From OZ ~ Dads on the Air ~ "The Canadian Special"

Dads On The Air
Monday night 3rd August for Northern Hemisphere and North American cable listeners , Early Tuesday morning 4 August 2009 for British and European Cable listeners and Monday Morning 4th August 10.30 am for Australian listeners and cable users

2GLF FM 89.3 and ONLINE

Local Sydney Australia Time: 10.30 am to 12 midday Tuesday 4th August 2009

USA and Canadian Eastern time: 8.30 pm to 10 pm Monday 3rd August 2009

USA and Canadian Pacific time: 5.30 pm to 7 pm Monday 3rd August 2009

UK GMT time: 12.30am to 2am Monday night (early Tuesday morning) 3rd-4th August 2009

In Canada:

Maritimes: 9.30 pm to 11.00 pm
Ontario: 8.30 pm to 10.00 pm

Prairies and Alberta: 6.30 pm to 8.00 pm

British Columbia: 5.30 pm to 7.00 pm

Listen live on 2GLF 89.3FM in Sydney or online via live streaming at www.893fm.com.au/On-Air

or in MP3 format at www.dadsontheair.net or subscribe to our Podcast

"The Canadian Special"
With Special Guests:
Karen Selick
Roger Gallaway
Jeffrey Asher

This week we look at the struggle for family law reform in Canada, the home of some of the world's most extreme anti-male anti-father legislation. Recently Dads On The Air interviewed Canadian MP Maurice Vellacot, who has introduced shared parenting legislation into the Canadian parliament. This week we follow on from that interview by talking with the highly experienced family lawyer Karen Selick, who has been an outspoken proponent for reform of the system; Roger Gallaway MP, who co-chaired an inquiry into shared parenting in Canada and Jeffrey Asher, a lecturer on men's studies who taught the last men's studies course in the country. With Australia's left wing government heading in exactly the opposite direction to the rest of the western world and winding back the modest reforms of the previous government promoting cooperative care of children after divorce, now is the perfect time to look at the situation around the world. Canadian society and many tens of thousands of fathers and their children have paid a very high price for the country's previous embrace of extreme anti-male ideology; and numerous voices are now united in a call for sanity to prevail.

Our first guest, Karen Selick, is a lawyer who spent approximately 22 years practising family law in Belleville, Ontario. During that time, she became an outspoken critic of Canada's divorce laws, including the law on marital property division, spousal support, child support and child custody. She has also publicly criticized the biases she observed in the courtroom. Selick was a columnist for Canadian Lawyer magazine for approximately 17 years, and currently contributes irregularly to the op-ed pages of the National Post, one of the few newspapers in the world which has over the past decade consistently run articles exposing the destructive practices of the family law industry and its bias against men. Her collected columns appear on her website at www.karenselick.com. Frequently, she wrote on matters related to family law. She has also appeared many times on television and radio to discuss family law issues. In 1998, she gave testimony to a Senate committee,opposing the then recently introduced Child Support Guidelines. In July, 2009 Selick left her practice to join the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF), a public-interest law firm that promotes freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of contract and private property rights. Among other things, the CCF initiates or participates in courtroom challenges of laws repugnant to the freedom and natural-law rights of Canadians. Here is an extract from her article: Is Family Law Really Better than Sharia?

"Having practiced family law in Ontario since 1985, I watched with some amusement the recent uproar over whether or not Ontarians should be allowed to arbitrate their matrimonial disputes using Sharia law.

"In their haste to condemn what they view as an unjust and undesirable body of law, opponents of Sharia arbitration overlook the corollary implicit in their position: namely, that ordinary Ontario family law—as specified primarily in the Family Law Act and the Divorce Act—is a just and desirable code for resolving matrimonial disputes.

"To me, this proposition is laughable. Blinded by their fear of radical Islamists, Sharia opponents have played right into the hands of a different set of radicals: radical feminists.

"Although gender-neutral in its language, today’s family law legislation was enacted over the past two decades primarily with the intention of benefiting women at the expense of men. My own view is that these laws have also institutionalized injustice at the expense of justice.

"The Divorce Act, for instance, provides that a spouse’s “conduct in relation to the marriage” is irrelevant in determining her entitlement to spousal support. Although superficially gender-neutral, this provision actually protects women (who comprise the overwhelming proportion of support recipients) from the consequences of their own blatant marital misconduct—acts such as adultery, desertion and
violence. Countless Canadian men pay support to their estranged wives and former wives despite the fact that these women deceived them, cuckolded them, then departed to live openly with new lovers or new husbands. Other men are paying support to women who viciously assaulted them.

"When I first began practicing family law, such behaviour would have 'disentitled' a wife to support. Nowadays, instead of punishing women for breaching their contracts, the law rewards them.

"Is this the legal system we hold out as an exemplar of justice"?

"Then there are the child custody and support laws. The vast preponderance of custodial parents and child support recipients are mothers. Men who seek custody generally face an uphill battle. I have heard several judges openly admit to being biased in favour of granting custody to mothers.

"Nevertheless, the law requires fathers to pay support in prescribed amounts even if the mothers poison their children’s minds to the point where the kids refuse to speak to their fathers. Fathers have to pay even if the mothers uproot their children and drag them off to another province so that the fathers rarely or never get to see them. Fathers have to pay even if the mothers are wealthier than they are and don’t need the money. Several Canadian men are known to have committed suicide as a result of these laws. Others have fled the country.

"Is this the legal system we consider superior to religious arbitration?"

Our next guest is the popular ex member of the Canadian Member of Parliament Roger Gallaway

In his former motion to amend the Divorce Act he stated that legal battles over child custody often lead lawyers to encourage their clients to complain of psychological abuse, and women in particular to complain about violence and abuse in order to gain the upper hand in disputes.

He is a personal friend and frequent political ally of Liberal-turned-Conservative-turned Independent Senator Anne Cools, and has worked with her to reform Canada's divorce laws in recent years. Both Cools and Gallaway have sought to ensure greater custody rights for fathers. In furtherance of these concerns, Gallaway served as co-chair of the Special Joint Committee on Custody and Access, which recommended shared parenting as the norm in its report, For The Sake of The Children, issued in 1998. The report called for shared custody, repeal of the tender year's doctrine and strict rules of proof when abuse was alleged. More than 10 years after the report has been ignored by successive Justice Ministers and governments. However there are now new moves afoot to finally reform Canada's troubled family law arena. As proponent of change MP Maurice Vellacott argued on Dads On The Air recently, with so many people having witnessed the damage done to their friends and relatives through the extreme anti-father bias of contemporary family law, 80% of the Canadian population now support shared parenting. Surveys in Australia have showed similar levels of support in the community, making even more outrageous the Australian governments moves to turn back the clock. Of the three government inquiries now in train in Australia, not one is asking the opinions of fathers or the general public. The mandarins have the debate by the throat. They could not care less what the public thought.

