Should this really have been shown on the lunchtime news?

[EasterBump]

I was totally shocked & unprepared to witness those scenes of Marnie Pearce saying goodbye to her children on the lunchtime news today.

I have not followed her case in any level of detail, but surely there are no circumstances that can excuse putting innoccent children through that?

There's a link to the footage here.

Just as a kind of warning, I found it particularly harrowing. Not sure it should really have been shown on the lunchtime news without some kind of a warning really.

As redsock says - the good fathers go patiently back to court and rebut the lies.

Just as I did, several times, about ex's bullying.

The other sort make a big cry about it.

Morpoth, my point was not that all women are good - it was that people are incredibly ready to believe that mothers are bad.

I have a slightly skewed perception of "never ever ever" seeing one's children again, having cut off my mother and stepfather both from me and from my children (one of which is a source of indifference to her, the other apparently the end of her existence)

but that guttural howl of raw grief you mentioned? my mother does that every time she stubs her toe, the mad incontinent bitch

I know a father who is in the very depths of hell because he is only allowed to see his beloved, adorable son once every three weeks at a contact centre. DH and I try our best to support and confort this man because he is really, really suffering and we see a lot of good in him. However he was violent and abusive towards both his ex-wife and his subsequent father and endangered that child's safety on a number of occasions - so if it came down to me to decide (which it doesn't thankfully) I wouldn't allow him the unsupervised contact he so desperately wants.

subsequent partner [dunce]

Yes, well, women should just suffer in silence when they are mistreated or badly done to in some way but men can bleat forever about the most minor of things and this is accepted, even encouraged!

Also incredible how people turn situations round to make out the stronger party is just not powerful enough! One woman in OP clearly unfairly has lost all contact with her children and this is compared with unknown cases of men who in all likelihood just don´t make the effort to see their own kids.

Redsock and Nighbynight, I´m afraid you are right and some men are likely to complain about how badly they have been treated without actually doing something about the problem. A good father, with a strong bond with his kids, should be able to work something out with courts surely! But then heh, what with the rugby and football etc. sometimes just just have time to fit in everything you´d like..

but that is different from women I know who don't allow access because their exes left them, or as in the case of a friend of mine because she was upset when he got a new girlfriend.

so ignores the court dates for contact to 'piss him off'.

I saw it ion the news and thought it was terrible that 2 grown ups could put their children through that.
xenia well said.

Greensneeze, this is it you see...scratch the surface and there will be something like violence or some such crap that the ex and kids have had to put up with.

sachertorte...how many women have you heard of never get to see their kids as apposed to the number of men.

you are missing the point these women ignore the courts..very little is ever done and it costs a fortune. (literally)

redsocks..not always

Noonki, not always no.I also know of women who with no good reason try and block contact...new bloke etc. however, as has been said, she will not get away with this for long. A GOOD dad will gain contact in the end.

Just seen report on late news - horrific. Very distressing to watch, it definitely needs to be reported but I watched with tears streaming down my face, particularly the last scenes.

MIL lost custody of BIL and newborn SIL to her XH (and the secretary he'd run off with) when they were tiny as she had PND and he presented her as an unfit mother. I can't think that this could happen now, she's never got over it, even though she has a good relationship with them these days, and went on to have more dc's.

The repercussions of either parent being denied access to their children are far reaching and irreversible.

I don´t know how much it costs if anything to take non-compliance with a court order back to court.

I do know that nothing would keep ME from my children, in many cases for life, just because my ex was pissed off with me and wanted to make life difficult. My guess is most women would fight to the death for access to their children, when access has been granted by court.

The reality is most men work full time and don´t have much free time. It must take a lot of effort to keep up contact, particularly when you establish a new family and have football commitments etc as well. Something has to give!

Have to say, my brother met much resistance from his ex re contact with his DD. He met up with her once a week without fail and took her away for regular holidays during the whole of her childhood. She was his priority throughout. A good man.

It costs a lot. It cost me a lot to go back to court to get orders to stop my ex from harassing us, to take time off work to be a witness far away from where I live, and to defend the action that he brought against me for parental resp.

