Rethinking Supervised Contact
Address to Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Supervised Contact Services
3 November, 2008
Principal Family Court Judge Peter Boshier
Summary for parenting orders granted in the last 12 months:
Total Interim Parenting Orders with Contact 3324
Total Parenting Orders with Contact (Final) 4967
Total Parenting Orders with Contact (Interim or Final) 8291
Supervised Contact
Interim Parenting Orders with Supervised Contact 666
Parenting Orders with Supervised Contact (Final) 375
Total Parenting Orders with Supervised Contact (Interim or Final) 1041
Supervised Contact with an Approved Provider
Interim Parenting Orders with Approved Supervised Contact 253
Parenting Orders with Approved Supervised Contact (Final) 122
Total Parenting Orders with Approved Supervised Contact (Interim or Final) 375
You will see that of the total number of contact orders we make, the proportion of supervised orders is slight. Only about 1 in 8 cases of contact are required to be supervised.
Of the 1,041 orders we made for supervised contact, 375 were with approved providers. So the majority of supervised contact orders we made appear not to fall within state funded provisions.
BTW, do keep up with the site below if you are interested in news of what other groups do and to help with activism.
Rationshed.
Thanks Judge Boshier
You and your cronies certainly destroyed the relationship with MY children, it is the fault of YOUR biassed secret courts and accepting of false allegations without any evidence. You do NOT act in the best interest of children, the realities of what you are doing is NOT justice. Stop the WAR on fathers NOW
Perseus
Comment by perseus — Thu 25th December 2008 @ 5:50 am
Supervision goal is to teach the children that their father is not safe and humiliate fathers. For 10 years i cared, schooled, fed, educated for my children.
Than womens refuge incites my wife ( done absolutely nothing to her, just crisis of old age) then the family court upon reception of a template affidavit, writes this prescription for me: 1) Attend violence course,(later the lawyer for child told me attending that course is admitting to being violent), have me supervised to see my children 2 hours per week, make my children attend feel safe programs at Barnados (where the children get a hint thast thier father is not safe), have my wife attend counselling services to reinforce her fears by incompetent counsellors. Remember all this prescription and no one saw me or interviewed me ( say a social worker ) every thing decided
by a judge(Ooooh when it comes to family violence they are very serious they say.
Result: They abused my children innocense big time, they traumatized both my self and my wife for 2 years now and still going. You know, naive as i was then i went to see Tim Barnett for help. He did not want to hear about it, how could he. Without my case, ‘It is not Ok’ would not have got the numbers so they had to invent them using my family. The family court destroyed my family.
If a
Comment by tren — Fri 26th December 2008 @ 9:54 pm
continued.
If any official in power wants to investigate, let me know.
The violence of the state on the children is of cosmic proportions.
That is that violence that needs to be uprooted.
Judging by my case i am confident that the state services will never and are inherently incapable of saving and helping vulnerable children.
and I am confident that the hordes of violent youth we see today are a direct product of the domestic violence industry. judge for yourself they have the same age.
Comment by tren — Fri 26th December 2008 @ 10:01 pm
Tren
we must try to inform ALL men about what we have been through, and how it getting worse. All men must be told about “Bad Women” and how the secret biassed family courts treat men. It is all about men being naive, as you say, you expect justice, but all you get is a legal process that wants women to take kids away from the Dads, and yes creates GREAT GREAT trauma for everyone, but mainly for dads. We are a very persecuted minority, emotionally tortured by the state.
i am SO sorry to hear about your story, which is so similar to mine and many others. I guess that she must have made false allegations that you had been “violent” to your kids too. That seems to be in the Womens’ refuge template.
But i am sure that you, like me, have been a great Dad and a good husband, and that your conscience is clear, your ex’s will not be, she will never change, you (and me) can change, we are no longer so naive, but we have been changed forever by these TERRIBLE experiences forced on us by the state
Comment by Perseus — Fri 26th December 2008 @ 11:32 pm
if an official of the newly formed government wants to investigate let me know.
