http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/ en-us Nucleus CMS v3.2 © Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news//nucleus/nucleus2.gif http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/ http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/index.php?itemid=186 Family Law Week
By Charlotte Dyer, Sophie McCrum, Ruth Thomas,
Rachael Ward and Stephanie Wookey,

Cardiff Law School

Introduction
As part of Cardiff University’s Undergraduate Research Programme, we conducted a small study to discover legal professionals’ opinions on how to promote and enforce contact between children and non-resident parents. We have also surveyed the general public and we hope that data from both surveys will be used to form the basis of further research. The project was supervised by Professor Gillian Douglas and Dr Leanne Smith of Cardiff Law School.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank David Chaplin at Family Law Week for enabling subscribers to contribute to our research by completing our online questionnaires, and to thank all those who very kindly took the time to do so.

Background
Under s.8 of the Children Act 1989 the court may make a contact order requiring the resident parent to allow contact with a person specified therein. This is usually the non-resident parent. A breach of such an order constitutes contempt of court and may be sanctioned through a fine or imprisonment of the resident parent. Alternatively, in some cases, residence of the child may be transferred to the other parent.

There has been much dissatisfaction with the current law (see, for example, the report of the Children Act Sub-Committee of the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Board on Family Law, Making Contact Work, 2002). There has been criticism of the use of imprisonment, branding it as a sanction which may be detrimental to the child’s welfare and thus running counter to the paramountcy principle. Another criticism of the sanctions is that they are rarely used and, therefore, ineffective.

As a result the Children and Adoption Act 2006 will amend the Children Act 1989 to introduce two new sanctions. Section 11J introduces the sanction of unpaid work where the court is satisfied, beyond all reasonable doubt, that a breach has occurred and that there is no ‘reasonable excuse’ for the breach. In addition, s110 introduces financial compensation for loss caused by the breach, such as the cost of a missed holiday.

Contact activity directions and conditions will also be introduced (ss. 11A-G) with the aim of facilitating contact. These include parenting classes and other specified activities such as counselling or anger management courses. Contact activity directions will be made only whilst a court is considering making a contact order. Conditions will be imposed where a final contact order is made.

Findings from the study
We obtained responses from 91 practitioners (54 solicitors, 26 barristers and 8 legal executives). One of our research aims was to discover whether legal professionals view the current range of available sanctions as adequate. Most of our respondents (84.3%) felt they were not. Seven respondents specifically stated that more sanctions were needed, whilst another seven felt that the current sanctions were too extreme. One participant commented that ‘imprisonment seems likely to simply stoke resentment, and can have a disproportionate impact on the imprisoned parent and the child’. Twenty-six respondents stated that sanctions were simply not used enough, with one commenting that enforcement was ‘an absolute joke’. Another solicitor stated that, in over twenty-seven years of experience, he/she had seen only two orders enforced.

In light of the new amendments being made to the law, we wanted to learn what professionals thought the aim of such sanctions should be, e.g. to support, punish or deter. The most popular response was to ‘deter’ breach. Next was to ‘support’ parents, to ensure meaningful contact as ‘their lives go on long after the court proceedings have ended’. This was followed by a substantial proportion stating that it was a mixture of ‘all three’ and that which was the most appropriate would depend on individual circumstances.

Interestingly, when asked whether the new sanctions would serve as adequate deterrents 46.4% responded in the negative. This may be linked to the view, noted above, that sanctions are rarely enforced, so that the threat of punishment is almost non-existent and the result is that resident parents ‘know this and therefore act accordingly.’

Despite this view, there was an almost equal split between those who thought that financial compensation will be an effective sanction and those who didn’t. Similarly, there was a 56:44 split between those who thought that unpaid work would be successful in practice and those who didn’t. Some commented that if harsher sanctions, such as imprisonment, were ineffective, half-hearted measures such as this would also not work. Others felt they may reinforce an ‘adversarial attitude’.

With regard to financial compensation, most respondents (60.7%) believed that parents would be unable to afford to comply with this sanction. It was also felt it may ‘indirectly cause further hardship to children’. Many agreed (52.8%) that unpaid work would not be practical for many parents due to, for example, childcare/employment commitments. As a result, it was felt probable that this measure will not commonly be utilised.

“Parents in Contact Disputes are Unlikely to be Able to Comply”

Graph: Parents in contact disputes are unlikely to be able to comply

We asked whether respondents thought that an interim stage of mediation might be beneficial before resorting to sanctions. A large majority (69.3%) felt that it would be. One theme that emerged from the comments was that mediation might better inform the parties on how to resolve their issues and help them to ‘work together to focus on a way forward’. However, many respondents who believed it would not be beneficial considered that the parents would just be too hostile to consider mediation and they ‘are usually past that stage when they enter a solicitor’s office.’ Others were concerned that it would just result in further delay which would not be in the best interests of the child.

