It is a shame that Barbara only concentrates on cases where the male is the alleged perpetrator.

On ABC radio a male caller talking about family law, mentioned that his ex female partner on the day that she was to loose custody of the child, she murdered the child and then killed herself. This happended only last year.

John Stapleton in the Weekend Australian 'Battered by the System' 3rd June 2000;

"Nobody believed 'Frank' when he tried to protect his son from bureaucratic bungling. John Stapleton reports that, nearly 20 years on, Frank has been proved right, even though he lost in court.

The boy was eight weeks old when his father called welfare authorities and pleaded with them to take his son into foster case. He alleged that the mother was being violent towards the child, throwing him against walls and trying to smother him. The authorities ignored him, as they did for years to come, but the father persevered."

No person, whether they are male or female should be allowed to abuse children.

Barbara cites eleven cases over a period of 13 years. However no matter how emotive this issue is, children are at much greater risk of accidental drowning or being run over by a reversing vechile, than the risks of a family law case.

I have no sympathy at all for people who abduct children and take them overseas. It results in a huge wastage of resources that could have been expended to good effect elsewhere. The crimes cherry-picked by the author are irrelevant to the case and do not justify it one jot.

When activists demand government action for a narrow area of interest the inevitable outcome is skews in funding and problems in coordination of effort.

This is the bigger picture as reported by the ABC:

'Maree Faulkner from the National Association for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect says the case (of child neglect) in South Australia comes as no surprise.

"We hear a lot about sexual and physical abuse. Really neglect is the hidden bit of the iceberg. There are enormous numbers of families that are just not coping and providing and caring for their children," Ms Faulkner said.

"The Australian community demanded action from the government on climate change. The government responded and has committed over $1 billion to climate change."

"This (child abuse and neglect) is an issue that should be at least of that order."

The cost of early intervention may worry governments, but Dr David Wood from the organisation Act for Kids, says research from 2003 shows the cost of child abuse is already in the billions of dollars.

"A conservative $5 billion in 2003 would have to be an extremely conservative figure," Dr Wood says, citing the cost of hospital stays for abused or neglected children, work involved in care and counselling of children and placement of children removed from families.'

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/06/25/2285053.htm

'How much longer can the government ignore the voices of children living with abuse?'

One answer lies in the first line of JamesH's post above:

'It is a shame that Barbara only concentrates on cases where the male is the alleged perpetrator.'

Therein lies a major part of the problem. The debate never properly gets off the ground, because someone always brings it back to a what-about-the-menz issue.

Thank you, James - nice little piece of topic hijacking. We can always count on you.

Perhaps, one reason we keep ignoring the voices of children who are victims of abuse is because, as a society, we have little to no respect for them. They are the chattels of their parents and, for centuries, the principal responsibility for their care and emotional nurturing has been delegated to the disempowered gender - thus putting them at the bottom of the political food chain.

Things are changing, however. Ironically, one reason for this is that children have become major consumers in the last generation or two, which is starting to make our democratic institutions take more notice of them.

Another reason is that organisations such as Kids in Distress [http://www.kidsindistress.org.au/] are doing a wonderful job in giving the legal and democratic rights of children the long overdue attention they deserve.

SJF, "..the principal responsibility for their care and emotional nurturing has been delegated to the disempowered gender - thus putting them at the bottom of the political food chain."

That is absolute garbage. I suppose that is why Japanese mothers initiate sex with their sons, or why in some cultures mothers masturbate their children to pacify them?
http://www.atypon-link.com/AAP/doi/abs/10.1375/pplt.14.2.218 (click on PDF report)

Fair crack of the whip SJF, accusing JamesH of hijacking is the pot calling the kettle black. Anyhow he was only reacting to the bias he saw in the examples given in the article, which was probably a fair call if you think about it.

But who cares? What about burying the gender hatchet (other than in someone's head) and attacking the much larger problem which is child abuse and neglect?

I disagree with your opinion that "Things are changing, however. Ironically, one reason for this is that children have become major consumers in the last generation or two, which is starting to make our democratic institutions take more notice of them." Regretably, the incidence of child neglect and abuse is known to be increasing. As usual, there are no simple causes or simple solutions.

Likewise, even if there was evidence that 'democratic institutions' now notice children because they are major consumers, that is a far cry from doing anything practical to help. I confess to wondering though what possible political impact infants or even young adolescents might have. There is a wealth of evidence that the major political parties pay scant attention to what anyone below voting age might want and then it is rapidly forgotten soon after the bums hit the leather in Canberra. Talk with young people and you will see.

From all I have read, the major hurdle to doing anything about child neglect and abuse is public ignorance of the sheer magnitude of the problem. One thing I worry about though is that there appears to be a problem in coordinating effort. There are three levels of government and helping professionals - public and private - are ferocious protectors of their own patches.

Correction SJF, the debate never gets off the ground because of bigotted and biased people like you.

When children are abused by members of either gender, it is not a mens or womens issue, it is a human issue.

Suddenly socalled Feminists flatly refuse to allow the debate to be expand out the narrow confines of their minds. This called concrete thinking.

The real problem lies in determining who is abusing, whether they be male or female.

The refusal of socalled Feminists to allow debate about this issue, and to try and to discourage discussion of this, is in itself abuse.

It has nothing to do with fathers rights, expanding discussion into abuse committed by women, it is about the rights of the child.

Unless SJF, only supports the rights of the child until those rights conflicts with the mothers interests.

http://www.canadiancrc.com/female_sexual_predators_awareness.aspx

Interesting the above link contains the statement "86% of the victims of female sexual predators aren't believed, so the crimes go unreported and don't get prosecuted."

Feminists maintain that they support human rights and social justice, then one must ask why? These same people refuse to allow the debate about child abuse and children at risk, to include the issue of abuse by women.

Maybe such people are only interested in preventing child abuse when it is committed only be men. Thereby keeping safe their precious political dogma.

SJF said –
Therein lies a major part of the problem. The debate never properly gets off the ground, because someone always brings it back to a what-about-the-menz issue.

It is not about bringing it back to men’s issues it is about keeping the debate free from gender issues altogether. As soon as readers smell a gender issue they should draw attention to it so that those issues can be eradicated from the debate altogether. Too often that smell crops up in articles by people who claim to be only interested in the welfare of children. It is not that difficult to write an article which is fair and balanced and focuses on the real issues. When you have some other agenda boiling away in your unconscious it will escape via your words and attitudes no matter how nice and fair you try to be.

‘for centuries, the principal responsibility for their care and emotional nurturing has been delegated to the disempowered gender’

How can you delegate that someone choose to have a child and take responsibility for its care and emotional nurturing. You cannot make anyone do this. It is physically impossible to force a woman to have a child. Women have to take responsibility for their decisions no matter how much regret they may have for them. Trying to shift responsibility does nothing in the long run to solve the problem of safety for children which is what the debate is about.

'How much longer can the government ignore the voices of children living with abuse?'

As long as we deprive fathers of the right to see their kids.
As long as we allow porn and violence to fill households and say what goes on behind 4 walls is no body elses business.
As long as we promote and encourage promiscuity and unfaithfulness
As long as we loathe Christian culture and promote heathen cultures including earth worshipping.
As long as we have no fault divorce even though often someone or both are at fault.
As long as feminist use the horror of child abuse to push their sick agendas.
As long as we don't discipline children.
As long as we allow artist to exploit children in the name of 'art'.
As long as we pretend we don't have to give an account of our lives to anyone at anytime.
As long as we look to the Government to solve moral problems when many officials are immoral themselves.

Thanks Barbara. As others have posted, the list of children of separated parents who have been killed by a parent is long and the majority of killers in this context are men. The filicide research has identified gendered patterns in the data. But beyond the social patterns of post-separation parental child abuse, lies the system which enables parents who are proven to use violence and abuse to have time with their children in the 'child's best interests'. There is no real-life monitoring of the child's day to day well-being, and if time with children results in serious injury or death to those children, the public is invited to regard this (a) as an unforseeable tragedy - (the Family Court line) (b) as an expected (normal) response to fathers' frustration -(the fathers' rights group line which translates to 'do as we want or the kids die') and (c) as a predictable tragedy, surrounded by evidential histories of risk, which have been ignored, trivialised, and denied - (research evidence and child protection line). The family law system needs to be subject to an independent death and serious injury review process which reports to the Parliament and where recommendations for change must be considered for statutory reforms. Premier Brumby wants to learn from the horrifying toll of Victoria's fires. The federal Attorney General needs to learn from the horrifying toll of the family law system on children.

