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Why deliberately alienating a father from his child is domestic abuse

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Mark Brooks, chair of The ManKind Initiative that supports male victims of domestic violence says it’s time that separated mothers who use their children to control and abuse their ex are recognised as perpetrators of domestic abuse.

The ManKind Initiative recently responded to the Home Office’s review to make domestic abuse laws tougher by creating a specific offence that included coercive control in an intimate relationship.

It can be argued and may have that there are already laws covering this including stalking and harassment legislation so why would should there be new laws? It is a fair point but to ensure there is clarity for the police, prosecutors and juries that coercion was an act of domestic abuse we took the view that it needed to be spelt out.

The key features that we put in our submission were to call for the inclusion, definition and recognition of a number of key issues that are male victim centric. For far too many fathers across the UK these themes are all too familiar, yet unrecognised. As if they are taboos and anti-PC so you are not allowed to say anything, but the ManKind Initiative has never been afraid of speaking truth to power.

The three themes we demand are included:

1)             It will reduce the ‘believability threshold’ for male victims to the same level for female victims. This is broadly because while the statutory sector will recognise physical injuries on a male, they will not so readily accept or recognise non-physical ‘controlling or coercive’ behaviour on a man.

2)             The threat and actual use of false allegations of domestic abuse is itself a domestic abuse crime. This also includes the threat and actual use of false allegations of child abuse.

3)             Parental alienation by the parent with “custody” (normally the mother) when couples separate

On the last point, the charity believes that where a family court has issued a contact order that provides for a parent (normally a father) to have prescribed contact periods with his children and that there is a clear pattern where the contact order is deliberately broken and repeatedly so, this should be classed and recognised as a ‘controlling and coercive behaviour’.

It should therefore be deemed as domestic abuse. This is because it ‘regulates the everyday behaviour of the victim’ and also ‘punishes the victim’. As the Home Office domestic abuse definition includes partners who have been in an intimate relationship, we believe this will apply.

The effect of repeatedly breaching contact orders is that it forms a pattern of control and coercion by the perpetrator (the person with custody of the children) and the victim (non-custodial parent). At one level, this includes the continual and purposeful disruption of the life of the non-custodial parent. This ranges from the continual last minute cancellation of agreed appointments (agreed by the Family Law court) for child contact, to the constant need and cost of going back to the Family Law court to enforce already agreed contact orders. This controlling and coercive behaviour will also have a negative effect on the children and the relationship they have with the non-custodial parent.

Our view from the experiences on the helpline which takes 1500 calls every year is that the threat and use of false allegations and the use of children as pawns are becoming “weapons of choice” for female perpetrators of domestic abuse. We recognise it and fathers recognise it – our job is to ensure the justice system recognises it too.

—Photo Credit: flickr/Mike Licht

Mark Brooks is Chair of The ManKind Initiative, a charity that helps and advocates for male victims of domestic violence. Follow them on twitter @ManKindInit.

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The views expressed in this article are not necessarily the views of the insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to to join the conversation about men, masculinity and manhood. Our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

Why I staged a father’s rights protest against “real family” statue

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Bobby Smith is a lorry driver who campaigns for fathers’ rights. Last week he made headlines by staging a protest against Birmingham’s new “real family” statue that features two mums, two sons and no dads. Here he explains why.

—This is article #51 in our series of #100Voices4Men and boys 

In September I spoke with Nick Clegg about how men are treated differently to women in the family courts simply because of their gender. I explained all the details of my case to the Deputy Prime Minister and cases of other people I know. He seemed to listen and begin to understand that men really are getting the short end of the stick.

Then he agreed to be photographed in the Feminist T-shirt. At this point I realised there is no hope for my generation and maybe I should give up hope.

About a week later I saw in the national news Gillian Wearing’s “Real Family” Sculpture being unveiled celebrating “A family that is not nuclear”. For me this was the final straw. Over the past four years I have been excluded from my children’s lives completely, simply because I was not needed anymore. The government have done nothing to help me or my children.

This statue embodied everything about my situation and was, in my view, paying homage to the fact that after seperation children are only seen as needing the mother. The father is optional. I decided I had to go to Birmingham and do something about this.

I prepared myself for verbal abuse 

I was joined by a friend, Carol Wheeler,  who has also experienced the family courts. Although she’s a mother,  she was adamant she wanted to come and protest about this statue. I thought at the time that she is probaly the only woman who objects to it. I was soon to learn that in lots of women are just as offended about this as the men I know.

We arrived at the statue at around 8 am on Saturday morning, I immediately put pictures of me and my two Daughters on the faces of one of the mothers and the two children and covered the remaining mother with a white sheet. The reason behind this was that if it is so acceptable to depict a real family with no father then there should be no problem with the exact opposite.

My intentions were to take a picture of this set up then when the police arrive to hold onto the statue for as long as possible in a non aggressive manner. This statue would be here for hundreds of years with no father, but for that day whoever saw or photographed it would see it in the way it should of been, inclusive of a father.

I expected to get a lot of verbal abuse especially from women, But I was prepared for that and had my arguments in defence ready to repeat to everyone who opposed what I was doing. I was adamant I had to let Birmingham Library know this was an unacceptable use of public money and it was sending out the wrong message.

The man who commissioned the statue shook my hand

The police arrived then quickly left without removing the pictures on the statues or threatening arrest. Over the next eight hours I did not stop talking. So many hundreds of people wanted to hear why I had done this. Nearly everyone I spoke to regardless of age or gender agreed that the statue should have a father.

