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

Many people don’t appear to realise how vulnerable the NZ Family Court is. The weakest point of the NZ Family Court is public confidence in it. Once the public confidence in the Family Court drops below a certain level the Family Court looses all power and authority. This is the greatest threat to the family court.

Public confidence in it is very low and weak yet there is a certain degree of implied confidence in it. New Zealanders are very law abiding in general. So newly separated fathers feel they have no realistic option other than to enguage in the Family Court process. Thus some commentators refer to it as the Family Caught.

Many men and fathers groups have tried for a great many years to bring about change to the Family Caught in NZ. Their frustration at the lack of progress is palitable. I can’t think of a peaceful approach that someone or some group have not tried. No matter what approach they take they are criticised. Usually this criticism is directed at them in the form of a personal attack. Yet for all this work and effort the outcomes for fathers and children appear to be little or no better. (more…)

Nia Glassie’s siblings are thriving in Tokoroa with their grandparents and father as their mother and others implicated in  their sister’s death face jail.

Lisa Kuka, 35, was found guilty of two charges of manslaughter in the High Court at Rotorua yesterday after a month-long trial that revealed shocking details of months of abuse that ended in  her three-year-old  daughter’s death.

Kuka’s partner, Wiremu Curtis, 19, and his brother Michael, 22, were both found guilty of murdering Nia. A cousin of Nia’s father, Glassie Glassie jnr, who asked not to be named, told the Waikato Times Nia’s three siblings from Kuka’s relationship with Mr Glassie, aged 12, 11 and 9, were thriving.

“The kids have an awesome relationship with their grand-parents, dad and the extended family,”   the cousin said. (more…)

I don’t know how to go about it but I think this is an opportunity to press for the state apparatus to support father involvement. Fatherless children are at risk children.

Tariana Turia states “Families need to stay strongly connected so that they are able pick up on any issues that arise.” So now is the time to ask her what she is going to do to combat the Family Court to stop their culture of creating barriers to separated fathers being connected with their children. (more…)

My story is pretty bad but so are many fathers.  One thing I learnt years ago is that there is always another father with an even worse experience than yours.  Mine is a bad one all the same.

When I tell people about my story with my ex, the family court and so on,  I find that women at least at first find it hard to believe, whereas men believe it.  Also I find that women are much more shocked that a mother could behave that way whereas men aren’t particularly surprised.  I find this observation holds up pretty consistently. I think it is says a lot about women and society.

My question to you fathers is: do you find a similar pattern to the reactions when you tell people about your situation/story?

Nov 16 2008

A Brisbane woman has been charged with torturing a two-year-old boy admitted to hospital with serious injuries.

Queensland Police charged the 29-year-old woman from Regents Park, in Brisbane’s south, with one count each of torture, cruelty to a child and two counts of assault occasioning bodily harm.

She was arrested after police were called to the Mater Children’s Hospital in Brisbane on Saturday to investigate injuries sustained by the toddler.

Police say the boy has been admitted to hospital and is undergoing treatment for serious injuries.

The woman will appear in the Beenleigh Magistrates Court on Monday.

AAP

Can you imagine a woman in New Zealand being charged and convicted of torture? Yet that is exactly what should happen in many cases.

Never under estimate the power of publicity.  Talk to any family law lawyer and if they are they are being honest they will tell you they scan this website all the time to see what is being said about them.  Some of them will tell you how much they despise it. Others will tell you how nervous they are that they might be the target of protest outside their houses from the men’s movement as a result. (more…)

It seems that men’s intuition is more than good enough, to be used in familycaught, as evidence?

Interestingly, scientific checking shows that women’s intuition is less sensitive and less accurate.

Men’s suspicious minds better at spotting infidelity

Suspicious dads spark surge in sales of DNA kits

Is this a bit of a turnaround from the familycaught’s “processing” of Domestic Violence complaints? where the familycaught accepts women’s intuition over men’s, even though at a macro level - the hospital admissions records totally puts the lie to the number of “protection orders” issued by these clowns!

Protection orders - the quantitative figures See #7, 10 and 17.

Anyway, I hope you can enjoy a laugh at these [judicial] clowns and not let them get under your skin, or waste your taxpayer dollars.

There is a catch of course, its not Political Clowning.

If we took it seriously and wanted to minimise the Government’s losses from refunding [spousal and] child support (without recovering it from most of the mothers), then we just need to sort it out correctly just after the birth. This is the cheapest and safest [and most honest!] approach, why don’t we just do it?

We have to face up to the leaky creaky condoms crisis, or it will cost us more in the long run. Its funny how the ripoff artists always want to bite the deep-pockets, who can’t run away. I always thought that you couldn’t get a woman pregnant, while you were looking the other way.

Ah, evidence - its such a complex subject that the average man on the street couldn’t hope to understand the finer points…. I would trust them more than a “clown in a gown”, lost and confused by sympathy and stupidity.

Cheers, MurrayBacon.

LONDON, October 9, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The largest UK teachers’ union wants the government to decriminalise sex with students who are over the legal age of consent. Chris Keates, the general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), said that teachers who have sex with pupils over the age of consent should not be placed on the sex offenders register. Keates called prosecution for statutory rape “a real anomaly in the law that we are concerned about.”

NASUWT complained that media reports had misrepresented their position. “To describe the NASUWT’s comments on this as ‘teachers want the right to bed pupils’ as one report has done, simply for pointing out an anomaly which criminalises a teacher but would leave any other adult free from prosecution for the same type of relationship, is a travesty.” (more…)

This should never happen, in a court that takes justice seriously.

This is so fundamental to successfully delivering justice, that the judicial oath was written to cover this issue. (see Oaths and Declarations Act www.legislation.co.nz)

In the [human]-animal, decisions leading to action, are made in the emotional part of the brain. This enables a fast response to threats, as at times it is needed for survival.

A rational decision takes longer to complete, than an emotional decision. A rational decision can only be made, if the animal has inhibited the emotionally based reaction, long enough to complete the rational analysis.

Many people are not prepared to put in the time and effort, to complete a rational analysis, when the emotive decision can be made easily and relatively effortlessly.

Open courts (or note taking reporters, or recordings) allow the public to know what is going on in a court and to review the judge’s decision. This allows the public to apply a typically wise and well informed corrective force onto any errant judge.

Justice can’t be done in secret and here’s why Times

Discussion about media access to familycaught

judge baragwannath refuses to allow a parking ticket appeal hearing to be filmed for public access

Secret caughts remove these safety mechanisms, so that “judges” may easily drift out of adjustment. The collegial structure of the judiciary doesn’t give the Principal judge of each court any useful remedial power over faulty “judges”. (more…)

I hope the following USA article clarifies this issue for NZ non-custodial parents (fathers). I apologise for using the old Guardianship Act terms, but they do communicate the legal relationships in a straightforward and honest manner, that helps real people to understand the caughtroom behaviour of these not qualified “judges”.

US OCSE Enforcement of Child Support Obligations

“The California Supreme Court reasoned that the obligation of a parent to support a child, and to become employed if that is necessary to meet the obligation, is in no way comparable or akin to peonage or slavery.”

(more…)