Letters to the Editors
Letters to The News Page (and Editors around the world....)

http://www.thepeterboroughexaminer.com/webapp/sitepages/content.asp?contentid=
550787&catname=Editorial&classif=
Fathers of divorce

TO THE EDITOR, Peterborough Examiner:

Re: "Divorce hits men harder" (May 23)--Stats Canada analysts have no real explanation why males are more prone to depression after a separation than women. Could it be that these men have encountered our wonderful family court system?

Maybe their role as a dad has been scaled down to having their children visit every other weekend? Maybe after support payments they are forced to survive on 30 per cent of their pay.

Maybe they are living on the couch in a friend's basement without enough money to get an apartment? Maybe without a stable living environment the judge has ruled that the mother should have sole custody of the children? Maybe the man was forced to leave his home by some trumped up accusation of wrongdoing? Maybe the judge believed the unsubstantiated stories of wrongdoing and in the best interest of the children removed the father from their lives?

Maybe they have learned that in family court, the Charter of Rights does not apply, that equal rights means the children stay with the mother and the father pays?

Maybe they have just come to the realization that family court only views the father as a walking wallet.

DOUG EDMONDSON
Peterborough, Ontario (CAN)

http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20070501/letters/letters2.html

Ignoring the single father

To the Editor, The Jamaica Gleaner:

In the article on Sunday, April 22, the single-father home is totally left out. Over and over, the single-father home has proved to be one of the best places for children to grow up. You need to interview some kids from single-dad homes and research some of the fathers to get the real picture.

One of the main differences between a single-dad home and a single-mom home is that in the latter, the mother is convinced that she can be both mother and father to the children, much based on the myth, "the mother who fathered me." This makes the father redundant, except to provide child support, as she believes that any contact with his children is not important and even counter-productive.

But, in a single-father home, the dad knows he 'cannot' be both father and mother, so he ensures that the mother plays a role and keeps in touch with her kids, or provides a stepmother or female close by, so the kids still have as close as possible, a two-parent family. Some single-father homes are even superior to some two-parent families living together, as the kids don't have to endure the bitterness and abuse of one parent against the other, and worse, the belittling of their father. And we single fathers do it all 'without collecting child support'.

I am, etc.,

LANNY DAVIDSON
fathersinaction@gmail.com

Fathers League members 'in for the long haul'

To the Editor, Cumberland Times-News:

Congratulation to Mr. Ed. Taylor, a man who has the courage to help organize and support such a worthy cause as the Father's Rights League.

Today's world offers little discrimination against women; the word discrimination brings fear to most. Let someone say to you that you've discriminated against them and you see a lawyer's bill flash before your eyes.

In today's world everyone wants a quick fix. Need money, get to the bank ASAP. Got a cold, run to the hospital. Hungry? Off to Wendy's. This is a situation that's not going to get a quick fix. The Fathers Rights League is in this for the long haul, they're tired of being discriminated against, and these fathers will be fighting until they're heard and the matter is corrected. Women have always had children awarded to them in a divorce. Well, no that's not right; 20 years ago if the husband could prove a mother unfit he would retain custody. What happened?

Today men are discriminated against. Why? A father gets to see his children four or five days out of a month. Oh wait, two weeks in the summer if lucky. But he's paying health care, dental, and child support. The child can be moved out of state 500 miles away and if the father wants to see the children, he has to travel. Something is wrong.

The judges, and this is including Family Court judges, need to look at the best interest of the child. Who is the best care-giver, who can give emotional, stable values and love the child needs? Twenty years ago values were much different. Your children were your pride and joy. Unfortunately today's women have changed, and courts need to change. Men are able to care for children. Remember, the children are part of their fathers and deserve to have the consideration. Not being part of the children's life - but don't miss the child support check - something is wrong.

Carol Rattenni-Johnson
Cumberland, Maryland (USA)

To the Editor, Middletown (Ohio) Journal:

I read that Karen's Pizzeria is putting pictures of deadbeat dads on their products and that these "Pizza box pics draw protests."

Have you ever gone to pick up your child--for your first, third, or fifth weekend--only to be blocked by a vindictive ex-wife and a screen door--with your child on the other side crying to see you?

