iPhone Data Save Man in False Rape Case
July 30, 2010
Sadly, this is not a very unusual case, but the article about it sure is (Sydney Morning Herald, 7/28/10).
Essentially, it's another false rape case. An 18-year-old woman and a successful older business man got to know each other through their love of dogs. She loves them; he trains and shows them. Pretty soon she started traveling with him to dog shows and a sexual affair developed. He gave her a $20,000 German Shepherd as a gift. ($20,000? Really?)
Last August she accused him of rape and the police arrested him and charged him with five counts of that crime. His lawyer hired an expert with the capability of extracting deleted information from his iPhone. And there was all the information anyone needed to figure out that the relationship had been not only consensual, but avid on her part. So all five charges were dropped and the prosecuting attorney's office has been ordered to pay him $30,000 in legal fees.
Having been charged with heinous crimes, the man's reputation and business have suffered. The Catholic Church, that had paid him $100,000 in fees the previous three years, dumped him. Seemingly it excommunicated him as well although the article only says it no longer allows him to worship there.
And that's where the article gets a bit strange. For example, it begins
A MAN'S business and reputation are tainted, a young woman's HSC and mental health are in tatters and prosecutors have been ordered to pay more than $30,000 in legal costs for a bungled rape investigation on Sydney's northern beaches.
Hmm. Her mental health is "in tatters?" The article provides no evidence for that proposition and no suggestion about why it would be so. Is it because she regrets falsely accusing the man? Because she got caught?
"Bungled" investigation? Again, there's nothing whatever to explain the claim. Clearly something went awry or the court wouldn't have ordered the payment of attorneys fees. But what? What did the police do or not do? The article doesn't say, but my guess is that they plunged ahead and charged him with five counts of rape, each of which carries up to 14 years in prison, without checking the facts. After all, this is a police force that seized the German Shepherd "saying it was relevant to the investigation." Huh?
From the outside, the story looks pretty easy to figure out. She had an affair with a well-to-do older man. That's the type of relationship that doesn't usually last long and it may be that she didn't want it to. Crying 'rape' would have been one way to ensure that the end of the relationship didn't mean the end of the gravy train.
But the article says nothing about her motivations, and in that, it's all of a piece. It contains many suggestions, but few facts.
Having been snatched from the jaws of the lion, the man is considering his options.
[The man] wants police to investigate [the woman] for causing a false investigation and is considering civil action against the police and the church.
I should hope so.
Thanks to Robert for the heads-up.
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Writer Lays Bare Utah Adoption Industry
July 30, 2010
This article is a must-read (Salt Lake City Weekly, 7/28/10). To be blunt, it's the best piece I've ever read on the subject of putative father registries and adoption. Moreover, its target is the State of Utah, which is, of all the fifty states, by far the worst offender when it comes to depriving fathers of their rights in adoption cases.
The article pretty much covers the waterfront. It deals with putative father registries generally and even quotes the director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute which is the authoritative source in the U.S. for adoption information.
“As they currently exist, [putative-father registries] too often are used to cut men out under the guise of cutting them in,” says Adam Pertman, the executive director of the Boston-based Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute.
That's spot on. From their inception in New York in the 1970s, putative father registries have had as their goal and their effect the removal of single fathers from adoption cases. That they violate the most basic tenets of due process should be obvious to all. The legal fiction they rely on is that, since men know that sex makes babies, every time a single man has sex with a woman he's "on notice" that (a) conception occurred, (b) he won't be informed of the pregnancy by the mother, (c) she'll carry the pregnancy to term and (d) place the child for adoption without telling him. Therefore, more or less every time a single man has intercourse, he's supposed to file a form with the putative father registry of the state. As one Texas family lawyer quipped to me years ago, "they ought to put a stack of forms in every men's room of every club in the state."
As bad as putative father registries are, adoption law in the State of Utah is far worse. Utah is the state that never saw an adoption it didn't like or a single father that it did. Adoption lawyers and agencies across the country know that, if a single father looks like he's going to stop an adoption in one state, just ship the mom to Utah and the dad's chances drop to nothing.