Roger Gallaway lives on the Canada-US border directly opposite the American State of Michigan. From 1991 until 2006 he was an elected representative first for the town of Pt Edward as Mayor and then for 13 years he served in Ottawa as the Member of Parliament for the constituency of Sarnia-Lambton. A former lawyer he is a graduate of the University of Windsor Law School and is a Queens' Privy Councillor.

Our final guest is Jeffrey Asher a retired teacher, who taught "Men's Lives," the only Canadian college level course on men's issues. Two thirds of his students were open-minded young women. This course was the very last 'Men's Studies' course ever taught in Canadian Universities and Colleges. He has written on male epidemiology and sex differences in intellectual ability. He knows his gender disparity backwards and continues to advocate on behalf of the natural family, equal opportunities and equal justice before the law. He says experience as a father was the most demanding and rewarding experience of his life.

Jeffrey Asher says over 40% of marriages end in divorce, and amongst university graduate women over 50%. Less than 6% of fathers are granted residential custody by the courts. "I was one of those rare fathers," he says. "The remaining 94% of fathers are reduced to wallets and weekend visitors with their children whom they love above all else. I am concerned about prevention of such grief, imposed on children and fathers. My young men students frequently asked how they might avoid divorce horrors".

"These are painful questions, but necessary in our age of feminist jurisprudence. Should men marry? Or should men maintain relationships with women only as long as both are satisfied? Should men conceive children? Those beloved children will be likely torn from them and possibly alienated".

"Repeated studies show that from 10% to 30% of children were conceived by a man who is NOT their wife’s legal partner. If a man’s partner or wife delivers a child, should he routinely request a DNA fatherhood test? What, if any, are the conditions which might permit a man to marry and raise children in a stable and lifelong marriage? Is that currently possible?

In last month's article "Why most men tolerate feminist misandry" Jeffrey Asher wrote:

"Over twelve years of teaching Men’s Lives, I also wondered why majority-male legislatures, judiciaries and mainstream media editors, capitulated to and enforced feminist politics and jurisprudence.

"Above all, men are powerfully driven by sexual attraction to women. Men easily rationalize their sexual need for women as based in intellectual and moral equality.

"Male protection of women and children - at the risk of men’s safety and lives - over millennia of social evolution, allowed our species to survive. I suspect that imperative is as integral to male brains and hormones, as the need for and care of children is integral to women.

"Men in power did not accede to feminists because of sexual opportunism alone – women remain second to one in that category. When feminists – confused as representing women – called out to men for ‘equality,’ men entrenched quotas and feminist jurisprudence. A man shamed by a woman promptly takes corrective action, to ‘act like a Man’.

"Most men did not expect feminists, to lie. Nor did men account for female emotional volatility. Men did not expect feminists to sabotage the family. Men did not realize that the driving force behind feminism was activist female self-loathing and lesbian misandry, deliberately alienating girls and women from heterosexuality and the family.

"Donna Laframboise in "The Princess at the Window," observed that in the feminist movement, the lunatic fringe had taken over the mainstream. Feminists terrorized women against men with abuse, assault and rape agitprop. And yes, too many men remain self-loathing feminists.

I suspect the above partially explains the reluctance of most men in power to oppose feminist opportunism, even after their own marriages are destroyed and their children torn asunder...

"At the end of the day, most men hope to return home, to their wife and children, whom they love. That is a powerful restraint against male denunciation of feminist family destruction."

By John Stapleton
www.dadsontheair.net

UK ~ Women's refuge closed by 'politically correct' council as it does not cater for abused men

Monday, Aug 03 2009
This Afternoon 21°C This Evening 15°C 5-Day Forecast

By Andy Dolan
Last updated at 1:17 PM on 03rd August 2009

Supporters of a women's refuge were 'shocked and stunned' to be told it is being closed - because it does not cater for men.

The emergency shelter was set up 13 years ago for women and children and adult males are not allowed to stay.

But council officials have now ruled that, because it does not serve both sexes equally, the money used to run the home would be better spent on an 'outreach service' to help battered husbands as well as wives in their own homes.

Unequal: An emergency shelter set up for abused women has been forced to close because it does not cater for men

Brian Ellis, a councillor who helped set up the refuge in Weymouth, Dorset, in 1986, branded the move a 'step backwards'.

'It doesn't make sense,' he said. 'The women are there because of what men have done to them and their children. When people suffer from domestic violence they need an immediate escape and that's being taken away.'

Refuge, a charity for women and children affected by domestic violence, said: 'There are not enough refuges for women as it is.

'It's already difficult to get help and women often have to travel long distances. Losing beds that are already there is really devastating. It is a whole community that has lost that kind of safety.'

The shelter, which can accommodate six families, costs £82,780 a year to run.

The council is one of nine in Dorset clubbing together to spend £250,000 on finding consultants to tell them where to set up a gypsy camp.

The shelter is funded by Dorset Supporting People - a partnership of Dorset County Council, six local district and borough councils, NHS Dorset and Dorset Probation.

The partnership said the refuge will close in March. A housing association which owns the building is working to find the women alternative accommodation.

One mother, 47, who used the refuge after being abused by her husband for years, said: 'I wasn't sure about where to go and what to do and then I found out about the Weycan't-mouth refuge. It was a place where I felt safe and I hadn't felt that for a long time.

'I can't believe they are going to close it - it's so important I can't even put it into words.'

A domestic violence outreach worker, who asked not to be named, said she was shocked and added: 'If there was a need for this 20 years ago then I see why not now. They are always full and there are women constantly trying to get in. I just don't understand it.'

In the last year, 6,323 people have reported domestic violence to Dorset Police.

Dorset County Council confirmed that one reason for closure was the lack of facilities for men.

A spokesman said: 'We want to make sure both men and women are catered for and we are not able to do that within the small building.'

Anthony Wilsdon, spokesman for Supporting People, said the new outreach service would help more people. He said: 'We have identified a need to support more people in their own homes.

'There is also a need to make support open to male victims and families with older male children.'

Comments (27)

What are these women moaning about? They believe in equality, don't they?

If anyone has any doubt about the comparative levels of domestic violence perpetrated by women and men, they should do some proper research and find out the truth that the government, the mainstream media and feminists have been suppressing for decades - which is that women are just as violent as men; in fact marginally more so. A good place to start is to do an internet search on the name "Fiebert" and read everything you find there. And I mean everything. Go on, I dare you.

Whether closing a women's shelter is preferable to extending shelters to allow for male victims is open to argument; but what should not be, is the need for genuinely equal treatment for both sexes, which we emphatically do not have at present.

