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X WHEN YOUR WIFE KIDNAPS YOUR CHILD-
Griffiin Stone, The Spectator,
24aug02, p10 Griffin Stone shows how
British justice tramples on the rights of fathers and brutally deprives them
of access to their offspring I am a member of a club I
never wanted to join. I barely knew the club existed until I had become a
member. I would love to pull out altogether, but the decision, unfortunately,
isn't mine. I see my fellow members as
a breed of noble losers, though my self-image doesn't permit me to see myself
that way. They are men – yes, it is an overwhelmingly male club, though women
have been known to gain entry - who have lost court battles (usually many),
personal struggles, money, time, professional standing and peace of mind. vet
still fight on because they believe they are right, because they can't give
up, they won't let ;o. I would say many of them are obsessive. I don't blame
them. We are parents who have
been cut off from our children. The degree of estrangement varies greatly,
from some fathers who haven't seen their children for years, to others who
are seeing them a few times a year, or monthly, but under controlled and
often demeaning circumstances. These are not child-abusers, sexual deviants.
drug addicts or alcoholics, though many have been accused of being one or
more of the above. Members of this club are, overwhelmingly, good men who
have had children with women who probably would like to see their ex-partners
drop off the face of the earth, and then close or unreasonably restrict
access to their children. All over Britain, children
are being deprived of contact with one of the two most important people in
their lives their fathers. Few realise how widespread this phenomenon is:
according to Families Need Fathers, between 40 and 50 per cent of men lose
contact with their children within two years of a separation. In a nation
where 50 per cent of couples will separate before the children are 15, that
means up to a quarter of our children aren't seeing their dads. And the
system helps to make it that way. Two Mondays a month, a
group of fathers in these circumstances meets in a village pub not far from
my home. One of the fathers who attends is Paul. He and his wife separated,
and for some months had, by mutual agreement, more or less equal time with
the children. There were rough patches and disagreements, though overall it
was working. He took his daughters, then six and eight years old. on a
week-long holiday in Cornwall. A few days after they returned. his wife said
that his daughters told her that he had been violent and abusive to them. She
closed his contact with them, saying they were petrified of him. All attempts
at reasoning with her failed. He had photographs of the holiday showing two
smiling, happy girls. The hotel staff wrote notarised statements avowing that
nothing untoward had happened and that they all seemed happy together. All to no avail. Paul
applied to court to obtain a contact order, but the court welfare officer
recommended a slow, gradual resumption of contact to rebuild his wife's
confidence in him. In one exchange, the welfare officer told Paul that it
happened all the time; she herself closed contact between her children and
their father for ten years. The case didn't reach
court for nearly a year, during which time Paul didn't-see his daughters. The
court eventually ordered that Paul could see his daughters for 45 minutes, in
a contact centre, twice a month, with his wife present. But even this proved
too much for her: after the first visit, she refused to bring them for
further contact. He returned to court:
rather than attempting to enforce its original order, the court reduced his
access to -45 minutes of supervised contact three times every two months. The
court refused his request for open telephone contact on the grounds that it
would cause stress for his wife. Eighteen months later. Paul has seen his
daughters three times. for just 45 minutes per visit. under the strict
supervision of their mother. On the advice of a child psychologist. Paul has
been instructed not to touch his daughters during these brief meetings. lest
he upset his ex-wife. Some of the more dramatic
cases in our club involve 'leave to remove' cases, where a mother – yes, it
is always the mother applies to take the children to live permanently in
another country. Though the official line is that there is no presumption in
favour of a mother wishing to leave the country, in fact it is extremely
difficult to prevent her doing so. After taking their
three-month-old son and moving back in with her parents. Nigel's wife applied
to move with their son to Philadelphia. where she claimed to have a wonderful
career opportunity. She had obstructed Nigel's contact before her
application. A British national, she had never worked or lived in the US, and
had no other family there. The judge overruled Nigel's objections, saying
that his wife would be distressed if forced to stay in London against her
wishes. He granted Nigel visits of two hours a day for three consecutive days
once a month. Nigel made the monthly trek to Philadelphia for six months,
sometimes to find the visits cancelled and never to enjoy one minute more
with his son than the court had ordered. But then the dream job in
Philadelphia apparently turned sour, and Nigel's ex-wife moved to Seattle.
Once there, she applied to reduce Nigel's visits from once a month to once
every three months. The English court agreed, and then transferred
jurisdiction to the courts in the state of Washington. Nigel's
visits are still fraught: someone is always present to watch him, often
videotaping his time with his daughter. The visits are prone to he
cancelled at the last minute. He has consulted lawyers in the US. who have
expressed shock and dismay at the approach of the English courts to his and
other cases. 'Is that legal? Can she do
that'.'' ask people who hear stories like Paul's and Nigel's. The answer is a
resounding 'Yes.' She can do whatever she pleases. Lesson number one for any
man in a child-cart: dispute: you are guilty until proved innocent. She can
say and do anything to put you on the defensive, and you will he on the
defensive. Meanwhile, she can he an emotionally incompetent parent, but that
is not considered material if the child is clothed, fed and sheltered. The
burden is on you to prove that your child should see you or spend more time
with you or stay the night with you. If the mother of your child decides to
close your contact, she can do so, regardless of it court order. Sure, you
can apply to court to reopen contact, get an appointment three months hence,
and a judge will probably eventually order that some contact be resumed. But
you will have missed several months of your children's lives, probably on
some minor, possibly fabricated pretext. Lesson number two is that
the court rightly considers your child's wellbeing to be paramount in all its
decisions. But that is a cloudy concept, and many judges consider the
wellbeing of your ex-wife, as the primary care-giver, to be tantamount to
that of the child. So she can say. 'He stresses me out.' and it court may
well restrict your contact with your children on that basis. Lesson number three is
that nobody besides your friends and family cares, despite this being the
most pervasive source of dissatisfaction with the family-law system. It isn't
the only problem with the system. There are genuine cases of abuse or
negligence by fathers: mothers incapacitated by drugs, alcohol, violence:
incapable mothers and fathers: difficulties in establishing paternity and the
like. But among men who have had a child with a woman to whom they are no
longer married or in a relationship with, some 90 per cent say they would
like to spend more time with their children. At the same time. 42 per cent of
children report that their mothers have tried to prevent them from having
contact with their fathers. A much higher proportion of men say this has
happened to them. Yet there is no men's movement to speak of. Talk of
fathers' rights is usually met with derision. We are seen, even by the
judiciary, as a bunch of obsessive softies who haven't managed to move on.