The writer, Jesse Fruhwirth, gives several examples, two of which I've covered in the past. One I haven't is the case of a man named Ramsey Shaud. Like so many others, he was sure that the woman who was pregnant with his child understood and agreed with his desire to raise their child, either with her or by himself. But she traveled to Arizona and then sent him a cryptic email saying she was going to Utah for a few days.
We've seen that before. In the Cody O'Dea case, the mother called him and spoke the words "I'm in Utah." Why did she and the mother in the Shaud case say those things? It turns out that simply by doing so, the father then has 20 days in which to hire a Utah attorney and file his paternity suit. If he fails to do so, he's out of luck.
Oh, and guess what. The attorney in the O'Dea case is the same one as in the Shaud case. He's Larry Jenkins who, according to the article, represents an adoption agency and lobbies the legislature and testifies before its committees (often misleadingly) on behalf of ever more restrictive fathers' rights in adoption cases.
But, as Fruhwirth tells us, even if a single dad does file suit inside of 20 days, he may still be out of luck. That's because he has to allege in the suit that he has been willing to pay all of the mother's medical expenses during pregnancy and set forth a plan of how he intends to care for the child. Ramsey Shaud hired an attorney and did both those things and still lost his child because the court decided his parenting plan wasn't specific enough. What would have been specific enough? Utah law doesn't say. It's like throwing darts blindfolded; you think the board is there, but the state of Utah has moved it somewhere else.
The U.S. Supreme Court has unequivocally held that single fathers have parental rights, but the State of Utah is having none of it. Their antipathy for single fathers knows few bounds. After all, former Justice William Brennan once described U.S. Supreme Court law on the rights of single fathers this way:
[W]e have held that any exception to the requirement of parental consent (to adoption) must be strictly construed so as to protect the right of natural parents to raise and nurture their children.
[T]he parent's interest is fundamental but the State has no legitimate interest in termination unless the parent is unfit, and finding that the State's interest in finding the best home for the child does not arise until the parent has been found unfit.
Put simply, there is no possible way that Utah's maze of anti-father adoption law could pass constitutional muster. By itself the idea that someone saying "I'm going to Utah" constitutes notice of the imminent compromise of rights the Supreme Court has called "far more precious than property rights," boggles the mind. As I've said before, the most heinous mass murderer has far more due process rights than the most upstanding single father who wants nothing more than to care for his child.
We excoriate as a 'deadbeat' any father who loses his job and can't make his child support payments because he's "not taking responsibility" for his child. But in case after case we have single fathers who want to do just that and states (not just Utah) do everything in their power to prevent it. Go figure.
The only things I'd add to Fruhwirth's fine piece are these: First, the children in the cases he's writing about don't need to be adopted. They have qualified, motivated fathers who want to care for them. By forcing adoption on them, courts are simultaneously denying adoption to children throughout the country and the world, who desperately need parents. If that's not a crime, it should be.
Second, putative father registries tend to be closely-guarded secrets. In Texas, where I live, the state budgets zero funds to publicize either the registry or its effects on the rights of single fathers. Into the bargain, although the statute creating the registry requires forms to be available at various public sites, they're not and the people at those sites (e.g. courthouses) stare at you blankly if you ask for them. The result is that single dads in Texas don't know about the registry or what they stand to lose by failing to file. Years ago, I asked 100 men in downtown Houston and at the University of Houston if they had ever heard of the Texas Paternity Registry. None had.
But enough of me. Read Fruhwirth's piece; but first take something to calm your nerves and lower your blood pressure.
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False Rape Accuser Gets Three Years
July 29, 2010
Check the top photo of Leyla Ibrahim in this article (Daily Mail, 7/16/10). Then check the bottom photo. It's the same person before and after being charged with perverting the course of justice and being sentenced to three years in prison. That's what facing prison time will do to you.
But of course Leyla Ibrahim might have considered that before she falsely accused four young men of rape. But she didn't. In fact, she used the most petty of all motivations to launch an enormous police investigation that resulted in the arrest and interrogation of the four.
It seems that one night, Ibrahim had a row with her boyfriend who then refused to take her home. She then went to astonishing lengths to make it look like she'd been assaulted. She ripped out chunks of her hair, tore her dress and hose, gave herself a black eye and other assorted bumps and bruises. She then went to the police who assigned no fewer than 40 (!) officers to the case. It didn't take long for them to arrest four entirely innocent young men and subject them to three days of grueling interrogation. By then they'd spent some £150,000 of taxpayers' money and concluded that Ibrahim was lying.
