What is the matter with these men? (Not funny)

[Janh]

Another one who killed most of the family and then jumped off a bridge - left the baby in the car this time

BBC

I don't understand why Tom wrote what he did in the first place - what has this to do with contact orders etc anyway - nothing IMO.

As dodgy as Families need Fathers and all of those people are I am sure even they would not hold these men up as examples of what they are driven to - being spiderman up a crane and murdering your whole family are miles apart!!

And as it has been said before women are terribly weak a lot of the time when it comes to stopping violent partners from seeing their children but it is hard to get out of the victim mentality and allowing yourself to stop being bullied and controlled - and all the people saying that those said women should let their violent partners see their children are mad - as Aloha says it is a form of child abuse which is recognised by the NSPCC - young gilrs see it happen to their mothers and end up being abused because they think it is ok to be treated like that by a man and young boys do it because they have not seen how normal families work out their problems - with communication rather than violence.

meanbean, your post is well argued, as Aloha says, and makes sense to me. Violence to the mother is violence to the child - yes I agree - and the problems caused by domestic violence are undoubtedly brushed under the carpet by society.

Where do you stand on fathers (with no official history of violence or controlling behaviour) who once threaten violence to the mother - just before separation for instance, when emotions are running high? Should they then automatically give up their right to unsupervised access to their child for ever? Or men whose violence seems to be caused by an external factor - drink, say - and they go on to give this up after separation from their wife. Do they deserve to slowly win back the right to see their children unsupervised? I'm not condoning this violence or violent threats in any way, but wonder, when you get down to individual cases, where one should draw the line.

And what about a partner who accuses their ex of violence only after they have separated, with no proof? no marks or bruises, no police records, no witnesses to it. If society punishes all violent partners with massively reduced access to their children, the stakes are high. If the accuser is believed, the guilty party (whether guilty or not) risks losing their access to their child. I am not simply playing devil's advocate - I hope this line of argument does not come across as such. Someone out there with more knowledge of these issues than me can, I am sure, supply better answers than I can come up with.

Hi Tigermoth
I don't think that a father who has no official history of violence or controlling behaviour should automatically lose unsupervised access to their children forever, but I certainly think any access should be heavily supervised for quite a while, and that such men would have to show that they are no longer so hostile to the mother of their children, that they are overcome by the urge to beat them to a pulp every time they see them.

I also think we have to take into account the (conservative) statistic that the average battered woman has been beaten up seventeen times before she even contacts the police, let alone is willing to stand witness in a prosecution. Just because a man's violence is officially unregistered, doesn't make it any less dangerous and damaging.

I think that as a principle of re-habilitation, men do win back the right to see their children un-supervised, but I think it has to be when their children are old enough to defend themselves against any potential violence and when the men have enough mastery of themselves to acknowledge their own responsibility for their words and actions. As you suggest, it very much gets down to individual cases, and I would always err on the side of caution - the safety of women and children in civilised society would take priority over the aggrieved feelings of men. And no-one is suggesting that even these violent and dangerous men can never re-habilitate themselves - a man who is truly sorry for the havoc he has caused in his family in the past, and is facing up to his responsibilities, would surely be prepared to accept that his past behaviour has made him unfit to be in sole charge of his children without stringent safeguards being applied. After all, most men, even these very violent ones, would be horrified by the thought of another man being in charge of their children, who had done the same thing as them - they'd probably be the first to jump up and down shouting blue murder about the ex-missus getting herself a new boyfriend who is known to be handy with his fists. And they'd have a point!
It is a complex area, and there are no hard and fast rules, but what I do know is that currently, the very real and present violence of men is going unheeded and unpunished and children and mothers are going unprotected, while we theorise about situations in which men would be penalised by a matriarchal man-hating law which is never going to exist. Domestic violence is still not taken seriously by the courts, by men and by society. And because of that, there are so many cases of children being terribly damaged by being forced into contact with men who have never been made to confront the shocking abuse they have inflicted on their children and so continue to blame the women who were their victims and use their children to control those women. However it's done, I want that situation to stop.

good answer meanbean - as you say, (and in my opinion) it is a complex area with no hard and fast rules. I tend to be someone who sees things in varying shades of grey, not black and white. While agreeing with your last paragraph, I think fair laws to all would be difficult to put into practice, but that shouldn't prevent a change in the law.

I wonder how men's groups would seek to use the law to protect mothers and children from violence, if fathers were to be granted more access to their children? I notice Tom has not said much on this thread recently.

Good post meanbean.