DV Act impact on childraising
Previously Scrap and I and several others considered the impact of DV Act onto saving the lives of women and children and came to the evaluation that it had negligible net positive impact.
Quantitative
Full analysis in submission
Another issue raised in wider discussion, how many fathers give up on parenting their children and leave NZ, as a result of harassment they have received under the DV Act?
Anecdotally, I know of a small number through the years personally, so I might hazard a guess that each year, about 200 men leave NZ with the intention to never return and to give up on being an active parent for their children. This leaves a large number of children in their wake. (A smaller number suicide, in the end the effective outcome for the children is much the same, probably somewhat worse.)
Although this possibility was very briefly discussed in Parliament, during the debate about DV Act, it was generally dismissed as not being an issue that Parliament needed to be concerned about. [sir] douglas graham, then Minister of Justice and supporter of the bill (more lately a lame director of a failed and fraudulent finance company) suggested that familycaught judges would miraculously not create problems such as this. (I don’t think that sir douglas graham has been jailed yet. I believe that he is the first ex-Minister of Crown to be charged with large scale financial fraud. As Sir Robert David Mulgoon said, any publicity is good publicity for a politician!)
What do these perjurous mothers tell their children, about the departed fathers?
Lies damage children severely, so why create opportunities to bring up children in a web of lies?
As I see it, leaving a few hundred additional children effectively fatherless each year doesn’t contribute to the best possible parenting of these children. The sudden loss of the father and the leaving the children in the care of the parent, who drove the father out of NZ, seems to me a recipe for a fairly disastrous upbringing.
What are the longer term outcomes, for children whose fathers have quit NZ after harassment and perjury in familycaught?
What are we saying to these children about life?
What are the longer term outcomes for the women who have used perjury under DV Act?
(In particular, what has it done for their longer term satisfaction, happiness, relationships and lifestyle?
I believe that children in this situation probably have slightly higher suicide rates, than children with two parents available.
Similarly, their social adjustment is likely to be poorer, leading to more crime, fraud, deceit, unhappiness generally.
Looked at in another way – is it better for a child to be sexually abused, or lose your father to DV Act harassment abuse?
(If the latter, then the former is also a little more likely as well…)
I know that another similar driver, for driving a few men out of NZ, is the Child [and Spousal] Support Act. Thus these two acts work together for the same perverse effect.
Apart from the fathers [and I expect there may be a few mothers too?] driven out of NZ, these social and financial pressures also degrade what Non Custodial Parents can do for their children. In particular, by forcing NCPs to have a lower standard of accommodation and generally lifestyle too, when seen from the children’s perspective, it creates an image of a successful CP mother and an unsuccessful NCP father. Are we deliberately misleading our children about life? Why?
If looked at in terms of lifetime earnings or tax paid, then the evaluation of the parents might be quite the opposite. However, our children don’t have ready access to this information. Incidentally, lifetime earnings also has a moderate correlation to the parent’s mental health and thus also to parenting skills too………
What do these perjurous mothers tell their children, about the departed fathers?
Lies damage children severely, so why create opportunities to bring up children in a web of lies?
Bit scary when you put these issues together……
What was Parliament thinking? I don’t think it was thinking carefully at all. These legislations were passed after abbreviated investigation by SubCommittees and passed quickly under pressure from Party Leaders.
Poor quality legislation can have a massive social cost, even if it feeds legal-workers well.
I wonder about sir douglas graham’s childhood?
How many of these driven out fathers ever return?
How much tax is lost to Government, by driving out taxpaying parents and keeping only the beneficiaries?
Are all NZers socially and financially suicidal? as judged by their original self-defeating low quality legislation.
When I get too stressed, trying to think about these issues, I just go back to reading Alice in Wonderland.
It doesn’t feel as safe as it used to, after Dr. Rob Moodie changed his name to Miss Alice, just before attending a High Court appeal……
Help, get me out of this. Stop the World, I want to get off….
MurrayBacon – searching for something axe-murderer.
In addition to the effects you’ve listed Murray are the many men who have chosen to forswear children and relationships with women because of the combined effect of these two bodies of legislation, along with the well-known bias against them in family courts. These men need not be as productive as they otherwise would be, can and probably will retire much earlier than their married/parenting counterparts, and contribute to our increasing need to import the next generation from abroad.
Comment by rc — Sat 4th February 2012 @ 10:01 am
Murray
You can add me to the list of fathers leaving NZ permanently! I haven’t had any formal contact with my 3 kids since Jan 2007. That and the upcoming changes to the Child Support formula are to blame. I have tried to get from Peter Dunne personally and IRD what the new formula is and they have refused to give it, instead telling me to read A. IRDs Regulatory Impact Statement, B. Draft Child Support Bill C. Commentary on the Child Support Discussion Document and E the CS Discussion Document itself (over 500 pages!!!). As a small business owner NZ will now lose all the company tax, tax on Family Trust income, FBT, PAYE, ACC, GST etc that I pay.