Last month a judge concluded the same thing. Two weeks ago, he sentenced Ibrahim to three years inside, calling her "wicked." The article makes much of the fact that Ibrahim is now seven months pregnant, but apparently that didn't deter the judge.
The young men Ibrahim had arrested aren't faring very well. Before being released by police, one of them attempted suicide and, once on the street, they've been subjected to public denunciations and threats. Two of them were under 16 at the time they were arrested; one describes his subsequent public abuse as 'torture.' Another has moved away, while yet another has been unable to eat or sleep.
Will they be compensated in any way? Will Ibrahim be made to pay for the ongoing damage to their psyches and reputations? Will anyone? Will they be given psychological counselling or indeed any assistance at all? So far they've haven't even received an apology.
The article doesn't answer those questions, or even ask them. Apparently, once the defendant is punished, we're supposed to think that all has been made right. It hasn't been.
Thanks to George and Atilla for the heads-up.
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MI Man not the Dad, but Owes the State Welfare Reimbursement Anyway
July 29, 2010
One of my first jaw-dropping experiences in the fathers' rights arena came back in 1999. I was researching the phenomenon of men who had learned after the fact - and sometimes long after the fact - that they'd fathered a child. I was interested in what happened to their parental rights if a mother kept a man's child secret from him. I was astonished to learn that the rights of such a dad could vanish into thin air. The rule in many states was that, since he hadn't actively cared for the child, he had no more claim to it. The fact that the mother had intentionally deprived him of the ability to do that often made no difference to courts.
So I had lengthy conversations with a number of those dads, one of whom lived in Lompoc, California. He'd had a one-night stand with a woman 16 years previously. They both lived in the same community, but she decided he didn't need to know about it when she became pregnant and gave birth to his daughter. Then she started receiving AFDC payments (now TANF) from the state which were required to be reimbursed by the father. Fifteen years later, the dad received a letter from the State of California saying (a) he had a daughter and (b) he owed the state over $40,000. This was shortly after he'd gotten married. He had to get a second mortgage on his house to pay off the state.
This case is very much the same, but in fact much worse (WXYZ, 7/8/10). This time it's the State of Michigan that's suing Gary Harper for AFDC payments made to a woman named Dorothy Hoose. She had a son in 1988 and named Harper as the dad. There's just one problem, though; he's not.
But the State of Michigan isn't interested in technicalities like who the actual father is. It's known for many years that Harper is not the dad and, as far as I can tell, lifted nary a finger to find out who is. That's because it's got Harper on its line and the hook is set. Why go after another fish when you've already got one reeled in?
You see, when Hoose named Harper as the dad, he was in prison. According to Michigan law, the state has to pay for a DNA test for any inmate for whom it seeks to establish paternity. The state knew Harper was in the joint because a Friend of the Court sent correspondence there about his case. But it never offered him the genetic testing.
After he got out, he didn't have the $500 it would have taken at the time to determine whether he was the dad or not. He didn't do the test until years later, when he had the money. That test proved he wasn't the dad, but it was too late. His window of opportunity for disproving his paternity had closed. That's one of those technicalities the state is interested in.
So as of now, Harper's on the hook for $22,500, down from the $50,000 the state claimed at first. He's got an attorney, Susan Pushman, who says that the state's failure to provide DNA testing when Harper was inside means it can't complain that he didn't do it on his own when he got out. If Michigan had done what it was obligated to do, it would have known Harper isn't the father, is her argument. The case is pending.
The "child" in question is now 22 years old. Perhaps oddly, he and Harper have gotten to know and like each other pretty well. That's a positive development in an otherwise tawdry affair.
It's worth asking why the State of Michigan has expended such effort in trying to bankrupt a man it knows has no responsibility for Hoose's son. After all, Harper has been trying to get his life back together after his time in prison, and he's done a pretty good job of that. But if the state has its way, it'll tear down whatever he's built. Nice.
What truly escapes me is why state welfare authorities don't just ask Hoose who the father is, do DNA testing on him and, if she's right this time, demand payment. What's the problem with getting the right man and letting the wrong one go? What state interest is served by soaking a man who's not the father and letting the man who is go free? One of the points of child support is that he who fathers a child should be financially responsible for it. In Harper's case, the State of Michigan has it exactly backwards.