Parental alienation by the custodial parent happens much more often than nonpayment of child support by the noncustodial parent; yet Karen's Pizzeria and the Butler County Child Support Enforcement Agency don't seem to care about that.

The time spent with a child is as important as the money spent. Children need both parents. And they don't need a parent to be vilified on a pizza box.

Don Mathis
Sherman, Texas
April 17, 2007

http://www.times-news.com/opinion/local_story_088105839.html?keyword=secondarystory
Courts don't enforce fathers' visitation orders

To the Editor, The Cumberland (W-Va) Times-News:

My friend had not seen his son in over a year because of our court systems. It took him forever to get into the courtroom and when he finally got into the courtroom it was court-ordered for him to see his son. He had to go through a program where he would see his son an hour a week to get them to know each other again. But when he goes every week the mother does not show up or walks out and he has only seen his son a half an hour out of the six-week session. They tell him to take her to court again. It was court ordered and I do not believe this is fair. He only wants to see his son and he loves him very much. He does not have the resources to pay for a lawyer at this time and he did everything on his own. He filed the paperwork on his own and represented himself in the court room.

Now he's being told to take her to court again. Where does it end? Is he supposed to keep going to court over and over?

I feel the judges should look more at fathers' rights, and they should uphold the judgements they make. I am proud of my friend and how he has handled himself in the situation. Take her to court again and again until you get back with your son.

Tracy Greise
Cumberland, West Virginia (USA)
March 29, 2007

http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070311/OPINION03/703100391
The real threat we face is fatherlessness

To the Editor, The Toledo (Ohio) Blade

Slain Toledo Police detective Keith Dressel has been laid to rest and Judge James Ray deliberates whether 15-year-old Robert Jobe should be tried as an adult.

Jobe's companion that deadly Feb. 21 morning was 19-year-old Sherman Powell, now indicted on four felonies and two misdemeanors. Mayor Finkbeiner contemplates legislation holding parents accountable for their children's behavior.

The Dressel children will grow up without their father. Robert Jobe is also fatherless; he was being raised by his widowed mother. We'll never know whether Bobby Jobe would have been out at 2 a.m. with a gun if his father were still living.

Sherman Powell's father hasn't received coverage, but his mother considers suing TPD because Sherman suffered abrasions during his apprehension, after which a gun and cocaine were found in his possession.

Fatherlessness is a result of the deadly shooting and likely a contributing cause. Fatherlessness is the unaddressed threat to public health and safety. Sons need their fathers as role models, mentors, and disciplinarians. Boys need their fathers to internalize self-control.

Daughters need fathers for validation, inspiration, and discipline, too. Without loving fathers, many girls go looking for love in all the wrong places, finding sex instead. They and their unplanned children are abandoned, and the cycle of fatherlessness begins anew.

Mothers can oversee children who are shorter and lighter than they are. Physical control is lost at adolescence when children grow taller, heavier, stronger, and faster than their mothers. Involved fathers are the antidote to lawlessness, provided they themselves are law-abiding citizens.

Fatherless juvenile delinquents must be confined. The cost of allowing feral teens to drop out of school and roam free to buy, sell, and use drugs and kill is much too high. Detective Dressel paid the ultimate price.

Jeanne Morrow

March 12, 2007
Toledo, Ohio

Does the U.S. Government sponsor Terrorism against Fathers and Children?

TO THE EDITOR, World Fathers Union News Page:

Much has been said and written about abused women. One can’t help but cringe in horror and disbelief about what abused women had to live through in the hands of their abusers. It is appalling to hear, read, or watch a news item about the terrors a battered wife had to live through. Perpetrators of these heinous crimes must be punished at all cost, I agree. It’s sad that a human being has to be subjected to such terror. The whole world condemns these violent acts. Through the course of time, a lot has been done to ensure that abuse in any form against women is put to a stop. I am a staunch supporter of reasonable measures against abuse because I have three sisters and a daughter but violence against men continues to be ignored.