When asked whether they thought that contact activity directions and conditions would fulfil their purpose of facilitating contact, the vast majority of professionals said that the only way that these provisions could work is if the parties were willing to abide by them, and make contact work. In cases where the parties are hostile towards one another and one or both parents are ‘determined to frustrate the situation,’ it was felt that the provisions are likely to have little effect.

One question that arose was how such activities should be funded. Forty per cent of professionals felt that they should be means-tested as this was the ‘‘fairest’ option. A significant proportion (38.3%) felt that it should be the responsibility of both parents since the children are the responsibility of both the parents. Far fewer felt that they should be fully funded by the State (13.6%) or solely by the non-resident parent (7.4%).

How Activities Named in Activity Directions/Conditions Should Be Funded

Graph: How activities named in activity directions/conditions should be funded

Conclusion
In conclusion, several problems have been highlighted with the current law, as well as with the new amendments. Sixty percent of the legal professionals who responded felt that the law does not strike the right balance between the interests of resident parents, non-resident parents and their children. The most common reason for this view was that the non-resident parent often gets ‘a raw deal’ in family proceedings. Others criticised the fact that resident parents can easily sabotage the process through, for example, causing delays. Several of our respondents were in favour of a presumption of shared residence.

As far as the new law is concerned, many respondents felt that financial constraints on the parents may simply prevent courts from imposing the new sanctions.

The overall message that emerged from our study was that, in the opinion of legal professionals, measures to enforce contact orders are likely to remain of limited value until the underlying problems relating to the promotion of contact are resolved.]]> News http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/index.php?itemid=186 Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:58:32 +0000 http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/index.php?itemid=185
Monday September 8th 2008, 10am Newcastle Quayside Crown Court

After appearing before Newcastle magistrates on August 15th Tyne Bridge protester Simon Anderton has been given a crown court date for his pleas on 8/9/08, an extra public order charge has also been added to his case.

A date will then be set for the full trial if he enters not guilty pleas.

Rffj will be calling for full support for Simon's trial by jury in Newcastle when the date is set, probably some time early in 2009.

]]> News http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/index.php?itemid=185 Sat, 16 Aug 2008 23:58:52 +0000 http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/index.php?itemid=184 By Daily Mail Reporter
15th August 2008
Comments

A protester dressed as batman forced the closure of one of Britain's busiest roads this morning after he climbed onto a gantry.

The stunt caused rush hour traffic to ground to a halt on the M25 between junctions 14 and 15.

Holidaymakers heading to Heathrow Airport were among those caught up in long tailbacks after four lanes of the M25 were closed.

The protester has been named as Geoffrey Hibbert - a 48-year-old computer engineer.

Mr Hibbert began his protest at 7am, claiming he had not seen his daughter since last summer.

After climbing onto the gantry he unfurled a fathers rights banner and displayed pictures of his eight-year-old daughter on the anti-clockwise carriageway, forcing police to close the motorway.

Mr Hibbert, from Farnborough, Hants., has been told by police that they will forcibly end his protest if he continues to refuse to come down.

However, he insists he will stay there all day.

Mr Hibbert said he has not seen his daughter Chyann since his former partner left him, and despite taking the matter to court he has not been able to get access to the schoolgirl who lives on the Isle of Wight.'My daughter is my life,' he said. 'I cannot described how not being able to see her makes me feel.

'Chyann is eight-and-a-half years old and I haven't seen her since August 12 last year when she was taken from me.

'If I had done that I would be in prison for kidnap but my ex-partner can do it and it's fine. Where is the justice?'

Ron Reed, a friend of Mr Hibert, said: 'I've just spoken to him, he's okay and he's doing it for his daughter.

'He's been driven to desperation, he's been through all the courts to get access to his daughter and it's cost him £27,000.

'He last saw her in August last year and he's only spoken to her once.

'The courts are so geared to the mother, the father gets no justice and that means the kids don't get justice.'

The affected section is on the anti-clockwise carriageway near the M4 turn-off for Heathrow.

The Highways Agency is warning drivers to expect delays of up to 90 minutes with traffic jams stretching back to junction 18.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: 'We were alerted at 7am by a man on the gantry of the M25 near junction 14 at Hillingdon.

'The clockwise carriageway is open as normal but the anti-clockwise carriageway is open with lane closures.

'We don't negotiate with people in these circumstance but will endeavour to speak to the man and encourage him to come down safely given the position he is in.'
]]> News http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/index.php?itemid=184 Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:19:00 +0000 http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/index.php?itemid=183 Theage.com.au
Adele Horin
August 13, 2008



A DYING man has been told by the Family Court that he may leave a "time capsule", consisting of a letter and DVD, for the 11-year-old daughter he has not seen for five years. The main purpose is to exonerate the girl for her father's death.

