture some of the
situations he was referring to; the level of discussion and debate on gender
is less sophisticated in the British media than in the US, so any material
from the US helps us understand our society better. To readers who might be irritated by
Gilder's assumptions and conclusions, I would say that he is talking about
general underlying trends in human society, rather than what individuals
choose to do. Like Steven Goldberg and others, he quite correctly says that
exceptions to the norm should be accepted as exceptions to the norm, not
pushed as the new norm (e.g. house-husbands). Surely a liberal democracy should be
able to accept this, but increasingly in Britain and the US people are
unwilling to do this thanks to radical feminism, gay rights and some parts of
the men's movement. Gilder has so many uncomfortable but
true insights which successful middle-class men and women should be forced to
acknowledge if they are sincere about the welfare of society, as many of them
profess to be by sporting the name 'liberal'. For example, 'in general, the
successful woman demands that her man be even more successful than she
is...Many men today deny that such pressures bother them. To declare
enthusiasm for feminist ideals is almost a new mode of macho, a way to flaunt
an invulnerable virility. Many will dismiss feminism as merely a matter of
domestic logistics. These men do not feel threatened at work...Mention
procreation and they talk about the population explosion...They profess
delight (somewhat uneasily) with the new female sexual freedom. The personal
experience and expectations of these men are real, but...as long as
everything goes reasonably right in their lives, the sexual revolution will
affect them little. Other men do not fare so well...' In other words, there isn't necessarily anything
wrong with being a successful middle-class liberal, but such a person should
stop assuming that everybody will want or be able to obtain their lifestyle.
Until government policies accept this diversity family and social breakdown
will continue. More controversially: 'In a world where women do not say no,
the man is never forced to settle down and make serious choices.' Hear hear.
Too many women do not realise that their behaviour (being forward and then
pretending that they are the victims of men) has a knock-on effect on the
relations other women have with men, i.e. radical feminists and libertarians
are creating a generation of useless irresponsible men. 'The facts of male homosexuality are
also endlessly misrepresented and confused by the homosexual women who often
speak for 'gay liberation'. Once a young man experiences the gay world -
often joining it as others join a cult or a movement - the addiction may be
very hard to break. The homosexual will seek to affirm his choice by finding
others to join him in it.' All this I can confirm from first-hand
observation. He is dead right about women (lesbian or not) misrepresenting
male homosexuality by naively romanticising it. It is mainly women who
imagine that most gay men long to have 'faithful, exclusive long-term
relationships'. They simply do not realise the harsh reality and so they are,
by their sweet rhetoric, actually putting their sons at risk of being drawn
into the gay underworld. Thankfully Gilder also tells us that
'the job-market is not a zero-sum game with a limited number of jobs. Women's
mass entry into the labour market has not caused rising male unemployment.'
This from a conservative - so there is no excuse for not making this clear;
there has been NO conspiracy against male jobs. The link between sex and family life is
very important for Gilder, but too many people are denying it. He goes so far
as to say the following, which must have infuriated a lot of people but which
again may shed light on such problems as eating disorders, dieting and
wafer-thin supermodels, who are NOT feminine: 'If we break the tie between sexual
intercourse and procreation, destroy the childhood memory of the nurturing
and omnipotent mother, banish the mystique of the breasts and the womb and of
the female curves and softness, we could remove as well much of the special
attraction of heterosexual love. We may liberate men to celebrate, like the
ancient Spartans, or the most extreme homosexuals today, a violent,
misogynistic, and narcissistic eroticism.' Read this book even if you don't think
you'll agree with everything in it, because his intuitions are those of the
silent majority. You owe it to society if you are a
middle-class liberal to acknowledge that this is what people think and feel,
and that going too much against the grain will provoke bitter resentment. I
worry that much of this resentment will be unthinkingly against women in
general. It's not too late to acknowledge all these problems. [I also strongly recommend Gilder's
prescient Sexual Suicide, pub. Quadrangle 1973. He saw it all coming. - Ed] Take back the campus From
http://www.shethinks.org/articles/an00029.cfm . in http://www.shethinks.org/index.cfm April 17, 2001 Are you tired of male-bashing and