We often talk about and feel for battered wives and abused women. Nowadays, there are a lot of organizations dealing with battered/abused women offering therapy, rehabilitation, and pursuing justice for these poor women. Laws have been created to protect these women. Through the course of time, too, these laws have evolved to become so powerful that a woman’s word would hold weight just on her say so, holding a man guilty unless proven innocent. The laws have come to a point that innocent men are now being persecuted not only by their ex-wives but also by the system who would deny a man due process because power-tripping judges prefer to legislate from the bench rather than implement the law.

But what about battered husbands and abused men? What can a man do if the perpetrator is a woman and the only tool he can use to protect himself – the justice system – turns a blind eye on his plight? I am not alone in this predicament. There are thousands upon thousands of cases of men being unjustly persecuted. About 40% of reported abuse cases are cases of abuse against men by women, yet women were rarely held accountable.

Sexual discrimination against men and fathers by the judicial system in this country has reached epidemic proportions, St. Charles, MO. included. Here, women can freely exact revenge on their ex-husbands – in cohorts with women’s organizations & the justice system – to bring a man down to his knees, & bleed him dry, even if the man is innocent.

I received a letter today from the Family Services Division in Missouri informing me that I am over $4000 behind in child support payments. I called them and informed them I had been paying my ex-wife and asked if they asked her what I paid. I was told they assumed I never paid and now I have to prove I paid. I have the canceled checks but for my own country to assume I am a dead beat is beyond insulting. I have spent more in lawyer’s fees than I have on my house to save my children from their abusive mothers and have faced an uphill battle against my own country.

I will not be a willing sacrificial lamb so politicians can be politically popular. I have rights and I demand them. Enforcement of the laws against the manipulative schemes of an ex-wife is my right, and the police and judges that refuse to enforce these are accomplices and must be held accountable. Instead of setting the proper example, the courts and police are abusing their powers in an attempt to intimidate abusive men but are also willing accomplices to terrorize innocent men like myself. In court I have been told there is not enough time to try each case, and I have to accept the judge’s decision--before the judge even hears any evidence--or upset the judge and fare worse.

I have lost my son to a foreign national that has abused my children and myself, but the evidence was never admitted into court because the judge refused to allow it: video tapes of a plain-clothes police officer threatening me on several dates, and my son's kidnapping for 4 months. I have also been arrested several times in front of my children on false charges but when I would try to file a complaint I was told “ I do not have the time to waste on you” by the police. The one complaint that was accepted was when my ex-wife used the account numbers on my child-support check to sign me up for an on-line gay escort service, but no action has been taken.

The crimes the police have done--and allowed to be done--and the courts that allowed it have gotten to the point that since they represent the U.S. government, it leads me to ask a question: Is our government now sponsoring terrorist groups? For that is what this is: Terrorism against Fathers and Children. I thought this country stands and fights against terrorism. It looks like I was wrong.

The saddest thing is the effect it is going to be having on my children. They will never reach their full potential; they will never be what they could be because political correctness prevented them from being with the best parent for them. As a father who truly loves his children and would do anything and everything to protect them – where do I go for justice? What can I do to protect them? If my own government fails me in my pursuit of truth & justice, whom else can I turn to?

Here in St. Charles men are always assumed guilty no matter what. It is the standard. Total sex discrimination against men by the police and courts is a national disgrace. I have had enough. If I can't enforce the rights supposedly guaranteed to me by my government, I might as well go live in a foreign country.

Douglas Gray
St.Charles, MO

February 18, 2007

Media indifference to the plight of fathers

To the Editor, World Fathers Union News Page :

These days the media indifference to the plight of Fathers without their children is highlighted more frequently than ever before-especially with the case of Miriam Bedard and her 'comfortable treatment' at the hands of the authorities. The fact that the accused Bedard--with her celebrity status--was flown home in an RCMP jet at taxpayers expense and is now free on bail (we all know she is not going to be seriously punished) is just further proof of the imbalance and bias of the media on parenting and other issues.

Imagine if you will what the media would be doing about the story of a man who kidnapped his children or fled with them overseas. I really need not elaborate. We of course know some of them who have done it--also in desperation--but then we also know how the law treated them.

