Thorpe Nukes UK's Secret Court System English Family Courts routinely marginalise fathers. The judgement by Lord Justice Thorpe in the Court of Appeal on 22 May 2003 sets the precedent which will compel all courts to totally remove all fathers. In the very week when Father-4-Justice staged a rooftop protest at what was thought the worst Family Court in the UK, and researchers published fresh research showing that father absence places daughters at special risk of early teenage pregnancy, Lord Justice Thorpe's Court of Appeal judgement effectively nuked the secret UK Family Courts. Lord Justice Thorpe's ruling validated the conduct of a mother who prevented her daughter from looking at photographs of her father, and endorsed the same mother's preventing Social Workers from reading her father's letters to his daughter.
He added that "the father is being denied an ordinary entitlement to experience his daughter's development." Figures cited by the Department of Social Security in the Children First consultation (1998) indicate that 40% of post-separation mothers admit to thwarting contact between child and father. Thorpe's Court of Appeal judgement has put the spotlight on the impotency of the present family court system, and he is unleashing anger and rage that serious reformers have long been predicting and warning about. It is now over 30 years since Professor Sir Michael Rutter's seminal work 'Maternal Deprivation; Reassessed' (1972) in which he challenged the accepted principle upon which family court proceedings in the UK are based. Although the Children Act 1989 sought to give such research the force of law, by redressing the balance between mothers and fathers in the interests of the welfare of their children, judicial practice still has not changed.
Reformers have for a number of years predicted that if courts continue their policy of cutting off fathers from their children that some will turn in anger and rage on judges and CWO (now CAFCASS) operatives. Meanwhile, Butler-Sloss has for a number of years been focusing her mind on championing equal rights for the less than 2 per cent of lesbian and homosexuals who she wants to raise children. Butler-Sloss
and Thorpe are playing with fire by bringing the law into
disrepute. The editor of ManKind's Ill Eagle Magazine wrote to sundry Chiefs of Police where they live to say that in view of their behaviour, senior judges Thorpe and Sloss should have 24 hour police protection. He wrote they are in real danger and predicted that the tyrannical behaviour of judges in Secret Family Courts, might cause wronged parents to take the law into their own hands by attacking those who play out their unfettered arrogance towards fathers. IllEagle
Magazine predicted that Family Court Judges and Court Officials
are in danger of being attacked. Allowing
a mother to prevent her daughter from seeing photographs
of her father, has placed Thorpe (and very likely other Family
Court Judges) in need of round the clock police
protection. |
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It
needs to be clearly stated that the judge has the power to jail
the We are dealing with ignorant, arrogant people at the top of the family court system. Thorpe's own (drink driving) family is a mess, as is Sloss's (using prostitutes), and twice divorced Bracewell argues that marriage has no meaning. People with dysfunctional families themselves have decision making power over millions of families. Sloss takes out her resentment over her husband's misconduct on other fathers. Why does Thorpe follow her? "Judges
can fine, or jail uncooperative mothers, but these sanctions
are rarely used. Fines against those
on Income Support seem pointless.
[Butler-Sloss] believes prison will only make things worse: "It
is not going to advance the relationship between the child and
the non-resident parent at all," says Butler-Sloss. "The
mother will say to the child, 'Your dad put me into prison; that's
the kind of man he is'. - ..." The fact that Butler-Sloss can envisage a mother saying that to a child, but is oblivious to the child abuse the statement contains, speaks volumes about the double standards found everywhere when men seek equal treatment. This is not a procedural issue requiring extra legislation, as some have made out, but the deep reluctance by judges to jail a woman. We believe they would have little compunction in jailing fathers caring for children if they tried to obstruct contact, so the discriminatory double standards must stem from a fear of adverse publicity. However, jailing a father for the same offence who then loses his job income, liberty and contact rights to see his children, is deemed legitimate. It is a common misconception that children will automatically suffer if they leave their mother's home. Thorpe demonstrates that he allows himself to be influenced by what Psychologists term the 'maternal deprivation' theorem, and he thus can not conceive that children can be switched from one home to another. This is a traditional Bowlby view that meant during the 1960's even children who were abused in their own homes were not moved. Rutter (knighted for work that debunked Bowlby) said that such a view is ridiculous. He held that even a bad institution is better that a home in which the child is abused. Mr Justice Wall recently wrote that on a couple of occasions he had switched children from one home to another with remarkable effects. Asked
to produce these two judgemenents, The Lord Chancellors Department
stated that since these two judgments by Mr Wall were not in
the High Court or Court of
Appeal they were not recorded.
Fathers do not get justice from the Law ... . The dictum that child custody should always go to the mother irrespective of her conduct was established in 1948 by the Appeal Court in the case of a prisoner of war who returned home to find his wife and his eight-year-old daughter living with another man. The judges felt that he had been greatly wronged but that they could do nothing but award custody to the mother. In the 1970s, Lord Lane established that blameless fathers could be ousted from their own homes, declaring sadly that "the law does not seem to be about justice - it seems that the needs of children have to come first". (Dr) John Campion |
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A distraught father whose partner hates him so much she even prevented their daughter looking at his photograph today lost his appeal to have any contact with the four year old. Lord Justice Thorpe told him he had "every sympathy" with him but had no legal power to overturn a total ban on contact. The ban had been imposed at Chelmsford County Court - Where Judge Ludlow ruled it was in the "best interests" of the child not to see her father as contact was making her mother depressed. Outside court today the father, who has not been able to see his daughter for two years, said he planned to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights. " I'm gobsmacked. Financially I'm still the father but emotionally I'm not. The courts have let my daughter down," he said, pointing out he has to pay maintenance through the Child Support Agency. Earlier the father, who spent 12,500 pounds in legal costs fighting for access but is now so in debt he represents himself, told Lord Justice Thorpe and Lord Justice Bodey his legally aided partner was performing a "parent-ectomy" Describing her "entranched Hostility", the father , said all she was succeeding in doing was "alienating" their daughter from him. The mother refused to allow her daughter to look at photographs of her father, and objected when social workers tried to read letters he had sent , the court heard. The father, supported by Families Need Fathers, added that unless the appeal court acted, his daughter faced the prospect of never knowing who her father is. Lord Justice Thorpe agreed and urged the mother's barrister to try to explain to her the importance of her daughter having at least some contact with her father. He added that it was "a tragedy for the child". Bemoaning the court's lack of power to force the mother to grant contact - the only sanctions open to judges are prison or the removal of the child - Lord Justice Thorpe urged policy-makers to study the case. "This is a major problem throughout the family justice system", he said, before adding that plans are afoot to bring in a wider range of punishments for non-compliance with court orders. The Judge added: " This case is illustrative of the dilemma that the courts face and is as extreme as any I have encountered. |
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