Smoke, mirrors and millions of dollars going astray
The article here by a woman in OZ tells a story I’ve suspected for years…
http://relatingtomen.com/blog/smoke-mirrors-violence-women/
It doesn’t even start on the millions spent in Womens refuges, nor does it count the amounts spent on or by maternity wards, midwives, plunket and CYFs actively excluding fathers from their childrens lives, mainly based on the myths that are propagated by the likes of white ribbon…
Does anyone have the time to build a table of money spent on DV in NZ?
I’m really keen to help present the amounts spent excluding dads…
I hate White Ribbon. I find there adverts on TV so male hating I’ve contemplated complaining to the TV standards commission but thought I would be wasting my time.
Comment by Richie — Tue 24th May 2016 @ 3:30 pm
I know I am being boring by saying it again, but Felicity Goodyear-Smith’s book First Do No Harm lays out these issues pretty well. A little has changed, but generally this book is still spot on after a long period of time in which there should have been much change! She didn’t detail the financials and these will have changed somewhat in that nearly 20 year span of time.
Quite a lot of the exclusion of fathers is by CYFs social workers, now MSD. Hospital doctors also play a significant role too, in their short tempered way of dealing with families. That was certainly my experience, now 25 years ago. Maybe doctors are now fitting into the world as better citizens than they did then, maybe still not as much as they should. Probably largely ignorance of how demotivating their exclusions can be, to save a few minutes of their time, here and there. (It isn’t just the clowns in familycaught$ and heartless assassins in Child and Spousal Support.)).
Comment by MurrayBacon — Tue 24th May 2016 @ 3:44 pm
Dear realkiwi,
although tallying money spent on disenfranchising fathers has some interest, totalling in only money terms will probably miss 80% of the barrier. Most of the barriers are in prejudiced behaviours of social workers, which particularly show up when they are short of time and feel a need to short cut on someone. Too often, the father is shortcut out. In many cases, these behaviours become habitual, even when they do have time to include fathers. Similarly the police often shortcut out fathers, despite most of them being male!!!??? Unless there is something we don’t know about them…..
Alternatively, there might be more power – ie you might be able to achieve more, by showing to the public the positive forces for including fathers?
One place to start, might be Sarah Farquhar, teacher’s college lecturer in early childhood education. She has a very pivotal role and a lot of influence on teachers, who directly affect how thousands of schools treat fathers.
I cannot suggest similar names at the med school somewhere in Auckland, wherever it is? Maybe they are having a positive impact too, maybe not? The only way to find out is to ask. They appear to be much less socially proactive than the education profession, hence my disdain about their impact on a few GPs.
Nigel Chapman did a lot of work in this area, nearly 20 years ago. I suspect that his work is as relevant and useful today, as it was then, alas?
I am sue that Father & Child have some positive impact too, but communicating largely to fathers probably weakens their ability to bring change. I can tell you a contact there!
I would be keen to help in the more positive focussed lines!
Comment by MurrayBacon — Tue 24th May 2016 @ 5:54 pm
Another positive force, that I never heard the end of the story was in this article:
Research related to Jennifer McIntosh article used for denying fathers Meaningful Access
I have a lot of respect for Bettina Arndt, so I am sure that the end result of her work would have been sensible, positive and listened to with due respect (outside of familycaught$ circles).
Since May 2019! – he he he……. I am lagging years behind and it really does show……
Comment by MurrayBacon — Tue 24th May 2016 @ 6:18 pm
Many hospitals have a policy of questioning all females, regardless of their reason for presenting, if they are being subjected to family violence. Males are not questioned in that way. That is one of the many hidden expenses, the time taken for this away from proper service by highly paid health professionals. Not to mention the extra staff employed to follow up responses to this sexist screening.
Comment by Man X Norton — Tue 24th May 2016 @ 8:19 pm
Murray, now we know why you chose the career of axe murderer.
Interesting though isn’t it? The extent to which women actually want men to be violent and controlling.