Thanks to Jeff for the heads-up.
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William McCormick Update: Emails Show Administration Listened to Accuser, but not Accused
July 28, 2010
I've reported before on this ongoing case. In a nutshell, William McCormick III started attending Brown University in Rhode Island as a freshman in the fall of 2006. Not long after that, an unnamed female student accused him of rape. He denied it, but, when the school offered him the opportunity to withdraw for "medical" reasons and avoid criminal charges and an on-campus hearing, he accepted. McCormick now says that acceptance was obtained by the school under duress. Presently, he attends Bucknell University.
McCormick has sued Brown, the woman who told school authorities he had raped her, her father and others. In his lawsuit he claims that Brown railroaded him into accepting their offer of a medical withdrawal. He claims that the woman's father was an influential alumnus of Brown and improperly influenced the school's administration in the handling of the woman's allegations. McCormick's wrestling coach, Michael Burch supports his position saying that the university authorities refused to speak to McCormick either in person or by telephone.
Now, this article tells us that the discovery process in McCormick's civil case has produced a batch of email communications that seem to support his claims (Brown Daily Herald, 7/26/10). Before the woman had ever made her accusations to Brown administrators, her father was in contact with them. Here is part of what he said in one email to Brown president Ruth Simmons:
“Ruth … I am working to resolve the matter with the student who attacked (the female student) — the goal is to have him withdraw from Brown and not have a University hearing. This will enable (her) and the other students to avoid having to come in contact with the student and face questioning from his advocate.”
The salient features of that email are (a) he's on a first-name basis with the president of the university, (b) he, not university authorities, is "working to resolve the matter," (c) he wants to avoid a hearing and questioning by McCormick's attorney and (d) what he was trying to accomplish is exactly what happened in the end. Does that sound like a man exercising undue influence over what should have been an impartial process? It does to me.
And when you compare that with the fact that Burch has continually maintained that the university didn't listen to McCormick's plea of innocence, things begin to smell fishy.
But there's a lot more to come. We're still at an early stage in the litigation of this matter and surely there will be some surprises. Brown administrators may have handled the matter clumsily; they may have refused to afford McCormick due process of law. Even if true, those facts alone wouldn't mean he didn't rape the young woman.
Still, no one, not the police and not the school, investigated her claims. By now, there is probably little or no objective evidence to support them. And without that, this case feels like one in which McCormick offended the woman somehow and she used her power as a woman alleging rape - with a heavyweight father behind her - to retaliate.
Maybe there's more to it than that, but that's my best guess for now. Stay tuned.
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Where’s the Dad? Media Accounts Ignore Father in Paternity Fraud, Attempted Murder, Child Abuse Case
July 28, 2010
This is a lurid tale, so it's no surprise that it's received a good bit of media attention (Orange County Register, 7/22/10).
Back in August of 2008, Shawn Sepulveda was married and had two children. But she had an affair with a co-worker and became pregnant. Strangely enough, she was able to conceal her pregnancy from her husband, or at least she mostly did. He was suspicious, but whenever he or their children asked her, she denied being pregnant.
Sepulveda gave birth in the bathroom of their apartment, cut the umbilical cord with a kitchen knife, wrapped the newborn in fabric and put it in a dumpster outside the apartment complex in which they lived. Her husband sent their 11-year-old daughter out to look around and she found the baby in the dumpster. They called 911, the baby was taken into foster care and Sepulveda was arrested and charged with attempted murder, for which she could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted. Her trial started last week.
So this is another example of the many ways children can be abused by adults. There's nothing new in that.
What I find interesting though, is the Amazing Disappearing Dad. The child's life was saved and presumably it's healthy and by now almost two years old. So who's caring for it? The husband? The father? It's odd how the writers of the various articles seem to care about the baby's welfare, but never mention the actual dad. Where is he? Who is he? Does he have custody?
Under California law, the husband is presumptively the father, but no one believes that to be the case here. Has paternity been established? Has a child support order been made? Do the husband and the father share custody? Has CPS placed the child in foster care permanently?
