C C Smale Family Lawyer

I was prompted to write this by this story in the news. Particularly as it is local to us in North Manchester.

Women kill men only about one third as much as men kill women in domestic violence situations. (If you count the number of suicides by men in abusive relationships and the number of men killed by their former partners’ new boyfriends, more men die than women as a result of domestic violence.)

You need to read the details but in brief, Samantha Brown and her boyfriend, Dean Darvil went to the home of Samatha’s sister Toni along with another woman. When Dean accused Samantha of having sex with the other woman Samantha stabbed Dean in the Groin and he bled to death over the next few hours. His life would have been saved but Samantha refused to let Toni call for an ambulance.

It is interesting that Samantha (age 20!) was sentenced to 5 years in a Young Offenders Institution. Toni got 4 years in prison.

Yes, that’s right – 5 years in a young offenders institution and 4 years in prison for the 20 and 25 year old respectively!

Men’s lives are more disposable than those of women. They die from violent incidents at vastly greater rates than women do, although violence against women incites more outrage. (In particular, as parents, men are treated of lesser importance than women.)

If men complain they are told “don’t be a baby” and to “be a man”. Men are considered to be “domineering” or “scary” if they confront a woman about her spending habits or sexual promiscuity. If they just take abuse it is because they “can’t get laid” elsewhere.

I suspect that unless some of us speak out about it women will murder men with increasing impunity in future.

I have not posted anything on this website for a while.

I am supportive of men’s and fathers’ rights, which is something I have tried to express in some of the things I write.

A number of people have contacted me to say to say they are distrusting of the idea that any solicitor could work on the part of men under what they see as a corrupt system. Fathers4Justice, for example, discourage fathers from using a solicitor at all. I have also been contacted by someone who considers family law and those who practice it to be “Satanic” and I can promise that person that I took your point seriously and I read up on the things you emailed me and I thought about them for the past two weeks.

I think Celia Walden is mistaken in this article in the Telegraph in thinking that Cristiano Ronaldo commissioning a woman to be a surrogate mother for his baby is an act of vanity.

I know nothing about the law in Portugal, nor in America where apparently the surrogate mother lives. Nor do we appear to be told anything about what Cristiano Ronaldo’s girlfriend, Irina Shayk makes of it all. Ronaldo himself has said little about it.

Women have had the controlling hand in reproduction for forty years or so. For financial reasons planned single motherhood is all too common, while fathers in their naivety disappear from their children’s lives.

I am not particularly a fan of football as such and therefore I don’t care too much one way or the other about these football players, however in this I think Ronaldo has shown quite a lot of wisdom. Congratulations to him.

I wrote a few days ago about the government’s proposed change to the law to give grandparents rights to see grandchildren. The reality is that it does no such thing – all it does is it removes the requirement to obtain the permission of the court before you can apply for court orders. As permission is always given to Grandparents any so-called “change” to the law is purely technical

Fathers rights organisations, the most high profile being Fathers4Justice, seek changes to the law which they see as making the law fairer.

One such proposed change is a “presumption of shared parenting”. I disagree. There already is such a presumption as the 1989 Children Act is pretty much gender neutral. A second proposed change is to make the “secret”  family courts more open to the media. I think this is reasonable in principal but who is going to report on anything other than the celebrity cases?

In considering “shared parenting”, who is this supposed to benefit? The most likely beneficiaries are those families who can choose to arrange their lifestyles that way. It will not benefit fathers whose work takes them away from home, nor their children.

Tweaking the law in these ways will not make any difference for just as long as women, and particularly- mothers, are indulged by a culture of entitlement and victimhood.

Allegations of violence, sexual abuse and deviant behaviour are routine in the family courts. By “routine” I mean they are made in most cases and they are made for tactical reasons. The most spurious allegations will be taken seriously and they take months or years to investigate.

Any advocate of fathers’, or grandparents’ rights needs to understand this – any tweaks in the law will be defeated until we understand the truth about domestic abuse and child abuse allegations. Your child’s mother only needs to make an allegation about you and your relationship with your child is stopped – shared parenting or not!

