Although NZ familycaught$ judges seem unaware that men can relate to and care for children and can successfully take care of children, newspaper records regularly show a more realistic picture.

Sometimes, I wonder if judges don’t read newspapers or listen to stories about families in NZ?

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Child abducted 13 years ago in Fla., found living in northern Missouri
Posted on: 11:35 am, September 20, 2013, by Tess Koppelman and Sarah J. Clark, updated on: 10:51pm, September 20, 2013

CHILLICOTHE, Mo. – A baby boy who was abducted as an infant in Florida almost 13 years ago has been reunited with his biological father, thanks to a local school official who had concerns over the boy’s school enrollment.
The school official contacted the Livingston County, Mo., Sheriff’s Office, which conducted an investigation into the boy’s background.
As a result, Sandy Hatte, 60, the boy’s grandmother, was arrested on Sept. 18 and charged with felony child abduction. Hatte is being held on a $25,000 bond in the Daviess/DeKalb Regional Jail.

Sheriff’s detectives conducted a thorough background investigation of the boy and were able to locate his biological father in Alabama.
The detectives obtained additional information from other law enforcement agencies, courts in Missouri and other states, which allegedly gave probable cause to support the allegation that the boy was abducted in Florida in 2000 when he was an infant.
“The dad was working, come home from work and she was gone with the baby,” said Detective Eric Menconi. “And he hasn’t been able to find them since.”
But that all changed on Sept. 5 when school officials grew suspicious of Hatte being the boy’s guardian.
….
Hatte was taken into custody while officers went to the school to pick up the boy. Menconi said the boy was confused at first, but seems to be adapting well.
“It was a good reunion,” he said. “You could tell within the first three minutes they hit it off pretty well. Since then I’ve been on the phone with the dad and from what I’m understanding it’s going very well. He’s adjusting.”
……
__________________________________________________________________________________________

OK, so why would such a humble story be important?

I recently met a father who had cared for his 7 year daughter since birth. The mother had weekend access through most of that time. She laid a complaint with CYFs that the girl had been beaten by the father. Although the girl did not show any visible signs of beating, she was removed by CYFs and police, who passed the girl on to the mother. The mother now has without notice custody. As the parents live about 150 km apart, this is a serious change imposed onto all facets of the girls life. Before taking the girl, CYFs just took the mother’s word, they made no contact with the father, or with the shoolteacher or principal of the school the girl was attending through the last 2 years.

When I hear stories like this, if it can be believed, then I have great difficulty in having sufficient confidence in familycaught$ or CYFs for protecting children.

The first rule of competent investigation, is to gather all information and to evaluate that information with an open mind. I have not yet done that in this instance, but will be doing that carefully in coming weeks.

It is only by listening appropriately to all of the relevant information, that our children’s welfare can be taken care of.

Through the world, a minority of judges will reverse custody from mother to father, when their behaviours make this necessary. In NZ, the only two judges that I am told have done this are Boshier and Inglis, both now retired as familycaught$ judges.

USA Law Professor Paul Chill has written about the extreme difficulties for parents to sort out wrongful removals of their children, due to the self protective human factors that operate in caught$ all around the world. What he writes is a dead ringer for what happens in our own caught$.

The issue is not our legislation, it is the way we train our legal workers and the manner in which we fail to regularly check on their competence and skills.

We fail to discipline them and give them incentives to actually protect children. The reality about the way we pay them, is that they make the most money by spinning out cases and dis-serving the richer parent, to encourage appeals. This systematically disadvantages children, as usually the financially stronger parent has stronger mental health. Not always, but it is certainly more true than the other way around.

Judges are paid a fixed salary, so how are we giving them incentives to spin out hearings and encourage appeals? If our caught$ were working efficiently, business would drop back to say 25% of what it is now. This is featherbedding. Thus 3/4 of those judges would be back to looking for work. And there wouldn’t be much anyway… They know this well.

I seem to recall when I was a child, that on Friday afternoons, the slowest working group of several gangs, would be laid off. New workers would be recruited on the Monday. This put a certain degree of pressure for powerful work, maybe too much given the difficulty to find other work afterwards. This is what I suggest that the principal familycaught$ judge should do each Wednesday and Friday afternoon.

The difficulty of righting wrongs in caught

The more I see of the current judges, the less confidence that I have in them.
This is what secrecy is all about.

Also notice that the USA local police were willing to investigate an allegation or suspicion of abduction. NZ police have a long way to go to be taken seriously about protecting children from abduction by mothers.

Lets put pressure onto all of these clowns, to do what they are being too well paid to do.

Best regards, MurrayBacon.