Another year of children being forcibly separated from their fathers.

Another year of children being forcibly separated from their fathers in secret courts.

Another year of fathers driven to suicide by the loss of their family and their barbaric treatment at the hands of our secret courts and the Child Support Agency.

Another year of broken promises from our politicians who scurry into hiding at the mere whisper of Fathers4Justice.

Another year of often willful ignorance, disinformation, bigotry and lazy prejudice in the media designed to malign a group whose sole aim is to ensure a child’s human rights to their fathers are enshrined – not abused behind closed doors.

No wonder they call this pitiful excuse for journalism the ‘lamestream’ media when we haven’t heard a single media outlet accurately report the facts.

Ian Douglas in today’s Telegraph writes “Fathers4Justice have just set back dads’ rights by decades.”

That’s an inflammatory accusation, so where is the evidence for his claim?

As the 2011 Norgrove report confirmed, fathers have no rights and should have no rights. 200 dads are losing contact with their children every day in secret courts by judges who sit under the Crown. Many of the legally binding court orders fathers have to see their children simply aren’t enforced. The CSA has reduced fathers to the status of sperm banks and cashpoints. (If Ian wants to read our fact sheet he can find it here )

We are a nation of first-class fathers, treated as second-class parents. And increasingly, many of us feel like outlaws in our own country.

As a result of this demonisation and denigration of fatherhood, millions of children will have little or no contact with their fathers this Father’s Day. 

As the Centre for Social Justice said this week, up to 75% of children in inner cities live without their fathers in what they called ‘father deserts’.

So what do we do? Just sit back and do nothing?

Did Ian Douglas want us to engage with our political classes? If he had been paying attention he would know we spent five long years, engaged with the political establishment. For what? Ten broken Tory promises, and for just three MP’s out of 650 to turn up to the Shared Parenting meeting held by George Galloway MP in Parliament on Wednesday.

If journalists like Ian Douglas really cared about this issue, it shouldn’t have taken a man with a spray can sending a message to the Queen in Westminster Abbey for Father’s Day to make him write about it.

To that extent, Ian Douglas has proven this point, rather than made his. As far as I can see – he hasn’t written a single article about the family courts.

The media simply can’t help themselves. The coverage for our cause is at best grudging, maligning, loaded with disdain and insult. ‘Heavy handed’ said Channel 4 news earlier this week. But thus as it ever was.

There is an old man dying in South Africa at the moment. 30 years ago he was called a terrorist by the mainstream media. I know, because I was in the anti-apartheid movement. Now he is venerated. We’ve just celebrated 100 years of the Suffragettes, yet we are expected to condemn a man for carrying out similar actions

Back in 1914, Ian Douglas would have been the journalist calling suffragist Mary Richardson ‘deranged’, accusing her of ‘setting back the cause of Women’s suffrage back by a decade’.

If Tim Haries had sprayed ‘help’ on a portrait of the Chinese Premier, he would have be a dissident hero celebrated by the West. God knows, if he had committed this act in Russia wearing a neon pink Balaclava and his underwear, Madonna would be singing about him and Angelina Jolie would have adopted him.

But the vision of our society has become so distorted and twisted, that our Prime Minister (who condemned dads on Father’s Day 2011) today says he wants the ‘Syrian opposition to succeed’ by violence, but says nothing about dads succeeding in their fight to see their children using peace and love.

The state have destroyed this man and his family in an act of capital punishment, and yet we expect him to do nothing. We have suffocated him, denied him any voice or representation in our country – by the very people who are the first to condemn him. Yet we expect him to comply, quietly, conveniently as the rest of society turns a blind eye to the national emergency that is mass fatherlessness.

I hope Ian Douglas doesn’t have any children and I hope his children don’t have any either. For his sake, statistically, the cancer of family breakdown will happen to him and when it does – when he can’t see his children or grandchildren 

– I want to see how far he will go for his family.

I know I would do anything for my children. What would you do Ian?

As Martin Luther King Jr wrote fifty years ago in his letter from Birmingham Jail, “…though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love? Will we be extremists for hate or for love?”

Matt O’Connor, Father’s Day, 16th June 2013

Post by The Fatherhood Task Force of South Florida(FTFSF).

New Study Says Divorce Can Seriously Impact Men's Health  - www.huffingtonpost.com

Father’s Day and men’s rights : Prime time : SunNews Video Gallery

"Reckless Disregard" A True And Compelling Story About One "FIT" Father's Fight For His Daughter

Father’s Day 2013:
The extremists for love

By Fathers 4 Justice16/06/2013Tags: Daily Telegraph, fathers day, fathers4justice, Ian Douglas,matt o'connor, Tim Haries
Another year. Another Father’s Day.

Remain an Equal Parent to your Child

We only support organizations who show an understanding that children need both parents, and that either parent is equally capable of the choice to perpetrate hate or declare peace.

Why Do Moms Have All The Power In Family Court?

The father's rights movement isn't an anti-mom or anti-woman movement; it's an anti-unfairness movement. It just so happens that moms have most of the power in the family

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Wondering what my estranged daughter is thinking?

That’s a heavy thing to carry. When there’s distance—especially with a child—it’s very natural to wonder what’s going on in their mind, and it can stir up a mix of hope, regret, love, confusion, and pain.

