|
Custody battles to get referees
By Louise Dodson, Chief Political Correspondent
March 8, 2004
The Federal Government has placed a stronger emphasis on mediation between separating parents to secure shared custody of children.
Cabinet will today consider the Government's response to a parliamentary report on shared custody which was tabled in December.
But government sources said cabinet was not expected to adopt some of the more controversial proposals of the parliamentary committee, such as the establishment of a families tribunal and an overhaul of child support arrangements.
Cabinet will not agree to set up a ministerial taskforce inquiry into the cost of supporting children, including setting up homes by both parents to allow joint custody arrangements.
The committee's recommendations for the Federal Government to develop a long-term strategy for improving community education and family support to promote positive shared parenting after separation are likely to be accepted by cabinet.
The recommendation for mediators, counsellors and legal advisors to help parents to develop a shared parenting plan is expected to be adopted.
Recommendations to promote the involvement of grandparents in custody arrangements are also likely to be approved.
The Government will also consider extra funding for the Family Court to encourage a greater emphasis on mediation and education to encourage shared parenting after separation.
The parliamentary inquiry was set up after the Prime Minister, John Howard, told a party meeting last year that automatic joint custody by parents should be investigated.
The Attorney-General, Daryl Williams, and the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Larry Anthony, then referred a more general inquiry into custody arrangements to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Community Affairs.
Mr Howard's decision to have an inquiry came after a number of Coalition MPs at party meetings raised the concerns of constituents and fathers groups that the existing custody arrangements overseen by the Family Court were not satisfactory.
Groups such as DADS Australia lobbied Coalition MPs to introduce equal custody for separating parents. They argued that the Family Court system disadvantaged non-custodial parents - often fathers - who were forced to pay child support although custody arrangements were not sufficiently enforced.
The committee reported that it had received a number of submissions from non-custodial fathers who argued that the Family Court favoured mothers in custody arrangements.
The report was written after the committee heard from 2000 people, either via submissions or at public hearings held around Australia.
In all, the committee made 29 recommendations. They include calls for an overhaul of the operation of the Family Court and child support arrangements, but urge shared parenting rather than automatic joint custody.
The committee's report revealed that estimates of the cost associated with family breakdown, of people avoiding child support and of entering the legal system to sort out custody and support ranged from $3 billion to $6 billion a year.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/07/1078594236067.html
END
The New York Times March 11, 2004
Ashcroft Weighs Granting of Asylum to Abused Women
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
ASHINGTON, March 10 ??? The first hint of change came without much fanfare or publicity last month as the Department of Homeland Security quietly proposed sweeping changes in the handling of political asylum cases. But as word trickled across the country, dozens of battered women seeking refuge in the United States felt the first stirrings of hope.
In their home countries, the women say, the authorities repeatedly ignored them when they tried to report and escape their abusive partners. The Department of Homeland Security, which took on the function of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, is proposing rules that would allow for political asylum in such extreme cases, opening the door to women fleeing countries that condone severe domestic abuse, genital mutilation and other forms of acute violence against women.
If approved, the rules would for the first time recognize severe cases of domestic violence as equivalent in certain instances to more familiar asylum cases involving political and religious persecution.
Department officials have passed along their recommendations in a 43-page legal brief to Attorney General John Ashcroft, who will make the final decision. The officials have urged Mr. Ashcroft to allow the department to put in place rules governing such cases and have called for Rodi Alvarado Pe??a of Guatemala, whose case gave rise to the recommendations, to be granted asylum.
Justice Department officials say Mr. Ashcroft is still considering the issue, which has been roiling the immigration courts since a small but growing number of such cases began appearing in the 1990's. Some Justice Department officials indicated that Mr. Ashcroft had initially opposed such rules, but a former senior administration official familiar with the issue said he believed that Mr. Ashcroft would approve the proposal, given the considerable pressure from conservative groups and the Homeland Security Department.
More than 36 Democrats in Congress, as well as leaders of conservative-minded groups like Concerned Women for America, and World Relief, an arm of the National Association of Evangelicals, have urged government officials to rule in favor of Mrs. Alvarado and women like her.
Many battered women are anxiously awaiting the government's final determination. In California, Mrs. Alvarado, who said she fled an abusive husband who had dislocated her jawbone and used her head to break windows and mirrors, said her eyes filled with tears when she learned that domestic security officials had recommended granting asylum to women like her. In New York, Zaide Cinto of Mexico, her vision blurred and her hearing dulled after years of beatings by her husband, said she shouted, "Yes!"
