Recent research shows that when a marriage ends, most fathers are left without the family home or primary care of the children. Men who feel they were mistreated by the system tell their stories to KATE HOLMQUIST
EVERY NIGHT before he goes to sleep, Joe, a separated father, looks at a picture of his children on his computer screen and tells them he loves them.
When Tom’s marriage broke up, he slept in his car near the family home because he wanted to be close by in case something happened to the children.
Cathal weeps when he speaks of how he came home from hospital after being stabbed by his wife to find his house emptied of “everything” – including his children. His wife had left a solicitor’s letter on the counter accusing him of being mentally ill and telling him she wanted a divorce.
All three men have struggled for years in the courts to gain access to their children and believe that they should have been made primary carers, in their children’s best interests. They tell of being so alienated from their children by their ex-wives, they’ve had to watch their children’s first holy communions and confirmations from the back of the church. They speak of telling social workers about their ex-wives’ abusive behaviour and of not being believed.
“I was really, really depressed before the separation, sleeping in the back sitting room. You weren’t walking on eggshells, you were walking on razor blades,” says Cathal, who showed The Irish Times an extensive psychiatrist’s report that declares him under stress due to the separation, but well mentally otherwise.
“I know men who killed themselves because they lost contact with their children,” says Declan Keaveney, a retired garda who spent €50,000 fighting through the courts to be made primary carer of his two children and even contemplated suicide himself. He eventually succeeded in becoming primary carer.“Men have no voice – we have nothing,” he says.
Keaveney, who is now is a volunteer with Amen, a support group for male victims of domestic abuse. He listens on a daily basis to men driven to the edge by rancorous separation wars in which children are often used as ammunition. “Parental alienation syndrome”, where one parent turns the children against another, is common, he says.
A report by One Family, an advocacy group for one-parent families, finds some fathers who, despite contact orders, are refused contact with their children by their wives and cannot get the HSE to intervene and enforce their rights.
Court delays also mean fathers can go months without seeing their children. One father says he “just gave up because it was too stressful . . . [my ex-wife] was on legal aid and I had a private solicitor which cost a lot of money and I just gave up”.
There is “no deliberate bias” against men in the family law courts, believes Anne Egan, a researcher who sat in on 158 in camera cases (where cases are heard in private) for her PhD, though the court “reinforces stereotypical views” that children need to be with their mother as primary carer – the result in 88 per cent of cases.
Another PhD researcher, Róisín O’Shea, found only 2.23 per cent of 493 cases had the children living with their father. While many fathers asked for 50/50 living arrangements, O’Shea saw this ordered by the court in just two cases.
Egan, who also interviewed fathers, says most accepted the mother as primary carer, but “they would have liked more contact rather than specific times and dates”. These fathers missed the daily informal involvement with their children over breakfast, the school run or even just a few minutes in the evening to hear about a child’s day.
The second major complaint was being left out of decision-making. “Most were not happy with the situation but it was working for them,” she says.
If a father wants to be primary carer, “it’s not always fair. There’s a battle royale if you are acting for a father,” says Marion Campbell, a private family law solicitor who has been dealing with separation cases since 1981, when she started her career in the legal aid board.
Due to the recession, a growing number of men have become stay-at-home fathers whose wives work full-time. It’s often the wife who wants to separate, yet if the father wants to remain in the home as primary carer, he needs maintenance paid by the wife and her agreement to leave the family home, which is practically unheard of (O’Shea’s study found not one case of fathers receiving maintenance).
Jobless and rejected men may have no choice but to move home to their parents’ house, Campbell says. Would a stay-at-home mother be asked to leave her house with no maintenance and limited access to her children because her husband wanted a separation? The question just doesn’t arise, Campbell points out.
Another unfair perception is that men are not physically assaulted by their wives, she adds. “I’ve come across a lot of cases, but women are much stronger and more proactive in issuing proceedings. Men bury their heads and come in at the last minute and quite a number are upset because they don’t want the separation,” says Campbell.
ONE FATHER WHO WAS physically abused says he never told anyone because “it’s embarrassing”. When parents fight in court over property and children, lawyers’ briefcases heave with psychiatrists’ and social workers’ reports, although hearings can be so brief that judges don’t always see everything.
Keaveney says the men he hears from often feel social workers have sided with their wives and barely listen to them, and that the wives’ allegations are always believed.
Joe says he experienced years of false accusations by his ex-wife before he finally received a verbal apology from a social worker who said he’d been right about his wife’s fragile mental state all along. For example, his wife went to gardaí accusing Joe of exposing their son to pornography during an access visit. Gardaí investigated and The Irish Times has seen a copy of a letter from An Garda Síochana telling Joe they found no basis for the allegations. For Joe, this was just one episode in a long campaign by his ex-wife to “destroy” him, even though she had left him for another man.
“Because she’s a woman she can say what she likes, do what she likes and is getting away with it. Because I’ve moved on, the only way she can get to me is through the kids. I know guys who have not seen their kids in five to 10 years.
“One father I know, hadn’t seen his son for eight years. Then he got a call through a solicitor to say his son had attempted suicide. Can you imagine how he feels?”
Tom weeps when he speaks of living “in limbo”. After years of court battles costing in the region of €50,000, he has good access to his children but still worries about their safety. At the height of the conflict, he would drive by a place where he knew his children would be, just to see them from a distance. “I’m trying to move on, but last week, I broke down leaving the kids back to their mother. I was leaving them to somebody I don’t trust.” Sleepless nights have become routine, but he keeps going, trying to rebuild his life and his business, “for my kids”.
