Bad mom really needed jail time

Columnists / Mindelle Jacobs

By MINDELLE JACOBS

Last Updated: 12th June 2009, 2:12am

Most fathers who've been denied access to their kids by demented ex-wives give up the fight rather than bankrupting themselves in lengthy court battles.

A Toronto surgeon had the money -- and the persistence -- to keep going. He won sole custody of his three daughters because his ex-wife spent more than a decade brainwashing the children to hate him.

She was subsequently fined $35,000 for contempt for ignoring repeated orders to get counselling. And on Tuesday, an Ontario judge imposed an even harsher punishment, ordering her to pay more than $250,000 of her ex-husband's court costs.

The father's expenses were "a litigant's worst nightmare," declared Ontario Superior Court Justice Faye McWatt. "She has acted deceitfully and in bad faith throughout the litigation."

If the mother in this case had been jailed the first time she ignored court-ordered access, everyone would have been better off.

The mother would have learned the courts don't take kindly to breaches of court orders, the father would have been able to bond with his children much earlier and court resources could have been used for more worthwhile purposes.

It's a pleasant surprise that the mother was actually punished; better late than never. Still, the father likely faces a huge challenge winning over his kids. Reversing the damage done by a parent who spends years alienating the children from the other spouse is a long-term process.

These girls, now aged 14, 11 and 10, may forever be damaged by their mother's sick, selfish actions -- behaviour McWatt bluntly described as "emotional abuse."

The couple split up in 1999 but K.D., as the mother is known, denied A.L., her ex, virtually any access. At the same time, she was over-protective of the kids to the point of infantilizing them. The oldest child wasn't even toilet-trained at the age of five. The middle girl was still using a bottle at night when she was three.

One psychologist warned as early as 2000 that the children were at "significant risk" of being alienated from the father.

A.L. gave up fighting for access for about six years because his ex warned that if he pressured her, he wouldn't get anything. But it didn't matter what he did. He still didn't get to see his daughters.

He only saw them for two weekends between 2000 and 2006. Then K.D. wouldn't even allow him to speak to them.

For a while, there was still a bond between father and daughters. Early on, one daughter would hug him and warn: "Don't tell mommy I did this."

By 2006, though, the bond seemed broken. The oldest showed no affection, the middle daughter stopped looking at him and the youngest only spoke to him in a monotone.

It's been 11 years since the release of the parliamentary report on child custody and access, with its dozens of recommendations, including the proposal that the terms "custody and access" be replaced with "shared parenting" in the Divorce Act.

A NUTBAR

But that assumes both parents are reasonable. In this case, the mother is clearly a nutbar who used her kids as weapons against her ex. Jail might have taught her a lesson a lot sooner.

A.L. is "exhausted but very, very happy. He has his children," says his lawyer, Harold Niman.

"This kind of case will hopefully send a message to those people who think it's OK to undermine a relationship between the children and the other parent."

MINDELLE JACOBS

from Mike Murphy sender time Sent at 13:48 (GMT-04:00). Current time there: 13:57. ✆ to mindy.jacobs@sunmedia.ca bcc date 12 June 2009 13:48 subject Column ~ Bad mom really needed jail time June 12, 2009 ~ Toronto Sun

Mindy:

http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/mindelle_jacobs/2009/06/12/9771231-sun.html

I'm wiping some tears from my eyes. I've followed this case for some time and as a target parent I empathize greatly with this father. The descriptions of the impacts on the children you outline are what pushes my emotional buttons.

A parent who has walked in these shoes knows exactly how it feels to be rejected by your flesh and blood. I lost an arm as a 12 year old boy but the physical and emotional pain of that was and is nothing compared to the years of dealing with my emotionally abused children.

I recall so many occasions when my two youngest would skip down the driveway from the school bus as happy care free children and kiss me as I greeted them. On occasion such as when I managed to get the trampoline operational in early April 2005 and they saw it from the bus window they didn't just skip they ran down the driveway telling me I was the best dad in the world. It is at those transcendental moments you know how it feels to be like a rock star. Nothing is more precious or pure.

Compare that to being denigrated in a restaurant a year later by two children who had no guilt and no concern they were being over heard by other patrons. It was one of many occasions of hostility taught to them by a mother who hates me more than she loves her children.

