Legal Action For Women and Women Against Rape, have written an open letter to Cafcass and the NSPCC a day before they are due to take part in a Families Need Fathers Conference looking at Parental Alienation.
The letter invites the organisations to withdraw from the event, where representatives have been asked to speak.
The letter is added below:
OPEN LETTER to CAFCASS and NSPCC re your PARTICIPATION in a conference run by FAMILIES NEED FATHERS (FNF)
Saturday 14 October
We understand that you are speaking at this FNF conference on parental alienation. You must be aware that FNF have consistently attacked women.
Must we refresh your memory? As long ago as 1994, during a debate on the Child Support Agency, MP Glenda Jackson reported in Parliament that FNF advised fathers who were not allowed access to their children to ‘kidnap them. If that failed and nothing else could succeed, it advocated the murder of the mother.’ Recently we helped a father re-introduce contact with his child. He had previously gone to FNF and was horrified when their facilitators described the whole system as stacked against men, and kept referring to ‘feminist Nazis’. He said they promote and perpetuate misogyny and refused to go back.
FNF deny domestic violence, dismissing it as false allegations. They claim that ‘False and unfounded allegations poison proceedings when a non-resident parent is seeking parenting time with his children. Judges need to make findings of fact as soon as possible and to take false allegations into account when determining the best interests of the child.’ FNF claim that ‘there is widespread abuse of men and boys in the context of the family courts’ and accuse women of ‘making allegations’ as ‘a motorway to obtaining legal aid’.
Such claims are totally outrageous. Surely you know that:
- One in five women aged 16-59 have suffered sexual violence in England and Wales;[1] two women a week are murdered by a partner or ex-partner; one in four women have been subjected to domestic violence in their lifetime; 81% of victims of domestic violence are women; domestic violence has a higher rate of repeat victimisation than any other crime; 62% of children in households where domestic violence is happening are also directly harmed;[2] 50% of rapes are domestic. The level of false allegations of rape is less than 1% and less than 0.5% for domestic violence, both are much lower than false allegations for other crimes.[3]
- Family courts have allowed violent fathers (even when they have a criminal record for violence) to terrify, threaten and intimidate those they had victimised and who managed to escape them. These legal standards would never be tolerated in an open court. Judges have insisted on contact and even residence, dismissing what women and children were telling them. Nineteen children and two mothers were killed between 2005 and 2015 following court orders to allow fathers unsupervised contact. (WA)
- FNF have the view that fathers who are estranged from their children have the same rights as mothers who do the daily work of caring and protecting them. That is the traditional patriarchal view by which children and their mothers are men’s property for them to do what they want with. No organisation or charity which gets public funds, especially ones that claim to speak for children, should give credence to such views.
We hope you will reconsider your participation in this conference.
Legal Action for Women and Women Against Rape
law@allwomencount.net war@womenagainstrape.net
[1] An Overview of Sexual Offending in England and Wales, Ministry of Justice, Office for National Statistics and Home Office, 2013
[2] http://www.refuge.org.uk/get-help-now/what-is-domestic-violence/domestic-violence-the-facts/ quoting various ONS and Home Office sources
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/mar/13/rape-investigations-belief-false-accusations
UPDATE: Shortly after we published this post, Families Need Fathers contacted us and tried, unsuccessfully, to upload their response to the letter. We add their response, which they emailed to us, below:
“It is evident that the authors of this letter do not know Families Need Fathers as well as the contributors to this event do. We are a reputable registered charity that engages constructively with relevant and distinguished stakeholders to discuss important issue relating to children’s welfare following family separation. We promote the clause of the UNCRC that children have a right to a relationship with both their parents, unless there is a welfare reason otherwise. We look forward to a successful conference tomorrow.”
UPDATE, 15th October, 2017: Legal Action For Women has sent Researching Reform an email with links offering evidence to qualify their statements.
“FNF’s use of the phrase “feminist Nazis” was reported to us by a father who had gone to them for help but stayed only for one meeting because he was so horrified by their attitude to women/mothers. It is a direct quote from him, but obviously we can’t pass on his name.
The first quote is from a FNF press release dated 12 September 2017: Lies, Damned Lies and False Allegations! See top paragraph.
The other quotes are from their press release dated 27 July 2017: CAFCASS Betrays the Trust of Fathers – see paragraphs 2 and 5.”
Researching Reform 
Reblogged this on Musings of a Penpusher and commented:
Dialogue by all means, but a logical and realistic view is essential when considering access.
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‘No platforming’ rises its head again! I am not sure how true these allegations are and I think it would be more balanced if these organisations also quoted the figures of men being abused by their ex-partners. When I was protesting on roofs for New Fathers 4 Justice, most of the members derided FNF for being ‘spineless’, and I still have newsletters for when I was a member (for one year) none of which promote or condone violence or an anti-woman bias. Unless the organisation has completely changed its spots, I find the claims bizarre, to say the least.