"I don't know who makes these decisions, but I think they must have hearts," said Mrs. Cinto, who is living in a shelter for the homeless as she awaits a decision on her petition for political asylum. "Perhaps they can understand our suffering."
"Things are changing," she said hopefully, "not only for me, but for many people."
The shift in policy would bring the United States in line with countries like Britain and Australia, which have been granting asylum in such cases for several years. Officials say the rules would also give much-needed guidance to immigration judges who have been issuing contradictory opinions in dozens of cases.
In 1996, the Board of Immigration Appeals granted asylum to Fauziya Kassindja, who said her clitoris would be cut off if she were forced to return to Togo. The board, the highest administrative court for asylum cases, agreed that female circumcision was equivalent to more widely recognized forms of persecution.
But three years later, the board denied asylum to Mrs. Alvarado. She said she had gone to the police in Guatemala on five occasions, reporting that her husband routinely raped and sodomized her, nearly pushed out one of her eyes and beat her into unconsciousness. The police declined to investigate, saying it was a domestic matter.
The immigration board found Mrs. Alvarado's testimony credible and agreed that the abuse would most likely continue if she returned to Guatemala. But it concluded that she failed to meet the statutory requirement for asylum.
Government lawyers criticized the board's analysis in the Alvarado case, and Janet Reno, who was attorney general, vacated the decision in January 2001, ordering the board to decide the case after the government completed regulations allowing victims of domestic violence to be granted asylum in limited cases.
The rules were never finished. Bo Cooper, who served as general counsel for the Immigration and Naturalization Service until it was subsumed by the Department of Homeland Security last year, called the new recommendations "very important" and said they would provide a critical road map for judges and government lawyers.
"Under established principles of asylum law, these kinds of cases should be granted," Mr. Cooper said. "What they're trying to do is to help bring some clarity to what has for years been a very unsettled doctrine in U.S. immigration law."
It is unclear how Mr. Ashcroft, who decided last year to take up the case, will rule on the issue. But a former senior administration official who has been involved in recent discussions of the issue with lawyers and lobbying groups said he believed Mr. Ashcroft would rule favorably.
"With conservative women's groups weighing in on this and now homeland security, the politics of it would be awful for the administration, whether it's good policy or not," the former administration official said. "That's going to mean enormous pressure put on Ashcroft to stay with the proposed regulation. I think he will ultimately go with it."
The need for clarity on the issue has become increasingly evident as a small but steady stream of women press their claims here. Some women, like Mrs. Alvarado, left their abusive husbands in their home countries and entered the United States illegally. Other women followed their husbands to the United States, entering the country illegally or on visas. They petitioned for asylum when the violence they had endured at home continued on American soil.
Immigration officials do not know how many of the roughly 250,000 asylum cases awaiting disposition have been filed by such women, but they believe the numbers are small. Karen Musalo, director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, represents Mrs. Alvarado and has tracked about 500 pending gender-asylum cases.
But critics of the Department of Homeland Security's proposal fear that the new rules will encourage a flood of frivolous asylum claims from poor women around the world.
"How can we provide permanent residency to everyone who is fleeing an unfortunate domestic or social situation where the government is alleged to be nonresponsive?" asked Dan Stein of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which seeks to limit immigration. "This is stretching the bounds of common sense."
In its brief, the Department of Homeland Security counters that the policy will affect only a "limited number of victims of domestic violence" who can prove that they meet the strict criteria for asylum seekers. Asylum seekers must demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. For years, advocates for immigrants have argued that women in certain circumstances can constitute a particular social group.
Joe D. Whitley, general counsel for the Homeland Security Department, explained in the brief that victims of domestic violence seeking asylum should show that the abuse was "supported by the legal system or social norms in the country in question."
Mrs. Cinto, who left Mexico in 2002, said the police there repeatedly ignored the abuse she suffered. She moved to the United States, and when her husband continued to beat her here, friends at a local church directed her to a domestic shelter in New York. Sanctuary for Families, a nonprofit group that supports victims of domestic violence, helped her file a petition for asylum last year.
Across the country, Mrs. Alvarado has been waiting almost a decade for her case to be decided. She has been separated during that time from her parents and two children, who still live in Guatemala."It hasn't been easy," she said. "But I know that if I win my case, other women like myself are going to be helped."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/politics/11IMMI.html?th=&pagewanted=print&position=
END
New mums reject depression tag
Mothers diagnosed as mentally ill may simply be undergoing normal hormonal adjustments, claims book
Amelia Hill and Jo Revill
Sunday March 14, 2004
The Observer
In the first few days after giving birth to her second daughter, Trudie spent most of her energy trying to convince the hospital that she hadn't lost her mind.