The girl has consistently expressed a wish that "her father was dead", the court was told. The man, who has terminal liver cancer, has as little as six to 12 months to live.

The court's family consultant has expressed concern for the girl's emotional health in light of the vehement remarks she has made about her father over years.

The girl's lawyer, Duncan Holmes, said: "While wishing your father dead might be a typical childish remark, in this case the little girl's wish is going to come true, quite quickly. In the circumstances, you have to do what you can."

The girl was three when her parents separated in 2000. The trial judge, Justice Le Poer Trench, said the mother was "permeated with hatred for the father" and was unwilling to foster the relationship between father and daughter.
In 2002, the court ordered that the father be allowed regular phone contact, and be able to send letters and gifts. The parents were ordered to attend counselling.

The girl last saw her father in December 2003. He applied in 2006 to see her every second weekend and half the school holidays. But, according to Mr Holmes, the case had "meandered through the court for 2½ years until it clicked into gear after his diagnosis of inoperable liver cancer".

Mr Holmes said the child had expressed hatred of her father from a young age. Yet the court records showed there was no abuse or serious violence.

Mr Holmes said the mother had not believed her ex-husband was dying, and it had been necessary to bring his doctor to court to give his diagnosis.

The court has said the father should provide the letter and DVD to Mr Holmes, who would check it to ensure it was suitable, containing, for example, nothing that disparaged the mother. The time capsule will be lodged with the court and the girl will be told how to access it.

Mr Holmes said the court had also made orders to attempt to set up a last meeting, but he held little hope it would proceed. He said it was rare for a court to go to such lengths to allow a father "to convey his love to his daughter".]]> News http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/index.php?itemid=183 Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:27:25 +0000 http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/index.php?itemid=182 Mail
By Erin Pizzey
29th July 2008

Comment
Harriet Harman recently made a leaden attempt at self-deprecating humour. In response to a House of Commons question about her leadership ambitions, she said that she could not possibly become Prime Minister because, if she did, then the nation’s airports would be filled with men trying to flee the country.

The joke caused bewildered looks rather than laughs, partly because of her lack of comic timing, but more importantly because there is nothing funny about her aggressively feminist agenda, which treats men as either second-class citizens or a menace to society.

Harman may try to raise a titter by playing on her reputation as a hardline women’s rights campaigner. But, in reality, men would be right to shudder if she were to seize the reins of power.

Throughout her political career, Ms Harman has promoted the extreme feminist cause.

She recently introduced an outrageously misnamed ‘Equality Bill’, which actually proposed to give legal sanction to overt discrimination against men in job recruitment.

The scheme was dressed up as an attempt to combat prejudice against women in the workplace, but in reality made anti-male bias acceptable.

Now comes an even more sinister move. Yesterday, Ms Harman — who, worryingly, is acting Prime Minister during Gordon Brown’s summer holiday — set out new proposals that may lead to a change in the law in cases of murder involving domestic violence.

As she revealed, she has embarked on a consultation process to decide whether victims of domestic violence who kill their partners should be allowed to plead provocation where they claim to be living in fear of future attacks.

At present, the defence of provocation can be used only when an individual kills during a sudden loss of self-control — during a fight, for example.

Under Ms Harman’s scheme, however, cold-blooded murder could be tolerated under British law for the first time, as long as the killer can convince a court she felt in long-term danger from her partner.

Now, I have been a supporter of women’s rights all my life. In 1971, I founded the first women’s refuge in the country, which led to the creation of a nationwide network offering shelter for victims of domestic violence.

And through that experience, as well as my own upbringing at the hands of abusive parents, I know what a terrifying problem domestic violence can be.

But it is precisely because of my desire to protect the vulnerable that I am so opposed to Ms Harman’s absurd new plan, which is not only an affront to the basic morality of our society, but also a ridiculously one-sided, misogynistic, simplistic and dangerous response to the issue.

Indeed, as with so many of her other forays into policy-making, it is driven more by feminist ideology than compassion.

Effectively, what Harman and the ultra-feminist lobby want is a licence for women to kill.

For thousands of years, one of the pillars of Judaeo-Christian civilisation has been the ethical injunction, ‘Thou shalt not kill’.

But now, radical female modernisers think that this moral edifice can be pulled down and replaced with a perverse new moral code which holds that women can murder as long as their sense of victimhood is sufficiently powerful.

If this plan is enacted, we will no longer have absolute justice in this country. Instead, our courts will have to use a carefully calibrated measure of female grievance against which to judge the darkest of all crimes.

Only in the warped mindset of feminist radicals should we protect the vulnerable by downgrading our moral abhorrence of murder.