victimology? Have you had your fill of feminist
"Ms./Information"? Have you been misled by factually
challenged professors? TAKE THIS TEST: Campus feminism is a kind of cult: as
early as freshman orientation, professors begin spinning theories about how
American women are oppressed under "patriarchy." Here is a list of
the most common feminist myths. If you believe two or more of these untruths,
you may need deprogramming. Ill17 p16 THE TEN MOST COMMON
FEMINIST MYTHS: 1. Myth: One in four women in college
has been the victim of rape or attempted rape. Fact: This mother of all factoids is
based on a fallacious feminist study commissioned by Ms. magazine. The
researcher, Mary Koss, hand-picked by hard-line feminist Gloria Steinem,
acknowledges that 73 percent of the young women she counted as rape victims
were not aware they had been raped. Forty-three percent of them were dating
their "attacker" again. Rape is a uniquely horrible crime. That
is why we need sober and responsible research. Women will not be helped by
hyperbole and hysteria. Truth is no enemy of compassion, and falsehood is no
friend. (Nara Schoenberg and Sam Roe, "The
Making of an Epidemic," Toledo Blade, October 10, 1993; and Neil
Gilbert, "Examining the Facts: Advocacy Research Overstates the
Incidence of Date and Acquaintance Rape," Current Controversies in
Family Violence eds. Richard Gelles and Donileen Loseke, Newbury Park, CA.:
Sage Publications, 1993, pp.120-132; Robin Warshaw (with Ms. Foundation) I
Never Called It Rape: The Ms. Report -- With afterward by Mary Koss, New
York: Harper Perennial, 1988; Mary Koss, et al "The Scope of Rape,"
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1987, Vol.55, pp.162-170; Mary
Koss, et al "Stranger and Acquaintance Rape," Psychology of Women
Quarterly, 1988, Vol.12, pp.1/24.Campus Crime and Security, Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Department of Education, 1997. *According to this study, campus police
reported 1,310 forcible sex offenses on U.S. campuses in one year. That works
out to an average of fewer than one rape per campus.) 2. Myth: Women earn 75 cents for every
dollar a man earns. Fact: The 75 cent figure is terribly
misleading. This statistic is a snapshot of all current full-time workers. It
does not consider relevant factors like length of time in the workplace,
education, occupation, and number of hours worked per week. (The experience
gap is particularly large between older men and women in the workplace.) When
economists do the proper controls, the so-called gender wage gap narrows to
the point of vanishing. (Essential reading: Women's Figures: An
Illustrated Guide to the Economic Progress of Women in America, by Diana
Furchtgott-Roth and Christine Stolba, published by the Independent Women's
Forum and the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C. 2000.) 3. Myth: 30 percent of emergency room
visits by women each year are the result of injuries from domestic violence. Fact: This incendiary statistic is
promoted by gender feminists whose primary goal seems to be to impugn men.
Two responsible government studies report that the nationwide figure is
closer to one percent. While these studies may have missed some cases of
domestic violence, the 30% figure is a wild exaggeration. (National Center for Health Statistics,
National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: 1992 Emergency Department
Summary , Hyattsville, Maryland, March 1997; and U.S. Bureau of Justice
Statistics, Violence-Related Injuries Treated in Hospital Emergency
Departments: Washington, D.C., August 1997.) 4. Myth: The phrase "rule of
thumb" originated in a man's right to beat his wife provided the stick
was no wider than his thumb. Fact: This is an urban legend that is
still taken seriously by activist law professors and harassment workshoppers.
The Oxford English Dictionary has more than twenty citations for phrase
"rule of thumb" (the earliest from 1692), but not a single mention
of beatings, sticks, or husbands and wives. (For a definitive debunking of the hoax
see Henry Ansgar Kelly, "Rule of Thumb and the Folklaw of the Husband's
Stick," The Journal of Legal Education, September 1994.) 5. Myth: Women have been shortchanged in
medical research. Fact: The National Institutes of Health
and drug companies routinely include women in clinical trials that test for
effectiveness of medications. By 1979, over 90% of all NIH-funded trials
included women. Beginning in 1985, when the NIH's National Cancer Center
began keeping track of specific cancer funding, it has annually spent more
money on breast cancer than any other type of cancer. Currently, women
represent over 60% of all subjects in NIH-funded clinical trials. (Essential reading: Cathy Young and
Sally Satel, "The Myth of Gender Bias in Medicine," Washington,
D.C.: The Women's Freedom Network, 1997.) 6. Myth: Girls have been shortchanged in
our gender-biased schools Fact: No fair-minded person can review
the education data and conclude that girls are the have-nots in our schools.
