What causes dads to be absent?

The following are my observations on the below article discussing why Hollywood rarely gets the story right.

There is a billion dollar plus industry tied to Divorce and the parallel asymmetric war against men, particularly dads. Misandric Feminism has portrayed women as perpetual victims at the hands of, based on their description of us,  evil and abusive men. It has gone on for over 40 years and now is entrenched in the culture.

Men are the last frontier for ridicule and we white men, according to the feminists, are the worst of the lot. We white males of privilege (WMOP) apparently control everything and not only hold women back but minority males as well. This is taught in feminist and minority run sensitivity classes.  If anyone sees a minority male as an incompetent idiot or being assaulted in a commercial let me know.

Females do about 80 to 85% of the shopping for intact families and more if they are single. It makes marketing sense to reach them because they control the money. Its an interesting conundrum for the feminists who say we men control everything - is it not? Therefore, men (as common culture would have you believe) who are interested only in drinking beer, watching football, and driving their truck are a niche market for those products specifically "manly". (note the satire).

In Canada, courts award mom sole physical custody in over 90% of cases and this starts a pattern of behaviour that is negative for the child, and eventually will see 50% of dads out of touch with their children completely. They just give up trying to see them as they are constantly faced with a series of events trying to stop them, including gatekeeper, move away, and alienating moms. These moms are abusive to the children by denying a relationship with 50% of their DNA, and don't care about the negative impacts of dad not being around, only their selfish motives for revenge. Yes, there are some dads who take off, and moms too,  but they are a tiny minority. Common culture wants you to believe dads are not necessary but impacted children and science says otherwise.

Other dads who continue to see their children are further marginalized as the children approach and grow through their teens. When the kids get to adolescence they care little about either parent most of the time. Friends are their main preoccupation. This means those dads who kept trying to see the children get to see them even less. It’s very uncool to go to a movie and sometimes even shopping with a dad. Mine get a tad embarrassed at water parks as I am handicapped (loss of left arm) and scold me if I appear too clumsy at boarding some tube rides.  A father might be able to coax them away on holidays but all he has become and can do is the role of the Disney Dad. Trying to be a real dad which includes coaching to give them a moral compass can be perilous and result in them not wanting to see him at all for periods of time. No attempt at using discipline if they cross a boundary can work well most of the time given they can opt to not see you or want to return to their mom's immediately.
The author's figures on “one out of three kids is considered "fatherless” may be low. About 40% of children are now born in the USA out of wedlock to single moms. The dad will be sought for payment of support but little else. Baby making can be a way to getting a living from the taxpayers and the dad – even if he isn’t the biological father. The latter can happen through a variety of methods including falsifying information. These are called dead beat moms and they are growing in number.

Where shared and equal parenting has been introduced Divorce rates have gone down and more dads can stay in the lives of their children. Eventually society will understand the single mom model is a failure and not in the best interest of children.

In Canada we have Bill C-422 languishing in Parliament. Write your MP to get it passed for the sake of the children.

Leave it to a feminist Sociology Professor quoted in the article, Andrea Litvack,  to speak gobbley gook then point out a fictional family on a TV show as representing the real world.  I watch the show but often have to turn my head away at some of the antics of the prissy gay couple. Her bottom unspoken line is dad's are unnecessary.MJM

Absent dads – Hollywood rarely gets the story right

KATE CARRAWAY

From Friday's Globe and Mail

Published Thursday, Jan. 06, 2011 3:54PM EST

Last updated Thursday, Jan. 06, 2011 4:03PM EST

7 comments

Judging from the depiction of fatherhood in most movies, you’d think all dads are simply a variation on three stereotypes: a bumbling but lovable idiot, a distant workaholic or a nutcase. And that’s if he’s even around.
In Sofia Coppola’s film Somewhere, which opens today in limited release, a bored, womanizing movie star named Johnny Marco, played by reputed real-life womanizer Stephen Dorff, is left to care for Elle Fanning’s Cleo, the adolescent daughter he rarely sees, in the days before she leaves for summer camp.