I paid that money because I wanted a fair solution, not his bullying. When people are genuinely being bullied, and they care about the outcome, they will go to court. If either of those things is not true, they'll use "I work full time, I dont have time to go to court" as an excuse.

nightbynight, so what you went through (awful) proves that it is not all in the lap of the mother...courts DO listen to the father, even shite ones...if they did not, your ex would have been told to just sod off on your say so.

This is also my experience...that a nob of a dad gets court time to spout his crap.So, that said, a GOOD dad will get that and more.

Awful pic, I saw it at the time in the paper, poor woman

OP - yabu. Awful as the footage is it needs to be shown.

WTF are some of the rest of you on? There really are some skewed views towards fathers on here aren't there? TBH, i don't even know where to begin.
Xenia has it right, there is traditionally an assumption here in the uk that the mother should be the primary carer and have most if not all the say in a childs upbringing.
In reality that doesn't work and shouldn't work.

I can comment on this as i have seen both sides of the fence.

My dp has a dd, his ex fell pregnant after they had been seeing each other for a matter of weeks. He bought them a home, worked hard to provide and gave as much as he could.
His ex used to call him at work and demand he come home because she was bored,or because the baby was "irritating" her etc etc.
The relationship began to break down and dp would have sole care of his dd each weekend as his then partner would go and stay with friends/relatives for "a break".
One day she didn't come back, he got a text from her to say she was going off to "have a life of my own".
5 months later she turned up and asked him to take her back as she was ready to be a family.
He came home early from work one day to find her shagging his best mate in their bed whilst the baby was left naked and lying in filth in the living room.
She left him and their child to go and live with this man at her parents.
My partner was again the primary carer whilst holding down a job and dealing with the breakdown of his relationship.

A few months later, she went to the family courts, accused him of extreme DV, applied to have the flat made over to her solely and also sole custody of their dd.

There was no history of DV, no police reports had ever been filed, there were no witnesses to come forward, the dates in her statements that she had named were all proved to be false as partner could prove where he was and who he was with on each occasion.

My dp was given 2 weeks to vacate his property, the contents were listed and had to remain there, his dd was handed over to his ex.
He was utterly devestated and ended up off work for months.

He had no money, no home and had lost his daughter. For almost 2 years his ex would deny contact on a whim, she would call him in the middle of the night leaving vile messages, his home was broken into and wrecked, his work were contacted and told all sorts of crap.

He finally paid off the debt he had incurred from all of this and got back to court. The judge threw out the original order and stated that had my partner been allowed the opportunity to defend himself properly at the original case the order would never have been made., we now have my dsd more than 50% of the time, social services are involved with the mother for many reasons and we are working towards my dsd living with us permanently in a way that will not disrupt her and will allow her to finally have a settled home life.

The biggest reason that the original order was granted was that my dp's ex had gone to court without him present. In this country you can ask for an emergency hearing to be held without the other party there. Had my partner known of the first hearing he and his dd wouldn't have gone through everything that has happened.

My partners case was extreme, but there are many other men who are written off when a relationship breaks down because all too often the ex cannot separate her feelings towards an ex from the need for children to have an uninterrupted relationship with both parents.
Gender does not make one person a better parent than another.

EasterSpirits, youi realise just how biaised YOU are don´t you, given what your dp has been through..?

Your poor dp has lived through an absolute nightmare, clearly. And he was very very badly treated by asuthorities that should have had his dds interests at heart and certainly not put him on trial and sentence him without him even being able to defend himself. I´m pleased the situation has gone towards resolving itself.

The fact remains though that Mothers are normally the primary carer when they are in a relationship with the father and this continues following a break up. Mothers go on maternity leave and turn to part time work to be with their children as much as possible. Fathers do tend to contiunue working full time and take a more marginal role because they are not physically present much of the time. Mothers tend to have the stronger relationship with their children. This is why mothers tend to get custody of their children. I´m not even convinced that many fathers would WANT full time custody. I wonder what proportion of fathers ask for this during separation..?

EasterSpirits, I don´t think your dps situation is typical and we are only getting one side of the story here. His ex was home alone, bored and frustrated with a baby at home. What´s new? I don´t think that´s so uncommon. She could have been overwhelmed with motherhood, suffering from postnatal depression. We don´t know the circumstances do we, though she clearly still has significant problems.