The hard truth is that we usually imagine many more thoughts than the other person is actually holding. Your daughter may not be thinking about you in a single, clear way. Often, estranged children hold contradictory feelings at the same time—love and anger, curiosity and avoidance, longing and self-protection. Silence doesn’t automatically mean indifference or rejection; very often it means “I don’t know how to handle this safely yet.”

A few possibilities that commonly show up in estranged relationships (not assumptions, just patterns):

• She may think about you occasionally, triggered by memories, milestones, or similarities.

• She may be protecting herself from emotions that feel overwhelming or unresolved.

• She may want connection but not know how to reconnect without reopening old wounds.

• Or she may be focused on her own life right now, not as a judgment, but as survival.

What matters just as much is this:

What you are thinking about her—and what you would want her to know if she could hear you without pressure or defense.

Sometimes the most grounding question isn’t “What is she thinking about me?” but

“If she were thinking about me right now, what would I hope she feels?”

A letter excerpted from 

Shoebox Letters – Daughters to Dads, a collection of over 30 letters from daughters to their dads about the role that their dad has played in their life. 

Dear Dad,

We’ve always had a special bond. Call it what you will, “I’m the apple that didn’t fall far from your tree,” “the relationship between father and daughter.” When I once complained jokingly to mom that she loved her son more than me…her very straight-faced response, “Well…your father loves you more.”

I never questioned the love from either one of you. Now that I have a daughter, I think about the power of love between people and it reminds me of the first thing you ever told me. I know the story well because you tell it at dinner parties, to new parents and to my boyfriends growing up. In the delivery room, when I was born, you say you held me in your arms and whispered, “I will love you unconditionally for the rest of your life and the Red Sox will always break your heart.” Everyone laughs and remembers the second part. I remember the first. It has defined our bond. Now that I’m a parent I think about how profound those first words were. And while I’m extremely happy the second part has turned out to be only half-true, I’m especially glad the first hasn’t wavered.

The feeling that I was loved unconditionally enabled me to grow up and feel secure, even when things weren’t perfect. It allowed me to hear your anger when I did something wrong, take your criticism when I asked for your opinion (even when I didn’t ask) and gave me the self-confidence to take risks, seek challenges and admit failure. If you have love; you have something.

You can’t underestimate the importance of telling a person you love them unconditionally. You were always so vocal about it. You didn’t expect me to know that you loved me just because you were my dad. You made sure I knew that you chose to love me. You told me explicitly that you loved me in every phone call, every evening we said goodnight, at least once a day and after every fight. You wouldn’t let me walk away as a child unless I said it too. We even developed our own code for how much we loved each other. “I love you 7,” I once said when you asked me just how much I loved you. It is to the moon and back.

You extended this love beyond your children, showing us that you don’t need to be born into unconditional. You loved mom instantly and for 40+ years until she died. And you continue to love her now and you don’t keep it a secret. You have invited others into this circle and treated them as family. While I have seen people fall from your graces, everyone knows that if they needed you, you would whisper in their ear again.

You have shown me the power this love instills. You have truly loved me unconditionally for my whole life. I am grateful.

It does not mean you treat me like I have no faults. You have always told me that you will be honest with me. I can’t say that I always liked this approach you’ve taken. I much preferred hearing Mom’s “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say it all” approach to life. But I do know that it’s always easier to hear your Truth because I know there’s an unconditional band-aid of love to put on when truth hurts.

I love you 7,

Kate

Fatherless Woman Syndrome - Raising and Teaching Girls to Build Strong Relationships

A liberatormagazine.com Exclusive Feature

Excerpts from the article: Fatherless Woman Syndrome

"When a woman is left without her father, she has emptiness inside, she struggles with abandonment issues, and she may even feel unloved or unwanted.

Some ladies without fathers in their lives may disagree with this diagnosis and may feel that their fathers’ absence has no affect or control over their lives but, even if it’s subconscious, it does have and affect and if we would be honest with ourselves, we would see that the syndrome shows its ugly head in all of our relationships."

"There is something about the father daughter relationship that is so special and unique; it’s where a woman recognizes her role and where she learns about a man’s role. This is why when a woman is left fatherless, something is lost; she doesn’t truly understand who she is as woman or the right things to look for when choosing a mate"

~ Terrica Taylor

Read the entire article HERE 

Fatherless (or “daddyless”) daughters are women who grew up without an active father, usually one who was absent by what appears to be his choice. This appearance of his choice to be absent is the key to the complexities of the girl/woman’s questions about her value to their relationship. As is true of many in my situation, I developed a fatherless daughter syndrome that would affect my self-esteem and my relationships with men over the years.

For girls, her relationship with her father sets the stage for her search for a husband or mate. A father conditions his daughter to how she will allow a prospective husband/mate to treat her and speak to her. She learns by the love of her father that she is lovable and worthy of the love of a man whom she hopes is as good as her father. Rarely will she consider it possible to have the love of a man who is better than her father.

If the father does not communicate his reasons for being absent, the girl may consider that it is her fault. That it is something she said or did to keep him away from her–she does not consider that the father is keeping away from her mother. If the father does not demonstrate love for his daughter, she will consider herself unloved and worse, unlovable. Later, in her search for a mate, not having had her father’s love, she will feel devalued and will settle for a man who does not demonstrate love.