Thank-you Barbara Biggs for your courage in speaking out about the failures of the Family Court to protect our children ; history will mark it well.
A comparison between child deaths due to accidents within the general population, cannot, in my opinion,legitimately be compared with the court sanctioned abuse of our children.
"Court Licenced Abuse" by Dr.Caroline Taylor documents the process of abuse, and the conduct of those who collude with it,within our courtrooms, well.
Sunita

Mog said – ‘the list of children of separated parents who have been killed by a parent is long and the majority of killers in this context are men.’

This may well be true but of what relevance does it have to the issue at hand which is the protection of children from being killed or hurt? Should we infer from this that there is something fundamentally flawed about men in general that makes them less likely to be trusted than a woman. If this is true then the courts should always deny access to fathers since it is a fundamental flaw in men’s nature that cannot be changed or access should not be granted until there is proof that all men have overcome this fundamental flaw. Men are more prone to kill than women so all things being equal men should never have access since courts have to do what is best for children. If governments were truly serious about protecting children they would do everything in their power to protect children from men at all times and not just in cases of access and custody. They should try and persuade women who have children to cease all close relationships with men as soon as the child is born so as to increase the safety of the child.

Either all men are flawed and courts should act on this premise or only some men are flawed and courts should judge each case on its merits to see if a particular man or woman is prone to violence. This is exactly what they try and do and sometimes they get it wrong – they are human beings after all.

Bringing totally irrelevant statistics into the debate signifies another agenda which is to disparage all men in general for some personal satisfaction.

Phanto

..."courts should judge each case on its merits to see if a particular man or woman is prone to violence. This is exactly what they try and do and sometimes they get it wrong – they are human beings after all."

No. This is exactly what courts do NOT do. They render decisions based on politics, quotas, disinterest and whether its late in the afternoon and they've had a hard day.

Getting it wrong so that someone is fined unfairly is one thing. Getting it so tragically wrong that people die as a result is not something we should just accept on the basis of a judge being a fallible being.

There should be no margin for error when human -especially small human - lives are in the balance. One of the reasons given by those who oppose the death penalty is because it has been proven that innocent people have been put to death in error. In fact the incidences of this happening were far more rare than the incidences where children die as a result of judicial error.

The system is at fault. Changes are needed as a matter of urgency. Just as people say "If only only one innocent person is put to death that is the only argument needed against the death penalty." So the death of even one child is all that's needed to signal the need for immediate and urgent reform of the family court system.

Nothing to see here, just a bit more man-bashing from the usual scapegoatists. The thesis is "all mothers are perfect, so it must be men, let's see if we can find some cases".

Although it won't do a blind bit of good in changing her blind prejudice, I would like to remind Barbara that about half of child homicides are committed by the mother and another large percentage by a boyfriend of the mother, whilst in the mother's care.

A small portion are committed by fathers. As JamesH points out above, that is hardly surprising, because children in single-parent househlods are overwhelmingly more likely to be neglected and to lack proper facilities and those households are much more likely to be headed by a mother than a father.

On the one hand, these women claim the children as their "right" and on the other, whingers like Barbabra try to claim that this is somehow not their choice. It is this sick culture of entitlement without any sense of personal responsibility for outcomes that is failing those children, not anything inherent in the capacity of men or women.

By removing the need for people to take responsibility for their own circumstances, as the Family Law and the social security system does for women, we train those people to look for someone else to solve their problems and in some cases, even to identify that problems exist. It is hardly surprising to find that some of those people so-trained are then incapable of coping in crises, which is when children get hurt.

Instead of trying to blame the loving fathers who have been removed from their children's lives, perhaps it is time people like Barbara started demanding a bit less featherbedding and encouragement for people wanting to use State resources, whether to pursue their husband through the Family Court or to support their choice not to work. Perhaps then, a little more sense of personal onus of responsibility might start to get through.

Very few countries in the world have started to take a long hard look at children's rights from children's perspectives. We only ever look at children's rights from adults' perspectives (in particular, the rights of parents).

Even then, the terms of reference on child abuse and any other form of negative treatment of children tends to be filtered through the lens of families under extreme stress - divorce, custody battles, poverty, domestic violence etc. We don't have adequate terms of reference for the rights of children per se.

We pride ourselves on being one of the world's forward thinking democracies. Yet, even in Australia, the one form of physical assault that is still legal is a parent's 'right' to hit his/her own child. If an adult hits another adult, it's called assault. If a spouse hits his/her spouse, it's called domestic violence. If a person hits an animal, it's called cruelty. But if a parent hits a child, it's called discipline. Even when such 'discipline' leads to physical injury, there is little that our social watchdogs can really do other than register it and then send the kid back home.

If all children are required to live by this unfair exceptionalism, is it any wonder that at the extremes of society, we are letting them down?

Cornflower

'I suppose that is why Japanese mothers initiate sex with their sons, or why in some cultures mothers masturbate their children to pacify them?'

If you happened to write anything halfway decent after this little gem of multicultural understanding, I wouldn't know ... as I stopped reading your post at that point.

JamesH

'When children are abused by members of either gender, it is not a mens or womens issue, it is a human issue.'

No. It's a power issue. There's a difference.

As usual someone comes up with the idiotic response that smacking children is child abuse. Usually the same people defend artist 'right; to strip young boys and girls naked and photograph them in sexual poses for money. They also ignore the simple fact that the less we have smacked our kids the more violent society has become. Many of the juveniles who bash old people for small amounts of money have never had a smack in their lives. That is half the problem. They know they can get away with almost anything without consequence. Anyone witnessing the tantrums of those children whose parents refuse to smack rebellious children can see how pathetic the weak uncaring parents are. No wonder we are breeding such a violent generation when we have swallowed the lie that discipline is child abuse. At least some can see how ridiculous this notion is.

"In a front page news story in The Australian recently, a mother who had abducted her preschool child to another country, was being hounded like a criminal following Family Court of Australia decisions"

Good. She is a criminal!! The only question that remains is if her crimes are justifiable in an Australian court (my intuition tells me they are not). Parental abduction is child abuse. It's no small suprise that courts tend to look unfavorably on kidnappers that are sent back to their home country for custody proceedings under the Hague Convention.

I am the left behind father of an internationally abducted son. I have no doubt that merely by stating that there are those that assume I am an abuser. It is a bias I have faced from the begining of my ongoing struggle to bring my son home. My wife didn't even have to make allegations of abuse. Society makes them for her. Stories like this make me sick. There is no conspiracy or bias to rob mothers of their children and place them in the hands of abusive fathers. In most societies mothers are shown a huge, often undeserved, deference at every level. The only abuser I see here is the mother. Parental abduction is child abuse, plain and simple. As an American citizen I have a tremendous deal of respect for Australia's handling of both outgoing and incoming Hague cases. While the US does a good job of handling incoming cases it stands to learn a lot from Australia's hands on approach to finding and returning abducted Australian children.

http://hagueabductions.com

It is interesting to see people vigorously defend adult rights to commit physical violence on children on a topic which has children's safety and survival at its centre. Sweeping claims that those who commit violence have never been sufficiently hit as children are grounded in ideology not empirical evidence. Developmental neurobiology is unequivocal that children whose development takes place in a context of abuse, violence, stress and chaos experience neuro-developmental injury. The more they are exposed, the more risk they carry. These impacts adversely affect their capacity to learn, to cope with new people and situations, to form relationships - and they carry forward the stress-related health risks - hypertension, cardiovascular disease, cancers.
The family law system currently has no capacity to investigate, determine or monitor children's safety and well-being under the orders or agreements made. So children die and are seriously injured.

The defensive men on this issue would be better served by acknowledging the necessity for children's safety to be improved in the family law system instead of bleating on about feeling accused. If you don't use violence or abuse then get on with working for its elimination and reduction and if you do, give it up.

"Developmental neurobiology is unequivocal that children whose development takes place in a context of abuse, violence, stress and chaos experience neuro-developmental injury. The more they are exposed, the more risk they carry. These impacts adversely affect their capacity to learn, to cope with new people and situations, to form relationships - and they carry forward the stress-related health risks - hypertension, cardiovascular disease, cancers."

I love it when someone takes common sense throws in some technical jargon and claims to have proven something. So, what you're saying is that kid's who are abused have problems later in life? That's deep, but what does it have to do w/ the price of tea in China?

It's interesting to see you vigourosly generalize a single post that suggests children aren't disciplined frequently enough as representative of the "sweeping claims" of all the men who have posted.

This article unequivically demonstrated a profound bias in favor of a female abductor. At no point was evidence of alleged abuse presented so why the assumption that it exists? An assumption you have made while accusing fathers of "feeling accused", well gee, I wonder why we might fell that way. While you bleet on about the revelance of neurobiology you may want to do what any self-respecting critical thinker would do and examine your assumptions. Anecdotal evidence was presented that children have been harmed during visitations with their fathers. Instead of providing real evidence we get an emotional appeal that generalizes from the exceptions that fathers killing their children during visitations is the rule that should dictate public policy and family law.