More related to this story

• From wife to widow to only parent
• In death, an estranged dad reveals himself
• Like father, like daughter

Somewhere is not unlike Ms. Coppola’s other beautifully shot movies about beautiful girls (Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette). But her new film is centred ona father who is, except for their week of video games and burgers, as unavailable to Cleo as he is preoccupied by strippers and sex. The sympathetic take on the relationship between Johnny Marco and his placid daughter is sweet, but far removed from the reality of most children of absent fathers.

The problems that affect the increasing number of children without dads (or with dads who drop haphazardly in and out of their lives) and the profound social issues they generate have been documented in many studies, most of them based in the United States, where one out of three kids is considered “fatherless.” The U.S.

Census Bureau notes that children who grow up without fathers are five times more likely to be poor. And the Journal of Adolescent Health reported last fall that upper-middle-class girls without dads are likely to experience early puberty, which has been linked to early drug use and sexual activity. Fatherlessness is routinely stated to be a major predictor of criminal behaviour and poor health. Boys who grow up without fathers have a greater likelihood of repeating the pattern.So why are so many films and television shows casual about bad dads?

Andrea Litvack is a professor of social work at the University of Toronto. Asked why absent fathers are something that Hollywood rarely gets right, she says: “It may not translate well because it’s a very complex issue. There are many combinations of factors that impact on anyone’s situation.”

Except for the disapproving glare that Cleo gives her dad over breakfast after a starlet spends the night, their relationship is portrayed as fun and undemanding. Whatever feelings she has about her father aren’t discussed. The other side of this Hollywood habit of diminishing an issue is that thorny social problems are sometimes exaggerated, which is no more plausible than Ms. Coppola’s withdrawn approach.

Paul Moore, who teaches sociology at Ryerson University, says that depicting a social problem “is a form of exposure even when it isn’t realistic.” He says that sometimes issues have to be glorified to work onscreen. This is especially true when it’s something that the audience may still be figuring out. Dr. Moore cites the 1979 classic Kramer vs. Kramer as an example, and says that while it was “revolutionary for its depiction of divorce at the time, we would now see it as utterly melodramatic.”

It’s unlikely that Hollywood will change its depictions of absent dads any time soon, but innovative ideas are out there to help combat the problem. Two years ago, Tom Matlack co-founded the Good Men Project, which includes a book, a magazine and a not-for-profit foundation dedicated to at-risk boys. Mr. Matlack says: “One of the core problems with manhood in America is that so many children grow up without fathers.”

He felt that no one was really talking to boys about issues such as death, divorce, war and sex, and when he speaks to audiences in places ranging from private schools to prisons, “jaws drop.” Mr. Matlack wants to make being an engaged and active dad appealing. “What a mother gives a child is obviously essential, [but] I think what a father gives a child is equally essential and different,” he says. “Every boy is asking themselves a question, ‘How do I be a man?’ and they’re looking for role models, mentors, clues.”

Prof. Litvack points to ABC’s hit sitcom Modern Family as an example of how much the family unit has changed in the past 50 years. “We have to stop thinking of the mother, the father, the two children, the white picket fence as the norm,” she says, and that in many families an absent father is “not necessarily perceived as a negative thing.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/family-and-relationships/absent-dads-hollywood-rarely-gets-the-story-right/article1860456/

Is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Beverley McLachlin, a radical Feminist or suffering from early onset Alzheimers?

Real Women of Canada sent out the following release over some of the less cogent and potentially misandrous comments of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.  To say she is a sexist feminist is fair, based on her single gender only opinions. I pity men who are appealing sexist court decisions based on Family Law having to deal with her.

Media Release

Ottawa, Ontario
December 7, 2010

Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin – was she confused or just presumptuous?

http://www.realwomenca.com/page/mediareleases.htm

Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin may have confused her role as a judge in her recent speech to the feminist oriented North-South Institute when she made a proposal to include women’s impact assessment in future international trade agreements. Previously this was solely the role of legislative policy workers and elected MP’s.

Modestly admitting that she was not a “trade policy person” she nonetheless believed herself qualified to provide the advice to government officials on trade.

Alternatively, if Chief Justice McLachlin wasn’t confused, she then must believe that her appointment as a judge provides her with rare insight and understanding that transcends that of the experts in the field, who would benefit from her guidance. If such is the case, her comments were only an extension of the remarks she made in another speech, in December 2005, that judges may base their opinion on unwritten norms “even in the face of enacted laws or hostile public opinion.” She reached this bizarre conclusion on the belief that judges have a “judicial conscience [which] is founded on the judges’ sworn commitment to uphold the rule of law.”

