There is a better way

This is an update to one of the earliest posts I ever wrote on this blog, back in 2006, some 500 or more rants ago.

If you recall, Molly/Misbah was a little girl who ran away from a council estate in Scotland where she lived with her mother to be with her father in Lahore, Pakistan, sparking an Interpol search.

It subsequently transpired that the child wanted to live with her father and other siblings there, and was very unhappy at the prospect of being with her mother in poverty and deprivation in Scotland.

There was, at the time, concerns about the mother's drinking too.

In the end, Molly got to live in Pakistan with dad, but one wonders whether that would have been the case had the evidence not stacked up so strongly that it was the best place for her. Had she not expressed her own desire so dramatically to leave, had her mother not been drinking, had her father not been affluent enough to fight the case, it could have been very different.

Anyhow, the update is that she has now, as a near-adult, moved back to Scotland to be with her mother and one of her sisters. Reading between the lines (Mum's had a child by another relationship taken from her custody) the girls are looking after their mother rather than the other way around.

But what's crucially important about this development is that it came about as the result of out-of-court negotiations between all the parties. IE the dad Sajad Rana could have sat in Pakistan and ignored all the mother's claims, but he didn't. He facilitated her visits and permitted his children to return to be with her when they expressed that interest.

There is a better way to resolve custody disputes than the traumatic and dramatic adversarial court system that put this family through the ringer over 3 years ago. And these people have found that way. It is to talk, mediate, negotiate and put the children first at all times.

I congratulate Sajad Rana for showing grace by allowing his children to be with their mother, and I congratulate Louise Campbell for having grown into a responsible relationship with her children and her co-parent.

And I'm delighted for little Molly/Misbah, who I suspect will never again feel the desperate need to run away sparking an international manhunt because she was so unhappy about the situation created by her parents' break-up.

Many couples can learn from the example here. The lessons are myriad - mothers who vindictively use their children against their exes may find those children come to reject them. Parents who show dignity and respect their children's need to see their other parents are rewarded with love and loyalty. And no one need enrich the parasites of the legal profession in resolving the issues that arise when a relationship breaks up.

There is a better way. Perhaps it's time we all migrated to it.

Sympathy for the daddy devil at last?

Obviously, men are evil and wrong. We already knew that.

Even when women murder their own children in cold blood, it's not their fault but that of some man, somewhere, who drove them to it by callously leaving them, or having the audacity to sleep with someone who isn't a crazy child-killer.

Yup, somehow, it's always a man's fault.

We've seen this in some of the commentary about this sad case, where an upper middle-class affluent mum lost the plot and killed her two toddlers.

Not one article has failed to mention that her husband left her insane ass before Christmas, as if that was the causative reason for the death of these two poor kids, and not their crazy knife-wielding mother.

And plenty of online comment has sought to exonerate her entirely in the context of the allegedly clear and obvious distress she was under due to the break up.

Well, what about the distress of the father? He's had to answer a knock at the door from the plod and hear that his children have been killed by their mad ma. He'll be struggling to contain his grief right now, wondering why he didn't take them with him when he split from their mother.

Maybe in future, the next time a crazy bitch decides that her children must die in order to hurt her ex-partner, the media and the public will lay blame where it actually belongs.

When Arthur McElhill burnt his family to death, no one would have dared suggested or implied that somehow his utterly innocent partner, who tragically died along with her children, had any responsibility for his despicable act of murder.

So why the eagerness to transfer some of Fiona Dennison's blame onto her former partner? Does anyone seriously believe, as he mourns his two children, that he isn't suffering enough right now?

This is how the patriarchy myth unfolds in such circumstances. Since, obviously, our society is cruelly dominated by the evil patriarchy, it stands to reason that it is the patriarchy and not the woman with the knife in her hands and the bodies of her children in the boot of her car who is to blame.

For some people, not to mention the legal system, mummy's always right, even when she's a latent killer.There is no court in Ireland or Britain prepared to grant sole custody to a father unless the mother is already in jail or a chronic substance abuser.

