Risk assessment in familycaught!!!!!!!!!!
Risk assessment is challenging, but is fast being put onto a reasonably scientific basis, in the real world, based on learning from past examples.
This is NOT rocket science, just common sense!!!!
Put the other way – there are none so blind, as will not see!
Assessing the risk, of a parent absconding with children, or retaining them in an overseas country has several well known risk factors:
1. psychiatric problems – in particular personality disorder (ie: poor parent skills)
2. mother 85% father 15% of such abductors
3. low commitment to the country the children are taken from
4. better family support in another country
Other factors that also should be considered:
The amount of value in such a visit, whether the risk is justified at all?
When caughts operate under cover of secrecy, then it is difficult for the public to be sure that they are operating on accepted best practices. This retardation may be due to:
1. slow to keep up with best practices ie slow learners
2. lack of knowledge about the needs of children
3. general lack of competence ie erratic decision making
4. driven more by sympathy than evidence
5. outright corruption
Our Australian friends, who work harder to stay up to date, are sometimes still riddled with similar problems to NZ familycaughts. Here is an example that we should be learning from.
How can we HELP the NZ familycaught to learn about competent risk assessment?
Notice how the father [in the story below], on finding little help from Swedish police, went to Sweden and appealed directly to the public for help. He got results!!!!!
There are quite a few books in NZ libraries, covering risk assessment, around child abuse and child abduction. They were published through the last 30 years.
How can NZ familycaught “judges” be soooo far behind?
Their actions communicate their values, so don’t listen so much to what they say, it is just marketing-speak.
It is extremely important that NZ parents, fathers and mothers, who have seen NZ familycaught “judges” make these kinds of malpractices, speak out in public. This is essential, to drag the familycaught into the modern world and FORCE them to learn the basic skills to perform their job competently. The “judges” who fail to develop competence, must be removed quickly.
Our children are at stake.
Remember that the legal-workers have a personal financial interest, they make much more money from abductions going ahead…..
Woman in custody dispute arrested in Sweden
Article from: The Australian
SWEDISH police say they have arrested a woman accused of kidnapping her two children in a custody dispute with their Australian father.The boys, aged 9 and 11, were handed over to their father after the woman was arrested in central Sweden, police spokesman Svante Melin said last night. He said the woman, who is Swedish, had allegedly failed to return the children, who had been living with their father in Australia, after they came to visit her in October.
The case received attention in Swedish and Australian media as the father travelled to Sweden to search for the boys and pleaded for the public’s help in locating them. The father had custody of the children but the mother was granted access twice a year.
The father said in an interview in February he was furious with the Family Court for giving the boys’ mother permission to take the children to Sweden. He also said Australian authorities had done little to help find his sons. The father said he had presented evidence to the Family Court indicating that should the boys’ mother be given access to them in Sweden, she would not return them to Australia.
After his sons were not returned to him, the father asked Australian authorities to ask Swedish authorities to inform schools, hospitals and social welfare to be alert for any sign of the boys. The boys’ mother reportedly filed documents in a Swedish court in January in preparation for a defence of the case.
What can we do?
It is extremely important that NZ parents, fathers and mothers, who have seen NZ familycaught “judges” make these kinds of malpractices, speak out in public. MurrayBacon
Murray,
you write as though you expect the NZ Men and their FAMILIES movement to stand together and do something about the problem you raise.
I admire your writing and hopefulness.
The reality is that the **Empire of Injustice** thrives on damaging the **Whole Natural Biological FAMILY**.
If one is not taken to the cleaners in the FAMILYCaught as you call it one of the other NZ Govt Edificies will.
Onward – Jim
Comment by JimBWarrior - HandsOnEqualParent — Wed 20th May 2009 @ 9:51 am
roflmao!
Family Caught don’t give a toss about risk assessment!
I could gie sepcifics; but cant because I am heading full steam for a full FC hearing, and no doubt HLF ODB has half an eye on this site.
Comment by Fearless Frank — Mon 25th May 2009 @ 10:38 pm
Good post Murray. There are two key underlying issues here you missed.
(1) The fundamental understanding of the needs of children.
(2) The fundamental paradigm that frames these decisions.
(1) The needs of children. In Australia the understanding of the primary needs of children is far more advanced than in NZ. (Although this wide discrepancy is only recent.) The NZ system will not catch up until forced to by changes in the law.
In Australia the laws in this area were changed twice. Firstly after some threatening and even violent action by some fathers groups the laws were changed to make it much harder to relocate internationally or to another state. Then after much lobbying a complete change of the laws was made in Australia so that there is a presumption of shared parenting and special requirements were made that decisions must give highest weight to the child’s ongoing relationship with both parents. They must justify any decision not to award shared parenting and they must explain how their decision will protect the child’s relationship with both parents.
In other words the Australian law is written with the understanding that apart from a few extreme exceptions what is most important for a child is a close relationship with both parents. This intention of the law reflects the vast body of research.
In NZ the law was recently (and at the last moment) changed to to suggest that the family court should take a minute to consider if the child might have some kind of relationship with both parents. It is written clearly as only a suggestion. In essence it is clear to anyone that works in the industry that some token symbolism should be made to keep fathers groups quiet.
The overriding belief of the NZ system is still that apart from exceptional circumstances the children should be with the mother and visited by the father. In essence the NZ system works by searching for reasons to minimise the father’s involvement. This is very outdated thinking and is supported by feminist research.
(2) The NZ family court doesn’t operate from a positivist paradigm. They don’t know that they should be weighing and critiquing things objectively. That simply is not their background. Theya re more comfortable with a critical or post modern paradigm. This paradigm supports concepts such as (but not limited to) feminism – where one person has power and control and the other is a victim.
For example you point out that 85% of child abductors are female. A positivist view of that is that children are at far higher risk of not being returned in the female parent takes them away. However a critical paradigm would say that shows how many females have to run to escape their threating situations. Since in the NZ family court system there is only a hypothetical difference between the child’s interests and the mother’s interests it follows that the children must be better off if the mothers run away with them. In fact in the NZ family caught’s eyes such figures are misleading and no conclusion can be drawn from them so they shouldn’t even be mentioned.
Do you see how fundamentally backward the NZ family caught system is? The entire culture needs to be over hauled.
Comment by Dave — Wed 3rd June 2009 @ 6:24 pm