I have written thousands of words in my blogs on this terrible abuse of children but I have yet to build a wall strong enough to hold back the tears when I read about its impact. The judges, just don't have the courage to deal with it until it is too late, if at all. It took 10 years in this case which is way too long but at least McWatt had the courage to do the right thing. Most of us don't have the resources this man had to draw attention to it so it makes a difference in court.

Thank you for adding to the body of knowledge people need to have to bring greater awareness of how terrible it is for children to be put in the position of choosing sides.

Mike Murphy
Sault Ste. Marie ON P6A 6J8
http://parentalalienationcanada.blogspot.com/

New Jersey Dad, David Goldman, hopes Brazil custody fight ‘is over soon

Court cleared key obstacle, but son still in ‘terrible emotional environment’

By Mike Celizic

TODAYShow.com contributor

updated 8:46 a.m. ET, Thurs., June 11, 2009

Heartened by a Supreme Court ruling in Brazil that rejected a challenge to his custody rights, a New Jersey father hopes that he is finally moving closer to regaining custody of his 9-year-old son after a five-year battle with the Brazilian family that claims the boy as their own.

“I hope it’s over soon,” David Goldman told TODAY’s Erin Burnett from Rio de Janeiro Thursday morning, the day after Brazil’s Supreme Court rebuffed a bid by a political party to stop him from taking his son, Sean, home to the United States. But the boy's return to the U.S. is likely to be delayed by further legal appeals.

Goldman said that Brazil’s high court also confirmed his claims that the influential Brazilian family with whom Sean has been living since 2004 has been trying to alienate the boy from his natural father.

Alienation of affection
“It was finally exposed yesterday in the court that these people holding him have been basically waging a several-year campaign to turn my son against me and everything about his memory from life with me back home in New Jersey,” Goldman told Burnett. “[They were] saying things to him, that his father abandoned him, his father didn’t love him.”

The Supreme Court called what the Brazilian family was doing “parental alienation,” Goldman said.

Goldman has been able to visit Sean several times this year under close and constant surveillance. He said that on his most recent visit, Sean told him, “I have two fathers now.”

Goldman said he told Sean that’s an improvement. “The last time they told you to call me ‘David’ when you called me Dad,” he told his son. Sean, Goldman added to Burnett, “is in a terrible emotional environment.”

Goldman also said that instead of being occasions of joy, his visits with Sean in Brazil have been emotionally trying for both of them. “The conditions are not fit or suitable for a father and a son. We are constantly under surveillance and it is damaging to him and to us,” he told Burnett. “Ultimately, he’s my son; we have a connection. We want to laugh, we want to play, we want our natural God-given right to be father and son. And they’re doing everything they can to prohibit that.”

Unanimous ruling
In its 10-0 decision Wednesday, the Supreme Court refused to consider a request by Brazil’s Progressive Party that argued it would be wrong to take Sean Goldman from his stepfather’s custody in Brazil after five years in the South American nation.

The high court ruled that a federal court should decide whether the boy will return to the U.S. or remain with his stepfamily in Brazil.

The boy’s Brazilian mother remarried and died after bearing a daughter last year. Sean’s stepfather wants the boy to remain with his sister and Brazilian family.

What began as a family dispute has become an international controversy.

President Barack Obama discussed the custody case with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Washington, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton lobbied for the boy’s return to live with father David Goldman, of New Jersey.

And last week U.S. Congressman Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican, introduced a bill that would temporarily remove Brazil from a duty-free trade program. He says Brazil received $2.75 billion in U.S. trade benefits last year.

Father pleased with decision
But David Goldman’s attorney said Wednesday that a federal court in Rio de Janeiro, which previously ruled the boy be returned to the U.S., still must consider another appeal from the boy’s stepfamily.

Lawyer Ricardo Zamariola said: “Sean will not be able to leave immediately because a federal court of appeals in Rio de Janeiro has ordered that the boy remain in Brazil until it rules on an appeal filed by Sean’s stepfamily.”

Nevertheless, David Goldman said he was pleased with the Supreme Court decision.

“I hope it will diminish the time away from my son.”