One hopes that one day people will see through these double standards. Hopefully one day we will mature to the point of Scandinavian nations, who rightly see parenting as a joint task performed by two people - mother and father.

In the meantime, there is a single glimmer of hope for devil daddies. Britain's bringing in a right to six month's paternity leave for new dads. It's not much. In fact, it's pathetic in the context of what children and fathers ACTUALLY need in terms of new legislation.

But it's a start.

Dermot Ahern and Fianna Fail still hate fathers

It appears that Justice Minister Dermot Ahern and his Fianna Fail cronies still hate fathers.

In a parliamentary question, Deputy PJ Sheehan asked the Minister to explain why unmarried fathers are still forced to go and queue with junkies in order to get their names on their child's birth certificate, and why they are still required, unlike married fathers, to apply to courts to be guardians of their own children.

Inevitably, the answer from the powers-that-be, petrified as they are of the single mummy mafia, is that no change is forthcoming.

In fact, according to our esteemed minister, the current situation is a 'comprehensive' solution, based on 'the welfare of the child'. Which is nonsense, clearly.

It is prehistoric to discriminate between fathers on the basis of their marital status in this manner, and I look forward to the day when someone challenges this in court or via equality legislation.

But I have little or no faith in the Irish legislature, which has a lengthy track record of ignoring the needs of fathers and their children for each other, in reforming itself.

Given the latest reiteration of hardened attitudes and ignorance from the Justice Minister, one can only conclude that they still hate fathers, and still fear the mommy mafia, who are entrenched in opposing rights for fathers despite their odious rhetoric about equality when it comes to demanding ever more state funding for child care, single mommy allowances, free education and back to work allowances and so on.

One day, likely at the insistence of the EU, we will eventually concede in Ireland the fact that fathers are immeasurably beneficial to the development of their children and that the status quo we have espoused for so long amounts to nothing short of human rights violations and child abuse.

In the meantime, we still have to put up with crap like lesbian lovers being granted parental rights over fathers, like fathers being accused slanderously of various crimes by bitter mothers in closed courts, and like children being denied equitable parenting from the moment of birth on the basis of their parents' marital status.

In the meantime, because Dermot Ahern and his cohort are so lazy and fearful of a feminist backlash, fathers will have to continue to queue up with the junkies to get on the birth cert, plead with courts to know how their children's health and education is proceeding and face ongoing denial of their and their children's rights to justice.

Fuck you, Dermot Ahern. I genuinely hope that you find yourself in a family law court one day, slackjawed with shock because the other half has accused you of sexually abusing your kids in order to get back at you for divorcing her, or because she simply doesn't want to have to deal with you at all.

I hope you enjoy the endless months of expensive legal applications, the monitored visits with social workers in tow, and then ultimately the success of paying half your wages in maintenance to live in a rented bedsit and see your kids in McDonalds every other Saturday.

It's not normally a prospect I'd wish on my worst enemy. But I wish it upon you, Minister for Injustice, because it is exactly that fate that you, in your ongoing refusal to reform Irish family laws, have condemned other fathers to indefinitely.

PQ and answer below:

Guardianship Rights.

77. Deputy P. J. Sheehan asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform his views on the guardianship rights of non-marital fathers; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [14417/09]

Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform (Deputy Dermot Ahern): Existing legislation makes extensive provision for unmarried fathers with respect to their children.

Under the law as it stands - section 6A of the Guardianship of Infants Act 1964, as inserted by section 12 of the Status of Children Act 1987 - an unmarried father may apply to the court to be appointed a guardian of his child. Alternatively, where there is agreement between the parents, they can make a statutory declaration under section 2(4) of the Guardianship of Infants Act, as inserted by section 4 of the Children Act 1997, conferring on the father the status of guardian.

Under section 11 of the 1964 Act, a guardian may apply to the court for its direction on any question affecting the welfare of the child, including directions as to custody and access. In addition, the section provides that the unmarried father of a child, even if he is not a guardian, may apply to the court for orders on custody and access. Section 3 of the Act provides that, in deciding on an application relating to the custody, guardianship or upbringing of a child, the court shall regard the welfare of the child as the first and paramount consideration.

