Cold North Wind,

The greatest levels of abuse are occuring in single parent familes with the mother as the single parent.

I wonder what would happen if a father thought that his children were being abused, but she had custody.

Would he have to spend years in the courts and spend all his money to get custody of the children.

That was the system prior to the reforms, and perhaps the Family Court and family law solicitors miss those good old days.

Cold North Wind

Name one case where allegations of abuse were initially ignored, only to be shown to be true.

benk it's quite possible that there will cases where allegations have been made and not taken seriously enough which should have been taken seriously.

That's always going to be a risk unless the system is doctored so heavily that it becomes unworkable due to an over reaction to every allegation.

It's my view that shared care reduces the overall risk in two fronts.
- It keeps a second adult closely involved in the children's lives
- It provides a break for parents and I think that the lack of respite is a significant factor in the over representation of single parent households in substantiated abuse claims.

Most of the fear mongering is based on the mostly unspoken assumption that fathers are abusers and mothers are not.

Given Cold North Wind's blatant willingness to make up false claims about the overall impacts of the changes it's somewhat hard to see any further value in trying to reason with her or him.

R0ber

Robert,
Your mentioning of respite breaks is interesting.

In many government systems, it is recommended that a carer has a respite break every second weekend, and I think payment to a full time carer is paid this way.

Now a father can easily get contact with his children every 2nd weekend, and this system hasn't happened by chance (eg it isn't every 3 weeks or once a month)

The father is not viewed as a parent who is important in the upbringing of the child, the father is viewed as a convienent person to provide a respite break for the mother every second weekend.

As well as that, the father provides money to the mother, but has no say in how that money is spent.

This is viwed as acceptable by those who actually have very little interest in children, and if they did, they would be much more interested in such things as childhood diseases, accidents in the home, traffic acidents etc that have much more risk to the child than their father.

Have you ever wondered why they accept the father as having contact with his children every second weekend, but not more than every second weekend?

where concern that shared care might not be in the child's best interests, if what Pragnell says is being reported anecdotally (often, occassionally?) about ICLs,who have not seen and not represented the child is true, well, that's one area that might need reviewing. why have one if they dont do their job?

Isn't PAS dead? I heard its author, Gardner saying 'If a child says his father has sexually abused him, the mother's job is to say 'Dont you ever say that about your father again. She should punish the child. If the mother believes the child, she should be removed from the child, and jailed if necessary'. He made this a gender issue, not a safety issue.

Next, the syndrome of parental alienation, where the mother was deluded, believing the child was sexually abused by the father: judged mentally ill,unlikely to promote a relationship with the father so must be punished by being excluded from the child's life.
One-sided, gendered and unsafe.

Next, the false allegations wave. Mother coached the children to believe they had been abused to keep dad away. The women called 'false denials' but that fell on deaf ears as Perjury has disappeared. The court simply does not believe natural fathers abuse their own, and if they do, well that's a family thing and not as great a problem as bad as having no relationship with father.

I'm asking why these issues are all about the 'bad motive' of women, and not the actual behaviour of people, especially where that behaviour, if ever tested in court, would surely be 'criminal'

I dont understand why men blythly say 'watch out for step fathers and boyfriends, but we're OK? This is so gendered. I don't understand why the jails are so filled with violent offenders (mainly men) that we now routinely give minimum sentences for murder.

I reckon marriages would work better if people didn't make it intolerable to stay.

jackson:"I'm asking why these issues are all about the 'bad motive' of women, and not the actual behaviour of people, especially where that behaviour, if ever tested in court, would surely be 'criminal'"

Because the vast majority of men do not do any of those things, yet a very much larger number of women make the claim that they do, especially in the context of a family court matter.

The problem is that the law is very easily misused. The misuse is heavily gendered - very few fathers make allegations about mothers. It is my contention that this is because at every step of the process the woman is exposed to propaganda about "violence" and "abuse" and is encouraged to make things up. when combined with the natural anger and vindictiveness that people feel during this time, it is a recipe for disaster.

Can you tell me why you think a woman going through a divorce should be given carte blanche to make things up about her ex in an effort to seek advantage though the Court?

Your own post makes it clear that you are of the view that if a man is accused he must be guilty. If a man says "she turned the kids against me", you assume that means he's a paedophile. If he says "she started it by throwing something at me", you assume that means she must have been defending herself.

The move to remove the burden of proof in DV is going to lead to yet more children being deprive of loving fathers by mothers with an axe to grind. It will lead to more suicides. It will lead to more filicide.

But all that's OK as long as Mum has a stick to use in court, eh?