fathers access rights? (posting for traffic)

[WorriedFriend2013]

namechanged in case friends wife is on here. posting in AIBU for traffic.

basically, my good friend has left his wife, about 4 weeks ago. They have a 1 year old dd. His wife has always been a bit controlling and 'odd', and has slowly driven away the majority of his friends and family over the 4 years they have been together. They had an argument last month and she said some disgusting things about his family, which kind of woke him up to what she was really like.

They split and she is now living at her mothers, with their dd. She has not allowed him to see dd since. Obviously he is totally heartbroken over this, as his daughter is his whole world. He has suggested various things eg, only seeing his daughter in a public place like a cafe/playgym, her supervising them at the house etc, but she is having none of it.

Her latest thing is that 'she is scared to see him', when there is zero history of violence/abuse from him. He is now terrified that she will lie and say he has hurt her or dd in order to stop contact for good.

He has made an appointment with a solicitor for the end of the week, but we just wanted to know, basically, is there any chance that she could keep his dd from him for good? If she lies will they just believe her even if there is no evidence?
She has said she will do everything in her power to make sure he and his family never see dd again, but does she actually have this power?

[Grennie]

Superstrength - No abuse is lesser. You should never have been treated like that by your mother.

[SigmundFraude]

DV is DV, no matter who perpetrates it.

Superstrength

[Alexandrite]

I cant help feeling that if a woman had gone through what he has been through with her, more people would be understanding of why he had to leave.

I don't agree. I think women who leave children with abusive men or even non abusive men are judged quite harshly in comparison to a man who leaves his children.

[BoneyBackJefferson]

Superstrength

[Grennie]

Totally agree Alex. And any thread on here inevitable gets lots of comments about - men are abused too.

[halfwildlingwoman]

I fail to understand why this has turned into a discussion about DV when the STBEX is merely "controlling and a bit odd."

Your friend needs to lawyer up. Is there any reason why he hasn't gone round in person and chatted nicely to her with her parents there? Did they have any discussion about these issues before he decided to end the relationship? I also think putting 15% of his income into an account that he can then hand over for his daughter's maintenance at some point is an excellent idea.

[Strumpetron]

If she's never been abusive to the child that could be an issue - didn't the OP say she was 'controlling and a bit odd'?

Also as I have brought up before, it is not as easy for men to remove the child from the mother

[CuChullain]

Grennie


I dont dount those stats at all, I just get fed up with domestic violence being continually framed as a largley single gender issue. Any stats or surveys that highlight the number of male victims are questioned and doubted, it gets rather despressing. I did not suffer like superstrength did above, but I have been in a relationship when for a 6 month period I was slapped and punched a number of times by an exceptionally jealous partner before I found the stregth to flee the relationship. I am 6ft 95kg rugby player, I was fearless on the field of play but terrified of my partner half the size of me. Good job I played rugby too as I could easily pass off any brusies with something I picked up during training.

Without wanting to fall into the trap of playing domestic violence top trumps, 21 men were murdered by a partner or former partner in 2010/11. One in three domestic violence victims is male. The British Crime Survey found that only 10 per cent of male victims of domestic violence had told the police, compared with 29 per cent of women. More than a quarter of male victims tell no one what has happened to them, compared with 13 per cent of women. Its only been in recent years that police even bothered to take complaints seriously, "what, you getting beaten up by that 5ft women, stop wasting police time"

Yes, the number of male victims is still lower then women, but lets try and treat the issue as a problem that needs to be addressed no matter what the gender of the victim is and stop the assumtion that sees domestic violence victims as being female rather than male.

[BoneyBackJefferson]

From what the OP posted
"hes walked away from an emotionally abusive woman who has controlled every aspect of his life for the last 4 years"

Different from "controlling and a bit odd." but then if you miss out "and has slowly driven away the majority of his friends and family over the 4 years they have been together." from the quote I guess that its not much red flag for some posters.

[kawliga]

For those asking why the numbers matter (i.e. if more women are victims than men) of course it doesn't matter to each individual victim. Obviously if you knew someone struck by lightning you wouldn't say 'wow, what are the odds of that happening?!' you would still be sympathetic.

If you are a woman and you want to believe that men are equally likely to be victims as women and anyone is as likely to be a victim of anyone as anyone else in any kind of relationship and it's a bit random and numbers don't matter go right ahead . But women who choose to be aware of the statistics might find themselves making more informed choices. Information is empowering. That doesn't mean other people's experiences are worthless.

[CuChullain]

"If you are a woman and you want to believe that men are equally likely to be victims as women and anyone is as likely to be a victim of anyone as anyone else in any kind of relationship and it's a bit random and numbers don't matter go right ahead"

I don't recall anyone suggesting that, at all, the stats clearly demonstrate that women are more likely to be victims of DV then men are, all what I am saying is that the number of men victims in my opinion are high enough to not make it a single gender issue. One in three victims of DV are men, yet they get a fraction of the resources available to women.

As I stated above, lets try and treat the issue as a serious problem that needs to be addressed no matter what the gender of the victim is and stop the assumtion that sees domestic violence victims as being female rather than male.

[kawliga]

Of course violence is a serious problem by anyone on anyone for any reason in any circumstances. Nobody thinks violence is only bad if it's by men on women. People fighting to reduce the vulnerability of women to DV are not saying the only kind of violence which matters is the violence they are committed to fighting against. Just like those committed to finding a cure for breast cancer do not believe that all other cancers are just fine and dandy.