Comment by Man X Norton — Tue 24th May 2016 @ 8:34 pm
amazing as men we ask for help be that from the IRD, WINZ or the court system itself we get “middle fingered” and “politely” expected to pull our fingers from our back side. Then we have to pay the required child support and maintenance and other debts you may incur after the settlement. I am going for a sex change operation or as Man X said “choose a carrier of axe murderer” I think there may be more benefits in sex change operation!
It is an excellent system – protection orders given without evidence, domestic violence complains only ever being 1 sided – male assault female – then there is the wonderful family court – Alleluah!
Comment by whythepenus — Tue 24th May 2016 @ 10:32 pm
#6 Oh gawd! No, I have never seen that “benefit”!!
Women complain about men’s violence, but their evolutionary pressures have manipulated men, medically and as individuals since birth. The hand that rocks the cradle. Maybe it is in women’s long term interest, to reduce their “legal protections to first right of childcare”, for the long run advantages to women and men?
But the forces of fear, uncertainty and darkness (Law Society=FUD) need to be seen through.
Though I am not really surprised. Stockholm Syndrome and all the rest. I do strongly believe that we need to be as aware as possible of the breadth of what our evolutionary past gives us and make the best of our lives with this understanding. Sure, some of it isn’t nice. It is about species survival, not welfare of individuals. There are many twists and turns, that do need to be taken account of. To a large extent, it says that we should humbly make the best of what nature has given us as individuals and accept what nature hasn’t given us. That we should be compassionate for those who nature was not so kind to. This isn’t naked capitalism and greed is good, Russia and USA style.
I like to think of being an axe murderer as a calling, that chose me! I don’t talk about that, as when legal workers talk about “being called to the bar”, I just see it as mutual m###########, psychosis and misleading, dishonest marketing. So I try not to talk about callings!
In all of human history, people have tried to give themselves advantage. The lazier used dishonesty and manipulation. So, legal workers setting up systems for their benefit and labelling them as “essential” social services, is just the latest in a string of thefts running back 15,000 years. Many times the thieves were put to death by aggrieved customers, when they realised what was going on and what had gone on.
I try to cut through anything which really needs demolishing. Sometimes that is uz.
In the end, the consumer always wins, when they can access honest information and can choose the provider of the service. This is why the familycaught$ is setup to exactly prevent both of these! The solutions are lying all around us. They have been actively and successfully used in commerce and trade for over 3,000 years. We just have to pick up these ideas and apply them to family dispute mediation services. Best of all, improve education, to minimise the later need for ambulance at the bottom of the cliff type solutions. Schools are doing the basics of that already. But they could do more.
It is up to consumers to act, to protect themselves and those that they care for. Examples abound:
Almon Brown Strowger
Cervical cancer enquiry
The women had already done enough investigation to establish the prima facie case against the doctors. The medical establishment failed to address the consumer complaint. In the long run, they lost the right to run their own enquiries into complaints about medical practitioners altogether! The doctors dropped themselves a peg in society.
Nothing new under the sun…….. The only question is how slow we consumers can be to learn and how greedy the wolves try to be.
Comment by MurrayBacon — Wed 25th May 2016 @ 11:42 am
@5 Its my understanding that all hospitals and medical centres routinely screen women and children for domestic violence. Its been this way for many years. My exwife and I once took my daughter to a&e with a slight injury. My wife was shown into another room to be asked if our daughter had been mistreated.
It was presumed that if there had been violence it would be unlikely to be caused by her mother otherwise we both would have been questioned. On another occasion I took my exwife to a medical centre with a sty infection to her eye,- again she was led away to fill out a dv form.
Yet a man who presents with injuries likely to be as a result of abuse is not asked to fill out any forms.
Boys 12 and over are not screened.
There is no know explanation for this blatant sexist discrimination.
I wish the government ministers would just come out with the the truth and say that- to them, hurting males don’t count as worthy of consideration. These are the questions that MP’s should be forced to explain. I have approached a couple of ministers about these most obvious biases lately, they say they will ask other relevant ministers for an explanation.
I mentioned incidentally to the assistant of one minister who is a white ribbon™ “ambassador” that- to male victims of DV, the campaign message was offensive and hurtful.
