Aa
An article on divorce and custody-comments please?
I saw this article, and having had my children abused molested etc and the courts do nothing because as one police officer put it. Judge Olsen (not the real name) would never take a child away from his/her mother?
Divorced from reality
By MINDELLE JACOBS
***@****
I inadvertently stoked the ever-simmering gender war last week when comments I reported from a domestic violence conference unleashed a fusillade of male outrage.
From California to Massachusetts, American men flayed me for painting a picture of male abuse while ignoring the flip side - that women are also perpetrators. Canadian ex-husbands and fathers also poured out their wrath.
Well, as I e-mailed back to many of my readers, don't shoot the messenger, guys. I didn't endorse the remarks of the head of the U.S. National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, who told a women's shelter conference that some leaders of fathers' rights groups are abusers who wield their positions like an ideological hammer against women.
Incendiary comments are going to get reported. And I have clearly acknowledged in past columns that spousal violence is perpetrated by both men and women. But there is no denying that women are much more likely than men to be the victims of the most severe physical abuse and spousal homicide.
Still, the men want their say so let's proceed. I received countless e-mails from wounded men (both physically and emotionally) who said they'd either been assaulted by unhinged wives or falsely accused of either harming their wives or molesting their kids.
"I'm a guppy in a sea of really big and angry fish," wrote one man who said he was falsely accused of sexually abusing his two-year-old daughter.
Men wrote about being assaulted by their wives - with no subsequent charges by the police. They complained about the nasty games women play to cut them out of their kids' lives.
Former Edmonton lawyer Grant Brown has heard it all. He quit practising law in March after only four years as a lawyer because he's sick of dealing with what he describes as a dysfunctional family law system.
"I couldn't hack it anymore," says the 50-year-old who's writing a book called Deadbeat Judges.
"The thesis of my book is that judges actually create the deadbeats. They make such harsh orders against fathers and give fathers no rights," he says. "A lot of (dads) just give up."
Several of his former clients have signed waivers allowing Brown to write about their cases. He's had female clients who were unfairly treated by the courts but he says it's mostly men who get shafted.
Police, prosecutors and judges are generally harsher with men in domestic abuse cases, says Brown. And, he adds, judges rarely punish women who violate court orders.
He recalls appearing before the same judge four times in two months because of a woman who wasn't giving her ex access to the children. The judge warned her there would be consequences for breaching a court order - but he never followed through.
"Dads can spend thousands and thousands of dollars trying to see their kids and the judges do nothing to make it happen," says Brown.
To some extent, judges are faced with an impossible task, he acknowledges, because the court system is adversarial. "Everything hinges on proving that the other parent is a badass of some kind."
He'd like to see mandatory mediation in bitter divorce cases as well as a legal presumption of shared parenting.
"The money should be going to the kids instead of paying for the lawyers," says Brown. "The more you can cut lawyers out of it, I think the better off the system would be."
If a woman's ever tossed in jail for the weekend for refusing her ex court-ordered access to the kids, let me know. Now that's a story.
Divorced from reality
By MINDELLE JACOBS
***@****
I inadvertently stoked the ever-simmering gender war last week when comments I reported from a domestic violence conference unleashed a fusillade of male outrage.
From California to Massachusetts, American men flayed me for painting a picture of male abuse while ignoring the flip side - that women are also perpetrators. Canadian ex-husbands and fathers also poured out their wrath.
Well, as I e-mailed back to many of my readers, don't shoot the messenger, guys. I didn't endorse the remarks of the head of the U.S. National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, who told a women's shelter conference that some leaders of fathers' rights groups are abusers who wield their positions like an ideological hammer against women.
Incendiary comments are going to get reported. And I have clearly acknowledged in past columns that spousal violence is perpetrated by both men and women. But there is no denying that women are much more likely than men to be the victims of the most severe physical abuse and spousal homicide.
Still, the men want their say so let's proceed. I received countless e-mails from wounded men (both physically and emotionally) who said they'd either been assaulted by unhinged wives or falsely accused of either harming their wives or molesting their kids.
"I'm a guppy in a sea of really big and angry fish," wrote one man who said he was falsely accused of sexually abusing his two-year-old daughter.
Men wrote about being assaulted by their wives - with no subsequent charges by the police. They complained about the nasty games women play to cut them out of their kids' lives.
