On September 6th in an article entitled 'BenDedek upsets Canadians at Magic City', I drew attention to two groups that are fighting similar causes, in that they both want more equity in the legal system for Divorced Fathers.
Since then I have been receiving regular emails about the article, and have noted how many internet sites have listed it. Apparently the issue of 'Father's Rights' has touched a sore point in the world community (UK, Canada, USA).
Now before proceeding any further, I must point out that I did make an incorrect statement in my original article entitled 'Leap of Faith' in relation to the feminist agenda. I said that 'In Canada they have even instituted laws to prevent men from criticising 'women'...'.It has been pointed out to me that this is not correct. It was attempted, but was rejected. I do apologise for having failed to research the matter more fully and accurately.
Justice and Law, are not synonymous terms.
As an ex-member of an Australian Police force, I know only too well, that Law and Justice are not the same thing. For Example, when I worked in a little country town, my Sergeant sent me down the street one day to give a traffic notice to the passenger of a parked car. The car was parked outside a public park. While the driver was out of the car talking to a third person, the passenger was sitting with his 'arm protruding' from the vehicle. The 'law' says that this is a traffic offense. As I was doing what I was instructed to (failure for which would have landed me in trouble), I informed the passenger of the exact situation (even telling him where the Sergeant was standing), and told him to let it go to court, for it would be thrown out. He did not do this. He paid the fine!
Perhaps the Sergeant was within his right to order me to write the ticket, but it was not just, and it certainly was not the intended purpose of that particular traffic regulation to penalise passengers in stationary vehicles, for having their arms out the window while parked at the curb. It may have been the law, but it was not just.
On the matter of law, in the Australian state of Victoria, police undercover procedures for obtaining murder confessions have been exposed in some newspapers. The Police tried to stop this happening, but the courts overruled them. It seems that undercover cops posing as criminals, gain the confidence of 'crims', who, without coercion, make confession of their crimes. The objection to this is stated as: 'Critics of the controversial tactics claim they are unfair because they involve suspects being questioned without being warned of their rights'.
Well, we'll leave the question of Law to the lawyers, and while one might like to fight for the 'rights' of the murderer, one wonders where the justice is, when a self confessed murderer who has completely removed any and all rights of their victim, can be considered to have any rights at all.
On the question of Divorce, there are three 'immediately present rights'. The right of the mother, the right of the father, and the right of the child.
Many years ago I knew a girl who eventually got married, had a child, and finally got divorced. I ran into her after many years, while attending my son's gymnastics class, and we got talking. As we talked about children and divorce, she became extremely angry. She was preparing to take legal action against the father of her child, for breach of his access agreements.
You see, while she lives in the Capital of Queensland, her ex lives in the Capital of New South Wales. That's miles away in anyone's book, and so to gain access to his child, the father had to pay the expenses of flying his son down south for his visits. This was not a problem, because the father was a businessman, but on this occasion, on the Saturday, the first day of the visit, he had been scheduled to attend a seminar or business meeting of some sort, and so could not spend time with his son, who was about 8 years of age.
So the father saw to it that the boy was looked after for the day, and to make up for his non appearance, the father took the Monday off, to spend time with his son. Monday afternoon, he promptly put the boy on the plane, and flew him home.
Father was happy. Son was happy. But mother was furious. Why? Because the father 'broke the law'! What a criminal! What an outright so & so! And mother was going to get her pound of flesh. Now I don't know what the end result was, but it left me with a sick feeling in my stomach. Yep! The law was broken - but where was the Justice?
I myself have broken the law. I hit my second wife, and she had the bruises to prove it! I can't deny it! I just hit her the once, in the arm. My youngest son will tell you, he was there. I won't go into the background of it all, but the end result was that she followed me to the beach to continue fighting with me, and she just would not stop. Everyone was watching and listening. Finally I punched her in the arm and said 'leave me alone'. And she had the bruises to prove it! What a monster I am! Of course, one thing that she never told anyone was that even when she goes for a massage, she ends up with bruises. Don't know why, but she just had that sort of body. She always had bruises. The other thing that she never told anyone, was that she constantly hit and punched me during our 18 months of marriage. My kids will attest to that. Her favourite trick was to punch me while I was driving the car. One day I screamed, 'If you ever hit me again, I'll bloody well deck you!' Scared her senseless!
Did I break the law? Yes - I'm a wife abuser. Was she a husband basher? Yes! But was her story about abuse true? Was it just? Did it paint the real picture? No! Because she wanted power. (Nothing went to court, and all her endeavours ever did was demonstrate that she lied so often that people decided that they couldn't believe ANYTHING she said!)