I've written a fair amount about paternity fraud. It's always seemed to me to be one of the least honorable things a woman can do to a man. But Shawn Sepulveda took the concept a good bit further than most.
Thanks to David for the heads-up.
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British Columbia Gives a Whole New Meaning to the Term ‘Child Support’
July 26, 2010
Here's one we don't often see (Calgary Herald, 7/25/10).
It seems that, years ago, Shirley Anderson was one of the worst of mothers. Her children, now aged 52, 50, 48 and 46, call their upbringing by her "harsh" and "brutal." But for one of her sons, Ken, it was worse than that; she abandoned him outright 31 years ago when he was 15. He had to drop out of high school, get a menial job and crash on friends' couches. He never completed high school and never attended college.
Sadly, as despicable as Shirley's behavior was, it's not the worst thing a parent can do to a child. But now, at age 71, she's upping the ante; she's suing her children for support. In fact, her suit began a long time ago, back in 2000. It all stems from a British Columbia law passed in 1922 that requires offspring to support their "dependent" parents. So back in 2000, Shirley Anderson asked for and received a court order requiring her children to pay her $50 a month, or $10 each (she has five children, but one is not part of the suit). Now she's asking the court to increase the amount to $300 - $350 each per month.
Not surprisingly, they're resisting the whole idea of paying to support the woman who abused them. Shirley's daughter,
Donna Anderson, who left home at 18, put herself through college and is the mother of two kids. She says she won't pay a dime. "They can take me to jail."
They may do just that. The law Shirley is suing under was passed at a time when circumstances in Canada were entirely different from what they are now. Then there was no state pension and no guaranteed medical care. So the law that placed responsibility for the wellbeing of the elderly on the shoulders of the children, has clearly been superseded by subsequent laws and policies. But it's still on the books and Shirley Anderson is trying to cash in.
My guess is that the legal issues are pretty cut and dried. My guess is that Shirley will win. The law is the law and however unfair it may be to Ken Anderson and his siblings, it still applies to them.
Still the case raises some obvious moral issues, if few legal ones. Ken and Donna Anderson ask, "what is a parent?" I'm not informed on the intricacies of this statute, but it probably assumes a parent to be the biological one, and Shirley Anderson is certainly that, if little more. But in other areas of the law, a biological mother can have her rights terminated if she proves herself to be abusive or neglectful of her children. Apparently the law requiring children to support a parent has no such provision to relieve children of the obligation when the parent is unfit.
If I were Ken Anderson though, I'd argue abandonment. A mother can also have her rights terminated if it's shown that she abandoned a child. Her unilateral act can, by itself, result in the loss of her parental rights. I would argue that she did just that when she left him behind with no support, no home, no money, no food, no love, no companisonship and no guidance. If that happened today, CPS would waste no time in terminating her parental rights. I would argue that the court should do so today in Ken's case.
The irony of a law that's meant to prevent children from abandoning parents being used to require support of a mother who abandoned her child is surely lost on no one. But the larger question is again, "what is a parent?" Depending on the situation, a parent is either a biological one or the active caretaker. Most often of course, the two are the same, but increasingly, not always. Our confusion about that and about to whom to give enforceable parental rights has, for many years, caused considerable grief, consternation and conflict.
But the answer to the question is not difficult. All law relating to parents and children should adhere to the following basic principles. With one exception, a parent is the biological one until that person demonstrates that he/she is unfit, unable, uncaring, etc. Only after that demonstration has been made following due process of law, can a biological parent be deprived of his/her rights and another person substituted. Therefore, a father who has been prevented by the mother from knowing about and/or caring for his child, is still a father with enforceable rights.
The only exception is in the case of paternity fraud. Where a man has been falsely or mistakenly led to believe that he is the father of a child and who has cared for and contributed to the support of the child, that man, though not the biological father, has rights. So does the biological dad whose ability to care for his child was denied by the mother's fraud or mistake. His parental rights should not be compromised by anything but his own informed actions or inactions.
Meanwhile, the law under which Shirley Anderson is suing should either be repealed altogther or amended so that it benefits only parents who have acted the part.
Thanks to Jeremy for the heads-up.
