Children Resisting Post-Separation Contact With a Parent,

Selected international thinking and research to inform Scotland's families, legal and professional systems to do better for the children in the middle of the more complicated and difficult separations.

Nick's GUIDE: Overview (with Diagrams), Thinking It Through, The Resources, Some Very Difficult Thinking, Nick's Conclusions, and Footnotes (including Help Now). 

INTRODUCTION 

Nick Child, family therapist and retired child and family psychiatrist (whose website and words you're reading) attended the event "Changing the Culture" on 31st August 2012 in Edinburgh - click here for programme and clickhere to download the full report of the event held at the Murray Stable. The event was mainly for and about family lawyers and the courts, and an imminent forthcoming review triggered by an infamous case "B v G". There were contributions from others including the Scottish Child Law Centre, Families Need Fathers, and Women's Aid. Since then other discussions have helped improve the picture and information in Scotland. 

Nick's interest arose from his family therapy work and his discovery and rapid learning about the field usually called Parental Alienation (PA) - click here for more. The terms PA and PA Syndrome are so loaded with presumptions that it is less off-putting to include it within a wider range of patterns of "Children Resisting Post-Separation Contact With a Parent" (Children Resisting Contact or CRC for short). Get a packed video interview about high conflict court cases and PA from one of the most prolific famous American names, Dr Richard Warshak. 

Starting from this hugely contentious complicated front door of CRC makes this topic and webpage long hard work. If we started from calmer ordinary knowledge about patterns and relationships, we would quickly understand how such high conflict patterns can arise. That they happen is no surprise. What is also no surprise is to find that the patterns, notably alienation, can happen to both genders and any sexuality. Most of the mountainous debates this page wades through below are irrelevant, since the patterns happen independently of the gender and legal aspects that add to the heated wrangles.  The information on domestic abuse describes virtually identical patterns whatever the gender of the victim and the perpetrator. Compare this with this for example. And note that both sides acknowledge that both genders cause and suffer abuse. Yet in talking about the subject, people often find they are “walking on egg-shells”. Read more on how equalism makes for firmer ground here. 

Mix together universal things we know about such as the following elements, and high conflict will result: Attachment patterns when attachment goes wrong, how thinking and feeling gets polarised and stuck, how neurobiological survival emotions of fight or flight fuel situations, the natural coercion of all childrearing, normal patterns of family division alliance and loyalty, how stronger and weaker personalities come into play, and the normal aspects of any separation process may naturally generate vicious circles (given the different concerns for children and differences in parenting styles along with other negative perceptions and given there is no constructive attitude or communication channels to sort these out). This recipe can explain problematic patterns in families without the gender and other issues that get dragged in. Nick is composing a short alternative webpage based on this idea, so you won't have to go through all the rest of this long page! Then you will be able to return to the many heated gender-linked debates and be puzzled about why they are getting in the way of more directly helping the families and children. Meanwhile, read on:

http://www.forallthat.com/scotlands-children-resisting-contact.html

Dear Readers, 

The above link has got a lot of information for Scotland's Children's welfare courts if they want to adopt these.

Denboba Natie

JUSTICE DELAYED is JUSTICE DENIED by DKN July 1, 2013

JUSTICE DELAYED is JUSTICE DENIED: - Nearly four years since my little daughter is deprived of her rights to be with her Loving and Caring Father!

Denboba Natie, 

Edinburgh, UK

Scotland in particular, the UK in general has got excellent, free of state/government involvement, fully independent and one of the oldest judiciary systems in the world. The over all objective of the said system is protecting the most vulnerable groups of society, in particular children and groups of people/s who are in most need. Therefore, it has got excellent social services whose ethos is supporting the most vulnerable groups of society financially, morally, socially, emotionally addressing the subjects all round needs. I also know and appreciate that the tax payers (including myself) pay a lot amount of money up to the extent of £250.000-500.000 a year for the support package of single person who needs all round 24 hours support services. This is an excellent humanely work all sane humane gives applauses. Such vulnerable-generous social services must be praised all over the world for generations to come- and the system must maintain its status-quo.  

