Petition to protect victims of domestic abuse in family law Victims of domestic violence and coercive control have no voice in the family court system In every other part of society, safeguarding policies log and monitor concerns, and children are protected. In other parts of our society, we advocate respect, understanding and empowerment, and encourage women to escape abuse. In other parts of society, the death of a child by abuse causes a national outcry. The reality for thousands of women after family break up is that they can no longer protect themselves, or their children. And leaving an abusive or coercive relationship turns out not to be the escape women were promised. Shared care for many mothers is an on-going nightmare, where they are forced to continuously re-engage with their abuser, who uses child care to sap their mental well being, and continuously control their daily lives. Fathers who had little or no interest in child care before the break up, and those who happily pursued diversity in parenting roles, suddenly start talking about equal rights – equating the importance of fathers with claims of equal time, and even the right to take over the mother’s role. The courts listen, and reward. Mothers are forced to hand over their children, even when they have genuine fears for their child’s well being. Even when the father is coercing the child to turn against the mother, or even when he has threatened to kill, mothers are forced to hand over their children. The ideology of equal parenting is more powerful than concerns over a child’s death on a contact visit. Such tragedies are usually found tucked within the inner pages of newspapers, and disappear quickly from our attention. A lack of commitment, experience, or child-centred motivation, dissolve in political correctness of equality, meaning the ‘same’. There is no mention of diversity, and protection is renamed as ‘obstruction’, and punished. Mothers, who most frequently are the primary carers of their children, are silenced. Media headlines invariably shout ‘fathers’, as if mothers had no story. Successive Governments have funded fathers’ rights groups, now reinventing themselves as shared care organizations, with no equivalent funding for mothers. Most mothers do want their children to have a relationship with their father, but in a way that recognizes and prioritizes children’s full range of needs, including the function of primary care, and women and children’s right to safety. Dawn Parton, from Walsall, knows from personal experience how difficult it is for victims of abuse to be heard in the court system. She has started a petition, asking the UK Government: ‘Don’t force victims of domestic abuse to put children back into unsupervised contact with the very perpetrator who once abused them and is now abusing their child.’ The lack of training for professionals working in the family court system has been recognized for a long time, and remains a problem, regularly compromising the safety of victims of abuse. Dawn says: ‘Contact orders put the perpetrator back in ‘CONTROL’. The Law should not be about keeping the ‘Family Unit’ together but be held accountable for their ongoing ignorance of victims of Domestic Abuse.’ Please sign Dawn’s petition for better training and guidelines for all professionals who deal with contact cases. With your help, we can change the future for our children, placing responsibility to change on the perpetrator of abuse, rather than on the victims. With your help, we can break the chain of abuse within families. https://change.org/p/david-cameron-protect-victims-of-d…
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 21:23:52 +0000
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