Parental Alienation
Rugby League – Abusing the truth in its fight against Domestic Abuse
The NRL and the NSW government have recently launched an educational DVD to teach young rugby league players and male students across Australia about the negative impact of violence against women.
This campaign, although well-meaning, has been slammed by many domestic violence experts as a mis-representation of the true nature of domestic violence in this country. Many argue that such a simplistic portrayal of domestic violence will only encourage further abuse, especially amongst the young, because the whole campaign is based on the falsehood.
Although it is fairly well documented that domestic violence is a relationship dynamic, with both parties contributing to the violence and abuse over an extended period of the life of the relationship, Australian sporting codes are unfortunately ‘buying in’ to the myth that domestic abuse and violence is a unilateral phenomenon, and can somehow be stopped by simply vilifying men.
Most domestic violence has a backdrop of  abuse tactics from both the male and female in the relationship, dating back many years before the authorities may be involved.
Parental Alienation Epidemic in Australian Family Law Courts, Expert finds
Editor Note: The premise that the Julia Gillard-lead Labor Government relied upon to substantially alter the 2006 Family Law (Shared Parental Responsibility) act, and in the process remove penalties against Perjury and Knowingly False Allegations, as well as removing the Friendly Parent provision (otherwise known as the Anti-Parental Alienation provision), was the insistence, as claimed by various womens’ rights zealouts like Michael Flood and Jen McIntosh,  that False Allegations and Parental Alienation were effectively a Myth, and did not occur at all (or only seldomly occurred) in any Australian Family Law proceedings.
This naive, incorrect and in many regards disingenuous claim has been slammed by many family law professionals, including Judges and Magistrates, who claim that the bulk of the work of all jurisdictions dealing with family law proceedings today are spent on just that, dealing with False Allegations, relating to Domestic Abuse and Child Sexual Abuse, and attempting to serve the best interests of children who have been significantly alienated from their parent, due to the ulterior motives of the other parent.
Mum’s hate campaign against stepmother in custody battle at Family Court
A MOTHER has lost custody of her two young daughters after she conducted an “obsessive” campaign against their new stepmother.
Family Court judge Justice Peter Young said he suspected it was the mother, 30, who painted “bitch” on the woman’s house and wrote “die dad haters” on her own car in felt-tipped pen and then sought to blame the stepmother, 28.
The judge said the sisters, aged 10 and seven, would be better off living with their father, 29, and his new wife, because their mother “would not likely change”.
He ordered an end to the shared custody which had been going on for more than five years and said the two girls should live full-time with their father.
“I find that he is capable of a greater level of responsive behaviour and conduct than is the mother and that is one of the considerations I have evaluated,” Justice Young said.Caught between warring parents, the sisters had to “tiptoe” around both households for fear of upsetting anyone.
Israel Takes Steps To Reduce Discrimination Against Divorced Fathers
Jerusalem — January 20, 2012 …. For many divorced fathers in Israel, the declaration yesterday by Israel Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman that divorced parents must now share custody of children, may have come too late. Neeman has accepted recommendations by the Schnit Committee that joint parental custody be ordered in divorce cases involving young children, which the law defines as those up to age 6. Until now, most divorced fathers became visitors, being limited to seeing their children only a few hours a week.
As the new law comes into affect, thousands of dads in Israel would have lost any opportunity of fatherhood due to the fact that their children have already grown up or that their children suffer from PAS – Parental Alienation Syndrome. With PAS the children become alienated against the father as the mother has pushed him away and brainwashed the children that he is of no worth, or perhaps even bad for whatever reason she creates.
Mum loses custody to her child’s alleged abuser
Editor: Anyone who understands the Family Law act would realise that we are likely not being given the full story here – see below. This sounds like a typical Caroline Overington beat-up, except for the fact that we have a new journalist in this instance who is likely to be selectively reporting the facts.