The assistant replied consideratly and mentioned there had been much feedback about this. It is encouraging.
And White ribbon™ – is offensive.
For men who have been abused by a female, and/or falsely accused of violence- white ribbon is like rubbing salt into a wound with a wirebrush. Its a constant reminder that YOU don’t count. The 6 ft billboard is seemingly a permanent installation at Christchurch central “‘chop shop’- for male rights” police station.
Its everywhere, insulting males with posters in the street, in all government offices. on TV, and through the papers.
It it targeting and promoting men as a problematic aspect of family welfare.
Let’s keep on at them.
I think I’ll try Winnie next.
Comment by voices back from the bush — Wed 25th May 2016 @ 3:22 pm
A lot of this is needed!!
Where there are choices, think them through and exert what consumer power you have.
I recall someone saying on menz, that they pointed out to nurses and doctors that having a “White Ribbon Campaign” on their wall implies that they will only assist women victims of violence. Are they aware that surveys competently carried out, in NZ and most countries around the world, show at least 30% male victims of violence. Are they really telling tens of thousands of men that they will not be given any type of help at all?
More to the point, that such callous refusal to help so many men, leaves the affected children with no avenue of help either? This is the same as affected women 40 years ago. Is your organisation really that callous to children and men? Then to discuss the other available local clinic options…..
Men do need to become more active, to protect their family relationships. Lets share what works and what doesn’t. Don’t expect to win straight away, keep on pressuring. Common sense often takes a long time to sink in.
Comment by MurrayBacon — Wed 25th May 2016 @ 4:45 pm
Jasmin Newman’s website has many hard hitting and very well written articles. Coming from a lady, it probably has more public credibility, than many men’s plaintive complaints and requests for fair treatment.
I was curious why she would set up her own website, rather than help work for one or several of the many existing websites in this area?
Does she mention Greg Andresen, of the Australian OneInThree campaign? I used the website search facility and yes, she does mention Greg Andresen once.
So, I am still a little worried about why she is going it alone, but best wishes to her!!!
Comment by MurrayBacon — Wed 25th May 2016 @ 6:36 pm
Get it right Murray @10! Males suffer approximately 80% of violence. This is similar to general murder statistics and statistics on family homicides other than intimate partner homicides. About the same proportion of that violence, 80%, is committed by other males. The 30% figure relates only to SERIOUS INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE. Even when it comes to all intimate partner violence including low seriousness violence, males suffer it about as often as females, i.e. 50%.
The White Ribbon Campaign is about ‘violence towards women’, not specifically intimate partner violence. Given that about 4 times as much violence is committed towards males, it’s an unbelievably dishonest propaganda campaign.
Comment by Man X Norton — Wed 25th May 2016 @ 10:28 pm
Dear Man X Norton, I stand corrected, thank you for correcting me quickly. I don’t like leaving errors lying around, for other people to trip over.
Comment by MurrayBacon — Thu 26th May 2016 @ 9:57 am
Back to realkiwi’s original question:
I suggested that money is one issue, but would fail to capture the range and power of forces excluding fathers from their own families. That it is the total excluding force which is what really matters and also where these forces are applied. That is where we need to put pressure and public exposure, to bring about positive changes.
I am very interested to know how realkiwi wants to proceed?
Comment by MurrayBacon — Thu 26th May 2016 @ 1:57 pm
@11, Hi Murray. I emailed Jasmine Newman a couple of months ago to thank her for her efforts and I got a nice reply. She is very approachable.
I get the impression she has support from US and Canadian MRA Advocates and has become sort of an Australian version of Karen Straughn.
I have met some women here in New Zealand that recognise Mens issues but have yet to meet ONE that actively stands outspoken against males being considered flawed at birth.
I think its going to take men and women standing together on the steps of parliament protesting against sex discrimination by front line services before we can really reduce instances of DV.
All Females who disagree with the feminist doctrine of divide to conquer, Please speak up.