- paul parmenter, Norfolk, UK, 03/8/2009 07:15

Click to rate Rating (0)

Report abuse

Too bad it isn't politically correct to acknowledge that men and women are different and have different needs.

- Bob Eubanks, Dallas, TX US, 03/8/2009 07:15

Click to rate Rating (0)

Report abuse

Whilst I have sympathy for the women who have suffered domestic abuse, there is a significant problem of male abuse too, which is often overlooked. Instead of shutting the womens' refuge, the council should have insisted that a male refuge was also set up.

It's nice to see the Political correct chickens coming home to roost, though. Maybe it will open the eyes of the perpetrators of this nonsense to think things through fully in future.

- Danny, Pendine, 03/8/2009 07:14

Click to rate Rating (0)

Report abuse

The people who make these mad PC decisions should be named. Not just hide under some council committee. If they want us to think that they are doing the correct thing, they should be proud of their decision. They are basically trying to make a name for themselves within the council, so they too can get a pay rise and a bonus!!!!

- Peter, Margate, Kent, 03/8/2009 07:12

Click to rate Rating (0)

Report abuse

Okay, at least men are beginning to at last get something in equality after 12 years of being shunned as second class by the government, councils, woman's rights and feminists. Like it or not men are battered as well as woman these days, it's just not publicized so much as women getting battered makes better head-lines so maybe look at the media why this is so. Woman are now not the quite stay at home housewife, and through wanting equality they have become the same aggressive person as there male counter-part as we are seeing on a daily basis.

- Robert Macbeth, Enfield, London, 03/8/2009 06:51

Click to rate Rating (0)

Report abuse

when will people realise that all this political correctness and health and saftey rules are doing the opposite and causing friction and dangers.

- nick, ENGLAND, 03/8/2009 06:50

Click to rate Rating 1

In MA a Horror Story ~ Till Death Do Us Pay

It's hard to believe this kind of thing exists in the 21st Century. The feminists think the patriarchy rules but indentured ex husbands may beg to differ.MJM

The poster child for progressive marriage laws, Massachusetts is also a singularly nightmarish place to get a divorce—especially for the better-off spouse. Now a brewing reform movement is pushing to rewrite the state's outdated alimony rules, led by one very fed-up ex-husband.

By Kris Frieswick

Steve Hitner sits on a bench in the Marlborough District Probate court, drumming his fingers on the wood. It's 10 a.m., and already a half dozen supplicants have been granted an audience with Judge Randy Jill Kaplan, a fiftyish woman with tousled blond curls: ex-spouses seeking settlement approvals, estranged parents sparring over visitation rights, a divorced mom making the case for why she should be allowed to travel abroad with her kid. The bailiff has opened every window on this brisk spring morning, making the courtroom as cold as a morgue.

Dressed sharply in a black blazer, silk tie, gray slacks, and rimless glasses, Hitner, 61, has the look and hopped-up energy of a salesman about to close the biggest deal of his life. He has quite a bit riding on this hearing. So, too, does his ex-wife, Joan, 66, seated with her lawyer on the opposite end of the bench, decked out in a formfitting gray pantsuit, ornate hair clips, stylish white leather purse, and long, manicured nails. She's flown up from her home in Florida for the occasion. At stake is the $45,000 in alimony Hitner has paid her every year since their 1999 divorce, but says he can no longer afford. With his printing and copying business hemorrhaging cash, he says he took just $36,000 in salary last year.

Despite these dire straits—Hitner relies on his second wife, Jeanie, to pay most of the household expenses plus the part of the monthly alimony bill he can't cover—he isn't optimistic that Judge Kaplan will be moved. Four years ago, he'd sought a modification from this same judge. "I told her, 'I really need help here, because I'm running out of credit cards to borrow on to pay this alimony,'" says Hitner. "The judge's response was, like, 'Lemme know when you run out of credit cards and I'll put you in jail.'" He ended up filing for bankruptcy in December 2006. A separate court battle with Joan (who declined to be interviewed for this article) over stock in his company has dragged on for 10 years. Hitner estimates that he's spent, at minimum, $200,000 in legal costs just to get where he is today. Which is to say, exactly where he was in 1999.

While he's been fighting these personal skirmishes, Hitner has also been engaged in a larger war: to finally, and fundamentally, change the way Massachusetts does alimony. When he isn't busy keeping himself out of financial ruin, not to mention lockup, he's leading that charge as president of Massachusetts Alimony Reform, a group he started in 2005 with like-minded first husbands (and the second wives who support them, often financially). His target is a system that many in the legal profession—both judges and attorneys, in our state and around the nation—contend is among the most backward in the country.

"We have a society that should encourage people to take care of themselves," says Hitner. "But in Massachusetts, when two people split up, the court system ties them together for the rest of their lives."

---

Such is the unique hell that is Massachusetts alimony law—a particularly ironic hell, given our pioneering, progressive reputation when it comes to marriage. Completely separate from child support—about which state law is surprisingly lucid—alimony is intended to provide for the financial needs of the lesser-earning, or "dependent," spouse after a divorce. "Need," according to Massachusetts case law, is whatever is required to keep up, to the extent possible, the standard of living the parties enjoyed before divorce. (Although it's a gender-neutral law, most alimony recipients in Massachusetts are female.)
Today many states have statutorily defined the purpose of alimony—for instance, as a temporary arrangement allowing the dependent spouse to get on his or her feet financially; as compensation for money invested in a marriage (like paying for a spouse's medical school); or as punishment in an at-fault divorce. In Massachusetts, by contrast, the statute mandates that alimony exist, but neither the courts nor the legislature has formally explained why. As such, the rules on who gets alimony, how much, and for how long are murky at best.

Because the statute is so vaguely worded, award decisions are habitually based on case law, the growing mountain of which is a hydra of rulings that point in so many directions that almost any decision can be defended or overturned on appeal, depending on how smart your lawyer is and which precedent he selects to argue your case. "There's no predictability about what a judge will do," says David H. Lee, a family law attorney and cochair of the Boston Bar Association's alimony task force, "and no predictability about whether an appellate court is going to be consistent with what was said months or years earlier. It's a real struggle." He adds, "A lot of people are looking for logical explanations. But when you look at alimony [in Massachusetts], you have to check logic at the door."

