Comments

Sign in or register to comment.

• Previous
• Next

• 1. At 08:28am on 16 Nov 2009, Robert Green wrote:

  Following my divorce, I fought for 4 years through the courts for regular access to see my daughter. After several thousand pounds, broken agreements and obstacles put in my way I gave up the fight. Net result: I have seen my daughter aprroximately 10 times over the last 8 years - and my ex- remains in contempt of a court order. Sadly, the legal system has badly let me down. Each time I was forced to take my ex- back to court she received little more than a slap on the wrist. What hope have fathers got if the legal system is so impotent?

  Complain about this comment

• 2. At 08:47am on 16 Nov 2009, rubber duck wrote:

  My wife had two affairs and I was forced into a divorce. It was awful. I lost the woman I loved, a house I enjoyed living in, a life that was perfect for me and now my daughter who is ten, who I love deeply, is drifting away from me. I had to divorced and was stripped of all I created over many years and had to move away to try and start again. I live about 30 miles away from my daughter and see her every other weekend. I bought her a phone so she could keep in contact, but it's never switched on and when I get through to her, I can tell she doesn't want to talk to me and she very rarely phones me.
  I do everything I can when I see her to give her a nice time, but she cries to be back with her mum - its so upsetting for me.
  I gave my wife a good live and all three of us where very happy until I found out about the affairs, but now it's hell for me. My biggest loss is losing my daughter and I can't do anything about it.
  My advice to any other man thinking about divorcing an unfaithful wife is to realise you will come off much worse - everything is stacked against you. If you think it's bad enough now, you haven't seen anything yet. The pain will get much worse - forever.
  

  Complain about this comment

• 3. At 09:57am on 16 Nov 2009, Nellysmydogsname wrote:

  The fall of blog - the rise of Facebook. The BBC are a public corporation actively encouraging the use of a private social network site - for what purpose? That would make a decent discussion point...

  Complain about this comment

• 4. At 10:09am on 16 Nov 2009, Jeremy wrote:

  My father left over 30 years ago. I have only met him a couple of times in my live, and that was about twenty years ago. Sadly, my brother died this year without leaving a will. My biological father is now claiming half my brother's estate. He is able to do this in the law, despite the fact that he played almost no role in his upbringing, and has not, to the best of my knowledge, seen him since 1991. This is an unfair law, and I have started a campaign to change it. (www.richardswill.co.uk)
  
  Jeremy

  Complain about this comment

• 5. At 10:10am on 16 Nov 2009, Gregg wrote:

  Good phone-in, some harrowing stories, excellently handled as usual by Nicky. People who haven't been through it must remember that normal sensible people lose their common sense. However, the marriage breaks down, the man normally leaves & therefore gets the blame, the wife believing she is on the high moral ground thereafter!
  I fortunately have good contact now with my children, but until recently my ex used them for any variety of reasons, including attempted financial leverage and emotional blackmail.

  Complain about this comment

• 6. At 11:25am on 16 Nov 2009, pattyroad wrote:

  I haven’t had chance to listen to the phone-in yet but heard some of the first texts from earlier this morning. It is heartbreaking stuff – my partner has 2 pre-teen children, one who lives abroad and one only a couple of miles from us, and he fights to see both of them but with such limited success. It is heartbreaking for him to have such a lack of substantial relationship with them and he misses them desperately but it all seems to be a game of control played by their mothers. Their selfish and cruel actions have a negative effect on my life too as my partner is now understandably reluctant to put himself in the position of having another child when he has had two ‘taken away’ from him already. It breaks both our hearts and the thing that makes me so angry is that the only people who are getting anything out of this situation are his ex-wives who can continue to control this major aspect of his life. It is not good for his children, for him or for me.

  Complain about this comment

• 7. At 11:50am on 16 Nov 2009, stuart smallman wrote:

  I'm an experienced family solicitor yet know at first hand what it is like to lose your daughter at the hands of your ex-wife and 'new' husband.The court system is very poor and needs a complete overhall.I have great empathy with all parents mums and dads who lose their children .Whilst you lose the most precious time of your childs life,it is not uncommon for that child in their later life to return to you when they have grown up having become unfraid to voice their anger at the parents who has orchestrated and denied them their daddy in the first instance.Parents have a lot to answer for, but unfortunately the courts at this present time are not the answer for the children.

