Father of murdered Abbotsford girl: 'Death is too good' for alleged killer

This story is similar to many when courts award sole physical custody to mom's, (90% in Canada, 86% in USA, 92% in the UK) enforce child support against him, and sometimes throwing him in debtor's prison if he cannot afford the support,  mom moves away, dad doesn't get to see child, dad tries to enforce access, court does nothing, child is in much higher danger, mom meets new guy, new guy has 24 hour access to dad's bio child increasing danger, mom becomes an appeaser and new boyfriend takes advantage.  It is a sad tale but so very common in western democracies where children are in much greater danger after the biological father is systematically removed from his children's lives.MJM

By Andrea Woo, Vancouver SunJune 30, 2010

Peter James Wilson, 29, is being held in Mason County Jail for investigation of first-degree murder of his five-year-old stepdaughter Clare Louise Shelswell at the family's rented vacation home.

Photograph by: Screengrab, KOMOTV

VANCOUVER - The last time James Shelswell saw his daughter Clare was two years ago in Vancouver.
Clare, Shelswell and his other daughter Suzanna, who was six at the time, had gone to the Vancouver Aquarium, followed by a trip to McDonald's.

“The kids were having a great time,” Shelswell, 48, told The Vancouver Sun from his Calgary home Tuesday night. “We saw all the fish and goofed around. Even the lady at McDonald’s commented, ‘Jeez, you’ve got good kids.’”

That visit was only the fifth in five years, Shelswell said, after his wife Sarah Wilson divorced him and moved to Abbotsford from Calgary with the girls, limiting his visits.

Clare was only four months old at the time.

“Every time I phoned, it was a big hassle to see them,” he said. “I just kept paying everything. It burns me; it just burns me. You’re paying all this money and you can’t see your kids. I should have hired a lawyer, but I’ve only got so much money.”

Clare died over the weekend while vacationing with family at Lake Cushman in Washington state, about 200 kilometres south of Vancouver.

Her stepfather, Peter James Wilson, 29, was arrested Sunday evening in Hoodsport, Wash., on the Olympic Peninsula after police arrived at a two-storey rented vacation cabin to discover the little girl's throat had been slashed.

According to a statement released by the Mason County Sheriff's Office, Wilson had told a detective he killed his stepdaughter with a knife he found on the kitchen counter after fighting with his wife about disciplining the children.

Shelswell said he found out about the grisly murder through his brother, who learned of it from media reports and called him from his home in Abbotsford at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday.

“[Sarah Wilson] didn’t call me, the Americans didn’t call me. The last name of the kids is Shelswell. They could have called me; I am the father,” he said angrily.

Shelswell had only met his ex-wife's new husband a couple times and did not know about his bipolar disorder, or that he was on medication.

Shelswell said “death is too good” for Peter Wilson and hopes he “suffers for the next 20 years.”
“What goes around comes around, and I hope it comes around. He should be made to suffer. Somebody who does that to a five-year-old girl?”

He is “devastated” he was not able to protect Clare.

“You’re not supposed to outlive your kids,” he said, sobbing. “You’re supposed to be gone before them.

That’s the way it should be, you know? You’re 80, they’re 40.”

awoo@vancouversun.com
With files from Darah Hansen

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
http://www.theprovince.com/life/Father+murdered+Abbotsford+girl+Death+good+alleged+killer/3218603/story.html#ixzz0tDS438cJ

Are There More Girl Geniuses?

It is of great interest a female, in the following article, is discussing the education system and creating greater awareness of boys falling further and further behind. Thank goodness for brave women like Christina Hoff Summers, who are prepared to take the heat from the outraged and screeching tax supported feminists. The feminization of testing, our schools operational policies, and the priority given by a preponderance of female teachers to feminine characteristics is at the root of it. In Ontario female teachers outnumber males in an over 4-1 ratio in the 20-30 age cohort.MJM

By Christina Hoff Sommers Thursday, July 1, 2010

Filed under: Culture, Public Square

American boys across the ability spectrum and in all age groups have become second-class citizens in the nation’s schools. Just visit New York City.

Boys are falling behind girls in our nation’s schools. Fewer boys graduate from high school, and boys are less likely to attend college. One education expert has quipped that if current trends continue, the last male will graduate from college in 2068. A recent story in the New York Times carried more bad news for boys. A significant gender gap favoring girls has arisen inside New York City’s gifted and talented programs. According to the article, “Around the city, the current crop of gifted kindergartners…is 56 percent girls, and in the 2008-9 year, 55 percent were girls.” In some of the most elite programs, almost three-fifths of the prodigies are girls. Could it be that girls are simply smarter than boys?