When an alimony case comes up before a judge, the focus is almost exclusively on the wealthier ex-spouse's ability to shell out, and hardly ever on the recipient's ability to fund his or her own needs. If the court believes a payor is intentionally underemployed in an attempt to lower alimony obligations, it will base the award on previous earnings history. In modification hearings, judges frequently count a second spouse's income as part of "total household income" and then use that figure in determining whether the payor has enough income to keep paying alimony (a backhanded way of tapping into a second spouse's income). But unlike in most states—and every other state in New England—here judges historically do not assume any income for the recipient, even if he or she is able to work but chooses not to. (In fact, Massachusetts' alimony system doesn't even conform with state rules for other areas of family law. In child support cases, recent reforms explicitly encourage the judge to impute potential income to a recipient if the judge believes the recipient is shirking higher-paying work.) Finally, when determining a payor's ability to meet alimony obligations after retirement, judges can count the income from retirement accounts, including those already divided in half during the original divorce proceedings. This last precedent confuses even the judges who must abide by it. "The courts have said up until now that it's not a double dip," says Edward M. Ginsburg, a retired judge who heard alimony cases for 25 years in the Middlesex Probate and Family Court. "But it is a double dip."

For all this, what really sticks in the craw of would-be reformers is that alimony in Massachusetts is so often a burden without end. While permanent alimony is frequently awarded nationwide for unions that lasted more than 20 years, judges in other New England states can set alimony duration, even for the longest marriages. New Hampshire, for example, tapers alimony over time to encourage a recipient to support him- or herself (judges there also take into account the recipient's income in setting the payment level). Alimony in the Granite State is by definition transitional, says Margaret Kerouac, chair of the family law section of the New Hampshire Bar Association. "There is case law that specifically says it is not a lifelong profit-sharing plan," she says. Not so in Massachusetts: The only way judges here will set a cutoff for alimony is if it is tied to a specific event, like the recipient's remarriage, death, or new inheritance. And since judges cannot predict what a recipient's financial circumstances will be at a point in the future, most simply award indefinite alimony and leave it to the payor to seek modification. The vast majority of judges who do want to set a duration get overturned on appeal, so few ever try.

"Massachusetts is unusual," says Gaetano "Guy" Ferro, a family lawyer in Connecticut and past president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. "They're not consistent with the laws as I understand them anyplace else." He laughs. "I think I'm going to tell my female clients to move there."

---

When their case is finally called, Hitner, Joan, and their attorneys approach the table in front of Kaplan's bench. They are old pros at this by now. After their three-day divorce trial in 1998, the couple waited almost a year for Middlesex Probate and Family Court Judge Sheila McGovern to rule on alimony and the disposition of their marital assets. In the interim, Joan sued Hitner in Superior Court for the profits on her 50 percent of the stock in his printing business. When McGovern at last ruled on their divorce case, she awarded Joan $865 a week in alimony until the Superior Court decided the profits question. Two and a half years after that, the Superior Court ruled that it was a probate matter, not a civil one, and threw the case back to McGovern...who died in November 2002, before she could give a final ruling. The couple had to start the process all over again with Judge Kaplan.

Hitner represented himself at his 2005 modification hearing. To get his alimony payments lowered, he needed to prove a material change in circumstances, so he brought his accountant as a witness and handed over tax returns, credit reports, and other financial papers that documented his troubles. No dice. Kaplan ruled that because Hitner had control over his own income, the documentation wasn't credible, and the modification was denied. After Hitner filed for bankruptcy in late 2006, he had to borrow against his house to support his business and keep making his alimony payments.

Today's hearing is short and, in the end, just as inconclusive as the last round. This time, Kaplan says the only way she'll rule on the value of the contested company stock is if a credible witness testifies—for instance, she suggests, the trustee who worked on Hitner's bankruptcy case. A moment later, though, Kaplan realizes she knows the trustee socially. She'll have to recuse herself if Hitner calls him. Because the alternative, hiring a business appraiser, would cost $10,000 or more, Hitner says, his only real option is to go with the trustee, and go back to square one with another judge.

"People in my situation think they're the only one. They're like, 'I had a bad lawyer, I had a bad judge,'" says Hitner following the hearing, sitting at the dining room table in his three-bedroom house in a manicured neighborhood in Marlborough. "But when I started my website, I got horror stories from all over. I said, 'Wow, this is incredible!'"

Hitner has hung on to those horror stories, in the event they might prove potent ammunition on Beacon Hill. At his urging, Lincoln attorney Tim Taylor drafted legislation that Massachusetts Alimony Reform managed to get introduced during the 2007 legislative session, only to have it die in the judiciary committee. Updated legislation was introduced this spring by state Representative Steven M. Walsh, this time with 72 cosponsors. The bill takes language from the laws that exist in most of our neighboring states: It defines the purpose of alimony as transitional help for a divorcée to become financially independent. It caps alimony at half the length of the marriage (up to 12 years unless there are minor children in the home). It ends alimony when the payor reaches retirement age, but allows permanent alimony if the recipient is determined to be incapable of working. It prohibits counting a second spouse's income toward alimony calculations.

The last time the Massachusetts Bar Association and the Boston Bar Association worked on alimony reform, the proposal amounted to little more than adding the word "duration" to the language of the current statute. Such limited efforts aren't surprising to Hitner, who wonders if attorneys who make their living trying alimony cases would voluntarily work against their own financial interests. Guy Ferro, the Connecticut family law attorney, says they won't. Indeed, when a committee of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers tried to draft alimony guidelines, other attorneys successfully pushed to spike that initiative. Ferro says the thinking was: "If a person can go to guidelines and plug in a number to show what they have to pay in alimony and for how long, what do they need lawyers for?"

Hitner thinks the same thing will likely happen to the local bar associations' efforts. But that's okay. He and his fellow alimony reformers have just gained another, potentially much more potent avenue for change.

---

It comes courtesy of a particularly charged example of Hitner's horror stories, this one involving Rudolph Pierce, a former Massachusetts Superior Court judge who'd also found success lawyering in Washington, DC. After retiring from his practice, Pierce, who is now 67, asked for termination of the $110,000 alimony he was paying his ex-wife, Carneice, 65. But in September 2008, Middlesex Probate and Family Court Judge Leilah A. Keamy ruled against that request, telling him that given his extensive legal background, he was capable of earning more than his planned retirement income, which included Social Security and disbursements from his retirement account, which had been divided during the divorce. By taking on a few side jobs, the judge ruled, Pierce could easily continue to pay Carneice the reduced—but still not inconsiderable—sum of $42,000 a year.

At no point in her ruling did Keamy question Carneice's decision, just weeks before the trial, to leave her $95,000-a-year job. She didn't impute any significant income to Carneice at all. Instead, the judge decided Carneice needed the alimony to continue to support her lifestyle, which includes a 2008 BMW x5 SUV, a condo in DC, and a rental apartment in Brookline. (Carneice told the judge she hopes to get another job soon, though plans to retire in two years.)

Pierce appealed Keamy's ruling to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which agreed to hear the case this fall. It is the most significant alimony-related case the court has taken up in years. If it goes their way, the case could enact the limit advocates have sought, allowing payors to retire. More than that, it gives them a double-barreled shot at securing major alimony overhauls.