These legislative provisions are comprehensive. They permit the court in cases of disagreement to decide on arrangements for the child’s care and upbringing having regard to the child’s best interests. The vast majority of applications by unmarried fathers for guardianship are granted by the court.

The reality of deadbeat dads

Last week, Minister for (in)Justice Dermot Ahern answered a parliamentary question in the Oireachtas about the inequality suffered by Irish fathers.

His answer was that existing legislation was perfectly acceptable in ensuring the relationship of children with their fathers following parental separation and divorce.

This is utter bollocks as everyone in the country knows. Unmarried fathers have to actually apply to be considered parents of their own children.

Fathers who separate from their children's mothers, no matter what the reason (short of maternal drug abuse or imprisonment) can expect to lose their homes and children in the family law courts.

All this inequality is based on two pillars of untruth - the outmoded prejudice that Mommy knows best, and the myth of the deadbeat dad.

That's why I must pay tribute to today's Daily Mail, whose reactionary politics would normally preclude it from depicting campaigning fathers as anything other than Spidey-suit clad loons.

Their article by writer William Leith is a superlative testimony to the reality of separated fathers' lives.

It should be obligatory reading for the single-mom agitators, who would rather see taxes spent on third party childminding rather than see legislation implemented to ensure children receive proper upbringing by both their parents equitably.

It should also be read by ignorant, complacent men in power like Dermot Ahern, who is only a marital separation away from doing the McDonalds weekend parenting shift himself.

Dads have fewer rights than lesbian lovers

Irish fathers be warned.

According to a court ruling yesterday, the one third of you who are not married to the mothers of your children have fewer rights than a lesbian in a relationship with your child's mother.

In a preposterous ruling that has massive implications for 30% of Irish fathers, Mr 'Justice' John Hedigan ruled yesterday that a family of two women and a child was no less of a family than an unmarried man and woman with a child.

And then he ruled against permitting the father of a child guardianship of his own flesh and blood, because of the poisonous relationship between the father and the two lesbians.

Let's just tease this one out, because the implications are rather profound.

In Ireland, if you are not married, and you father a child, you have no de facto rights. You are obliged to seek those rights of guardianship, access and custody via the family law courts, which are held in camera, meaning that what is said in those courtrooms cannot be repeated, either in libel cases or in other formats like the media.

In other words, you could go to court to gain access to your child, only to be called for example a paedophile or a drug addict with no basis in reality, and be denied a relationship with your child.

And now, thanks to the most recent ruling yesterday, you can be denied a relationship with your child because the mother has shacked up with another woman and they don't want you involved!

This story will inevitably be spun as some sort of victory for equal rights for gay couples. It isn't. It's a defeat for fathers.

It's the story of a father denied a relationship with his son, a child he fathered, made up of half of his genes, because of the caprice of a lesbian couple and the blind stupidity of the Irish family law system, which favours everything and everyone over father's rights.

And it's the story of a little boy denied a relationship with his male parent because his mother is vindictive and because courts are shit-scared of doing anything that could remotely be spun as homophobic.

Conclusion: It's alright to deny human rights to people as long as they are children or fathers in Ireland.

Supreme Court ruling today

Lost among all the important events of the day, like the Sopranos finale, was an interesting ruling from the Supreme Court.

The birth mother of an infant was permitted the right to continue to appeal for guardianship and joint custody of her fourteen month old child, which the father wishes to remove to Australia for at least a year.

The father, who is in a gay relationship, had sought to take the child to the ends of the earth with his gay lover, but the Supreme Court has ruled in a majority 2-1 decision that he must at least wait until the mother's court appeals to have the rights to see and know her own child have been heard.

Ridiculous? Of course it is. No mother would ever be treated like that in Ireland. It never happened. Only it did, sort of. Swap the genders around and you have the real story.

What I find bizarre is that the father, as this RTE report reveals, has had to go all the way to the Supreme Court just to be permitted the right to ASK for rights to know his own child, before the child's mother and her lesbian lover whisk the infant off to Australia.

