This is my first post on ONO, I signed up after reading the story about young Andrew,and I'm totally gobsmacked by most of what i read!
I'd like to put it to you that a mother doesn't just up and off simply to be spiteful to her husband. This woman left, I imagine, a very nice home and a husband on a very good salary...she would have wanted for nothing. She would've also left some very good friends and of course family. Why? To protect her child is why!

I know about the case Prof Briggs spoke of, and yes it's a fact that the children involved in the case she refers to have suffered permanent brain damage caused by severe PTSD.
Prof Briggs is stating the truth when she commented that lawyers are warning their clients not to mention "abuse." If anyone is familiar with Dr Richard Gardner you'll understand why lawyers are taking this stance.
Although his "Syndrome" has been discredited and banned the psychologists of the flc still use it when there's accusations of abuse by the mother.

Someone mentioned that Andrew had been interviewed and it was found there'd been no abuse. Oh my, what a surprise!! (not)
My grandson was interviewed at age 4 and was very articulate about his abuse but it couldn't be used in court becos 4year olds "lie." Sheeez, they're about the only people on the planet who don't lie...

Finally a word to all the "women haters" Can't you see you're falling right into the hands of the powers that be? They need the gender war to continue,it's all about $$$. Think about it.

Can you imagine what it would be like if we actually joined forces and fronted those 'powers'? They'd be forced to make sure that the best interest of the child was paramount. There was a case not so long ago where the judge automatically gave full custody to the father because mum was 25 minutes late getting to court due to traffic problems. Now get this bit.....It was a female judge!

My children live only one hour's drive from where I live and I have not seen them for nearly 7 years. Behavior of professionals during the four year court battle was a major factor that led to this traumatic estrangement. Two examples follow.

Behavior 1 - early on, in a session with a court-appointed counselor, my ex-wife told me that not seeing me was ok for the children, that they had 'moved on' and no longer needed me. The counselor allowed this to be a worthy line of inquiry, for us all 'to consider'. It shattered me, I had no idea how to respond, and therefore 'lost' that round of discussions.

Behavior 2 - a psychiatrist, who I never met nor consented to treating my children, wrote a report that was allowed to be used in the court saying it would be a threat to the children's psychiatric well-being for them to have contact with me. Even though final orders had been made based on court-initiated assessments and reports that found no reason for anything but regular contact, the court agreed to consider this. During the next 12 months (of no contact) and another round of court-initiated reports again supporting our regular and 'normal' contact, the psychiatrist commissioned by my ex-wife wrote another report, also allowed in the court, saying I was still a serious threat to their well-being (ignoring that they had been through another trauma of their mother's divorce to her second husband). The legal process was brought to its knees, by so-called professionals, stifling the Court's capacity to make a fair and reasonable decision.

Lesson 1. Until the professions involved in family disputes are required to honour some basic principles such as the need for both parents to remain meaningfully involved in each child's life, the legal processes will remain too easily misused to suit the emotional and sometimes manipulative interests of one party or another.

Lesson 2. Perhaps the Court could be required to be more selective in the evidence it allows for use in cases such as mine.

I feel profoundly for both yourself and your children Dean. The following is no consolation or can ever make up for the enforced estrangement, however, as you would know, when your children are older, they will naturally wish to see you and get to know you, as their father and as an adult. After this occurs, your wife will regret sadly, her actions of the past.

My father I did not see for 7 years after he remarried an insecure woman who put her foot down stating that if he wished to remain married to her, all four of us teenagers were not to be invited over to tea or for any visits.

Not having dealt with this situation previously, my father gave in to her, until he decided to separate 7 years later. By that time, he was deeply sorry for having missed out on our teenage years, when we kind of needed him the most.

I forgave him, and so too have all of my siblings. I believe, that this woman today, now in her early 70's, does not see her own children much, as she had treated one of them in a similar manner.

I do have to state here, that not having either of my parents around me during my teenage years, forced me into standing up on my own two feet in a confident and strong way, both emotionally and financially. I worked part time jobs from the age of 12years to buy my own clothes and school lunches.

There were other positives amidst the sadness of losing a father for 7 years [high school years], that after reading your story, I have now realised. There was the odd negative too as an adult. Who knows? Perhaps all family units experience many of the different traumas for various reasons. That's where my attitude and faith in God have gotten me through all of life's obstacles.