'I couldn't sleep for days because the pain of having a second Caesarean was so intense and the hospital was not giving me enough morphine,' she said. 'I hated being on the ward and was on an emotional rollercoaster, crying at the drop of a hat.
'But my worst fear was that I would be diagnosed as being depressed, which I knew I wasn't. I knew my feelings were the result of external issues and natural upset, and that I would get over it.'
Trudie also knew that the health worker who came to see her every few hours thought she was suffering from post-natal depression (PND). 'She kept coming back, telling me I was suffering depression and asking these questions that almost forced me to agree,' she said.
'Post-natal depression was presented to me as something that would almost certainly happen to me, and that I should be completely open to it because when it pounced the full force of the medical establishment would swing into action with its drugs and intervention to take all responsibility away from me.
'If I'd been slightly less determined I would have been seduced by the pressure to be self-indulgent to an almost hysterical level,' she said. 'But I was determined, and within a few days after coming home I was fine. All that was left was the memory of that relentless pressure to make myself into a victim of PND.'
According to the Depart ment of Health, the months surrounding the birth of a baby carry the greatest risk for women of developing mental illness. The most common is PND, suffered by 10 to 15 per cent of all new mothers.
However, a new book on the subject is aimed at exposing some of the myths surrounding depression. Its author claims these figures are vastly exaggerated and include large numbers of healthy mothers suffering nothing more extreme than the natural post-birth hormonal shifts.
Sociologist Ellie Lee will present her views today at a debate held by think tank The Institute of Ideas. 'Once motherhood was a time of joy, but now many professionals seem to regard childbirth as a threat to the mother's mental health and child-rearing as hazardous to both mums and dads,' she said. 'What is happening now is that mothers are being misdiagnosed with PND by a medical industry intent on pathologising childbirth,' said Lee.
Andrea, who gave birth to her first child six months ago, felt a similar pressure to Trudie to admit PND. 'The health visitor kept asking me if I was depressed - she never asked if I was just sad or fed up,' she said. 'It alarmed me that, if I had these feelings, I would be encouraged to go down that road and give in.
'Parenting is so hard that you need to discover your own inner strength and resilience as well as building the community- and family-support networks that you need to cope,' she said. 'Blaming my mood swings on PND would have absolved me of any responsibility of overcoming it myself.'
For centuries, women who genuinely suffered depression following the birth of their child went undiagnosed. In the Fifties, it was not unusual for women to spend time in mental institutions if it was considered they could not cope with their newborn child at home. The emergence of new medications in the Sixties allowed doctors to give new mothers more help, although there has always been controversy about whether the condition is over- or under-diagnosed.
'Baby blues' is thought to affect a 90 per cent of new mothers, a state caused by changing hormones, exhaustion after the birth and rapid readjustment to a different way of life. It can make women very sensitive, prone to burst into tears and give them a sense of isolation.
PND, however, is a far more serious condition that lasts for longer than the first few weeks and can make it hard for a woman to bond with her child. Some experts believe it is the body's inability to adjust to the different hormone levels, and that the neuro-transmitters in the brain are affected.
Genetics plays a role, but women who have had previous psychological difficulties are known to be particularly vulnerable. The more social support that a woman has from parents or from a husband, the less likely it is that she will suffer PND.
Lee's contention that the psychological needs of parents are being blurred with mental illness - outlined in her book Abortion, Motherhood and Mental Health - is upheld by Brid Hehir, a former midwife who has worked in the NHS for 15 years.
'Because of the insistence that the welfare of children must come first, this is fertile ground for the involvement and intervention of health professionals,' she said. 'We have lower expectations of parents in the current climate. The notion that they can sort out their problems for themselves has become anathema.'
Screening now automatically takes place for PND six to eight weeks after a woman has given birth, using the Edinburgh Post-natal Depression Scale (EPDS) questionnaire believed to detect 90 per cent of cases. But Hehir criti cises the scale, which comprises a series of statements with four possible responses related to mood and feeling, through statements including 'I have been able to laugh and see the funny side of things' and 'I have felt sad and miserable'. A score of 14 or more out of a maximum 30 necessitates a referral to a GP.
But Lee's contention that scarce NHS resources are being spent by doctors searching out PND in women meets with an angry response from Kate Figes, author of Life After Birth.