Goldman said that the hearing also made public another issue that he had been legally barred from discussing: “The psychological damage that has been inflicted on my son is finally out in the open,” he said. “There’s no words to describe the anxiety and the pain that I feel from that. Fortunately, it’s been exposed.”

Goldman’s lawyer told the judges about reports by three court-appointed psychologists who found Sean was suffering.

‘Up to the judge’
At the hearing, Sergio Tostes, the Brazilian family’s attorney, said that when asked in which country he preferred to live, Sean told a family-appointed psychologist: “It makes no difference to me. It’s up to the judge.”

A few weeks ago, Tostes said Sean told the psychologist that he wanted to stay in Brazil with his sister and friends at his current school.

Repeated calls to Tostes for further comment went unanswered.

Courts in Brazil have been weighing David Goldman’s rights under the Hague Convention on international child abductions against Brazilian law.

At the Supreme Court on Wednesday, the government’s solicitor general, Jose Antonio Dias Toffoli, told justices that if Brazil does not respect the convention, it “runs the risk of having its requests for the return of Brazilian children facing similar situations abroad denied.”

The convention requires that participating countries return abducted or wrongfully retained children to the country of their “habitual residence.”

Sean’s journey
In 2004, Sean’s mother, Bruna Bianchi, took him for a two-week vacation to her native Brazil and never returned. She divorced David Goldman in Brazil and married Rio de Janeiro lawyer Joao Paulo Lins e Silva.

She died last year of complications from the birth of another child, and a Rio de Janeiro state court granted Lins e Silva temporary custody of Sean.

Last week, a lower court ruling that Sean Goldman be returned to the U.S. was suspended by a supreme court justice based on a petition filed by the conservative Progressive Party, which argued that the boy has been living in the country for five years and would be stripped of his current family environment of “happiness, love and comprehension.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting to this story.

© 2009 MSNBC Interactive.

URL: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/31232695/

© 2009 MSNBC.com

Court punishes woman in alienation case

Mother, who lost custody of her three children last year, must pay $250,000 in court costs

Kirk Makin

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail, Tuesday, Jun. 09, 2009 07:52PM EDT

A 42-year-old Toronto woman who spared no effort to alienate her three daughters from their father has been ordered to pay court costs of $251,641.

“I can only characterize the costs incurred by the father as a litigant's worst nightmare,” Ontario Superior Court Justice Faye McWatt said Tuesday. “No litigation of this sort should ever have generated this kind of cost if the parties had any common sense or reasoning powers.”

The father, a 56-year-old vascular surgeon, had originally claimed $557,719. Although Judge McWatt awarded less than that amount, she pointed toward the mother – known as K.D. – as being the culprit in the runaway litigation.

“The mother's behaviour has amounted to bad faith,” Judge McWatt said. “In addition to being contrary to the best interests of the children, the mother's contemptuous actions toward this court required the father to go to extraordinary and unnecessary lengths – at great expense – to address the damage she caused.”

Last year, Judge McWatt ordered that the three girls be seized, sent to a parental-alienation centre in the United States for deprogramming and prevented from communicating with their mother. The children – aged 14, 11 and 9 – now live in the sole custody of their father.

On Tuesday, Judge McWatt said that K.D. has refused her order to obtain therapy. In violation of another order, Judge McWatt said that, “there have been surreptitious efforts by members of the mother's family to contact the children and undermine their relationship with their father.

“The future of children is of utmost importance to courts everywhere in Canada,” she said. “This case was of particular note in the context of family life after separation. The issue in this case is potentially significant in many custody and access cases presently before the courts.”

