MENZ Issues: news and discussion about New Zealand men, fathers, family law, divorce, courts, protests, gender politics, and male health.

tonyf: Im kind of sceptical of this whole article, but for your information…

By Sarah Cassidy

Men are more likely to win Nobel prizes and achieve excellence simply because they are more intelligent than women , according to a controversial male academic.
In a paper to be published in a leading research journal, one of Britain’s most outspoken academics will argue that men have larger brains and higher IQs than women, to such an extent that they are better suited to “tasks of high complexity”. (more…)

Review at The Wild Duck

Passengers on a Modern Day Underground Railroad: Are They Deadbeats, or Freed Slaves?

…fathers in both the US and Canada, bankrupted by the effort to obtain Equal Protection in Family Courts on both sides of the border, are accepting offers from a heretofore secretive organization helping these victims flee the two countries.
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The key questions one must ask after reviewing this article are:

• Are fathers like “Dave” “deadbeats”, or “escaped slaves”?
• Is the Western Standard’s willingness to print this article, and particularly Mr. Kelly’s characterization of child support payments as a “tax” paid to the ex-wife, a turning point in the struggle for equality in Family Courts?

Men who are overweight are more likely than thinner men to be diagnosed with prostate cancers that are less likely to be detected on screening and more likely to be aggressive, according to a report in the medical journal Urology.
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I hope they throw the book at the 23-year-old woman who’s been charged after making a false rape complaint against a Wellington taxi driver.
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The speakers at the New Zealand Men’s Issues Summit held in Auckland on 6th May 2005 were filmed by Murray Bacon and Bryan Norton. The videos have been formatted for the web by John Potter, and are available online thanks to www.archive.org.

These are big files which will only stream over a fast broadband connection. Dial-up users should right-click the link, then “Save Target As…” (Explorer) or “Save Link As” (Firefox) before attempting to play.

• Video of John Tamihere at Men’s Issues Summit [26 MB .wmv]
• Video of Bruce Mackie at Men’s Issues Summit [48 MB .wmv]
• Video of Warwick Pudney at Men’s Issues Summit [32 MB .wmv]
• Video of Stuart Birks at Men’s Issues Summit [36 MB .wmv]
• Video of Paul Callister at Men’s Issues Summit [42 MB .wmv]
• Video of Alan Blackburn at Men’s Issues Summit [42 MB .wmv]
• NB: Rex McCann’s session was of a participatory nature which produced minimal audible content.
• Video of Jim Bagnall at Men’s Issues Summit [34 MB .wmv]
• Video of Joseph Driessen at Men’s Issues Summit [51 MB .wmv]
• Video of Kim Workman at Men’s Issues Summit [31 MB .wmv]
• Video of Phil Chapman at Men’s Issues Summit 33 MB .wmv]

A Waikato woman has been jailed for making false complaints that she was raped by a policeman and sexually assaulted by his colleague.

Sally Marie Inglis, 44, was sentenced to five months jail at the Tauranga District Court yesterday after being found guilty of two charges of making a false complaint to police.

Judge Robert Spear said the offending was “at the very highest end of the scale” and a prison sentence was required.

“You need to spend some time in prison to contemplate why you are back there.”

Judge Spear said the sentence, two-and-a-half months’ imprisonment for each charge, was influenced by the woman’s continued insistence that the claims were true despite clear evidence to the contrary and by the devastating effect they had had on the victims.

On April 14 last year, the woman told police she was sexually assaulted by a female non-sworn police employee when arrested on December 9, 2003, and that she was raped several times by the arresting officer two months later.

The female victim, spoken to after the sentence, said it had been the most traumatic experience of her life, and while prison was appropriate, it would not “give us back what she has taken from us”.

by Chris Trotter. Otago Daily Times, August 12th 2005

I was one of those who signed the petition organised by Don Brash and Lynley Hood calling for a Royal
Commission of Inquiry into the arrest, trial and conviction of Peter Ellis in the Christchurch civic creche case.
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While recommending a number of worthwhile changes to the legal web in which the unfortunate Mr Ellis became entangled, the petitioners’ request for a full and independent investigation, conducted by a legal expert from outside New Zealand, was declined. As a result, the catastrophic failure of our criminal justice system, represented by the Ellis case, will endure unacknowledged, unexamined, uncorrected, and unreproved.

And unfortunate, because miscarriages of justice on the scale of the Ellis case exert a pernicious influence on every one of the institutions that they touch. Local government, the police, social welfare, the courts, the judiciary and now Parliament have all been tainted by their involvement. In every instance, ignorance, fear, and the singular reluctance of institutional authorities to ever admit to error, have combined to exacerbate and extend the original injustice.

