Bring a private prosecution for harassment.

Too often it is the innocent party in domestic disputes who ends up on the wrong side of the law.

Take this common example:

A father comes home from work to find his partner has left and has taken their children. Beside himself with anxiety, he texts her again and again, asking where his children are, are they safe, and when and how he will see them? Shortly afterwards, he is arrested and charged with harassment for sending these text messages.

Most people would think that stopping someone seeing their children is a more serious form of harassment than sending text messages asking where they are, and this view would find some support in the Protection from Harassment Act. The Act’s definition of harassment includes a course of conduct which someone carries out, without justification, knowing it will cause distress to another. As such, taking someone’s children away and denying them contact without good reason would certainly seem to be a form of harassment. However, the reality is that the Police are more inclined to see the text messaging as harassment than the denial of contact.

The father can then find himself on the back foot when he comes to apply to a Family Court for contact with his children. The harassment charge, being a form of domestic abuse, may lead to his contact with his children being limited until investigations are completed into whether contact is safe, by which time his bonds with his children may have been permanently damaged. As for the distress caused to the father, that is outside of the Family Court’s remit, whose sole concern is for the welfare of the children.

What can be done? One option is to bring a private prosecution against the mother for harassment by denial of contact. If successful, it can provide an evidential basis for asking the Family Court not to trust her with sole care of the children in future, and instead to make a shared residence order, or to order sole residence to the father.

The issue: The present law allows resident parents to emigrate, and remove a child to another country, unless there is good reason not to. The fact that this will result in the termination of the child’s bonds with the non-resident parent is not generally held to be a good reason to refuse the resident parent leave to remove the child.

All of the research evidence show this practice is contrary to the welfare of children, and yet this principle continues to be applied by courts. This principle cannot be challenged in the Supreme Court unless the Court of Appeal itself gives permission for it to go before the Supreme Court. This makes a nonsense of having a Supreme Court at all.

This link gives you the opportunity to register your support for repealing Sec 54 of the Access to Justice Act and so allowing this, and other issues, to be considered by the Supreme Court.

Mike Robinson has now come up with another coup in the form of an e-guide on shared residence.

It is an invaluable resource for anyone handling their own case through the Family Courts, or indeed for anyone who might have a solicitor, but still wants active involvement in the management of their case. It includes the court forms needed, templates for statements, relevent caselaw and academic research, and much more.

At £15 it is well worth it.

Here is the full text of the section on Families and Children in the coalition’s published programme for government:

14. FAMILIES AND CHILDREN
The Government believes that strong and stable families of all kinds are the bedrock of a strong and stable society. That is why we need to make our society more family friendly, and to take action to protect children from excessive commercialisation and premature sexualisation.
• We will maintain the goal of ending child poverty in the UK by 2020.
• We will reform the administration of tax credits to reduce fraud and overpayments.
• We will bring forward plans to reduce the couple penalty in the tax credit system as we make savings from our welfare reform plans.
• We support the provision of free nursery care for pre-school children, and we want that support to be provided by a diverse range of providers, with a greater gender balance in the early years workforce.
• We will take Sure Start back to its original purpose of early intervention, increase its focus on the neediest families, and better involve organisations with a track record of supporting families. We will investigate ways of ensuring that providers are paid in part by the results they achieve.
• We will refocus funding from Sure Start peripatetic outreach services, and from the Department of Health budget, to pay for 4,200 extra Sure Start health visitors.
• We will investigate a new approach to helping families with multiple problems.
• We will publish serious case reviews, with identifying details removed.
• We will review the criminal records and vetting and barring regime and scale it back to common sense levels.
• We will crack down on irresponsible advertising and marketing, especially to children. We will also take steps to tackle the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood.
• We will encourage shared parenting from the earliest stages of pregnancy – including the promotion of a system of flexible parental leave.
• We will put funding for relationship support on a stable, long-term footing, and make sure that couples are given greater ncouragement to use existing relationship support.
• We will conduct a comprehensive review of family law in order to increase the use of mediation when couples do break up, and to look at how best to provide greater access rights to non-resident parents and grandparents.

The constituency of Wolverhampton South West, made famous by Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech, became the focus of the immigration debate again today.

Equal Parenting Alliance candidate Ray Barry said immigration had become a “political football” yet closer examination showed the effects on unemployment had been misrepresented.

“So much long-term unemployment traces back to people losing touch with their children. There’s a strong correlation between it and people being alienated from their kids, which drains the heart out of them,” he said.

