An Open Letter:

My name is David and I am one of the administrators of this page. In the few months I have been with this page, I have seen the good and the bad from supporters and haters. I joined this page because I believe in equal parenting rights. The page is titled “the Fathers’ Rights Movement” but it is really about parenting rights. Similar to how the Civil Rights movement was about rights for all minorities, The Fathers’ Rights Movement t is about Fathers, Mothers, Step Parents, Grandmothers, Grandfathers, and other family members who are being denied access to their family members through Family Courts.
A lot of the people who come to this page are men who have been victims of not only Family Courts, but DV, and other forms of abuse by their former partner. However, there are people from both sexes that come here for the same reasons. We in no way, shape or form advocate DV, Rape, and kidnapping, or any kind of physical, mental, or emotional abuse. What we have are people who come here at the end of their ropes from a system designed to cause strife, anger, hate, depression, poverty, suicide, and other things. This system does not care about the child (for the most part); it’s cares about its wallet. The divorce/child custody industry is a $50 BILLION dollar a year industry; yes $50 BILLION… to put that in perspective; the Oil industry makes about $88 Billion a year; worldwide!
If a parent, mother or father, is denying their child access to the other parent, it is a form of child abuse that can lead to Parental Alienation Syndrome. It is brought on by Hostile-Aggressive Parenting techniques. These techniques include:
* Alienating the child from the other parent
* Not involving the other parent in life affecting decisions of the child.
* Limiting contact between the other parent and the child and/or supervising visitations and communications with the child without a court order.
* Creating a hostile environment during visitation and/or trying to control how the other parent spends their time with the child.
* Using threats or enticements to persuade a child to say or write hurtful things to the other parent.
* Making degrading or diminutive comments about the other parent to the children or in front of the child.
* Making false accusations about the other parent.
* Threatening the child or otherwise persuading the child to alleged false accusations.
* Actively trying to denigrate the role of the other parent in the life of the child.
If you are the custodial parent, try putting yourself in the non-custodial parent’s shoes. Try having your child taken from you, limiting their contact, cutting them out of life decisions, etc. You would probably be feeling the same way a lot of these other men AND women on this page feel: anger, hatred, depression, and even thoughts of suicide. How many of you have said at some point of your time with your child that if anyone every hurt your child you would kill them? Now think about that very carefully; because your former partner probably said the same thing. And no I am not advocating that, I am making a point.
It is time for parents to take back their rights to THEIR children. Take it away from the courts, lawyers, GAL’s, social workers, DCF, DCSE,etc. We made a child(ren), WE raised them; WE were good parents before the split and WE must still be good parents afterwards. If you truly care about your child(ren), you would do what is in their best interest, not yours. Now I also want to make this perfectly clear; if there is any kind of abuse involved, a parent needs to still be involved, but under certain conditions. Even if a child was abused, that child needs to be able to come to terms with it through therapy and eventually facing that abuser. And the abuser also needs the same thing. People can and do change.
The main idea is to raise the child to be the best they can. I can cite hundreds of statistics about the effects on children through divorce, PAS, HAP, etc. But, if we make every effort to have the parents involved, we can negate that and not raise a generation of children who have emotional and mental issues. In order to make change happen we need to work together, reform Family Courts, limit their power to run our families, and yes Reform VAWA (it’s sexist).
Please discuss this; make suggestions, voice your opinion. Without conversation; meaningful conversation, nothing will change. So for all the haters that want conflict—- think about the child(ren), and let’s stop fighting each other, and fight the system that creates this conflict.