Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts

Stop The Responsible Fatherhood Bill

"All I ever wanted was supervised" a repeated phrase amongst family violence survivors.  The Family Court has come under recent scrutiny over unsafe contact and the controversial use of Parental Alienation Syndrome a diagnosis that has not been accepted by any scientific organization globally.  The bottom line is that children are ordered by the court to attend access visits where the parents are abusive.  If the mother objects, she risks losing the children altogether.  That is the state of not only the Family Court in Australia, it is an international problem.  
Until recently, there were few groups that were advocating for children and far too many groups advocating for such forced contact.  "Pro Contact" culture is really just being polite.  "Contact No Matter what" Cult, is more appropriate considering the facts that there is no limit as to who they wish children to have contact with.  

Cult definitions coined from 1920 onward[1] refer to a cohesive social group and their devotional beliefs or practices, which the surrounding population considers to be outside of mainstream cultures. The surrounding population may be as small as a neighborhood, or as large as the community of nations. They gratify curiosity about, take action against, or ignore a group, depending on its reputed similarity to cults previously reported by mass media. -Wikipedia


Bizarre punishments against mothers are initiated by the courts if they do not comply without consideration for the impact that the children suffer.  
Some of these punishments include:

"Isolating The Child From The Protective Parent"
"Orders inhibiting the Child From access to Counseling"
"Removal of The Mothers Passport'

In cases where the parent has a mental health condition that is one of the leading causes of homicide, the protective action is often minimal.  Some orders are for the parent to take their medication and see their doctor, but left entirely to the device of the patient and the potential victims are left restricted by the court order and helpless to what might come about.  The Court evaluators who make the decisions that the judges often solely rely on are often untrained for these cases, but overtrained in the area of "pro - contact' and too well understand the terms of "maternal gatekeeping" "Alienation" and "False Memory Syndrome".  They believe that the child is not unsafe in relationships with sex offenders if they "just accept it" without the interference from mothers.  

This is due to the fact that in the early 80s, Dr Richard Gardner coined the term, "Parent Alienation Syndrome" and travelled the world with the help of Association of Family and Conciliation Courts(AFCC).  Many conferences were held indoctrinating lawyers, psychologists and judges into the belief that children are better off with abusive parents.  This belief was also supported by the international Child Emancipation, a lobby group for pedophiles.  

Cases where there is not enough evidence to support Family Violence are often referred to as, "False Allegations" and in most cases the victim is required to pay costs to the alleged perpetrator. This goes against studies that support the notion that in 95% of child abuse cases are true.  Clearly it is the interference that the victims receive during the court processes that leads to the lack of evidence that is able to be provided.  

Like the German Lebensborn organization, they said, "Best Interests" but the intention was to reintroduce laws that tie women to men and diminish any concerns regarding child abuse and violence against women.  The current family law regime reduces the value of children and mothers compared to men and promotes the cycle of violence continuing through to another generation.  Like a genetic disease, our children have been infected with family violence.  

The German Lebensborn organization was similarly cruel in its time.  In the context of the German welfare system, it was considered that it was the "best interests" of the child to be German.  By abducting babies of other origins for German families, "Best Interests of the child" was created to serve the purposes of racial intolerance.  Today in the context of Family Law, "best interests of the child" refers to the amount of time spent with a parent no matter how abusive they may be. 

Although there have been more efforts to protect mothers and children affected by family violence with the Violence Against Women Act and the introduction of the Protective Parent Bill, PAS is still alive in the US court system and have progressed to a point where they are supporting it through the "Responsible Fatherhood Bill".  Like best Interests, it is aimed at enforcing contact with fathers regardless of the rise to epidemic proportions of murder suicides.  In sect 2, "Findings" it states that the reason to provide fathers with billions of dollars in funding is due to:
      6) Children who live without contact with their biological father are, in comparison to children who have such contact--

        (A) 5 times more likely to live in poverty;

        (B) more likely to bring weapons and drugs into the classroom;

        (C) twice as likely to commit crime;

        (D) twice as likely to drop out of school;

        (E) more likely to commit suicide;

        (F) more than twice as likely to abuse alcohol or drugs; and

        (G) more likely to become pregnant as teenagers.

      (7) Violent criminals are overwhelmingly males who grew up without fathers.
        
The findings stated here is derived from a confirmitory bias. If you look deeper into the research, it becomes obvious that:
Children were economically abused by the fathers and the state for withdrawal of financial support of children.  It is in fact written in the convention on The Rights Of The Child:
 
Article 26
1. States Parties shall recognize for every child the right to benefit from social security, including social insurance, and shall take the necessary measures to achieve the full realization of this right in accordance with their national law.
2. The benefits should, where appropriate, be granted, taking into account the resources and the circumstances of the child and persons having responsibility for the maintenance of the child, as well as any other consideration relevant to an application for benefits made by or on behalf of the child.
 
