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Father's Rights - Part II

© Kerry Hook

We are living in a time, when thanks to the father's rights movement, women and children are being placed in danger. The courts have adopted a philosophy, based upon little more than sentimentality that fathers are essential, and children are doomed without the presence of their biological father. Make no mistake about this, this is a dogma, and a dangerous one at that - especially for victims of domestic violence.

I don't believe that visitation after abuse is in anyone's best interest EXCEPT the father. Children do not need to be exposed to abuse. Abusive men should lose their rights completely. Women and children's rights to safety (sometimes their very life), should ALWAYS be more important than a father's rights to visitation. But this is not the case.

I live in fear for my daughter and myself and can never be free from the abuse because her father is regarded as essential DESPITE his behavior. Visitation guarantees him the opportunity to continue to control and abuse me. I know that I am not alone - many survivors of domestic violence describe feeling abused not only by the abuser, but by the system as well. The father in my case has beaten every woman he has ever been involved with. His children have been subjected to witnessing abuse year after year. Worse still, he beats them. He is on a child abuse registry, yet STILL has rights to visitation. NOTHING will cause him to lose his rights. We are living in an era where EVEN murdering the mother of your child will not result in losing your rights. And all this is so, because of the dogma of the essential father. This movement has only further enshrined the power that abusers have over their victims.

Despite perceptions, there are a lot of great dads out there who respect women, and work to stay married. There are many men, who still respect women's roles as mothers, and wouldn't dream of taking their children away from them after the divorce. This is the reason that in 90% of cases, custody is NOT contested, but this fact is set aside by the father's rights propaganda. Instead they misuse this statistic to say that in 90% of cases women get custody, failing to point out it wasn't CONTESTED - it was by mutual agreement. This is done to further their own agenda and play at the public's perceptions of a lack of "fairness" to men.

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