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

I thought I’d put this up here because it’s become a big event and men’s representative Jim Bagnall is presenting something special about fathers plight and suicide and by the looks of it Murray will be video taping the event. Also, I chased up a teenager who left a comment on a post by Mike in May 2008 and then met up with the mother the article was about. She [Maria Bradshaw] is remarkable and already changes are taking place in New Zealand regarding suicide awareness.

We’d love for men and women who read this site to come along and support as well as learn some.

ORGANISATIONS are banding together in the battle against suicide, which claims more Kiwi lives per year than the road toll and you are invited to come listen to speakers sensitive to the subject and the latest unfortunate events in Papakura.

Debbie Swanwick, of the Auckland Single Parents Trust, says East Auckland has the highest rate of suicide of men aged 40-60 in the western world.

Suicide prevention group Casper and the trust are holding a public meeting to share personal stories, current practices and other options to try reduce the number of people who take their own lives.

The meeting will take place on Sunday, December 5, from 3-6pm at the Senior Citizens Hall, 8 East Street, Papakura.

Casper, which stands for Community Action on Suicide Prevention Education and Research, was co-founded by Maria Bradshaw, who has been campaigning for suicide awareness and change since the death of her son, Toran Henry, at the age of 17 in 2008.

Jim Bagnall, of Project Reunion, who has worked with more than 10,000 fathers and mothers dealing with separations over the past 12 years, will present “The Black Hole”, a place people reach prior to taking their own lives. “People naturally revert to their instinctual level where self harm or harm to others can take place”, he says. “The system to some degree is not coping and experiences can fill in the gaps”.

Other speakers include representatives of Counties Manukau Mental Health and a secondary school student who has experienced depression.

The meeting will coincide with the opening of the South Auckland division of Auckland Single Parents Trust, and will start with a performance by dance group The Geeks.
For enquiries, email info@singleparents.org.nz

Although a minority of news reports use the term “men” to refer to the miners, I have not come across one discussion of men’s roles in maintaining the infrastructure of our privileged lifestyle, or the fact that men have always comprised very close to 100% of workplace deaths in NZ.

Today I sent the following note to the acting minister of Women’s Affairs: (more…)

Simon Power has tried to cultivate an image of being an active Minister of Justice.

Jury trials ruled out for smacking

He is in stark contrast to previous Ministers of Justice, such as Phil-(Peter Ellis)-Goff (who was inconsequential and seemed to follow official’s advice and contribute no initiatives himself) and The-Right-Honourable-Douglas-Graham [legal-worker] (who introduced the Domestic Violence Act – which has contributed $100s of millions to legal-worker’s incomes, driven so many men’s suicides and probably saved under 10 women’s and children’s lives).

protection-orders-the-quantitative-figures

Simon Power’s knee jerk reactions might look good to voters who don’t stop to think about the long term consequences, in terms of reducing the quality of “justice: in NZ.

Certainly, I perceive the caught system in general as being more closely related to public blood sport entertainment, than delivery of good quality justice, first time round.

Similarly, I suggest that Simon Power’s contributions are more cosmetic than substantial.

Simply cutting out the right to access a jury trial will save – in the short term – considerable cost. In the longer term, I suspect that it will significantly increase costs to Government, in terms of payouts for wrongful imprisonment, for example David Dougherty and Arthur Allan Thomas.

On top of these financial costs to Government, are the larger costs imposed onto innocent citizens, by slandering of their name and years lost to wrongful imprisonment, after defective investigations and trials.
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Trust in “judges”

The USA Government provides lowest tolerable level benefits for returning war veterans. Although these “benefits” are provided, to pay for ongoing more essential and basic medical needs for the war damaged veteran, wives who Ex-ed after they became aware of the degree of damage, have been awarded half of the veteran benefit, in divorce settlements.

For better or for worse……

Although the “judges” can only legally divide assets and not income received after the divorce and the benefit is not income, they have been including the Government veteran benefits as assets in the division calculation.

This then leaves the veteran with barely half of the minimum tolerable level of Government support and thus not able to pay for legal defense of their situation.

The Arizona Governor (a woman!) has passed an additional law, to require State “judges” to follow the Federal laws on division of assets and income, in divorce cases.

