Fathers 4 Justice

[mothernature]

In the news today was the following story:

Father's crane protest continues
A man protesting about fathers' rights has started a second day 300 feet up a crane in Manchester city centre.
The man, who is dressed in a Spiderman costume, climbed up the crane in Chester Street in the early hours of Thursday morning.

He is believed to belong to the Fathers 4 Justice group which campaigns for fathers in broken relationships to be allowed more access to their children.

The police are still waiting to see if he will come down voluntarily.

The crane stands over a building site close to the busy Oxford Road.

But there has been little disruption caused by the protest.

What are your thoughts?

I'd like to know why they always dress up as spiderman.

That people who do this aren't really helping the cause they are fighting for - seems very undignified to me??

they are heroes thats the point

I am right behind them

Well hold on tight, Coddy. Bet you look FAB in the Spiderman outfit now that you have achieved your goal weight.

I think what they are fighting for is admirable. It is peaceful and gets massive publicity - go for it!!

I would hate to be a man and father in a failing relationship when the odds are so stacked against you to get custody of the children.

I would not say its peaceful - it costs a fortune - not to the people they are trying to target but to construction companies and the police as well as disrupting the lives of thousands of commuters like the last spiderman did on the bridge over the Thames!! (He was uncovered as being a violent man too - not at all the caring sharing father he painted himself as!!)

Yes, I read that too Twinkie. Why have they not got access? Hardly a responsible thing to do climbing cranes. Can it really help their case?

If I had limited access to my kids I'd happily sit on a 300 foot high crane if it would help my cause.

Well I had limited access and I did not dothat - I feel you would have to be slightly mad to do it anyway - I have been there and it is not an adult responsible way to go about things - you end up looking rideculous and a little mad - someone I would most certainly not want my child to see - a little common sense and dignity is what is needed rather than lycra!!

My sons mad on Spiderman, is he still stuck to the crane? Only 1.5 hours away so if he lasts tonight might go tommorow..

I am getting a strong sense of deja vu here....where's that recent thread?

I would welcome more informative detail about precisely it is that they are campaigning for. As far as I am aware, courts usually insist on access for fathers, unless there is a good reason why not. Discussion on MN usually puts acces between children and fathers as a priority, despite the fact that the mother may be suffering horribly as a result of the break up and the man's behaviour towards her, and there are many MN-ers tying themselves in knots to ensure access between children and fathers.

But if good fathers are being kept away from their children, I support them in their cause. (but don't think their tactics are the most effective)

I think they are campaigning for the courts to actively enforce contact orders where the mothers refuse to cooperate with them. At present there is nothing the courts can do when mothers simply don't let the fathers see the kids. In other countries women have been jailed for persistently flouting contact orders, and in other cases, the men have been awarded residence in those cases.
My dh has a daughter and sometimes it has been a struggle - his ex has wanted to cut contact down to once a month - but luckily she has a possibly exaggerated respect for the law and sticks pretty much to the court-ordered contact (though is a total bitch about flexibility of any kind) so I do know that some women can be horribly unreasonable even when fathers are pretty much perfect.
However, I do wonder if there are good reasons why in at least some of these cases the mothers are keen for their kids to be kept away from these men. I suspect we do not know the whole story.

The huge problem is the fact that one law has got to cover a multitude of situations, often just based on one person's word against anothers.

Some men have evil ex-wives who do anything to deny them access when they deserve to see their kids and other men (like my dh) are evil themselves and have perfectly reasonable exes (like me) but don't honestly deserve to see their kids (but don't pounce on me, if dh wants to see dd he can, he just doesn't seem bothered).

How do you protect the mothers who have horrible exes while still enforcing fathers access?

I think that's a huge problem, personally. Violent fathers are still routinely given contact as violence against the mother is not seen as a reason why they can't see the kids, but if someone was violent to me, I might well feel that it is not in my interests or the children's to have this man in our life.

Message withdrawn

I totally agree SB34. We hear a disproportionate amount of news about how fathers are denied access, and a couple of years ago it was suggested that mothers who blocked father's access to their children should be jailed, but we hear very little about the deadbeat dads (such as my XP) who cannot be bothered to even pick up the phone and talk to their kids, however much they are encouraged to do so! Don't suppose there will ever be any suggestion that they should be jailed...

There is usually a good reason if the courts deny men contact ? in fact courts have been too lenient in some cases, resulting in the horrific deaths of women and children. I'm sure there are also decent men who have trouble with ex-partners arranging contact but I'm not sure they are the people climbing cranes.