"If you don't use violence or abuse then get on with working for its elimination and reduction and if you do, give it up."

You can help us eliminate child abuse by not being an apologist for child abductors that happen to be female.

Parental abduction is child abuse:
http://www.prevent-abuse-now.com/unreport.htm

Well done, guys! Take a bow. The Dispossessed Fathers Anonymous faction has well and truly conquered this commentary thread.

I have to admit though ... for a minute or two there, I actually thought a couple of posters were going to manage to make this a discussion about children - like, you know, as the author intended it to be.

Silly me. Children? What children?

This thread is now well and truly about the menz - poor menz, divorced menz, dispossessed menz, bitter menz, a whole legal system against poor menz, and ex-wives from hell who make life awful for poor menz.

I don't know how you do it so effortlessly, guys. Without so much as a 'pardon my bias' blink or 'is my misogyny showing?' flicker of conscience. Perhaps it's the accumulation of thousands of years of having the universe revolve around the needs of poor menz. I guess it's just too hard to kick the entitlement habit.

Mog

For what it's worth ... nice post.

SJF

So like an ostrich you stick your head in the sand, preferring that your bigotry against men - half of the total population - is never challenged. How obvious to act shocked and stalk off.

Here again is the link to research challenging your foolish belief that child sexual abuse (in particular) is restricted to males, or that it is mainly males who are involved. Although now it also appears that you think it is also restricted to Europeans. The research can set you right on that too.

Female-Perpetrated Child Sex Abuse: Definitional and Categorisational Analysis

http://www.atypon-link.com/AAP/doi/abs/10.1375/pplt.14.2.218 (click on PDF report)

I cannot imagine where you ever got your jaundiced view of men from. Didn't the footage of the hundreds of men fighting the Victorian bush fires and caring for victims say anything to you? If some men do atrocious things and some women do too, that doesn't mean that a particular gender is inherently flawed or to be more highly valued.

mog:"If you don't use violence or abuse then get on with working for its elimination and reduction and if you do, give it up."

And if you don't make false allegations of abuse to bolster your Family Law case, then get on with working for its elimination and if you do, give it up.

Isn't that easy?

I remind you that most violence against children is committed by mothers or by unrelated men associated with the mother, not by biological fathers or those associated with them. If you are serious about wanting to prevent violence against children, it is not sensible to attack biological fathers and ignore the far-greater number f cases perpetrated by mothers and their associates.

Cornflower

Like an ostrich with its head in the sand you are (deliberately?) blind to any achievements by women and assume that "MEN" do everything.

Take off your Blinkers and you might be taken more seriously by others.

""They are men and women from every walk of life and they are highly trained by professional firefighters," a CFA spokesman said."

http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/article/2009/02/10/51621_latest-news.html

Women contribute in all human endeavours.

Now the topic is:

The Children's Voices

Do you really care about children or are you just here to diss women?

As has been stated beautifully by others who ARE genuinely concerned about children's welfare; the Family Court needs a complete overhaul in its methods, its views and policies in order to put the requirements for children BEFORE warring parents of any gender.

SJF you keep referring to men as menz. This need you have to denigrate an entire sex is disturbing. This infantile inability to feel self-worth... Let me be the first to tell you that you are special. You are unique.. You matter. Now, unfortunately, you also appear to have a raging case of Penis Envy. It would seem your mental development has been retarded by an inability to progress from the phallic stage of your psychosexual maturation leaving you unable to put aside your sexual impulses towards your father that, when not reciprocated, have left you angry and bitter and caused you to employ the displacement defense mechanism of shifting the object of your undealt with emotions onto men in general.

You also appear to have a problem differentiating between fantasy and reality because, in reality, this article was about a mother stealing a child from his home and the proper legal consequences of her doing so under the Hague Convention and Australian law. The title may have been Children's Voice, but Children is a red herring. This article is about the authors, and your, apparent inability to differentiate between the best interests of a child and the desires of the mother. An inability to accept that mothers are not are not inherently the most capable parents and a simple infantile desire to get your way.

I suggest we set up a treatment regimen immediately. Please contact me at your earliest convenience.

Kind Regards,

Dr. David Corteguera

ENOUGH!

It's no wonder so many of you can't focus on the issue of children. You act like children yourselves.

Antiseptic, James, LBF, David, Cornflower, runner and you too SJF, (James's initial posts weren't unreasonable) - get over yourselves for just one damn second! This thread is a circus.

The family law system fails to serve either gender. We shouldn't be viewing it through a prism of gender or victimhood as much as a malfunctioning system.

So kiddies, I don't give a sh!t which gender are *victims*. Whinge elsewhere.

Sure, the author could have included some mention of children killed by mothers but it doesn't matter - the key phrase was in the last sentence of her article:

"The government also needs to urgently amend FCA procedures to allow children to give testimony and to implement an inquisitorial, rather than adversarial system of law in cases of alleged abuse."

BINGO!

I won't hijack this due to my preference for the inquisitorial system on the whole, but I'll point out that when deciding what's best for children, an adversarial system where two parties lawyer up and attack each other, is the dumbest concept imaginable.

It only exacerbates hatred between parties and encourages distorting truth, at cost to children who become a trophies.

The inquisitorial system is an investigative system where a judge (not always an ex-lawyer) is in charge and instead of merely acting as umpire, the judge requests evidence from lawyers, as well as independent third parties.
The case is reviewed and an outcome decided after consideration of all evidence, rather than what's decided appropriate for a jury after the courtroom circus, which all too often involves lawyers hammering away at witnesses and victims until they're in tears (an especially horrifying spectacle in rape cases).

So for this nugget, the author has my support - her suggestions would serve decent parents, not specifically men or women.

This system is used for criminal law Japan and Germany. More guilty verdicts, fewer cases of wrongful imprisonment.

Far better, albeit with less power and profit for the lawyer fraternity, so they resist change.

Fractelle,

'As has been stated beautifully by others who ARE genuinely concerned about children's welfare; the Family Court needs a complete overhaul in its methods, its views and policies in order to put the requirements for children BEFORE warring parents of any gender.'

Everyone here has blinkers on. The interests of the children will always neatly align with the interests of the mother due to the general attitudes of society towards the value of mothers and fathers; A mothers motives are always assumed to be pure, and best for the children, a father is always under suspicion of being a predator or violent. These debates further prove this. All the female posters roaring 'I am woman, I am handed 'putting the kids first' status on a platter, so off I go to question the motives of the self interested male posters'.

So we always have the same argument here.

1. Article about all the men who have harmed babies.
2. Male posters defensive as there are no examples of where women have done same.
3. Female posters saying it's all about children, not men.
4. Male posters saying well if it is, why don't you care about all abuse not just men's abuse.
5. Women posters say well more men are abusive, lets get back to the children. All you men are callous selfish child endangerers as you cant let it just be about the children.
6. Male posters say that's easy for you to say as the shift towards protecting children is inevitably a shift towards protecting mothers interests at the expense of fathers interests.

To be 100% sure of child safety, why don't we implement Phantos suggestion? If ever a man is accused of abuse, just lock him up and deny any contact with the children. We cant afford any mistakes can we?

Firstly, I think the problem of child abuse and blaming the Family court is looking at the problem the wrong way.

The family court would not exist, if relationships did not break up, there would be no need for a court to divy up property and to decide on residential arrangements for the children.

There already exists under various names, the dept of human services, where allegations of child abuse can be made. Imperfect as it may be.

To expect the Family court to some how to be able to look into future and decide who is or who isn't at risk is a big ask.

To are two separate problems, firstly there are the families that abuse is alleged prior to separation, and then there is the alleged abuse that occurs after separation.

If we look at for example the screening process that pregnant women go through, they are screened for signs of depression, as well as to see if they are the victims of abuse, Pregnant women are never screened to see if they just might be an abuser.

So basically, right from the outset of separation people should perhaps be screened (I know it sounds Orwellian). But even with this screening process it is possible, there will some who slip through the cracks.

SJF thanks for that Power thing, here I was niavely thinking it had to do with things like mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse, poor parenting skills, post natal depression, poor impluse control. And it was about POWER all along.

I guess because Power is the answer there is no need to conduct any further research.

Mog, I dont know where you get off, but no one has defended adults rights to abuse children. No person has the right to abuse another.

TRTL

Well said. The adversarial system does not work for family law. Given the complications a "one size fits all" ruling doesn't work either. What is desperately required is a supported, mediated style of discussion with the best interest of the child as the goal. Do away with courts completely. The only time lawyers need be involved is to draft the solution agreed upon by all parties.

The rest of you please note: I am not buying into the blame game or gender wars. Get over it. Contribute a suggestion that would benefit children or stay off this thread.