The most alarming aspect of this institutional infection is that the longer it is allowed to continue, the higher it rises. What began as an expression of individual and collective hysteria gradually morphed into the exercise of civic, police and, ultimately, judicial power. At every stage, the application of scientific and forensic rationality could have brought the whole manic process to an end.

Sadly, a malign confluence of individual obsession, ideological dogma, religious bigotry and reckless careerism pushed the case forward to the point where a great many reputations, both individual and institutional, had become inextricably bound up with Ellis’s fate.
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There is something truly horrifying about this failure of our judicial system. Not only did it condemn a man whose guilt was in more than reasonable doubt to 10 years in prison, but it conferred upon Peter Ellis’s accusers an undeserved and entirely spurious credibility. The groups responsible for the “witch craze” that we know as the Christchurch Civic Creche child abuse scandal: all those “ritual abuse” peddlers, “recovered memory” counsellors, “all men are rapists” feminists, “children never lie” social workers and “Satan is among us” Christian fundamentalists, have never been called to account.

A shake-up of the Family Court would see a counselling and mediation service established to handle disputes, freeing up judges for the most high-risk and complex cases.

Chief Family Court Judge Peter Boshier outlined the proposals in a speech to the Auckland Family Courts Association last night, saying the changes would help to reduce delays in the system.
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A court “intake consultant” – a position that could be filled by Family Court co-ordinators – would assess each case and decide whether to refer it straight to the court or conciliation. At present, most cases were referred automatically for counselling, which proceeded to mediation and then court if the dispute could not be resolved.

Only cases where there was a risk to children’s welfare – such as allegations of sexual abuse or violence – should enter the Family Court directly and be “closely managed and determined by judges”, said Judge Boshier.
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Auckland family lawyer Brian Gubb supported the proposals, saying they would speed the court process and remove some of the “more destructive aspects of the adversarial process”. It should also save money for the parties involved.
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Antony Mahon, chairman of the Auckland Family Courts Association, said the proposals were “quite innovative” and had his support provided they were adequately funded and trained staff filled the new roles.

Darrell Carlin, spokesman for the Union of Fathers, said the group was keen to see a faster court process. At present there was no incentive for women to go through mediation as they knew they would win in court.

He supported more mediation, provided that equal shared custody was the “default position”.

National Women’s Refuge spokeswoman Lesley Melrose said it was vital that counsellors remained impartial and women did not feel pressured to agree to things they were not happy with.

More cases involving children should be dealt with outside court or by someone other than a judge, the principal Family Court judge says.
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In a speech tonight to the Auckland Family Courts Association, Judge Boshier said the changes were needed to maintain confidence and reduce delays as requested by Parliament.

He said: “Better processes could be created for New Zealanders using our Family Court. These can occur in both a better conciliation service and in better use of the Family Court itself.”

The current counselling service was out of date and a new conciliation service was needed for those who may not require a court hearing, he said.
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Judge Boshier said in cases involving violence or sexual abuse, delay was the “single greatest injurious factor”.

“Only children’s cases involving risk to welfare of children should enter the Family Court directly and be closely managed and determined by judges,” he said.

Vivienne Crawshaw has ended her series of articles in the Herald about the NZ Family Court.
Two years of big advances in family law

It would be an interesting exercise to analyse the outcomes she presents in her stories as a balanced picture, compared with the hundreds of actual Family Court judgements now in men’s group databases.

Crawshaw begins by outlining recent changes, keeping ‘on-message’ to the end about what a fair and responsible institution the court is.

“In the past two years the area of family law has been saturated with a flood of legislative changes.

“These have ranged from altering the primary law governing the care of children to change the emphasis to one of continuing children’s relationships with both parents, to presumptions about guardianship (a child’s father will now usually be a guardian whether or not he and the mother are living together), to widening the class of people who can apply to have care of children, to admitting the media into family courtrooms and many more.

“The focus of the law relating to care of children remains the child’s (not the adult’s) best interests and welfare.

“That focal point will not please everyone, particularly those with ideological agendas including radical fathers’ rights organisations and extreme feminists, both of whom criticise the legislation and its implementation on the basis that it fails to serve their needs.”

Crawshaw’s choice of language in her column makes it pretty clear where she is coming from. The idea that there are “radical fathers’ rights organisations” throughout the country with “ideological agendas” to introduce policies which benefit men and revive patriarchy, is pure feminist spin-doctoring imported from across the Tasman. Papers which introduced this theme include Regina Graycar: ‘Equal Rights versus Fathers Rights’ and Miranda Kaye & Julia Tolmie: ‘Fathers’ Rights Groups in Australia’.
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