Rather than reducing violence, Harriet Harman’s proposals could become a charter for domestic chaos, as vengeful women believe they can butcher partners they come to loathe, inventing incidents of abuse or exaggerating fears of assault.

'It is an outrage that thanks to Ms Harman, feminists such as Bindel can influence public policy'


That this grotesque proposal is even being considered by the Government only shows how far the once honourable women’s liberation movement has been hijacked by extreme feminists, who are interested in oppressing men rather than real equality.

It is telling that one of the driving forces behind these proposals is Julie Bindel, of the Left-wing pressure group Justice for Women.

Ms Bindel displayed her lack of balance in a recent article in the Guardian newspaper, entitled ‘Why I hate men’.

One of her sentences read: ‘I will say loud and proud, yes, today I hate men, and will tomorrow and the day after.’

No doubt in her misogynistic world, killing men is a form of justifiable homicide. But it is an outrage that thanks to Ms Harman, feminists such as Bindel can influence public policy.

The absurdity of the Harman position is the pretence that women in a violent relationship have no alternative but to kill their partners.

It might have been true half a century ago, when there were no refuges and neither the courts nor the police treated domestic violence seriously. But it is not the case today, not least thanks to the efforts of women’s campaigners like myself who have fought to change things.

Domestic violence is now taken seriously by all state institutions, and every police force has its own domestic violence team. A woman fearing abuse does not have to suffer alone. She can pick up the phone, and the police and social services will respond.

The proposals have also been prompted by the feminist belief that men often escape justice for their violence simply by claiming they were bullied by their partners, or that they were provoked because their partner was having any affair.

This is a myth. Home Office research shows 5 per cent of men are acquitted in domestic violence cases. Meanwhile, 22 per cent of women get off.

Another myth is that domestic violence is almost exclusively perpetrated by men against women. Again, this is nonsense.

Certain crime studies show that while one in four women has suffered from abuse, one in six men has also done so.

I will never forget one woman, who was staying in my refuge, telling me, in chilling tones, ‘knives are a great leveller’.

That is the reality of domestic violence. It is far less clear-cut than the ideologues like to pretend, with their neat division between female victims and male oppressors.

The truth is that much of the violence takes place in squalid, tortured relationships, often involving drink and drugs, where both partners are guilty of verbal and physical assault.

In the refuge I opened in 1971, for example, of the first 100 women through the door, 62 admitted that they had also perpetrated violence against their partners.

Harman’s law, if enacted, will be a recipe for injustice, not a means of protecting women’s rights. It is vital that we should uphold the law as it stands and never allow our legal system to be dragged down by amoral feminist dogma.]]> News http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/index.php?itemid=182 Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:24:34 +0000 http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/index.php?itemid=181 Britain and Canada are well ahead in the race to make fatherhood completely redundant.
Jennifer Roback Morse
26 June 2008

Comments

Last fall, I debated same-sex marriage at a university in Florida. I argued that treating same-sex unions identically with marriage would lead to marginalizing fathers from the family even more than they already are. At the time, I viewed that as a long-term prediction. I did not realize I would be proven correct in less than a year.

Fertility clinics in the United Kingdom used to be required to consider the child’s need for a father before they agree to artificial insemination for unmarried women.

But recently, that rule was revoked. Parliament did not want to imply that the children of legally married lesbian couples would somehow be at risk.

In the parliamentary debate, Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith said the absence of a father had a “detrimental effect” on a child. Labour MP Geraldine Smith appealed to “common sense” in the need for a “father figure”. These advocates for fathers noted that lesbian couples and single mothers were still able to obtain fertility treatment.


But their opponents claimed that the rights of women take precedence over children’s need for fathers. Labour MP Emily Thornberry flatly stated, “[T]he important point is to give legal rights to lesbian couples and single women.”


So, the government of the UK cannot bring itself to say that children need fathers.


Making same-sex parenting equally acceptable as opposite-sex parenting requires that the public believe that mothers and fathers are interchangeable. A child will do equally well with two mommies, two daddies or one of each. This is the official position of the entire coalition that supports same-sex parenting. By legalizing same-sex unions (which have been legal in the UK since December 2005) the state declares that mothers and fathers are interchangeable. And when mothers and fathers are interchangeable, it is fathers who will be pushed aside.


This is for two reasons. First, the connection between fathers and children is intrinsically more tenuous than the bond between mothers and children. The social purpose of marriage always has been to strengthen the attachment of fathers to their children. Second, our social universe has already marginalized fathers from the family. Feminism teaches that men are unnecessary. Declaring that mothers and fathers are perfect substitutes can only reinforce that belief. The vanishingly small of gay male couples who adopt are not going to interrupt that. No-one will look at a pair of men parenting a child and say to themselves, “You see, it is just as I have always suspected. Children don’t need mothers.” Yet that is exactly the conclusion people draw from a pair of lesbians raising children together.