Join the Discussion:

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MikeMurphy		6/9/2009 10:55:19 PM Hopefully this will send a strong message to parents who alienate their children. its clear from this article not only the mother but the extended family were participants which is not unusual. Hopefully the children will have an eventual loving relationship with both parents but until there are assurances the alienator can keep control and not manipulate the girls she should be restricted. 10 0 Report Abuse
Cold North Wind		6/10/2009 6:37:40 AM Human societies have a long history of child sacrifice. This is our version. We sacrifice lives to the high priests and priestesses of psychological theories. In this era, pas/pa/a theories which have grown from the mind of a dead psychologist who happened to be a defender of child sexual abuse, are trying to rule. I wonder what the critical mass of destroyed lives is-for alienation theories. Guess Canadians ,in general, don't know about the inadmissability of alienation theories (at least in U.S.) Guess the press doesn't either. Guess few know of Joyce Murphy's testimony last week -in California-nor do many know of Jennifer Collins, and the thousands and thousands of children they -"represent".United Nations latest Council on Human Rights ? Lawsuit against the U.S. government ? Judges recused ? (in U.S.)Guess we have to reach critical mass first. Can anyone pronounce the word -appeal ? Perhaps the mother hasn't been destroyed enough-nor the children. Sacrificial lambs. 1 13 Report Abuse
Robert Gartner		6/10/2009 7:11:10 AM Human societies have a habit of eating up the planet. Much has already been destroyed. Eating the children now almost seems 'acceptable'. Parental Alienation has been a way to do it. Judge McWatt is one who understands predatory behavior unleashed. Its a great day when justice is served. So much for sending a message. Overcoming DENIAL is an individual matter and comes often at a precious price. These children are lucky to have the father and the judge they do. How could this have taken as long as it has? 8 2 Report Abuse
MikeMurphy		6/10/2009 10:06:47 AM You will note Cold North Wind is a non-believer in PA. Also she equates this case to child sacrifice. I have always wondered about the mental health of these deniers. She is of a group of Victim Feminists who have swallowed a doctrine first spread by a Law Student at a California University about the non-scientific basis of Parental Alienation Syndrome. Understand this is a law student not a scientist. Why is it that Law has such a badly tarnished reputation? There are many reasons one of which is having law students, who know nothing about science, telling her victim feminist sisters Dr. Gardiner's theories aren't scientific. It is, however, accepted by all courts in North America as science. Yet you find this person, and others of her ilk, trolling comment boards spouting the dogma which defies common sense. We can conclude these people, therefore, lack common sense. We can also conclude because of their denial they are enablers of child abuse and probably practitioners. They have one thing in common. Everyone of them wishes to remain anonymous. Do you ever wonder why that might be? 6 1 Report Abuse
RLamont Republic of Alberta		6/10/2009 11:07:51 AM Instead of having to pay, she should have to spend time in a mental institution or jail. Hopefully this type of ruling will become more common. 7 2 Report Abuse
KS from Recipro City		6/10/2009 11:29:46 AM RLamont: agreed. She should be facing more than dishing out money for the abuse of her children. She obviously has mental health issues and they need to be addressed. MikeMurphy, don't blame feminism for this PAS denial. You're just tarring the wrong group. It is clear that Cold North Wind is far from being a feminist - he/she is most likely some first year arts degree student and has an alienating-parent friend with whom he/she sympathizes. The whole "child sacrifice" spiel just reeks of a lack of life experience. 3 1 Report Abuse
MikeMurphy		6/10/2009 12:30:06 PM KS: I don't want to rain on your parade but it is indeed a very organized and willful victim feminist effort. If you think today's feminism is about equality that ended 20 or more years ago. Today it is about victimhood and the war against the patriarchy. If you are a man you are the enemy of these victim feminists. Some of them even call themselves maternalists. Its the same thing using a different term because its about motherhood. How can you argue against that hey? They are female supremacists full of hate toward men. Cold North Wind hangs with many of the latter. I know them well. The Internet is rife with these types. Check out their blogs. You are in for a wake up call. You haven't yet experienced their vindictiveness and their willingness to lie, cheat and smear anyone who disagrees. I am one of the most experienced in dealing with them. Do some homework but you are on the mark in seeing they are "out to lunch." 4 4 Report Abuse
etarking		6/10/2009 9:43:27 PM The courts enable PAS by awarding sole custody. In fact, sole custody is far more pervasive and does far more harm than PAS. The family court giveth, and the family court taketh away. In the vast majority of cases, the family court has no business doing either. "Bad cases make bad law" because they tend to spawn rules that are later used to abuse ordinary people. All of family law is based on bad cases, apparently, and it is all abusive to human rights. The very idea that the government has any business interfering in the family comes down to us from a time before democracy and self-determination. It takes a rare bad parent to be a worse parent than the government, but the government seizes parental rights with no responsibility. The court does harm and suffers no consequences. The court becomes a disastrously bad parent to parents and children alike. It is astonishing that we go on living with the jeopardy that the incompetent courts will interfere in our family life, making us bitter enemies, when the children most of all need both parents fully available with peace and security in the divided family after separation. Equal parenting, equal parenting, equal parenting. If the courts were stripped of the power to blunder into the family, we could apply a medical model to helping the innocent victims of divorce (which is almost everyone involved). We might actually be able to minimize the bad cases instead of making them worse. Polls over the years have shown that the people want equal parenting at the 80 or 90% level, so why can't we have it? The answer is fear, myths, and inertia. The fear comes from government-sponsored feminist campaigns to terrorize us about domestic violence that is actually on a declining trend, and done about equally by both sexes. Most of what you think you know about DV is a myth. The inertia comes from people not knowing how to get change against the resistance of the establishment. Get political! Support equal parenting! 3 0 Report Abuse
RhondaP.		6/11/2009 11:20:15 AM I commend Judge McWatt's discissions on this sad case and also the father's admirable dedication to his daughters. It is a shame however that it had to go this far. The years that have gone by with the girls suffering at the hands of their mother will never completely heal, though they may have received some help they need in the recent past, the years prior to that implanted negative emotions and ideas that may take years to surface. It shouldn't have gone this far. It saddens me to hear these stories knowing that in the end nobody wins in the family, everybody looses something. Family Laws need to change, everyone involved in any respect knows this. It is time to step up to the plate and work together to stop this type of child abuse - Parental Alienation- from happening to children long before it gets to the extreme as in this case. It is time for people to take their heads out of the sand and address these issues head on, enough is enough. Government mandated education is needed in all areas dealing with children, including the parents, educators (schools), therapists, the Courts and all aspects of the family law system, law enforcement...everyone. If they could be educated on how PA operates I am sure we would see a huge shift in how things are handled by all. Children need both parents in their lives, unfortunately that may not always be possible due to one parent's inability to put their children's best interesta ahead of their own, in that case they need to be with the better parent without doubt and only hope that the other parent eventually recognizes the need to change their behaviours. The Family law system needs to adopt equal shared parenting as fast as it can be put into place to help prevent 1000's more children being subjected to this awful form of emotional and mental child abuse. Everyone should get involved, lobby your MP's, do anything you can to spread awareness and education. This is far too wide spread to remain on the 'to do' list any longer 1 0 Report Abuse