Former Edmonton lawyer Grant Brown has heard it all. He quit practising law in March after only four years as a lawyer because he's sick of dealing with what he describes as a dysfunctional family law system.
"I couldn't hack it anymore," says the 50-year-old who's writing a book called Deadbeat Judges.
"The thesis of my book is that judges actually create the deadbeats. They make such harsh orders against fathers and give fathers no rights," he says. "A lot of (dads) just give up."
Several of his former clients have signed waivers allowing Brown to write about their cases. He's had female clients who were unfairly treated by the courts but he says it's mostly men who get shafted.
Police, prosecutors and judges are generally harsher with men in domestic abuse cases, says Brown. And, he adds, judges rarely punish women who violate court orders.
He recalls appearing before the same judge four times in two months because of a woman who wasn't giving her ex access to the children. The judge warned her there would be consequences for breaching a court order - but he never followed through.
"Dads can spend thousands and thousands of dollars trying to see their kids and the judges do nothing to make it happen," says Brown.
To some extent, judges are faced with an impossible task, he acknowledges, because the court system is adversarial. "Everything hinges on proving that the other parent is a badass of some kind."
He'd like to see mandatory mediation in bitter divorce cases as well as a legal presumption of shared parenting.
"The money should be going to the kids instead of paying for the lawyers," says Brown. "The more you can cut lawyers out of it, I think the better off the system would be."
If a woman's ever tossed in jail for the weekend for refusing her ex court-ordered access to the kids, let me know. Now that's a story.
i agree with rockrose and want to reinstate that it's urgent people stop hooking up with just any-old-whos-it. thinking ahead in all aspects of life is what wise people do. until you're wise, use contraception
SS - it does seem that the family unit is in crisis. If you're in the middle of it, statistics don't seem that relevant, I guess.
I'm going to INSIST - statistically - that men are much more responsible for violence than women are.
I guess statistics aren't really all that relevant when you're talking to an individual who is suffering from abuse. It all gets lost in the mix.
Best wishes.
I'm going to INSIST - statistically - that men are much more responsible for violence than women are.
I guess statistics aren't really all that relevant when you're talking to an individual who is suffering from abuse. It all gets lost in the mix.
Best wishes.
I know one guy who was shot by his girlfriend.
I know a professor of sociology @ LLCC in Springfield who admitted in her office that she used to drug her ex.
Just look @ the damned department of justice statistics. I am not even the mood to argue something so asinine @ the moment.
What is funny is domestic violence percentage wise among lesbian couples is higher than any other mix.
Rockrose: As a domestic violence victim who out massed my wife but was run over and absorbed blows for years and was isolated from MY friends. I normally love ya, you know it but, respectfully go amuse yourself. Me usually have even smaller support groups, and when you go to the hospital they laugh at you and then they ask you if you really want to put your wife down. MEN CANNOT LEAVE because then their kids become the victims and they will not get to see or rescue them.
Women can and do maim torture, abuse, and kill men in some of the messiest most gruesome ways possible.
You have know idea how offended I am. I could only hope that you could experience a fifth of what I have to protect my kids and still survive.
I know a professor of sociology @ LLCC in Springfield who admitted in her office that she used to drug her ex.
Just look @ the damned department of justice statistics. I am not even the mood to argue something so asinine @ the moment.
What is funny is domestic violence percentage wise among lesbian couples is higher than any other mix.
Rockrose: As a domestic violence victim who out massed my wife but was run over and absorbed blows for years and was isolated from MY friends. I normally love ya, you know it but, respectfully go amuse yourself. Me usually have even smaller support groups, and when you go to the hospital they laugh at you and then they ask you if you really want to put your wife down. MEN CANNOT LEAVE because then their kids become the victims and they will not get to see or rescue them.
Women can and do maim torture, abuse, and kill men in some of the messiest most gruesome ways possible.
You have know idea how offended I am. I could only hope that you could experience a fifth of what I have to protect my kids and still survive.
SS - there is a dynamic with violence against women, vs. violence against men, in marriages that I think is important.
It's not the punch to the face that is the worst of this whole thing. It's the inability to escape, and the grave fear of deadly violence.
