Parents 'should go abroad to avoid family courts'

[ScrambledSmegs]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-25641247

Yep, that's the BBC. Currently trending as one of the most read pages on the site.

I know they've tried to make this balanced by referencing CAFCASS, but it doesn't feel like much balance when the headline is something as scaremongering as that. It feels quite irresponsible.

Yes, I know that they're trying to drum up interest in their Panorama program, but I think they'd have been better off not publicising JHMP and his ramblings. Unfortunately, he's dangerous. Ridiculous and foolish, but dangerous.

And here's another book

books.google.co.uk/books?id=QIHbI5Tjbs8C&pg=PA292&lpg=PA292&dq=ludwig+lowenstein+parental+alienation+syndrome&source=bl&ots=fod_5RnNAp&sig=jc2Cn_xoc8H0-NOBhuMODin_APs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=jPMRU_qlJ67Q7AaMn4DABA&ved=0CDAQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=ludwig%20lowenstein%20parental%20alienation%20syndrome&f=false

Don't know much about these things (have never needed to) but I gather that Parental Alienation Syndrome is an, erm... controversial theory; yet here it is expounded and promoted by IJ's favourite psychologist.

oh dear, sorry about link!

here it is again

Thanks for those links, simultaneously illuminating and scarey reading.

What I also found interesting about Dr L - apart from his experience as a 'wrestler' and how this translated into caring for vulnerable children - was his utter dismissal of the value of social work training, despite knowing nothing of the content of any such training.

So it's easy to see how he fits in at Camp Conspiracy, as they all sit round the camp fires toasting social workers.

This is the case of the brothers with the Indian mother where the school evidence that they did not hand in all their homework seems to have been not from their own teacher but someone else at the school and it all looked a bit dubious where the judge ordered the boys to be moved to the father.

You cannot really force a huge great 14 year old boy who wants to be with his mother, whose father is probably ultra strict and nasty and where the father living with his new young wife and small children who probably does not want two boys thrust into her home anyway, on to his father anyway.

Telegraph.....

" Twice in the past month I have reported the bizarre story of two boys, aged 14 and 11, who, following a High Court ruling by Mrs Justice Laura Harris, were pulled kicking and screaming from their beds at 7.45 on the morning of Christmas Day by four police officers. They were taken from the respectable, intelligent middle-class mother with whom they had lived happily all their lives, to be handed over to a father who walked out on them 11 years ago, shortly after the younger boy was born.

Last Sunday, I described how, in response to my original article, Judge Harris ordered the publication of her original judgment of December 23, to justify her decision that the boys, against their expressed wishes, must now live with their father. She recognised that it would be a major upheaval for the boys to be uprooted from their school and friends, but was confident that they would soon learn to make a new life, miles away, where they didn’t want to be. She didn’t add that, following this traumatic event, the police had to be called to the father’s house on several occasions, and that the older boy had twice run away to return home to his mother.

Late last Sunday evening, I had a message from the mother to report a remarkable twist to the story. The boys had just been dropped off at her house by the father, who had then driven away without a word.

On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of meeting the mother and her charming sons for lunch. Between discussing with the older boy his passion for palaeontology, I heard something of the events that had led to this amazing turnaround. For once, it seemed, this family had the good fortune to encounter two sensible social workers, one at each end of London, who agreed unanimously that the boys should return to live with their mother.

Where this leaves Mrs Justice Harris we can as yet only guess. But at the moment it seems this nightmarish episode in the family’s life has come to a miraculously happy ending. "

It is an enormous pity that booker either has not bothered to read the judgment - or even more worryingly, read it and discarded it - because there is a great deal in that judgment to show just how damaging the mother's behaviour was. In the long term I wonder whether this will be in the children's best interests.

But at least we should be having an honest debate about what is going on, not relying on 'journalism' which is so agenda driven that it simply ignores any facts it doesn't like.

Thought I recognised the Booker style there!

Do you happen to have a link for the judgement Spero?

Sorry, am on iPad with fat thumbs - don't find linking easy! But will try...

Hah! Just seconds later I find this good article from suesspicious minds which contains link to the judgment.

suesspiciousminds.com/2014/02/18/x-box-mother-the-judgment/

If anyone wants to pontificate about this case, particularly if they are going to be very critical of the family courts, I would appreciate it if they would read the judgment first.