In OZ ~ Breastfeeding mums forced to share care

Ed: note - There's that old "forced" word again. She doesn't say it but implied is the patriarchy is making this happen against the oppressed breast feeding mom. The solution for 1 week off is using a breast pump. She could give some of it to dad. Why do these reporters not mention obvious solutions? Are judges so unaware it doesn't come up? Somehow this is not as big a deal as Overington seems to want to imply.MJM

Caroline Overington | June 10, 2009

Article from: The Australian

THE Family Court is placing infants who have not yet been weaned from the breast into shared care arrangements with their separated parents.

A study by academics at Flinders University has found that infants less than a year old are spending one week on a diet of cow's milk, and one week nursing at the breast, so that parents can share their care, as recommended by the Howard government's shared parenting law.

Others are spending up to three hours a day in a car, shuttling between homes.

The shared parenting laws, introduced in July 2006, are attracting complaints from a range of professionals at the coalface of family law.

The study on the shared care of infants after divorce was conducted by Linda Sweet, of the Flinders University School of Medicine, and Charmaine Power, an associate professor at the School of Nursing and Midwifery.

Their report said the shared parenting law placed "expectations on both parents to participate equally in care, regardless of the child's age".

The report said there was "ample evidence that breastfeeding is the best form of nutrition for infants" and the Australian government's dietary guidelines espouse breastfeeding as the optimal food for children for the first six months of life.

"It would be expected that breastfeeding infants would not be ordered into substantial shared parenting arrangements," the report said. "However, many infants regularly are."

One mother, "Georgianna", separated from her husband when their child was seven months old. The magistrate ordered week-about shared parenting, saying the boy could have his nutritional needs met by means "other than breastfeeding".