Here are a few observations – they are from personal observation but if anyone wants to comment, posting some statistics we could have a proper debate:

• Mothers kill their children more than fathers do.
• Mothers physically assault their children more than fathers do.
• Women are more abusive than men, mentally and physically.
• More women die at the hands of their partners than women do but it evens itself out if one takes into account women who get someone else to kill the male partner – if you take into account suicides there are more male than female fatalities from domestic abuse.
• Women who abuse men are incredibly unlikely to be arrested or convicted of any offence. Sentences for any such offences, including murder are likely to be harsher for men than for women.
• There is far more sympathy for female than male victims. I posted on here a few days ago in connection with the fact that in Scotland £3,500 was spent in supporting female victims of abuse for every £1 spent on supporting men.
• There is an entitlement / victimhood culture which is sold to women. “No blame”. “You are not responsible”. Even womens’ rights organisations who proclaim this know it is a lie and in private they will tell you this. This is why women keep going back to abusive men.

Why has this man had so many marriage proposals?

My challenge here is to fathers’ rights organisations to acknowledge the real issues and stop trying to tweak the law. If this gets one of you to stop disrupting the traffic and take off your Spiderman outfit – let me know.

I am sceptical about the ever expanding definition of “domestic violence”. Here is Women’s Aid’s definition.

Oddly enough, “sulking” is included in the definition of violence according to Women’s Aid. “Lying to you” is also included in the definition, as is “witholding information from you”.

It becomes increasingly weird. “Having other relationships” is included in the definition of domestic violence.

It seems to me that the whole point depends on the context. Anyone who engages in another relationship cannot, as far as I can see it, complain if their partner checks up on them but then “checking up on you” is included in the definition of domestic violence, according to Women’s Aid.

I was in one of my local courts with a male client recently. He was accompanied by his sister. The sister pointed out to me that she was bewildered by the posters everywhere portraying only women as victims of abuse.

My client and his sister both have a fair idea, before he goes into court, of what he will be up against.

(This is based on a comment earlier today here. )

This bit of negative publicity in connection with the World Cup did not surprise me when I read it last week. The report on the same theme in our local paper, The Lancashire Telegraph yesterday prompts me to make some comment on my website. It is a piece of oportunism which jumps on the immense popularity of the World Cup to push the dubious message that men cannot be trusted to behave and that women need to be wary.

Publicity of domestic violence which acknowledges that men are often victims is rare. (The headline in the Lancashire Telegraph newspaper which does not appear in the online version is “Wife-beaters crackdown”.) It is significant that the definition of domestic violence as accepted by most women’s organisations as well as by the home office includes a lot of things which are nothing like “wife beating”. This means that if you act in some way that someone could possibly perceive as being controlling you are guilty of domestic “violence” or domestic “abuse”.

Questioning the usual rhetoric

A lot of money is spent on so called “support” for abused women. The reality is that much of the rhetoric is easy to say but empty of meaning. The message so often repeated that “domestic violence is never acceptable and it will never be tolerated” is repeated by the same people who applaud Tiger Woods’ wife for attacking him with a golf club because of his infidelity.

Many women repeatedly return to abusive relationships for sex. Many move from one abusive relationship to another. This happens no matter how many hundreds or thousands of pounds worth of support they are given and no matter how many times they are told they are “not to blame”.

We are told how “domestic violence destroys lives and tears families apart”, which is undoubtedly true but I am sceptical that the agenda is really about the protection of families. (My own opinion is that sexual unfaithfulness damages families more).

On the contrary, there is very little support given to men who are either abused by their partners or who are unjustly accused of being abusive.

Representing men – often an uphill battle

As a solicitor, when representing men I know that it will often be an uphill battle. It is men and not women who are removed from the home if the police are called to an incident. If a man raises his hand to a woman who then decides to call the police it is likely to get the man locked up and – if he is a father – risks him not seeing his child without a battle. This is the case regardless of the behaviour of the mother. Some of the very powerful protections available to women both in the civil and criminal courts are almost never granted to men.

It is a big injustice for any person whether a man or a woman who leaves a relationship and is forced to leave their children with the other partner or hand over their home or property to the other partner. (By the way, although the point of this post is to highlight the challenges in representing men’s rights, I think I should also mention that women who find themselves as non-custodial parents sometimes get the least support of all.)

The fact that men’s rights are met with less sympathy than those of women is a genuine challenge. Men, rather than women all too often have to defend themselves against the allegation that they are a risk and it is men rather than women who lose out on a relationship with their child because of this perception. If we as solicitors are going to represent men effectively we have to be prepared to fight against against this.