One has to wonder why a Judge would give sole custody to a father, if the only facts of the case are as reported in this story. There must be much more to this story than this journalist is letting on, especially with regard to the mother’s parenting abilities, her own possible child abuse behaviours, and perhaps some serious instances of parental alienation or false allegations. Who knows, but what is certain is that there is much more to this than what this news article claims. In any case, if anyone can point me to the actual judgment or provide F4E any further information on this case it would be appreciated.
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Shared care dead as mother stands firm on no access
A QUEENSLAND father has been banned from having any contact with his five-year-old daughter until she reaches 18 after the Family Court accepted that the child’s mother would “destroy” the relationship rather than agree to shared care.
In a decision that suggests the “shared care” law introduced by the Howard government was effectively dead, a full bench of the Family Court said “the mother would ignore any order for contact” and, as a result, it was pointless to order her to co-operate.
Shared care of children after divorce was a policy goal of the previous government, but the law is now being rolled back, with key changes to the Family Law Act (1975) passing through the Senate this week.
Under the old law, mothers were sent to prison or lost custody of children when they refused to allow them to have contact with their father. While this is still possible, the full bench of the court has now said that in some cases there is nothing it can do.
The full bench ruled on the matter after a father, known as Mr Summerby, appealed against a 90-page judgment by a Brisbane federal magistrate, Keith Wilson, which effectively ended his relationship with his daughter.
Mr Wilson agreed that the loss of the girl’s relationship with her father “would be distressful in the short term and may also be emotionally damaging to her in the long term”.
Pregnant women continue to smoke & drink, study shows
Editor: The relevance of the below article to the topic of this blog, for those who may not see the connection, is to emphasise the unfortunate circumstances in this country where an enormous amount of resources are being targeted against an entire gender (men), in the name of preventing child abuse, while the most prevalent abusers of children (being single mothers, as represented by all Crime Reporting bodies in Australia), are being effectively ignored and in many cases encouraged.
If one was to take a results-based appraisal of all the forms of child abuse in this country, including abortion, paternity fraud, substance abuse during pregnancy, child abductions, child neglect, parental alienation, denial of contact with father, relocation away from father, and all other forms of abuse, then one can only conclude that there is something fundamentally wrong with Australia’s action against child abuse, which is selective at best, but at worst is simply an illusion of protection that in truth protects the vast majority of child abuse culprits by ignorance, complicity, and government support.
Take our Poll:
Should it be illegal for pregnant women to drink or smoke?
- Yes, a child's health should be the only consideration (58%, 42 Votes)
- No, a woman has the right to choose herself (32%, 23 Votes)
- I am not certain. Both children and women have equal rights (10%, 8 Votes)
Total Voters: 73
Loading ...Article Start: WEALTHY, older women are most likely to drink during pregnancy while poorer, young mums-to-be have the highest rates of smoking.
Despite repeated health warnings, nearly 40 per cent of pregnant women drink alcohol and 18 per cent light up, an Australian Institute of Family Studies report says.
Mum pleads guilty in boy-behind-wall case
A US woman who authorities say hid her young son, often in a crawl space, for nearly two years as part of a custody dispute has been ordered to spend two years on probation without more jail time.
Shannon Wilfong, 32, pleaded guilty yesterday to five misdemeanours, including obstructing a police officer.
Wilfong was sentenced to $US1500 ($1470) in fines and 30 days in jail – a judge credited her with time served – on that count and fines of $US100 on each of four counts of unlawful interference with child visitation.
Wilfong’s mother, Diane Dobbs, also pleaded guilty to obstruction and escaped additional jail time when the judge credited her with the 12 days she’d already been behind bars. Dobbs, 53, was fined $US1000.
A prosecutor said the case-closing plea deals came with the blessing of the boy’s father, Michael Chekevdia, Wilfong’s one-time boyfriend.
Canada: Dads fight to see their kids
While it’s a day all about dad, some fathers aren’t looking forward to Father’s Day, as they won’t be able to spend it with their children. Dads like Brad Corbett, of London, Ontario, have little or no contact with their children due to strained custody situations.