"Georgianna's milk supply became erratic as a result of these week-long absences," the report said. At the time of interview, her son was receiving breast milk while with her, and cow's milk while with his father.

"Trish" separated from her husband when their child was five months old. The court ordered shared parenting of seven days a fortnight, but no overnight stays, with dad. The distance between the homes meant the child spent three hours a day in a car seat.

The authors concluded that "national and international guidelines on optimal duration of breastfeeding" have less sway with judges than the benefits of time with fathers. "This in itself is not a bad thing, and all women in our study encouraged father contact," they said.

Breastfeeding was at issue in a Family Court matter heard in Cairns last year, involving a couple who had been married for less than a year when they separated. Their daughter was five months old. The mother was committed to "attachment parenting" and demand feeding, and would not allow the child to stay overnight with her father.

The judge said the mother had "no time set for the child to be weaned" and allowed the father to see the child only when a mothercraft nurse was present (the father had an annual income of more than $280,000, plus a $350,000 annual bonus, so hired help was no problem).

The judge said the father "wanted to take the child out and have her stay overnight but could not "because the mother insisted that the child be breastfed".

The judge said the shared parenting act made it necessary to "consider whether it would be in a child's best interests" to spend such limited time with her father, and concluded that overnight visits should begin three months from the date of the hearing.

In Australia, a Backlash Against Shared Parenting

June 9th, 2009 by Robert Franklin, Esq.

In 2006, Australia's government led by John Howard passed amendments to existing family laws that established a presumption of equally shared parenting in divorce cases. Or at least they sort of did. Apparently the statutory language is complicated enough to confuse the most assiduous of legal scholars, so parents, lawyers and courts are struggling with what the law really requires.

Whatever the defects in the new statute, a movement is afoot to scrap the whole idea of equal parenting. Stated another way, for some people, three years of fathers' rights is too much. Not long ago, a deranged Melbourne man threw his daughter off a bridge, killing her. Anti-father activists immediately seized on the tragedy to claim that the shared parenting law places children in the nefarious clutches of brutal dads.

Now, as this article makes clear, some experts are calling for the whole idea of parenting shared 50-50 to be done away with, or radically changed (ABC, 6/3/09). Why? Because, in the words of one family law expert, "this often gives fathers a false expectation that they will be granted equal time, when this isn't true for the majority of cases."

Let's see, do I have this right? The law attempts to create a presumption of equally shared parenting, but that's bad because it's caused fathers to believe that they'll get equal parenting time. Because courts don't or can't enforce the statute, Australia should scrap the idea of shared parenting altogether. Huh?

Did it occur to that expert that when there's a presumption of shared parenting, it's not really inappropriate for dads to expect just that? Did it occur to him that, given all we know about the value of maintaining connection between fathers and children, the right idea is not to dispose of shared parenting laws, but to make them better?

And indeed, courts don't get anywhere close to ordering equally shared parenting, despite the intent of Parliament in passing the law. A study of 1,400 cases of court-ordered parenting arrangements post-divorce revealed that a 50-50 split was ordered only 15% of the time.

Now, it seems to be true that, despite the clear intention of the new law, there are plenty of instances in which equal time is either not possible or not advisable. As always, one parent may truly be unfit or a danger to the child. But that's always been the case, and courts have gone on ruling on custody issues anyway. And, in the case of parents who live far apart, just how to establish an equal arrangement that is workable may not be possible.

But the idea that, because Australia has made a very half-hearted stab at equal parenting for a very short time under a statutory scheme that courts don't understand, the effort should be abandoned, is the type of old-school, anti-dad notion that belongs in the dustbin of history. Was the old system such a flawless gem?

To be sure, equally shared parenting is a work in progress. Doubtless the Australia statute needs modification to guide judges. It also needs some time to work; it needs a track record to educate everyone about what works and what doesn't. As Patrick Parkinson, former head of the Family Law Council and current Professor of Law at the University of Sydney said,

"But it would be a grave mistake to think that the whole legislation is deeply flawed, it would also be a grave mistake to amend the law on the basis of anecdotes or horror stories. We need proper evaluation, proper research and careful thought."