  Complain about this comment

• 8. At 12:33pm on 16 Nov 2009, GoodYearForTheRoses wrote:

  I notice that mediation is being touted as a panacea, but before the "let's sit down and talk like adults" brigade get carried away with their own cleverness, can I remind them that this only works if both sides negotiate in an adult way. Where one (ex)partner is dominant and aggressive, there is no mechanism within mediation to counteract this. I went through mediation not in the hope of justice or fairness, but purely because it was cheaper and would deplete the family resources less. She demanded and got pretty much everything, as she would have in a court of family law. Plus ca change.
  Since then I have had had brushes with several government agencies, summarized as follows:
  The Education system: Can't apply to schools in my area, because I'm not the resident parent. Well I could, but I need her approval. She doesn't need mine.
  The Benefits system: Lost my job in 2008, but I'm not the resident parent so no allowance is made of the fact I have two kids. Benefit received barely covers travelling expenses to see them, never mind clothe and entertain.
  The CSA (God love 'em): Got new job, so ex gets in the CSA, impatient for her pound of flesh after the above. For the first time in the eyes of the law, I am a parent. But no allowance is made in their rudimentary calculations as to what I already provide for my kids independently. I am cheerfully told that I am being "trett (sic) the same as everyone else". So effectively being fiscally punished for my attempts to maintain an influence in my childrens' lives.
  Family law as it currently stands does not recognize or encourage any positive action a father takes to continue to be a caring parent. My advice to anyone in like position to myself, would be to walk away at the onset of your divorce. This way you take the pain in one big hit, and are not killed by degrees over the coming years. That is the sensible approach. To their great credit many fathers don't take it.

  Complain about this comment

• 9. At 1:48pm on 18 Nov 2009, STUART wrote:

  My Story
  
  As a father of two, with a soon to be X wife (of 8 years) I have been treated like and felt like a criminal. Fathers are guilty until proven innocent. Until the day I left my home, the one that I had soley worked and paid for over 22 years, the children I had to walk away from (who are my all), I was seen as a good father, an honest man, a business owner who had not once been in trouble with the police, not even a speeding ticket, always paid my bills and provided an income and support for my family. Since then I have been labeled (only by my x wife) as a father who would snatch his children, a peadofile (I had a picture of my daughter (6) and son (4) as my phones screen saver, dancing in the summertime just out of the pool, I involved the police and she with drew her threat to sling mud) a liar who my children can not trust, a mean tight bastard, this is the tip of a very large iceberg of insults and mind games she plays. I have paid for my wifes mortgage (she refuses to work as her benifits are to good) and I have and will support my children during the whole of this traumatic period (not once have I said one bad word about her). My children have been made emotional crutches for all my wifes anger and they have to suffer untold mental abuse, they have been stopped from seeing me for 8 weeks at a time, they have had to see me driving away with them screaming why cant they come with me, whilst my X wife just stood and watched and ignored them and again and again restricted access at her sole contole. I have spent thousands in court trying to get access and a holiday with them all for the courts to say "yes you can" at the 1st full hearing. This has not stopped her abusing the children mentaly, puting the fear of god into them and turning them against me and now my new partner and her daughter. Through out all this my daughter has been so very very strong and has not beleived my x wifes lies and has refused to play silly games, but I have still seen a change in her. My son is so very young and is not allowed to have a relationship with me. I left all that I loved and had worked for due to a breakdown in a two way relationship, not just oneway. But she has taken the moral high ground and as the father who walk out of his home I will allways be labeled by society and the law. I hate to think what effect this may have on the future of my children, it could have been so very different but for one person in the whole of this mess. Your artical was very emotional for me to hear and I hope the law will change to save those future children who will have mothers like my X.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Complain about this comment

• 10. At 9:19pm on 22 Nov 2009, kidsfirst wrote:

  The Shared Parenting Information Group aims to promote the continued involvement of both parents in their children’s lives. Their website (http://www.spig.clara.net/) provides a “Good Courts Guide”. The Guide provides statistics supplied by the Lord Chancellors Department. In 1994 a mere 1 in 40 Contact Applications were refused by the County Courts in England and Wales. By 2003 this very small proportion had been reduced to about 1 in 400. Over the years 2000 to 2003 half of the courts received collectively some 52,000 Contact Applications and did not refuse a single one.
  
  I have consulted a great many Family Law practitioners and asked if any of them has ever handled a case where a Contact Application was refused. Not one had, and a barrister stated that the chances of a mother successfully opposing a Contact Application by a violent former partner were now much less than 1 in 1000.
  
  The confidentiality imposed by the Family Court system prevents the mothers from publicising their personal plight. However, something of the seriousness of the issue can be seen in a report prepared by Hilary Saunders for Women’s Aid that was published in 2004 and is accessible via the Women’s Aid website. The report identifies 29 cases where children were killed as a result of contact arrangements.
  
  It is clear to me, on the basis of the cases of which I am aware, that CAFCASS and, in turn, the Family Courts are interpreting parental responsibility as being the inalienable right of any absent father to have access to his child, regardless of his behaviour and the threat he poses.
  