Boys are slightly ahead of girls in math and science; girls are dramatically
ahead in reading and writing. (The writing skills of 17-year-old boys are at
the same level as 14-year- old girls.) Girls get better grades, they have
higher aspirations, and they are more likely to go to college. (See: Trends in Educational Equity of
Girls & Women, Washington, D. C.: U.S. Department of Education, June
2000.) 7. Myth: "Our schools are training
grounds for sexual harassment... boys are rarely punished, while girls are
taught that it is their role to tolerate this humiliating conduct." (National Organization of Women,
"Issue Report: Sexual Harassment," April 1998.) Fact: "Hostile Hallways," is
the best-known study of harassment in grades 8-11. It was commissioned by the
American Association of University Women (AAUW) in 1993, and is a favorite of
many harassment experts. But this survey revealed that girls are doing almost
as much harassing as the boys. According to the study, "85 percent of
girls and 76 percent of boys surveyed say they have experienced unwanted and
unwelcome sexual behavior that interferes with their lives." (Four scholars at the University of
Michigan did a careful follow-up study of the AAUW data and concluded:
"The majority of both genders (53%) described themselves as having been
both victim and perpetrator of harassment -- that is most students had been
harassed and had harassed others." And these researchers draw the right
conclusion: "Our results led us to question the simple perpetrator-victim
model...".) (See: American Education Research Journal, Summer 1996.) 8. Myth: Girls suffer a dramatic loss of
self-esteem during adolescence. Fact: This myth of the incredible
shrinking girls was started by Carol Gilligan, professor of gender studies at
the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Gilligan has always enjoyed higher
standing among feminist activists and journalists than among academic
research psychologists. Scholars who follow the protocols of social science
do not accept the reality of an adolescent "crisis" of confidence
and "loss of voice." In 1993, American Psychologist reported the
new consensus among researchers in adolescent development: "It is now
known that the majority of adolescents of both genders successfully negotiate
this developmental period without any major psychological or emotional
disorder [and] develop a positive sense of personal identity. ..." (Anne C. Petersen
et al. "Depression in Adolescence," American
Psychologist February 1993; see also, Daniel Offer, and Kimberly
Schonert-Reichl, "Debunking the Myths of Adolescence: Findings from
Recent Research," Journal of the American Academy of Child and
Adolescent Psychiatry, November 1992.) 9. Myth: Gender is a social
construction. Fact: While environment and
socialization do play a significant role in human life, a growing body of
research in neuroscience, endocrinology, and psychology over the past 40
years suggests there is a biological basis for many sex differences in
aptitudes and preferences. In general, males have better spatial reasoning
skills; females better verbal skills. Males are greater risk takers; females
are more nurturing. Of course, this does not mean that women
should be prevented from pursuing their goals in any field they choose; what
it does suggest is that we should not expect parity in all fields. More women
than men will continue to want to stay at home with small children and pursue
careers in fields like early childhood education or psychology; Ill17 p17 men will continue to be over-represented
in fields like helicopter mechanics and hydraulic engineering. Warning: Most gender scholars in our
universities have degrees in fields like English or comparative literature --
not biology or neuroscience. These self-appointed experts on sexuality are
scientifically illiterate. They substitute dogma and propaganda for reasoned
scholarship. (For a review of recent findings on sex
differences see a special issue of The Scientific American [Special Quarterly
Issue] "Men: The Scientific Truth," Summer 1999.) 10. Myth: Women's Studies Departments
empowered women and gave them a voice in the academy. Fact: Women's Studies empowered a small
group of like-minded careerists. They have created an old-girl network that
is far more elitist, narrow and closed than any of the old-boy networks they
rail against. Vast numbers of moderate or dissident women scholars have been
marginalized, excluded and silenced. (Essential reading: everything by
Camille Paglia; Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge--Professing Feminism:
Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women's Studies; and Christina
Hoff Sommers--Who Stole Feminism? How Women have Betrayed Women.) **Should you encounter an item of
Ms/information in one of your classes, in a textbook, or a women's center
"fact" sheet, let us know. We will print it on our campus website,
SheThinks.org, correct it with accurate information, and politely inform the
source of the mistake. We (IWF) are a women's group dedicated
to restoring reason, common sense and open discussion to the campus. [See Ill
Eagle 16 p4 and www.womensquarterly.com
] Not all Nazis were bad, surely? - Karl Glasson Many of us in the men's movements see
feminism as very much akin to Nazism. At the very least, both ideologies
legitimate discrimination against individuals purely on the basis of their
genetic makeup. And there are now laws which clearly discriminate against
persons because of their male gender. True; men are not being hauled off to
gas chambers and exterminated by feminists, but they are discriminated
against in nearly every important area of their lives - health, education,
family, law. And men are currently being demonised, persecuted, prosecuted,
ostracised and imprisoned simply when women accuse them. There was certainly a considerable
period of time during the 1930's when many good and kind Germans would have
considered themselves to be Nazis. They swallowed Hitler's propaganda against
the Jews, among other things, and they believed that they were supporting an
ideology that was destined to do good for their country and for mankind. And, in those earlier times, there was
no way that the majority of these people even contemplated what might befall
the Jews and how horrendously they were going to be treated by the very
people that they were supporting. Thus, for example, the Nazis of 1935
would have included amongst themselves thousands of good individuals who were
conned into supporting the Nazi ideology. Now, of course, (if they were still
alive) few of these good and ordinary folk who supported Nazism would dream
of supporting or condoning what Nazism most effectively, and especially in
its homicidal essence, turned out to be. They had simply - at that time - been
overwhelmingly hoodwinked by a deceptive, racist propaganda machine. And so it is that if you NOW asked these
