Tim Haries – In The Name of Love
Never hate your ex more than you love your children.
That is our creed.
But there are times when we are tested. Times when anger turns to hate and hate turns to vengeance. Yet all we really long for is the return of our children and the restoration of the sacred bond between father and child.
As I have said since 2001 when I started Fathers4Justice, losing your child in the secret family courts is like a living bereavement.
Many dads commit suicide. Others walk away when faced with an impenetrable wall of opposition and a cruel, secretive court system that will leave you buried alive in a pit of despair, with no children, no home, no life and no hope.
Others courageously fight on. Some may achieve a positive outcome, but as many fathers find, relationships with our children – channeled as they are through the ever present gatekeepers – are fragile and can be broken easily at any time.
Then there are those rare few; men who have said their prayers. Men of courage. Men of steel.
Tim Haries is one of those men.
Tim is a man who has managed to turn his anger into a positive force for change. Tim has transformed debilitating kryptonite into his own internal superpower.
A quietly spoken father with a steely determination and a rare moral courage, Tim made clear his commitment to act after he had been given a 91.14 preventing him from continuing his legal battle to see his two daughters.
He had no voice in his country, no representation in his parliament and no rights in law to see his daughters. Tim had run out of road. He either walked away from his children – or took a leap of faith.
Tim hadn’t seen his daughters Katie and Scarlett in four years. He been stripped of his children and been left for dead by his ex-wife and the legal system. His ex was aided and abetted by the Jehovah’s Witnesses who were complicit in the excommunication of Tim from his family and the use of his children as human shields.
In fact his own flesh and blood had been instructed to rain a biblical storm of fire and brimstone down upon their own father. In a troubling case of alienation – made more extreme by the sinister cult-like overtones – Katie said she wanted her own father ‘cast from the earth’.
What child says something like that? What makes a child hate their father so much? What makes a child turn their daddy into a monster?
Because mummy and her church had told her what to believe. Because they were supported by the courts. Because four long, painful years of hateful indoctrination had demonised her father and taught his daughters to believe in the religion of hate, not love.
Before Tim had launched his protest, he had already served his sentence. Four years forced separation from his children was surely suffering enough.
But if he had remained invisible, his truth would have remained hidden.
By following the actions of the suffragettes, he decided he would petition the Queen. A letter could be easily ignored, but the writing of the word ‘help’ on a portrait of the Queen would catapult his case to global attention and shine more light on our country’s dirty little secret – our barbaric family justice system.
And so it passed.
On the day after his protest at Westminster Abbey where he sprayed help on the Queen’s portrait, supporters declared that our children’s lives were worth more than any painting. They are priceless.
I have had many conversations with Tim since that day. Our entire focus has been on ensuring he had the best legal representation and organisational support we could provide. On 28th January I met with Tim and Nadim Safdar in London to discuss the possible outcomes from the trial, including the option of a hunger strike.
Having been present at various meetings with Tim’s legal team and attended one hearing and two days of his trial, it was clear to me that the Judge had a prejudicial agenda from the outset and that a custodial sentence was a serious possibility, regardless of the recommendations from the probation service. This was a kangaroo court and the sentencing would be politically motivated.
We explained to Tim that he had already done more than enough to raise attention about his case. Yet Tim expressed a passionate belief that he needed to continue his protest, his way, about his children, until his case is re-opened and he could see his children again.
And the only option to protest he had if he was imprisoned, was a hunger-strike.
We respected his wishes and briefed him on the strict protocols for a hunger-strike (only water, an independent doctor, personal declaration supplied to the prison) and the way this would need to be managed in prison, relying on an expert briefing by Doctor Mike Stroud, a physician and senior lecturer in medicine and nutrition at Southampton Hospital.
I can’t disclose the rest of the protocols or conversations with Tim as these were private, other that we agreed a specific strategy, accepting that other people would express their support in different ways. Our main priority is working with the legal team to launch an appeal that will see him released at the earliest opportunity. Whether Tim adheres to a hunger strike or not is a matter for him and he enjoys our support regardless.
