Child Contact
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
Couple lose court battle to contact grandchildren
GRANDPARENTS who resorted to litigation to see their beloved grandchildren after their son and his wife cut off all relations have lost a court fight to regain contact.
In what a federal magistrate said was an ”unusual” and ”tragic” case, the grandparents sought court orders to re-establish contact with the two boys, aged 10 and six.
Failing agreement with the parents about seeing the children, the grandparents wanted court orders that included the grandchildren being able to contact them, as well as times set for meeting at Christmas and birthdays.
The relationship between the adults began to slide when the grandmother made a catty comment at the hairdresser’s about her daughter-in-law.
The comment got back, sparking tensions that drew in other members of the extended family.
Sole Custody and Another Toddler Murder – Mother’s Boyfriend Faces Court
THE grave of toddler Brendan-Junior Nathan Williams is marked with a small white cross, colouring textas, toy cars, a glass butterfly and a picture of a bubbly little boy with an infectious smile.
A love heart and two hand prints are pressed into the fresh soil that marks his final resting place. Brendan, 2, was buried last Tuesday, almost two months after he died on January 15 from injuries.
Today, a 23-year-old man – the de facto husband of Brendan’s mother – who was not the child’s biological father, faces court charged with murdering Brendan at the family’s Melrose Park home.
Police arrested him on Saturday but have released few details about their allegations.
They have sealed off a converted-garage room at the home, where Brendan lived with his mother, her boyfriend and two caged pythons.
Brendan was rushed to Flinders Medical Centre in a car by his mother and her partner about 5am on January 14, three hours after the couple returned home from a southern suburbs hotel.
There’s no such thing as a good divorce: but biased SMH Journalist beats the same drum
Editor: The following study is quite interesting, but in some of its finding is quite out-of-step with almost all previous studies.
The author of this article, Adele Horin, also puts an odd twist to this particular study, and I suspect creates a misleading impression, especially in the closing, that sole parenting is the optimal arrangement for children of divorce, even when the divorce is amicable, which is in fact quite contrary to what the Amato study found.
This is not surprising given the well-worn path of previous articles by Horin, who seems to obsess along the same lines, repeatedly, which I suspect says a lot more about Horin’s personal ideology than it actually says about the research itself.
In any case, one should more accurately interpret this study as suggesting, contrary to the foundation of the current family law act (2011), and in direct opposition to the shrill of many women’s rights advocates, that “conflict” during divorce does not impact children anywhere near the extent that the actual divorce does, nor the resulting loss of one parent. As such, conflictual divorces should play a lesser role in determining whether Shared Parenting should be provided for in the event of divorce, as divorce and sole custody are the two most significant stressors that children face, even in the face of benign and often temporary conflict.
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.
Australia’s Shared Parenting laws finding favour in Britain
FIERCE debate over the success and safety of Australia’s shared parenting laws has been exported to Britain.
Australian-based fathers groups, which are advising British counterparts, yesterday welcomed public comments from Britain’s Minister for Children and Families Tim Loughton that his government was considering “legislative and non-legislative” means to promote shared parenting as part of a broad family law shake-up.
Mr Loughton also distanced himself from the recommendations of a government-commissioned review of family law that cited problems with the Howard government’s 2006 reforms to argue against shared parenting legislation. Lone Fathers Association of Australia president Barry Williams backed the British government stance, which goes against the key recommendation of the Family Justice Review chaired by businessman David Norgrove.
In his final report published late last year, Mr Norgrove said “thorough and detailed evidence from Australia showed the damaging consequences for many children” when courts compelled them to spend equal time with both parents.
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Jen McIntosh: Child Abuse by stealth – flawed research and ideology contaminating family law
Mis-represented, poorly structured, open to observer bias, inaccurate, agenda driven, pseudo-science. These are some of the apt descriptions of the recently released guidelines on shared parenting recommendations for toddlers, which attempt to contradict volumes of research, dating back decades, from hundreds of independent researchers, all who have found quite the opposite.
I would encourage all to treat these guidelines as policy statements from an ultra-left leaning political party, rather than well-researched recommendations, given that it has all the hallmarks of a well-meaning, but recklessly determined, and ultimately unsubstantiated piece of political folly.
Jen McIntosh, a self-confessed anti-shared care Zealot
The main protagonist behind these guidelines, Dr. Jennifer McIntosh, is adourned with an esteemed salutation, but don’t be fooled into concluding that this woman is an impartial researcher, or a researcher who is promoting the welfare of children, for she is doing none of the above.
Jen McIntosh is a lobbyist first, and a social researcher last, given the pseudo-science she frequently promotes as the foundation of her anti-shared parenting campaigning.
Shared custody a mistake for the under-2s, says Lobbyist Researcher
Controversial: 'sleeping is stressful, but not daycare'.
SEPARATED PARENTS should not share custody of babies or toddlers under two, according to controversial guidelines released this week by a national infant welfare group, which seem to contradict decades of research and conclude the exact opposite.
”Prior to the age of two years, overnight time away from the primary care-giver should be avoided, unless necessary” according to the Australian Association for Infant Mental Health’s ”guidelines for protecting the very young child’s sense of comfort and security”.
The guidelines recommend that non-custodial parents, nine out of 10 of whom are fathers, should instead see children under two during the day, up to three times a week, gradually phasing in overnight visits after the second birthday. Families fighting custody battles in the Family Court should not share custody until the child is three, according to the guidelines.
Court makes remarkable Apology to Malicious Mother who poisoned children against their Father
Editor: The below article is about a disgraceful act by Australia’s Family Law Courts, to completely destroy any shred of child protection provisions left in Australia’s Family Law act, by making an unprecedented apology to a malicious mother who has alienation her children against their father.
This is the Court, at its highest levels, over-turning a sitting Magistrates decision and rewarding a Mother who has engaged in Parental Alienation to an extreme degree, for no apparent legally justified reason.
You have to seriously ask why the Family Law act was amended by the Gillard Labor government recently when the Judiciary has already interpreted out any provisions designed to promote a child’s meaningful relationship with both parents.
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”.