What would these “judges” give to the second ex-wife and what would the veteran be left with after a second asset division?
In equity, should the veteran be able to claim from his ex-wife, to the degree that his ongoing needs are not met by Government benefits?
There really is a need, for sensible, simple as possible, workable legislation….

How realistic is it, to pass an additional law “requesting” “judges” to follow existing laws?

2 Governors Sign F & F-Inspired Bills to Protect Disabled Parents from Family Court Abuses

My suggestion is that the time has come to dismiss the more erratic “judges” and recruit people who are able and willing to follow legislation.

I and other contributors on MENZ have criticised NZ suicide researchers for showing relatively scant interest or care in younger middle aged men’s suicides, particularly if not coloured. This criticism seems to apply to all NZ suicide research published in the last 20 years. Although some commentators put this down to callous disregard for men, I see it as being controlled by successive Government’s funding manipulation, rather than the personal proclivities of the researchers.

Similarly, although “judge boshier” has publicly acknowledged a small part of familycaught “judge’s” roles in triggering parental suicides, it really looked more like a partial admission to allay public suspicion about the history, scale and extent of this problem for children. Killing by “kindness” and plunder, as a substitute for helping? From a consumer’s perspective, this process may be viewed as “service failure”.

I recently attended a World Suicide Day at Auckland University Tamaki Campus.

The main focus was on women’s attempted suicide and maori men’s suicide. The only person who spoke of having any interest in younger middle aged men’s suicide issues, was another attendee, who (like me) does not work in the qualified medical field.

They sounded to me to be interested in attempted suicide presentations at hospital ie what puts itself down on a bed in front of them, and totally ignoring those being ceaselessly buried down the road, around the bend!

To my very pleasant surprise, recent UK publications DO show a working and energetic interest in all of the groups showing up larger than life in suicide and unexplained death statistics, including weakly coloured younger middle aged men!
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What can you do if what she says are lies
?

On 23rd September my wife Felicity delivered her Inaugural Lecture at Auckland University’s Tamaki Campus. This is now available on video.

In parts one and two she talks about how her career has developed and the projects she is currently working on, which will mostly be of interest to those of you who have met her, or have a specific interest in primary healthcare research.

MENZ readers with limited time or attention spans should skip directly to part three, where she talks about her troubled relationship with DSAC – Doctors for Sexual Abuse Care.

Part One

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The intense scientific and courtroom debates in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, referred to as “the memory wars”, have largely settled now because of the large amount of research demonstrating beyond doubt that, through a variety of simple influences, children and adults can easily develop memories for events that never happened and that existing memories are vulnerable to distortion (Newman & Lindsay, 2009). A number of models and mechanisms for false memory creation have been explored. The “backward causal inference error” (e.g. Lyons et al, 2010) is especially relevant to recent discussions on MENZ about “recovered memories”. (more…)

Peter Hodgson, Labour Party Defence Spokesman yesterday showed how well he was trained in misandry under Helen Clark’s tutorship. He was interviewed on National Radio Morning Report about the SAS doing a training day for a group of businessmen in order to raise money for a trust fund helping soldiers’ families. Here is an excerpt from his comments (words in italics were emphasized by him in a sarcastic tone):

…there is no benefit on taking grown up boys on a day’s tour through rifle shooting and target shooting and being locked in a darkened room whilst people are silently removed from that room because they might be suspected terrorists and all this sort of (pause) boys own day. I mean that is simply grown up boys with a little more money than sense…

Whether or not one agrees with Mr Hodgson’s criticisms of the Defence Force, I took exception to his implication that men’s activities deserve scorn simply because they are of interest to males. (more…)

Dear John Potter

In February last year you wrote a comment supporting the Big Buddy organisation, in which you said that buddies would not be assigned to boys with a father present, but excluded by the Family Court.

That’s certainly what I believed when I became involved.

But now I hear on the grapevine that this may not be the case – that boys may be given buddies because their father is deemed “violent” or “abusive”.

I haven’t seen anything official about this yet, but I am deeply concerned that what I believed was a core principle of the organisation may not always be upheld.

Please don’t use my name if you make this public.