The abuse and trauma inflicted on the children by the state agencies on the children in the name of ‘best interest of the children’ is of cosmic proportions compared to the ‘alleged abuse’ by parents, allegations extorted treacherously from innocent children by false Santas, wrapped in legal buzzwords to make a priest turn evil.
The society must pay attention to the hordes of violent youth roaming streets of NZ. They are a direct product of the domestic violence industry. dva and the youth are of the same age.
Comment by tren — Sat 27th December 2008 @ 12:26 pm
Sorry for the repetion
Comment by tren — Sat 27th December 2008 @ 12:27 pm
My kids were taken by cyfs from school… sadly for cyf pimple faced University graduates – no abuse substantiated… My daughter (13) describes it as her “abduction”, my son (12) refers to it as his “kidnap” – but of copurse in any other forum it would be “kidnap” and “Abduction”. My sympathies to you all especially at this time of year..God speed.
Comment by Jon — Sat 27th December 2008 @ 5:56 pm
Perseus, I know how you feel and god bless.
I do inform people around me, but you know sometimes i feel like ‘pissing’ in the wind. People do not understand it because they think such things cannot happen in New Zealand the land of freedom and responsibility and fair governance. If someone told me these stories which incidentally all match, before it happened to me I would not have believed it. At least you would think there are places where you can complain and make your case heard but not.
In the case of my wife, they scared the hell out of her. They told her ( women’ refuge) either file a protection order against me or she would be prosecuted and the children taken from her. She ended up suffering from Post traumatic stress disorder. I have proof of all what i am saying here but it does not matter. There is no where to complain…
Comment by tren — Tue 30th December 2008 @ 12:16 am
Tren
That is a really tragic story, i didn’t know even the Womens’ refuse stooped that low. Can you not find out who sponsors the local womens refuse and womens centre, these groups’ financial incentives are a BIG source of Dads’ problems.
Pretend to be a donator, that is always a good way, even better get a woman to phone them, get some of their literature from the library, or on a website
The women who run these centres earn MASSIVE salaries from all the sponsorship in USA (where their income is public access), i guess that they do very very well in NZ too.
If sponsors knew that these evil women groups did exactly they would soon stop donating. Things are changing a little , but are still going against men, the state, legal workers and womens’ groups have strong financial incentive in the status quo, men are not used to emotionally support each other. Things will eventually be turned round in America one day, at first we will have to INSIST omn REAL equality according the law, and get our plight recognised (like Fathers for Justice have done in England – making the injustice visible as Gandhi once said).
I feel the same way as you, but we are men, we get through things by ourselves in our own way, life must go on. Things do get better in even the worst cases (mine was BAD, but yours is worse).
Comment by Perseus — Tue 30th December 2008 @ 10:29 am
If judge boshier’s words are correct, then it sounds as though the familycaught is starting to take it’s responsibilities to children more seriously, even if it has a personal financial cost.
Men’s Centre North Shore has noticed a significant reduction in the last year, in the numbers of fathers traumatised by familycaught/District Caught domestic violence hearings and asset stripped by legal workers.
Children are damaged when their relationship with either parent is needlessly vandalised.
The familycaught “judges” have traditionally taken the view that restricting children’s access to their father, or marginalising it through “supervised access” did no damage anyway, so why not do it on practically all applications. Even on those that were clearly frivolous or malicious. Even if the “supervised access” then went on for many months, or even years – during unwarranted feather-bed hearings.
This assumption is clearly not true, if you read the professional research literature about the resultant effects on the children. The “judges” behaviour in the familycaught dreamworld, is not supported by research in the real world.
This approach of approving practically all “protection order” applications has served the familycaught workers very well, as it gives legal workers very strong extortion tools, to scrape real money from parents. Usually from fathers, but in many cases from mothers too. The ongoing, feather-bedded hearings have led to the appointment of large numbers of legal workers to familycaught bench.
http://menz.org.nz/2007/protection-orders-the-quantitative-figures/
These complaining mothers may feel empowered at the time, but when the reality of the money they have squandered on legal-workers-aid comes to them, they too will feel very asset stripped, as their inheritances are recovered by Government, to refund the extortionate fees paid to their legal worker. Who are the beneficiaries in this situation?