As a 61 year old (non citizen) with a liability for the next 5 years once gone I will never return. I have a gutsful of fighting for my childrens’ right to have me involved in their care and upbringing. Ten years of it have taken their toll and I need to get what is left of my life back on track!! Not a decision taken lightly but I have no more fight in me…..
Comment by Kelvin Dunn — Sat 4th February 2012 @ 10:03 am
Dear Kelvin, sorry to hear about your clash with IRD. I am interested to learn more about your experiences. Please contact me privately (09) 6387275 or 021 537196 actually 2degrees.
In particular, please tell me any points that you might like me to emphasise in my submission and I will probably be very pleased to try to make these points for you.
As well as the consequences for parents, I am trying to get people discussing the consequences for the children. In the last two years I have had 1 adult suicide and 1 child’s suicide pointed out to me. Although these are the severe (end of the gaussian bell curve effects), I am trying mainly to focus on the more subtle effects that impact onto the larger number of children.
One example is a degree of fear of the opposite sex. This seems to be slowly turning around the chaser/chasee roles in our society. Can we handle the consequences of this?
Another aspect is incentivising (DPB and CS) women to have sex with “legally” underage boys, to get pregnant. I find IRD’s attitudes about these rape incentives abhorent to me as a parent and as a taxpayer.
As rc draws attention above, I want my boys to have about equal degree of freedom to choose, as anyone else’s daughters.
What kind of society are we trying to build?
MurrayBacon.
Comment by MurrayBacon — Sat 4th February 2012 @ 1:09 pm
@Murray…
Another aspect is incentivising (DPB and CS) women to have sex with ‘legally’ underage boys, to get pregnant.
Are you able to expand on this re New Zealand? I know of instances of female rapists getting child support from their male victims in the US, UK and Australia. When you say “incentivising” what do you actually mean? Are they actually encouraging it in some way?
I’d add that both my mother and one of my sisters got young men drunk as a part of their “planned pregnancies”.
Comment by gwallan — Sun 5th February 2012 @ 10:04 am
There was some newspaper coverage about 3 or 4 years ago, that IRD CS were chasing boys under 16 for CS payments and also boys over 16 who were obviously under 16 at the time of conception. They said that fathers should be responsible for the costs of bringing up their children, but seemed to turn a blind eye to the underage sex aspect and in particular that they were effectively paying these women to have sex with underage boys. If I remember correctly, I think there were over 150 boys in that situation, so presumably more now. According to legislation (but maybe not our familycaught???) these boys cannot legally consent to sex, thus how can they be saddled with the liabilities?
IRD are not paying more to have sex with underage boys, than they pay to have sex with any other male. However, they are paying more for getting pregnant, even to underage boys, than they pay to women who don’t get pregnant. In that sense, they are giving a financial incentive, to break NZ legislation.
The Crimes Act makes it a crime to incite or encourage another person to break the law, so in this instance, they are giving a substantial financial incentive, to women having sex with underage boys.
There is also the element that underage boys may be less able to protect themselves from this sort of being used – this is why they are meant to be protected??????
I am very uncomfortable with IRD CS’s attitudes about rewarding “rape” of underage boys.
MurrayBacon.
Comment by MurrayBacon — Sun 5th February 2012 @ 10:47 pm
Thanks Murray. I’d be really interested to know if they “caught” any. I’ve tried to find out how many instances exist in Australia but was blocked at every turn. One political aide admitted that it was because he was afraid of the gender warriors in the government. The one I do know won full custody of the child in ’99 voiding any need for payments on his part. He was raped in his sleep – she admitted to mounting his nocturnal erection – when he was thirteen.
Do you know when NZ sexual assault laws were amended to enable women to be charged and convicted with rape of a male? Australia made amendments of this type through the late nineties. I understood that NZ made this change much more recently. It may be that the “pursuit” you mention occurred in that same time frame.
According to legislation (but maybe not our familycaught???) these boys cannot legally consent to sex, thus how can they be saddled with the liabilities?
If it’s like other jurisdictions any CSA will deem the boy to have consented. He had an erection after all. Consent is irrelevant for minors in sexual assault cases but relevant for child support. The question of consent to parenthood and associated responsibilities never arises for any male.
Comment by gwallan — Mon 6th February 2012 @ 11:47 am
If I remember correctly, the 150 about, was the number they were in contact with (ie not necessarily getting money off them). Presumably the number would be more now.
You mention the boy later gaining custody, how did this come about?