Ok everyone go home. Fractelle has spoken, and as you all know she owns the thread. If you'd like to participate further, please submit a comment to Fractelle and she will decide if it fits within her requirements.

Comments are normally in response to the original article and the question is whether or not the original article is actually about the welfare of children or is it just a thinly veiled excuse to attack men in general. This author has a track record of abusing her power as a writer to promote her own personal agenda. Those who refuse to read between the lines and who refuse to observe how she says what she says are being very naive.

The purpose of the forums is to discuss social issues and if someone abuses that purpose it should be noted and addressed in order to maintain the integrity of the forums. Telling people to get back on topic when the ‘topic’ is not really the point of the original article just helps to provide the camouflage that the original author would like. Rather than come out into the open and declare what her real problem with men is she hides behind her ‘concern for children’. If that was her only genuine concern it would come through in her writing

Turn Right Then Left

‘…and you too SJF, (James's initial posts weren't unreasonable).’

I was not criticising the reasonableness - or lack thereof – of James’ initial posts (or the others I targeted). I was criticising their intellectual dishonesty.

You can get on your high horse about how the author SHOULD have done the even-handed gender thing. But you know what? She had absolutely NO obligation whatsoever to do so. And I am sick to death of women authors on OLO being chastised and abused for ‘failing’ to write about men. (Get over it, guys. The universe has other priorities.)

The author was making a very important and REASONABLE point about WOMEN (Yes … women) who find themselves in genuine fear for their children’s physical safety – so much so that they are faced with no other alternative than to incriminate themselves in order to protect their children.

Who would want to spend their lives on the run and face extradition and criminal prosecution if caught, IF they didn’t have good reason?

And if the system is soooo biased toward women, then why would any woman bother to kidnap her children and incriminate herself at all? Why not just sit back and let our supposedly ‘female-biased’ legal system just hand everything to her on a silver plate – kids, house, bank account, investment portfolio and family poodle?

Dr. David Corteguera

'Now, unfortunately, you also appear to have a raging case of Penis Envy.'

Don't worry, Doc. I'm not after yours.

If the Family Law were inquisatorial rather than adversarial, it would simply lead to those women who want to believe that "all men are bastards" accusing the court of being biased. As it stands, they claim it anyway and frequently bugger off overseas rather than accept its rulings.

There is also an aspect of handing over power to the State that I personally find abhorrent. It is readily conceivable that an inquisatorial Court that is obliged to act on "behalf of the children" may in fact act against both parents and hand care of the children to the State, rather than risk being accused of being complicit if a child should come to harm if in the care of a parent. Given the trend in all sorts of aspects of life toward risk-minimisation, I'd say the above scenario is almost a dead certainty. Far better to give the child to "qualified" people in orphanages than take the ckance that a parent may be imperfect.

IOW, it's a stupid idea that cannot possibly replace the current one, at least in this sort of matter.

Meanwhile, Barbara and her fellow manhaters are busily telling lies for women, doing what they can to preserve their self-perceived "right" to the children and the power they represent. After all, "don't you love your kids?"...

I hope this response meets yopur quality criteria, Fractelle.

JamesH In answer to your query I was referring to runner's assertions of the importance of hitting children to teach them not to be violent.

To protect children in the family law system there needs to be a capacity to fully investigate parents' criminal, police attendance and health records and children's health education and child protection records when allegations of violence or abuse are made.
The best predictor of future conduct is past conduct. Where a parent has a history of assault, serious mental illness (ie hospitalisation) alcohol or drug addictions there needs to be serious attention given to children's well-being in their care. At present such histories are ignored, dismissed, not available, seen as not relevant. They should be red flags triggering a requirement to make orders/agreeements which minimise risks to children. There also needs to be a review process to learn how the system failed when children die or are seriously injured as a result of family law system outcomes. The children who are killed in the family law system are at least as important as the dead from the Victorian bushfires and governments should be as eager to learn how to prevent children being killed in this context as they are to prevent bushfire deaths.

"Don't worry, Doc. I'm not after yours."

Getting past your denial is the first step down the road to recovery.

"Who would want to spend their lives on the run and face extradition and criminal prosecution if caught, IF they didn’t have good reason?"

And there it is. In one succinct sentence you have summed up all the evidence I have seen to support allegations of child endangerment by the father. If the gender roles were reversed, and the Dr's diagnosis holds any water, you'd be demanding castration. The mother has committed a heinous crime, that is not just tantamount to child abuse, it IS child abuse, and you are so incapable of assigning her any culpability that you have taken the imaginative leap of assuming there is some hidden dimension to this story where she is protecting the child. Believe me, I have heard your unfounded arguments before, and not just from women. You're whole argument is predicated on the assumption that women are incapable of being selfish, dishonest or irrational. You would paint the men is this thread as being bitter and dispossesed, but believe me, had a father kidnapped his son or daughter i'd be right next to you as you cried for castration (except i'd only by calling for justice...).

phanto,

'If that was her only genuine concern it would come through in her writing'

Possibly. You generally make a lot of sense. But really, don't you think the anti-feminists here are like a pack of wild dogs who can sniff out a real or imagined bias against men from 27.5 miles away? Maybe some people are desperate to find such a bias and so they do. Just putting it out there.

SJF does have a point in that why should every author have to do the 'even-handed gender thing'. It's normally the feminist pc brigade who always want this kind of tip-toeing around to make everything pedantically gender neutral.

Antiseptic,

'Far better to give the child to "qualified" people in orphanages than take the ckance that a parent may be imperfect.'

Excellent point. Now ya didn't think of that now did you to the 'oh we have a better way that will come out smelling of roses contingent.'

LeftBehindFather,
Yep, point taken. A man abducting kids is probably doing it to piss the ex off, or abuse or defile them. A woman doing it is obviously protecting them from an evil man. Pretty par for the course I think.

I'm off now, as I don't like to upset Fractelle as I'm terrified she'll stalk me and try to make me cry for going against her rules.

I'd just like to close by saying THINK OF THE CHILDREN. That's all I really have to say (actually yell, as I'm not female, and by definition a lover and nurturer who would never put myself in front of children) to silence all debate on the topic. Everything I say thereafter is pure and good, and anyone who disagrees with me is a selfish misogynist looking for a gender war.

Of course the author is under no obligation to be even handed in her approach but if your concern is for all children then why wouldn’t you want to be even handed. Is she concerned only for the children who are mistreated by men or also for the children mistreated by women? Is she talking about the plight of women who are trying to protect their children or about the plight of children who need authorities to step in to help them?

All her examples suggest she is concerned about the plight of women but then she says –
‘How much longer can the government ignore the voices of children living with abuse?’
It is not that clear. If she is only talking about the plight of women then she does not have to be even-handed but if her concern is for all children then you would expect that she would want to be even-handed.

The subject is an emotionally charged one and nearly always involves a man and a woman at loggerheads. That is why it can polarize genders and then the gender war gets in the way of solving the problem. If you are going to write about this topic it would be much more productive to eliminate the possibility of inflaming the gender war by writing in such a way that was inclusive and by giving examples from across both genders. If you are not interested in being careful to that extent then you leave yourself open to being accused of some other agenda and such accusations may well be true in this article.

That's a pretty convincing and much though about argument phanto. Not sure it will sway SJF though;-)

Phanto (and others)

‘If you are going to write about this topic it would be much more productive to eliminate the possibility of inflaming the gender war by writing in such a way that was inclusive and by giving examples from across both genders.’

The author is not stupid – although I can’t say the same for the belligerent kneejerk reactions of the male gender warriors here. Don’t you realize that you fell straight into your own trap?

After more than 20 years of living through a vindictive backlash against the threat of a movement of women advocating for women, any woman involved in the highly charged field of gender politics – including, and especially child access – knows the score.

And so does Barbara Biggs.

One of the main rhetorical weapons used by the so-called men’s rights movement in its backlash politics is to artificially ‘even-hand’ the gender landscape by creating a fictitious social environment in which women are supposed to be equal perpetrators in the crimes and destructive behaviours overwhelmingly committed by men (against other men, against women and against children).

I’m glad to see that women advocates are finally waking up to this manipulative intellectual dishonesty, and refusing to kowtow to this fake even-handedness – especially when their past efforts to 'be fair to both genders' just get them either more abuse or dilute the issues to such an extent as to render them ineffectual

Fractelle, mog, Romany, SUNITA

Just a reminder … In all the kerfuffle, it was easy to overlook the link to Barbara’s petition calling for an overhaul of the FCA in its dealings with children:

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/family-court-of-australia-amendments.html

I’ve signed it.

LeftBehindFather

Too many men such as yourself would like to believe that the number one reason why a woman would commit herself to a life as a criminal on the run is simply to spite the father of the child she is kidnapping.