There is also a third possibility for the comments of the Chief Justice – namely, that she threw all caution to the wind in her speech in pursuit of her feminist concerns promoting the cause of women. If this were not the case, why then was she not equally concerned about the rights of men, children, the aged and the poor in trade agreements?

Regardless of the reasons for her agitation on behalf of women in her speech, Chief Justice McLachlin has displayed a remarkable lack of judgment and common sense. This discredits her personally as well as the judiciary.

For Further Information Please Contact:

C. Gwendolyn Landolt                                        
National Vice President                                        
(905) 731-5425, (905) 889-1993

Diane Watts
(613) 236-4001
Researcher

Male victims get lost in domestic-abuse data

WASHINGTON — When Adele Freeman fired five .38-caliber bullets into her boyfriend in 2000, she contributed to an often-overlooked statistic within the sometimes-deadly world of partner abuse: namely, that more than one-third of all homicides each year connected to domestic violence are perpetrated by women.

By Jon Aerts

Capital News Service

Related

WASHINGTON — When Adele Freeman fired five .38-caliber bullets into her boyfriend in 2000, she contributed to an often-overlooked statistic within the sometimes-deadly world of partner abuse: namely, that more than one-third of all homicides each year connected to domestic violence are perpetrated by women.

"Men can be victimized in the same way women can," said Laura Martin, the Calvert County, Md., state's attorney who helped secure Freeman's first-degree murder conviction in 2002. "And it's not just the violence. It's about control, dominion, power," she said.

The fact of female abusers and male victims is often lost in the discussion of domestic violence. In fact, women's advocates have used selective statistics — the same federally funded survey that found women are equally as abusive to men — to bolster their plea for funding and services.

That absence of attention to the men's side of the coin has contributed to an imbalance of services for men who are victimized in abusive relationships.

"This is the best-kept secret on family violence," said Murray Straus, a sociologist who led the commissioned survey in 1975, and again in 1985 with the same results. "There is a tremendous effort to suppress and deny these results."

No one disputes that when physical violence occurs, women are prone to more serious injury than men; however, Straus and others caution that this should not obscure the fact that about a third of men sustain injuries, or are killed, from partner violence.

Bill Hall, of Adam's House, a health and wellness center in Suitland, Md., agreed. He called domestic violence an "equal opportunity" issue that often gets overlooked by the 24 or so women's advocacy centers throughout the state.

"It's kind of hard to find programs that cater to men and boys," he said. "Most of the agencies I know of refer men to us ... as abusers."

Each Monday night, he and his wife, Stacie, counsel two groups of some 30 women and 65 men. Within each group, about 70 percent have been court-ordered to attend the 90-minute-long counseling sessions, aimed at curtailing future violent behavior.

In dealing with those who've punched out girlfriends and choked wives, socked boyfriends, stabbed exes and even shot at spouses, both Halls agree that domestic violence is anything but a one-way street of male-on-female violence.

"Most women who abuse in the relationship [do so] because they feel pressured and don't feel that they can communicate any other way," Stacie Hall said. "Because he's just not listening, and [men] are much bigger than we are."

But other advocacy groups ignore female-on-male violence.

Take one particular bullet point from a brochure sponsored by Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence, a state advocacy coalition backed largely by federal funds: "Every 15 seconds a woman is battered in the United States by her husband, boyfriend or live-in partner."

To Michaele Cohen, the nonprofit's executive director, that statistic sounds about right. "There are male victims, of course, but the majority of victims who come forward are female," she said.

Cohen said other data suggesting that men suffer from equal rates of violence are unreliable.

"That methodology is very controversial because, you know, you're saying that every hit is equal and you're not taking into account context," she said. "I think you have to look critically at those studies."

Yet both sides of the debate are actually looking at the same studies: that 1975 survey, updated 10 years later, that revealed nearly identical rates of abuse by men and by women.

Cohen did not know of the connection to the statistics in her group's brochure, but said anecdotal evidence supports their contention.