During the separation process, Corbett’s ex-wife had him charged with assault in order to stop his access to their children, then nine and 12. He believes that she had been coached by a lawyer to do so as a tool to ensure she’d receive full custody. “It was well orchestrated systematically,” he explains. “She had been to a lawyer and had me charged with assault. It didn’t matter if it was a false allegation.”
Though the university professor had no pattern of such behaviour or record before or since, Corbett has faced financial problems, feared for his job and had his relationship with his children damaged in the case of the younger, and decimated in case of the older.
Molly Murphy says that this is a situation that happens all too often. She’s written a book illuminating three fathers’ struggles to gain access and regain their dignity in Winner Take All (Dog Ear Publishing, available nationally). Murphy was prompted to write the book when she heard so many woeful tales of men seeking access to their children and having their reputations and finances ruined. A divorcee herself, she’s experienced the problems with Canada’s family law system personally. “I’ve witnessed it and it’s the worst crime I’d seen in my life,” says Murphy.
“Families are set up to fight each other (in divorce). They pay lawyers all kinds of money – from $250 to $500 per hour – and a lot of them lose their income to lawyers, and then (in the case of fathers) have no more money left to fight for custody,” she explains.
Deciding she couldn’t participate in such a travesty when encouraged to go for the family assets, full custody and full support by her own lawyer, Murphy decided to share custody with her ex-husband and that they’d sit down to discuss the children’s financial needs on an ongoing basis. “Not everyone can do that but its best for the children if you can. It truly puts them first.”
Murphy affirms that false claims of assault are sometimes used as weapons in the divorce wars. “False claims of abuse happen; it’s sad but they do happen.”
Corbett has been active in Canadian Equal Parenting Council. CEPC is a national group, according to president Glenn Cheriton, that is trying to bring balance to the system. “We are working to make it (the system) more rational and responsible,” explains Cheriton.
Murphy agrees, “The pendulum has swung from women having no rights to women having all the rights. We have to balance that out.”
Women get full custody in most cases, but Murphy feels that joint custody is the way to go, when possible. “Shared parenting should be assumed. When a child has both a mother and a father, why would one get them, unless the family decides it should be that way because of work schedules or something? And when there are allegations of abuse, make sure they are valid.”
To help parting couples work together for the best interest of the children, and the family as a whole, Murphy feels the solution is to make the system less adversarial. “Get rid of the lawyers and get mediators in there.”
Children are the ones who would win in the long run, and making sure kids are happy and well-cared for is what Father’s Day is all about.
http://www.torontosun.com/2011/06/09/dads-fight-to-see-their-kids
Fatherlessness on a grand scale – an open letter to Julia Gillard on the 2011 Family Violence bill
From an email sent to Fathers4Equality:
I would just like to thank Fathers4Equality for all the information and support your group has made available to me over the years, especially during the times when I felt completely dissolutioned and abandoned by the family law system in this country.
Despite the hardships along the way, and for the one year when I was denied contact with my son because of false allegations of child sexual abuse, I now am happy to say that I have a very happy, co-operative and child-focussed shared parenting arrangement with my ex-wife, and have done so now for a number of years.
I however have recently been reading the news that the Gillard Labor government is set to replace the 2006 Shared Parenting laws with a set of malicious, archaic and bizarre set of laws that will presume all separated fathers as being violent and abusive, and from what I have read the legal test will now be subjective, Â meaning that even provable facts will no longer be a defence for fathers.
I write the following with a strong sense of despair, not for myself, because I now have an unshakable arrangement that both my ex and I, and especially our son, wants to continue.
My despair however is for the next generation of Australian children who will lose contact with their fathers’ because this out-of-touch government has chosen to replace Shared Parenting laws that encouraged mediation and co-operation, with laws that will encourage acrimony and false allegations.
