A request for research in support of our activism.

**Trauma Fried Brains** · 22nd-February-2011

I haven’t posted for a while before just I posted again on the intro forum which will give some background and relevance to this Feminism research request. It is a request for some research material which we will gain media attention for with our activism.

Basically, Together with a few others I Scale structures as what people think of as Father’s 4 justice Protests. Recently many changes have taken place in this area, some of which are detailed in my new intro string.

Because of these changes, we are extremely overloaded with work towards various projects, but there is a small research requirement I though could be met more effectively by people who frequent AM.

I would be grateful if any members could give documented examples, of clearly absurd excuses that obstructing mothers give in UK family courts to break contact orders. I am particularly interested in cases where the court does nothing further than give the mother a pointless verbal warning not to do so without any effective punitive action, (that would be nearly all of them), or does nothing at all as if it’s accepted routine for mothers to repeatedly break laws with impunity.

Cases were this has occurred over a series of broken contact orders, (again, most of them probably) are what I would like the research to concentrate on.

If people would like to help us out with this, you can know we will put it to good use as material we will promote and push into the media when our next scale takes place.

Even if responding posters only give one or two examples on this string, it would be well appreciated.

Much obliged,

TFB.

**Percy** · 22nd-February-2011

Hobart Family Court.

A 'Mother' claimed that she stopped her ex (a friend of mine) from seeing his kids because 'he murdered my previous partner and is an International Terrorist"

The judge replied, 'You are being fanciful', but did NOTHING to uphold the father's rights to see his children.

**Marx** · 22nd-February-2011

I daresay links will be useful, yes, TFB?

**Douglas** · 22nd-February-2011

Since Family Courts are private hearings (which is usually against the Human Rights Convention) getting 'documented examples' is going to be difficult. What standard of documentation is satisfactory? Letters from the custodial parent? Records of telephone conversations? I have none such, just asking for the sake of ensuring your research is properly supported, since I presume the anecdotal tales spread throughout the Internet (including this forum) is not adequate.

**Trauma Fried Brains** · 25th-February-2011

Apologies for my delay in responding. There are difficulties with my laptop and I had taken it to the repair shop two days ago. There’s now news about it today and I am in an internet cafe doing this now.

Percy,
your example certainly get’s a medal for the breathtakingly absurd. As for the judge to acknowledge the absurdity and then take no appropriate action with the mothers brazen perjury makes me wander if in a fair world he or she should be done for perverting the course of justice.
In fact in a fair world, the great majority of judges ought to be prosecuted for perverting the course of justice.
However, on this occasion, I am particularly looking for UK cases. I do hope there is some paperwork for this, as at a later stage, I hope to campaign on a wider field. It’s just that there is an enquiry into the family courts currently open on the UK.

Marx,
yes links would be fine.

Douglas,
All of those categories are fine, including any anecdotal material in the newspapers, but not anecdotal material of a private source. I do not specifically need only official material, although obviously that would be of the highest quality in terms of source credibility.

Thank you all for your responses.

**Douglas** · 25th-February-2011

Quote from Trauma Fried Brains

Percy,
your example certainly get’s a medal for the breathtakingly absurd. As for the judge to acknowledge the absurdity and then take no appropriate action with the mothers brazen perjury makes me wander if in a fair world he or she should be done for perverting the course of justice.
In fact in a fair world, the great majority of judges ought to be prosecuted for perverting the course of justice.

One problem many people have is that they are all too ready to 'judge' a case based on just a snippet of information. The media are especially good at winding the public up on an issue and seem to delight in doing so, quoting one or two lines out of context, or even just making up a headline with very little support to it.

For instance, with Percy's example, how do you know that the husband was not a wife beater? How do you know that he was not a child molester? How do you know that the judge didn't reject the father's application for contact because the father was insisting the mother travel 400 miles each time, to drop off the children?

The point is, you don't know. Yet you are willing to berate the judge (who, by the way, HAS to follow the LAW which is generally created by politicians that the PEOPLE voted into power) and assume with so little knowledge that he is perverting the cause of justice. He is the upholder of justice as the LAW defines it. If the law isn't ethical or fair, don't blame a judge for it.

Now, granted, Percy is a respectable fellow and is the kind of man not to generally shoot his mouth off, so the case is not likely to be as blatant as my "what if"s: but do YOU know that?

To make it very clear, I think that family law on the whole stinks in my country and most other western countries seem to be about as bad. Nor do I think all judges are sensible or reasonable. But on the whole, blaming the judge is like blaming the typist who wrote the law down - neither of them are the correct one to blame for bad law and neither can change it.