'These claims underestimate the strengths of individual women; being given all the information and prepared for the worst does not mean that women will start believing the worst is going to happen,' she said.
'If a woman is grown up enough to have a baby and bring up a child, she is grown up enough to cope with the truth and decide whether or not she needs extra help and advice. It's ridiculous to claim that an under-resourced and over-extended health industry is spending time and money trying to exacerbate non-crisis cases.'
There are enormous social consequences for those who feel they cannot cope with a new child. Most marriages break up within the first year of parenthood.
'The mere fact that we have become much more willing to acknowledge that parenthood isn't all rose-tinted spectacles should be celebrated,' said Lisa Harker from the Daycare Trust, a charity that campaigns for more support for mothers.
'The curtains have been lifted at last on the experience of parenthood.'
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1168916,00.html
END
12.03.04 BBC News Article: 'Father's crane protest ends'.
The man climbed up the crane on Thursday morning.
A man protesting about fathers' rights has climbed down from a 300 feet crane and given himself up to police.
The man, who had been dressed in a Spiderman costume, was arrested on suspicion of aggravated trespass.
The protest began after he climbed up the crane in Chester Street in the early hours of Thursday.
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.
There was relatively little disruption caused by the incident which ended at approximately 1345 GMT on Friday.
The crane stands over a building site close to the busy Oxford Road.
In a separate demonstration, two people who earlier climbed to the top of a gantry on the M60 motorway near to junction 9 have now come down and been arrested.
The 47- year-old man and 43-year-old woman were arrested under the Road Traffic Act and will be interviewed later.
http://www.geewcee.com/news.htm
END
Dennis Prager: The legal system is now our enemy
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/dp20030603.shtml
The legal system is now our enemy
Dennis Prager
June 3, 2003
I was raised to believe that law is the glory of decent society; that
the rule of law is the sine qua non of civilization; that international law is the greatest protector of human rights; that lawyers should be coupled with doctors as an elite profession to which a young person can aspire; that making laws is the great work of legislatures; that law schools are among the noble places of learning in society; that the title "judge" was perhaps the highest appellation in society; and that the jury system is an essential component of a just society.
Most of the preceding has become nonsense.
I have come to fear almost everything having to do with law. Though
there are many fine people in the legal profession, and though law is
necessary to protect society from descending into chaos, I now fear the legal profession more than I do Islamic terror. I am far from alone. I believe that more Americans rightly fear being ruined by the American legal system more than being killed by a terrorist.
Tens of millions of innocent Americans, and untold numbers of innocent institutions -- from schools to businesses -- stand a good chance of having their money legally stolen through litigation or even the mere threat of it.
Innumerable American children are terribly harmed by family lawyers who egg on their clients to destroy the other parent.
Parents fear allowing visiting children to play on their property -- in their pools or on their trampolines, for example -- lest they be sued in case of injury.
Airlines won't give passengers aspirin for fear of lawsuits.
Physicians prescribe unnecessary procedures, raising the national
medical bill astronomically, for fear of being sued.
American hotel guests can no longer breathe fresh air because hotels
are no longer built with windows that open lest they be sued if hotel guest falls out of one.
Men and women fear speaking normally at work, lest they be sued.
The deprivation of freedoms in America because of laws and litigation
has made this country less free than at any time in its history.
Law in America and internationally is no longer on the side of the
decent. It is a weapon in the hands of the indecent.
Everything related to law has been corrupted.
Law schools .
Most people leave law school morally worse than when they entered. When they enter law school, most students think in terms of right or wrong. In law school they are taught to reject such thinking and to think only in terms of legal and illegal. This transformation of morals into legal categories, reinforced most especially in trial law, and particularly among criminal defense lawyers, explains the proliferation of amoral lawyers and the destructive role many trial lawyers play in our society.
Lawyers .
The best humor is almost always the truest humor. The
funniest jokes I ever heard were those told by Soviet dissidents; the funniest today are about lawyers. Both types of jokes are so humorous because they come from the same place -- bitterness at one's helplessness against an overwhelming and oppressive power -- the communist system in the Soviet Union, the legal system in America.
International law .
Had America followed the proponents of
international law, the people of Iraq would still be tortured and murdered by Saddam Hussein's regime. The frenzied screams of the international law community against American liberation of Iraq were the screams of people who hate American power and values far more than they hate tyrannies.
International law and international treaties (all broken by the very regimes that we need to be protected against) are now the weapon of choice against American moral and military power.