Most were very angry that the cost of this will come from their council services. Jonathan Watkins the Gentleman who commissioned the sculpture came out shook my hand and said he was glad that I came there as it gives rise to debate about what the actual statue means.

I also met Richard Hay who was part of a family who were in the final 4 runners up, The Hay/Wooldridge family. Ray is a black man in a relationship with a white woman. They have a mixed race daughter. He seemed completely confused as to why the sisters were picked over his family and so was I.

They would of been a true representation of Birmingham in 2014, much more worthy than the eventual winners. It is worth pointing out that when the process started she would of not been pregnant, By the time they won and the measurements were taken she was by then pregnant yet no mention of the Dad, almost as if he was not relevant.

Two parents are better than one

Apart from around 10 people, everyone we met over the days we spent in Birmingham were fully supportive and were disgusted at the absence of a father in the statue. A number of local and national papers printed the story of my protest and also ran articles  online. Thousands of comments were in complete agreement with me and my reasons for the protest.

The council missed out on the perfect opportunity to promote a strong family unit or at the very least reinforce the undeniable fact that a child is better off with two parents and for a normal upbringing actually needs two parents.

Instead they allowed Gillian Wearing to use this as a self promotion platform for her latest “controversial” piece of artwork. No doubt she is smiling now at the many articles in national and local press her sculpture has generated and I dare say already doubling her fee for the next one.

By now she has settled back into her life and condemned Birmingham with a lasting memorial that is a permanent reminder that if the whole city was to be summed up in one statue, it would be of two single mums. This type of family is no longer considered out of the ordinary. Thanks to Gillian Wearing this is now something for young people to aspire to, it is after all a “real family”.

—Picture credit: Birmingham News Room 

Bobby Smith campaigns for New Fathers For Justice.

You can find all of the #100Voices4Men articles that will be published in the run up to International Men’s Day 2014 by clicking on this link—#100Voices4Men—and follow the discussion on twitter by searching for #100Voices4Men.

The views expressed in these articles are not the views of insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to take take part in this important discussion, our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

You can join the #100Voices4Men discussion by commenting below; by following us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook or by emailing insideMANeditor@gmail.com. 

Why new changes to family law won’t make a difference for dads

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New laws governing the role that mums and dads play in their children’s lives in England & Wales following separation will not make a difference for dads, says Nick Langford.

—This is article #15 in our series of #100Voices4Men and boys 

October 22nd 2014 marked the introduction into Section 1 of the Children Act 1989 of what for brevity we can call the presumption of parental involvement.

Judges are now advised that a parent’s involvement is likely to further their child’s welfare; “involvement” means any kind of involvement, direct or indirect, but not any particular division of a child’s time.  Since the division of time is about the only thing a court can rule on, this doesn’t offer desperate parents much hope.

This reform represents the culmination of decades of family campaigning and the end of the road for the presumption of equally shared parenting.

Lest we are in any doubt why reform was necessary, let’s remind ourselves of a few facts.  More than half of children will see their parents separate before their 16th birthday and more than half of those will lose contact with one parent. Absent parents are overwhelmingly fathers and residence is overwhelmingly awarded to mothers.

Campaigns for 50/50 shared parenting are doomed to fail

Most applications for contact are by fathers, and while a mother’s parental responsibility (the official recognition of parenthood) depends on her relationship to her child, a father’s depends on his with the mother, and can be taken away again by the court.

It isn’t surprising fathers wanted this situation to change.

While the effect of reform remains to be seen, it seems likely it will merely increase delay, while misinformed parents try to assert rights they do not have, and may hand the courts further justification to disenfranchise parents.

Many will continue to campaign for a 50/50 presumption, but they won’t succeed, for two reasons.  First: as the progress of the Children and Families Bill proved, opposition is just too strong, too well-funded and too well-organised.  Second: however desirable such a presumption might be, it is inseparably associated with the hectoring and intimidation of the less savoury fathers’ groups, and no government can afford to be seen to surrender to them.

Family breakdown costing UK £46bn 

Sadly, there’s no simple legislative solution: no quick fix.  The reality is that the courts have become increasingly irrelevant: applications have fallen by a quarter.  Contrary to government intention, the take-up of mediation has also fallen by 45%.

The vast majority disputes were once settled by negotiation between lawyers, but since the loss of legal aid this option, too, has evaporated.  Most parents will need to resolve disputes themselves.

Not all of the £46bn cost of family breakdown can be laid at the door of the courts.  As a society we need to treat fathers better, to value them more; to learn that a couple of nights a fortnight isn’t parenting, that mothers have no place to “allow” fathers contact, that a father can care for a sick child as well as a mother, that staying overnight with Dad won’t cause a child any harm, that Mum’s level of child support is determined by her child’s need for contact, and not the other way around.  Only then, only when this has been learnt, can we expect the courts to catch up, and by then perhaps, just perhaps, they won’t be needed quite so much.

—Picture credit: Flickr/Steven Depolo

You can buy Nick Langford’s new book, An Exercise in Absolute Futility: Whatever happened to family justice? from Amazon.

You can find all of the #100Voices4Men articles that will be published in the run up to International Men’s Day 2014 by clicking on this link—#100Voices4Men—and follow the discussion on twitter by searching for #100Voices4Men.

The views expressed in these articles are not the views of insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to take take part in this important discussion, our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

You can join the #100Voices4Men discussion by commenting below; by following us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook or by emailing insideMANeditor@gmail.com.