Domestic Violence
One Rule for Politicians, another rule for Separated Fathers
Extract: Unless you have been living under a rock, you would be well acquainted with the saga of Australian Labor MP Craig Thomson, whom Fair Work Australia has recently found to have misused his Union credit cards to pay for the services of prostitutes, amongst other misuses of union funds.
In the Australian legal system, people are supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, however the evidence against Mr Thomson is by most standards overwhelming. Fair Work Australia has found a striking coincidence between the use of the credit cards in Mr Thomson’s possession, at least one signature on the brothel credit card dockets, phone calls between Mr Thomson and the brothel, and a number of other highly suspect pieces of evidence that in my opinion would be highly unlikely to lead to any other conclusion, other than that Mr Thomson himself actively sought and paid for these services, with union funds.
According to Prime Minister Julia Gillard, politicians SHOULD HAVE a presumption of innocence, even if the facts of their guilt are overwhelming. As such she has steadfastly defended Mr Thomson, claiming that she thought he was innocent and that she would not expel him from the party. In response to media pressure and the prevailing community belief that the evidence stands on its own, she finally relented and expelled him from the Labor party, while still claiming he was innocent, and still accepting his vote in Parliament. The thinking behind this is obvious, as Gillard is acting in her own self interest, damn the ethics at play. But any way you play it, Mr Thomson has received remarkable leniency in this sorry saga, even having his legal fees in defence of these allegations paid for by the Labor party.
However, as many Australian fathers would be well aware by now, Julia Gillard is quite selective as to how she applies the principle of a presumption of innocence.
As in abundantly clear from Gillard’s recent Family Violence amendments to the Family Law act, she believes that even though Craig Thomson should be presumed innocent, should keep his job and should receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in free legal funds to fight his case in Court , separated fathers however do not get such privileges, and in fact should be considered the ‘HAVE NOTS’ in application of the principle of a presumption of innocence.
Not only do separated fathers lose their house, the majority of their life insurance and all other assets, but in most cases, as presumably intended by these amendments, they lose meaningful contact with their children, even if they are completely innocent of any wrongdoing. They are also in many cases prevented from accessing Legal Aid, and certainly never get their legal fees paid for by an organisation for apparently no reason.
Read the full article on Ezine4males.com
DIVORCE LAWS: Family Court loathed for the vast harm it does
The Americans have a well-known saying for politicians, “It’s the economy, stupid!” — meaning that what matters most for people are economic issues. It’s false.
What matters most to people, and most affects their well-being, are close relationships, and above all family relationships. These are areas where politicians and bureaucrats can do only limited good but almost limitless harm, and huge harm is being done.
Here are some facts regarding Australia today. If there’s a marriage or relationship break-up involving children, and custody or access is in dispute, the parties must submit to an inquisition by Family Court social-workers or the latters’ pet psychologists regarding their past behaviour towards and in the presence of the children.
A major purpose of the exercise is to identify “family violence” by the male, with this being defined as any behaviour “actual or threatened” which causes any member of the family “to fear for, or reasonably to be apprehensive about, his or her personal well-being or safety”.
The term “well-being” is infinitely elastic, and meant to be, as are the other catch-all Family Court categories of “family violence”, such as “psychological violence/abuse”, “emotional violence/abuse”, and “controlling behaviours”.
What about the men? White Ribbon, men and violence
What about the men? White Ribbon, men and violence: A response to Dr Michael Flood by Men’s Health Australia
The White Ribbon Foundation is an organisation that works to prevent male violence towards women – a goal that is extremely worthy and worth supporting. The White Ribbon website states that “all forms of violence are unacceptable,” however in 2009 the organisation issued a document to it’s male Ambassadors which used erroneous ‘facts and statistics’ to downplay, diminish and report incorrectly about male victims of violence. These Ambassadors use federal government funding to take the White Ribbon message into regional, rural and remote communities. These significant errors could have led the Ambassadors, and through them the general public via federal funding, to be misled about the nature and dynamics of interpersonal violence in Australia.
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.
Fraud in Australia’s plan to reduce violence against women
The 2009 Australian project a ‘Time for Action: The National Council’s Plan for Australia to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children, 2009-2021′, was approved for implementation by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG). The Plan, which is split into several parts, puts forth recommendations for new legislation, changes to judicial processes, requests for funding and ideas for domestic programs targeted at reducing domestic and sexual violence against women. The advisory council has some powers to implement programs through the Office of Women among other agencies, but much of what the government funded program calls for requires approval by Parliament.
The entire premise of the National Plan was underpinned by the belief in this statement:“While a small proportion of men are victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, the majority of people who experience this kind of violence are women in a home, at the hands of men they know.”[27-pg1] But a quick examination of the statistics and data shows a much different picture to the rather sweeping indictment of Australian men the National Council paints.
‘We don’t care about Family Violence against Men’ – Service providers betray their Charter
Editors Note: A F4E member recently received an email from Relationships Australia, presumably because he was a client of their service at some point during his separation.
This email highlighted a new program made available at Relationships Australia – Westmead NSW, called “Family safety – Women’s Choice and Change”.
Given this member’s history, it comes as no surprise that he was infuriated by this email, and has written back to Relationships Australia challenging them on why such services are evidently not available for male victims of abuse.
This member was in fact a victim of abuse and violence from his ex-wife, and has complained bitterly in the past at the lack of services available for male victims of abuse, and the completely dismissive disinterest in ‘male pain’ as he calls it, by organisations established to protect victims of abuse.
This man eventually won full custody of his young child, but only after the child was seriously injured by the mother. Up until that point, this man claims to have been criminalised by a system that only supported and believed women.
Below is his email to Relationships Australia.
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”.
Labor’s Male-Hate anti-Family Law amendments become LAW
Knowingly false allegations of child abuse will now become a legitimate reason to deny children any contact with their father in the event of separation, under controversial new laws passed by parliament today.
The government has made changes to family laws compelling family law courts to consider all allegations of family violence, even irrational, malicious and knowingly dishonest allegations.
The law rolls back reforms made under the Howard government that encouraged shared parenting responsibilities.
The legislation also aims to change the definition of family violence and abuse under the act to include a host of alleged behaviours, that are now to be determined by what the alleged victim claims to have feared, rather than what occurred, was witnessed or can be proven.
It will allow the court to deny contact, in most cases with the children’s father, based on nothing more than a claim that the mother “fears” abuse, whether or not there is any history of abuse, or whether any threatening behaviour occurred or is likely to occur.
