Roger 'The Court Jester' Crawford at the MOJ protest yesterday
Roger said 'We had fourteen at this very low-key demo. But a huge (friendly) police presence, after Arch's antics. And a lot of public interest. The security staff at the MoJ were laughing and joking with Arch, and we could not have had a more relaxed and interested reception at the MoJ'
'I contacted the Ministry of Justice this morning and they will meet a representative from New Fathers 4J ustice, the Equal Parenting Alliance, and the various Grandparents groups on a day in the near future, to be confirmed'
General Statement From Representatives Of;
New Fathers 4 Justice, The Equal Parenting Alliance, Real Fathers for Justice, Grandparents Action Group And Grandparents Apart
FOR THE ATTENTION OF THE FAMILY LAW REVIEW PANEL
We are very concerned that there is no disenfranchised parent or grandparent on the Family Law review panel, or anyone affected by forced adoption. Some of our number here today are deeply sceptical of yet another review body looking into Family Law, and have mentioned that there may be some on the panel who may feel that their own interests are best served by keeping the ‘status quo’. However, we do earnestly hope that this review will take into account the views of people like these and others who feel wronged, damaged, and disenfranchised by the current Family Court system in this country.
We, as representatives of these people, believe it is in the best interests of families and therefore of society as a whole that the following two changes are made without any further delay.
These changes will go a long way to meet the financial reductions required of the Ministry of Justice, and free-up time and the staff to deal with serious child-care cases.
(i) Give each parent an automatic presumption, a right in law, to see their children after divorce or separation. This alone would stop up to 100,000 cases going to Court in the first place, and would in almost all cases enable grandparents to have a meaningful part in the lives of their grandchildren.
(ii) Make the Family Courts open and accountable, bringing them into line with the Crown and Magistrates Courts. Concerns over anonymity and privacy are unfounded as there are already measures to protect privacy in open court. This measure would stop the bias and corruption so many have experienced in the secret Family Courts.
As a 'rider' to this, we would recommend that agreements made in mediation should be recognised in the Courts if one party fails to keep to the agreements made.
We urge you to make these changes for the sake of countless children, parents and grandparents, and help therefore to make a fairer and happier society for everyone.
My name is Lisa Harris.
I’m responding to the ‘call for evidence’ questionnaire attached to the family justice review for myself and on behalf of my two sisters.
When we were children our parents separated, and because of how the family court system operates, we lost contact with our loving and dedicated father. For years we grew up without his essential input in our lives despite every humanly perceivable effort on his part to father us. Those lost years and contact are too precious to quantify, but we want to say emphatically, that it clearly harmed our childhood and quality of upbringing.
Our dad constantly fought against the intransigent family court system that continuously dismissed his claims, and evidence of how your court procedures harmed our upbringing. There was absolutely no justification whatsoever in our father being excluded from our childhood. He spent years exhausting his money, time and nerves trying gain justice for us whilst the court system spent the same years and wasted almost £1 million of public money maintaining their biased procedures against our interests.
During this period of estrangement the family courts endeavoured to keep secret the fact that our mothers boyfriend abused us while ignoring all of our wishes to see our dad. They also ignored us when we tried to tell them our mothers boyfriend was hurting us all and making our lives a misery. It was only when we were old enough to run away to our father did the abuse stop and we got our dad back.
You never listened to him; so now in your ‘call for evidence’ in this latest enquire, we want you to listen to us and take our testimony AS EVIDANCE. But, before any of that, for the sake of a little human decency. Stop saying the corruption and prejudice your institution practices, is in our best interest. It’s breathtakingly callous to hear that jingo, and it’s so untrue; you behave with the narcissism of holocaust deniers when you pronounce your prejudice as in the child’s best interest.
We take exceptional offence to any public official who sustains this anti-father bias by falsely claiming that it is in the best interests of the children. You should be deeply ashamed of yourselves for constantly fobbing off the public with that highly offensive jingo. To our experience, you appear to be callously indignant in the way you bully silence from those who try to plead reason with you. You abuse the power of your office, and facilitate harm to countless children all over the country, by what is clearly prejudice against good fathers and say it’s in the children’s best interest.
As young adults we have had time and mind to examine the huge collection of legal documents our father has collected from your procedures. We can see for ourselves how prejudiced and falsely condemning your institution is.
There is also more than enough evidence, statistical and anecdotal, from various groups and sources detailing the bias through which you operate, and we want you to regard it seriously.
‘Arbeit macht frei’; those are the German words found on the signs above the entrances of Nazi concentration camps. The meaning approximately translate to ‘work sets you free’.
We relate to the insincerity and insult of ‘work sets you free’ in a similar way to how your officials say “in the child’s best interests”.
Stop the destruction of the lives of multitudes of British children which has led to the creation of today's broken Britain!
Stop rationalising your prejudice!
Stop issuing your insulting arrogant spin!
Stop wasting vast amounts of public money facilitating anti-father bias!
IN THE CHILD’S BEST INTEREST.