'good' people, "Are you a Nazi?", they would reply No! And they
would be telling the truth. For the realities of Nazism would by now have
been shown to them. When I was young, I once thought that I
must be a communist - equality for all, and all that - until I discovered
more about what communism actually meant, and how it went about achieving its
aims. Well, what we NOW know to be Nazism is
not something that these good people EVER supported. They thought that they
were Nazis - but they weren't! I thought that I was a communist, but I
wasn't. And the same is true for women who call themselves feminists today. They might as well call themselves Nazis
(bar the gas chambers etc) for by calling themselves feminists they ally
themselves to a repulsive ideology that not only discriminates appallingly
against the male gender but which also has been shown to be promoted by
particularly dishonourable and self-serving groups of women who have done
little but lie and deceive. Thus, for example, so many 'so-called'
academic feminists have now been caught manufacturing dishonest 'research'
findings and distorting or hiding others to support their deceitful,
fraudulent claims, for YEARS, that they really should be sacked and publicly
shamed for their incompetence and mendacity. And media feminists have been shown to
have colluded, for years, in shielding important truths while specifically
headlining deceptive reports in their attempts to fuel continuously a hatred
of the male gender. These dishonourable, self-serving
manipulative groups of women are no different in essence from those who ran
the Nazi propaganda machines. They are little but bare-faced liars, and they
are full of hatred toward others simply because of their genetic makeup. The catalogue of feminist deceits is
astonishing, is still growing, and is being exposed every day. And the
evidence that this has occurred on a massive scale is OVERWHELMING. Thus, when a woman today claims that she
is a feminist, she backs a hysterical, vindictive, corrupt and divisive
ideology in exactly the same way as would someone who TODAY is claiming to be
a Nazi. Once upon a time there were good Nazis,
but when these good Nazis realised what Nazism actually meant, they stopped
supporting Nazism. Similarly, once upon a time there were
good feminists, but those who continue to support feminism now, in the light
of what we now know, are either remaining ignorant of what their fraudulent
man-hating ideological 'leaders' have been up to for all these years, or they
are as repulsively discriminatory and shallow as this website accuses them of
being. It is fortunate indeed that, unlike in
the 1930's, the retrieval of archived information is now a relatively simple
affair. And documented evidence of the nauseating and detestable fabrications
and hate-mongering of feminist groups throughout the academic world, in the
media, and in the government is not even hidden. The upshot is that those who continue to
support feminism are soon going to find themselves shamed in much the same
way as were those who continued to support Nazism even while the archived
evidence against it was collected and publicised. And, as for those politicians, academics
and media folk who continue to try to endorse this repulsive ideology in the
face of all the evidence that exposes it, well, at the very least, their
professional days are really and truly numbered. Their votes will disappear,
their tenures will be severed, they will be condemned and dishonoured
publicly with the evidence that stands against them and, it is my guess, that
quite a few will actually be prosecuted for betraying their duties and the
people who invested their trust in them. Pilot's Crash into his home -
Associated Press, 29aug01 CONCORD, N.H., Aug. 28 A pilot whose small plane crashed into a
house was the home's owner, a medical examiner said today, adding that it
appeared that the crash was deliberate. The pilot, Louis W. Joy III, was killed
when his plane went into a dive and slammed into the home he shared with his
wife and 8-year-old daughter, said the deputy chief medical examiner, Thomas
Gilson. No one on the ground was injured when the single-engine Socata
Trinidad struck the house on Saturday. The authorities said Mr. Joy's wife,
Jo, who had obtained a restraining order against him the day before the
crash, was staying at a hotel with her daughter when the crash occurred. Ill17 p18 For days, investigators have picked
through the ashes and wreckage of Mr.
Joy's home, his plane and his life
searching for what might have driven Mr. Joy, a successful business
consultant and motivational speaker, to suicide. On Monday, Judge William Drescher, who
granted the restraining order, sealed the court documents in which Ms. Joy
explained why she wanted the order. David Lauren, Jo Joy's lawyer, read a
statement from his client in which she pleaded for privacy. The Nightmare of Family Court - Stephen Baskerville The ordeal of Mark Harris, the father
sent to Pentonville prison for ten months for waving to his children, is not
an aberration. It is part of a growing international trend whereby fathers
(and sometimes mothers) have been arrested for sending their children
birthday cards, calling them on the telephone, or seeing them in church. Last year a father in New Hampshire was
beaten to death by jail guards after being incarcerated without trial for
allegedly missing a child support hearing of which his family claims he was
never notified. A father in British Columbia was evicted from his home, cut
off from his children, and ordered to pay more than twice his income in child
and spousal support plus court costs for a divorce to which his never
consented. He hanged himself from a tree. A mother in Massachusetts was
recently told by social workers to divorce her husband or they would take
away her children, and they did. In the same state a fathers' rights activist
claims he was dragged from his car and beaten by what appeared to be
plainclothes police and told to stop making trouble for the courts or he
would never see his son again. These cases are the tip of a huge
iceberg. In the United States, Canada, Australia, and beyond both fathers and
mothers are losing their children in large numbers and turned into outlaws.
They are subjected to questioning about their private lives that attorney Jed
Abraham has termed an "interrogation" and incarcerated without
trial. They are jailed for failing to pay lawyers and psychotherapists they
never hired for services they never sought. Their children are taught to hate
them with the backing of government officials and used as informers against
them. Why is this happening? Contrary to basic principles of free
government, family courts operate largely behind closed doors and without
record of their proceedings. The secrecy ostensibly protects family privacy,
though more often it provides a cloak to invade family privacy with impunity.