Kindest wishes.

I'm so sick of every parenting after separation debate being reduced to a battle between men and women. Another great opportunity for dialog hijacked by the far left and right wings of the parenting debate;

What kids need is for mum and dad to "get back up" after family breakdown, that's it in a nutshell ladies and gentlemen! Nobody dragged my sister into court to prove her worthiness to parent after her husband passed away with cancer. There was no family report, no DHS involvement and no false allegations. She wasn’t forced to spend a university education for my niece because the other parent just refused to co parent or share the responsibility.

What we should be talking about is how best to protect children from the stupidity of parents at the most obviously emotive point in life. In-stead we give them a pair of boxing gloves each and a number of purpose built arenas in which to punch each others lights out; mediation, PDR, local magistrates, federal magistrates, family court and just about any other boxing ring we can steer them into.

We give them family law, child support, social security (A&B) and now the ever widening crimes family violence act and definitions with which to punch each other senseless.

Give me three good reasons why parents in the midst of all that encompasses the average 2010 family in “breakdown mode” should be able to focus completely on the needs of their children, or see well enough to make effective decisions regarding their long term development for that matter. Chances are at least one of them, particularly the displaced parent can’t and shouldn’t we simply applaud those who can?

What we really need to do is support and encourage parents to use a model that works well for children after separation, rather than continually arguing the far right and left of sexism. Parents who keep the kids settled, surrounded by their normal extended families, school and social support networks for example. We need to create interventions that work and a support system retrained and free from politically polarized cultures.

Could some simple changes to the current process make a significant difference to children of divorce?

It seems pointless to me to do anything to change laws effecting separating families if we can’t first agree that lowering their level of conflict would have the most immediate impact on child welfare and kids future life potential. More than just money, plenty of happy well adjusted humans come from poor backgrounds.

The most important fact that comes out of reading a whole range of credible statistics, including those stated by Warwick Marsh here, is that children just love their parents, even the bad ones and react very badly to being estranged from them. The evidence is in folks, the lives of these children are to some degree predictable whether the children of a drug addict or a loving fire chief.

We should only allow this to happen under the most exceptional of circumstances. This should be the responsibility of every one of us. There are few crimes that attract a true life sentence for a reason and I’m sure that the crime of divorce shouldn’t carry one, poor parenting skills shouldn’t either or even the worst crime effecting families, family violence?

The justice system has always advocated the people should have the opportunity for rehabilitation, even those guilty of the most horrific crimes. Why is it that we so often make parenting after separation a one chance only deal, when so much is so obviously at stake for the vary children we are charged with protecting – Protecting children must start with protecting families, not just individual parents, but the whole extended family support structure available to children.

I wonder; if there was a simpler way to prevent much of the unnecessary harm done to children while we wait for intervention through the back-logged mediation process or from the often inconsistent, ineffective child protection safety-net, would we change our approach before spending millions re-reinventing the family law wheel once more?

Would I apply a presumption of equal parenting time? No

Are there some easily implemented steps we could take? Yes

http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=4991

<"She mocked him. She laughed at him. (She said) 'I took all your money, I took your daughter and now I am going to take your career'," Assistant County Attorney Jerome Blanchard said in court yesterday.

That gave her a leg up in the custody case and eventually, he was convicted, on her evidence alone, of a misdemeanor and released on bail pending sentencing.>

The point is who do you beleive?

An extreme degree of scepticism is called for and for claims not to be taken on face value.

Abuse of children does happen, and it is committed by both genders. However in the past certain methods of interrogation have been shown to have led to the prosecution and persecution of innocent parties.

there are cases where the children involved in the past, have now come forward as adults and said that the abuse never happened.

Perhaps all allegations of abuse should be referred to the police, so that such allegations can be investigated to the level of the standard of proof, that is required by criminal law.(however even the police do get prosecutions wrong at times)

Rather than on basis hearsay evidence.

But then there will always be some who want to believe regardless of the evidence that abuse has occurred and for them only a guilty verdict will ever satisfy them.

I had a lawyer tell me about a mother who was digitally raping her daughter, whilst saying to her daugther "Daddy do it."

Yes there are some very very nasty people in the world and they aint always men.