"I don't really want to quibble about the particular stats," she said. Instead, Cohen pointed to the "huge number" of female victims she sees in need of assistance each and every day.

"I'm not relying on statistics. I'm relying on 30 years of experience."

That reliance on nonscientific data is no shock to Richard Gelles, who co-authored the 1975 and 1985 surveys with Straus.

"People cherry-pick their numbers for advocacy studies," he said. "This is what advocates do, and that's not sad. What's sad is policymakers don't create evidence-based policy."

Gelles, dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania, offered up the Violence Against Women Act as an example.

Since 1994, the federal law has doled out some $4 billion to states — dollars aimed at eliminating domestic abuse, stalking and sexual assault through increased financial, legal and housing support to women. The act has also upped the penalties against offenders and more closely knits prosecutors, judges, police and victims advocates to the effort.

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee last May, Gelles said the law, which is set for reauthorization in 2011, mostly ignores services and resources for male victims of abuse.

"No other federal legislation dealing with an aspect of family violence, including child maltreatment, sexual abuse and elder abuse, singularly focuses on one sex," he testified.

So what of services available to men?

Laura Dugan, a public-policy expert and associate professor at the University of Maryland, said you might not know of a need for men based on the services available to them.

"All of these service providers, they do not let men on their premises," she said, recounting a case she was familiar with in which an alcoholic wife was abusing her husband. "She really abused him. And he had nowhere to go."

In Maryland, the House of Ruth, one of Maryland's largest domestic-violence service providers, will assist men, but active outreach efforts seem in short supply.

"We also work with men," said program development director Cheri Parlaman, referring to an abuser intervention program

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2013743521_domesticviolence26.html

Single fathers feeling trapped in one-sided system

This reporter gets the issue that affects 10's of thousands of fathers across Canada. We have, on average, about 280 divorces each working day many involving custody issues. Lawyers for dads know full well mom will receive custody and tell dads to cut their losses and take the standard 14-15% visitation or face at least a $10,000 bill for a custodial trial.

Mom's in Canada get 90% of sole physical custody, child support and often alimony.  Child support has a degree of spousal support built in.  Dads are often then controlled by mom who has him over a barrel. She can stop access with impunity, move away and unless dad has lots of money to go back to court he is both estranged and alienated from his child(ren). This is clear child abuse but goes unenforced by today's breed of misanderous judges.

Eight dads a day kill themselves across Canada unnoticed for the most part because they are men.  Many do this as a result of Family Court gender apartheid.  Every now and then one takes others with him as an act of despair.

Family law is highly biased and needs to change. Bill C-422 is a first step in this to obtain shared and equal parenting for fit parents. With both having legal custody if the other withholds access it can be construed as kidnapping.MJM

 

 

 

 

By Gerard Creces

Posted 1 day ago

Single fathers lose more than the stereotypical house, car and bank account.

They lose their families, their confidence, and in some cases, even their means of making a living. What's more, any success they have is garnished without prejudice.

The stigma of the deadbeat dad, the father that is never there for his kids, still remains as strong as ever, though a large part of what perpetuates it is a social justice system that assumes fathers as providers, breadwinners and supporters, without needing support themselves.But what happens when, in order to meet those obligations, the father's standard of living suffers greatly?

What happens when failing to meet those obligations results in not only punitive family law measures, but the degradation of the individual who is suffering to make ends meet?In all the cases of fathers interviewed, not one said they regretted contributing to their children's wellbeing. Not one wanted to be free of their familial obligations. All they wanted, they said, was a little fairness, be it the chance to see their children or the ability to have some say in how their money is being spent.

All Mike wants is some accountability.

Every month, he pays $800 for child support. He travels back and forth to Bayfield for work, pays auto and life insurance, gas, groceries and rent, and on $18 an hour, it doesn't leave much left for living. On top of that, he said, are equalization payments that are anything but equal. These are above and beyond child support, paying for things like sports, extra-curriculars and dental.

"There are two sets of braces I have to put out for now. I'm looking at 8,000 to 10,000 dollars," he said. "And I'm looking at 75 per cent because she only makes minimum wage.

"I'm not saying I don't want to pay or deserve to pay, but where am I going to get that money?" Mike had to go to St. Vincent de Paul when he had an abscessed tooth that he couldn't afford to take care of.