The thing is, I know the law is an a** and it doesn't give proper justice all the time but surely any reasonable man is given reasonable protection by the courts for access to his children and the law will uphold that. So if the men who are protesting have been given access but are being denied it by the mothers, surely they should be spending their time getting support from the courts rather than climbing cranes and making the whole situation look ridiculous.

Well said Wobbly. Great name BTW!

in some cases good for him fathers who havent married there mother should have the same rights to acsess as the mothers but each case would have to be lookd at indervidualy like why the relationship broke down in the first place
how long the father has taken to go for a order for acsess and if over a loong period of time why he had waited so long

Yeah well the courts can insist all they want but dads often are denied access out of sheer pettiness on the mother's behalf. Of course there are plenty of genuine reasons why a father shouldn't have access but I have seen what happens when a mother is vindictive enough to deny access.

A family friend, a few years younger than me so we all played in a large group when kids and I was friends with his big sister (who died aged 16.) ANYWAY at 18 he met this girl, had two children, settled down and I was pleased to see some happiness in his life at last. Only madam thought as he was a labourer he wasn't keeping her in the manner she deserved. One morning he woke up to find the police in his house, she had said he beat her and the children up.

To cut what is a very long story short she has lied, made up horrific stories (that he abused his daughter!) All of which were easy to prove wrong, the judges and even her lawyers were on C**'s side. Didn't matter, she has made sure it has been years since he has even had a glimpse of his children. He even said he didn't care if it had to be a room full of social workers, police whatever, he just wanted to see them. She has gotten her own way - a real evil character.

What she has done to him she must be very proud...he is unemployed, a complete wreck, has had a nervous breakdown and has lost so much weight he looks like a ghost. It is awful.

So for the cases like this GO DAD'S GO!

(And before I get lambasted by people who see this as an attack on ALL mums, my BF's ex is a complete a* but she grits her teeth and gives him access to their daughter. I don't know how she does it and I feel sorry for all mum's who get their kids coming home telling them horror stories!)

My dh has been denied access over and over and over again by his ex. He has parental authority, drives 2 hours each way to pick up his children every other weekend, and more than once has arrived to find out that she won't let him have them. We spent £6,000 on legal feees to get a court mediation (best we could do for that money)where a judge told (but did not order) my dh's ex that she should let him see the children everyother weekend and talk to them on the phone a few time a week. She makes up stories about him and is constantly telling the children how evil he is. I know I'm a little biased, but he is an absolutely wonderful father. His ex is a lousy mother, but the lawyer advised us that my dh would probably never actually be able to get custody of his children and if she continues to deny acces there isn't really much else that can be done. Unlike aloha's dh's ex, she has no respect for the courts or the law. If the family courts don't come into the 21st century and realize that a father can be as valuable a parent as a mother, then people do need to climb up cranes in spider man suits to bring attention to the cause. These are the same courts that are stealing children from people like bunglie and cheeseball on the testimony of idiots like roy meadows. Yes , there are bad fathers out there, but the courts aren't stopping them from being bad fathers, just stopping the good ones from being able to have acces to their children if the mothers are not good mothers.

My brother had a similar situation. He split from his wife shortly after their twin boys were born. She made up stories about him being violent and abusive which resulted in the court granting him only limited supervised access to his sons (supervised by the MIL who was an alcoholic lunatic I might add!). His wife kept going back to court with more lies about his behaviour until he eventually gave up on being able to see the boys at all. Now I know he's my brother and I'm biased, but a gentler man you could not wish to meet - he is simply incapable of violence towards anyone, least of all his own children. But the court gave her the benefit of the doubt - understandably I suppose if there are allegations of violence.

There is a happy ending to the story though. His ex-wife had another child when the twins were 10 or 11 years old and this resulted in a change of heart and she allowed my brother to start seeing them regularly and have them stay with him. They are now 15 and see more of him than they do of their mother (she sent them to boarding school and now they do not even have a bedroom of their own in her house). They have a really close relationship with him now, despite years spent having their minds poisoned against him by their mum.

I know there are an awful lot of shitty fathers out there (mine included!), but having seen the pain my brother went through, I know never to generalise and I have a lot of sympathy for the father's rights campaigners.

Twinkie, I disagree, I think it is a peaceful form of protest - it may be unsafe, expensive and inconvenient - but that doesn't mean that it is not peaceful.