It has remained fixed at £9.24 an hour for 15 years and has not increased with inflation. Now, the Jackson Review of Costs in Civil Proceedings has recommended that the rate should increase to £20 per hour.

The final report was published by the Ministry of Justice on 15th january 2010. It runs to some 600 pages, but if you want to read just the 3-page section on Litigants in peron, it starts at p 142.

The Scottish Crime and Justice Survey 2008-09 published its results on 15th December 2009. Scotland’s chief statistician reveals that in the last 12 months as many men as women were victims of partner abuse, and perpetrators of abuse were also in almost equal proportions (48% men, 45% women).

The results of this survey are irrefutable. With a sample size of 16,000, this is the largest study of its kind ever conducted in Scotland, and there is another key reason why its results are so reliable: it investigated more deeply than is normally the case. As Scottish journalist, John Forsyth put it:

“The research has to be commended for its rigour. When asked whether they had been subject to domestic abuse since the age of 16, only 3% of men and 14% of women said yes. However, when asked to report specific conduct by a partner that falls within the definition of partner abuse, the number for men rose 5 times to 15% and for women by half to 20.9%. This is hardly surprising given the tens of millions that has been spent by successive Scottish administrations on campaigns, support services and organisations targeted at women, encouraging them to recognise and report domestic abuse. In the same period precisely nothing has been spent on efforts to encourage men to recognise and report domestic abuse.”

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
16,000 interviewees were asked about their experience of physical or psychological partner abuse both since the age of 16 and within the preceding 12 months. The findings included:

• 18% of adults who had had at least one partner since the age of 16 reported having experienced at least one form of partner abuse. The figure for women was 20.9% and for men 15.3%.

• However, in the most recent 12 months the figure for both men and women was 5%.

• The data for the last 12 months showed that young men aged 16-24 experienced physical and/or psychological abuse more often than young women and more often than any other demographic group.

• For persons experiencing partner abuse in the last 12 months, 48% of the perpetrators were male and 45% were female.

• Police came to know about 35% of incidents of partner abuse reported by women in the preceding 12 months but only 8% of incidents in which a man was on the receiving end. 40% of men told no-one compared to 21% of women.

Our thanks to Australian Senior Researcher, Greg Andreson, for bringing this to our attention.

The personalities involved seemed to have a really good grip on the problems with our current system. I particularly remember Theresa May, Tim Loughton and Dominic Grieve all appeared to understand the issues.

As a previous long-term Labour voter I was fully prepared to vote Conservative for the first time ever. This wasn’t even so much to do with the policies they were promoting, but simply with the fact that their heads and hearts seemed to be in the right place and they came across as being very determined to see that something was going to be done on their watch.

Of course, Labour won another term at the last election so we have had another five years of spin, dishonesty and policy making ruled by political correctness rather than facts or evidence-based analysis.

Like many people in the equal parenting movement, I had been hoping that the Tories would re-institute their previous sensible (and really quite radical) line on family law issues for this general election.

Sadly, I think we are going to be disappointed again. I get the feeling that the political apparatchik in the party have declared family law to be a hot potato they dare not touch for fear of threatening the women’s vote. On the contrary, David Cameron seems interested only in finding opportunities to promote women as victims where ever he can. They seem terrified of tackling any issue which might be portrayed as being negatively disposed towards women in any way whatsoever.

The worse part is that they are probably right!

What a scrunched-up, politically correct and un-brave society we have become. No wonder this country is in such a mess, with the two main parties being so terrified of being different from each other that all they are prepared to think about is how to appeal to – and swing voting patterns – in marginal seats.

Even so, I must admit the Tories still offer the only [small] hope of ridding us of this Labour government under whom – I’m convinced – there will be absolutely no changes for the better in family law now or in the future.

A British Airways Policy which presupposes that only men are paedophiles. Don’t they read the papers?

An earlier post on this site reported I had won a Judicial Review of the Magistrate’s decision to refuse to issue a summons. The Magistrate’s decision was quashed and the matter was referred back to the Magistrates for reconsideration.

The 15th January hearing was to reconsider it, and unfortunately it was again refused, this time for a different reason.

I take a number of positives from it, however. At this hearing the court did not dispute that I had a right to bring a private prosecution without first complaining to the Police and, more importantly, the court accepted that if my ex-wife damaged my bonds with my children that could constitute criminal harassment. The court held that in my case, the evidential base for the alleged harassment was not sufficiently strong, and it was dismissed for that reason.

I am not too disappointed. It has not been a wasted exercise. It has opened the door for others to use this route.

It means that anyone who can provide firm evidence, to a criminal standard, of incidents which have damaged your bonds with your children, harassment law is a possible route to seek redress, and I would be happy to assist anyone who wants to try it.

There must be at least 2 incidents during a 3 month window in the preceding 6 months. The incidents don’t have to be breach of a contact order. They could be alienating you from your children, or wilfully using the power of the residence order to belittle and control you. Remember, in criminal proceedings, it is no longer the so-called welfare of the child principal which trumps everything, and allows the other parent to destroy you with impunity. This is criminal law, outside of the Children Act, and different rules apply.

You have to be able to prove 2 things to the highest standard of proof, i.e. beyond reasonable doubt:
1/ that the other parent did these acts which you allege, and
2/ that he/she did them knowing that they would cause you distress.

If this applies to you, get in touch.

Ray

It is a small victory, but an important one.

Leading Family Lawyer, Sandra Davis, commented “”The adversarial nature of the system invites people to come and use the courts system as a punch up and the children get used as pawns.”

See Daily Telegraph Report 16/11/09

The effect on me of losing my children is simply not addressed by the Children Act, which discounts the interests of any party other than the child. Even when a father is driven to suicide by the loss of his children, that is held to be a matter of no concern to the Family Court.

So, how are the rights of parents to be protected? The Protection from Harassment Act would seem, at first sight, to offer a solution. Harassment is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “trouble or vex by repeated attacks” and the harassment act itself defines it as a course of conduct which the perpetrator knows or should know to be harassment. The Act’s definition also includes causing alarm or distress to another.

When one parent systematically destroys the bonds between a child and the other parent that would seem to fit this definition; it is a course of conduct which the perpetrator knows will cause distress to the other parent.

The Police were unimpressed when I first made a complaint that my ex-wife was harassing me, and when the conduct continued, I used an arcane piece of law to apply to prosecute her myself in the Magistrates Court, as a Private Prosecutor. This right dates back to the days before there was a Crown Prosecution Service, or even police forces, when it was the right and duty of any subject to prosecute when he received information of an offence. That right still remains in law.

The Magistrates refused to issue a summons to allow the prosecution to begin. I challenged that decision at a Judicial Review and won, and the High Court has remitted the case back to the Magistrates to be reconsidered. The judgment has been published in Family Law Week.

Private prosecution is not the way forward in the long term, but if it can help to establish that such conduct is a form of criminal harassment, it will have served its purpose. Individual dads and mums would then be better able to ask the Police to enforce their rights.

I’ll keep this site posted with how the case progresses from here on.

Ray Barry

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