Public schools in the largest cities in Scotland have demonstrated this asymmetry by refusing this month to allow children to make Father’s Day cards. They didn’t want the students without fathers to feel bad. However, the schools have made no comparable ban on making cards for Mother’s Day.


In Canada, where same sex unions have been legal since 2005, birth certificates reflect this marginalization of fathers. Each birth certificate in British Columbia has a place to mention the biological mother, but the official must check off whether the “other parent” is the “father” or “co-parent”. Likewise, Quebec’s birth certificates have a space for the name of the biological mother, and a space to check off whether “autre parent” is a mother or a father.


The drive for treating same-sex unions as the equivalent of marriage is not simply opening the institution of marriage to a new group of people. Nor does same-sex marriage simply provide public affirmation for those few unfortunate souls who experience same-sex attraction. I believe treating same-sex unions as interchangeable with marriage will change society in far-reaching and unpredictable ways, one of which will be the further marginalization of men from the family and from child-rearing.


Children need to be in relationship with their fathers; social science shows this beyond any shadow of a doubt. Teenage girls in fatherless homes face elevated risk for early sexual activity. Teenage boys are at risk for juvenile delinquency, crime and incarceration. Father involvement decreases the behavior problems of their children.


The movements for marriage, for responsible fatherhood, and for divorce reform are all social movements that seek to benefit children by having more of them spend more of their childhoods with both their parents, married to each other. I am proud to be actively involved in this effort. But all that effort can be undone by the stroke of a legislator’s pen or a judge’s opinion, instituting same-sex marriage.


Make no mistake: treating same sex unions as marriages is the government’s declaration that fathers are disposable. The activists and politicians who foist same-sex marriage on the public will have to answer for the plight of the next generation of fatherless children.


Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. is the author of Love and Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a Village, newly re-issued in paperback.

]]> News http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/index.php?itemid=181 Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:00:32 +0000 http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/index.php?itemid=180 Times Online
Frances Gibb, Legal Editor

Britain’s most senior family judge yesterday lifted a prohibition on the publication of details of a care proceedings case so that the public could form its own view of the behaviour of the local authority in the case, Medway Council in Kent, and the decisions of the court to date.

The highly unusual move came after an application by The Times and a series of articles questioning the “secrecy” of the family courts and the lack of redress afforded those caught up in the family justice system.

The decision of Sir Mark Potter, President of the Family Division, is welcome. But it would be wrong to categorise family judges as only acting defensively in the face of a barrage of press criticism or being on the back foot.




What they call the “privacy” (rather than the “secrecy”) of the family courts results from a recent policy decision by ministers. Many family judges have been only too keen to have greater openness of proceedings so that their decisions can be seen to be fair and they can rebut criticisms of bias.

Judges may seem to be an obvious target as the decision-makers. But as another recent case highlighted so well, they are often best placed to ensure that injustices are rectified — or if it is too late, that they are not repeated.

New guidelines from judges, to be publicised this month, will warn against the flouting of adoption procedures by local authorities who try to rush through adoptions against parents’ wishes. Such councils will face challenges in the courts, senior judges say.

Their recommendations follow a case in which a council was castigated for its “wholly unacceptable abuse of power” in racing through an adoption of an 18-month child and blocking a challenge by the father.

In May the Court of Appeal ruled that East Sussex County Council had acted unlawfully when it proceeded with an adoption placement, a day before the father was due to fight his daughter’s removal in court.

The judges condemned the council’s conduct as “disgraceful” and said that it had deliberately set out to prevent the father from being heard in court by keeping him “in the dark”.

Copies of their ruling, which gives guidance for future cases, are going to all family judges who hear adoption proceedings, to every adoption agency in England and Wales and will be publicised by the British Agency for Adoption and Fostering in its journal which is due out shortly.

The judges were unusually strong in their condemnation. In his ruling Lord Justice Wall said that the practice followed by the council was “unacceptable and must not be repeated”.

Such behaviour gave ammunition to those who criticised the family justice system, he said, for “administering ‘secret’ justice and who attack social workers as a group for their arrogance and the manner in which they abuse their functions by both removing children from their parents unlawfully and by stifling legitimate parental responses”.

Any local authority who sought to behave similarly would almost certainly find itself challenged by way of judicial review, he added.

His comments, made a few weeks ago, chime exactly with concerns highlighted in the Times in a series of recent articles. In an eloquent expression of the views of parents involved with care or adoption cases, Lord Justice Wall said: “There is no more emotive subject for most parents than the adoption of their children by strangers; it is even more emotive than their child being taken into care.”

He went on: “In my judgment, a fair process is essential. Justice must not only be done but be seen to be done. This is even more important in cases involving children, which are heard in private.”