A fair selection process should produce more boys than girls in a gifted and talented program.

In fact, males and females appear equally intelligent, on average. But on standardized intelligence tests, more males than females get off-the-chart test scores—in both directions. The greater variance of males on intelligence tests is one of the best-established findings in psychometric literature. More males are mentally deficient, and more are freakishly brilliant. The difference in variation isn't huge, but it is large enough and consistent enough that a fair selection process should produce more boys than girls in a gifted and talented program.

To give just one example, here is what a group of Scottish psychologists found in 2002 when they analyzed the results of IQ tests given to nearly all 11-year-olds in Scotland in 1932.

This study, one of the most comprehensive in the literature, shows that for the highest IQ score of 140, boys outnumbered girls 277 to 203 (or 57.7 percent boys vs. 42.3 percent girls), and for the lowest IQ boys also outnumber girls, by 188 to 133 (or 58.6 percent boys vs. 41.4 percent girls).
Little appears to have changed in the cognitive profile of men and women since prewar Scotland. Those with IQs above 140 or below 70 are still very much the exception. They can be male or female, but males have a statistically significant edge at both extremes. How did things get turned around with New York City’s kindergarteners?

Here is how the Times describes playtime for a group of five-year-old braniacs:

Four of the boys went to the corner to build an intricate highway structure and a factory from wooden blocks, while two others built trucks. One girl helped them, by creating signs on Post-its to stick on the buildings. Another kindergarten girl, Tamar Greenberg, stood to announce to the class her own activity, a Hebrew lesson. “We’re moving to the green table because it’s too distracting with the computers” in the back, she told the other children. On a roster, she neatly recorded the names of the three children who joined her for the lesson: Skyler, Isabelle and Bayla. “No boys were interested,” Tamar said.

Gifted boys and girls are just like other children in one respect: in both groups, the girls are more mature, more verbal, and more capable of sitting still. Until a few years ago, admissions directors for New York City’s gifted programs took account of these differences and through a series of tests, interviews, and observations managed to recruit roughly equal numbers of budding engineers and linguists.

The greater variance of males on intelligence tests is one of the best-established findings in psychometric literature. More males are mentally deficient, and more are freakishly brilliant.

But the old practice of taking equal numbers of boys and girls was phased out a few years ago when Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his administration sought to make the application process more fair, open, and uniform. Reforms were needed, because, for many years, admission procedures were haphazard and varied from school to school. Parents who knew how to work the system had a huge advantage. Many average children with assertive parents found their way into the city’s elite programs—and many brilliant but socially disadvantaged children never had a chance. The Bloomberg administration imposed a uniform and transparent admission process so that all applicants (about 15,000 four- and five-year-olds) now take the same two standardized tests. Only children who score in the 90th percentile or above can enter the programs. This approach leaves little room for parental lobbying.

Well-intentioned government officials and educators can disregard boys’ needs and abilities and unwittingly adopt policies detrimental to boys’ well-being.

The reformers believed this open and consistent procedure would yield a more ethnically diverse group of students. So far it has not. It has yielded more girls than boys. As the Times reports (and disgruntled mothers of boys say on websites like UrbanBaby ), the test is “more verbal than other tests” and it plays to girls’ strengths. Boys are especially disadvantaged by the necessity to sit quietly for one hour and focus exclusively on the test. Pre-kindergarten boys with mental abilities three or four standard deviations above the mean have astonishing talents. But as Terry Neu, an expert on gifted boys, told me, sitting still for an extended period of time is not one of them. The capacity to remain seated for a long test does not reliably measure brilliance, but requiring pre-K children to do it is a sure way of securing more places for girls than boys in a gifted program.
The developing gender gap in the gifted programs of New York City does not signal that girls are smarter than boys. Rather, it exemplifies how well-intentioned government officials and educators can disregard boys’ needs and abilities and unwittingly adopt policies detrimental to boys’ well-being. It is a small part of the long story of how American boys across the ability spectrum and in all age groups have become second-class citizens in the nation’s schools.