Some names have been changed
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2010/1005/1224280399159.html?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4cac9f9c81c6172f%2C0We grandparents suffer too as our sons despair over their loss!
I pray my husband and I will live to see our son reunited with his child
Letter to the Observer following this news item
http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/index.php?itemid=421The Observer, Sunday 3 October 2010
Our son has been going through agony in the last 10 years and the knock-on effect has devastated our entire family. We grandparents never got to see our only granddaughter at birth. Why, after paying thousands in solicitor's fees and eventually getting a contact order, are things not enforced?
Two weeks after the order he arrived at his former home to find the mother had moved away. More fees to hire a private detective. She was found and eventually had to comply with contact.
Over the next four-and-half years, contact was 14 hours a month. Our son was never allowed to take his daughter on holiday and had her to stay only one weekend in his house.
All contact has been refused since 2006. He receives no school reports and has had one photograph. Parcels, gifts, cards and letters are sent regularly to her from Dad and family and maintenance has always been paid.
Changes must be made to support fathers who desperately want to see their children. Mediation is now the only option.
I put on a brave face most of the time and I pray that my husband and I will live to see our son reunited with his only child. Somebody out there help these fathers, please.
Name and address supplied
My parents separated in 2001, when I was eight and my sister five ("How a new age of fathers' rights is taking hold", In Focus). Both my parents wanted us to retain a strong relationship with each of them and so it was decided between them that they would "share us". We spent every Monday and Tuesday nights and alternate weekends with our dad and the rest with our mum. After eight years, my sister and I felt we were constantly in limbo; we felt as though we had no real home.
With the support of our mum, we spoke to Dad and told him we wanted the situation to change. Although he was upset he could see this was affecting us and he valued our happiness. Although we now tend just to see him alternate weekends I feel that our relationship is now stronger as we value our time together more.
I am greatful to Toon of RFFJ for both of these items : James Whale suffered the sadness of seeing his own son going through Parental Alienation at the time he was diagnosed with Kidney Cancer. James devoted a chapter of his book to this time and if you click on the origional blog title above you can read more on James's battle and remisson from Cancer. Davey
We grandparents suffer too as our sons despair over their loss! (James Whale)
You said: "Only about 11% of children from broken homes go on to spend equal amounts of time with each parent", without speaking to any children in this situation. After eight years of living this "ideal" scenario, it became complicated and impractical. The happiness our parents were trying to create turned to unhappiness.
Leah Sharman
Bournemouth
Last week, I received a telephone call from a policewoman threatening me with arrest. My crime? Sending three cards to my grandson telling him I love him. He had his third birthday last week and as my son's former partner will not allow me to see him I put birthday wishes in our local newspaper. My son is fighting through the family courts to regain the access he had with his son until March this year but he still is not seeing his little boy.
My son's ex-partner saw my cards as harassment. Don't you think the police have more important things to do than threaten a 67-year-old grandmother?
Name and address supplied
I'm single and not a parent, but I noticed that none of the concerned fathers you quoted made any reference to their children's feelings.
That the men you interviewed seemed incapable of putting their children's feelings above their own is illustrative of a bias in the home of the very children those men purport to wish to protect.
Vivian Frew
London EC1
"Home" needs to become a space that is healthily shared by women and men, not a battleground.
Alongside the gains of feminism in making the space "out in the world" a much more healthily distributed one between men and women, there needs to be a similar recalibration of power and perception in the shared space of home. This has to be in the interests of us all.
Phil Goss
Senior lecturer in psychotherapy
University of Central Lancashire
For more on Grandparents check out my friend Jimmy's blog.
http://chatterboxblogforyou.blogspot.com/ 
I was also delighted that John Hemming (Lib-Dem) M.P. for Yardley Birmingham within the Coalition Government, tipped me off about the Ministry of Justice call for eveidence and subsequent review that will conclude in about one year from now. The call required 2 questionnaires to be completed one brief, one more intensive and I was struck by the quality of questions including the final one which was what questions did we feel they should have asked and I highlighted the plight of the many thousands of fathers who commit suicide each year because of the effects Family law CSA and other related influences have on their lives. I also submitted my blogs and other submissions and been invited to contribute more now after the 30th September 2010 deadline and in turn they will keep me updated with the developments as the review progresses. I am aware of many campaigners who are not convinced by this review describing it as a fudge or white wash and I too have my reservations knowing that it is this Governments motivation to make cost savings throughout all departments rather then the quest for justice as we have all been campaigning for for many years, but nonetheless I urge that we give this a chance and keep it high on the political agenda via your own MP and in the media, I am not sure the impending NFFJ protest on Chairman Lord Justice Wall's home will have the desired effect as he is the one person from both the Houses of Parliament that is at least doing something about this and we should give him and his team all the support and information they need. (Keep focused Guys!)
I am pleased with the International awareness campaign I have pushed on Facebook and elsewhere and the number of people affected and who have come forward with interesting and complimentry feedback from the Washington DC campaigners,to Dadsonair in Australia ( Not forgetting Ken Thompson's one man crusade for justice from Melbourne to the Hague Courts for human rights!) the PAS campaign spearheaded in Singapore to the 3 musketeers in New Zealand my great concern for the Canadian system and the recent but just as significant advice from South America and South Africa. Maybe our Review here in London will influence other countries to follow suit even if it is on the same cost cutting premise. If it gets the justice we crave then so be it!