The council in this case had “quite deliberately set out to prevent the father from being heard. No other inference can be drawn from its conduct.” Its conduct, he added, was “an abuse of power and wholly unacceptable”.

He added that the social workers in question had not only been “inadequately managed” they did not appear to have been properly trained.

“Worse than that, they do not appear to see the need for good management. It is, I think, the arrogance of the agency’s behaviour in this case which is its most shocking aspect.”

The child in the case was born in November 2006 to parents who had had a casual relationship. The father, known only as MC, did not know he was the father until the council served care proceedings on him and asked him for a DNA test. At the time the child was with her mother but the council recommended adoption.

The Court of Appeal was told that at the time the father was served with proceedings, he was in hospital after a heart attack and so took no part. Eventually he learnt of the adoption plans once the child, known as J-L, was in the care of foster parents. He immediately alerted his solicitors who immediately contacted the council and applied for permission to revoke the placement order at Brighton County Court. The hearing was due to take place on January 30; the day before the hearing, the council ratified the adoption panel’s decision.

Lord Justice Thorpe criticised the council for failing to respond promptly to the father’s solicitors’ inquiries and said he had suffered a “manifest injustice”. That failure and the placement of the child on the eve of the hearing “give rise to the clearest inference that the council as out to gain its end by means more foul than fair”.

The council said after the case that it was reviewing its procedures in the light of the judges’ comments although it insisted that it would not have been in the child’s best interests to delay the adoption process further.

In such a case, the judges have done their bit. They must also ensure that the lower courts act with similar vigilance. It is also up to the General Social Care Council and local authorities to take any appropriate disciplinary action.

Closed family courts do not help the judges’ cause - not least because critics are tempted to lay the entire system’s failings at their door - when they are only trying to put right injustice when they find it. ]]> News http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/index.php?itemid=180 Sun, 27 Jul 2008 12:09:02 +0000 http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/index.php?itemid=179 National Post
Barbara Kay

In the 1979 movie Kramer vs. Kramer, a New York mother bored with child care bolts to Los Angeles “to find herself,” leaving her husband suddenly in sole charge of their little son.

The heart of the movie is the riveting evolution of a patriarchy-era father — career-obsessed, domestically disengaged — into a New Man: putting career ambitions second to his child’s needs, parenting clumsily and frantically at first, but eventually with tender efficiency.

Not without realistic missteps and emotional pain along the way, they form a loving bond. The child is happy. Nevertheless, when the mother swoops back into town 18 months later and sues for custody, a patriarchy-era court ignores the dad’s obviously superior moral claim — and the child’s wishes — awarding the mom custody on the basis of her gender.

Thirty years later, New Men are the norm in bourgeois society. But the instinct to privilege the mother-child nexus, ironically a dominant feature of both the sentimentalist patriarchy and today’s feminist-dominated family law, continues to rule in family court.

As many New Men are shocked to learn, all the midnight feedings, bedtime stories and soothing band-aid applications to scraped knees count for nothing against morally indefensible gender bias in family court: In 90% of litigated custody cases, the mother gains sole custody.

Thus, with mom-friendly courts always the trump card up a mother’s sleeve, even the best of fathers in all custody negotiations must depend on the mother’s good will rather than justice for anything approaching equal access to his children.
In 1997, when the current Divorce Act came into effect, a Special Joint Committee was convened to make recommendations on child custody and access. After 55 hearings and more than a year of study, the 48 recommendations of the 1998 report, For the Sake of the Children, converged on one theme: The sole-custody adversarial system, as it pertains to the majority of custody and access disputes, denies children and non-custodial parents basic human rights, and puts children’s psychological and emotional health at risk.

The report recommended the “non-rebuttable presumption” of equal parenting (in the absence of abuse) as both fair to parents and best for children. But it was ignored by the then-Liberal government and fell into a political black hole.

We know what Canadians think on this issue: Polls show that 80% of Canadians support equal parenting. We will know the present government’s frame of mind when Saskatoon-Wanuskewin MP Maurice Vellacott’s Motion M-483 in support of equal parenting comes up for debate in parliament this fall.

A hopeful sign: On June 19 the Northwest Territories passed a supportive motion for Vellacott’s initiative with a vote of 11 to zero (with seven abstentions).

Vellacott has lined up 17 of a necessary 20 seconders to his motion and feels optimistic about its reception: “The social science is air-tight on the importance of fathers and mothers in the whole range of life experience as [children] grow older.”

He is correct about the social science. In a September 2007 policy paper, UBC sociology professor Edward Kruk, Canada’s foremost expert on custody, adduced a wealth of peer-reviewed data to support the superior effects of “shared parental responsibility.”

Yet, as he observes, judges in family courts tend to perpetuate old stereotypes, ignoring evidence in cases where the father is provably the more responsible caregiver, or presuming fathers only seek sole custody to evade financial responsibility.