One day, perhaps, we might eventually see some equity in parenting in this country. But that dissenting judge's opinion in the Supreme Court today indicates that it won't be any day soon.

Vote for Parents' Rights

Voters in four constituencies in Ireland will get the chance to vote for parents' rights in the forthcoming election after the Fathers Rights-Responsibility Party became the state's newest official political party this week.

Candidates include former MEP candidate Liam O'Gogain, a veteran campaigner for shared parenting and founder of campaigning organisation Parental Equality, and Alan Beirne, one of Parental Equality's leading members who came to public prominence when he featured in RTE's groundbreaking documentary series on divorce some years back.

Unlike our current Taoiseach, who had wealthy pals to buy him a house and bankroll his marital separation, many divorced and separated fathers in Ireland suffer real financial hardship when their relationships break down.

And unlike our current Taoiseach, they do not always gain unlimited or even any access to their children following separation.

The creakingly antique laws relating to parenting in Ireland are predicated on the outdated belief that a woman's place is in the home and the children's place is at her apron-strings.

Hence the phenomenon of so many children who are now being raised in Ireland without meaningful influence from their fathers. Around 40% of all births in Ireland are now to unmarried parents, but what those many fathers often do not realise is that the state gives their relationship with their children absolutely no protection.

They are not granted automatic guardianship of their children, and if they split with their children's mother, they must petition for access via the courts. They must also seek 'custody', that odious phrase with all its connotations of children as possessions.

Instances of bitter women denying fathers access to their kids, and being facilitated in doing so by our outdated legal system, run into the thousands. In fact, Irish fathers face the worst discrimination in Europe.

The adversarial, Kramer Versus Kramer, format pits mother against father on a queered playing pitch which ensures only that fathers must empty their pockets to finance their former partner's lives, while being simultaneously unable to have meaningful relationships with their children.

The result is that we are raising an experimental generation of children with no paternal input into their lives. Forget the media lie of deadbeat dads. We have a deadbeat system, and it is no wonder that it results in an ASBO generation where the Department of Social Welfare has become husband to lone mothers and father to their children.

The Fathers Rights-Responsibility Party advocate a mediated, shared parenting system that benefits all, especially the children.

To all voters in constituencies where their candidates are running, I urge you to offer these candidates a preference in the forthcoming election, a first preference if possible.

That way, you can send a message out to the incoming government, whoever they may be, that it is time we dragged our legal system out of the dark ages for our children's sake.

What is the law for?

I read in the Irish Daily Mirror a heart-rending tale of a Belfast mum who has been separated from her only child.

Her bloke took the child and legged it to his homeland of Algeria, whence there is no chance of his extradition.

Dawn Andrew's helplessness in the face of the fact that her child has been effectively abducted from her makes you wonder - what is the law for if it can't prevent things like this occurring, or at least fix them once they've happened?

Anyone who remembers the Chancery opening of 'Bleak House' by Charles Dickens will recall the physical and metaphorical fog that surrounds it. The Nineteenth Century British law court was a cold, bewildering house for the common man to find himself in.

In those days, there was one law to protect the rich, and no law for the poor except the aforementioned 'Don't fuck with the money people' law.

Divorce, as another Dickens novel depicts it, was unknown for ordinary people. They had to stick together in shitty marriages even though it was hundreds of years since one of their kings had slaughtered his way through a series of wives, divorcing some of them and even founding his own religion accidentally as a result.

Of course, these days we can get a divorce in most civilised countries. It didn't come through some respect for the rights of the individual, though. It came through the feminist movement, which saw divorce, like contraception and the torching of lingerie, as part of the armoury required to establish the liberty of women.

Now, in many places, women are still no more than chattel. Try walking through Mogadishu or Tehran in a bikini and see what happens if you doubt that. But we don't often hear a lot from feminists about the legal rights of the sisterhood when the sisters happen to be dark-skinned, Muslim and from outside the Western World.

Instead, they're keener on tweaking the laws in Western Europe and North America to protect the rights they gained for themselves and to prevent the overhaul of antique laws here that give them an artificial advantage over menfolk.

