Can we DO something about the awful system in this country WRT courts and access to children after divorce?

[BertieBotts]

I've heard one too many awful story now. Why the hell are we letting children down, forcing access with abusive ex partners, even when the children don't want it, making it difficult to gain supervised contact when supervised has already been given, forcing the resident parent (mainly mothers) to make their children available for contact, getting their hopes up and doing NOTHING when the NRP breaks that same contact order by not turning up for weeks on end, causing considerable distress to the children involved. NRPs being allowed to refuse to bring children home if they are repeatedly showing prolonged distress at being away from their main carer. It being extremely difficult to reduce contact or restart it off slowly, regardless of the age of the child, even if the parent has good reason to want to do this.

I understand there are bitter ex-partners who will try to deny their ex access to the children because of personal differences or spats, but seriously? Are there that many that we need a court system which immediately assumes all resident parents are conniving and bitter and all NRPs are loving and involved? Or is this just another fucking media frenzy like how common so-called "false rape accusations" are?

Absolutely agree SGM.

Despite the increasing amount of research and evidence to the contrary, people still believe that DV is about anger and that abusers can change.

It's not and they don't.

DV is about control and entitlement. Less than 5% of abusers ever change.

If it was genuinely about anger, abusers would abuse a number of different people - but most don't seem to have problems controlling themselves around their friends or at work.

Abusers abuse those who cannot stand up to them. For this very reason children are particularly vulnerable. Quite often it does not become apparent until the children get a little older and more willing to challenge the abuser's behaviour. More often than not it is not directed at the children directly, but indirectly - by using them to punish the other parent. The effects can be just as damaging though.

The damage done to a child by forcing denying them contact with their abusive parent is IMO lesser than the damage done to them by allowing that abusive parent to slowly but surely poison their outlook on life and relationships.

I know SGM. It's horrifying when you consider what the stakes are.

Domestic Violence is a social issue, not a gender problem. Some fathers suffer abuse as much as some women. Let's not forget that at least 5 children of separated parents have been murdered by mothers recently to punish a former partner or to prevent a father from having the children.

People are entitled to their opinions and make ideological presumptions of course, but the courts in the UK make decisions based on evidence and fact. Expert witnesses base their evidence on empirical research rather than ideological presumptions. Anger is a factor in divorce but anger can be secondary to feelings of hurt or fear so anger management can be effective when there are issues relating to children.

Child abuse is defined in law. The Children Act 1989 states that abuse should be considered to have happened when someone's actions have caused a child to suffer significant harm to their health or development.

Significant harm is the threshold for the authorities to get involved and physically abused children may be watchful, cautious or wary of adults; unable to play and be spontaneous; aggressive or abusive bullying other children or being bullied themselves; unable to concentrate, underachieving at school; having temper tantrums and behaving thoughtlessly; lying, stealing, truanting from school and getting into trouble with the police; finding it difficult to trust other people and make friends.

When there is impartial independent professional evidence of the above it is a question of balancing the risks against any strengths, including any measures that might be put in place, to determine whether or not a parent's parenting is "good enough."

And how many children have been murdered by fathers?

Of course domestic violence also happens to men, but not on the same scale. Hence, it is a gendered issue. There are some statistics in the Lundy Bancroft book - I don't have my copy to hand, but from memory, the highest group is male-to-female violence, by a long way. Then it's male-to-male violence, then female-to-male, and finally female-to-female, which is in single figures, I think.

Xposted, SGM.

I know more women (and men!) are seriously assaulted by men but when it comes to less serious incidents and emotional abuse it isn't nearly as clear cut. It isn't just about numbers anyway - if either of our adult children were victims of domestic abuse it would make no difference whether it was son or daughter.

"See and I refuse to believe that abusive parents are capable of relationships with their children."

I don't necessarily agree with that. My ex has been horribly abusive and downright violent in the past. Our DCs have been on the Child Protection Register as a result of her behaviour. Yet when she's sober she's a good (well, good enough) mother.

Do you think it would be good for my children to stop seeing their mother entirely due to her past behaviour? Because I don't. My children deserve to have a relationship with both their parents while being aware of the ability of each parent to, well, parent at any given time.

I think trying to frame this situation as one of overbearing "father's rights" is missing the point of what the courts are trying (admittedly often badly) to achieve. It's not about "father's rights" or indeed "mother's rights". We, as parents, don't have rights we have responsibilities. It's the children who have the right, wherever possible, to have a relationship with both their parents.

Some mothers are family annihilators too ....

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-13208067

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/mother-killed-children-to-punish-her-former-partner-2312252.html

StewieGriffinsMom Mon 15-Aug-11 08:11:40
Domestic violence is a gender issue which has social implications.

How many men kill their children every year to punish their wives? Far more than women."