I am actually dumb-founded that the proposed new family laws have ZERO protection for children who have been subject to parental alienation, and ZERO protection for fathers who have been the victims of false allegations. One has to ask what type of family laws they are expected to be when they don’t protect children and fathers, as well as mothers?
I am quite saddened because I personally experienced the overwhelming discrimination faced by fathers in family law as it was, and things will now only get significantly worse with these new laws.
As I said with my case, I have a very co-operative relationship with my ex, and this has been the case since our court case was finalised. However, I too was subject to the most sinister allegations of child sexual abuse by my ex, and I am still at a loss to understand why she made those allegations to begin with. Over a chat recently, she told me that she regretted that episode, and she made reference to being ‘pushed’ by the independent children’s lawyer to make the allegations she made.
None of this makes sense to me, as I still cannot fathom how someone can make such sinister allegations that they knew as un-thruths, or should reasonably have known, but what I have learned over the years is that false allegations are by no means the exception in family law, and I have since read possibly hundreds of cases of  eerily similar stories to mine.
In any case, the allegations against me were roundly condemned by almost all the experts called in Court, from DoCs, doctors, psychologists, the family counsellor and others, to a point where my ex was condemned by the Judge for not being completely truthful in her testimony, or otherwise having developed irrational beliefs. The Judge lamented that our child was needlessly paraded from one doctor to another, in an effort to find someone who agreed with my ex’s allegations.
I say ‘almost all the experts condemned the allegations’, because the one exception was the independent children’s lawyer, a most malicious women whom I will never forget for her breath-taking personal comments to me prior to the start of our hearing, and for her relentless demands in Court that I not be allowed to see the child again unsupervised.
This woman was however forced to admit in Court, only after being repeatedly challenged by the Judge, that there was absolutely no evidence that any child abuse ever happened, but she kept on defending her demands by arguing that there was “no evidence that child abuse did not occur.” (In fact there was abundant evidence that nothing occurred….but I will not digress)
I recall like it was yesterday the first thing this malicious woman said to me as I introduced myself to her on the morning of the hearing: “I will not support any over-night contact with you because it will reduce the mother’s child support”, she said.
When I responded by saying: “What has that got to do with the family law act?”, she said, “Everything, as far as I am concerned!”
To cut a long and painful episode short, I have put all this behind us now and my son has excelled in everything from school to sports since then, with both my meaningful support and likewise from his mother.
Our shared-parenting arrangement is rock-solid, and my son is a great testament to how two people who have everything in common when it comes to their child, will make it work given the right laws being in place.
However, with these laws changing, I see an end to stories like mine, because the influence of these malicious persons, who seem to be present in one capacity or another in almost ever family law case, will eventually win out, forcing an outcome which may be ideologically in keeping with their hate-inspired gender views, but completely inconsistent with the charter of their profession, which should be to protect the best interests of the child.
Because of the likes of Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Attorney General Robert McLelland, and every member of Parliament who have so far supported passage of the Family Law Legislation Amendment (Family Violence) Bill 2011, family law will no longer encourage co-operation between separated parents. It will once again be about winner-takes-all, and this will bring out the worst in most parents, at the expense of our children.
With the Gillard government removing any penalties for false allegations, with its redefinition of abuse to include events that have never occurred or not likely to occur, where even a side-ways look will now be considered domestic violence, and with the drastic slashing of funding to Family Relationship Centres, it is clear that being a decent and loving father is no longer good enough in this country, because the presumption that stands is that separated fathers are violent, and no amount of evidence will dispute this.
…and sadly, the malicious anti-male zealots in privileged positions, like the Independent Children’s Lawyer in my case, Miss Jane Weber of the NSW Legal Aid Commission, will now be able to systemically abuse the unprotected victims of the family law system, without the necessary checks and balances that have been so desperately needed in the most exploited area of law in this country.
If fatherlessness on a grand scale is the goal of this legislation Miss Gillard, then it sure has the makings of success, but no doubt we will one day look back at another stolen generation and ask ourselves, “how did we let it happen again?”