Mike said he has been back and forth with lawyers, however, he firmly believes the court system is not the way to deal with families. It is costly, adversarial and does more to divide than to rehabilitate families, he said.

On top of that, the system places penalties on fathers that only help to hasten the decline of the "deadbeat dad". If Mike is unable to make his payments, the law makes it even harder to do so by taking away his means of getting to work.

"There's the threat of having my license pulled because I'm not paying other things," he said. "How am I going to get to work? It's like a kind of vicious circle… like dogs chasing you around."

Mike doesn't qualify for Ontario Works – he makes too much money. However, 75 per cent of his paycheck is gone after deductions, support payments and bills, leaving him 25 per cent to live on. His $18 just became $4.50. Ontario Works works out to $3.50.

Mike's situation is different than most. He called 911 for himself, after an argument with his then spouse. The police came and Mike waited for them outside the home. Even though he acted in what he thought his own and his family's safety, he was handcuffed, taken away and segregated from his wife and children while Children's Aid workers interviewed his kids.

The result was devastating for Mike.

A one-year peace order meant he couldn't even talk to his family unless through a lawyer, and with no home and no contact, things, he said, inevitably worsened.

At the St. Vincent De Paul in Goderich, Mary Barry sees first-hand the effect of poverty on single people in the area. Nearly half of all food bank users are singles – a figure she said is alarmingly high.

"Even though we knew it would be high, it was still shocking to see it in black and white," she said. "Of all the people we serve a staggering 45 per cent are singles. This is both men and women, young and old… just living alone."

But, if you are out of work, have no transportation and live in a rural area, life is tough.

There is nowhere for men to go; no shelter to take them in, no services or resources for them.

The maximum a single adult can receive from Ontario Works is $585 per month. The average rent in Goderich for a one-bedroom apartment hovers around $650.

"Where in Goderich are they living?" Barry asked. "They can't pay rent, hydro, or heat and they certainly don't get to eat. And if they have a car, forget that idea."

She said most clients seek help near the end of their EI. By that time, she said, even if they do get Ontario Works, there is little to look forward to.

"You've got three months before your homeless," she said. "You have to find someone who will let you stay on their couch."

"The OPP told me the best they could do was drive me to London for shelter," Tom recalls. "I had no vehicle and no transportation."

Tom and his then girlfriend had a falling out worse than most. A domestic assault left him with severe injuries to both his back and his jaw and unable to work. After both he and his girlfriend were charged in different assaults, she was granted custody of their son while he was put out in the street.

Since then, he has completed parenting courses, attended group counseling sessions and even went through the Children's Aid – all in an effort to regain access to his son.

But, it has been a battle every step of the way.

In his case, the mother of his child refused to sign a consent form, and as she had care and control of the child, there was nothing he could do. He's scared to fight back, because any sort of aggression will only make his case worse.

"The worst part is, I've been there as a father," he said. "But even my lawyer tells me to keep my mouth shut and bite my tongue. I never tried to argue – I just want access. I eventually had to call the police to get it."

Now, he only wants to see his son regularly again, but it is getting increasingly hard, as the mother moved away from Huron County in direct contravention of their agreement.

Tom collects disability pay, earning $630 a month.

His rent is subsidized, however, after hydro, gas and food are factored in, there is little left to live on, and nothing for his child.

"It's not where I want to be," he said. "If I want to get clothes for (my son) I can't do it."

With no money for transportation, he was/is at the mercy of the courts, who ordered that the child's mother deliver the son for their weekly visits. However, with no means to provide, Tom said even those visits are growing less and less.

Heartbreaking is how he described seeing his access go from a weekend together to just five hours on Sunday afternoon. How long will that last when the mother "can't afford" to bring the child to Goderich.

"I try to be a good parent and I get my son taken out of the county," he says. "What if he gets hurt? I can't just up and go to him now."

Not only that, but being on disability means no more bike rides, no more making lunches together and no more sleepovers. Rather than receive benefits to help him care for his son, his access becomes more restricted, he said.

However, he is not in a financial position to combat the agreement, and so is relegated to a diminishing role.
However, it's not only finance that can limit a father's access to his kids, but the length of the court process itself.