  It is also clear that death threats, abduction threats, harassment and molestation of the mother, even when perpetrated by the Applicant while proceedings are ongoing, are not deemed by CAFCASS and the Family Courts to provide sufficient grounds to justify the refusal of a Contact Application. Nor is the physical and psychological harm that the mothers and children suffer as a result of Applicants’ behaviour. Furthermore, Applicants are allowed by the courts to commit perjury, submit false documents and breach court orders with impunity, and CAFCASS are being allowed to submit blatantly biased and factually incorrect reports without subsequently being required by the courts to correct them.
  
  The Court process is a devastating experience for the mothers and their children. Mothers suffer stress-related illnesses (up to and including stroke), clinical depression and anxiety, or worse, caused by the constant threat of ultimately being compelled, on pain of imprisonment, to hand their children over to the abuser. The demands on their time created by the legal process will curtail their already limited opportunities for quality time with their child, who will suffer as a result. Many will lose their jobs as a result of illness and court related absences. If they are not poor enough to qualify for legal aid they will face unaffordable legal costs or have to go to court unrepresented.
  
  They will have to face their abuser in court over and over again. They will have to reward him by giving evidence in court of the further psychological, physical and financial harm he is succeeding in inflicting on them and their children. The courts then reward and encourage him further by minimising or ignoring what the Applicant has been doing, medical evidence of its effects, and other evidence (such as criminal convictions, drug and alcohol abuse etc) that may be placed before them by the mother.
  
  The children will normally have been harmed prior to the separation by the violence of their father, either directly or by witnessing or even just hearing his violence to the mother. Their memory of this and their associated fears will be reawakened by his forced reintroduction into their lives. Their sleep may be disturbed by night terrors. They will often suffer physically and psychologically as a result. Many will also worry, usually in silence, about their mothers’ distress and illness. They will often be affected by poverty caused by the CSA’s failure to obtain maintenance by the father, the mother’s loss of employment, and child care costs incurred by lone mothers. Children’s vulnerability to illness will typically increase and their social and academic development at school will often be impaired. They will find any sense of security the mother may have managed to build following the separation utterly destroyed by the mothers’ unavoidable preoccupation with protecting them from their fathers and the disappearance of fun from their home lives.
  
  The courts are supposed to treat the best interests of the child as paramount. In fact they are almost invariably ordering contact where there is not only a total absence of evidence that contact would be in any way beneficial to the child, but also positive evidence that contact is already being, or is highly likely to be, harmful. The courts are also supposed to take account of the wishes of the child, yet they invariably order contact even when the child is vigorously opposed to it and plainly in terror of the Applicant.
  

  Complain about this comment

• 11. At 9:20pm on 22 Nov 2009, kidsfirst wrote:

  I believe that, Family Court judges should be required by law to issue a No Contact Order if the Applicant:
  
  • is found to have been habitually violent to the mother and/or the child and is shown to have caused actual physical or psychological harm to either of them OR
  • fails an independent Risk Assessment by properly accredited assessors OR
  • is evidently using his Contact Application maliciously to continue controlling and abusing the mother OR
  • has failed, by his acts and omissions, to demonstrate that his Application is based on a genuine desire to have a positive and meaningful relationship with his child OR
  • is shown to lack the basic parenting skills that would be necessary to ensure the safety and security of the child while in his custody OR
  • has acted while proceedings are ongoing in a manner that has caused physical or psychological harm to the mother and/or child OR
  • is proven to have committed perjury or knowingly submitted false evidence in the Family Court OR
  • has wilfully breached Family Court Orders OR
  • is on the sex offenders register OR
  • is shown to be involved in serious crime that might place the mother, child or the Applicant himself at risk OR
  • is shown to be an abuser of drugs and/or alcohol OR
  • is wilfully evading his parental responsibility to contribute financially to his child’s upkeep.
  
  I would also suggest that, where supervised contact in a Contact Centre is considered, it should not be ordered by the court if the child does not wish to have contact with its absent and violent parent. It is self-evident that there is no justification for forcing a child to have contact with a father who is so dangerous that he can only be allowed contact under supervision in a secure Contact Centre, and yet this is routinely ordered as a precursor to the inevitable ultimate outcome - unsupervised contact.
  
  Neither CAFCASS nor judges sitting in Family Courts are in any way accountable. This situation needs to be changed immediately. Women who have suffered Domestic Violence often find it very difficult to leave their controlling and abusive partners. The need to protect their children is often the factor which gives them the courage to get away. They suffer great financial and emotional difficulties in the process. Women in this position do not lightly choose to suffer the privations that follow separation and they do not refuse contact just to spite their former violent partner. They do so for entirely honourable and compelling reasons. It is obvious from the statistics that Contact Applications are almost always pre-judged in favour of the Applicant, and that the legal process is no more than a lucrative, cruel, and I would say criminal, charade. The courts are knowingly legitimising, assisting and perpetuating Domestic Violence.
  
  

  Complain about this comment

• Previous
• Next

View these comments in RSS