Ruth (my spouse), Paul Lowe and I drove to Calgary yesterday to be at the
Workshop on Family Conflict, with Sen. Anne C. Cools, Erin Pizzey, Theresa Petkau and
others. A few other people from Edmonton went as well.
It had been a frosty
morning, with layers of fog in the fields here and there, a bright sun, and the Fall
colours in full display. As we arrived at the Peter Lougheed Centre, we met the trio
as they were leaving their vehicle to enter the building. Things warmed up after
that; not just the weather.
The Radio Show
The three ladies had made an appearance on the Rutherford Show just the day
before. It blew me away.
Erin Pizzey spoke of the terrorists in the
family, with Sen. Cools and Theresa Petkau interjecting now and then with their own views,
providing information on trends in the frequency and culpability pertaining to child abuse
and about training-enforced police bias in regards to arrest policies when responding to
calls in cases of family violence respectively. Whenever Dave Rutherford asked a
question, it seemed that the answering was precisely orchestrated. Any of the three
women would respond, with the one who did giving powerful emphasis on the points brought
up, by relating experience from her specific field of expertise.
Erin Pizzey said that ever since the leaders from all over the world of what she called
an evil movement -- the feminist movement -- had met in London, England, in the early
Seventies, they had actively conspired to promote world rule by women. The plan that
these evil women had concocted envisioned not just a world dominated by women, but a world
without men. The plan was to disenfranchise men by depriving them of their families
and to achieve that through the systematic destruction of
the family. To enable that it was required to engage in the systematic
vilification and demonizing of men.
Funding was lacking to further all of that. The women's shelter movement was
usurped by these radical, extremist women to provide them with an operational base and a
credible cause for raising funds. The funds poured in, by the many millions.
Government agencies fell over themselves to provide them.
Erin Pizzey said the battered women's shelters serve as command bunkers in the battle
of the destruction of our families in which these
these evil women can safely plot their tactics.
Theresa Petkau reported on her masters thesis "ACCOUNT AND ACCOUNTABILITY:
PATROL CONSTABLES' PERCEPTIONS OF WIFE ASSAULT SENSITIVITY TRAINING, A QUALITATIVE
EVALUATION" (EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY )
Theresa Petkau recounted her impressions that she gained doing her study. During
the study she managed to ride with patrol constables to respond to family violence
calls. She said that when she began her study she was a feminist and that now she is
firmly cured from her feminists' views on the mechanics of family violence, indeed, cured
of feminism itself.
Almost without exception, calls for assistance in
family violence involve nothing more than to cater to participants in mutually destructive
combat in which the parties are virtually always equally at fault. She asked one of
the 43 patrol officers whom she interviewed during that time whether he hadn't ever
encountered any truly battered women, that surely there had to have been some that he had
seen over the many years that he had been involved in that type of work. He
responded by starting to count on his fingers and then said: "Yes, there were
two."
Theresa Petkau stressed that when the latest report on violence against women was
released (the exact source escapes me now), it stated that 29 percent of Canadian women
experienced violence during their life, but it also said that in the last year of the
reporting period 3 percent of women reported having experienced violence at the
hands of their spouses. She stressed, that, even with the wide range of types of
"violence", expanded to bring up the numbers, 97 percent of women reported no
types of violent acts against them of any kind.
Theresa Petkau too, just as Erin Pizzey and Sen. Cools did, had to cope with the
consequences of her actions, to report politically incorrect views that displeased the
radical, extremist feminists. She has found no job position that corresponds to her
education. She currently works as a part-time teller at a Credit Union branch.
Sen. Cools mentioned that on account of the politicization of violence against
women, promulgated by the feminists, the plight of the majority of the victims of that
violence is being ignored and forgotten: the plight of innocent children, because family
violence has come to mean nothing more than violence against women, which, when it occurs
always, receives prominent attention in the media. However, in 60 percent of the cases of
violence against children, the violent acts against them are committed by women. We
have even a special crime category, infanticide, that can be
used only by women to make it possible to make their crimes against children appear less
serious, so that women may be let off lightly.
Dave Rutherford asked how in the world it was possible that the atrocious circumstances
of our gender politics, especially those pertaining to
family violence, weren't reported in the media. All three of the guests expressed
that, unless the feminist domination of the media were to end, we weren't likely to see an end to
the boycott on news-reporting with respect to violent women.
The calls that came in couldn't have made the points of the discussion any better if
they would have been staged.