The fantasy that women are willing to ruin their lives to spite men is more than just misogynist paranoia – it’s typical of the male-centric mindset that many men develop in regard to women as a result of patriarchal conditioning. After all, it’s very flattering to think that someone hates you so much that they are prepared to ruin their lives just to spite you.

It’s a male mindset that I see over and over again on these OLO gender threads – that women only exist in relation to men. The pathetic thing is that these men don’t see the egomaniacal aspect of it themselves – or at least, those men who have bought into the MRM’s ‘poor menz’ lie.

David29

My comments to Leftbehindfather also directly relate to your self-revealing attempts to psychobabble me. The premise that a woman would criticize men on a forum such as this because she really wants to sleep with her father is symptomatic of the patriarchal assumption that women’s lives and psyches are (or should be) ruled by men.

I suppose it would offend your masculine ego if I really wanted to sleep with my mother.

SJF,

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Don't displace your sexist notions on me. At what point did I say she ran to spite the father? You assume I care what she wants at all. It's not about HER. This is about the CHILD. I couldn't care less what her motivations are ss long as the're not to protect the child they are irrelevant. Parental abduction is child abuse. If it wasn't done to avoid more serious abuse it's unjustified. I never posited ANY motivation for the mother doing it. None whatsoever. You are the one who is assuming her motivations are altruistic and that the man want's her back. Stop playing the victim and ASSuming women are never cruel, self-centered or irrational and men are. Get off your soap box and stop trying to pigeon-hole me and all "menz". I was raised by a strong, feminist, SINGLE mother so don't rant to me about patriarchy either. I do and have supported women's rights for many years. It is clear to me that without knowing anything about me, or my family, you have assumed that my wife fled me as an abusive husband/father to protect our son as well (no other rational computes right?). Not surpirsing since you did the same with respect to the above article. Not even my own wife has made those claims, she instead lied that I was a completely absentee father. Those are lies that are easily disproven, but it is clear to me that she should have just said I beat her and planned to anal rape my 1 year old baby boy when he got bigger since there are clearly idiots who would believe that in the total absence of evidence simply because a women would never make that stuff up or leave behind a good life without a "good" reason. Now I have no doubt that you will write this comment off as you did the rest so you can go just go back to your regularly scheduled program (no doubt on the Lorena Bobbit channel).

SJF:"a fictitious social environment in which women are supposed to be equal perpetrators in the crimes and destructive behaviours overwhelmingly committed by men (against other men, against women and against children)"

It's your claim that is the fiction. Women, especially "single" mothers and the men associated with them are the largest perpetrators of violence against children according to all the reputable studies in the field, while biological fathers are far less likely to harm their own kids. The only ones making the claim that you do are those with a specifically "feminist" agenda. Of course, you already knew that, so it's just more of your "telling lies for feminism" and the power that comes with being able to hold the children of decent fathers to ransom.

SJF:"their past efforts to 'be fair to both genders'"

Try as I might, I can't think of a single "feminist" text that does that. OTOH, there is a massive body of smear-material aimed at denigrating men produced by writers who claim "feminism" as their guiding principle.

SJF:"the number one reason why a woman would commit herself to a life as a criminal on the run is simply to spite the father of the child she is kidnapping."

People of both genders do stupid things under stress. Once having done it, some stupid things are difficult to simply say "I'm sorry" about. If the stupid thing is to kidnap one's child to prevent the other parent having contact (out of spite or some other motive), then one is trapped in a situation in which to be apprehended is to lose the very thing one aimed to gain. IOW, there is a clear secondary motivation that kicks in once the initial impetus to kidnap has been acted on.

As for the Biggs petition, it's a garbled piece of rhetoric designed to boost her "pro-children" credentials and encourage more women to claim abuse or violence in order to bolster their claim in a divorce case. As such, it's not merely dishonest, it's pernicious. Right up your alley, in fact.

SJF

Thanks for the link to the petition which I have subsequently signed.

A particular phrase in the petition's preamble was the following:

"Enshrine in legislation that parents’ rights to their children must not take precedence over the children's right to be and feel safe."

SJF, Fractelle,

I've tried a couple of times to open that link but it just refuses. May indeed be a China thing as the Firewall concerns kiddy-porn...maybe it just reacts to anything about kids?

Any other way of getting to it?

"I suppose it would offend your masculine ego if I really wanted to sleep with my mother."

Actually you misunderstand your condition and I must now upgrade my diagnosis to one of Massively Raging Penis Envy (MRPE). In these cases the child actually develops her first sexual impulses towards her mother. At this point she realizes that she is not physically equipped to have a heterosexual relationship with her mother. Hence the desire to have a penis, and the power that it represents. She sees the solution as obtaining her father’s penis and develops sexual desire for him.

I'm afraid that MRPE does not respond well to therapy as its sufferers experience such high levels of cognitive dissonance in trying to adopt or understand a broader world view that very little progress is ever made. The only solution I can see for you is a surgical sex change that actually gives you that which you need to feel whole.

Best of Luck,
David

If it please fractelle, I humbly submit the following:

"Enshrine in legislation that parents’ rights to their children must not take precedence over the children's right to be and feel safe."

Yeah, that's really ground breaking of her to include that. With all her concern for children she might have bothered to read, or mention, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, a convention that Australia has been a party to since Jan 16th 1991, which, among many other things, stipulates that spending time with the mother and father is a right of the CHILD. That's correct. It is the child's right to have a maternal and paternal bond, a right which is more important than either parents rights to have access to the child. She may also have read the study I linked to above "Parental Child Abduction is Child Abuse" by Nancy Faulkner, Ph.D (a woman?!), Presented to the United Nations Convention on Child Rights in Special Session, June 9, 1999, on behalf of P.A.R.E.N.T. and victims of parental child abduction. Speaking of intellectual dishonesty, how about arguing for better protections against child abuse while defending an abuser?

I a soooo glad that SJF is really concerned about intellectual honesty.

But it puzzles me? How does she deal with feminist research that is intellectually dishonest?

Or is it that she believes that any said by a woman is truthful and anything said by a man is dishonest.

Problem solved, no need for an intellectual conflict, just disregard any by men as not being valid.

She still has not answered previous questions, like how do we measure 'equality' so that we know when we have achieved it. I could guarantee that even if there was a equal 50-50 split for CEO's and Pollies, feminist would still say that women were not equal and that they were still oppressed.

I wrote about how feminist research firstly expands the definition of dv or personal violence, but when they argue about violence they always fall back to physical violence.

Intriuging as it may seem, by giving fathers shared parenting, would allow for more mothers to partake in the workforce, yet feminism is opposed to this.

It is almost like feminists do not want to give men anything, but expect men to pay.

"But it puzzles me? How does she deal with feminist research that is intellectually dishonest?"

The brief requires the researcher to accept that the original (feminist) proposition is true and to interpret results in such a way as to prove it.

Dishonest? Not if you are to uphold the faith. Anyway there is a good living in it and academics knew who was signing the cheque well before consultants arrived on the scene.

Romany

Just a suggestion... Have you used the link provided in the article itself? It’s down at the end, above the ‘Discuss in our forums’ box.

David29

'Best of Luck,David'

Which of your diagnoses do you wish me luck with?

Wanting to sleep with my father? Wanting to sleep with my mother? Needing a complete sex change? Treating with my raging penis envy? Or treating my massively raging penis envy?

I can't keep up... but I AM enjoying myself.

JamesH,

'Intriuging as it may seem, by giving fathers shared parenting, would allow for more mothers to partake in the workforce, yet feminism is opposed to this.'

Your stunning ignorance of feminism is on display … yet again. For at least 40 years, feminists have been greatly in favour of shared parenting in all its forms - so that they CAN participate more in the workforce and not be so financially or emotionally dependent on self-absorbed husbands and hostile ex's. I would suggest you read more, but I’m starting to doubt if you can read at all.

JamesH, Cornflower, Antiseptic, LeftBehindFather (and Hooleybeck)

There is no point addressing all the humbug distortions you have made of my posts. Even if I DID have the time and the inclination, you would just come up with more pot-and-kettle distortions of your original distortions.

Even if I am addressing you specifically or something you wrote, much of what I write on OLO gender threads is not intended for people like yourselves, who enjoy creating your own fallacies in order to 'debunk' them.

I write more for others here who are interested in looking beyond the traditional paradigms on gender/family behaviour to question the assumptions we make about why things are - in this case ... why so many children end up abused by the very people who are supposed to love and protect them and why the system is powerless to help them.

Some here reject the ‘gender war’ as irrelevant to this topic. I disagree, but not in the way posters like you present it (that Family Law is there mainly to protect the rights of vindictive women … groan). I believe that the socio-political gender-power relationship is at the heart of both the problem of child abuse and the legal system that lets children down.

Similar to women, children occupy a lower, largely disempowered position in a male-centric social hierarchy. Until there is a significant shift in this paradigm, changes to either the rights or legal status of children will be at best ineffectual and at worst destructive.