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Schwarzenegger Signs Child Support Reform Bill SB 580
July 26, 2010
California Senator Rod Wright (D-Los Angeles) has long been a leader in working toward a balanced family law system, and is sponsoring three child support reform bills this year. Fathers and Families' legislative representative Michael Robinson, in cooperation with the Family Law Executive Committee of the California State Bar, the Public Defenders Association, the Department of Child Support Services, and others, has been instrumental in introducing and working for the passage of child support reform bills in the California 2009-2010 legislative session.
The first of these bills to pass is SB 580, a bill to ensure that noncustodial parents aren't saddled with an unreasonably high percentage of their children's medical care costs. Governor Schwarzenegger signed SB 580 last week.
We thank Senator Wright and Robinson for their successful work on this bread and butter issue for California child support obligors.
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Your Letter Wanted: Cleveland Plain Dealer Editorial Board Demands that Family Courts Enforce Visitation Orders
July 26, 2010
"Youngsters need two loving parents in their lives, and if a father has been deemed fit by the courts and is ready and willing to be a good parent, no one should be allowed to stand in his way."--Cleveland Plain Dealer Editorial Board
After discussing child custody and child support with Ned Holstein, M.D., M.S., Chair of the Board of Fathers and Families, the Editorial Board of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper, called for more shared parenting in their Father's Day editorial Making sense of child support in Ohio: editorial (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 6/19/10). Now the Plain Dealer's Ed Board has come out with a strong editorial calling for enforcement of visitation orders and criticizing the sole custody for mothers norm. To write a Letter to the Editor, click here.
The Board writes:
When parents fail to pay child support, the consequences are clear -- seizure of driver's licenses, and a new nickname: deadbeat. But when custodial parents -- usually mothers -- refuse to allow their legally entitled ex-spouse or boyfriend to visit their children, they often escape punishment. Yet both are disobeying a court order.
It's a problem across the country, but it's time court officials in Greater Cleveland find a fair resolution...Youngsters need two loving parents in their lives, and if a father has been deemed fit by the courts and is ready and willing to be a good parent, no one should be allowed to stand in his way...Child visitation works when parents behave as adults and consider what is in the best interests of their children. Let's end the practice of allowing children to suffer collateral damage in the war between parents.
The Board also commends a Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Court plan to "add a mediation program this fall that encourages parents to come up with a child-visitation plan early in divorce proceedings, before both sides are arguing bitterly over other issues" and calls on "all Ohio courts to put mothers and fathers on an equal plane from the start. Currently, the courts presume that single mothers automatically have sole custody. In an age when many fathers care for even the youngest infants, it's hard to defend that presumption."
The full editorial is Visitation rights must be enforced (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 7/17/10). To write a Letter to the Editor, click here.
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European Court of Human Rights: German Custody Law Discriminates Against Single Dads
July 26, 2010
At least in Germany they admit it.
In 2003, Harshad, a British citizen of Indian descent, had a baby daughter with his German girlfriend. Knowing nothing of Germany’s idiosyncratic custody laws, Harshad went along with his girlfriend’s suggestion that they skip the laborious process of registering joint custody.
It wasn’t until the couple split that Harshad discovered the enormity of that choice.
“I had no idea it would cause so many problems,” said Harshad, a 44-year-old IT professional. “My ex-girlfriend had said, ‘It’s nothing to worry about; from the paperwork point of view, it’s far easier not to do it, and I said, ‘Okay,’ not really understanding the situation.”
What it meant was that, after the separation, Harshad, who asked that his name be changed, had no claim to be the legal guardian of his daughter. Even if his former girlfriend were to die, custody would pass not to Harshad but to the mother’s parents.
In short, in Germany, single fathers have no parental rights without the consent of their child's mother. In order to establish their rights, they have to file documents with the state and they can't do that if the mother doesn't agree. Apparently, she has to file along with him. If she doesn't, it's his tough luck.
This article tells us about German custody law and points out something I hadn't thought of (The Local, 7/2/10). The law gives single mothers such total control over the parental rights of the fathers of their children that they can convert it into cash. As one single father said,
“I give (my ex-girlfriend) the regular child support and … then on the side, I pay her extra to keep things nice. I realised that I have to be nice because I’ve got no cards. I have nothing. There is no piece of paper saying I have any rights.”
There was a time that would have been called extortion, but apparently where fathers and children are concerned, it's perfectly alright.