Of the half a dozen alimony recipients contacted for this article, only one was willing to talk. Betty O'Brien (who asked that her real name be withheld) lives on the South Shore, and receives $1,500 a week in alimony from her ex-husband, "Rob." Last winter, Rob told the judge at his modification hearing that his construction business was failing due to the recession and he simply could not afford the payments. He spent two weeks in jail. O'Brien says she felt bad when that happened, but that it was his own fault.

"He made a great deal of money and, unfortunately, the economy turned, and that's not my problem," says O'Brien, who works part time at a local hospital. "[Rob and his second wife] went crazy financially and that's not my problem, either. They are putting me in a very bad financial situation."

She gets prickly when asked whether she deserves the $78,000 a year she receives in alimony—"I don't have to give you the reasons"—but it's clear she feels she's earned it, that it's a kind of back wages. "When we were married I gave him money. I inherited money. I worked very hard. I had to account for every penny I spent. We made money on the houses we bought. I supported the whole thing," she says. "I don't hold a grudge against either of them, but there are two sides to every story."

O'Brien's thinking dovetails with the argument most popular among defenders of the existing alimony system, who hold that the payments are just part of the standard division of assets that comes with a divorce. "The expectation is that the product of the marriage would be divided about equally," says Ginsburg, the retired Middlesex judge. But in practice it's rarely that simple. Retirement assets can't be tapped until retirement age. The marital home is illiquid (or today, underwater) and throws off no income. "So what is the major asset that most people accumulate during a marriage?" says Ginsburg. "It's earning capacity. That's the major asset." Never mind that the Internal Revenue Service doesn't categorize things that way. If you want to treat ex-spouses equitably, the thinking goes, factoring in salary-earning potential has to be in-bounds.

---

Preserving that option is crucial to state Senator Cynthia Stone Creem, cochair of the judiciary committee—and, as such, the person in position to stop Massachusetts Alimony Reform's efforts in their tracks. Her view is that any changes to the current statute should be limited to allowing for finite alimony, and nothing more. Off the Hill, Creem is a family lawyer who argues alimony cases, and she sees marriages as partnerships, ones that ought to compensate dependent spouses for making their exes the successes they are. "But for their spouses, they wouldn't be where they are today," she says. "They brought up their children or helped with their businesses or entertained their associates." Creem is opposed to Hitner's legislation, and, as judiciary cochair, has the power to kill it before the full Senate and House get a chance to vote. "It's unfair to make it so difficult to get support," says Creem. "This bill, it's set up by people who basically want to eliminate alimony."

Hitner denies that's his goal. He thinks there's a place for alimony, even in perpetuity, if a recipient is physically or emotionally unable to work. Which is indeed the reality for many women who were married in a different era—no one can fairly expect a newly single 60-year-old whose career was homemaker to readily support herself on her own.

The problem is that the Massachusetts system treats all dependent spouses as if they fall into that category, ignoring that these days, and especially in this state—where nearly two-thirds of families with children are dual-income—that's rarely true. And so alimony is routinely awarded to women (and some men) who are fully capable of supporting themselves.

Defined the way it is now, the purpose of alimony in Massachusetts is not to help the recipient survive, but instead to maintain the lifestyle he or she had before the divorce. This is why exes like Carneice Pierce, who has proven she is more than capable of making over $90,000 a year in income, can still claim "need." She in fact does need that $42,000 in alimony to maintain the upper-class habits she had when married. Massachusetts law says it is her right to expect it, and her former husband's duty to provide it.

That makes the state's alimony system one that not only punishes some men, but also takes a dim view of the women it's supposed to help, enshrining biases that treat them as if it's the 1950s and women are uneducated, unemployable traditional mother/homemakers who shouldn't be stripped of the lifestyle to which they've grown accustomed. Actually, Ira Mark Ellman, a professor at Arizona State University's law school and author of the American Law Institute's recommendations on family law and alimony, would go further than that, having looked at our setup. "It's like a leftover from the old gender-based laws, 'women can't work, we can't put that obligation on them,'" he says. "It's right out of 1850."

The day after Hitner's hearing in family court, he calls with news. Joan has signed an agreement that gives him back his stock in exchange for a cut of the profits of any eventual sale of the business. It also lowers his alimony payments by the amount Joan gets in Social Security, and eliminates them completely when he turns 65. For the first time since he and Joan separated in 1996, Hitner says, "it feels like there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I am free, or I will be soon." It is fitting that after a decade, hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills, and weeks in front of judges, it was a private agreement, and not the court system, that put an end to the couple's drama.

Hitner says he's now more committed than ever to see that change comes for those still stuck in Massachusetts alimony hell. "I'm going to spend all the time I used to spend working on my own case working on getting reform passed. I write that last check on January 28, 2013. After that I can keep whatever I make. My life will be my own again."

KRIS FRIESWICK is a freelance writer living in the South End.

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/till_death_do_us_pay/page1

Parental Alienation ~ Conference Workshop at the University of Toronto

Sanford Fleming Building / Blue Room
10 Kings College Road
Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3G4

October 17th & 18th, 2009

What You Need to Know About Parental Alienation
and
Parental Alienation Syndrome

Speakers: Joseph Goldberg - Founder of the CSPAS Dr. Abraham Worenklein Brian Ludmer, Solicitor Also Speaking via Video Feed Dr. Amy Baker Dr. Michael Bone Dr. Terence Campbell Dr. Douglas Darnell Dr. Glenn Ross Caddy Dr. Richard Sauber Dr. Marty McKay Dr. Demosthenese Lorandos Gene C. Colman, Solicitor Carey Linde, Solicitor Bob Finlay, M.A. Pamela Hoch, M.A. Bob Hoch M.A. Gwendolyn Landolt, Solicitor Dr. Jayne Major		Come Saturday or Sunday One Day Conference / Workshop Cost is $ 175.00 To Pay By Check: Make Check Payable To: CSPAS / Canadian Symposium Mail Your Check To: CSPAS A7-1390 Major Mackenzie Drive E. Suite 127 Richmond Hill, ON L4S 0A1 To Pay By Credit Card: Click - PAYPAL BUTTON
This educational conference should be attended by: Family Law Lawyers Psychologists Psychiatrists Custody Evaluators Parenting Coordinators Family Therapists Social Workers Mental Health Professionals Family Mediators Child Abuse Investigators University Faculty Educators Family Law Judges Supervisors of Visitation School Counselors Law Enforcement Professionals Social Service Agencies

Did you miss the last conference held at the Metro Toronto Convention Center in March, 2009?
Now is your chance to attend the next conference at the University of Toronto!

The National Post put the CSPAS Conference on the Front Page of their newspaper, March 27th, 2009.

Click here to read the article

Click here to read the Globe & Mail article by Tralee Pearce

Click here to read the Globe & Mail article by Kirk Makin

UK ~ Inside the family courts: raw deal for mums?