The Workshop
At the workshop yesterday morning, with Dave Rutherford, Radio QR 77, moderating, many
of the same views were presented, but in a more formal setting, under the heading of
"Domestic Violence - Gender Issue or Human
Issue."
Erin Pizzey related her views on family
violence, with emphasis on the terrorists in the power dynamics in families, in which
dominating women are too often, by far, the prime vector in the never-ending cycle of
violence.
Theresa Petkau, M.Sc. McMaster U., reported in detail on the findings of her
study "ACCOUNT AND ACCOUNTABILITY: PATROL CONSTABLES' PERCEPTIONS OF WIFE
ASSAULT SENSITIVITY TRAINING, A QUALITATIVE EVALUATION (EXECUTIVE SUMMARY http://www.freeyellow.com/members5/free-press/page6.html)"
Ferrel Christensen, Prof. Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of
Alberta, spoke about discriminatory views of gender relations in the politics of family
violence. He provided numerous examples of how these deliberately distorted views,
supported by distorted and biased reporting of statistics, are used in the vilification
and demonizing of men.
In the afternoon, under the heading of "Shared Parenting 'The Best Interests of
the Child' - Proposed Changes to Divorce Law" was moderated by Carol Adams,
Journalist CKUA radio network.
Senator Anne C. Cools (Liberal), presented an analysis of
the doctrine "In the best interest of the child." She had found that the
first time the term had been mentioned in any legislation was in a 19th Century ruling, in
a hearing by the Lord Chancellor in Britain -- the highest Court in the U.K., responsible
for questions of judiciary equitability and ethics -- in which it became established that
children have the right to both of their parents and that the King will be the protector
of that right. She then recounted a trail of decisions during which that premise
became modified repeatedly until it came to mean today that children are the property of,
and an adjunct to, their mothers, with most of those changes having taken place during the
last three decades. She concluded by asking how it was possible to come from the
beginnings of a doctrine with such noble intentions to where we are now. [Update 2000
10 03: Make sure to look up relevant information provided
by Stephen Galvin from NZ.]
Marlene Graham, MLA Calgary - Lougheed, reported on the
recommendations that resulted from the findings of the Committee on the Review of Child
Custody and Access in Alberta. The recommendations of the committee that she chaired
are for access enforcement measures to be implemented in legislation to be introduced in
the Spring of 1999. She explained that although presumptive joint custody
(rebuttable, not mandatory), had been considered for recommendation, upon the advice by
the Family Law Institute [a feminist dominated organization] it had been
decided to recommend sole custody by the mother "in the best interest of the
child." [See Sen. Cools' comments on that. Clearly the answer to Sen.
Cools' question is right here.]
Wayne Lenhardt, L.L.B., founder of the Independent Lawyers
Society, reported on justice accountability, in a presentation named "Something funny
happened to justice on the way to family court." He described a system out of
control, in which there is not even a pretense of adhering to the rules of evidence, in
which judges base capricious decisions on "opinions that they pick off the wall"
and frequently have total disregard for factors introduced in filed affidavits --
obviously not having read them at all. He recounted a number of instances that would
have boggled the mind of Franz Kafka. He told of the absurdity of having child
support guidelines to govern fair and equitable calculations of child support amounts,
only to have those guidelines circumvented when judges routinely "impute" the
incomes of the fathers who are ordered to pay extraordinary amounts of money that bear
no relation to their ability to pay. In one case, he said, the father had an income
of $40,000/year, but the judge "imputed" his income to be $60,000/year [impute:
to lay the responsibility or blame for, often falsely and unjustly].
Wayne Lenhardt asked where these people come from to apply imputation as a principle of
justice. [See also Eeva Sodhi's comments regarding the
imputation of fathers' incomes.]
In our current system of patronage appointment of judges, he said, it isn't likely that
we'll be blessed with judges whom we can expect to possess fairness and objectivity.
Holding up the Sept. 21, 1998 issue of the Alberta Report featuring Chief Justice Antonio
'The Fixer' Lamer of the Supreme Court of Canada [http:/www.albertareport.com --
the current
issue as of 98 09 27 wasn't on-line yet— the link no longer functions as the
Alberta Report is no longer being published], he referred to a comment by Ted Byfield in
one of his frequent columns on judiciary activism, in which Ted Byfield had suggested that
the constitution should perhaps be discarded because it didn't provide a valid framework
for guiding and regulating our lives. However, Wayne Lenhardt said that Ted Byfield
should have considered that perhaps there is very little that is wrong with out
Constitution, and that an obviously better alternative would be to hold judges responsible
and accountable for upholding the Law, and, instead of getting rid of the Constitution, to
get rid of the judges who circumvent the Law.