Law .
Law is a man-made series of rules. That is all it is. In and of
itself, law is entirely amoral. There are moral laws and immoral laws.
Both decent and vicious governments make laws. The Holocaust began
legally. Nazis and communists had judges and lawyers who respected their societies' laws. In our country, slavery was entirely legal, as was the racial segregation that followed it. The notion that obedience to a society's laws is always moral is itself immoral.
Judges .
Too many judges are unfit for their position. How else can one explain the New York State Supreme Court ruling that women can bare their breasts in public because men can? How to explain the judges who liberate criminals only to have those criminals murder and rape again? Or the many judges who regard their primary role as imposing their values on society? This has led to an undermining of the democratic process beyond the wildest hopes of any homegrown fascist or communist.
Juries .
Juries are now merely weapons in the hands of amoral
attorneys. The attorney's purpose is to win, not to find justice, let alone truth, and the jury is selected only for that purpose. The Florida lawyer who brought the new legal terror weapon of "class action suit" against tobacco companies rejected over 800 potential jurors before he could find 6 people who do not believe that anyone who smokes has freely chosen to do so.
And now a trial lawyer is seeking the Democratic Party's nomination for president. He ought to win it. Trial lawyers are, after all, the
largest contributors to him and to his party. And if that doesn't frighten enough Americans, we will cease being a free country.
If America is destroyed, it will be done legally.
??2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
END
Abused men suffer in silence
February 26, 2004
By Barbara Cole
They are physically and emotionally battered and bruised and they are victims of domestic violence - and amazingly, they are men.
They get sworn at, starved of food and affection, used as a punching bag and stabbed.
And there are lots of them of all races who are taking a hammering on the home front all over Durban and the surrounding areas.
And "it's a big problem," says Themba Mkhize, a senior counsellor with the relationship experts, the Family and Marriage Society of South Africa (Famsa). "When people talk about domestic violence, they tend to believe it only happens when men abuse women," said Mkhize.
"But our experiences when dealing with couples have proved that there are men who are subjected to violence from their wives and girlfriends. They are the ones beating the men."
And it is not just physical abuse either. Men are also being knocked about psychologically and emotionally.
The problem of abuse against men has been "going on for years" but has remained a closely guarded secret, a taboo subject not to be talked about outside the home.
"Men have just remained silent," said Mkhize.
Said Oasis Crisis Care Organisation director Merle Martin, who has dealt with more than 50 cases over the past year: "I don't think the society is aware of this. Men are too embarrassed to come forward."
But more men are now beginning to come forward to reveal the horrors of their treatment at the hands of their partners, he said.
Generally, when they seek Famsa's help, they merely say they "have this problem", giving some other reason for their visit to counsellors.
Eventually, the real story of their abuse comes out.
And just like abused women, abused men feel guilty, believing they are to blame and that somehow they have done something to deserve their bad treatment.
But why would women turn on their husbands and boyfriends?
"When there's conflict, the wife will resort to other means. Maybe the husband is not dominant; maybe the woman is the stronger partner."
Now a call has gone out to men in abusive relationships to effectively fight back. Famsa and Mkhize want more victims to come forward to "break the silence" and seek help.
A special support group for male victims of domestic violence has been set up at Famsa, with the first meeting planned for March 24 at the organisation's offices at 30 Bulwer Road, Berea, Glenwood.
?? Famsa can be contacted at 031 202 8987 or e-mailed at
famsadbn@mweb.co.za
http://www.dailynews.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=499&fArticleId=359164
END
Otago Daily Times
March 1, 2004
Family Court hearings - better than a movie
by Michael Guest
Michael Guest is a former lawyer and District and Family Court Judge
Has ACT New Zealand MP Muriel Newman completely lost her marbles?
I thought her Family Courts (Openness of Proceedings) Amendment Bill had been well hung, drawn and quartered and that there was only a tiny giblet left dangling in the proposed Care of Children Bill allowing family and whanau to attend the court only if they had been to an earlier mediation. I criticised even that much of an intrusion in my first column.
But whoa. Ms Newman's Family Courts (Openness of Proceedings) Amendment Bill bubbles to the surface in the lavatory bowl of lapsed legislation. It is a shocker. Forget the minor exceptions. This proposed law throws open the doors of the Family Court for all of us to have a gander . . . to have a gawk . . . a bit of a laugh.