The "Violent males who grew up without fathers", were in fact infected prior to the separation by witnessing the actual violence.  According to Amy Coha:
  • Boys who witness domestic violence are more likely to batter their female partners as adults than boys raised in nonviolent homes. Of the children who witness domestic abuse, 60% of the boys eventually become batterers.
  • Sixty-three percent of boys age 11-20 who commit homicide, murder the man who was abusing their mother. In 50% of the time, if the wife (mother) is being physically abused, so are the children.
Teenage pregnancy is an old sexist phrase that draws the need to look at the pregnant women as the problem.  Contraceptives apart from the condom are directed at her as entirely responsible for the pregnancy.  According to Rape Abuse and Incest Network(RAIN):

Girls ages 16-19 are 4 times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault.


 


Victims of sexual assault are:7
3 times more likely to suffer from depression.
6 times more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
13 times more likely to abuse alcohol.
26 times more likely to abuse drugs.
4 times more likely to contemplate suicide.

The fact that in some states, the perpetrator can apply to the Family Court to stop the abortion and continue these attacks on her suggests that women and girls are considered by the state as objects rather than human beings.  If such a bill were to pass, it would be a greater violation to the already eroded human rights of women and children.  

Journalists Against Family Court Censorship


Bid to ease blackout on custody cases

Caroline Overington | May 02, 2009

Article from: The Australian

PROMINENT journalists are starring in YouTube videos calling on the federal Government to change the law regarding the identification of children involved in Family Court proceedings.

The law states that children who are injured or killed cannot be named or identified with photographs if they were involved in a custody case before the Family Court.

It means cases in which either parent kills their children in a custody dispute, as has happened several times in the past 12 months, cannot be reported.

The law also prevents adults from speaking about their experience of the Family Court, including children once they are grown up, and it prevents parents whose children have been killed from talking about their experience.

Ross Coulthard, a Walkley Award-winning reporter from the Seven Network's Sunday Night program, and three other journalists agreed to make the YouTube videos as part of a wider campaign to open the Family Court to scrutiny.

There are concerns, especially among women's groups, that the court processes are veiled in secrecy. In some cases, the court gives permission for one party to speak, but not the other. This happened in the case of Ken Thompson, assistant NSW fire chief, whose former wife abducted their son and fled Australia. He has given his version of events, with the court's permission. She is forbidden from discussing the case.

In his video, Coulthard says there are "good reasons for making sure children are protected in proceedings before the Family Court". But, he adds, "there are issues that should be scrutinised by the media that aren't. Where children are hurt as a consequence of a bad Family Court decision, I think the public have a right to know."

The videos have been uploaded alongside videos of child protection workers talking about the rights of children in Family Court hearings.

Women involved in the campaign will rally in all capital cities tomorrow.

Graham Archer, producer of Today Tonight in Adelaide, says: "There are suppression orders which are there for good reason." But, he adds, "they act as a veil over the conduct and procedures of the court. All human institution fail, including our courts."

Megan Norris, a writer for women's magazines who has written about custody issues, says: "We understand there has to be strict confidentiality (but) there are exceptions (where) our lawyers should be able to argue that these are areas of great public concern."

STORY TOOLS

Family courts system accused of hiding evidence from parents

Parents fighting in the family courts for contact with their children are being denied access to their personal files by a corrupt system, a leading parental rights campaigner has said.

Alison Stevens, head of Parents Against Injustice, has called for Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, to force social services and individual courts to comply with the Data Protection Act.

She said: “Local authorities have to send the requested files within 40 days . . . but they are often not following public law guidelines. It’s corruption within the system. They are playing God, and there must be some reason why — perhaps to hide things they have got wrong in the cases.”

Evidence is gathered from a variety of sources before children are taken from their parents in family courts. Tracking down and obtaining these documents can be very difficult because they are held by various bodies and must be applied for in different ways.

Ms Stevens said: “Parents should be entitled to their files — not just social services files but all files: from health visitors, GPs, different hospitals, the ambulance trust, psychologist reports, paediatrician notes and so on.”

The Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming has written to all MPs calling for a parliamentary review into the operation of the family courts. He said: “One of the ways legal practitioners prevent parents from fighting cases is by not giving them the paperwork. Often the paperwork doesn’t add up, so if parents got hold of it they would see what was going on.”