Wayne Lenhardt explained that and why it isn't possible to hold judges accountable for
anything these days, because the legislators refrain from doing their job of telling the
judges what their responsibilities are, and that the judges are left to ply their games
with absolute power and total lack of control by anyone but themselves. To complain
to anyone about the misconduct of the judiciary is useless, he said, because such
complaints ultimately arrive at the very same judges who make a mockery of our
constitution. With nobody holding them accountable and with them only being
accountable to themselves, he asked in whose favour they'll rule when they hear such
complaints.
Questions from the Floor
There were question from the floor after both the morning and the afternoon
sessions. In general, the presentations were well received and clarification was
provided in a thorough and satisfactory manner. However, there was an exception to that.
When Marlene Graham made her presentation there were stirrings in the audience.
During the question period, when questions were asked of her, the otherwise excellent
decorum of the workshop deteriorated somewhat, to become what could be described at best
as mildly hostile.
One man asked, how it could be that Marlene Graham presented such an optimistic
view with respect to the introduction of the legislation for the long-awaited enforcement
of child access, considering that indications from the caucus of the Progressive
Conservative Party, indeed, from one member of her review team, Victor Doerksen, were that
the legislation would not be introduced at all, because it is "too
sensitive." [Note 1]
Prof. Ferrel Christensen asked, sarcastically, that if it had to be decided in the
Courts as to who is the better parent after divorce "in the best interest of the
child," why wouldn't it be "in the best interest of the child" to have both
parents appear in Court to obtain that decision immediately after every time a child is
born to them.
[Perhaps Marlene Graham could take that consideration to heart and go even
one more step. Why not make the determination recommended in Ferrel
Christensen's facetious question and divorce the parents immediately after
the decision to legally award "sole ownership" of the child to the
mother. Indeed, why not even embed ownership by mothers in our constitution?
That way we could kill two birds with one stone. We would
finally be able to lay to rest any allegations that the original intent of the doctrine
"in the best interest of the child" was to be truly in the best interest
of the child.
It would also totally eliminate the tedious chore of child custody and access litigation which, at any rate, almost invariably has the same
outcome: sole custody for the mother. That way the
destruction of our families would be final, and men would be relegated, not
just in fact but by law, to the role of sperm donors and that of providers for
women and "women's children," not within the confines of families of
their own, but through the State.
The implementation of Chairman Mao's
recommendations, as to how to eliminate the traditional institutions of our
society, that the feminists so eagerly adopted and began to promote in the
Seventies would be complete. The last two of "the four ropes that bind
the people" the family and the clan (a.k.a. the patriarchy, that is, the extended
family) would finally be cast off. [Note 2]
A comment by one man made a deep impression on my better half, Ruth. A young man,
obviously agitated and under a great amount of distress, said that regardless of
what legislation Marlene Graham and her colleagues were to introduce, he wouldn't pay a
cent of child support unless he would get to see his children, and said also: "It
wouldn't make bit of difference if you were to chase me all over Canada!"
Here comes the really incongruous part. The auditorium was filled with people
concerned about the planned destruction of our families,
people who virtually without exception are the victims of that program of the destruction
of all that we all hold dear and holy, who devote what meager resources they are left with
after they have literally been sucked dry by the legal industry -- without even a vestige
of help from any funding -- to restore common sense in matters of family law. In
that auditorium Marlene Graham said to the man: "I'm sorry that you have had such a
bad experience. I hope that things will turn out better for you."
Ms. Marlene Graham, how can you possibly be so insensitive as to assume that just
because one man cracked under the pain of having his life completely destroyed, that the
others in that room did not suffer in an identical fashion!? You of all people, you,
a family lawyer who had her billing procedures questioned by the Court's Taxation Office
for overcharging a client in an uncontested divorce case by several thousand dollars and
had the amount of the bill reduced on account of that, you should have known better!
Ruth commented that it is high time, and that she is very glad, that a man finally
spoke up and made his feelings known. She later asked me why such a man couldn't
just work for room and board somewhere. He would have an infinitely better life than
that in store for him. I had to tell her that this avenue of escape is being
closed. In the State of California legislation had been introduced already to punish
anyone who shelters such a man. If that legislation passes, the individual who
harbours such a "fugitive from the Law" will find that his assets will be
seized. No doubt, such legislation will soon be implemented here.