It took the women’s movement to change the gender paradigms that led to long-overdue rape law reforms in the 70s and 80s. It’s going to take a similar shift to bring about the reforms needed to improve the rights of children and implement a legal system adequate to protect them.

I would write much more about this, but the thread has become too dysfunctional. There is a limit to what someone can say when they are being routinely shouted at.

I'll only further address any one of you if you contribute something helpful.

SJF:"boohoo, you're all mean and I wan't talking to you anyway"

Guess what? Who cares?

If you continue to do as you've done to date and tell lies then I'll continue to point it out. I will not allow you or the other dishonest feminists here get away with your constant stream of misinformation and generalised abuse of men. As an example, from your last post:"posters like you present it (that Family Law is there mainly to protect the rights of vindictive women … groan). Would you like me to go back and find the many times I've specifically rejected that particular straw-man? Thought not, after all, that wouldn't be "telling lies for feminism", would it?

If, OTOH, you choose the honest route, I'd be happy to discuss the subject with you.

Your claim to be a victim is rejected, now go ahead and stand up for yourself instead of whining.

SJF:"children occupy a lower, largely disempowered position"

Especially in "single-mother" households, not in "a male-centric social hierarchy" as you like to put your claim for victimhood.

As it doesn't seem to have sunk in, I'll just remind you that most violence against children is perpetrated by their mother and non-related men associated with their mother, not by biological fathers. I don't believe you're the slightest bit interested in the plight of those children, because you've not once bothered to mention them, merely the lower number injured by their fathers. IOW, yours is a political, ideological position, not a compassionate, caring one.

Just as we thought.

SJF,

"Which of your diagnoses do you wish me luck with?"

My first reaction would be, all of the above, though it's more constructive (and accurate) for you to view your condition as a cohesive whole rather than view each separate symptom as a separate diagnosis. I find it very promising that you are able to keep a sense of humor about it. I myself find it pretty funny.

Cheers,
David

This sequence of postings reveals really interesting social responses to the issue of post-separation child abuse. The first noticeable thing is there is a terrific off-topic shift into each parent being more to blame than the other for everyting.
It leaves me with questions of the 'audience'.
Would a child experience a different quality of suffering if the same abuse was perpetrated by a male parent or a female parent?
Are male parents and female parents differently entitled to abuse children?
Is survival with the loss of parental relationship better for a child than having a relationship with the parent who kills her/him?

mog;"off-topic shift into each parent being more to blame than the other for everyting."

It's not off-topic, because the topic is the author's article, in which she mentions not a single case of abuse by a mother and several cases of the less-common abuse by a biological father.

That biased form of reporting gives an altogether false impression of the likely perpetrator to the casual reader.

Furthermore, by ignoring the abuse perpetrated by mothers, the author shows that her intent is to vilify fathers rather than to protect children.

If you don't agree with her, say so, don't blame me for setting the record straight.

mog:"Are male parents and female parents differently entitled to abuse children?"

According to Barbara Biggs's article here, it seems she thinks so. What do you think?

mog:"Is survival with the loss of parental relationship better for a child than having a relationship with the parent who kills her/him?"

What a stupid thing to say. Firstly, few children are victims of filicide, by either parent, therefore you're trying to generalise from extremes. Do you also favour immediate confiscation of all motor vehicles because some people are dangerous idiots behind the wheel? The vast majority of kids do better with frequent, prolonged periods with both their parents. Secondly, in cases of divorce, it is more frequently the custodial parent or those associated with that parent who will be an abuser. The stresses of parenting alone can be great and the child is always there, as well as being unable to fight back.

Anti-septic name-calling is a juvenile response which reveals a competency gap in your argument.
The article focuses on filicide in post separation contexts.
That is the topic.
At least it is clear that you still don't comprehend that.

Mog,

It is still clear that you have not acknowledged that the only thing you require to take away a father's child is for the mother to say he was abusive. The only thing that has been objectively or even convincingly shown is that a woman parentally abducted a child and took them out of the country. If we can agree that parental abduction is child abuse, the only question that remains to be answered is if that abuse was justifiable in the sense that it was done to avoid greater harm to the child. What I found interesting, though not suprising, is how many of you (notice I did not say women, because men will also do so) assumed she was protecting the child. A year ago I may have made the same assumption, even today the question arises in my mind.

I have read the article the author referred to as the basis for hers. It has even been on my own site dedicated to international parental abductions since before she wrote hers:

http://hagueabductions.com

To my knowledge there has been no credible evidence or even uncredible allegations by anyone but the mother that the child is in danger with the father and we are approaching a year since the kidnapping occurred. If you study parental abduction cases you will see that almost every single one of them, whether perpetrated by a male or female, will allege abuse occurred as a justification for their crime. That is not to say that abuse never occurs, only that the allegation of it is virtually guarranteed and cannot be used as the sole basis of anything.

Intellectual honesty.

I stand corrected about the child sharing bit, but I wonder what group those women who oppose shared parenting so strongly, belong too.

I am going blind so it is really hard to read these days, SJF. Shame the print isn't made bigger in the texts etc.

I think I almost got this intellectual honesty connudrum sorted out.

If someone publish and original piece of research, that is being intellectually honest, anyone who publishes research that contradicts or criticizies that research is being intellectually dishonest.

So in fact research by for example Lenore Weitzman is intellectually honest and those who found her research to be faulty are intellectually dishonest.

Neat!

No need to rethink or to readjust your belief systems.

So Christine Stobla was being intellectually dishonest when she found that feminist texts, contained errors of fact, sins of ommission and errors of intepretation.

There is a process of projection and transference, I cant remember which is which, but basically you accuse another person of doing the things you are actually doing yourself.

For example a racially prejudice person accuses some else of being racial prejudice. So in this case is much easier to label MRA's as being intectually dishonest, than it is to challenge feminist research.

"If mama ain't happy. Nobodies Happy" Michelle Obama.

"has been delegated to the disempowered gender"

"of having the universe revolve around the needs of poor menz."

"Similar to women, children occupy a lower, largely disempowered position in a male-centric social hierarchy"

One of the problems we seem to have here, is about belief systems, for example if a person grows up feeling/believing that they are not worthwhile, then that is the lense through which they will view the world and relationships.

They will follow a personal script, which ignores any evidence that does not support their original position.

Another example is that if someone grows up being abused, it is possible that they then will extrapolate that to all or the majority of human relationships.

I find it immensely exasperating that I have written several posts here that focus on the general rights of children in this society. Yet, rather than anyone picking up on this and respectfully discussing it with me, I’m am STILL being hit with lengthy responses to what people think I’m supposed to be saying, for no reason other than that I’m a feminist.

Hardly any posters here have been able to get into the mindset that children exist IN THEIR OWN RIGHT and that they hold a disadvantaged position in the power hierarchy – one that deems them to be the chattels of their parents or guardians (although this is changing). Criminal and/or ‘disciplinary’ assault on children by a parent or relative is about the only form of assault that our society still condones – both socially and legally. This is a major stumbling block in achieving any gains in the fight against child abuse.

Why is this so hard to mentally grasp? I have used the position of women only as a point of comparison, to show that once a social paradigm shifts – e.g. gender attitudes to rape – then legal and political changes tend to follow.

This is where my interest in the gender war – in relation to this topic – begins and ends. The fact that the author used female examples has overwhelmingly dominated this thread - when it is largely irrelevant. Women tend to focus on women - so what? I am not interested in all this father’s rights versus mother’s rights crap (although I admit I have allowed myself to get side-tracked into that scrum, mostly in response to being misrepresented). If others are concerned with this, that’s fine. But please leave me out of it

David29

There are a lot of pyschobabble theories about - including good old castration anxiety - to supposedly explain why so many people irrationally fear feminism or any form of women's advocacy, but I have refrained from going down that road with you. It may one day be relevant to another OLO thread, but not this one.

JamesH

Sorry to hear about your failing eyesight … and my little jibe about reading was not meant to be taken seriously. I hope you still have many good reading years left.