Here's an article written from the clear perspective of a female supremacist when it comes to parenting. Early on she acknowledges that 95 % of moms get custody but also asserts the pendulum is swinging the other way? What fatuous kind of logic is that?

I am left with the distinct impression she believes, despite her obvious good position as a reporter, that women are mere children and putty in the hands of everyone that comes in contact with them in family law. That a few, and I do say few, relative to men find themselves in the same boat as 95% of UK dads is interesting. It is more shrieking by the feminist class - but not the equality camp - rather it is the supremacist camp.MJM.

From The Sunday Times August 2, 2009

It's increasingly ruled women must live apart from children post divorce - attacking working mothers or rewarding male parenting?

Christine Toomey

Tension is high in the waiting area outside the top floor courtrooms of the Inner London Family Proceedings Court in Wells Street, central London. In one corner, an agitated young mother sits pressing crumpled tissues to her face, mumbling, “I just want my kids back”, as solicitors huddle close by talking among themselves about the need for her to attend parenting classes.

In the opposite corner, an older mother sits staring straight ahead, her handbag perched primly on her lap, studiously avoiding eye contact with her former partner, who has sidled over to sit by my side. Like all family courts, Wells Street, the largest in the country, has only been open to media scrutiny since April after a campaign arguing that the close secrecy in which they traditionally operated led to widespread miscarriages of justice. “Blokes are being crucified in here,” the man blurts out to me, his face red with pent-up fury. This is not quite true.

Over the course of the next few hours, a formidable female judge patiently listens to his pleas to be allowed to see his baby son fortnightly, despite objections by the baby’s mother that this should not be granted until full background checks on him are completed. She claims that he was once excluded from a leisure centre for inappropriate attention to children. Her objections are overruled. Supervised contact is granted.

After years of high-profile stunts by pressure groups such as Fathers4Justice, many people assume that men still systematically fare badly in family courts. But in the wake of a recent spate of stories highlighting the treatment of mothers considered “too stupid” or disruptive or too busy working to look after, or even be allowed contact with, their children, some question if the pendulum has begun to swing the other way.

I hear the stories of mothers whose experiences have convinced them of it. Isabel is a former teacher, aged 40, now living in the northeast of England. Her voice trembles as she tells of a lengthy legal battle with her wealthy ex-husband for custody of her son. “He left me when I was pregnant and showed little interest in our son at first. But as soon as he got a new girlfriend with children of her own, he wanted to impress her by playing the family man, and applied for contact and eventually full custody,” she says. Her ex-husband, a prominent businessman, Isabel says, is a bully who intimidated social workers into writing negative reports about her mothering abilities. She tried to challenge them in court, only to be told, she says, by the judge who granted her son’s father increased contact: “Any more from you and you will never see your son again.”

“It was all about control as far as my ex was concerned,” she says, “and because he had a cousin in the legal profession, he knew how to play the system. I began to be treated like some sort of criminal and entered a living hell.”

When Isabel’s son was three, he started to complain, grabbing his genitals, that his father was “hurting me there lots and lots”. But when Isabel told the court that she believed her son was being sexually abused by his father, she was accused by psychologists employed by her ex-husband of suffering from Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), a controversial term used to imply that she had planted false allegations in her son’s mind.

The term PAS, sometimes referred to as “implacable hostility”, was coined by an American psychiatrist, the late Dr Richard Gardener, in 1985, to describe the process by which one parent brainwashes a child against the other by obsessive denigration. It has been cited in high-profile custody battles such as that of the actors Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, but it has never been recognised as a clinically diagnosed condition.

In this country PAS has been dubbed by some mothers “the new Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy” — the now widely questioned suggestion that parents expressing concern for a child’s health may be fabricating or inducing illness. There are no statistics cataloguing the extent of its use in the British courts, but it appears to be gaining an increasing foothold here. Time and again in my conversations with mothers who have lost custody of their children, or are struggling to maintain contact with them, it emerges that they have been accused of suffering from PAS.

It was on the strength of such accusations against her that Isabel finally lost custody of her son. She is allowed to see him only once every three weeks during visits that involve her making a round trip of more than 300 miles. Devastated that her son is being raised by her ex-husband’s new wife, who she believes neglects her child, she is “seething with anger and feelings of impotence” at the injustice. “I am heartbroken that my happy intelligent little boy has been so let down by the system,” says Isabel, who describes the family courts as “a one-size-fits-all setup” that leaves too many parents and children traumatised.

Isabel describes her son now as “just a shadow of himself” when she manages to see him. “He appears at the door and I hardly recognise him, he is so withdrawn. But I daren’t say anything more to the courts about this because I am sure then they will stop me from seeing him altogether.”

Laura, a 44-year-old businesswoman, has not seen her two sons for more than a year, after her ex-husband was granted full custody (now known as “residency”) when she too was accused of trying to turn them against their father. “My sons were rejecting their father partly because they felt so guilty about leaving me when they went to see him. But the so-called experts who assessed them had such little understanding of child psychology and development, they were on a par with dentists trying to perform brain surgery.”

In the case of Norma, a 43-year-old London-based professional, it is she who believes her husband has indoctrinated her two sons with such animosity against her that they no longer wish to see her. Despite a court order granting her shared residency, she has not seen her sons for almost a year. Yet the courts, she says, refuse to acknow-ledge the damaging effect that this is having on her children’s psychological wellbeing, and insist that they continue to live with their father. “This is emotional abuse of the worst kind. I feel as if all my instincts as a mother have been disregarded. Once you enter the British family court system, you enter a battle scenario that only ratchets up animosity and does nothing to help you reach an amicable settlement.”

Norma believes that being a working mother has counted against her. After her sons were born, she reduced the hours she worked at a middle-management level in the public sector from full-time to three days. But because her husband ran his own business, he was also able to be flexible with his working day, to adapt to his young sons’ needs, which was the reason, she believes, a shared residency order was granted.

At first, Norma says, she supported this arrangement; she had had a poor relationship with her own father, so was keen for her boys to have the best possible relationship with theirs. “I was very happy to share everything, including financial responsibility. But my ex-husband is not capable of sharing. He abused the situation and turned my boys against me to the point where they have nothing to do with me now, even though I continue to support them financially.

“I suppose I’m a victim of the typical aspirations of a 21st-century working woman, who, after a good education, wanted it all: a good career and a family, a true work-life balance. But in the end, when the family fell apart, I paid the price for that dream and got absolutely shafted,” continues Norma, who spent £80,000 on legal expenses to try to regain full custody of her sons. “If I had been a traditional Sixties stay-at-home mother, I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in now. The children would have stayed with me and the conflict that escalated to the point where I now no longer see them would never have started.”