The anti-dad crowd isn't about to sit still for a law that gives fathers some power in family courts. But we know that father-involvement in children's lives is almost always a good thing. Any attempt to turn back the clock to the bad old days is a slap at both kids and dads. It's bad for society generally and ultimately for mothers too.

Aussies, let your representatives know.

http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=3814

Family justice reform urgently needed in N.B.

Published Tuesday June 9th, 2009

By Mary-Eileen Flanagan

The Access to Family Justice Task Force

There are few people in our province who have not experienced directly or indirectly the pain and confusion, rage, powerlessness and despair that accompanies the tragic breakdown of a family.

The disputes that arise at those times are complex, emotional and very personal; yet we as a society have historically used an adversarial, procedural and impersonal process to find solutions for these family disputes, a process which the participants do not understand and over which they have little or no control.

The rules of the process have been crudely adapted from rules of civil procedure which were created long before the modern family system and which were originally intended for commercial disputes, not disputes involving family members. The huge family justice system and its processes are applied to every situation no matter how big or small.

Our system is profoundly broken. We each have a story which illustrates the dilemma -- a parental alienation which was not given priority, adjournments, lack of mediation services, child protection matters take too long, no easy way to vary child support, wait times, large legal fees or inadequate legal aid services.

No one aspect of the system is to blame. The dysfunction and collateral damage suffered at the hands of this system is not solely due to lawyers or judges, or court staff or mediators. Each of these groups of professionals have attempted their own damage control but the reality is that only wholesale change -- a paradigm shift -- is going to alleviate the damage which the system does to families in crisis.

The problems in our family justice system were well known in February 2008 when our Minister of Justice, T. J. Burke, Q.C., struck the Access to Family Justice Task Force. Access to Family Justice is an unfortunate title because we all know that justice has precious little to do with how families reconfigure and heal following breakdowns.

Our group spent 10 months meeting, interviewing, studying, researching, reviewing, reading, collaborating, brainstorming, advocating and envisioning the best possible dispute resolution process for all families in our province -- be they big, small, rich, poor, urban, rural, sophisticated or not.

Sadly, in the course of our work, we have confirmed that the problems are as bad as we all feared. The stories were as compelling as we instinctively knew. The stakeholders and front line workers were as generous and as candid with their experience and advice as we could ever have imagined. We are indebted to every social worker, psychologist, court clerk, regional director, mediator, lawyer, judge, prosecutor, grandparent, and parent who gave us insight and advice.

The report has been tabled in the legislature (www.gnb.ca/justice). The Minister of Justice has set an incredibly ambitious agenda to revolutionize the way families in crisis in our province access solutions for their very particular situations. He and his staff cannot do this alone. We (the parents and grandparents, professionals and stakeholders) cannot stand back and passively or critically dare his success. We must all be active participants in delivering the family focused, empowering and efficient system our province deserves.

We are only 750,000 people, for goodness sake. There are only three degrees of separation between all of us. Surely we can have a system to support and educate our citizens and neighbours during the absolute worst time in their lives and surely we can do this in a way that restores hope and preserves dignity and protects children.

The cost of the existing system is too huge in time and money and children, whose innocence and relationships are irreparably damaged.

Undoubtedly there are situations that do absolutely require trials and individuals who are unable to participate in child focused and/or interest-based dispute resolution. For those individuals, our Family Courts must exist, but every other sacred cow must be challenged and must be available to be sacrificed and it has to happen immediately.

Modernizing, personalizing and revolutionizing our system of dispute resolution for families in crisis is not a spectator sport. Our province cannot ever be self-sufficient if our most vulnerable children and the most tragic family matters continue to be dealt with using the most adversarial, time consuming and expensive dispute resolution mechanism.

The system must change and our minister of justice is prepared to lead the change. He requires support from all MLAs, all judges, all lawyers, all families, all New Brunswickers. Each and every one of us has been and will be impacted directly or indirectly by the failure or success of our family court system.

n Mary-Eileen Flanagan is one of the seven members of the Access to Family Justice Task Force. She practices law in Saint John and is the current chair of the Family Law Section for the New Brunswick Branch of the Canadian Bar Association.