Many parents have welcomed the call for greater accountability. Roland Simpkin (not his real name) received his social services files seven years after his children were taken into care in 2001 amid allegations of abuse.

When the allegations were shown to be unfounded, he sought to obtain the evidence held on him by social services to find out why he was still not allowed to see his children.

He was sent his files last year, after pursuing his case through a series of letters, complaints and court orders, but he found that parts of the notes had been crossed through with black pen, words had been deleted and sections of paragraphs had been removed during photocopying.

Mr Simpkin said: “Despite being repeatedly found not to have harmed or posed a risk of harm to \ children or anybody else’s, the sheer amount of delay introduced by the sluggishness of the social services department to share information is likely to be a serious negative factor in any potential repeated contact \.”

In another case, Marc Tufano, an actor who has appeared in EastEnders and The Bill, has not seen his two sons for seven years because he cannot obtain the documents that he needs to bring his case to appeal.

His children were given residence with his partner in 2003 after their relationship broke down. Though he immediately tried to launch an appeal, he said that he had found it impossible to obtain transcripts of the original court hearings because the court authorities had been slow to reply to his requests and had since claimed to have destroyed the documents.

Mr Tufano said: “I have begged these government agents to leave me alone so as I can see my sons without being harassed by endless arguments over the paperwork they require. It is made impossible for parents to get hold of the documents they need.”

Case study: I fired six sets of solicitors

Sezgi Kapur’s two daughters were taken from her in 2003 amid allegations that her violent attitude towards care professionals could be harmful to her children, allegations she denies.

Before the hearings in the family court, her requests for her social services files were ignored or denied, and she was forced to apply for court orders to disclose the documents. Without them, Ms Kapur was unable to respond to the evidence gathered against her by social services and care workers, and so was unable to fight her case effectively.

After the files were provided, she discovered that the minutes from high-level social services meetings about her case had been withheld and that memos had been circulated to those who attended asking them to “destroy all previous copies” of notes from the meeting.

Ms Kapur said: “These meetings painted a picture of me as a volatile, aggressive, threatening individual who was alienating professionals, who might one day emotionally harm my children through this purported alienation. It was incredible to read this.

“I fired six sets of solicitors because they failed to get disclosure of all my documents. If the parents do not get a fair trial, the children do not either.”

Shaun O’Connell, a lay adviser working on behalf of Environmental Law Centre, said: “If you’re not familiar with the Data Protection Act and you don’t know the format and structure, it’s impossible.”

Abduction Bias: Father gets away with it

From correspondents in Los Angeles, USA | April 17, 2009

Article from: Australian Associated Press

LOS Angeles prosecutors are yet to decide if Australian father George Betsis will be charged with kidnapping his son.

Mr Betsis has been on the run for almost two weeks in Los Angeles after picking up his 10-year-old son, Tomas, from a school in the city's affluent suburb of Pacific Palisades on April 3.

Mr Betsis, a Sydney-based advertising executive, is embroiled in a custody battle with ex-wife and Tomas' mother, celebrity "baby whisperer'' Priscilla Dunstan.

In interviews from secret locations with various Australian media organisations, Mr Betsis said he took the extreme decision to take his son into hiding because he was desperate to spend time with him.

An LA lawyer hired by Mr Betsis arranged for Tomas to be handed back to LA police on Wednesday, but Mr Betsis remains in hiding while awaiting a decision by the Los Angeles District Attorney's office.

"We have not filed any charges,'' DA spokesperson Shiara Davila-Morales said.

"The case is still under investigation at this time.''

Los Angeles police will await the DA's decision before committing resources to search for and arrest Mr Betsis, an LAPD spokesman confirmed.

"The DA's office is still in the process of deciding if they will file charges against the father,'' LAPD spokesman Richard French said.

"I don't think we are tracking him down at this time.

"That doesn't happen until they (the DA) decide if they are going to press charges against him.''

Mr Betsis, now married to Australian actress Mary Coustas, best known for her comic character Effie, said he was shattered when he said goodbye to his son on Wednesday.

"I feel like I've let him down, sending him back in there,'' he told Australia's 2GB radio station.

"He didn't say anything really in the last minute or so - I was pretty choked up.''

Openness of family courts is a ‘con trick’

Jack Straw has been accused of a confidence trick over plans to open the family courts to the media.

John Hemming, a Liberal Democrat MP, has warned that although the Justice Secretary’s new rules will allow the media to attend family court proceedings for the first time, reports cannot be published without the judge’s permission.