Christina Hoff Sommers is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Her books include The War Against Boys (2000) and The Science on Women and Science (2009).

http://www.american.com/archive/2010/june-2010/are-there-more-girl-geniuses

Reminder from nature: Boys aren't girls

This is a column bound to be a classic when comparing genders. The Ontario school system is running an over 4-1 female to male teacher ratio in the 20-30 age cohort. This means more trouble for boys as the system further tries to feminize them.  When a part of society becomes unbalanced as do many sectors of our social and educational system bias becomes the norm.  Health, teaching, child protection is largely female. Boys are doing badly in school and its simply due to gender bias by a highly feminized society. If Patriarchy was bad Matriarchy is worse.MJM

By Roger Collier, Citizen Special      June 29, 2010 8:37 AM

Jack and I enter the arena just as the lights go out. We scramble to our seats while Bono hollers about nameless streets over the sound system. Seconds later, the canned music fades and a spotlight shines on a man standing on the arena floor.

"OTTAWA!" he bellows. "Are you ready for a monster spectacular!"

I heard about this show on the radio. Eardrum-shattering, jalopy-crushing monster truck mayhem! I'm not into trucks -- monster or non-monster. But I knew someone who was: my four-year-old son.

Jack loves trucks, motorcycles, airplanes -- anything that moves fast, makes noise and pollutes. He could make engine sounds before he could speak. He would push a toy car across the floor and, through vibrating, spit-flecked lips, make that noise all little boys make: brrr, brrr, brrr.

I once thought fathers had to teach their sons to be boys. Now I know better. Only someone without a son could think gender is primarily a social construct. Sure, Jack and his six-year-old sister, Ella, were

indistinguishable as babies, when both were fussy, thirsty, genderless perpetual poop machines. But as soon as the first inkling of Jack's personality surfaced, it was obvious that he was all boy.

It's tough to be a boy today. Boys want to run and wrestle and shout. They want to have sword fights and gun battles and mud races. The world, however, wants them to be quiet, to settle down, to stay in their seats, to take Ritalin, to keep their nice shirts clean, to be careful with toys, to be cautious on play structures, to not go so fast, to not go so high, to always be gentle. Don't point your finger and shout "bang!" No standing on the swings. Put that stick down, buster. Basically, the world wants boys to be girls.

The lights come on and the show begins. Soon, colourful trucks with giant wheels are flattening cars, motorcycles are soaring through the air, and four-wheelers are barely avoiding collision as they race in tight circles. Jack is loving it. He is eating it up, like the popcorn he is stuffing into his maw with both hands. The only way he could enjoy this more is if the vehicles turned into robots and began duking it out.

Jack likes fighting. A lot. His love of horseplay, like his love of horsepower, seems innate. He slipped from the womb with a taste for pummelling. We wrestle often, and I have as much fun as he does, though it sometimes gets out of hand. During a recent bout, after receiving my fill of headbutts and groin-stomps, I told Jack to take it easy.

"I will not take it easy," he replied, launching a new assault. "I will take it tricky."

If we aren't roughhousing, we are debating who would win in a fight between so-and-so and what's-his-cape. Could The Incredible Hulk beat up Batman? (Definitely.) Could Megatron beat up Superman? (Unlikely.) The other day Jack posed a tough one: Could a lightsabre defeat an earthquake? After much discussion, we decided that the lightsabre would win. Unless it was a really big earthquake.

At 9:30 p.m., I ask Jack if he wants to leave. "Okay," he says. Two hours of vehicular carnage is enough for any boy, I guess. As we walk out, we pass a boy waving a Monster Spectacular pennant. "I want one of those!" Jack says. We pass a boy wearing a Monster Spectacular shirt. "I want one of those!" We pass a boy holding a toy monster truck. "I want one of those!"

Teaching a boy to ask instead of demand is a challenge. Especially if he wants something with wheels. Jack's manners are improving, though. A few weeks ago, he approached Ella and me and said, "Whoever wants a butt in their face, raise your hand." There was a time when he didn't ask for volunteers.

In front of the arena's exit is a souvenir booth. It has hundreds of toy monster trucks. It might as well have a giant vacuum that sucks money out of my pocket. Thankfully, Jack opts for a small (overpriced) truck instead of a large (overpriced) truck. I buy it and we head home.

The next morning, Father's Day cards await me at breakfast. In hers, Ella says she loves Dad because he helps her with art. Sweet girl. In his, Jack says he loves Dad "because he has a watch." That's my boy.

Roger Collier's column appears every other week. E-mail: rogercollier@hotmail.com

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/Reminder+from+nature+Boys+aren+girls/3207639/story.html#ixzz0sFvl8eBX

The secret to happiness - speak to your father

This isn't rocket science but at least social science is proving what involved dads already know from getting feedback while talking with their children.MJM

Children who regularly talk to their fathers are happier than those who do not, according to new research.