There are many MEN and women who are subject to abuse, not all of which is physical. On a TV program years ago in my home state, they taught women how to 'Get back' at the men they hated. 'Put sugar in his petrol tank', 'Enter the house while he is not there and ring an overseas automated telephone response and leave the phone off the hook'. Well - it wasn't violent! But it was abuse.
My brother had a business friend who got divorced. Gave his wife EVERYTHING plus whatever the monthly cheque was. Eventually she wanted MORE! He couldn't afford to pay, so she began to ring business houses and tell them that he was bankrupt, and in the process destroyed his credit rating and his business. Of course, she lost the house, the car, and the monthly cheque. Silly woman!
The underlying theme here is POWER. Some people want power at any cost, even if they damage themselves, their children, their cause, their families and everyone around them.
There are many female victims of abuse in the world, whose cause is not championed by women who trivialise abuse by manipulating the law in order to gain personal power. There is no justice in that for anyone. There are many women who refuse to acknowledge that men are also victims of abuse by women. They cannot admit it, because they fear that they might lose some of their power.
I remember in university, we had a guest lecturer on domestic violence. That lecturer was a raving 'feminazi'. She went on and on about statistics, and kept maintaining that men are not victims of abuse. When she finally conceded that perhaps 'some' men might be abused, she said that the numbers were so insignificant that it didn't really matter.
The crunch came when I said to her: 'If we are going to go on YOUR statistics, then according to those figures, there is no domestic violence within the gay community. Perhaps it would be better if all men turned gay!' She hit the roof! Then she sent us out on an early break. I went home. I found out next day that 20% of the class walked out as well, and that the women in the class got stuck into her when class resumed. Her agenda was power. Her method was hate. Nobody bought it! Everyone stood up to it!
It is not always easy knowing the truth behind any matter,and some people are good liars, whether it is the woman who claims to be terrified of her husband, or the husband who claims to be terrified of his wife. But the one thing that we should not do, is be 'unjust'.
The Old Testament book of Micah says: Tell me Oh man what is good, and what does the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God. (and what is a greater show of POWER than Mercy?)
At "Women in Green" [ http://www.womeningreen.org] in an article entitled "TERRORISM KNOWS NO BORDERS" {RUTH MATAR - JERUSALEM - Thursday, September 09, 2004} there is this following passage:
The following words of Pastor Martin Niemoeller, one of the most respected Protestant leaders in Germany, who himself perished in Auschwitz, are inscribed above the entrance to Yad VaShem, the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem.
- First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--because I was not a communist;
- Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--because I was not a socialist;
- Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--because I was not a trade unionist;
- Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--because I was not a Jew;
- Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Although the article centers on the Mid East conflict, Ms. Matar makes an interesting statement: "What was unfortunately not realized, is that once it becomes acceptable for the ends to justify the means, then what starts with the Jews, will ultimately extend to other places and other people."
Ms. Matar is right, the end does not justify the means. Justice must prevail. And if the law, which was written with a specific intent, is abused by people who are trying to manipulate it to their own end for their own personal power, then that law should be changed.
Here is one example of how the law is both used and abused. This excerpt from an email I received:
"After going through 8 fabricated charges, a local (CITY) Judge who heard 3 of those charges issued 5 charges of assault against my wife. Another judge looked at that and ordered an emergency trial of custody and access. Another judge ordered a trial for her to pay me spousal support. Then, she moved to (CITY) where there are 3 feminist judges. A judge did not like the order for a trial of custody so he issued a "restraining order" banishing me from the city limits of (CITY), which effectively prevents any access and/or litigation in that court until I appeal the restraining order".
Fathers deserve justice. Children deserve justice. Women deserve justice. And no one has the right to manipulate the law, in order to hide behind it to justify their personal ABUSE of another! Worse still, no one should be allowed to manipulate society, the law, or justice, for the sake of a 'CAUSE'. If the cause must be established by lies, distortions, manipulation and abuse, it is not a cause worth fighting for.
We have swung the pendulum against men. Now let us swing it back to achieve some sense of equilibrium. Let's make our kids whole, healthy and happy.
R.P.Bendedek
Email: rpbendedek@hotmail.com
Note: Because of the recent Server change, some links may not work. This file was amended August 2007.
R.P.BenDedek is the pseudonym of the Author of 'The King's Calendar: The Secret of Qumran' (www.kingscalendar.com), and he is a guest columnist at Magic City Morning Star News. An Australian, he currently teaches Conversational English in China. King's Calendar Social Commentaries
"The King's Calendar" is a chronological study of the historical books of the Bible (Kings and Chronicles), Josephus, Seder Olam Rabbah, and the Damascus Document of The Dead Sea Scrolls.
