Tuesday 10 June 2008

Justice 4 everyone

Full Story: http://www.stopinjusticenow.com/News_0864.htm

Caroline Norton campaigned to secure divorced mothers access to their children. Today, it's fathers who need a pioneering figure One of the hardest things about being a single parent is allowing your child to disappear on an access visit. And for me that's exactly what my precious daughter, aged two at the time, did. Dreads, my ex, quickly moved on with a new girlfriend, about whom I was allowed to know precisely nothing. I didn't know her name, where she lived or who she was. And every other Saturday night, my daughter would disappear to this stranger's house. I went to bed at night with no idea where my daughter was sleeping. And if I asked Dreads to at least give me an address, he'd answer: "All you need to know is she's with me." Cruel? Perhaps. Unneccessary? Definitely. But life after separation is usually a pretty barren, petty place, with the kids acting as mute referees in the ring of embittered parents. It would have been all too easy to have stopped Dreads from seeing his daughter. I knew the threat of a long court process would easily have deterred my ex from seeing our child. Something another single mum friend even urged me to do. Yet this was something, however much I was hurt or left angered, I never countenanced. Because denying dads their right to see their children, I think, quite simply makes you a terrible parent. So, even as the Fathers 4 Justice "superdads" pranced on Harriet Harman's roof, I felt more than a smidgen of sympathy for them. I have little idea of why Jolly Stanesby and Mark Harris aren't allowed access to their children. Maybe they are victims of some heartless ex who wants to get them back for past bad behaviour, or perhaps they are useless fathers who have tried the patience of a court judge too many times. But whatever the reason they are on that roof, it is about time we listened.

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