Link to full BBC report

1. Family Courts will be made open, with no caveats. They will be brought into line with the Crown and Magistrates Courts.
2. There will be, in law, a presumption that each parent is of equal value, i.e. has equal status, resident parent or not.
3. There will be a greater emphasis on mediation with the aim of keeping far more cases out of the court system. If a case goes to court, agreements made at mediation will be taken into account.
4. The issue of Family Law reform will be a priority.

Roger drove a bus with 40 protesters through the streets of Oxford, and met with Mr Bellingham at Witney, by arrangement with the Police, who escorted the bus, and brokered the meeting.

Roger added that Henry Bellingham seems to have a good grasp of the issues, and that he intends to continue with consultations as part of these reforms, including fathers’ interests groups.

T 01865-760553, E wgeorgestanden@btinternet.com

I am Agent for parliamentary candidate Roger Crawford of the EPA..

Roger Crawford 60 is standing in Oxford East for the Equal Parenting Alliance (EPA) in the general election. The EPA is linked to NewFathers4Justice.

Roger is “The Court Jester” pictured last year demonstrating on Carfax Tower on 18 June, and at Oxford County Court on 4 November, calling for better Family Laws.

The EPA wants a presumption of equal access for spouses to their children after separation or divorce.

Two important dates this week:-

Tuesday afternoon 6 April 2010 Roger will be in Oxford for interviews – ring Roger 07849-522180 or me 01865-760553.

Then Saturday 10 April 2010, Roger and EPA members, in Batman/Superhero costumes, will be demonstrating in and around Oxford East in an open-top bus.

In the morning we will tour the constituency itself. In the afternoon we will tour Witney, David Cameron’s constituency, and visit David Cameron’s house. All this has already been discussed with David Cameron himself and his Office.

Yours sincerely, George Standen (Agent – address above)

Candidate – Mr Roger Crawford, The Pigling, Woodview Nurseries, Shefford Rd, Meppershall. Beds SG17 5LL. Mob 07849-522180, Tel 01462-814575, Email Roger jester-rog@talktalk.net

Agony of the frozen-out fathers
A new BBC series explores the reasons why fathers lose touch with their children post-separation.

By Cassandra Jardine
Published: 7:00AM GMT 27 Mar 2010

Watching a preview of next week’s BBC series Who Needs Fathers?, I felt ashamed to be a woman. The men on the programme appeared to be loving, attentive fathers – not extremists in Batman costumes. All they wanted was to play their part in the upbringing of their children. But, at every turn, it seemed, vengeful, short-sighted women were selfishly trying to thwart them.

These mothers cancelled contact arrangements, scuppered telephone calls, made false allegations of abuse, and prevented the men taking their children on holiday. “Honestly, I feel like throwing in the towel,” said one tearful father, who sat in his car outside his ex’s front door, waiting in vain for the children to come out. Only an emergency court order won him the day.

Not only did these women want total control of the children – believing their love was enough – they also expected their exes to keep them in the style to which they had become accustomed, while the men lived in cramped bedsits. When one man finally manages to remortgage his own home to keep a working mother in hers, her response is: “OK, so I can book a holiday.”

The programmes not only seek to explain why 40 per cent of fathers lose touch with their children within two years of divorce – the figure is likely to be even higher when unmarried parents separate – but also why this matters. Looking at the confused faces of children being fought over by parents like favourite toys, it was not difficult to imagine what might happen when they grew into teenagers, unsure about their loyalties and identities. Indeed, in the third programme, we see fatherless teenagers behaving appallingly.

The prospects for children who don’t see their fathers are bleak, according to a Unicef report in 2007. Educationally, they do less well. They are more likely to get in trouble with the police, and to abuse drugs and alcohol. They also find it more difficult to form relationships. If Broken Britain – that over-used moral call to arms – has roots, they lie in broken homes.

A third of children are now growing up without parents living under the same roof. Each of the 150,000 to 200,000 separations per year is a source of sadness for the children involved, children who yearn – however unrealistically – for mummy and daddy to live together happily ever after. But those partings can be handled more or less well. “The emotionally healthy 18 year-olds,” says Judge Nicholas Crichton, who works in the family courts, “are those who can say, ‘Whatever happened between my parents, I knew I was loved and that I was free to love both parents without feeling guilty.’?”

Too few children are growing up with that balance. Ninety three per cent of children live with their mother after a separation, and half then lose touch with the non-resident parent. That’s a tragedy not only for the fathers, but for the grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins who would otherwise provide a support network for those children.