The Bill was re-introduced on February 19. Its purpose is to require Family Courts to be transparent and open. The Bill has only nine sections. Clause 4 inserts a new section 11A in the Family Courts Act. It provides that sittings of the courts must be open to the public and that reports of their proceedings may be published. That is the overriding principle.
I accept the court will have the power to prevent publication when it is "in the interests of justice, or of public morality or of the privacy of any person". However, the public may be excluded only in exceptional cases. So, publication may be prevented on the strict grounds above, but the public could still be allowed to attend. How bizarre.
Today is March 1. "Beware the ides of March", penned Shakespeare in Julius Caesar , Act I, Scene II. I exclaim this legislation will sign the death warrant for civilised family dispute resolution as we know it. Your separation, your relationship property dispute, your custody battle, your domestic violence case and all your marital misery could attract an audience of blowflies you have never met.
It is the end of summer. Let me borrow once more from Shakespeare and his sonnet XVIII now that "summer's lease hath all too short a date". I welcome you to climb aboard the boredom bus for a full day's guaranteed entertainment at the Family Court. What to do on a rainy day? Want some fun with free admission? You might have your answer, if these pressure groups have their way, to pop along to your local Family Court, which sits almost every hour of every working day in our towns and cities, and have a bit of a gawk at other people's miseries. Bring sandwiches.
The curtain rises at 10 o'clock. There will be intermissions at 11.30am and 3.30pm, and a nice big break for lunch from 1pm to 2.15pm.
Show time will probably start with a straggle of maintenance dodgers. You will be able to marvel at the myriad of excuses and giggle at the real names of the mothers and children in pitifully poor financial straits. Guys might want to note a few good "certs". But, hey, you are only exercising your right to know what goes on in a Family Court.
After interval, you might just be lucky enough to catch a couple of paternity cases, right down to the "angle of the dangle" of sinful Cyndi and dirty Bertie. Marvel at the intricacies of blood and DNA tests. Names, places and details will surpass Days Of Our Lives and, to pinch a wonderful line from David Lange, you will be able to witness in true gladiatorial style, "Lays Of Our Dave". Far better than an afternoon at the movies.
Before the main feature starts, and for those who like blood sports, maybe you will take in three or four short domestic violence cases. He hit you where? You have bruises? Forget the privacy of the protagonists involved. You are only exercising your "right for the public to know what goes on".
The main event will surely be a fully blown custody case with allegations and counter-allegations, maybe some sexual abuse thrown in, but certainly plenty of juicy mental cruelty. The whole dynamics of a family in pain will be played out before you in a room of the same size once used for illegal cock or dog fights. But, hey, you are only exercising your right to know what goes on in a Family Court.
Bollocks. Common decency still has a role to play in the real world. Lofty principle is frequently misapplied and real people irretrievably hurt. People who profess to be motivated only by principle are usually people who are about to do something very mean.
When Julius Caesar happened on the soothsayer on the way to the senate, he replied: "He is a dreamer, let us leave him. Pass." I forward the same sentiments to any MP who sponsors this wretched Bill.
END
Home Truths
By Greg Knight
The Weekend Sun, Tauranga, Bay Of Plenty, New Zealand
27 February 2004 Issue: 177
Family Court a Disgrace
The Family Court is probably one of the most contentious government departments in this country. For nearly 30 years the New Zealand public have believed that we have had a fair and equitable system where parents can
go to the Family Court to sort out custodial arrangements when they separate, and that they can have a Judge decide what is in the ???best interests of the child???.
When talking to people who have been thru the Family Court, many would tell you that this couldn???t be further from the truth. As the speaker of the West Australian Parliament Peter Lewis has said, the Family Court is ???sexist, abusive, biased, crook and criminal???.
Act???s social welfare spokeswomen Dr Muriel Newman agrees with this and has said ???our Family Court system is a disaster zone: it is unfair and unjust, its costs are excessive, the process takes far to long, it fails to uphold court orders, it perpetuates false allegations, it is totally biased against fathers and, in alienating fathers and grandparents, it is damaging to children.???
Although many people are unaware of what goes on within the Family Court, (it is illegal to speak about what goes on in this Court) I believe that the mistakes of the Family Court experiment are catching up with us. There is no doubt in my mind that many families have suffered by this unjust and biased Court, particularly fathers and children. What we are seeing now is the tragic effects of this failed experiment all through our community.
Without fathers
A devastating picture of life for young New Zealanders has been disclosed in an official report, showing New Zealand teens lead the world in suicides, crime and drugs. It has been shown that growing up without a father is a
more reliable predictor of criminal activity than race, enjoinment or poverty. The Police Association has just this year complained that ???children aged 10 to 16 are responsible for almost one in four crimes committed in New Zealand.