To say that fathers have not been prejudiced against in the Family Courts is absurd, so many would not have gone to protest if they hadn’t felt heartbroken at losing contact with their children through the Courts and vindictive, callous ex-partners. However, I know quite a number of mothers who have been treated barbarically by these Courts, too. I’ve said it before, if you are the non-resident parent, you are likely to lose. It’s just that there are more non-resident fathers than non-resident mothers, hence the common perception amongst the public that men are unfairly targeted. These women’s groups are doing themselves no favours by their rather lop-sided stance on this, just as Father’s groups achieved very little despite some heroic protests.
Until men and women of good faith work together for the good of families, no further progress will be made. Much money is being made in legal circles by pitting parent against parent, even child against parent, and unless united, we will always lose, both fathers and mothers. And children.
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I absolutely agree with all you say, Roger. I don’t hold a high opinion of FNF, but they are decent, well-meaning people and the allegations against them are without a shred of truth and scandalous. I also joined for about a year and gave up on them as fairly ineffective. Inevitably the allegations are not referenced, because there is no evidence.
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Thank you, exInjuria. I, too, found FNF decent and well-meaning, and very good with counselling and guidance to fathers who were entering the dreaded Court system, and were totally perplexed with a hostile environment which they thought was going to be supportive and helpful! Still makes me laugh, cynically, after all these years. But not effective with changing anything. I wanted to shout from the rooftops, and F4J gave me the opportunity to do that, literally! But that hasn’t changed anything much either. . . .and so I’ve concentrated on being a McKenzie Friend to fathers and mothers. I’d love to join a coalition of mums and dads united in fighting this bloody awful, family-unfriendly, obstinate, dysfunctional system. But so many mums and dads seem more interested in fighting each other, to the detriment of their children and themselves. It makes one despair sometimes.
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Reblogged this on | truthaholics and commented:
Any deviation from ‘good-enough parenting,’ typically to fetter a capable parent, should never be tolerated – this is the root cause of defathering (and demothering) of children.
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No, you keep sending comments. As I said in my email to you, I have not received a formal response.
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Dear Natasha,
What an awful piece of utter prejudice. Domestic violence is truly awful and I condemn any man who does it. As does Family Needs Fathers. I fully accept the majority of physical assaults are men on women (partner or ex-partner). But it’s completely sexist to extrapolate this to all men are perpetrators and women victims. All the independent evidence confirms there are significant numbers (a minority ranging from 10 – 40%) of men are victims of domestic violence (DV).
My personal experience was that obtaining a conviction against my X in a criminal court was a doddle compared to having a family court believe me. Most shocking of all was that no DV course exists for women. Since my case I’ve helped about 100 men go through the family courts. I wouldn’t spend my time and energy lifting a finger for any man who was abusive to a women. In the time since their cases where they were accused (between 1 and 5 years) not 1 has gone on to be arrested or convicted for DV or any other crime. I’m afraid false allegations are made. I was arrested for assault and locked up for a night. I was the one actually attacked and had to work hard to ensure my X wasn’t harmed. By the way she was in breach of the contact order as so many cases.
DV is appalling in all it’s forms but it’s not gender specific. Ask my children.
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“I fully accept the majority of physical assaults are men on women (partner or ex-partner).”
You shouldn’t just accept this. It may well not be true.
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UPDATE: Please see the bottom of the post for Families Need Fathers’ official response to the letter. They tried several times, unsuccessfully, to post the response, so in the interests of transparency we have added it to the end of the post. We have chosen to share the response as a screenshot for transparency reasons also.
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Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
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The Glenda Jackson quote is here:
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199394/cmhansrd/1994-07-04/Debate-6.html
“A few years ago, part of its advice to fathers, if they were not allowed access to their children, was to kidnap them. If that failed and nothing else could succeed, it advocated the murder of the mother. There is little doubt that no reasonable person, either within or without this House, would give much credence to that type of fathering.”
It may be seen that she was speaking on an occasion of Parliamentary Privilege. FNF did not therefore have a remedy in defamation, against Ms Jackson. It follows that nobody can infer that the allegations she made had any truth in them at all.
FNF hasn’t “consistently attacked women”, as this recent open letter accuses. This defamatory statement isn’t protected by Parliamentary Privilege. I hope that this respected, 40 year-old registered charity, with which I am associated myself, clears its besmirched name.
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If a parent has not committed any crime against children it is very wicked to cut off all contact with his/her child.Sometimes face to face contact is neither practicable nor desirable but indirect contact by phone,email,or via internet sites such as Facebook should always be permitted .
It is the children rather than their parents who are emotionally harmed and even irreperably damaged by this wicked practice so beloved by the family courts.
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Certainly FNF should sue for these libellous comments, and make a very public show of it. It would have the side benefit of bringing the issue of the Family Courts right back into the public domain, which that institution really hates.
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Dear readers, whilst Researching Reform invites open discussion and comment on posts we publish, we would like to remind you that in order for libel to be proven, the comments must be shown to be false.
We remain concerned that Families Need Fathers have not directly addressed the open letter’s allegations, in their official response.
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Quite correct, Natasha. I should have said ‘they should sue if these comments are libellous’. My apologies. I hope FNF fully address the open letter’s allegations, refuting in detail each one, and if they can, they should sue. I remain convinced that they have never advocated kidnap or murder, as they surely would have been brought to account before now, if they had. Either would not have benefited anyone, and FNF, having taken the Government’s shilling, always seemed to me to take a very ‘soft’ approach to these matters.