By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent
Published: 12:01AM BST 18 Jun 2010

Young people who said they talked seriously to their dads most days gave themselves an 87 per cent score on a happiness scale Photo: PHOTOLIBRARY

Young people who said they talked seriously to their dads "most days" gave themselves an 87 per cent score on a happiness scale compared with 79 per cent for those who said they hardly ever spoke to their fathers in this way.

The findings, from an analysis of research from the British Household Panel survey into 1,200 young people in Britain aged between 11 and 15, were released by the Children's Society to coincide with Father's Day this weekend.

Nearly half of young people - 46 per cent - said they "hardly ever" spoke to their fathers about important topics compared with 28 per cent who hardly ever spoke to their mothers about the things that matter most.

Only 13 per cent confided in their father "most days", according to the analysis.

The study, commissioned by the Children's Society and undertaken by the University of York, showed that young people talk less to their fathers about important issues as they get older.

The data showed 42 per cent of 11-year-olds did so more than once a week compared with 16% of 15-year-olds.

The analysis suggested there has been little change over the years with the same proportion - 30 per cent - of young people talking to their fathers about something that mattered to them more than once a week in 2007-08 as in 2002-03.

The charity said the findings were "highly significant" as academic research has shown that a child's well-being later in life depends on their teenage relationship with their father as well as with their mother.

It launched a Fatherhood Commission with children, experts and the public invited to submit evidence about the barriers to fathers' involvement with their children.

Bob Reitemeier, chief executive of the Children's Society, said: "This research shows that young people's happiness is closely linked to how often they speak to their fathers about things that matter.

"Yet all too often these days, children are becoming alienated or live apart from their fathers.

"That is why the Children's Society is today calling on children, experts and the general public to submit evidence to our new Fatherhood Review.


"It will be investigating the extent to which fathers are involved in the everyday aspects of their children's lives and in the autumn we will publish recommendations on how the obstacles to better father-child relationships might be overcome."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7835708/The-secret-to-happiness-speak-to-your-father.html?utm_source=tmg&utm_medium=TD_speakdad&utm_campaign=family1806pm

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Divorced B.C. father kept from seeing child

In the article from the CBC below Mr. Geesing has done the right thing by taking this matter public. For many years courts have given sole physical custody to moms (90% in Canada).  Possession of children is not 9/10's of the law it is 10/10's. When mom has the kids she directly controls dad and often in a very twisted manner using the children as pawns. The courts will not enforce access. Mom's know this, as do lawyers, and use it as leverage.

The courts and the lawyers are picking the pockets of vulnerable families including the child's future financial integrity, and will not change without public knowledge and intervention.

It is a gamble because courts tend to use it against the parent who does go public. They do not believe it is in the "child's best interest". It will be if enough men go public, and we number in the tens of thousands, so men get involved and support Billl C-422 for equal shared parenting. Lawyers do not like this bill because it will reduce their business and they intimidated Rob Nicholson, the conservative member for Niagara, and Canada's Federal Justice Minister, at their annual general meeting in Ireland in 2009 so much he said he didn't support it.

Think about this for a minute. The Canadian Bar Association represent lawyers across Canada. They are a lobby group. Nicholson is a member of this group. He is also the Minister responsible for the creation and administration of Canadian Law. Bill C-422 will reduce divorce and lawyer's income. Isn't there something ethically wrong with this? 

A few Human Rights Complaints against government policies and bureaucrats down the road will help to steer the ship into more equal waters as the system, whether it be DV or Family Law to name just two, is way out of whack in favour of the feminist mythology that dads and men are just plain bad.MJM  

June 22, 2010

By CBC News
CBC News

A divorced B.C. father who hasn't seen his daughter for months blames the family court system and is joining others in a call for change.

A divorced B.C. father who hasn't seen his young daughter for several months blames the family court system and is joining others in a call for change.



"Before all this happened, my daughter had a great relationship with me," said Dieter Geesing. "I feel really helpless. This is not right."


Geesing said his ex-wife has been allowed to bar him from his daughter because a court order requiring her to co-operate is unenforceable.


"I love my child. It's not fair to her. You are cheating her of her childhood," he said tearfully. "This child has a right to interact with her father."


Geesing is a forestry specialist and his daughter is his only child. He and his wife separated in 2008, when the girl was eight years old. Since then, he said, his wife has tried to shut him out of his daughter's life completely.

No contact for 15 months

 

"When I phone, I get the message 'She doesn't want to talk to you,'" said Geesing. "On her 10th birthday, I left flowers on her doorstep - that's it."