Many criminal Court Judges are also starting to see and understand the devastating effects of the Family Court separating fathers from Children. As youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft has claimed, ninety percent of youth offenders he has dealt with have no meaningful relationship with their fathers.
If we look at the outcomes for children who are brought up without a father in their life, the statistics are alarming. As Rt.Hon. Sir Michael Hardie-Boys, former Governor General of New Zealand has said, ???Fatherless families are more likely to give rise to the risk of being abused, of being emotionally, even physically scarred, of dropping out of school, of becoming pregnant, of living on the streets, of being hooked on alcohol or drugs, of being caught up in gangs and crime, of being unemployable, of having no ambition, no vision, no hope, at risk of handing down hopelessness to the next generation, and at risk of suicide???. That alone, should be enough to make us concerned that we have a problem that needs fixing. There are other studies in New Zealand that show children growing up in single-parent families are twice as likely to develop serious psychiatric illness and addictions later in life.
Distraught
Fathers, distraught at been separated from their children are killing themselves at a rate of 3-4 a week. As a Bay of Plenty coroner has recently said, ???over a period of 13 weeks he has sat on 12 cases involving men committing suicide and that 9 of those had or were involved in Family Court issues or proceedings???.
How much evidence do we need before we make the much needed changes to such a failing Court system. Even a report done by the New Zealand Law Commission states, ???There is now wide-spread community dissatisfaction and lack of public confidence in our Family Courts. Delays in hearing cases are commonplace; staff are still inadequately trained; costs cripple families when finances are already stretched and strained, adding to the trauma of family breakdown. In addition, gender-bias (mainly, though not exclusively, anti-male gender-bias) is rampant and remains uncorrected???.
The Family Court is slowly destroying families and the moral fabric of New Zealand, and yet we have this Labour Government refusing to acknowledge there is a problem. Not only for family???s going through the Court but for the on-going negative affects in our community. Is it because (as Richard Prebble has stated), that ???Helen Clark and the rest of the childless cabinet have no sympathy or understanding of the issues facing families???.
When something goes rotten from the inside, the continuing decay is invisible to the casual eye. Eventually imperfections appear and spread quickly. That is what is happening in New Zealand as a consequence of our Family Law. It is the responsibility of the many people administering and regulating the system to find a better way. The public, and children especially, deserve much, much better.
END
Home Truths
By Greg Knight
The Weekend Sun, Tauranga, Bay Of Plenty, New Zealand
20 February 2004 Issue: 176
The Cruelty of our Family Law
A few weeks ago I read an article written by Sir Bob Geldof, and published in The Sun newspaper in England. (Sir Bob Geldof was the man who brought us the very first Live Aid concerts to support underprivileged and starving children.) Now that Christmas is over, I think this is a subject that needs to be aired and debated. I am sure that many people will be moved by this story, as it sounds very familiar to the stories of many New Zealand men.
???For those divorced men with children, Christmas is a travesty, a repulsive contradiction of a family holiday, of a loving celebration, of a special children???s time.
These are the men who will be forced to be alone without their babies, who will commit suicide most frequently at this time of year in an age when male suicides are already 300 per cent greater than women???s.
These are men who, in the eyes of what is sickeningly called Family Law, committed the greatest crime ??? of being divorced.
And men, as everyone knows, are monsters, feckless, abusive, aggressive, thuggish, incapable of such a hugely complex task of giving love and patience, cooking baked beans or giving a bath, doing homework or combing hair and reading stories.
It???s a miracle any of us got here at all, us all having had dads and everything.
Yet there will be many fathers forbidden by the savagery of our laws to be with their children, standing broken, as I have, outside their old homes, the keys still in their pockets, weeping and whispering goodnight as they watch each child???s bedroom light switch off before turning away, maddened with grief, to the pointlessness of another lonely day.
What have we become? In whose name is this brutality done?
Who are they who do this and why do they not account to us, the people? What unthinking fools perpetrated these unlawful laws?
How is it in a child???s interest to remove him from his Dad and why? Two people fall from love and one, though having done no wrong, is semi-criminalised and punished by having his children removed from him for ever (for childhood is never recoverable).
The extremity of Family Law is bewildering, for having your children taken away from you is only one slight degree better than them taking away your freedom.
And yet you are not a criminal, nor have you done any wrong.