The media, groups campaigning for justice for families and the English public had each been taken in, he said. “Whether it is by Jack Straw or by forces of reaction in the judiciary – we have all been hoodwinked.”

The reforms will take effect from April 27 under rules that have just been published. Mr Hemming, who, with The Times, has been in the forefront of the campaign to open the family courts, said that the reforms brought some benefits, in that parents or children could tell journalists or their MP about court proceedings, but he added: “It remains that publication can only happen with the permission of the judge.”

In an interview with The Times in December, Mr Straw appeared to imply that the media would be allowed to report on cases as long as they did not name the parties or publish their personal details. “It will be open to parties to apply to court for specific reporting restrictions. But my hope is that the courts are reluctant to grant these,” he said.

Last month a senior family judge said that the media would continue to be denied the ability to report on the detail of cases. Sir Andrew McFarlane, a High Court judge, said that only reports of the “gist of proceedings rather than the detail of an individual case” would be allowed. The present reporting regime would remain in place and would be “unamended to accommodate the insertion of the media into the courtroom”, he said.

Sir Andrew added that the Government was not intending to ease restrictions to “give the green light to the reporting of human interest stories”. Because of the need to protect the identity of children, he said, the media would “face tough sanctions” if they reported the detail of any case. “The reporting will be about the system, rather than substance.”

Sir Andrew, a family judge who made his comments to a conference

held by Resolution, the family lawyers’ association, said that the changes would help to prevent ill-informed and inaccurate reporting. But he concluded: “The brave new world postApril . . . seems to be far more sophisticated and restricted than may at first sight have been understood by some journalists, the public at large and, for that matter, the legal profession.”

Announcing the reforms in December, Mr Straw stated that courts would retain powers to restrict attendance and what could be reported.

Sir Andrew said that journalists would face difficulties when confronted with a parent complaining about a miscarriage of justice. “Under the new scheme, the journalist is in no better position than they are now to evaluate the validity of the complaints that they are hearing.” He also said that when care and criminal proceedings were being held in parallel, a journalist would be unable to “report any of the substance of the care proceedings other than possibly the outcome, once the proceedings have fully concluded”. In a case involving serious injury or death, such as the Baby P hearing, the journalist who was privy to the case would not be able to report any detail.

Mr Straw strongly denied any intention to mislead. He said that the intention was to legislateto rationalise reporting restrictions but it would take primary legislation. He said: “It is nonsense for anyone to suggest that there has been any dubiety in the Government’s position. Time and again I have said that we will bring the current highly restrictive rules against reporting in respect of the High Court and county courts into line with the rules for family proceedings courts.

“Alongside the formal changes to the court rules, I have also wanted to ensure a change in the culture and practice of all courts – the High Court, county courts, and magistrates’ courts – towards greater openness, and I am confident that the overall effect of these changes will be to achieve that.”

Battered Mothers Custody Conference


Sunday, January 11, 2009
 
Battered Mothers Custody Conference
Updated: 01/11/2009 05:21 PM
By: Dave Detling

ALBANY, N.Y. -- "My daughters said, 'mommy, fight for me, fight for us every day and do something to get us back,'" said Linda Marie Sacks.


The Florida mother said the source of her pain is losing her two daughters.


"In less than one year and nine months I've had less than 37 hours of contact," she said.


A victim of domestic violence, Sacks lost her children to what she calls an unfair custody battle.


Dr. Mo Hannah, a professor of psychology at Siena College, said it's often the outcome in many relationships where battering takes place.


"In the course of these battles women run out of money because normally the men have more money, and the women become debilitated by the stress of trying to fight for their children," said Dr. Hannah.

Battered Mothers Custody Conference
In Albany, it was an emotional weekend for both women and men alike, as more than 200 victims of domestic abuse and advocates against it gathered to teach abused mothers how to navigate the court system.

Hannah said a lack of money and an unfair judicial system can make it difficult for mothers like Sacks to gain proper custody. This is also true for many fathers.


It's a wide spread problem and it's drawn more than 200 people and outside organizations to the Sixth Battered Mother's Custody Conference in Albany. They've come from as far as Spain and South Africa in hopes of finding support.


"They need to talk to other women. They need to talk to legal advocates, they need to talk to domestic violence advocates, and they need to get connected as other people at the conference have gotten connected so they can have support," said Dr. Hannah.


And for parents like Linda Marie Sacks, its this type of network they say will bring them closer to their children.


"There is no quick remedy for moms like me but I will not stop trying to get my daughters back," said Sacks.


Experts say custody battles like these often stem from unbalanced court proceedings. They say the best defense is thorough documentation and getting help from advocates.


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