Geesing has had no contact with his child since March 2009.


A court order in June 2009 gave the parents joint guardianship, with the child's "primary residence" at her mother's home.


The court also instructed the mother to pay for and attend counselling to help establish a "healthier" relationship between father and daughter. A letter from the counsellor to the judge shows Geesing's ex-wife has since failed to co-operate.



"For me it's quite obvious here is somebody who doesn't want this child to have any contact," said Geesing.


Records show there have been no consequences for the child's mother. Geesing has been told he has no legal recourse but to go back to court to ask the judge for help, which could take several months.

No comment from mother

 

Because she is the custodial parent, CBC News is not identifying the mother by name, to help protect the child's identity. When contacted, Geesing's ex-wife refused comment. Her lawyer did not respond to messages.


Geesing is one of several parents and family advocates calling on Ottawa to change the Divorce Act to give non-abusive divorcing parents automatic, equal roles in their children's lives.


"Why am I supposed to be the lesser parent?" asked Geesing. "The default [in the courts] should be equal, shared parenting. That should be the default."


When Geesing's divorce case got to trial, the child's mother wrongly accused him of inappropriate behaviour toward his daughter.


"It completely went out of control," said Geesing. "Nothing shook me as much as this accusation."

Ice cream photos called 'inappropriate'

 

Evidence of what Geesing's ex-wife deemed inappropriate included pictures he took of his daughter showing off her first permanent teeth and pictures of her eating an ice cream cone.


B.C. Supreme Court Justice Burnyeat concluded, "Having reviewed the photographs that the plaintiff believes were inappropriate, I cannot reach that conclusion."


The mother also said it was wrong for Geesing to playfully nibble on his daughter's ear while they were watching a DVD together.


The judge didn't buy that either, concluding, "I am satisfied that the plaintiff overreacted to what might be viewed by many as an innocent sign of affection between a father and his daughter."


A detailed psychological analysis of the family found no evidence the child had been abused, but concluded instead that the mother had alienated her from her father. It also recommended that if the mother didn't change her behaviour, the child should live with her father.


"[The mother] has been using control as a coping mechanism of ...perverse anxiety," wrote the psychologist. "There has clearly been a campaign of parental alienation."


"All of this court, this fighting, for nothing," said Geesing.

Access denial 'common'

 

"I know fathers who have been to court 50 times - in front of a judge - only to be told that they will get access but they do not," said Jerry Arthur-Wong, the executive director at Vancouver's only men's resource centre.


"It's like the court appearance had no impact on the other parent."


He said the extreme problems he sees are with the minority of protracted, acrimonious divorces, where the parents go all the way to trial to fight it out.


A 2009 study by Edward Kruk at the University of B.C.'s school of social work took a detailed look at the parental roles of 82 Vancouver-area fathers, from all walks of life, post-divorce.


Of the 82, 56 reported "lack of access" as their No. 1 problem. Thirty of the 82 fathers reported being completely disengaged from their children's lives.


Arthur-Wong also wants the Divorce Act amended to make equal, shared parenting the norm, except in cases where one parent is deemed unfit.


Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott is sponsoring a private member's bill that would make shared parenting the starting position in all cases that go to court. The bill passed first reading, but won't be debated in Ottawa for several months, if at all.

Government undecided on bill

 

A spokesperson for Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said he wasn't available for comment and the government has not decided whether to support the initiative.


"Our government is committed to promoting positive outcomes for the entire family during separation or divorce," wrote Nicholson's press secretary, Pamela Stephens. "Since parents usually understand their children better than anyone else, our government strongly encourages parents co-operate to make parenting arrangements in their children's best interests."


Arthur-Wong said the government has delayed taking definitive action for far too long.


"Denial of access is pretty common," he said. "That is child abuse and that is not acceptable in this society."
He thinks provinces should set up registries of parents who ignore court-ordered access, similar to the maintenance enforcement agencies that penalize parents who default on child-support payments.


"Those who say that it would be impossible to keep a registry of access denial, I say let's try it with the more extreme cases," he said.


Geesing doesn't expect to get another court date until the fall.


"I don't even know what I will do the first time, if I ever see her," said Geesing. "Should I shake her hand? Give her my business card or something like this? What do I do? I feel afraid to do anything."


Even if he doesn't see his daughter until she grows up, Geesing said he hopes by seeing him tell his story publicly, she will know one day that he tried to be a good father.


"I think I owe it to her to let her know that this is wrong."

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/06/21/bc-accessdenied.html#socialcomments