Norma acknowledges that some fathers can be better carers than mothers, but she believes that mothers suffer particular hardship when deprived of contact with their children because society sees this as unnatural and stigmatises women in such situations. “I feel bereft, empty, heartbroken. But I rarely admit this to anyone unless I know them very well,” she confesses. “I just live in the hope that my boys will reach a level of emotional independence one day and will come back to me and ask questions about what has gone on.”

Like all the women I interview, Norma begs me to change her name and details of her story that might identify her or her children to anyone familiar with the circumstances. Unlike the pranksters from Fathers4Justice, all these women shy away from publicity, fearful that this will further damage any hope of rebuilding better relations with their children in the future.

In the overwhelming majority of cases, child-ren do still live with their mother after divorce or separation — 95%, against 5% with fathers. The figures have stayed proportionally the same over many years. But as divorce rates have risen, so has the number of women living apart from their children. Data from the Child Support Agency (CSA) show that the instances where mothers are registered as the non-resident parent have increased from 32,100 in 2005 to 65,800 in March 2009. In the same period the CSA’s caseload doubled, from 647,000 assessments made to 1.28m, involving just under half of the estimated 2.6m separated families in Great Britain.

The charity Match (Mothers Apart from Their Children), representing women who find themselves in this situation, estimates that there could actually be as many as 250,000 mothers living apart from their children in this country.

“People assume a woman must have done something wrong if she has lost custody of her child, so it is very hard for women to admit to being in that situation,” explains Sarah Hart, an advisor to Match and author of a book called A Mother Apart. “While the courts might operate on a so-called gender-neutral basis when it comes to making decisions regarding the custody of children, society does not. It is very judgmental of women whose children don’t live with them, which not only damages them psychologically, but then impacts on their ability to mother their children — if they still have contact, that is.”

This is certainly how Isabel feels. She was so traumatised by losing custody of her son that she abandoned a degree course she had begun after he was born, and now works part-time in a small business unrelated to education. “I felt totally destroyed. I couldn’t bear to be around other children, and if anyone asked me if I had children, I would change the subject immediately,” she says.

Hart cautions mothers to be very aware — especially in the current economic climate, with more women forced to take up the financial reins of their family — that the hours they spend out of the home can influence court decisions should there be disputes over custody. Courts will take into consideration such factors as which parent has performed more child care in a household prior to family breakdown, in deciding who a child’s “primary carer” has been, although increasingly shared residency orders are granted.

Jane, a police officer who also lost custody of her two children because she had worked longer hours than her ex-husband, offers a warning: “I would say to any woman who considers the equality role swap, ‘Don’t do it.’ I did it for the right reasons, but it came back and bit me.”

The gradual shift in custodial arrangements can be seen as a direct consequence of women’s fight for equality in the workplace. But the unforeseen effect of mothers losing custody of their children as a result has taken many by surprise. One senior advertising executive who lost custody of her son and daughter to her ex-husband — a building-site foreman who gave up his job to look after their children so that she could retain her six-figure salary — describes how a picture was painted of her as a “hard-faced woman more interested in board meetings than school plays”. This was so far from the truth, she says.

With family courts long since operating a strictly gender-neutral approach to resolving conflict over issues such as where children will live after their parents separate, some people have raised concerns that the traditional nurturing role of mothers is being undermined, and that women’s worries over the welfare and safety of their child-ren are too often being ignored.

Despite the recent historic opening of the family courts to the media, on condition that the identities of those involved in cases remain protected, journalists are still prohibited from accessing court documents. This means that a true understanding of how many crucial judgments are reached is still limited. It is a shortfall that those who have campaigned for the opening of the courts, including our sister paper The Times, are pressing to have addressed. But in recent months, several cases have emerged of mothers whose children have been taken from them and put up for adoption because the women were deemed “not clever enough” to look after them. One mother, prevented from even seeing her three-year-old daughter as the adoption process continues — despite a psychiatrist’s report stating that her intellectual ability appears to be “within the normal range” — is now taking her case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Prior to this there was widespread astonishment at the decision of a judge to ban a mother from seeing her daughter and two sons for three years because she was ruled to be an “overindulgent” parent who was “infantilising the children and encouraging them to make complaints about the father”. The woman, the former wife of a wealthy financier, was even jailed for a month for approaching one of the children on the street, in defiance of the ban, and telling him she loved him. She now faces a further prison sentence for ignoring a gagging order preventing her from talking about the case, by posting a video about her situation on the internet.

So are women finding it increasingly difficult to get just settlements for themselves and their children? And are these shifting currents a reflection of the way our society is evolving, to the point that mothers are no longer perceived to have the special role they once did, and the roles of mothers and fathers are now seen as almost interchangeable?

Some people in the legal profession argue that since the vast majority of separation disputes — excluding maintenance settlements involving the CSA — are settled privately, with only 10% on average reaching the courts, any apparent hardening of attitudes towards women in the justice system has little bearing on most people’s lives. But high-profile judgments by the family courts do influence the thinking of people trying to come to private agreements. “It’s called ‘bargaining in the shadow of the law’, and means that many more than those involved in a judgment are affected by it,” says Mavis Maclean, joint director of Oxford University’s Oxford Centre for Family Law and Policy (Oxflap).

Legal professionals are also agreed that the worsening economic situation is hitting women caught in the midst of family breakdown harder than the majority of men. Whatever their financial circumstances, many women are finding it increasingly difficult to access legal advice, they say. This is partly a result of drastic reductions in legal aid in recent years, which disproportionately affects women with young children, who are less likely to be working.

With legal aid now available to so few, many mothers who have given up work to look after their children find they cannot afford to consult a solicitor when a family splits up, though the children’s father may be able to do so. “While women might be able to make an application for an interim maintenance order while the details of the separation or divorce are worked out, releasing equity in a shared property to allow a woman to pay for legal fees can be more complicated,” explains Teresa Richardson of Resolution, an organisation representing 5,500 family lawyers.

The government’s failure to grant cohabiting couples legal rights similar to those of married couples also disproportionately disadvantages women. The widespread belief that couples who have lived together for years are “common law” husband and wife is a fallacy that leaves many women devastated when their relationship fails.

“One of the biggest problems faced by women going through family breakdown is that they are not aware of such legal complexities, nor of the options open to them, nor the potential pitfalls,” says Emma Scott, director of the voluntary organisation Rights of Women, which offers free legal advice to women but is only able to deal with a fraction of the requests for help it receives each year (last year it could only answer 1,130 of around 90,000 attempted calls).

Recent moves to encourage separating couples to settle their affairs privately, through either mediation or a relatively new non-adversarial process known as “collaborative law” — where couples are encouraged to make key decisions themselves, with legal advisors present, in more informal meetings than court sittings — have been widely praised as a positive step away from often lengthy, costly and acrimonious court wrangles.