Phil has taken his ex to court multiple times for violating their visitation agreement, and the longer the process takes, the more profound the eventual estrangement from his son. After years of court hearings and thousands of dollars in legal fees, Phil has finally been granted visitations again – though in a limited capacity.

"My access is cut back so they don't devastate the child, since I haven't been around," he said. "At this point, I'm just glad to be reconnected, but I feel my rights have been violated.

I feel my kid's rights have been violated. And I can't get that time back."

The worst part, Phil said, is that he has a court order to see his son, however, he is powerless even if the mother of the child continues to violate the agreement. Rather than the courts making the mother obey the court order, he said, he has to go through the whole process from the beginning. He said fathers currently fighting for visitation rights should know it's not an easy process, even if you already have the law on your side.

"The mother can deny access until you go to court, basically," he said. "It took me nine months to reach an agreement the first time, but it could take a year after that to actually start getting access.

"Even though I have a court order to see this child."

His advice to fathers is to get into court as soon as possible and pay the money to get all the necessary documentation from a lawyer. Duty Counsel, he said, is ineffective if any sort of legal documents are needed.

When he needed his child support payments adjusted, he said, the only way to make it happen was to buy software from a lawyer for paperwork he feels should be available to the public. If a father is taking free legal representation, he said, chances are he isn't able to afford the necessary documents.

"Even the courts can't produce the documents you'll need," he said. "I feel that to be unfair."

However, no matter how many obstacles society puts in the way of non-custodial fathers, Phil said there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

"Don't give up," he said. "Even if it is taking that long. You will get somewhere eventually, even though you may be fed up with the time it takes."

In 1995, Andrew Renouf of Markham devastated the country when his suicide note grabbed the attention of the national media.

A single father who was cut off from his daughter for four years, Renouf's suicide note described a situation where his paycheck garnishing left nothing to live on. By the time his pay reached his bank account, he literally had 43 cents to his name.

Too 'rich' for welfare and too poor to sustain himself, Renouf chose suicide.

"I would have preferred to die with more dignity," he said.

In his eulogy, Rev. Alan Stewart summed up not only Renouf's situation, but that being faced by men across Huron County, Ontario and Canada.

"The access that mother and father have with their children, aside from obvious abuse, should not be determined by the issues that the mother and the father have with each other. Each parent can say that we are having problems with each other, but we both love you very much…

"It takes years to recover from taking sides, and that same taking sides sabotages future relationships when those children become adults."

 http://www.goderichsignalstar.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2870703

National Post: Criminal Code should not be changed to include ‘honour killings’: symposium panel

“Is this inherently a cultural thing? Yes. It’s a culture of patriarchy. It’s not a South Asian or Muslim culture.”

The feminists are in denial. They looked at their Duluth Wheel of Patriarchal oppression used in all DV shelters and said its those bad men and has nothing to do with culture. So all you white guys you are now being blended in with the primitive cultures of extreme Islamists, Hindu's and Sikhs. Be prepared for more misandry based on these cretins.

This is nothing more than a whitewash of primitive cultures and another feminist hive creating new myths about patriarchy implicating all males.

"Woman are revered", one of the participants says. What a load of absolute crap. Are they the women following two steps behind their man, some wearing tents, are they the girls aborted because some South Asians prefer males, are they the ones unable to pray with their man, are they the approximate 20,000 women killed world wide in dis-honour by a culture of contempt for women?

How can anyone have any respect for the feminists running these DV shelters when they continue to try and foist pure unadulterated nonsense on the unsuspecting public. It is no more than misandry wanting to put all men into a category of patriarchs trying to oppress and kill women.MJM

Kathryn Blaze Carlson  November 30, 2010 – 6:08 pm

 

RICHMOND HILL — So-called ‘honour-based crimes’ should not be viewed as distinct from mainstream violence against women and the Criminal Code should not be amended to include a separate ‘honour killings’ charge, a panel agreed at what was believed to be the first-ever symposium on the subject in York Region.

“When you use the term ‘honour crimes’ the way we do in Canada, it becomes a way of saying ‘those barbaric practices’ done by ‘those barbaric cultures,’ as if the West’s hands are somehow clean,” said panelist Farrah Khan, a therapist with the Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic. “Is this inherently a cultural thing? Yes. It’s a culture of patriarchy. It’s not a South Asian or Muslim culture.”