Under mounting critical scrutiny in recent years, the judiciary’s lack of expertise in determining the “best interests of the child” has become increasingly apparent. As a result, a new parental “responsibility-to-needs” discourse has emerged in the socio-legal realm.

A child’s “needs” cannot be optimally met by a single parent, however loving. Kruk’s findings show that a child must spend at least 40% of his time with a parent to establish and maintain a beneficial attachment.

Kramer vs. Kramer ended happily, with the mother’s recognition that fairness to the child required voluntary relinquishment of her legal entitlement.

Unfortunately Hollywood is not running the divorce industry in Canada. In real life, mothers are rarely so selfless; court-battle endings are rarely so happy for fathers and children.

In 2006, Stephen Harper’s electoral platform promised to implement “a presumption of shared parental responsibility, unless determined to be not in the best interests of the child,” with mediation as an alternate method of conflict resolution.

Campaign talk is cheap. When can divorced Canadian fathers — and their children — expect justice, so long demanded, so long promised and so long deferred?

bkay@videotron.ca ]]> News http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/index.php?itemid=179 Fri, 18 Jul 2008 08:54:36 +0000 http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/index.php?itemid=178 By Daily Mail Reporter

The father of two children killed by their paranoid schizophrenic mother today condemned a new report into their deaths as 'scandalous'.

Jimi Ogunkoya's son and daughter died at the hands of his former partner after doctors failed to spot the danger and social workers allowed her unsupervised access.

Vivian Gamor, 29, had stopped taking her medication days before she killed Antoine, 10, and three-year-old Kenniece at her Hackney flat on 27 January last year.

Killed: Antoine, 10, was battered with a hammer and Kenniece, three, suffocated with clingfilm at their mother's Hackney flat

Antoine was bludgeoned with a claw hammer after his mother tried to strangle him.

She suffocated his sister with clingfilm and left her in a bin bag before setting fire to the flat and calling 999.

Mr Ogunkoya cared for the children and had repeatedly told the authorities of his fears about Gamor, who believed her real children had died in the womb and were swapped at birth.

But Hackney social services allowed her visiting rights against his wishes after doctors failed to realise she posed a physical threat to the children, partly because she did not live with them.
Vivian Garmor,
Paranoid schizophrenic: Vivian Garmor, 29, believed her children had been swapped at birth

It also emerged today that the number of visits supervised by social services was cut from three to one after a social worker went on holiday.

But an independent report into the tragedy published today concluded that no 'single judgment or action within any agency triggered or failed to prevent' the killings.

Instead the 'serious case review' published today by the City and Hackney Safeguarding Children Board identified 'organisational and individual failings' within the various agencies involved.

It recommended:
• Better communication between mental health services, social workers and other agencies.

• Child protection procedures should be applied in cases of parental delusions involving a child, even if they do not live together.

• Social care of children should be considered whenever a parent's delusional thinking involves them.

• Multi-agency meetings focusing on the risk to the child before a mentally ill parent is discharged from hospital.

• Greater involvement of a child's other parents or carers in risk assessment.

• Better training and record keeping.

But Mr Ogunkoya, 32, branded the report 'inaccurate, insensitive, inadequate and scandalous' and called for a public inquiry.

The former council worker had to give up his job after his children's deaths and despite counselling describes himself as 'a broken man'.

He hit out at the decision not to make the full report public, taken because publishing medical records would breach data protection laws.

Mr Ogunkoya, of Hackney, said: 'I have suffered the most painful thing in this life. My children are gone and we have not had time to grieve because of all these issues surrounding their deaths.

'I understand that nothing will bring them back but in the interests of the public and my family we need a wider inquiry into this case.'

Gamor had been sectioned in September 2006, several months before the killings, after claiming she was 'Jesus's twin' and the children were not hers.

In other incidents she attacked a hospital worker, cut off her daughter's hair and threatened her half-sister with a knife.

But she responded well to treatment and was released in October after saying she wanted to re-establish contact with her children.

When she was released doctors did not assess the physical risk she might pose to her children and she was treated accordingly by social services.

The one supervised contact session shortly after her release was considered a success and they were allowed to stay overnight with her for the first time two weeks before she killed them.

The report found that only if doctors had identified a physical risk to the children, which would then have been taken into account by social services, could the tragedy possibly have been averted.

Gamor was detained indefinitely after admitting manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility at the Old Bailey on 1 August last year.

Following the abuse and murder of eight-year-old Victoria Climbi in Haringey in 2000, an inquiry report by Lord Laming made a series of recommendations.

But Mor Dioum, director of the Victoria Climbi Foundation, said: 'This case shows that in many areas basic good practice that could stop children dying has not been implemented.'