--Walter Schneider
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Notes:
1.)Another member of the PC Party caucus indicated the same thing
and added that instead it will be that methods for strengthening maintenance enforcement
measures will be introduced:
- Companies have already been engaged to develop methods for implementing tracers. (Isn't
it interesting to see how easy it is to make money available for work that hasn't even
been authorized by legislation, far in advance of making expenditures for such work
legal? Maybe that isn't all that bad. At least it will give the people who
were employed by the existing Department for Access Enforcement -- also not legally
authorized yet -- something to do.
All that will be required is to redirect their focus and give their organization a new
name.)
- Government-issued licences for defaulters with CS payments will be cancelled at any time
a default occurs, with the defaulter being notified of the cancellation by registered
mail. (Presently it is that when defaults occur, existing licenses will not be
re-issued when the defaulter applies for renewal of a license. Currently
there are 45,000 case files on hand with Maintenance Enforcement. 13 percent
of the fathers went into default and had their licenses suspended. In two thirds of the cases of serious defaulters, the defaulting is the result of
poverty, often abject poverty.
One Edmonton man I know was ordered to pay $100/month in child maintenance from his
disability allowance, which leaves him with $354/month to make a living. He is disabled because of partial brain damage that he contracted when he made a
suicide attempt after he had lost everything he ever had, his right to be a parent,
his children, his wife, his house, his car, his tools, even the pay-out he got from
a long term of employment. That man is no deadbeat dad. He is a hero!
There are many more like him.)
- The assets of corporations owned by a defaulter will be attached and their bank accounts
seized (even if the defaulter is only a co-owner).
- Justice minister John Havelock indicated at the caucus meeting that most, if not all, of
the recommendations made by the Custody and Access Review Committee, will not
be implemented for now, "because they are too sensitive." He didn't rule
out that the term of the delay in the implementation of the recommendations will be as
long as never.
Marlene Graham is a member of the PC Party caucus [Rumour has it that Marlene Graham
is bucking for the position of Justice Minister]. It isn't known whether she was
absent at that caucus meeting, nor is it known -- if she was absent -- whether she was
informed about the decisions reached at the caucus meeting at which these issues were
decided. However, it is obvious that even though they are still afraid to speak out
against the oppressive, feminist-dominated bureaucracy that so easily can play havoc with
the career of any politician that dares to evoke its wrath, there are party members in the
Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta who are friends of families and fathers, or else
we wouldn't know about the details leaked from the caucus meeting 2 1/2 weeks ago.
2) Source: Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little
Red Book) 31. WOMEN -- Report on
an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan (March 1927), Selected Works,
Vol. I, pp. 44-46.
The chapter contains prescriptions for a plan that will
"liberate" women, in the form of some very important tips on how to "arouse
the great mass of women who did not work in the fields before to take their place on the
labour front...." so that they can be removed from a life of idleness in the
protection of their families and be made to do productive work for the greatness of the
State — in our society it isn't working, is it?
A very large number of the women "liberated" from the
"oppression by family and clan" are now on welfare or perform menial part-time
work for minimum wages. Many of the men who lost the right to have children and
families see no purpose in a life that condemns them to slavery, in being indentured to
the State for life. They become: less productive; perhaps, to escape the destitution
and unbearable oppression by a cruel system that contrived to rob them of their families,
they become substance abusers; they become unemployed; they become members of skid row;
they commit suicide, and some ultimately crack completely to
lash out by killing themselves, their children and the mothers of their children —
some even kill their lawyers.
On the way back
The weather was warm, we stopped in by Red Deer to gas up and to have a little
break. Two groups of young teenagers came in. They were all well-behaved, and
we reminisced about how it was when we used to go on trips like this one, only for
different reasons, to take the children to see Heritage Park in Calgary, to go a little
farther and stop in in Banff on our way to the Okanagan. The fun we had singing in
the car, telling stories, pointing things out in the country-side, guessing the distance
to the top of the rise in the road ahead (persistently underestimated by a factor of
three, no matter how hard anyone tried) and the other games that we played to keep the
load of kids from becoming too rambunctious. There were times after a break when one
or the other of the boys didn't want to come back into the car, because he had spotted
some fish under the bridge that he wanted to catch first. All that ended for me and
my children on Thanks Giving Day, October 1975, suddenly and without prior announcement
other than an increasing sense of coldness and gloom that I had hoped would pass. It
didn't.