Since the events of last week, many people have said that his actions are extreme. That Tim’s protest is extreme. That Fathers4Justice is extreme.
But what is ‘extreme’? I would argue that nearly 4 million children living without their father is extreme. I would argue that secret courts where 200 children a day are separated from their fathers is extreme. I would argue that for children to have no right in law to see their fathers is extreme. I would argue that the £44 billion cost of family breakdown is extreme.
I don’t remember anyone being injured through Tim’s actions? I don’t recall any threats or abuse? This was a father pleading to the head of state for help. Pleading to the Queen whose coat of arms hangs on a wall behind every judge who separates children from their fathers. Do we really place a greater value on the price of a painting than the fate of our own children?
And why is it that the media lavish such sycophantic praise on feminist protest groups like Femen and Pussy Riot, yet treat men like Tim Haries with such disdain in their grudging coverage.
The degenerate actions of His Dishonourable Judge Alistair McCreath (in a biting twist of black satire, ‘McCreath’ actually rhymes with ‘death’) were as predictable as they were perverse. His spirited defence of the indefensible family courts was a disgrace. His manipulation of the jury and the entire process had one end and one end only – the incarceration of Tim Haries.
And this from a Judge who had previously refused to jail a paedophile and who represented a rotten judicial system that makes a mockery of justice by refusing to imprison mothers who break court orders with impunity.
In sentencing McCreath said, “The opportunity to have close access works of art was greatly valued,” and that it would be, “a sad day when works of art can only be viewed from a distance or behind barriers.”
The bitter, black irony of his comments passed McCreath by.
Forget works of art. Tim doesn’t have access to something far more valuable than any painting – his own children – and the outcome of his protest pales into insignificance to the the living hell of not being able to see your own children because of the secret family courts.
Tim Haries is not a criminal.
He is a prisoner of conscience, for believing that mothers and fathers should have equal rights and that children deserve the best of both their parents, not the worst.
He is a political prisoner because the court were always going to ignore the probation service and deliver their own brand of injustice because of what he stood for.
And he is a prisoner of his gender, trapped by fate, not because he posed some threat to his children, but because of the institutional discrimination that would tear him apart from his children because he is a father and not a mother.
But he was also the greatest servant of the court during his trial.
He was a whistleblower, exposing the truth which is hiding in plain sight behind the closed doors of our secret family courts. Courts which have created a generation of fatherless children, children who have unleashed an epidemic of anti-social behaviour and crime on our country. Children who will tragically end up in front of foolhardy, ignorant judges like McCreath in twenty years time in a self-fulfilling prophesy because he cast the die that made them when they were deprived of the love and care of their fathers in British courts.
I say that if Tim Haries is a criminal, then we are all criminals.
If Tim Haries is an extremist, then we are all extremists.
And if we are extremists, then we are extremists for love.
The British government has stolen a man’s children, his life and his love. Now they have stolen his liberty. Tim’s case is your case. It is my case. Anybody who has blood in their veins would fight for their children. That is why we must all act in whatever way we can. Respectfully and with dignity as Tim has.
You can lock a man up, but you can never take away his love for his children. When Tim pulled a picture of his daughter’s from his pocket and told the judge, ‘It’s not about me…it’s about them…’ that picture spoke a thousand words and broke the hearts of every person in the court room.
So I ask you, in the name of love.
In the name of his children.
Free Tim Haries.
Matt O’Connor, Founder of Fathers4Justice
Equal Parents. Equal Love.
Tim is currently in Wandsworth Prison. Please send your messages of love and support to Tim Haries today at:
Prisoner Number – A4278DD
Tim Haries
Wandsworth Prison
Heathfield Road
Wandsworth
London
SW18 3HS
Tim is currently in Wandsworth Prison. Please send your messages of love and support to Tim Haries today at: Email A Prisoner
http://emap.prison-technology-services.com/