I don't know where the stats are coming from, specifically, but I know just from living on this earth that women don't tend, as a gender, to chase down their men and beat them to death if they leave. Sometimes women do run them over with cars, or hire hit men - but the hit men, in my estimation, are usually for financial gains and not an offshoot of a domestic violence issues. But, in those cases the husband's lives ARE threatened although they may never ever have experienced any episodes of intimidation or violence from their wives.
How many men in these relationships are truly chronically battered - say, more than 5 broken bones (including facial bones) in a period of 5 years? Almost zero men, do you think? Almost zero are chronically severely battered.
The reason is - men can usually leave. Classically, women who are in abusive situations can't. They have 3 kids, no income, and a husband who has isolated them from any and all friends so that they literally feel trapped. And they ARE trapped.
The dynamics are different. No one should hit guys over the head with rolling pins, that's true, but marriage violence is a different thing coming from a woman.
If you want to talk allegations of sexual abuse, that's an entirely different story.
It's not the punch to the face that is the worst of this whole thing. It's the inability to escape, and the grave fear of deadly violence.
I don't know where the stats are coming from, specifically, but I know just from living on this earth that women don't tend, as a gender, to chase down their men and beat them to death if they leave. Sometimes women do run them over with cars, or hire hit men - but the hit men, in my estimation, are usually for financial gains and not an offshoot of a domestic violence issues. But, in those cases the husband's lives ARE threatened although they may never ever have experienced any episodes of intimidation or violence from their wives.
How many men in these relationships are truly chronically battered - say, more than 5 broken bones (including facial bones) in a period of 5 years? Almost zero men, do you think? Almost zero are chronically severely battered.
The reason is - men can usually leave. Classically, women who are in abusive situations can't. They have 3 kids, no income, and a husband who has isolated them from any and all friends so that they literally feel trapped. And they ARE trapped.
The dynamics are different. No one should hit guys over the head with rolling pins, that's true, but marriage violence is a different thing coming from a woman.
If you want to talk allegations of sexual abuse, that's an entirely different story.
Sammy, it's true that you can't always tell, and sometimes marriages fail when they appeared to be good choices at the beginning. So.
Then, there are a LOT of people who conceive who never ever considered getting married - in fact, they really don't like the person much at all who is the other parent of their child. Then there are people who get married knowing full well (and so does their family and friends) that their spouse is completely incompatible and would not make a good parent.
But yes, as you say, best laid plans sometimes go awry. But did you know that couples who live together before getting married are twice as likely to divorce? Twice.
So there are patterns to look for. It's patterns I'm talking about, that are useful to think about, not each single case because that would take us all day to judge every single case of custody failures in the world.
Then, there are a LOT of people who conceive who never ever considered getting married - in fact, they really don't like the person much at all who is the other parent of their child. Then there are people who get married knowing full well (and so does their family and friends) that their spouse is completely incompatible and would not make a good parent.
But yes, as you say, best laid plans sometimes go awry. But did you know that couples who live together before getting married are twice as likely to divorce? Twice.
So there are patterns to look for. It's patterns I'm talking about, that are useful to think about, not each single case because that would take us all day to judge every single case of custody failures in the world.
I can see women being able to emotionally abuse a guy - women are good at that b/c it's our nature to understand psychology a little bit better than a guy - but frankly I don't see how a female could really beat up a guy. Do you have links to support your statement about current abuse stats?
From what I've seen with custody battles, usually they happen when one parent is trying to hurt the other parents b/c they got left. The children are used as pawns. It's the only thing left to hurt the other person with.
People do seem to have children with other people without thinking. I see it all the time. Then, when the relationship doesn't work out, they get mad and act like children themselves. "Why doesn't s/he love me anymore? Wah Wah Wah". If two people are acting like adults they will instead say "Well, sorry this didn't work but it was nice being with you for a while but it's time to go our seperate ways. Good luck with life and if you ever need a reference, let me know."
From what I've seen with custody battles, usually they happen when one parent is trying to hurt the other parents b/c they got left. The children are used as pawns. It's the only thing left to hurt the other person with.