"The family court is the most powerful branch of the judiciary,"
writes a prominent American judge. "The power of family court judges is
almost unlimited." American Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas once
characterized them with the term "kangaroo court." Family courts sit at the nexus of a
powerful network of lawyers, psychotherapists, social workers, bureaucratic
police, and others. Recalling Dickens's observation that "the one great
principle of the law is to make business for itself," it may not be
overly cynical to suggest that judges and their entourage have a vested
interest in separating children from their parents. Family courts routinely ignore basic
civil liberties and international human rights conventions. "Your job is
not to become concerned about the constitutional rights of the man that
you're violating as you grant a restraining order," American municipal
court judge Richard Russell told a judges' training seminar in 1994.
"Throw him out on the street, give him the clothes on his back and tell
him, see ya around. . . . We don't have to worry about the rights." Family law is now criminalizing activity
as basic as free speech. In Australia it is a crime for litigants to speak
publicly about family law. A Sydney group protesting peacefully in 1998 was
told "if any people who had any involvement with family court were
identified the media and that person would be prosecuted to the fullest
extent" of the law. As in Britain, Australian family courts have closed
Internet sites operated by parents' groups. In some American jurisdictions it is
likewise a crime to criticize judges. The former husband of singer Wynonna
Judd was recently arrested for speaking to reporters about his divorce. A
father protesting outside his Los Angeles home on Fathers' Day 1998 that he
had not seen his son in more than two years was apprehended by police for a
"psychiatric evaluation". Following his congressional testimony
critical of family courts, a Georgia father was stripped of custody of his
two children, ordered to pay lawyers he had not hired, and jailed. "We
believe the court is attempting to punish [him] for exposing the court's
misconduct to a congressional committee," said the president of a local
fathers' group. Family courts are now politicized by ideological
agendas and attack citizens ' groups for exercising their political rights.
The Australia Family Court publishes a book attacking fathers' groups as
"a concerted lobby of disaffected individuals". In 1998 the court's
Chief Justice publicly declared them a "sinister element". In a
paper funded by the US Justice Department, the National Council of Juvenile
and Family Court Judges, an association of ostensibly impartial judges who
sit on actual cases, attacks "dangerous" fathers' groups for their
political opinions and "values" and their belief "that divorce
is always harmful to children". The words "divorce" and
"custody" sound deceptively innocuous. We should remind ourselves
that they involve bringing the penal system into the home for use against
family members. Once we thus marshal the state apparatus there is no reason
to assume it will stop where we want it to. "When they've taken away the
fathers," warns Irish Times columnist John Waters, "they'll take
away the mothers." Stephen Baskerville, a professor of
political science at Howard University in Washington, is spokesman for Men,
Fathers, and Children International, a coalition of fatherhood groups from 9
countries, and serves on the board of Gendercide Watch, a human rights
organization that monitors gender-selective atrocities. Copyright (c) 2001 Stephen Baskerville, Department of Political Science, Howard University Washington, DC 20059 [Stephen spoke at our 28oct00
conference. A very fine, lengthy article about the rapidly growing Child Protection
Industry is at www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/1a168.htm - Ed] Spreading Misandry The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture - Paul
Nathanson and Katherine K. Young A probing inquiry into the pervasiveness
of negative male stereotypes in popular culture. Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young argue
that men have routinely been portrayed as evil, inadequate, or as honorary
women in popular culture since the 1990s. These stereotypes are profoundly
disturbing, the authors argue, for they both reflect and create hatred and
thus further fracture an already fractured society. In Spreading Misandry
they show that creating a workable society in the twenty-first century
requires us to rethink feminist and other assumptions about men. The first in an eventual three part
series, Spreading Misandry offers an impressive array of evidence from
everyday life, case studies from movies, television programs, novels, comic
strips, and even greeting cards, to identify a phenomenon that is just now
being recognized as a serious cultural problem. Discussing misandry, the
sexist counterpart of misogyny, the authors make clear that this form of
hatred must not be confused with reverse sexism or anger and should neither
be trivialized nor excused. They break new ground by discussing misandry in
moral terms rather than purely psychological or sociological ones and refer
critically not only to feminism but to political ideologies on both the left
and the right. They also illuminate the larger context of this problem, showing
that it reflects the enduring conflict between the Enlightenment and
romanticism, inherent flaws in postmodernism, and the dualistic (Aus versus
Athem) mentality that has influenced Western thought since ancient times. A groundbreaking study, Spreading
Misandry raises serious questions about justice and identity in an
increasingly polarized society. It is Ill17 p19 important for anyone in interested in
ethics, gender, or popular culture, or just concerned about the society we
are creating. Genuinely intelligent and insightful.
Spreading Misandry is provocative in the very best sense and will help point
the way toward social harmony and away from bickering and fingerpointing. -
Donna Laframboise, columnist for The National Post and author of The Princess
at the Window: A New Gender Morality An important book. Nathanson and Young
do a good job on introducing the average reader to the positions of various
intellectuals as they relate to this moral issue and to moral issues in
general. - Charles H. Long, emeritus, religious studies, University of
California at Santa Barbara Spreading Misandry turns the tables on
the gender wars. It's not men ganging up on women. It is just the reverse--a
long and gradual cultural attack on
men. This book is a brilliant and perceptive
overstatement, but one that is needed to discover the truth that will heal
the rift between the sexes." Don Browning, University of Chicago and
co-author of From Culture Wars to Common Ground Paul Nathanson is a freelance editor and
author of Over the Rainbow: The Wizard of Oz as a Secular Myth of America.