You dp is only special in that he is a man, trying to do the right thing by his child. Sorry, but 99% of the time it is the MOTHER who has to combine work and motherhood as a single parent, who struggle to bring up their family. I actually find this whole situation quite mysogonist. The idea of pitying a tiny minority of men who live through this situation when there are millions of women who suffer similar circulstances is wrong.

Redsock, that is simply not true. "a GOOD father will gain the contact he and his kids deserve.."
In the UK women are never jaioled for denying contact. If a woman chooses to ignore a court order about contact in most cases nothing is done whatsoever. There are many thousands of men like the woman in the video who are denied contact despite using the law to seek to obtain it. It is very wrong and I hope all mothers on mumsnet see how sad a woman is to lose her children can use that to think - let's imagine how all these UK fathers feel who are given paltry contact or never allowed contact, all those dreadful women who deny contact to men or mess them around week after week after week.

I just wish women would put themselves more often into the shoes of men who are denied contact. Mothers should understand the pain men suffer if they can do that and then the next time they have a friend who is not letting her chidlren's father see the child perhaps she can actually say - hey this is wrong however much you hate his guts or the fact he's got a woman 10 years younger or whatever.

Xenia does make a very good point here. A man would or could not have behaved like the mother in the OP, even if his feelings were similar.

It is entirely wrong to prevent your children seeing a loving father on the grounds that he behaved badly towards the mother (unless abuse is involved)

I think a s split family is a constant reminder of failure and some mothers and fathers find it easier to try and make a clean break of it altogether. Not that that excuses any of it.

His ex was not home alone bored with a baby. She was out all the fucking time, just as she is now. Her idea of a meal is tomato ketchup poured over semicooked pasta.
She rang me one day, her new baby appeared to be having a fit and she wanted to know if i would come and take it to hospital as she wanted to go fucking shopping!.
Yes i DO know the circumstances, no she was not suffering from postnatal depression, she is now and always has been a spoilt self centred moron.
Even her own family acknowledged in various meetings with various bodies that her actions were born out of self obsession, don't try and paint her as some kind of poor put upon victim.

And no, I am not biased. I have been on BOTH sides of the fence. My dd's father has absolutely nothing to do with her. This is court ordered for various reasons.

Your response was patronising in the extreme. You appear to have picked up on points that you feel will bolster your own blinkered views.

A split family is a constant reminder of failure?? Well done love, you've just described half of mumsnet as "failures".

again what Xenia said.

No one, man or woman, should be denied the right to have contact with their children without good cause.

Any experience of failure is normal and does not define a person as "a failure" as such. That is what YOU appear to believe though EasterSpirits.

I stand by my thought that many spliting couples do battle with the idea that they have failed in some way to make a relationship work and regret things have not worked out. I don´t think this is contentious.

I don´t see what was patronising about my last response. I do know that EVERYBODY will pick up on points that they agree with to justify their beliefs. Just as you have done on this thread. I fundamentally disagree with Xenia´s initial response, but think she is correct in saying a mother should put herself in the father´s shoes and have some empathy.

I have nothing against you or your p, I have just pointed out that you are giving one side of the story. That´s a fact. It doesn´t matter if the mother is an "unfit mother", you are giving your side of the story even if you have sat on both sides of the fence at one time.

Does anyone know what's happened to the petition that was set up for Marnie?

Why has it been closed?

I must say, I am quite surprised at the general lack of empathy that this case has roused given the extreme set of circumstances involved.

The petition closed just short of it's target, they didn't actually present it in the end as 'negotiations were at a delicate stage' according to the website. I don't know if they have done since.
The website also says that they intend to start a new one, as the exposure given by the video has attracted more publicity and sympathy for her cause.
According to the website, her appeal failed and at present is still due to be deported at the end of her 63day sentence. The deportation being the biggest problem obviously. The sentence must end soon looking at the dates.
Does anyone know more?
the website is here

as far as I was aware the deportation order had been suspended.

Am not sure why this was shown on the news now, as she is now free and IMO the custody of her children is no-one else's concerns, and I certainly don't think that the British government should get involved in that.