In the U.S. we're far less candid about placing the rights of fathers, particularly single fathers, in the hands of mothers. We do it, but require subterfuges far more subtle than the one employed by "Harshad's" ex. Here, in order for a mother to deprive a single father of his rights, she has to lie to him, avoid him, place the child secretly for adoption, lie to the court, etc. If they're divorced or separated, she has to deny him visitation over a long period of time. Or, if the two are married and she has a child by another man, she has to convince her husband the child is his. That is, she's got to jump through some hoops in order to deny the child the care of its father.
Now, for the most part, those hoops are perfectly acceptable to state legislatures and family courts. No state has passed a law that requires a mother to tell the father about his child. If she doesn't, he'll at best have real problems getting access to his child, if he ever learns about it. Again, his rights are in her hands. Does she commit perjury in family court for the purpose of denying the child to its father and the father to his child? For the most part, that goes entirely unpunished, as does the denial of visitation.
Up to now, German law has been far more frank about the matter of the rights of single fathers; they don't have any without the mother's say-so. That's simple and easy to understand.
It's also illegal - as of last December.
In December, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that German custody law discriminates against unmarried fathers by denying them custody without the mother’s consent. The government is now reviewing the law, with a bill expected this year.
“German law has to change and will change,” said Thomas Meysen of the German Institute for Youth Human Services and Family Law, which is conducting research for the government on international comparisons of child custody law.
“There should be a possibility for fathers to get into joint custody without having to rely on the mother’s consent. In that sense, the law is deficient at the moment.”
If Germany wants to change its laws, it has plenty of examples from which to choose that would allow it to continue discriminating against single fathers and still pass legal muster. Basically, it just has to create the fiction, like the U.S. does, that giving primary custody to mothers and "visitation rights" to fathers (a) is equitable, (b) likely keeps both parents in their children's lives and (c) is good for children. Then Germany can dress the whole thing up with a nice pink ribbon called "joint custody," and it all looks pretty good.
It looks good, that is, if you don't examine it very closely. If you do that, you notice that our wonderful system harms children, denies fathers meaningful parental rights, enriches lawyers and enrages anyone with even a minimal sense of justice. It's not really something to emulate.
I know Herr Meysen said that the law must and will change, but he may have been optimistic. It seems the government doesn't agree.
Thorsten Bauer, spokesman for the Federal Justice Ministry, which has oversight of custody law, denied there was systemic discrimination in the courts...
Of course, as a member of the government, it may be difficult for Bauer to admit that "yes, we discriminate." So his statement may just be posturing for the press. After all, when the law allows a woman complete power to grant or deny rights to a man, how can it not be said to discriminate? It's the very definition of discrimination.
And then there's this from Meysen:
“The mother’s rights or the father’s rights are not the most important questions,” he said. “In family conflicts, usually one parent feels they are the loser. The one that does might blame the authorities, in this case the Jugendamt.
“In break-ups ... people’s feelings get hurt and most of the time, they’re fighting about something else, not the custody. Then they make it an issue of rights: ‘I have a right to the child and the mother - or the father - does not.’ Where are the child’s interests in that?”
Isn't it funny how the concept of parental rights all of a sudden becomes suspect when fathers look like they're about to get more of them? We see this frequently. When fathers agitate for more time with their kids or even equal consideration as parents, then and only then do certain people call into question the very idea of parental rights. I've never seen anyone talking about mothers' parental rights make that claim.
And reading what Meysen said, you'd think that parental rights in some way excluded children's interests. No, actually it's one of the major reasons for increasing and enforcing fathers' rights; children do better with two parents in their lives. "Where are the child's interests in that?" They're right there beside fathers' interests hand in hand. Children need their fathers; they tend to do better with fathers involved in their lives than without. We know this. Meysen pretends we don't.
But if Meysen is so dismissive of parental rights, I propose the Germans just reverse things. Give all single dads sole custody of their children and complete control over mother's rights. If the dad says she can see the child, fine; if not too bad for her. Of course Germans are never going to even consider such a thing and in truth I wouldn't want them too. After all, I'm serious about this two-parent thing. But still it'd be entertaining to see, if the positions of the sexes reversed, how quickly people like Meysen decided that parental rights weren't such a bad idea after all.
Thanks to Paul for the heads-up.
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