People do seem to have children with other people without thinking. I see it all the time. Then, when the relationship doesn't work out, they get mad and act like children themselves. "Why doesn't s/he love me anymore? Wah Wah Wah". If two people are acting like adults they will instead say "Well, sorry this didn't work but it was nice being with you for a while but it's time to go our seperate ways. Good luck with life and if you ever need a reference, let me know."
current abuse stats are almost equal according to the departnent of justice (with the caveat) that many police departments do not report dv from women, and under the violence against women act (VAWA) arresting men is subsidized arresting women is not in the US.
You can't tell at the start that a relationship is not going to survive. You can't even tell for sure 10 years in. At the time our first child was conceived my wife and I had been married for 7 months, living together for almost 3 years, and had been a couple for 7 years - we were pretty damned sure we were a solid couple that would be together forever. This was hardly rushed. We still felt that way 6 years later when we decided to go for a 3rd child. Please don't make sweeping statements about people rushing to have kids in unsuitable relationships - that's just not true in many, probably the majority, of cases.
On the upside, in our case at least, we both love our kids too much to get acrimonious with each other and use the kids as bargaining chips. At the moment it looks like we will continue to live under one roof as a family. Even if that doesn't work out we will work out arrangements between us, there's no need to get the courts involved.
I can't recall any specific cases, but I believe the courts tend to be the same way in the UK. Don't hear much about physical abuse by wives (because it never happens, or because it's not reported?). The typical presumption in a separation is the kids stay with the mother unless there is a convincing reason otherwise, but also the father will get reasonable visiting rights unless there is a convincing reason otherwise.
On the upside, in our case at least, we both love our kids too much to get acrimonious with each other and use the kids as bargaining chips. At the moment it looks like we will continue to live under one roof as a family. Even if that doesn't work out we will work out arrangements between us, there's no need to get the courts involved.
I can't recall any specific cases, but I believe the courts tend to be the same way in the UK. Don't hear much about physical abuse by wives (because it never happens, or because it's not reported?). The typical presumption in a separation is the kids stay with the mother unless there is a convincing reason otherwise, but also the father will get reasonable visiting rights unless there is a convincing reason otherwise.
I agree, that the judicial system DOES favor the children staying with the mother. Although, I do NOT think it's fair. The judges are biased BIG TIME-the old fashioned ones anyway. Some of the women don't deserve the children because, sometimes, they are more screwed up than the father is. The judges have a hard time accepting the fact that the children are sometimes better off with the fathers. The men don't get a fair shake, then the battle becomes long and drawn out, and financially draining. Which, in and of itself, is emotionally damaging to the children.
I am not a parent, though, but I sympathize with my friends that have had to deal with this!!
I am not a parent, though, but I sympathize with my friends that have had to deal with this!!
Court battles are only a symptom of the problem. The problem is that incompatible couples are getting pregnant and having babies. That's the problem. I don't need to tell you that in your case, you're living it, but that's what's causing this. I've followed your story and am sorry you're having to deal with this.
But the thing is, courts aren't causing this. They're standing by wringing their hands trying their best to remedy the disasters adults make of their relationships and their children's lives. That's the problem.
Once we solve that - somehow get people to wisely choose their marriage partners and wisely decide when to try to have babies, there will be no need to courts to try to get through the difficult maze of people's inability to form relationships and take care of their kids.
But I do agree, men tend to be a little ignored by the courts. On the other hand, one of my dear friends had a divorce experience in a court that you would absolutely not believe it was so onesided and ridiculous. So it does go both ways.
But the thing is, courts aren't causing this. They're standing by wringing their hands trying their best to remedy the disasters adults make of their relationships and their children's lives. That's the problem.
Once we solve that - somehow get people to wisely choose their marriage partners and wisely decide when to try to have babies, there will be no need to courts to try to get through the difficult maze of people's inability to form relationships and take care of their kids.
But I do agree, men tend to be a little ignored by the courts. On the other hand, one of my dear friends had a divorce experience in a court that you would absolutely not believe it was so onesided and ridiculous. So it does go both ways.
Never had it taken away. I wasn't married in the case of my son and in Illinois in that particular case default custody goes to the mother, even if she never took care of the child during a relationship.
Plus if you move enough as she has it can be hard to pin a person down to one venue.
Plus if you move enough as she has it can be hard to pin a person down to one venue.
I have known men who get custody of their children. One guy I know got custody b/c his ex-wife was mentally ill.
Why did they take custody away from you?
Why did they take custody away from you?
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