Katherine K. Young is professor of the history of religions in the Faculty of
Religious Studies at McGill University and has published extensively on
women. October 2001 6 x 9 390pp Cloth ISBN 0-7735-2272-7
$39.95 (US) $29.95 (UK) £21.50 http://report.ca/archives1/06112001/p50ai010611f.html
Dad as nurturer A psychologist says children do better
with single fathers than single mothers - Candis
McLean, Report, Canada,
11june01 A war against fathers has been raging
over the past several decades, with mothers and children among the losers,
according to California-based psychologist Warren Farrell. During that time, the
percentage of single dads doubled, the pendulum swung from the era of Father
Knows Best to the era of Daddy Molests, from dad as family head to deadbeat
dad. So contends Mr. Farrell in his new book, Father and Child Reunion: How
to Bring the Dads We Need to the Children We Love. However, he believes, the
pendulum is about to swing back. As an indication, he points to a Harris poll
which last year asked people in their twenties if they would give up money
for more time with the children: an unprecedented 70% of the men said yes, as
compared to 63% of the women. "Just as the last third of the twentieth
century was about creating equal opportunity for women as workers, so the
first third of the twenty-first will be about creating equal opportunity for
men as parents. Neither goal will be achieved until both goals are
achieved," he states. More controversially, Mr. Farrell ranks
family structures, according to how they serve the child's best interest, as:
1. the intact family;
2. shared parent-time;
3. primarily father time; and
4. primarily mother time. According to his research, both boys and
girls living with single dads do better in all academic areas, particularly
math and science, health-wise with fewer days absent from school and less
likelihood of being hospitalized, and socially, through an increased
likelihood of developing empathy. Empathy, he says, is created by the male
style of discipline, which focuses the child less on getting its way and more
on the reward to be obtained by paying attention to others' needs. Most children also pay more attention to
fathers than mothers - "which frustrates mothers no end" - he
claims, because in their discipline, dads: * restrict less often;
* give more input before
restricting;
* are more likely to set up
consequences, and
* are more likely to stick to
them. The failure to establish effective boundaries also explains, Mr.
Farrell believes, the fact that single-mother households account for 43% of
all abused children, and single moms are 24 times as likely to kill children
as single dads. "When boundaries are not set well, and the children nag
the mom into a state of frustrated exhaustion and powerlessness, mom is more
likely to 'lose it' and hit the child. Domestic violence is a momentary act of
power designed to compensate for an experience of powerlessness. These moms
are having an experience of powerlessness." Beyond discipline, the overall reason
children do better with single fathers than single mothers, the psychologist
contends, is not because men are better at fathering than women are at
mothering, but rather because of the type of men who seek and get primary
custody: those with higher incomes than their ex-wives, better education and
more motivation to overcome the psychological, social and legal barriers to
men gaining sole custody. Ironically, the fourth reason children do better
with single dads is because they are more likely to have their moms involved
than children with single moms are to have dads involved. In other words,
they come closer to having two parents. The ultimate answer to the problem of
divorce, the author concludes after writing four books on the battle of the
sexes, is "the need to get pre-school children and their parents
involved in learning ways to give and receive personal criticism in a way
that allows them to communicate about everything. Nothing really positive
comes unless we get that." The most powerful step in receiving
criticism, he says, is to "imagine the criticizer on a movie screen. The
temporary emotional dissociation allows you to listen, rather than distort
what the criticizer says, find flaws in it, or side-step and counter-attack,
all of which result in 100% dissociation, and require the criticizer to up
the ante - raise their voice and distort in order to make their point, or
back off and shut up." The intact family is best for children
because of the different contributions of moms and dads. "For example,
mom is more likely to say, 'Don't climb the tree, you could hurt yourself,'
and dad, 'Oh let her climb the tree, it's important for her to learn how to
take risks.' In the intact family a compromise can allow the child to climb
the tree with dad standing under it to cushion a fall. The child receives
both protection and risk-taking. However, when the mom and dad don't value
their differences, they create tension that destabilizes the family." Write a letter to the Editor: ar@incentre.net Hate-male Rabid feminists call
fathers' rights advocates such as Warren Farrell 'incest proponents' - Candis
McLean. The Report
Newsmagazine, 20aug01 Seldom have recent stories in The Report
evoked so many and such vitriolic letters as those prompted by an article in
the June 11, 2001, issue titled "Dad as Nurturer." The article
summarized findings in the book Father and Child Reunion: How to Bring the
Dads We Need to the Children We Love by California author Warren Farrell. In
it, Mr. Farrell ranks family structures, according to how they serve the
child's best interest, as: 1) the intact family; 2) shared parent-time; 3) primarily father time; and 4) primarily mother time. The tenor of the letters in response is
summed up by the comment from M.L. Bruno of Wrightstown, New Jersey, who
wrote: "WHAT A CROCK." Warren Farrell "advocates incest,"
wrote Cindy Ross of the National Alliance for Family Court Justice in
Fairfax, California. "There are a number of other sexologists,
pedophiles and incest proponents connected to Fathers' Rights,' 'Children's
Rights' and 'shared parenting' organizations," she claims. "By
renaming themselves 'psychologists' and 'child experts,' they try to give the
illusion of legitimacy to their perverse agenda. The only 'fatherhood' they
promote is controlling and abusive, and the only 'relationships' between
fathers and children that they advocate are sexual in nature or otherwise
inappropriate." "It is so typical," sighs Mr.