Society is telling us: walk away. It's not supposed to be
this way. Parliament recognised long ago that family law left little room for
divorced fathers, and sought to rectify the problem with the Children's Act
of 1989. That Act did away with the concept of custody. Instead, it defined a
series of parental responsibilities and parental rights. These are in theory shared
equally by the primary care-giver and the 'non-resident' parent. They include
the responsibility to feed, shelter and clothe the child, and provide for his
or her education, health and wellbeing. The child has it right to a
relationship with both parents, but nowhere is it minimum regime of contact
defined. The every- other-weekend-and-half-of-school-holidays formula - the
accepted standard, paltry as it is - is not part of English law. And even
that right can be trampled on by a primary care-giver (almost always it
woman), with no consequences. Why? The explanations are
murky. Some say judges want minimum hassle and maximum throughput on cases.
Who can blame them'? After all, let's say you're a judge, and you take a
reasonable and balanced decision between a father and a mother at odds over
his contact with the children. There's it good chance she will violate it,
abscond with the children, create a scene in the courtroom. However, if you
err on her side, tell the father to back off and leave them in peace, he'll
take it like a man, and everyone will shut up. No judge wants to be accused
of sexism, of prejudice, of conspiracy. So, one way to avoid problems is to
try to keep the people who cause problems out of court. i.e. placate mad
mothers, punish earnest, would-be fathers. Others believe the reflex
in favour of the mother is a legacy of political feminism. 'This isn't the
will of Parliament. but it is the will of politicians.' one MP told me. 'This
is simply an area of policy and the law that has been ceded to the women's
movement.' More likely the
explanation is inertia and defeatism. Parliament insists it can't get
involved with judicial decisions, and the judiciary says its decisions
reflect the will of Parliament. though this is demonstrably not the case.
Promotions in the judiciary depend on well-written and reasoned decisions
that cite precedent and don't make waves. Judges at the top of the family
division have a vested interest in seeing their precedents endure. So the
status quo is accepted. though most of those working in the field of family
law know it is wrong, antiquated and counterproductive. To be sure, some in the
judiciary recognise that there is a problem. The Lord Chancellor's department
issued a report earlier this year entitled 'Making Contact Work'. The very
existence of this report is an acknowledgment that contact isn't working in
Britain. The report proposed many sensible steps to improve the system,
including empowering courts to order family counselling and education for
parents who deny the importance of the other parent. It proposed considering
a California-style system of equal parenting, in which the starting point at
separation or divorce is that each parent will have equal time with and
responsibility for the children, unless there is a reason not to allow such a
regime. But even those proposals
have raised opposition. Women's groups that participated in the report
insisted that the key issue to focus on was domestic violence, and argued
against a tilt towards equal parental rights. Lastly, in the name of
protecting our children's anonymity, our family courts operate in a shell of
secrecy which rivals that of any dictatorship. Though the reason for this
secrecy is a good one, the result is what happens in any institution that is
shielded from scrutiny: abuse, arrogance and overreach. Because of these
constraints. I cannot write in detail about my own case, and must use a
pseudonym. Details of the other stories have also been changed to protect the
children. But I have been through something like Nigel's experiences, and my
son now lives in another European country. His mother is British, not a
citizen of that country, had no family ties there, and did not enjoy better
career prospects there than in Britain. She had obstructed my contact with
our son before leaving, and a court welfare officer recommended against leave
being granted. The English judge brushed that aside and granted her permission
to leave, on the grounds that she is an unstable woman who may be distressed
if forced to stay. The judge said that she might obstruct contact again, so
it was best to let her go. A total judicial cop-out. That, in a nutshell, is
our judiciary at work. The mere possibility of stress for a mother is deemed
more harmful to children than a certain reduction and possible permanent
cessation of contact with the father. Fathers, it would seem, are expendable.
This is despite a growing body of research and evidence to the contrary: it
is now widely accepted that a strong bond with both parents is the most
critical factor in a child's stability and emotional wellbeing. The lack of fairness and
equality, the financial and practical burden placed on me now, and the
consequent pain and anger are taking their toll. By disregarding fathers'
rights and emotional wellbeing, our system today is testing their commitment
beyond what can be reasonably expected. It happens all the time. That's why
so many walk away. P.S.: I haven't walked
away. I have been travelling every month to see my child. It is expensive and
disruptive, but it is the only way to see him. I am considering moving
country to be more available to my son. I shouldn't have to do that. |
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