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Clara Harris, a Texas woman who was convicted of murdering her
husband in
March, was just granted joint custody of her twin five year-old
boys. The ruling
validates what fathers' and children's advocates have been
saying for
years--when it comes to children, many courts believe that
mothers can do no wrong.
While Clara Harris' murder conviction was not enough to deprive
her of equal
rights to her children, hundreds of thousands of fathers have
been thrown out
of their homes and driven out of their children's lives by
unfounded
accusations of domestic violence. According to Washington family
law attorney Lisa
Scott, most courts grant restraining orders to practically any
woman who applies,
and domestic violence accusations are very effective at
depriving fathers of
custody and visitation rights after divorce. She says:
"Most restraining orders do not even involve an allegation of
physical
violence. For most judges, the woman saying she ‘feels afraid'
of her husband is
enough. Men have no way to defend themselves against these
accusations. How do
you argue against a feeling?"
While both the judge and the attorney appointed by the court to
represent Harris' two sons saw value in preserving the bond
between the children and a mother who is a convicted murderer,
many courts are unable to see the value of the bonds between
children and decent, law-abiding fathers. Studies show that
visitation interference and move-aways are a major problem for
divorced fathers, yet courts are indifferent at best to
enforcing fathers' visitation rights, and generally permit
divorced mothers to move children hundreds or thousands of miles
away from their fathers. This is despite the fact that the rates
of the four major youth pathologies—juvenile crime, teen
pregnancy, teen drug abuse, and school dropouts--are tightly
correlated with fatherlessness, often more so than with any
other socioeconomic factor.
While in the Harris case a mother was able to win joint custody
from a prison
cell, decent fathers who have never had any brush with the law
beyond a
traffic ticket often cannot. Studies show that in contested
cases mothers are
granted sole custody over fathers by a margin of eight to one.
According to
research conducted by Sanford Braver, author of Divorced Dads:
Shattering the Myths,
divorced mothers are five times as likely to be satisfied with
their
post-divorce child custody arrangements as divorced fathers
are. In Braver's study,
three-quarters of divorced men and one in four divorced women
believed that the
system is slanted in favor of mothers, while only one in 10
women and none of
the men surveyed thought it favors fathers.
The "woman good/man bad" mentality of our family courts often
hurts children
by blindly favoring mothers and placing barriers between fathers
and the
children who love them and need them. The Harris ruling--where
even a mother who is
a convicted murderer is still not seen as being an unfit
parent--demonstrates
just how deep-seated and destructive this mentality is.
This column first appeared in the Houston Chronicle (9/19/03).
Glenn
Sacks' columns on men's and fathers' issues have appeared in dozens of America's
largest newspapers. Glenn can be reached via his website at
www.GlennSacks.com or
via email at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
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