Having these all excellent and highly praised systems effectively implemented, however, the perilous situation Scotland’s and the UK’s justices systems in relation to children’s and father’s rights can’t be under-emphasized  In the last 3-4 decades the children welfare hearing courts became the place where a few groups of people make adverse decisions on the fates of children at their tender ages for pure purpose of erroneously representing the hateful interests of mothers without duly following the rule of law. Others female judges, lawyers, curators and reporters use this opportunity to punish fathers under the pretexts of children’s rights whilst actually satisfying their hidden feminist political ideology, I presume. I didn't come across the system that monitors and punishes those who don’t respect the rule of law.

I have seen these acts of irresponsibilities- the action which constitute crimes against the very rights of children and the human rights of fathers to family rights in the past nearly 4 years of ongoing saga. The irony is that the said courts unequivocally orders fathers to pay Child maintenances (which fathers happily do) systematically agreeing with the hatred of mothers once they are separated or divorced. In this manner, fathers are being used to fund hatred and others needs of mothers who might even don’t use the money fathers pay for the purpose of bringing up children. There are ample evidences that most of mothers use it for their own consumption.

From these personal experiences and others genuine information I have gathered from others hundreds of unlawfully deprived fathers, it appears to me that the systems in particular the Children Welfare Courts -that are fundamentally established to safeguard children are hijacked by few groups of immoral, unprofessional, manipulative and business oriented curators, lawyers and reporters all of whom are given unquestionable trusts to do the right thing for the right purpose. The said elements are also left and freely allowed to easily maneuver Sheriff’s/Judges to distort and distract the course of justice by fabricating new cases against fathers now and again, asking for additional time to do very minor things to drag the case for years with ultimate objective of cutting bond between fathers and children. I saw these with my naked eyes time and again in the last four years as others several thousands of UK’s dads did in the past three to four decades.

Meanwhile, the children are left in limbo with no choice or influenced by misguided information based on advices of those who are involved in advocating that fathers are not needed in the family. The said advocacy is becoming so dangerous that it is likely to further compromise the noble UK’s and (Scotland’s) justice systems which the forefathers of this land had highly treasured-if it isn't addressed according to the rule of law. All involved children undoubtedly remain confused not knowing why they are denied contact with their fathers without any reasons; as are fathers who are often regarded as violent and abusers once they are separated of divorced without substantiating the said numerous false fabrications of the curators, lawyers, some misguided judges who never question the integrity of the allegations and others involved in the process including the police and social services personnel. In particular, if the fathers are from the groups of ethnic minority here in the UK the situation becomes extremely fishy for several reasons about which I don’t currently go into at length.  

The irony is that there are humongous buildings erected for the sole purpose of protecting the interests of children at their very tender ages boasting in all cities and towns lifelessly when it come to the row between fathers and law enforcers. In a land where people’s choices are respected and people are pushing with their demands to assert these chosen rights, the lack of justice for fathers and children to have natural father-child relationships remains the mystery of 21^st century.

In the UK’s Children Welfare Courts, law enforcers, all of whom are legally obliged to discharge their duties diligently and impartially, they rather on most occasions entertain sexism, prejudice and racism all of which must be categorically denounced by all law abiding citizens of the country and global community at large!

As mothers are entitled to an unconditional love and rights to family life, there is no reason for most UK’s children welfare hearing courts to deprive the fathers of these fundamental rights.

I also strongly advice the Scottish government in particular, the UK in general to revise the practices of  Children Welfare Courts and put the international and country’s rule of law into practice and hold those who ignore these noble systems into account.   
 
Let Justice, Fairness and Dignity Rule over 21^st Century Justice lubricated Barbarism!!

Denboba Natie

July 01, 2013