Leftbehind father says to me:
"It is still clear that you have not acknowledged that the only thing you require to take away a father's child is for the mother to say he was abusive"
This is a piece of propaganda. It is wrong. It is a false belief.
Research Report 15 of the Australian Institute of Family Studies (http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/pubs/resreport15/main.html) found the most common response by the courts to allegations of abuse was no response. That is their orders were no different from orders in cases where there were no allegations of abuse.
Mothers who allege abuse face being labelled as falsely alleging, vindictive, seeking advantage, being an unfriendly parent. They risk court costs, fines, imprisonment and loss of contact if they do not abide by court orders. The abducting mother of this thread can expect that she will have her child removed by Police, placed in foster care and she will be imprisoned and have supervision whenever/if she sees the child again. There are no rewards for her or the child here.
Certainly the misogynist posters on this thread have given vociferous examples of the kinds of furious hatred directed at women who challenge violence or abuse against them. I guess this post will attract a fresh round of sound and fury. As usual

"..found the most common response by the courts to allegations of abuse was no response"

No, the courts hear people peddling bullcrap everyday and tend to develop a talent for recognizing it. I did not say the courts believe any abuse allegation I said, "It is still clear that YOU have not acknowledged that the only thing YOU require..." (emphasis added)

"Certainly the misogynist posters on this thread have given vociferous examples of the kinds of furious hatred directed at women who challenge violence or abuse against them."

lol.. I love reading your convoluted exercises in vocabularic profoundity.. I have a good $5 word for you: sophistry

"I guess this post will attract a fresh round of sound and fury. As usual"

Not really, aside from pointing out the above distortion in your response i've lost interest in anything else you have to say. Not that I will play the fractelle card and tell you not to post anymore. Feel free to drone on as long as you'd like :)

SJF:"I find it immensely exasperating that I have written several posts here that focus on the general rights of children in this society. Yet, rather than anyone picking up on this and respectfully discussing it with me, I’m am STILL being hit with lengthy responses to what people think I’m supposed to be saying, for no reason other than that I’m a feminist."

And I've done the same several times in this thread, yet you have chosen not to engage with honesty on the subject, but prefer to regurgitate the same politically and ideologically motivated crap. I'll tell you what: you acknowledge that the author of the article on which this thread is based was wrong to mention only men as abusers and I'll not mention the whole feminism thing again in this thread as long as you don't. somehow I think you're going to find that a difficult thing to do.

SJF:"Hardly any posters here have been able to get into the mindset that children exist IN THEIR OWN RIGHT and that they hold a disadvantaged position in the power hierarchy"

I have and the response from you was silence, while the somewhat dimmer mog wasn't up to anything but accusing me of misogyny for daring to suggest that some mothers are not perfect. You specifically linked the abuse of children with the cause of feminism ("male-centric social hierarchy"), which has formed part of the political activism of feminists since the early days.

SJF:"The fact that the author used female examples has overwhelmingly dominated this thread - when it is largely irrelevant."

It is not irrelevant if the aim is to stop the abuse of children. How can it be irrelevant to ignore the largest class of perpetrators because they happen to be female? To claim that is so is to imply that their victims (their children) are worthy of less concern.

mog, thank you for the link to that report. I have copied some of the key findings below. I will add a commentary of my own at a later date, as this will be my post limit for today.

From the AIFS report:

More than half the cases in the FCoA and FMC in both samples contained allegations of adult family violence and/or child abuse.

More than half (57%) of the cases judicially determined in the FCoA contained allegations of actual physical spousal abuse, and many allegations looked to be at the “severe” end of the spectrum. Thus, allegations of violence appeared to be “core business” in family law disputes that went on to litigate in the FCoA and such allegations of violence were largely of a serious nature.

In the general litigants and judicial determination samples taken separately, allegations of spousal violence were most likely to be made by applicant mothers, followed by respondent mothers, then applicant fathers, with respondent fathers being the least likely to make such allegations. Where fathers made allegations, mothers were also likely to do so or to have done so.

Three layers of ambiguity are suggested by the data: (a) there is little evidentiary material to support allegations (especially in the general litigants sample); (b) there are fairly high rates of non-response to allegations of spousal violence—except for cases in the FCoA requiring a judicial determination; and (c) there are generally low levels of detail in the allegations and low levels of detail when responses are made.

A scarcity of supporting evidentiary material suggests that legal advice and legal decisionmaking may often be taking place in the context of widespread factual uncertainty.

Mothers’ allegations of child abuse by fathers were less likely to be accompanied by evidence than was the case for mothers’ allegations of spousal violence. (Few fathers raised allegations of child abuse.)

Allegations of spousal violence or parental child abuse accompanied by evidence of strong probative weight appeared to influence court orders. Without such evidence, allegations did not seem to be formally linked to outcomes.

The point about the most common response by the courts to allegations of abuse being 'no response' is to highlight that there is no investigative process in the family law system which currently can systematically take account of family health records, police attendance records, courts and corrections records and child protection records. Even when courts have clear evidence of serious violent offending it does not ordinarily result in orders which protect children from the offenders. Courts can and do order children to the unsupervised 'care' of convicted child sex offenders and the 'care' of psychotic homicidal parents. This points to 2 areas for necessary reform. 1. A need for the family law system to be able to scrutinise parents closely and have access to all relevant records when there are any concerns of violence or abuse raised by any party to gain evidence of their capacity to parent safely and 2. a willingness to make orders which have regard to the evidence of safe/unsafe parental capacity and to prefer to protect the child when there are risks to the child's safety. This would, of course, apply to both mothers and fathers.

SJF I wasn't offend by your quip about not being able to read, it is a fact of life.

From the report:"More than half the cases in the FCoA and FMC in both samples contained allegations of adult family violence and/or child abuse."
"many allegations looked to be at the “severe” end of the spectrum"

Does anyone really believe that "severe" violence is a genuine factor in more than half of all marriages ending?

From the report:"(a) there is little evidentiary material to support allegations (especially in the general litigants sample);"

That speaks for itself, I think. If the frequency of allegations is higher than would seem likely and few of the allegations have any evidence behind them, then it is likely that the false percentage is high.

This is borne out by the next line from the report:"A scarcity of supporting evidentiary material suggests that legal advice and legal decisionmaking may often be taking place in the context of widespread factual uncertainty."

In other words, lots of women tell lies about abuse and the people in the system realise that.

From the report:"Mothers’ allegations of child abuse by fathers were less likely to be accompanied by evidence than was the case for mothers’ allegations of spousal violence."

Those like mog and Barbara Biggs would like us to believe that this lack of evidence is due to a lack of interest from the system in collecting it, yet the report clearly places the onus on the allegor to provide evidence to support their allegation. This is in clear accord with the law. An accusor must always be able to provide at least some evidence to support their claim before anybody in authority will investigate it and no court should use it in making a decision.

From the report:"Allegations of spousal violence or parental child abuse accompanied by evidence of strong probative weight appeared to influence court orders. Without such evidence, allegations did not seem to be formally linked to outcomes"

Just as I said above.

mog:"there is no investigative process in the family law system"

Quite right. There is an entire department (DOCS) charges with doing just that. If a parent is concerned about a child being abused, they should call in DOCS. Mind you, that can lead to the allegor being found to be the abuser, so I'm not surprised at the reluctance.

mog:"A need for the family law system to be able to scrutinise parents closely and have access to all relevant records when there are any concerns of violence or abuse raised by any party to gain evidence of their capacity to parent safely"

See above. Why should an unsupported allegation by one parent be sufficient for the other parent to be placed under close scrutiny? Why should the FLC take on the role of DOCS?

mog:"a willingness to make orders which have regard to the evidence of safe/unsafe parental capacity and to prefer to protect the child when there are risks to the child's safety. This would, of course, apply to both mothers and fathers."

In my experience, that is exactly what the Courts do. I spent 7 months separated from any contact with my children while a DVO matter was heard, based on entirely unsupported claims from their mother. When the claims were shown to be baseless, the DVO was withdrawn.

Where I get angry about people like you is that you seem to think that separation is of no consequence if it is the father who is subject to it. Being kept from children you love is an awful punishment. "All's fair in love and war" is the old expression and it is something that it seems women going through divorce have taken to heart. Get over it.

Most men aren't child abusers or wife bashers and the constant stream of false allegations simply makes it more likely that one who is will slip through the net. Instead of trying to get the FLC to take on DOCS's role in protecting children, you should be encouraging a more responsive, better-resourced DOCS or its equivalent.

septic I have never said it is of no consequence for fathers to not see their children. Long distance drivers, military, international workers share similar pain of separation from their children.
You are right that DOCS needs many more resources and I do advocate for this often. One state recently reported that 28% of family court reports were ever investigated. There weren't enough workers to even look at the other cases. Children are routinely failed by state child protection and routinely failed by family law. So they are killed, injured abused and damaged while adults like septic can only ever do the 'what about me' wail, and the 'you women are all out to be mean to men' bawl so all the focus is on bleating moaning males while children's safety is reduced to the 'all women lie' mantra. Get over yourself septic. Your persistent attacks on women make it unsurprising that your ex found you abusive.

" Your persistent attacks on women make it unsurprising that your ex found you abusive."

I knew it was only a matter of time till one of you went there. Yes, antiseptic, it is no wonder your wife found you "abusive" w/ your persistent "attacks".