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The first allegation concerns a claim made in 1994 by Glenda Jackson regarding something said some years before, perhaps around the time of the introduction of the Children Act. While it is not impossible that someone said something unwise in the heat of the moment, it is a long time ago and hardly relevant to FNF now.
The allegation that FNF deny domestic violence is obviously false, not least because many of their own members will have been victims. That some allegations are false is hardly controversial. The other allegations made by LAW and WAR are simply statements which I’m sure FNF will have no difficulty substantiating.
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Apart from the *privileged* reporting of privileged dicta in Parliament in 1994, which is not actionable because of that privilege, the only concrete allegation against FNF that matters is that FNF “consistently attacks women”.
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UPDATE: Legal Action For Women offer evidence to qualify the claims in their open letter. Please see the bottom of the post for their response.
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You rely upon one unattributed, feeble anecdote about one local FNF group help meeting, to purportedly “substantiate” (so-to-speak) your “Feminist Nazis” claim about FNF as a whole. I believe you. There are fathers who draw a parallel between Feminism and National Socialism, just ast there are mothers who draw a parallels between men and pigs, I dare say.
You claimed that “FNF deny domestic violence, dismissing it as false allegations”. You have failed to substantiate that claim. Rather, the FNF begins, “Research into a sample of 75 Scottish family actions revealed that allegations of abuse were made in 35% of contact/residence actions and 70% were found to be false or unfounded.” (FNF accepted those findings.)
You claimed that, “FNF have consistently attacked women”. You have failed completely to substantiate that claim.
You quoted allegations on the part of Glenda Jackson MP that were published in Hansard about 23 years ago. That defamation wasn’t actionable, because of Parliamentary Privilege. However, you have not substantiated it this year, for what little it is worth.
Finally, you claim, “FNF claim that ‘there is widespread abuse of men and boys in the context of the family courts’ and accuse women of ‘making allegations’ as ‘a motorway to obtaining legal aid’.”
What the FNF press release actually says is this:
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Family justice charity Families Need Fathers is very disappointed that a Government agency has published a press release favouring the views of a lobbying charity relating to women and girls without any reference to balancing views regarding the widespread abuse of men and boys in the context of the family courts. This is a one-sided publication that is clearly intended to influence practice in the Family Courts.
…
A second major problem with the ‘research’ is that it is focussed on allegations of abuse rather than the reality. Organisations that primarily support men have been raising concerns about the prevalence of unfounded and, increasingly often, obviously malicious allegations, made in the Family Court and a complete lack of any form of deterrent or consequence for making such claims – despite these technically being a criminal offence of ‘perverting the course of justice’ – understandably a serious offence carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Making allegations of abuse is already a motorway to obtaining Legal Aid and many within the judiciary openly acknowledge that fact. Now we learn that almost 2/3rds of cases are ‘alleged’ to involve allegations of abuse. The joint report itself stated that
‘The purpose of the study was to look at the types of allegations present in family law court proceedings, including safeguarding concerns other than domestic abuse, and what happened within the proceedings. It did not seek to make findings on the allegations’
Increasingly, the absurd notion of on the one side requiring the acceptance of any allegations by women as true, regardless of evidence, and at the same time promoting the belief that fathers are too dangerous to be trusted with their own children, is severely undermining today’s political agenda. The result of such malicious, unfounded allegations has been that thousands of children each year have been denied time with their much loved dads for many months, in many cases leading to the permanent loss of a good and loving parent.
Many fathers in difficult separation cases already have very low confidence in the result of interventions of CAFCASS. If they are to have support of mums AND dads CAFCASS need to demonstrate the kind of leadership that will lead to the confidence of both.
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Not doing very well at proving your accusations against FNF, are you?
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Surely what FNF should be demanding is evidence for the allegation made by Glenda Jackson. These are the most serious allegations in their letter.
The other points are not really ‘allegations’ they are simply quotations of things said by FNF with which many people, I am sure, would agree. Indeed, Lord Justice Munby said something very similar to the first quotation in 2004,
‘False allegations of misconduct are highly damaging and destructive… The court should grasp the nettle. Such allegations should be speedily investigated and resolved, not left to fester unresolved and a continuing source of friction and dispute. Court time must be found – and found without delay – for fact finding hearings.’
Peter Lodder, the chairman of the Bar Council, warned in 2011 that the new arrangements on legal aid would result in an increase in false allegations as a route to funding.
None of this justifies the demands made in the letter.
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exInjuria, I attempted to post a comment on your blog, about Mary’s holiday (Dancing Attendance), and was told, “Sorry, this comment could not be posted.”
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Oh, I don’t know why that should be. I’ll look into it.
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I attended the conference and noted every word said throughout. It was worse than you could imagine. This organisation is an absolute terror threat to women and mothers and MacFarlane should never have spoken nor said the hideous things he did- whilst not giving consent for his talk to be made public! Shockingly aggressive tactics and I will be reporting on the conference shortly
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You waited five years to mention this?
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