Acrimony is unavoidable when relationships end, but some couples, such as Chris and Angela in the first programme, succeed in suppressing their irritation with one another for the sake of their children. Why then do so many children lose a parent to this game of bitterness and revenge?

“Henry” (not his real name), who is seen in the second programme, tells me he blames a court system that is biased against fathers, as well as being expensive, slow and ineffectual. When his daughter was born, Henry wanted to be involved, even though he had subsequently married. In return for maintenance, he saw his daughter alternate weekends and took her on holiday. “She was a massive part of my life,” he says. “Then her mother decided to live abroad.”

He fought the move but, as in 99 per cent of cases, the mother won in court. “All a woman has to say is that refusal will psychologically damage her. There’s a view that whatever is in the mother’s interests is also in the child’s interests, even though nine out of 10 non-resident parents then lose touch.”

Henry did not wish to be one of them, but despite a “mirror order” giving him visiting rights and regular contact, he has had to fight for every glimpse and chat, at a cost of £70,000, putting considerable strain on his marriage. “When we meet it’s wonderful, but it’s hard to slot into a role if you haven’t seen a child regularly.”

During the whole court process he felt “like the puppet in the hands of a puppeteer”. He says: “I can understand why mothers use whatever power is at their disposal, but there was an imbalance.” Many fathers feel the same. “In order to be considered equal, you have to be twice as good,” says Simon Ramet, who has fought for half his child’s time.

“The courts are still stuck in a 1950s paradigm of mothers doing the caring, and fathers doing the earning,” says John Davies, chief executive of Families Need Fathers.

Women are also more likely to get legal aid than fathers, who have to weigh up the cost of pursuing a case against the fear that the longer they go without seeing a child, the weaker their case for maintaining contact becomes. “As few parents with young children can afford it, access to the law often depends on having wealthy parents. It tends to be a middle-class privilege,” says Sara Feilden, producer for Films of Record, who made the BBC series.

Despite fears that speaking out will harm participants’ contact arrangements, Fielden is glad to have found the brief window of opportunity in which to tell their stories. Last year, it became legal to report on the family courts, but a Bill is going through Parliament that would make it impossible, once again, to film people who have been involved in family legal disputes. “It’s unlikely that we would ever again be able to make a programme about this important issue,” she says.

The men filmed are eager to highlight the shortcomings of an overburdened legal system. Cafcass (the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service), which appoints guardians to represent the child’s interests, is so stretched that it can take nine months to produce a report. When allegations of misconduct are made, contact is rightly refused until they have been investigated. But sometimes they are purely vexatious.

Families Need Fathers is fighting for a number of changes on behalf of all non-resident parents, mothers as well as fathers. These include publication of judgments so parents know what to expect (and may therefore avoid court), sanctions for those who make false allegations, and financial recognition that non-resident parents also have to maintain a home suitable for their children to visit.

The current system finds favour with few, least of all those whose lives are dominated by endless hearings and court orders. “You should be reasonable when splitting up,” says Juliette Thomas, who was brave enough to defend on air her reluctance to allow Alex, her ex, his share of their four sons’ time: she claimed lack of clarity in his plans. Unable to agree, the court process has made the gulf between them wider and Alex resentful.

Family breakdown is not unique to the UK, but some countries seem to handle it better. In Australia, an assumption of shared parenting was introduced four years ago, backed up by family centres where separating couples could be given information and counselling on sharing their children. More children are now staying in contact with both parents as a result.

Dr Mandy Bryon, chief psychologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital, tells parents: “Whether you like it or not, you will remain in a relationship with one another as parents of your children.” To prepare for that, she believes couples need to acknowledge the errors in thinking that occur when people are angry and upset, and to anticipate the problems that cause flare- ups – late delivery back, changes of plans, and so on.

“If parents are living together and a child comes back from a visit to the park with the father in tears, the mother will try to reassure both parties. If they are separated she will say, ‘Never again.’ The father might ask the child not to tell Mummy. Then, when the child blurts out what Daddy said, the mother thinks something sinister is going on.”

Judge Crichton already sends many parents on courses to learn about sharing. If we adopted a system similar to the Australian one, that would be compulsory before a couple go to court. “A good thing too,” he says, “as the courts are not the best place to sort these matters out.”

Both the Labour and Conservative parties have reviewed the family-law system. Henry Bellingham, shadow justice minister, talks of introducing automatic shared contact, if the Conservatives are elected, and using Sure Start centres for counselling. Looking at the worried eyes of children caught up in disputes that they don’t understand, change can’t come too soon.