Comment by voices back from the bush — Thu 26th May 2016 @ 5:34 pm
I’m keen to present to politicians and MSD and DHBs and funders of maternity services, that it’s not just under family court law, the current one eyed view of DV – that all males are violent and all women are victims… this myth is being used by the maternity, child support and CYFs sectors, this leads to lots of dads excluded from their childrens lives, some before they are even born.
I wish we could accurately extrapolate this into the net loss of lives, happiness and possibly productivity. ie show us the money!
this preso may be split along sector lines, eg
$ spent $ for dads $ Problems caused
Maternity Sector
Plunket and similar
MSD Benefits
Child Support
CYFS
Education bias
Police Bias
Family Court bias
Is this the economic impact of actively promoted fatherlessness
Comment by realkiwi — Fri 27th May 2016 @ 3:36 pm
Hi voices back from the bush, one of the problems for the public, is the confusion of many people saying different things. By comparison, the legal workers are as organised as Hell and present a unified picture to the public.
The truth be known, I could suggest several areas where such father removal occurs. (I would prefer to call it parent removal, as men are certainly not the only victims.) I consider any actions which restrict children’s relationships with their parents, as within what we are discussing. Restrictions might be in contact time, or in quality of relationship eg badmouthing, or might be manipulation of lifestyle by excessive child and spousal support demands.
But I don’t know all of the places that it occurs. This surely has to be the starting point?
One of the best ways to gather information about these situations, is to gather parent’s stories. I have assisted several such projects in the past. Tedious, but anything less is too easily disregarded.
Also, there are a lot of stories on menz, though most of these are just small fragments of the whole story, so again perhaps of limited value, but still a useful start.
Several men have published complete books of their story. If balanced and complete, then these are the gold standard of what we should be looking for. An excellent example is Adam Cowie’s book.
I am happy to make the old collected stories available again for a worthwhile study. (Subject to each author’s agreement for release for this purpose.)
The Care of Children Act 2004 was meant to stop these things from happening in familycaught$. familycaught$ is meant to stop other organisations from failing to perform, by being checks and balances. However, the management and supervision of legal workers has not been satisfactory for protecting the public from legal workers self interests. There lies one of the major problems.
I guess quality of skills, supervision and accountability are the important issues in all of the organisations that impact onto families?
In the last 15 years there has been a lot of research on well-being. This gives tools for quantitatively evaluating the impacts of organisations performance, onto children’s and adult’s lives. The results of these types of studies are then extremely difficult for the offending organisations to refute!
I would like to see this project succeed.
Comment by MurrayBacon — Fri 27th May 2016 @ 3:52 pm
I see that realkiwi has just laid out a pretty good list of culprits!
The only addition I could make, are the parenting skills training organisations. Most of them are pretty good in this area and probably the least problematic of all of those listed.
I hope things are moving?
Comment by MurrayBacon — Fri 27th May 2016 @ 3:55 pm
Murray @17: You may prefer to call it ‘parent removal’ but the reality is that ‘father removal’ constitutes the huge majority of parent removal. Although I don’t know the actual statistic and I doubt it’s being kept by any of the expensive government departments that should really be keeping such important information, from what I have seen when a parent loses out on time and influence with children that parent is a father 95%+ of the time. The parent who ends up paying the other parent substantially (either directly or indirectly by reimbursing the government for the DPB) is the father in a huge majority of cases. (Recent changes that make more parents liable to each other for so-called ‘child support’ serve to obfuscate the figures because they pretend that a high proportion of mothers are paying it whereas the truth is that the difference between the parents’ liabilities means mothers are mostly still making as much from it as often as ever).
Equal shared care remains relatively rare largely because access to free government money and so-called ‘child support’ (father removal tax) depends on one parent seizing predominant care time. The mother who is then with the children much more of the time and becomes associated with providing for the children’s needs (the father’s financial contribution is channeled through her and this is generally hidden from the children), has the most opportunity to indulge in parental-alienation efforts. The beliefs and attitudes of Family Court and other institutions with power have been heavily exposed to feminist, male-bashing groups epitomized by their call for Fathers Day to be a ‘day of shame’.
Comment by Man X Norton — Sun 29th May 2016 @ 8:43 am