The panel — which featured self-proclaimed Muslim feminist, social worker, and beauty queen Tahmena Bokhari, and which also included Det. Christina Baker of York Regional Police, lawyer and activist Zarah Danani, and Anita Khanna, of the Council of Agencies Serving South Asians — agreed that the term ‘honour killing’ wrongfully suggests so-called honour crimes are somehow different from the crimes of yore
.
“I think it’s important that we don’t buy into the hype: We’ve got to stop creating legislation — as is going on around the globe — that targets Muslim people,” said lawyer and panelist Zarah Danani. “It’s fear-based hype finding its way into the law because we have a right-wing Conservative government.”
The symposium — entitled Honour Based Violence and the Canadian Context and hosted by the Sandgate Women’s Shelter of York Region — drew 50 or so mostly female community members, activists, and social workers to Richmond Hill’s Elgin West Community Centre.

Although ‘honour killings’ — widely understood as culturally motivated killings carried out by relatives in order to “cleanse” the family name and restore the family’s so-called honour — remain relatively rare in this country, several high-profile cases have sparked heated discussion about what event organizers called an “upward trend” in honour-based violence in Canada.

Just this month, an Ontario Superior Court judge decried the “extremely reprehensible” mindset behind so-called honour crimes, and sentenced a Scarborough man to five years in prison for speeding his minivan into his teenaged daughter, her boyfriend, and his son-in law. The Tamil man had disapproved of his daughter’s boyfriend, who was of a lower Sri Lankan caste.

The notion of ‘honour killings’ is most often associated with the Muslim community, though Canada and the United States have also seen many cases involving Sikhs and Hindus.

Ms. Danani lamented that there is an element of Islamophobia in “how these things keep getting labeled,” and said that the use of the term ‘honour killing’ is simply a bid to muster a new “phenomenon” out of an age-old offence.

“When you create a new term, you get to create a phenomenon,” she told the crowd, who shouted and clapped in agreement from their chairs in a multi-purpose room at the community centre. “You get to take it out of the everyday, and make it sound new.”

“Honour killings need not be placed ‘out there,’” echoed Det. Baker, adding that amending the Criminal Code would be a “bad idea.”

Whether Ottawa will amend legislation to include ‘honour killing’ is yet to be seen; speculation reached a fever-pitch this past summer.
In July, Rona Ambrose, Minister for the Status of Women, told a news conference in Mississauga that the government was “looking at” adding a separate charge. Later that very day, however, her statement was hastily rejected by the Justice Department.

The Criminal Code flip-flop came on the heels of a Frontier Centre for Public Policy report, which said “honour/shame codes are rife” in the non-Westernized segment of Canada’s South Asian community.
Still, Jehan Chaudhry, executive director of the Sandgate Women’s Shelter, said on Tuesday that “there is no room for discussion” as to whether so-called honour crimes — when perpetrated by members of the non-westernized South Asian community — are at all distinct from domestic violence.

“Whether it’s a brother killing a sister, the victim at the end of the day is still a woman — there’s no other way to look at it,” Ms. Chaudhry said in an interview. “What I know of Islam, what I know of Sikhism, what I know of Hindu, there is no room for ‘honour-based violence.’ Women are to be revered.”

The symposium — which offered Urdu, Mandarin, Farsi, and Tamil interpretation — convened almost precisely one year after the Conservative government released a toughened-up citizenship guide that explicitly condemned “barbaric cultural practices” such as so-called honour killings.

Posted in: Canada, Posted  Tags: Domestic violence, Honour killings, Symposiums

Read more: http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/11/30/criminal-code-should-not-be-changed-to-include-honour-killings-symposium-panel/#ixzz16ode2a1u

Mom gets conditional discharge for abandoning 3½-year-old to go drinking

If this was a dad would he now be in jail and being painted as a monster as opposed to this slap on the wrist? Note the incompetent and neglectful mom wants to get custody back.  The poor child if that ever happens. Shared parenting needs to be the default and when dads are allowed to stay in the life of their child they will be better protected.MJM

 



Sick child home alone

By STEVE BRUCE Court Reporter
Sat, Nov 27 - 4:54 AM

While Joanne Victoria Lawson was drinking at a bar one night, her 3½-year-old daughter was home alone with a fever — vomiting, wandering around the darkened apartment, banging on the door and crying for her mommy.