These same people assume that women make better parents ??? that a mother???s love is better, more important than a father???s. That somehow it???s bearable for a man to be parted from his children but not a woman.
Why? These assumptions and prejudices are not simply outdated but plain wrong, dangerous and damaging.
You only have to listen to the language that the law uses when it gets involved in our private lives. It???s meant to be neutral but it is cold, deadening and hopeless. In fact it becomes heartbreaking, hurtful, rage-inducing. I cannot even say the words.
A huge emptiness would well in my stomach, a deep loathing for those who would deign to tell me they would ALLOW me ACCESS to my children ??? those I loved above all, those I created, those who gave meaning to everything I did, those who were the very best of us two and the absolute physical manifestation of our once blinding love.
I cannot begin to describe the pain of being handed a note that allows you access to your children, sanctioned by your (still) wife with whom you had made these little things, with whom you had been present at their birth and previously had felt grow and kick and tumble and turn and watched the scans and felt intense manly pride.
Wrestled and played with them, walked them to school, picked them up, made tea with, bathed and dressed, put them to bed, cuddled and lay with in your arms and sang to sleep.
We need a human law. A law that fits the way we live now. A way that reflects the differing versions of family that we have but that still generates love and kindness and compassion.???
END
Home Truths
By Greg Knight
The Weekend Sun, Tauranga, Bay Of Plenty, New Zealand
13 February 2004 Issue: 175
Margaret Wilson Delivers An Aprils Fools Day Joke For Employers
On April 1 2004, the new holidays Act will come into force, which gives employees up to three days paid leave on the death of an immediate family or one day paid leave in the event of a death outside the immediate family that causes a person to suffer a bereavement. The new Act states ???both types of bereavement leave can be taken at any time and for any purpose genuinely relating to the death. They do not need to be taken immediately, or on consecutive days???. I don't think anyone will begrudge an employee having paid leave to mourn the loss of a family member, but it is the one day paid leave to mourn someone close that is the contentious bit.
I say contentious because National Leader Don Brash has suggested he would hire a pakeha over a Maori of equal merit because he believes Maori could claim ???unlimited tangi leave??? under this new Act. However Labour Minister Margaret Wilson believes this is misleading and that under the new Act, everyone has the same modest entitlement to a single day to mourn someone close to them.
Now I believe that laws that we trust our politicians to make should be easy for the average person like me to follow. We shouldn't expect to have to get a lawyer involved, even before the ink is dry. So when the Act doesn???t state that this one day of paid bereavement leave is limited to a year, or how many times in a year, you have to start thinking that maybe Don Brash has a point. Does this mean that you can take bereavement leave as many times in the year as you like or can justify.
Don Brash has identified Maori???s as probably taking this leave more often than others, probably because of their marae affiliations and the possibility of attending all of the marae???s tangi???s. Now if you look at some of the larger marae???s this could be a lot of leave.
However, to be fair, the Act certainly doesn???t restrict the leave to Maori???s. What if you attend the local church (and there are many churches much bigger than the average marae), and you decide that it is your right under this new law to attend each and every funeral of your ???extended church family???, as these people are close to you. You???ll never be at work, (I can hear all the people cheering now, vote Labour and you???ll never have to labour)
So, how can an employer judge if an employee is close to someone deceased. Dare an employer question an employee who states they are? The Act assumes that the employer should know who is close to the employee, or the employer must trust the employee on their say so. Seems to me like a few lawyers might be kept employed over this one. (What was Margaret Wilsons last job? Wasn't it teaching law at Waikato University? Interesting!)
Anyway to help employers understand the act, the government have given examples that the employer should consider when deciding whether to allow this entitlement.
They are;
?? How close the association was between the employee and the deceased person. (Who knows, and what guidelines are there here for the employer to follow?)
?? Whether the employee is responsible for any aspects of the ceremonies around the death. (Yep. From peeling potatoes for the tangi to being in charge of the music in the church, I???m sure there will be an excuse.)
?? Whether the employee has any cultural responsibilities they need to fulfill in respect of the death. (This could mean anything from being the Kaumatua on the marae to the Elder at the church).
There is no doubt that unless this piece of legislation is clarified, there is going to be some interesting court cases or certainly a lot of Bereavement leave.
I think Margaret Wilson needs to start consulting and listening to the wider community before she pushes through another piece of legislation that will change the way we live and work. Someone with her experience should know better, or is there a hidden agenda that us mere mortals don't know about.
END
|
Search This Site
Syndicate this blog site
Powered by BlogEasy
Free Blog Hosting
|