It was the silence before the storm. When the storm broke, it was
the end of life as we knew it. From then on, from one morning at around ten to the
afternoon, everything changed. It was the death of our family, and the beginning of
what seemed to be Hell for all eight of us. Five of our children had to grow up fatherless. For a little while I saw them now
and then, and then no more -- for eight years.
My oldest son is angry at everyone in the family. He had been made the
substitute father for three years until he left home at eighteen to get away from that
responsibility. A younger son never spent much time at home, he lived in his
friend's house. My oldest daughter came in touch with me again after she had left
home at a fairly early age. The two youngest were often left alone at home,
first-grader and pre-schooler. The youngest daughter had been allowed far more
freedom when she got older than she thought good for her. Our youngest son was the
last one to leave home, also at an early age. They never again had the joys we used
to have when we still were a family, that of everyone being in the same room at the same
time, or traveling together. ...It wasn't an easy life for them.
They clearly suffered the most. Even though they don't seem to
feel the intense pain of the losses they experienced, or at least don't show it, they do
have a sense of nostalgia. It seems that it is very difficult for them to vocalize
their feelings about this, and I don't press. They have the vocabulary but don't
know what terms to use to express the sense of loss of something they never had, a father
while they grew into adults. ...
The second group of kids that had come in had gone again too. We
didn't even notice. There weren't any leaders with either group. They had been
on their own. They had been so quiet that we didn't notice when they left.
Could it be that they didn't laugh like kids that age used to laugh? How many of
them were without a father at home? How many of them were growing into adults
without having a father to turn to for help and advice? Had they been so quiet and
not boisterous at all because they all were grown up already, prematurely, with never
experiencing what it is to be a child who grows into adulthood under the guidance and in
the company of his father?
It was time to carry on. We had all met in Calgary and discussed some of the
symptoms and speculated on a few possible solutions, seemingly like the little Dutch boy
who held his finger in the dike, except it seems that as we are inserting our finger into
the hole, the hole is enlarging and its walls are getting softer, so that even if we stick
our whole hand in there it may be too late to stop the flood that will come and roll over
everything...
The workshop was like analyzing individual waves on the other side of
the dike as if in an attempt to extrapolate from there to derive an estimate of the
destructive power of the flood itself when it breaks through. We know what damage is
being done by the trickle. That should give us an idea of what happens when the last
vestiges of common sense, justice, and moral standards comprising the dike holding back
the flood have been washed away. When there are no more dikes to hold in the flood,
it will be the end of all of us.
All that is in the best interest of our children? Anybody who tries to foist that
on society is worse than a fool, he is most likely either insane, terribly malicious or
driven by uncontrollable greed to cash in on the profits that can be derived by many
people active in the new growth-industry that is devouring our society: The Divorce
Industry, the eager agent of the evil forces that are destroying our society in an attempt
to establish the domination of the World by women -- by only relatively few women from the
upper and middle classes of society, because the majority of women who were promised to
"have it all" now find that they "have to do it all." [Dave Usher,
ACFC, in a letter to The Editor, Worcester Telegram &
Gazette, 1998 09 10]
Never before in the history of Mankind have we had such enormous growth
in the number of women who, on account of having to bring up children without the help of
devoted fathers, would be in total misery and poverty if it weren't for the generosity of
governments whose capacity to help these poor misled women has become exhausted.
Only excessive taxation that is bringing our economy to its knees, that hits families with
children the most, and broken families even more so, because they can the least afford it
-- as if to punish them for having dared to be normal and to punish them even more to have
failed under the handicap -- is seen as the sole means by which the consequences to our
society can be staved off. Half of the average Canadian tax payer's income is now
being confiscated to prevent the immediate collapse of our economy, with the total public
debt having risen to astronomical proportions, about $1.4 Trillion if the un-funded
liability of the Canada Pension Plan is added to the portion of the debt that our
politicians pretend is all we have to worry about. [According to a 1999 estimate by the
Fraser Institute the correct figure for the total Canadian Debt stands at $3.5
trillion.—WHS, 2000 10 03]
The nobel doctrine of "in the best interest of the child"
that became so perverted in the last few decades manifests itself in the negative impact
that these insane social policies have on our children of divorce. According to our
Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who proudly and regularly announces annually the latest
verdict from the UN, the headquarters of the forces engaged in the war against common
sense in society, on that, Canada has once more been declared to be the best place in the
World to be. The time when Canada had the third-highest standard of living in the
World is now so long in the past that nobody cares anymore to find out how low it has sunk
over the past thirty years. Wouldn't it be nice if our Prime Minister would
actually, instead of just falsely alleging that he does, talk to the people who are
suffering the consequences of the disastrous policies that his party promulgates?