The building superintendents heard the little girl’s screams over a two-hour period and finally let themselves into the apartment. After finding the child unattended and leaving messages on the mother’s cellphone, they called police.

Lawson, 42, pleaded guilty earlier this year to child abandonment and received an 18-month conditional discharge Thursday in Halifax provincial court.

The events of March 20, 2008, cost Lawson custody of her daughter, who now lives with her father in Cape Breton.

Lawson has stopped drinking and abusing drugs, is responding well to medication for adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and hopes to eventually regain custody of the girl.

"It was a horrible thing I did," the Dartmouth woman told Judge Carol Beaton.

"I don’t have the words to describe how I feel every day when I wake up and I don’t have my daughter, and it’s from my own actions — actions that I quite simply don’t remember.

"It’s something I live with every day."

Lawson said she worked to keep her emotions under control when she spoke to experts about her actions. Those people interpreted that as a lack of remorse, causing the prosecutor to have concerns about having agreed to propose a conditional discharge.

"Everybody seems to think I don’t have a lot of remorse for this incident, which is absolutely not true,"

Lawson said, fighting back tears. "I know exactly what could have happened and it scares the hell out of me.

I love my child very much."

Court was told Lawson drank a bottle of cheap red wine at her apartment on Layton Road in Halifax before calling a cab to take her to a downtown watering hole shortly after 8 p.m.

When police entered the apartment at about 10:30 p.m., the bathtub had about 15 centimetres of water in it.

It appeared Lawson had used the tub to wash vomit off her daughter’s clothes earlier in the day.

The woman returned home intoxicated at about 2 a.m. and was upset at the superintendents for what they had done.

Lawson had made tentative arrangements for a babysitter that evening but forgot to follow through on them, defence lawyer Margaret MacKenzie of Nova Scotia Legal Aid told the court.

"She loves her child and was devoted to her child," MacKenzie said of her client, who works as a cook.

"She admits to screwing up big time that night. There’s no doubt in anybody’s mind that alcohol was the main player and (the child) suffered as a result of that."

The Crown proceeded by indictment on the charge, which meant the maximum penalty was five years in prison.

Crown attorney Susan MacKay said it was fortunate that Lawson lived in an apartment building and not in a house, where the child’s cries might have gone unheeded by neighbours.

"This incident is very serious," MacKay said. "I would hope that this criminal process . . . will have a positive impact on Ms. Lawson’s future behaviour."

MacKay said a medical checkup found that the child was suffering from a bug of some kind but was otherwise in good health. There were no signs of any previous abuse and the dwelling was clean and well maintained.

Lawson had no previous criminal convictions and, by pleading guilty, accepted responsibility for her actions, the prosecutor said in recommending the conditional discharge to the judge.

"I think she’s getting a bit of a break and I hope she knows it," MacKay said. "It would be a very different circumstance today if further trauma had come to that child."

Lawson will be on probation for 18 months, with conditions that she abstain from alcohol and drugs, participates in counselling for substance abuse or any other issue identified by her sentence supervisor, and performs 50 hours of community service. She also can’t have contact with her daughter unless it’s through lawyers or in relation to a family court order.

If she fulfills the conditions, the conviction will be discharged and she won’t have a criminal record.

"This was a situation that had the potential for real disaster, over and above the seriousness of what did occur," the judge said in adopting the recommended sentence.

"One shudders to think what could have happened to (the child), left alone at 3½ years of age. She could have aspirated on her own vomit. She could have fallen into the bathtub. . . . She could have come into contact with matches.


"I could be here for an hour listing all the possibilities. All of the reasons that adults don’t leave children alone can be conjured up here to illustrate how some sort of success was snatched from the jaws of potential disaster."

Beaton said the court was essentially being asked to emphasize the positive changes Lawson has made in her life.

"That takes a leap of faith on the part of the court and on the part of the community," the judge said.
She urged Lawson not to do anything to abuse that faith.

( sbruce@herald.ca)

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Metro/1214225.html