Violence against women is a particular social problem flagged up by the numbers. all around the world. It is relevant to highlight that on a forum read mostly by women. I wouldn't go on a breast cancer forum and say 'but what about prostrate cancer that's bad too' or 'and what about other illnesses that are not cancer they are illnesses too they also need funding' because that would be beside the point. It's ok to champion the cause of women, it doesn't mean nobody else matters except women.

[NotYoMomma]

this is a PARENTS forum so the breast cancer forum/ prostate cancer example you gave below isnt the same. OP posted in AIBU, not feminism.

dv agaist woman ismore numerous and horrific, no oneis denying that, but the level of instant disbelief and suspicion of the op and the tone of responses so early on is horrible to see.

I dont think thestats needed to be brought up in the way they were (to almost defend the I don't believe you stance)

people shoukd have stuck to the OP

[BoneyBackJefferson]

kawliga

This is a thread about father's rights and female on male DV on a parenting forum, in this case those derailing the thread are those bringing up female DV figures and doubting the OP.

[kawliga]

I agree that the OP didn't deserve to be disbelieved or to have the thread derailed.

Since I am part of the 'derailment' I will say that I only jumped in to the DV debate because I wanted to challenge those saying that women and men are equally likely to be victims and suffer in equal numbers. But I agree that the debate about numbers does not help the OP at all. To be fair most people were supportive of the OP so hopefully they found some help on mumsnet parentsnet.

[BoneyBackJefferson]

nobody said that the numbers where equal just that male victims are not rare

[kawliga]

Not sure I want to scroll back and see who said numbers were equal but off the top of my head I recall the suggestion that it is 60% to 40% which suggests more or less equal. That's the figures being put out there by campaigners for the rights of men to suggest that the problem does not really affect any specific gender more than another. Posting stats from men's rights campaigners on mumsnet should not go unchallenged imho although I'm sorry it derailed the thread.

[kmc1111]

Why are posters saying he left his child. He didn't. OP says they broke up at night, he slept in spare room, went to work and came back to find his wife packed and leaving for her mother's with DD. She left the family home of her own volition. No doubt he assumed she'd be back in a few days after she cleared her head, he'd find somewhere else to live and they'd start sorting out custody. Instead she's stayed away for a month, she's rarely responding to his calls and texts asking after his DD and she's refused him any form of contact.

As for letting his child stay in her care, given she's emotionally abusive and not physically abusive (as far as we know anyway), and given the age of the DD, the child isn't at risk right now. Not sure what he was meant to do. Physically stop his wife from leaving or snatch the baby from her as she walked out the door? Obviously not. Go to his in-laws, grab the baby and run? Of course not. He should have started talking to a solicitor immediately, maybe he should have put better plans in place before he told her he wanted to end things, but that's hindsight for you. He mistakenly thought she would be reasonable about it and it's dragged on for too long, but he's doing something about it now.

[BoneyBackJefferson]

60/40 are the stats put out by the British crime survey.

[kawliga]

No they are the stats put out by the men's rights campaign group Parity based on their analysis of the British Crime Survey. The British Crime Survey reports raw data and the punters then make of that data what they will. There are loads of studies based on the same BCS data that cast serious doubt on what the men's rights campaign group is trying to say e.g. it doesn't tell us anything about the seriousness of the injuries or the circs in which the women/men admit to being violent.

[SigmundFraude]

'nobody said that the numbers where equal just that male victims are not rare'

Not rare and vastly under-reported, due to not being believed/embarrassed/worried about losing kids etc

[BruthasTortoise]

With regards to domestic abuse I think that by giving such a heavy focus to physical violence we run the risk of minimalising the other types of abuse. Some of the most traumatised people I have come accross have been victims of purely otional / mental / financial abuse. They were nearly destroyed without ever having had a finger laid on them and due to the nature of the abuse found it very difficult to exlain the insiduous manner in which it was carried out. In many cases they didn't even realise they were the victims of abuse for years by whihc stage ever shred of their dignity, self confidence and self esteem had been eradicated. I would say, based on my personal knowledge, that physical violence in the home is much more likely to be man on woman but the other types are far more evenly split.

[kawliga]

'nobody said that the numbers where equal just that male victims are not rare'

Not rare and vastly under-reported, due to not being believed/embarrassed/worried about losing kids etc

Domestic violence against women is also vastly underreported for the same reasons. Everybody surely has met or known a woman who suffers DV and can't or won't report and says the bruises are from walking into the cupboard door rather than admit the husband did it. Neighbours hear her screaming, call the police, police come round, woman says it's ok she doesn't want to press charges. Of course this happens to some men too, but the vast majority of cases involve women in the vulnerable position, not men. I think 'rare' is a good word to use in cases of people calling police because they hear or see someone being beaten up by the spouse: it is 'rare' that the case involves woman beating on man.

[BoneyBackJefferson]

"In 2011/12, 7.3% women (1.2 million) and 5% men (800,000) report
having experienced domestic abuse2."

from womens aid, that would be a 60/40 split then.

[kawliga]

Here's a PSA:

One misleading statistic, which is often repeated, is that - while one in four women experience domestic violence - so do one in six men. These figures are, however, based on single incidents, of a criminal nature, and without regard to:
•severity of violence
•whether or not it was repeated - and if so, how often
•the complex pattern of overlapping abuse of various kinds
•the context in which it took place.
They also exclude sexual assaults - which are overwhelmingly perpetrated against women, by men - many of whom are partners or former partners of the victims. Finally, emotional abuse - which is often not regarded as a crime, but which survivors often find even more destructive - is excluded from these statistics.
A more complete picture of the extent and nature of domestic violence is given in Sylvia Walby and Jonathan Allen's analysis of the self-completion module of the British Crime Survey (Walby and Allen, 2004).