These processes are also becoming increasingly popular as the credit crunch puts costly legal consultation beyond the means of many. But Scott warns that there are problems with such methods of conflict resolution, particularly for women when it comes to making financial settlements. “Women are coming under increasing pressure to settle matters out of court, but often they feel their concerns are then not heard. Without the investigative powers of a judge, many are forced to rely on the honesty of their husband or boyfriend when it comes to disclosing family finances, for instance, and often this presents problems.

“Even when cases do go to court, we speak to very many women who feel their concerns are not listened to, especially when it comes to worries they have about the welfare and safety of their children at the hands of abusive ex-partners. All too often judges brush these concerns aside and continue to grant contact with fathers on the grounds that it is in the children’s best interests to continue their relationship with both parents. It is, of course, but not if this leads to further abuse.”

What is worse, say experts, is that as more mothers recognise that courts will grant contact to fathers regardless of concerns that they might have about how this might affect their children, growing numbers of women are keeping quiet about those concerns for fear they will be deemed obstructive by the courts, which could then grant full residence to the father.

“What is happening now is that women feel they have to be seen to be very supportive of Dad, no matter what, otherwise the court will be cross with them, and that is very dangerous,” says Mavis Maclean. “Courts by and large are very sensible. But where there are instances of women being afraid to express their anxieties because they are afraid they will be badly thought of by the court, will be considered recalcitrant and, as a result, could lose custody of their child, that is tragic.”

Under the 1989 Children Act, courts must consider the interests of the child above all else. But the way this legislation is framed means that parents are no longer referred to specifically as “mothers” or “fathers”, but as those with “parental responsibilities”. This gender-neutral approach also has its pitfalls, argue those who have both studied and practised family law for many years.

“We are 20 years away from the era when it was generally accepted that the mother should be the primary carer post divorce unless there were grave reasons to suggest otherwise,” says Robert Tresman, a barrister with Staple Inn Chambers and a specialist in both criminal and family law for nearly 30 years. “But we are 30 years away from a situation where gender might not matter when it comes to childcare, and I’m not sure that would be a good position to reach anyway. I don’t think courts should ever ignore the role that gender plays in parenting. I do think courts can sometimes get into a situation where they are too focused on the practicalities of care without looking at the particular nurturing abilities of those involved and their abilities to cope and juggle.”

“Some hold the view that the courts are engaged in social engineering by operating on gender-neutral principles, when the reality is that parenting is highly gendered,” stresses Dr Liz Trinder, a specialist in family studies at Newcastle University.

Asked if fathers now feel they are getting a fairer deal in the family courts, Nick Barnard of Families Need Fathers is adamant they are not: “The courts probably think they are doing their best. But the fact that we still exist and have about 10,000 members shows that people still don’t feel they are getting a fair deal.” Barnard is quick to point out that his lobby group, established more than 35 years ago, also now operates on a gender-neutral basis and represents not just fathers but also mothers who feel excluded from their children’s lives. His group insists there should be automatic assumption, both within the court system and in society in general, that parenting responsibilities should be shared equally following family breakdown. “Unfortunately, we do not have a court system that has as its priority keeping both parents involved in children’s lives, so we try to encourage people not to go near the courts because it puts them through an emotional hell.”

Few would disagree with the latter.

The crucial voices missing in many of these arguments are those of children themselves. With the debate so often framed in terms of whether fathers or mothers are getting a bad deal, the question of whether or not children are getting a good deal is lost. Ask the experts for a view on this, and for once they are almost unanimous. Dr Liz Trinder sums it up: “Kids are not getting a good deal. With so much conflict left unresolved, children are left to live in a war zone.”

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article6734001.ece

Copyright 2009 Times Newspapers Ltd.

More Mom abuse ~ Missing Idaho Boy's Disappearance 'Suspicious,' Police Say

This is a very common story. What is uncommon is the MSM reporting on it unless it gets to the point of a child's death or, in this case disappearance. This woman has apparently got a few gender discounts prior to now for child abuse. The fact she has 3 children with 3 men is a tad telling of her stability and ability to manage her reproductive urges. No doubt the victim feminists will line up to provide the usual propaganda about how she is actually a coerced victim and not responsible for her own behaviour, yadda, yadda, yadda. So much putty in the hands of the patriarchy. It is really very, very sad and there are some in the legal field/social work field who are not overly sharp knives who will buy it.MJM

Friday , July 31, 2009

style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Police investigating the disappearance of an Idaho boy missing for a week said Friday they are afraid the child may have been the victim of a tragedy.

Boise authorities told reporters that there are "suspicious circumstances" surrounding 8-year-old Robert Manwill's disappearance.

"Robert may be injured or be the victim of a tragic event," said Boise Police Chief Jim Kerns at a brief Friday press conference. "But he is still missing."

Earlier this week, news emerged that Robert's mother is on probation for fracturing the skull of the missing boy's infant half brother, who was removed from her custody by the state.

Robert was last seen near the Boise apartment of his mother, Melissa Scott Jenkins. Police detectives, FBI agents and more than 100 volunteers have searched extensively, but haven't found him.

Boise police have previously said there is no evidence of foul play in the disappearance of Robert, and that the family is cooperating fully.

The missing boy's father, Charles Manwill, has had custody of him since 2008. Jenkins has visitation rights, and the boy was visiting her the night he disappeared.

Court records show a history of family tragedies involving children.

Jenkins pleaded guilty in March to a misdemeanor charge of injury to a child following an October 2008 incident that fractured her infant son's skull, according to The Idaho Statesman.

Court records say Jenkins "did willfully inflict" the injury to her other son "by striking the child's head on a surface, causing a fracture to the child's skull," on Oct. 19, 2008. She was sentenced to 29 days of work release, fined $75.50 and put on probation for two years.

The child is the son of Jenkins' boyfriend, Daniel Edward Ehrlick, and was in the care of the state Department of Health and Welfare through at least February, according to court documents. The agency on Wednesday would not release his whereabouts, citing policy.

Jenkins has a third child, a 2 1/2-year-old daughter, fathered by a third man, who has custody of her. Jenkins has visitation rights. Ehrlick, who has been convicted of burglary, battery and possession of drug paraphernalia, is banned from being alone with the girl, but court documents don't say why.

In another case, Charles Manwill's wife, Silke Fatma Manwill, stabbed their 4-year-old son, Michael, in the chest in 1993, killing him. She was sentenced to federal prison after pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter, and was released in 2002.

Meanwhile, Jenkins has declined to comment on her son Robert's disappearance.

"We are a joined family at this time in this crisis," said Trisha Burrill, Robert Manwill's aunt. "We are acting as one, with one goal in mind. To bring Robert back."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,535914,00.html?test=latestnews