Farrell. The author of five books attempting to help the sexes understand one
other, he has had three speaking engagements and two appearances on "the
biggest radio shows in the U.S." cancelled after radical feminists such
as Florida attorney Liz Kates alleged to them he was pro-incest. Ms. Kates
also wrote one of the letters to this magazine, stating, "Let's start right
off by correcting the most blatant error. Warren Farrell is not a
psychologist. His PhD is in political science. Farrell did appear to get
interested in 'sexology' for a Ill17 p19 while ('millions of people who are now
refraining from touching, holding, and genitally caressing their children,
when that is really part of a caring, loving expression, are repressing the
sexuality of a lot of children and themselves.'-Warren Farrell, quoted in
December 1977 Penthouse article, 'Incest: The Last Taboo,' by Philip Nobile.)" Mr. Farrell, who spoke in Calgary in
June, responds: "A few years ago I informed Liz Kates that the word
'generally' had been mis-transcribed as 'genitally.' Nevertheless, Kates and a woman named
Trish Wilson continue to publicize the misquote. I am seeking legal action.
They have been making similar accusations of many other men's-issues
advocates; their most pointed attacks are on men working on fathers' issues
('they all just want to molest their children')." He points to Web sites
created by these women devoted to discrediting him, labelling his academic-
and government-sourced research "a barrel of steaming compost."
They offer links to feminist articles supporting "The Deliberate
Construction of Families Without Fathers" or debunking "myths"
such as "A father's most important role is 'fathering' his
children" when in reality, say the feminists, his most important role is
"making life easier for his children's mother." Mr. Farrell, who for 30 years has
conducted workshops for psychologists, did do a study about incest in the
1970s "to better help people who were traumatized." His
contribution to the controversy, he believes, is that as a then graduate
student, he "tried to be neutral, to disengage from the horror, let the
data speak for itself, then draw thoughtful, balanced conclusions. Now that
I've raised two sets of stepchildren," he adds, "I would have a
more gut-level negative reaction. The idea of touching is repulsive. If
someone touched one of my daughters when she was 13, I'd be so furious." Data ignored by antagonists includes his
findings that once a parent starts being sexual with a child, he or she
starts needing the child and loses the ability to set boundaries, a problem
compounded by the child realizing he or she has blackmail power. In addition,
Mr. Farrell found, " Girls are often molested before they know about
sexuality. When they later learn this was abuse, they learn that the only
person in their life they trusted was an abuser. They feel unloved, unworthy,
they can't trust any man or, if it was a woman, any woman. They may also
become sexually inappropriate because they were sexually activated too early,
or completely close down and never become sexual." No one paid any attention to the 1977
Penthouse misquote, he says, until the 1993 publication of his book The Myth
of Male Power, critical of some aspects of feminism. In it he contended that
men are paid more because they do more hazardous jobs, move more often and
accept more responsibility, and included findings such as 40% of the women
employed on one major naval ship became pregnant shortly before it departed
for the Gulf War. The biggest problem in the battle of the
sexes, he concludes, is the 30,000 women's courses in the U.S. each year-by
his estimate 3,000 in Canada-whose graduates, believing men oppress women in
many ways, are pumped into every bureaucracy in which gender-related
decisions are made. "In many respects, MP Hedy Fry and the Status of
Women offers more government protection of women and condemnation of fathers'
rights than what we have in the U.S. It would be as if North America had
33,000 courses on the value of being conservative and none on liberalism.