So it was with just another sense of bitter irony for me this morning when I noticed the headline in this Ottawa Citizen story. It was hard not to miss it. “ I can’t wait to be with my kids” says the the lady from the US who kidnapped the children she gave up for adoption and fled to Ottawa. Thousands of fathers in Canada say the same thing almost every day--some hoping to see their kids just one more time. And this has been the case for years now. Some Dads don't see their children at all. The tragedy is no less complete. But they never even get a 'byline' in the news. We would just get the "the accused appeared manacled in an Orange Jump Suit" treatment if they even bothered to report it at all.

Whats even worse is that in the case of Alison Quets she even gets two reporters from Ottawa travelling to the USA to follow the and report on the case. What is the real story behind this? That Quets wants desperately to be with her children--or that she is a women desperately wanting to be with her children?

Fathers across the country have known the real story behind the story for a long time now. The reality of course is that WE just can't wait to be with our kids.

Jeremy Swanson
Ottawa, Ontario (CAN)

January 9, 2007

Conrad Black vs the common man

To the Editor, The National Post (CAN):
Nobody should think that the legal travails of Conrad Black are anything out of the ordinary. As a former professor of business and professional ethics, an author of peer-reviewed research in the field, and a current practitioner of family law, I can say without fear of contradiction that the common man frequently receives treatment much worse than Lord Black's from our dysfunctional family-dispute system.

There is no "presumption of innocence" for men. They are routinely evicted from their own homes by ex parte restraining orders on the basis of false or completely uncorroborated allegations of abuse, or even merely the "fear" of abuse. They are consequently denied access to their assets, especially the equity in their homes, while paying the mortgage and credit cards for the benefit of the estranged partners and their alienated children. They may have to spend thousands of dollars to defend themselves against criminal charges of assault, over ridiculously minor incidents in which the woman was equally a participant, if not a deliberate provocateur. They may have to spend thousands more to have a home study done to prove their innocence and their competence as a parent. Rarely is a woman legally sanctioned in any way for false or exaggerated allegations of abuse, or self-serving slander of fathers.

Private lawyers in family disputes often behave no better than the public prosecutor in Lord Black's case. They encourage clients to take uncompromising positions, to swear questionable affidavits, and to rebuff reasonable settlement offers. They speak out of turn and tell judges irrelevant and misleading half-truths in Court, to slant the proceedings in their client's favour and put the other side off their message. They delay, play procedural games, obstruct the other side from getting at the information they are entitled to, and run up the cost of litigation until it becomes unaffordable to continue. They do all this with the blessing of the Courts and the Law Societies.

Lord Black can fend for himself, with the able assistance of Eddie Greenspan. The common man is the more to be pitied.

Sincerely,

Grant A. Brown, DPhil (Oxon), LL.B.
Edmonton, Alberta
January 16, 2007

Court system failed this poor little girl

To the Editor, Concord Monitor (USA):
The Sunday Monitor carried a story from the Associated Press about a 10-year-old girl who was forced by her mother to stand in a corner for two nights and was sprayed with water to keep her awake. The girl was also forced to urinate in a heating vent and wear a sign to school on her backpack that said, "I wear diapers."

One person quoted in the article said that such torture was "like being tortured in the Abu Ghraib prison."

The story included the statement that although the girl's father paid child support, he was not involved in her life. The obvious question is: Would this torture have occurred if the girl's father had been permitted to remain an active parent?

Probably not, as fathers are naturally and historically the protectors of their children.

The allusion to child-support payments means that he was removed from her life by the decision of a family court master/judge. Therefore, we can lay the blame for this torture of a 10-year-old girl at the feet of our family court system, which routinely separates children from their fathers.

There is ample research to show that mothers are more commonly the abusers of children, so giving sole custody to the mother places the children in danger. In this case, not only should the mother be charged with and convicted of child abuse, but the family court master/judge should be held accountable as well.
Our new family law statutes tell the judges that they should consider equal contact with both parents to be in the best interests of the children. The master/judge failed to uphold that principle in this case and should be punished accordingly.

PAUL CLEMENTS
Concord, MA (USA)

December 27, 2006