Cheers, Murray.
Comment by MurrayBacon — Mon 6th February 2012 @ 1:16 pm
Same way as anybody else – family court. The child was six at that point. That process happened without anybody doing anything about the original rape. Child support had started, with fed govt assistance, when the young man began getting youth allowance in 1996 at age sixteen. It took him six years after winning custody in 1999 to get her to criminal court at which point she got only a suspended sentence.
We have mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse for any other institution in Aus but it seems the family court don’t have to comply. I’ve tried to find out if the CSA have any reporting requirement but, as with other questions re this matter, I’m continually blocked.
These matters have been on the back-burner for me for a couple of years. Not forever though. My engagement with rape crisis services has grown significantly to the point where I’m certain to have quite some influence in the future. Eventually these things will be changed.
As a side note the woman concerned was apparently accosting him on his way to school when he was 14 and extorting his lunch money with threats to tell everone he’d had consenual sex with her. She’s quite a piece of work. Note that when she raped him IT WAS LEGAL(as it was when it happened to me). The rape was prior to the legal amendments I mentioned which occured in ’98.
Comment by gwallan — Mon 6th February 2012 @ 5:23 pm
Excellent post Murray!
“Another issue raised in wider discussion, how many fathers give up on parenting their children and leave NZ, as a result of harassment they have received under the DV Act?”
It is not just the DV Act. That is only one of a whole set of laws that are implemented in such a way to exclude or virtually exclude the father from a child’s life.
We certainly should have information about the outcomes for these children after a family court process. Also the shadow of this process. I think it is very common that the process drives fathers away, resulting on poor eventual outcomes for these children.
It is amazing that all these so called experts and judges have for years made rulings claiming to be in the best interests of the child yet they have no data showing what the eventual outcomes of their decisions are. Could the process be more fundamentally flawed???
Comment by Vman — Tue 7th February 2012 @ 5:40 pm
Dear Vman, thanks for the compliment.
These experts are self appointed, they may be legal experts (I wonder even at that), but when they start giving opinions in areas of social policy, they are professionals acting outside of their training, examined expertise and professional experience. (You don’t have to pass any examination to be a judge, just have a law degree when applying.)
For one example, sir ron davison’s report about the murder of Christine Bristol and their children was written after reading ONLY the familycaught file and nothing else.
Surely, if he was wanting to successfully address an issue as multifaceted as murder suicide, in the wake [excuse the pun] of a familycaught process, he ought to read the medical and psychiatric files and talk to people close to both parents?
He then made recommendations, without checking whether they were workable, ie whether there would be perverse outcomes. He also only considered changes that could be made in legislation, without considering that other policy options might provide more effective or safer ways to address these types of problems.
In other words, he concentrated only on legislative options, without disclosing all of the other options [that he should have considered]. This can be a method of manipulating policy, to choose from a restricted set of options. I don’t know whether it was dishonest manipulation, or just overpriced ignorance on his part?
This report lead to DV Act. The topic was poorly studied by officials and poorly investigated by Parliament, before the legislation was drafted and passed.
If we don’t have the resources to investigate carefully, then we shouldn’t even attempt to pass innovative legislation. Experimenting on whole populations, without prior research, is criminal negligence, possibly even manslaughter.
I was taught that to work professionally outside of your areas of competence (unless your work was reviewed by someone who was competent) is unethical.
Last comment, sir ron davison didn’t consider to what extent the familycaught process might have contributed to the triggering of the murder suicide. To me, this looks like an approach of failing to understand that the familycaught process MIGHT in some way, have contributed to triggering the murder suicide. It seems his prejudices blinded him, to considering all possible options, which is an essential prerequisite for good research.
Does the whole familycaught work with this same level of competence and relevance?
I would suggest that all familycaught public statements be viewed cautiously, as marketing publications of beneficiaries of the familycaught system, who are generally not competent in social policy or ethical issues [perhaps even spectacularly incompetent].
Cheers, MurrayBacon deranged professional axe-murderer.
Comment by MurrayBacon — Tue 7th February 2012 @ 9:58 pm
I believe that there are men (And likely females) driven out of NZ by Child Support, and the knowledge that even if they did stay and be good, the chances of them ever seeing their children again are 0 – Nil! To achieve you have to convince one judge to over rule another. Considering they all slurp at the same trough, I have better chances of winning Lotto!
BTW Murray Davidson in his report seemed to totally forget his terms of reference, not only exceeding but straying well outside. Equally of interest is Christine Bristol’s bleat to Neville Robertson of Waikato University, it is interesting on the way the learned “Gentleman” Stretches facts even further!
Comment by Gwaihir — Sat 25th February 2012 @ 9:34 pm