It's become a one-party system of gender politics." Subscribe to take full advantage of the
newsmagazine. http://207.216.246.197/subscribe/subscrip.html
Write a letter to the Editor. mailto:ar@incentre.net
NATIONAL POST August
23, 2001 TORONTO (CP) -- A man who spent three
years in prison for sexual assault had his name cleared Thursday. The Ontario Court of Appeal quashed the conviction and called
the case a miscarriage of justice. Jamie Nelson, 34, of Stratford, Ont., spent 37 months in prison
from 1996 to 1999 after an Ottawa social worker falsely accused him of sexual
assault. Nelson said he's happy because his "nightmare" is over
but is also saddened because it happened at all. Nelson's lawyer, Todd Ducharme, said the complainant has since
been convicted of making similar false allegations against other men. Copyright (c) 2001, Canoe Limited
Partnership. All rights reserved. Catty Clatford or what? DR DAVID HARRIES does make exceedingly
good cakes. So much so that his mouth-watering Victoria sponge, quiche, jams and gingerbread beat
all the local housewives to win the village fete cookery contest. This year,
he has been barred. Such was the ill-will that followed Dr
Harries's victory last year that he has been ruled ineligible to defend his
title and the organisers of the Goodworth Clatford Flower Show and Fete have
been left ruing the day when real men learned to bake quiche. 25,000 cases collapse
through absent police - David
Bamber, Sunday Telegraph,
21oct01, p16 Thousands of magistrates' court cases
are abanodoned every year because the police do not turn up to give evidence
.... more than 25,000 trials a year .... scrapped ....[costs] more than £10
million .... Police officers say it is the chaotic
and archaic structure of the magistrates' court system that leads to
confusion .... they are never sure whether or not to turn up. .... M4 siege M4 siege suspect described as pleasant
and friendly from: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/ 21oct01 The owner of the Seaview caravan park in
Cornwall where the hostage drama began says the man arrested had been calm
and friendly during his stay at the site. June Brownbridge says the suspect,
who spoke with a northern accent, arrived at the site in Sennen nearly two
weeks ago in his motor caravan. He paid the £325-a-fee in advance and in cash
and booked for a two-week stay, she said. Although the 45-year-old was seen
around the site, the owner says nobody saw his wife or the mother of the
toddler. Mrs Brownbridge said: "He was a perfectly pleasant man and was
always very friendly. We saw him walking around with his son. He told me he
worked in the Bahamas renting out property and was looking for a base in
Cornwall as he loved this part of this country. "He said he would be moving down
with his wife and son from the north of the country. He was perfectly calm
and friendly whenever I saw him. He'd come in and get a newspapers every
morning." Mrs Brownbridge said he registered at
the site as Mr P Brooks. She added: "I thought his wife was with the
whole time and I don't know what happened on Friday night. We didn't even see
any police unless they were in an unmarked car. "I'm so glad this has come to a
peaceful conclusion." Wiltshire Police said they would not
release the identity of the man being held in connection with the siege while
he was being questioned and had not been charged. Making Contact Work The Family Courts Consortium in
collaboration with The Lord Chancellor's Department and The Financial Times
will hold An Interactive Consultation Day at the Financial Times Conference
Centre, Southwark Bridge, London, on tue20nov01 from 10.30am until 4.00pm Aim: To provide effective contact
between children and non-resident parents. The day will be chaired by the
Honourable Mr. Justice Wall, Chairman of the Children Act sub-Committee and
Family Liaison Judge for the Northern Circuit The cost of the day; £45 For information, tel. 0207 581 4838, or
write to The Chairman, Family Courts Consortium, 727 Nell Gwynn House, Sloane
Ave., London SW3 3AX [pp21-24
missing from this version. – Ed] |
|
Association of Chief Police Officers, C/o Chief Constable, Dyfed Powis Constabulary, Llangunner, Carmarthen SA31 2PF Dear Mr Grange, Police and the Witch Craze George Williamson of AAFAA, in his 17may03 letter to you, urged the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) to enquire into the role and effect of the Child Protection Movement (CPM) This web page shows you that there is no time to lose if police forces want to avoid taking the rap for CPM activity when the balloon goes up. The journal I edited, see www.ivorcatt.com/02.htm , is replete with scandalous cases which could damage our police. See for instance these three from the present www page which I happened to be looking at today; Save us from social workers on crusade - Donna Laframboise, National Post (Canada), 12july01 .... Here in
Canada, judges have condemned social workers for taking sides when divorcing
mothers have falsely accused fathers of child sexual abuse. …. MISSOULA, MONTANA - First, they took her three young girls on an anonymous and
unverifiable phone call that one looked kind of sick. Then they moved heaven and earth, trying
desperately to take the baby she bore a month later, though it was several
states out of their jurisdiction.
Then they had her arrested and thrown in a Montana jail for
"kidnapping" her own children. …. …. IN the Nordic
countries - each year, millions of crowns are squandered and thousands of
innocent families are needlessly wrecked by dishonest social workers,
incompetent child protection officers and secretive administrative (family)
courts. Also see www.ivorcatt.com/2001.htm Cherie Booth has
already been bitten once, in Bristol. She is heavily mired in the CPM, as is
Butler-Sloss. Blair will not always be there to shield our police from the backlash
against the excesses of the CPM movement. Out police
forces have been warned, and have a duty to protect our children from the CPM,
and to protect themselves from the fallout when the current witch craze
collapses. Ignorance will be no excuse. I urge you to
organise a good ACPO attendance when Claire Curtis-Thomas MP and Detective
Inspector Andrew Parker speak on the problem at the third UCAFAA conference
on 27sep03, Conway Hall, London, contact www.aafaa.org.uk
, aafaaorganisation@hotmail.com
, and that they make their presence known, thus showing ACPO concern. Ivor Catt 01727 864257 121 Westfields, St. Albans AL3
4JR 23may03 |