And I would really like to know what Booker thinks of these findings.

I will turn now to my finding about the mother. I found the mother to be a very angry and wilful woman. Her hated of the father is almost pathological. In my judgment, this is likely to have its origins in the circumstances of the breakdown of their marriage: the father leaving when CD was but a few weeks' old, and her belief that the father had already begun an affair with SB. That has been fuelled, in my judgment, by financial issues, in particular the mother's assertion, which has not been tested in these proceedings, that the father walked away with all the funds obtained by re-mortgaging the marital home. In her oral evidence, she accused him of adultery and of fraud on her. The years have done nothing to abate this anger. I consider that the fact that the father has made a new life, when she does not appear to have really moved on, has further fired her up.

She also asserts that he has years of unpaid maintenance and, again, this is simply an allegation which was not pursued in evidence. To cap it all, from her point of view, the father has now had the nerve to apply for a change of residence. So preoccupied is she with her own sense of grievance that she completely overlooks the effect of her behaviour on her children. In my judgment, she has prioritised her own needs and feelings at the expense of the needs of her children. That is not to say that she does not love her children, I have no doubt her does, although I find her love to have something of a possessive quality about it.

A key example, a glaring example of her prioritising her own needs was the parents' evening when her behaviour was petty, childish and petulant. She has done nothing to shield the children from the fallout, rather, the converse. She has consistently and repeatedly put them in the centre of this dispute and has used them, or their contact, as a weapon against the father. In my view, her anger is always ready to spill over into uncontrollable rage at the slightest perceived provocation.

This was clearly demonstrated by the voicemails. I am quite satisfied that, contrary to her denials, there have been numerous occasions when the father has been exposed to outbursts like these. I reject her evidence that the children have not been exposed to such outbursts other than during the September 2012 phone call, which led to the child protection referral.

Thanks Spero. As you say, a pity that Booker seems not to have bothered to read the judgement.

Those poor boys

I feel very sorry for her. But agree.

Spero, I have read the judgment and I still think it was not the right call to remove the sons.

I also suspect we have here a father who reached a verbal agreement with the mother that if she gave him more of the capital from the house she could take the boys back home to India or wherever it is and he reneged on that and has not paid much since. He now lives in a lovely 4 bed house with a younger wife and small children leaving the mother to cope financially. Even reading the judgment I felt the father was probably a nasty piece of work if you read between the lines. Sitting there in judgment.
The fact the mother was sometimes asleep in the day for example - gosh, loads of us probably have done that. Is that a crime? The judge mentions it.

The mother did make children available but the children refused to go. It's easy to pick up a toddler who does not want to leave the house and dump it in its father's car - we have all done that even if it's kicking and screaming. It is harder to do that with a huge teenage boy. I don't see why the mother should be blamed for it.

Anyway on a practical level now the mother has been vindicated in my view.

..due to good social workers... credit where it is due.

You ignore completely the sustained and serious emotional abuse perpetrated by this mother upon these children.

No matter what a grade A shit she thinks her ex is, she should NOT have dealt with it by encouraging the children to hate and reject one half of their genetic identity.

I agree is was probably the wrong call to remove them - but only because it was left far too late to be effective. I would have removed them years ago.

Goodness knows how anyone can ever tell is a parent has encouraged hate of not. Plenty of teenagers simply form their own view. Indeed many children (mine) are more likely to take the opposite view of whatever their parent says. They are not malleable robots.

Well, one way you tell is by having a contested hearing and having evidence from a number of different people, including a Guardian who will interview the children, the parents and the schools etc and come to certain conclusions.

Like the Guardian did in this case.

Read what the Judge said about the parents. She made findings of fact.

You may disagree with the Judge - even though she has the advantage of you in that she was able to form opinions about the parents who were directly in front of her for many hours or even days. However, what neither you nor Booker is entitled to do is ignore her findings or pretend that she said something entirely different.

This is NOT a case about a permissive X Box mother or the evil family courts.

It is a case about the utter lack of ability some parents have to translate the 'love' they FEEL for the children into ACTION which is congruent with their children's welfare.