Fathers4Justice Update – November 2011
For over a decade, Fathers 4 Justice has fought to ensure fathers play a fundamental role in the parenting of their children after parents separate. With the support of tens of thousands of fathers, mothers, grandparents and even children, we have campaigned to ensure that the best parent for our children is BOTH parents.
Yet 1 in 3 children now grows up without a father. You only need to look at the youth involved in the summer riots to realise how many of these young men and children desperately need the love, care and discipline of a father in their lives.
The Family Justice Review report on family law published in November 2011 reaches some astonishing conclusions which will feed the epidemic of mass fatherlessness and condemn tens of thousands more children to losing contact with their fathers with catastrophic social consequences.
In a detailed response to David Norgrove, Chairman of the panel, F4J Campaign Director Nadine O’Connor wrote:
- This was a review the Conservative Party committed to scrapping before it was elected in a coalition government, saying it was not ‘credible nor far reaching enough’ in terms of its remit. The reports primary function was to look at procedure, not principle.
- The review panel was not impartial – it excluded parents and users of the system.
- The report has rejected the testimony of over 10,000 parents submitted by Fathers 4 Justice.
- The report supports secret courts and rejects transparency and public accountability.
- The report rejects a parents right in law to see their children.
- The report rejects claims of gender bias despite 93% of residencies being awarded to mothers
- The report rejects the principle of equality and shared parenting, saying it was ‘not in the bests interests of the child’.
- The report states that grandparents ‘can be a risk to their grandchildren.’
- Yet the report acknowledges that no records have been kept on the outcomes for children. How can the Family Justice Review panel know what is in the ‘best interests of a child’ without empirical evidence?
- The report fails to address the massive increase in the number of warring parents going to court and the impact government cuts to legal aid will have in the increase in the number of unrepresented parents going to court.
- On the issue of delay, F4J says delay is caused by through the systemic incompetence of organisations like Cafcass who have been repeatedly condemned by Ofted and the court system itself which is run by an ‘unelected, unaccountable and unsackable judiciary operating in complete secrecy.’
- F4J says the courts are for criminals and are entirely inappropriate for dealing with family cases.
- F4J is calling for a full, independent public enquiry into the Family Courts headed by Sir Bob Geldof and former Home Secretary David Blunkett.
David Norgrove’s report is a charter for the ongoing abuse of children yesterday, today and tomorrow. The configuration of the panel is based on the incestuous relationship between the judiciary, lobbyists and an ideologically driven industry built on conflict and the destruction of families.
The review is content, somehow, for the status quo to remain. It does not use the language of outrage or urgency, but language spoken with the ears of vested interests in mind. It has excluded parents from the panel as the system excludes parents from the process and it’s vision is filtered through the distorted prism of public law where decisions are made on behalf of children by politicised and ideologically driven organisations.
It rejects the principle of equality between mother and father, scrapping any plans to introduce what we call ‘shared parenting’ which would ensure children retain the love and care of BOTH their parents and grandparents. As a result tens of thousands of fathers and grandparents will be be forcibly separated from their children in our brutal and secretive family courts. It even states there is no bias. If that is the case, can they explain why 94% of residencies are awarded to mothers and 50% of all contact orders for fathers are broken?
Perhaps the greatest travesty though is that the people responsible claim to be acting in the ‘child’s bests interests’ whilst failing to keep any records on the outcomes for the children passing through its doors. It’s a cruel, fraudulent and bogus claim, a wicked deceit made without a shred of empirical evidence whatsoever. It is the lie at the heart at family law they use to excuse the inexcusable.
This review is a monstrous sham and a bureaucratic exercise in improving the efficiency of injustice. It doesn’t even begin to address the crisis in family law
From Victoria Climbie to poor Baby Peter whose natural father was denied access to him with fatal consequences, we fail children again and again. It is a national disgrace – our children deserve better than this.
As a country we can’t keep telling fathers to have equal responsibility and not give them equal rights. And we can’t expect our children to grow up as well-adjusted adults when we consistently treat them in such an appalling way.
We all know it. We can all see it. Join Fathers 4 Justice and do something about it.
Matt O’Connor, Founder, Fathers 4 Justice