Few statistics available to build murdering mothers' profile
Susan Hatters Friedman, M.D., Sarah McCue Horwitz, Ph.D., and Phillip J. Resnick, M.D. review years of research in their article, ?Child Murder by Mothers: A Critical Analysis of the Current State of Knowledge and a Research Agenda,? 2005, published by American Psychiatric Association. They state, maternal filicide, defined as ?child homicide by mothers,? ?occurs more frequently in the United States than in other developed nations.? They also claim, that in the latter part of the 20th century in the United States, of the 61% of children murdered, aged less than 5 years, ?30% were killed by their mothers and 31% by their fathers.*? After an extensive review of literature pertaining to mothers who murder, the researchers found that little is known about the predictors of ?maternal filicide.?

www.suite101.com/content/mothers-who-murder-their-children--maternal-filicide-increases-a356525

That comment just isn't true regarding Filicide there are plenty of statistics to prove that it's Mothers and Fathers who kill equally.

BTW..It's about the Childs rights not the Mothers or Fathers.

snorbs I think alcoholism (or any kind of substance addiction) is slightly different. There is sometimes a definable cause to abusive behaviour in these instances, which means that when the problem is under control, the behaviour is ok.

However, for most abusers without alcohol addiction their behaviour is abusive whether they are sober or drunk. Alcohol may worsen the severity of abuse, but it is not the main cause of it. It is simply an aggravating factor.

Sadly, most abusers tend to fall into the latter category rather than the former.

Piousprat "Wtf does that say about society that the great progress of the last 100 years is that father have gone from being able to sell their offspring to merely demanding acess on their terms?"

That is indeed how far we've come.
I find this thread almost painful to look at, because there are so many women out there (not so many on this thread thankfully!) who actually believe that these fathers4justice knobs-who-don't-even-pay-child-support-but-want-to-control-the-mothers actually have a point.

I did snigger a little at that large rambly post on page 2 going on about "if the batterer and abuser shows remorse then he'll has rights to his children that supercede the rights of the mother to keep her children safe." WHich was the entire point of the post in a nutshell.

FUck the mother's right to prevent an abuser from going near her kids

FFS, this is three-year old stuff. Men show "remorse" to get what they want. Rapists do it. Mass-murderers do it. Hell, even dictators have been known to "show remorse" in order to further their agenda.

Gotta be a bloke who invented that law.

And gotta be a bloke who invented the law that says "only in exceptional cases is a parent not allowed access to the child" Yes, you'd have to be a serial killer before the courts would consider you to be enough of a threat.

I completely agree with your above point SaF. All I can see is that women are being completely and utterly duped by all this "equal rights" malarkey, whereby they are handing over their innate rights over their children to the fathers in exchange for some elusive equality. MEanwhile men are hogging 80% of the seats in parliament and almost all the money worldwide. And women think letting men have more , more than they've already got is going to help women??!?!? THis is me right now

SUrely, after everything men have done to women over the millenia, and continue to do to us today in the form of pornography, murder (2 women a week in the UK) rape and battery, if any man is serious about women's liberation, he will understand instinctively that he should not fight for the child a woman carried in her womb for 9 months and birthed in pain upon risk of death.
No man who really had women's best interests at heart would ever do that.

Why do posters keep referring to American research that is full of American statistics, descriptions and opinions but has very little empirical data? In the rest of the world there is scientific criticism of the validity and reliability of the criteria American mental health professionals use.

"More than one in four women (28%) and around one in six men (16%) had experienced any domestic abuse (any emotional, financial or physical abuse, sexual assault or stalking by a partner or family member) since the age of 16. These figures are equivalent to an estimated 4.5 million female victims of domestic abuse and 2.6 million male victims"." - Home Office statistics (England & Wales) published 2010.

Empirical studies reviewed in the UK by Professor John Archer (University of Central Lancashire) find women are as likely to use domestic violence as men, but women are twice as likely as men to be injured or killed during a domestic assault. Men still represent a substantial proportion of people who are assaulted, injured or killed by an intimate partner. If the empirical research is correct between a quarter and half of all domestic violence victims are men.

Whatever the figures people who believe in equality shouldn't ignore or subordinate the plight of male victims. Failure to acknowledge that some women can be and are violent and men may also be the victims of DV fuels a backlash of extreme men's/fathers' rights and is therefore a disservice to both men and women.

the reason I said women's best interest is because most of these bloody men who are all up for taking women's children off their hands, these SAHDs, or these men who fight women for their children in court, have the gall to call themselves feminists . THat's the killer. Male-feminists no less. An oxymoron if ever I heard one.
Do it because you think the children are better off without their mother. Fine. FIght the mother's decision to not let you see your kids because you believe she is wrong. Fine.

But puhlease stop calling yourself feminists. Ridiculous!

STIDW you're talking utter shite. 2 women a week are murdered by their spouse in the UK alone.
Men murder, rape and abuse women at a far far far greater rate that women abuse men.

Ah, I see STIDW is a self-confessed "male feminist" or someone who "believes in equality"

I don't believe in equality STIDW, especially when it's a male version of equality designed to fuck women over

Especially when it's the type of "equality" that pretends having a shag is equal to pregnancy, CHILDBIRTH, and breastfeeding., Women RISK THEIR LIVES to bring a baby into the world. Men DO NOT risk their lives by having a shag.

Show me the "equality"

I'm a women's liberationist. I don't give a fig for equality.