As a singular example, I offer child custody. Four decades or more since the countercultural wave of feminism, I still hear no outcry from women about why men don't get to look after the children after divorce or separation.

I do hear them demanding ever more state funding for creche and kindergarten places, where working mommy can leave her little one in the care of a third party all day. And I hear them demanding the house from departed Dad to raise the kids in. Not to mention a stipend of his wages from here to eternity, no matter whose fault the separation was.

But I don't hear any calls for the radical overhaul of child custody and family laws from that quarter. Why? Because the old patriarchal assumption that raising kids is women's work suits them on this occasion.

Now, men moved over in the workplace to accommodate women in the last century. Sure, it took a few millennia. Sure, it probably only happened because women got to vote, then were needed to work in factories because men went to war yet again. Men are dumb, they like fighting and they kept women suppressed for a long, long time. We know this already.

But men love their children, and cannot understand why, after four decades, the feminist movement and women in general have decided to fail their kids by refusing to move over in the home and accommodate men who want to look after their kids.

I've met guys who separated from the mothers of their children and had to move into a one room flat or back with their parents in their Forties and even Fifties because Mom got the house in the separation, because they had kids, and well... kids should go with mom, don't they?

Not necessarily true. There are endless statistics to indicate that children raised by single mothers do worse at school, are more likely to become involved in delinquency, drugs, alcohol abuse and get in trouble with the law. This is not to say that there aren't great people raised by brave and steadfast women on their own. But the trends indicate that raising your kids in a one-parent atmosphere can be deleterious to their upbringing.

But it gets more interesting than that. Not many people realise that children are many, many times more likely to be sexually abused by the new partner of their mother than they are by their father. This fact gets lost in screaming tabloid tales of men who preyed on their offspring.

Even more interesting is that when children are raised with their father as sole parent, they tend to do better than average on all of the same indices that their peers raised by Mom do worse at. Like school performance, academic achievement, avoidance of substance abuse or lawbreaking.

Don't believe me? You don't have to. You should dip into Adrienne Burgess' book 'Fatherhood Reclaimed' and read her research for yourself. A lifelong feminist, she set out to do a number on deadbeat Dads who leave their partners and kids in the lurch to go drinking and whoring.

Instead, she happened across the biggest social scandal in our modern times - the inflicted divorce of children from their fathers by women and the antiquated legal system that still assumes Mom knows best.

Her book should have caused an outcry when it was first released a decade ago. Instead, it was ignored, and we raised a generation of ASBO-achieving hoodies.

And those deadbeat Dads - a term incidentally that is way past its sell-by-date now? Well, in Britain and Ireland many of them are trying and failing to get to see their children, unable to force the mother to facilitate their relationship with their kids even with a court order, because no judge wants to be seen in the press sending a Mommy to jail.

But dare he miss a maintenance payment, there's a court order on his property, and the relevant government agency will be docking cash from his payslip.

Other dads are unable to even establish where their children are, after their mothers skipped the country with them in tow. Thousands spent on detectives and trips to foreign countries looking in vain for their children, trying to guess their height, their look now they're older.

But the mainstream media would rather depict endless stories of distraught Mommies like the one above, who stupidly got involved with someone from a fundamentalist Muslim background and a dusty foreign land, then were gobsmacked when he didn't return to their council flat with the kids after a holiday in Dar al-Islam.

We are told that Mommies are the victims, not Daddies. Daddies are cash cows to be milked and ignored. Except when they are morons in superhero outfits getting in tabloid trouble.
And people wonder why the male suicide rate is through the roof.

We need a radical overhaul of our legal system in this regard or we need to rethink what civilisation means. We are involved in a massive and unprecedented experiment involving the mass deprivation of fathers for children. The early results are in, and it is not an experiment that we should continue.

If this mass shortchanging of the next generation is not sufficient to convince the powers that be to change the duplicitous, overbalanced and secretive legal system on the issue of childcare, then perhaps men should start converting to Islam and take their little ones on an extended holiday to Algeria.

If it doesn't rectify injustice, but institutionalises it instead, what's the law for anyway?