These people are not that hard to find. He would have a hard time to miss them
crowding the unemployment offices and the food banks, if only he would truly look. A
good number of them are victims of false abuse allegations who served time in jail because
they became disenfranchised fathers who thereby were forced to become unable to meet their
obligations and became unemployable, mocked by being labelled deadbeat dads.
The last time we all saw Jean Chretien truly having contact with a
common man was when that man shook his hand and Jean Chretien had his hands around the
man's throat, choking him. Let's hope that spectacle wasn't an omen.
Judging from what we have seen since then it may have been, but let's hope that it is not
even remotely as close to being an omen as the beautiful sunset was that we saw as we
drove into Edmonton. We have many beautiful sunsets here. The one we watched
that night was one of the best I ever saw in my life.
Today, the weather was just average, a little cloudy now and then, a few very light
sprinkles, and even a rainbow -- triggered by the setting sun -- as we drove from the farm
into the city to meet Erin Pizzey once more at the event that MERGE had arranged at the
Edmonton City Hall. Erin Pizzey again was absolutely magnificent, again speaking
without notes, participating in the discussion and controlling it, capturing the
audience. New friendships were initiated, a few familiar horror stories told,
promises made to provide mutual assistance at upcoming Court hearings (one man having been
anonymously accused -- apparently by an unidentified neighbour -- of molesting his
daughter whom he and his wife are now in danger of losing, and with him facing a prison
term against which he must represent himself), strategies discussed and much more.
Into every life a little rain must fall. One women, in child but
without a husband at her side (I hope it's nothing serious), complained bitterly that
there was too much women-bashing. When pressed for evidence, she pointed at a
grandfather who, after telling that for years he hadn't been allowed to see his
grandchildren, on account of having been an alleged abuser, had complained that it isn't
possible to reason with "these lesbians" present everywhere in social services
and other sectors of the bureaucracy. I'm sure that it will be possible to teach him
manners and get him to use words like "man-haters" instead. I don't think
that at his age we can hope for anything much better, just like the farmer who moved into
the city and whose children told their mother to teach him the word "fertilizer"
when he had informed them about his intention of spreading the manure on the front
lawn. "Are you crazy?" she said, "It took me 42 years to teach him to
say manure!"
We all had to say our good-byes. Erin Pizzey left Edmonton, with Sen. Cools and
Theresa Petkau having returned home from Calgary. We were all sorry to see her
go. Let's hope that we'll see each other again. Try to convince her to come to
your part of the world. I truly think that it will make a difference. If you
can get two more people on the team like Sen. Anne Cools and Theresa Petkau, you'll be
able to conquer the Devil himself. Let's pray that the funds will be made available
to do it with.
Welcome back to Earth and reality, all of you who met Sen. Cools, Theresa
Petkau and Erin Pizzey this weekend. Who knows what things would be like if it
wasn't for them and others like them. We owe them much gratitude, they make a
difference!
________________________
Stephen Galvin, pointed out on Sat, 23 Sep 2000 that
there is quite a bit more tangible information about the history of the doctrine "In
the best interest of the child."
Stephen wrote:
---Quote---
"The father is the person entitled by law to the custody of the child. If he abused
that right to the detriment of the child, the court will protect that child. But there is
no pretence that the child has been injured for want of nurture in any other respect. Then
he, having a legal right to the custody of the child, and not having abused that right, is
entitled to have it restored to him."
Lord Ellenborough, C J. Rex v De Manneville (1804) 5 East, 102 Eng Rep 1054 quoted in
Joakimidis, J. Back to the Best Interests of the Child, Child Support Action Group
Adelaide 1994 p.13.
Joakimidis goes on to recount the history of the 'tender years' doctrine which
progressively eroded the presumption of the father being the natural caregiver for the
child.
Stephen
---End quote---
The question now is whether that can be made the basis of a legal challenge. Is
it that the law was subsequently broken repeatedly, or was that original decision
rightfully overturned?
If fundamental and "inalienable" rights mean anything, then it shouldn't be
possible for the law to make a 180 degree turn, even if it took almost 200 year to
complete it.
To merely ask, "How did we get from there to where we are now?" isn't enough.
--Walter