Children are best protected by honesty and good faith negotiation – just what “protection orders” seek to prevent!
Families can help with negotiation (and protect children’s interests successfully) at low cost – far better than the familycaught extortion processes.
What’s the bet, that we will not see any sudden increase in domestic murders?
Remember that more than half of domestic murders – of either women or men, had never had prior contact with familycaught anyway, thus familycaught behaviour could have no useful impact into these situations, even if they tried to be usefull!!!
Maybe discharging unneeded “judges” would go a long way towards paying for tax cuts, for real workers!
If the familycaught is truly moving forward, then I can only support this sudden change.
I hope the “protection orders” still being issued, are being issued in the right cases, even though there is often no evidence provided to the “judges” who go ahead and make these decisions?
Cheers, MurrayBacon.
Comment by MurrayBacon — Tue 30th December 2008 @ 1:04 pm
I have asked people who help many men and their feeling is that even if judge boshier’s comments about parenting orders are true, they don’t cover separate “Protection Orders”, which are still being issued in vast numbers.
For example, the POs issued seem to still be about 10x what would appear to be reasonable, from looking at homicide and hospital injury data. This reflects the familycaught not being able [willing?] to tell what is real or what is fairytale, ie an evidence weighing skills problem. [This is why I call it the familycaught dreamworld.]
The overall impression is that “Protection Orders” are still being issued without notice, in about 50% of applications. This is down from 80 – 90% 3 years ago.
Thus the familycaught does seem to be moving very slowly towards listening to evidence, rather than always just believing the woman.
Over-reactivity:
Having said that, one large problem that many men have, is over-sensitivity, over-reactivity and pride. this leads them to over-react to their own disadvantage in familycaught.
Idealism rather than pragmatism leads many fathers into not being “street-wise” in separation negotiations and in dealing with familycaught.
The old adage “Look before you Leap”, is excellent advice before trusting either familycaught or legal-workers. When you consider the amount of money they might be able to scrape off you, good preparation is wise.
The familycaught and legal-workers operate the familycaught like a clothes mangle, once your fingers are caught, it is difficult to escape and you will most likely get slowly pulled through and wrung out dry.
Most fathers underestimate the amount of effort required to become well informed about what really goes on in familycaught. As they say – only the paranoids know what really goes on!
Don’t just believe their marketing window dressing, such as printed legislation, printed familycaught “rules”, or published cases. You need to talk to [at least 5] people who have been through it and learn from their experiences, good and bad. Be warned about the double-talk and manipulation through dishonesty and misleading.
These over-reactivity characteristics often stem from one of more of the following childhood factors:
1. parents split during childhood, especially if this split was argumentative and caused insecurity
2. was adopted
3. poor social communications skills to adults or to children
4. involved in abortion of own child, siblings, parents
5. one or both parents had psychiatric problems causing insecurity or instability
If any of these factors are present, then the father is strongly advised to learn impulsivity control techniques and to set negotiating limits eg deals over $100 always sleep on it, over $500 always sleep 5 nights and always get second opinion, long term issues involving children – similar to over $500….
It is interesting to note, that if the mother has any of the characteristics listed, then the advice to the father should be the same, as listed just above.
Irrespective of complaints about incompetence in familycaught, there are many things that separating mothers and fathers can do, to respond appropriately to separation negotiations and protect their relationships and finances from those who prey on people less fortunate than themselves.
It is important that if you are baited by legal-workers or “judges”, that you learn to control your frustration, get through the immediate engagement without making any disadvantageous commitments and come back in a few years to prosecute the gamesy-manipulative-thieverous-legal-worker.
Cheers, MurrayBacon the smooth talking, slippery, devious, backstabbing thief.
Comment by MurrayBacon — Sat 10th January 2009 @ 8:51 am