THE CANADIAN FAMILY FORUM

Open forum by Canadians about legal and social issues affecting Canadian families - May 6, 2004 .

One story about how the system forces fathers to part from their children.

http://www.nojustice.info/HowtheSystemForcesFatherstoPartfromTheirChildr...

By Evelyn Soloway

After my ex-daughter-in-law filed false allegations against my son and obtained a restraining order against him, he, and us, the grandparents, were eventually granted supervised visits with the two very young children, but not before a few court hearings.

Initially the judge ordered that the nanny bring the children to the father who was staying in our tiny "pied-à-terre" in the city while we stayed at the cottage in the country, some 100 odd km away.

The mother refused to allow week-end visits, so the father was given a few hours each Friday, thus forcing him to take one day from work each week with the resulting loss of 20% of his earnings. In addition, the mother only allowed the visits if they were supervised by a security guard who posed as a nanny. The father was told that if he wanted to see the children, he had to pay her fee, as well as the full week's wages of the regular nanny whom the mother ordered to clean the house while the children were with the father, in addition to the far too numerous court hearings, each costing thousands of dollars. The money that we, his parents, had managed to save for our old age, thanks to our frugal lifestyle, disappeared fast into the bottomless pockets of the divorce industry workers as well.

During each visit period the mother's lawyer kept on pestering the father's lawyer, who in turn had to keep on phoning the father for immediate instructions. The atmosphere was charged, to say the least. At times the children did not arrive, or they arrived late. The lawyers had to be called for explanation, and the answer always was "they are en route". At times her lawyer slammed down the phone on his lawyer. Each phone call was added to the costs, not to mention the fear about the children's safety. Eventually the fears came true as the mother absconded with the children.

Initially the judge's order did not specify that the nanny had to stay with the children though she always did (we had no objection to this as we all liked her). After the second visit the mother forced the nanny to sign a letter, which the mother wrote, stating that she would not be accompanying the children as she felt uncomfortable doing so because we were constantly on the phone, whispering in the corner (we had to consult each other in order to instruct the lawyer) and ignoring the children and when not preoccupied between ourselves we were "pumping her for information" (hardly). We have a recording of a telephone conversation between the nanny and the father where she explains it all. She was branded an unreliable witness.  

The mother then employed a security guard who posed as a nanny (she was exposed within a few minutes). We got the police to come and remove her. However, the mother flatly stated that unless we accept her, there will be no visits. The judge agreed, so the security guard tagged along during each visit. Though she never was more than three feet away from the children, and could have heard a whisper, she signed a letter, once again written by the mother, that though she did not hear us say it, she was sure that we were badmouthing the mother to the children as we captured the three year old boy on the video saying that he did not like his mother because she did not let him come to visit his father "on Sundays and Saturdays".

The mother was responsible for paying the agency and the father was responsible for giving the money to her lawyer who says that she gave it to the mother. However, the agency did not receive the money and ended the contract. No guard, no visits. Judges chose to ignore the fact that the mother had pocketed the money.

There was a separate order for us, the grandparents, to have a supervised weekly visit with the children at the matrimonial home. The timing was set to coincide with the children's afternoon nap time.

One of our visits fell on Canada Day. When we were going to leave the boy followed us round the room, tugging at our clothes, and said: "But it's Canada Day, you cannot go …" Not that he knew, at his age, what Canada Day was all about. He would beg us to move to live on the same street so that he could come and visit us every day. The constant threat was "I am going to run away from this house". They no longer referred to it as "home".

Much to the chagrin of the mother and her lawyer I had the video camera running throughout the visits. The judges were shown the children's agony, did they care? Not one bit. To them the best interest of the children obviously was to create as much emotional pain as is possible.

We were not aware that the mother had taken "sick" leave and was in the basement office of the home during each of our visits. Seeing the children wanting to come with us she cancelled the visits. As the visits were far too traumatic to the children we did not ask to have them reinstated, after all, we saw the children every Friday when they were brought to their father.

However, after she had denied access for several weeks, and her lawyer phoned (she never wrote things like this) the father's lawyer the day before Christmas Eve that there would be no Christmas visit unless the mother was given $5,000, we had to take yet another emergency hearing at the court on Christmas Eve.   We knew that even if she got the money there would be no visit, just like for the preceding five or six weeks, as there was no supervisor. The judge was furious this time. Strange how the extortion of money is seen to be so much worse than breaking children's spirits.  He ordered an immediate end to the supervised visits (by this time the custody and access report was out also. No matter how warped, it still showed that the father posed no danger to the children. Later the psychiatrist who wrote the report said, when under oath, that if he had known that the mother would abscond he might not have recommended sole maternal custody as he had serious doubts about her parenting capabilities).

As the mother, quite rightly, suspected that the next step would be joint custody she took flight. Though the judge, who heard the resulting motion, wrote that the mother had performed a "pre-emptive strike" he did not order her back. His excuse was that knowing her character she would make life hell for everyone concerned (he did not write this down and the hearing was not recorded). Instead, he tried to reason with her. How do you reason with a woman who knows that the only way to exercise absolute power and control over the children, whose upkeep is paid by their father, is to be as far away from the father as possible?

Now, five years later, the mother still is a six hour drive (one way) away, has sole custody and the father sees the children a couple of times a year. None of the judges specified the frequency of visitation but accepted the mother's word that it would be frequent. She shacked up with a pilot for the few weeks before the final hearing. This cad promised to fly the children to visit their father frequently. As soon as the case was over so was the relationship. There were no more resources, either financial or mental, left to continue the useless fight for justice for the children. We had become yet another statistic of a paternal family shut out of the children's lives by a vindictive and controlling custodial parent with the support of a court system that just did not seem to care about justice. Yet, each time the children call their father they tell him that they get all "teary eyed" when they speak with him and know that it will be a long time before mother allows them to see him.

When I wrote to the MPPs and told about our case, Michael Bryant (then in the opposition) was the only one who answered. He said: "I am happy that everything turned out all right". The Attorney General of Ontario expressed how delighted he was that yet another once thriving and happy family, spanning three generations, had been sacrificed on the altar of feminism with the full support of the biased family court system.  

Evelyn Soloway is a social Justice writer and family advocate and may be contacted by e mail at evel...@canadacourtwatch.com

The Canadian Family Forum is a publication of the Canada Court Watch Program at (416) 410-4115
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