You have just validated every point made in this thread about false allegations of "abuse". When words like abuse, attack, violence and rape start to be used in contexts like these it is clear we have abandoned any vestige of rationality or reason. You lament the courts and social services lack of response amidst allegations of domestic violence and abuse while robbing those very words of any meaning whatsoever. Your inability to differentiate actual abuse from a mildly heated debate on an internet forum makes it all the more likely that the woman who is actually abused is not believed. After all was it really abuse or did a debate just get to the point where the woman had no credible arguments left. Your bandying about of these terms every time you can't sustain an argument on its own merits, endangers women and children every bit as much as the actual abusers.

On the subject of how trivially SOME women take accusations of abuse:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgxwPU0W-Wg

Adele Horin managed to write a article on child abuse without managing to make it gender specific.

Reading her article reminded me about the boy found in a suitcase, floating a lake. He was murdered by a parent during a access visit.

Leftbehindfather, I read the work of a psychologist who wrote about how some people hang onto their opinions so strongly and tie their opinions to their sense of self, that they feel that if a person disagress with their opinion, then that person who disagrees with their opinion, does not like them.

They feel/believe that in order to be validated as a person, their opinions must also be validated. Invalidating or not agreeing with their opinion is seen by these type of people, as a personal attack.(Misogyny)

So because some of us blokes are challanging the opinions (rigid) of feisty feminists, they then call us mysogynists, when all we are doing is not agreeing with them.

Plus labelling someone as being a mysogynist, is usually just an attempt at trying to make the other person feel guilty, or bad about themselves. thus stopping any further debate or discussion.

I think if mogg's ever bothered to read Spreading Misandry. Nah that is a bad idea, Some people just cant cope with reading material that might just be a little challanging.

Babara, in todays paper is a story about Jarrad Roberts who died from an ear infection.

Jarrad was in the care of his mother.

Where is your outrage about this childs totally preventable death?

Clearly a mother would never allow her child to get an ear infection that progressed into a fatal condition. Women are always rational and have children's best interests at heart. I have not read the article, but I do not need to. There must have been abuse on the part of the biological father.

SJF said "Who would want to spend their lives on the run and face extradition and criminal prosecution if caught, IF they didn’t have good reason?"

ie the mother MUST have had a good reason to let her child die of an easily preventable complication, and that good reason MUST have been child abuse/domestic violence.

QED

In SA in the last 3 weeks a man shot his ex dead - shot police and was shot dead. A man stabbed his ex wife and 2 year old son dead in front of his other children. A man stabbed his current partner and 2 week old daughter to critically injure them then stabbed himself and his 2 year old son to death.
So much for the numbers of dead at whose hands.
Clearly the mother of the ten year old was seriously neglecting her children. What a shame the family never got the help the boy needed.

Hey mog, that sounds like 'Men who abuse are bad and need punishment, but women who neglect need help'.

Houellebecq,

Please stop "attacking" and "abusing" mog.

The mother will likely face criminal charges and be punished - apart from living with the fact of a dead child.
The boy could have been kept alive if there had been an effective intervention - and there is no evidence at this point that she intended her son to die.
This is in sharp contrast to the man who shot his partner, the man who stabbed his ex and son and the man who stabbed his partner and two children and himself - these actions were intended to cause death or serious injury. There is emerging evidence that the killer in the most recent event had pleaded for help with his mental illness before the slaughter. It would have been wonderful if somebody had helped him and detained him in a secure facility before he killed. The mental health system is as useless as the child protection system.

Unless SA is quite different to other places in Australia I think Mog is playing gender games with a small set of publicised killings. The stats on fatal assault from reports of child death review teams don't show the same pattern which Mog's post suggests. My impression is that women tend to be identified as the perpetrator more often than men (probably because children spend more time in their care).

I've not been able to locate information on perpetrators from the SA Child Death Review team report however the NSW reports do provide that info. On my copy of Acrobat the page lists as 75 but shows 58 on the page. Some of the commentary has been left off due to the word limit - read it on the link.

http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/public-health/health-promotion/injury-prevention/at-risk-groups/cdrt-report.pdf
"
Table 22 presents the causes of death of the 14 children who died as a result of assault.
Table 22 Assault: cause of death by gender and age at death
Age Gender Cause of death Alleged perpetrator
7 weeks female Possible shaken baby – inquiries continuing unknown
3 months male Head injury father
6 months female Suffocation/smothering mother
8 months female Shaken Impact Syndrome mother’s defacto
11 months female Drug overdose (methadone) mother
20 months female Carbon monoxide poisoning mother
3 years female Assault by sharp object 14 year old male
5 years male Multiple injuries (burns, bruises) and bronchiolitis mother
9 years female Strangulation mother
16 years male Assault by gun unknown
16 years male Assault by blunt object unknown
16 years female Assault by blunt object unknown
17 years male Assault by sharp object unknown
17 years male Assault by gun unknown

The assaults of the children aged 16 to 17 years were similar to adult homicides. These were characterised by more violent methods of killing (shooting, stabbing) and the use of weapons. The alleged perpetrator was unknown. In contrast, the younger victims of assault died as a result of smothering, poisoning, head trauma or exposure/abandonment and the alleged perpetrator was usually a family member.

http://www.ccypcg.qld.gov.au/pdf/publications/reports/annual_report_dcyp_2007-2008/All-Deaths-AR-Chpt11.pdf

http://www.aifs.gov.au/nch/pubs/sheets/rs4/rs4.html

R0bert

R0bert:"I think Mog is playing gender games"

No! Really?

Let's face it, this topic is nothing but a trite rehash of the usual "all men are bastards, all women are victims - oh, yeah and don't you care about the kids" crap that has worked so well for the feminist movement for years, largely because most men aren't bastards, most women aren't saints and we all care about the kids.

What's changed and what the entitlement-junkies like mog and Barbara Biggs and some of the other toxic feminists haven't grasped, is that the men who aren't bastards are getting mighty sick of the constant refrain and have started to ask questions about the rest of the feminist message that has hitherto been accepted with little examination.

Those questions, asked here and elsewhere, increasingly show the message to be bereft of anything more than the "all men are bastards" mantra and that, when challenged, that mantra is all that is available.

In Western societies, there is effectively no discrimination, despite there being differences in outcomes. In some third-world countries, especially those involved in wars, things are very bad for women, which I'm sure that mog and Barbara Biggs are quick to acknowledge. I'll bet they're nowhere near as quick to get up and help do something about that situation for those women. After all, without those women to put into UN statistics which can then be bandied around to "prove" "all men are bastards", they've got very little to back up their claims of entitlement. They can all console themselves with another latte and tell each other what a fine job they're doing "raising consciousness" or some other piece of gobbledegook and get on with sucking at the teat of a system that places their "entitlements" at the top of the priority list.

Hypocrisy is never a good look.

It is hilarious that the'what about me' crusaders accuse me of playing gender games. I selected the deaths on the basis of the last three weeks of murders in SA. Six dead, two children - big game huh.

It is good however to see some engagement with data. That's progress. You note that the majority of child deaths by mothers are in the context of young infants mental illness amd substance abuse. Have a look at the AIC Homicide monitoring program and note that another large group of child deaths is from fathers in the context of domestic violence, separation and post-separation.
Both contexts of child deaths are awful and urgently need system reform.
Now it is over to you guys for another tantrum about how terrible women are and how guys are picked on and how it isn't fair and so on. Off you go.

mong:"You note that the majority of child deaths by mothers are in the context of young infants mental illness amd substance abuse"

Rubbish, they're in the context of people who have a conveniently available punching bag that can't fight back when Mum and the new boyfriend get pissed and decide to do some "teaching"; or Mum's had a bad day with Centrelink; or Dad's not paid the CS on time, or some other, usually stress-driven triviality.
As always, your position is "all men are bastards, all wmen are saints" and you'll regurgitate as much dishonest disinformation as you can throw up to try to convince yourself of that. I do so hope you're not in a position of sole authority over some poor, helpless child.

mong:"large group of child deaths is from fathers in the context of domestic violence, separation and post-separation."

the domestic violence aspect is routimely claimed in any contentious divorce and I suspect that sometimes becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. When one is treated as having offended simply for the making of an accusation, there can seem little reason not to actually offend, even if no offence has ever before been committed. Besides, there are also many such deaths caused by women in the same context, yet very few DV allegations are made by divorcing men.

I don't expect you to grasp any of that, dear. Just please do try not to take out your frustration on the kids.

'Let's face it, this topic is nothing but a trite rehash of the usual "all men are bastards, all women are victims - oh, yeah and don't you care about the kids" crap that has worked so well for the feminist movement for years, largely because most men aren't bastards, most women aren't saints and we all care about the kids.'

That's just so funny.

Houellebecq:"That's just so funny."

The word you're seeking is "ironic". No, not the Alannis Morriset version...

Actually No. Nice that you're pleased with yourself though.