Hackney Council said today that all the recommendations of the new report had already been brought in. ]]> News http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/index.php?itemid=178 Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:38:00 +0000 http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/index.php?itemid=177 The Times call for an end to secrecy has produced a huge reaction - except from the man who could change it
Camilla Cavendish

I am awed by the response to the family justice campaign that The Times launched last week. So many readers have e-mailed their MPs that I am getting calls from all three main parties. Several MPs have also raised their private concerns about how their own local authorities behave. It is uplifting to see democracy in action.

There are chinks of light already. Thoughtful people on all sides of the argument seem to accept that some degree of change is needed. Sir Mark Potter, President of the Family Division, gave broad but qualified support to many of our proposed reforms, although he argues strongly that the courts are private, not secret, and that families want them that way. Bridget Prentice, the Justice Minister, has announced that the Government will finally publish new proposals this autumn. Many social workers restrained the urge to hurl rotten eggs and supported our call for openness, while saying that the system is not as Kafkaesque as I fear.

Bill McKittrick, a social worker for 35 years and director of Bristol Social Services for ten, wrote to say that openness is a moral imperative in care proceedings where, he tells me, “lawyers get rich, social workers check and check, but children and parents get lost”. He says that “groupthink” can easily take hold. “The more people involved in a decision, the more dangerous the decisions are.” But he still thinks that mature professionals would get a better press if they gave their side of the story, being honest about the uncertainties involved in decisions, rather than trotting out the mantra of “never apologise, never explain”.

Two main arguments have been made against The Times's position. First, that the family courts should not be open to the press because the parents and children involved in cases dread being identified. Sir Mark, the heads of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass), the Royal College of Paediatricians and Child Health and Family Justice Council have all made this point. It is understandable that families don't want the neighbours to know highly personal details.

The same argument was used by Lord Falconer of Thoroton last year to reject the recommendation of the Constitutional Affairs Select Committee, that the family courts should be open and parents no longer gagged. It is prompted by a visceral dislike of the press, which I can partly understand. Yet it is overdone. I see from the inside how concerned the press is to remain within the law. In rape cases and family appeals, reporting restrictions have successfully kept names secret while allowing evidence to be reported.

The halfway house proposed by many, including the Government, is to publish all judgments, but made anonymous. That would be a good step. But without access to the underlying evidence, it will be impossible to discover whether experts or social workers are making repeated errors. The public do not need to name names for justice to be done. But they do need to see the evidence on which people are effectively convicted.

The second criticism is that professionals do their job properly, and we critics do not understand the complexity they have to deal with. The Family Justice Council states that “the courts do not shrink from exposing poor practice by social workers and questionable medical evidence”. I cannot agree. In the past few years, Court of Appeal judges have made blistering criticisms of lower courts for relying on shockingly poor statements from social workers and experts. Family court judges can rely heavily on such people, in cases where there is no circumstantial evidence.

It seems Orwellian to ask us to trust people who are not subject to scrutiny to make correct decisions about cases which we are repeatedly told are too complex for us to understand. Years can pass between children being taken into care and a successful appeal. Those are formative years in which children are deprived of their parents, and sometimes adopted before an appeal is even heard.

The Royal College of Paediatricians gives warning that doctors will stop giving evidence for fear of vilification in the media. That very real fear is made worse becuase so many paediatricians still support Professor Sir Roy Meadow, who went beyond his remit, and gave evidence that led to the jailing of innocent people. If innocent experts do live in fear then that is entirely the media's fault, and we must correct that. But I do not believe that they would have to.

Intriguingly, only one person challenged our view that the system is unaccountable. That was Sir Rodney Brooke, chair of the General Social Care Council. I have seen no evidence that the GSCC has disciplined a single social worker denounced by appeal court judges in the past few years. But I hope to be corrected. Nor did any one of the eminent bodies who wrote to us deny that miscarriages of justice occur. Some of the glib references have made miscarriages of justice sound like a standard occupational hazard. There are 550,000 referrals to social services every year. It makes the Birmingham Six fade by comparison.

Yesterday, Frank Lockyer wrote to point out that the authorities have closed ranks in response to our campaign. “The agencies defend themselves by persisting that things are done as they expect, rather than as they are,” he said. Mr Lockyer should know. His daughter was Sally Clark, jailed for killing two of her sons until her conviction was quashed, and who has since died. Mr Lockyer knows that his daughter was exonerated only because she could protest her innocence in public. In the family courts, gagging orders make that impossible. We cannot know how many Sally Clarks have lost their children. The volume of mail on this topic has been hugely welcome. Only one person has remained silent. Jack Straw, the Secretary of State for Justice, holds the power to change the system for the better. It would be good to know what he is going to do about it.]]> News http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/index.php?itemid=177 Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:30:00 +0000