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The mayor of London compares him to Osama bin Laden. He's been
dubbed a "menace" holding a city for "ransom," as well as a
lunatic and an extremist.
What has 36 year-old David Chick done to arouse such anger? He
loves his little daughter, from whom he's been forcibly
separated, and he had the courage to do something about it.
The now world famous Englishman recently ended his traffic
stopping, six day, one man protest atop a 150 foot high crane
near the Tower Bridge in London. Dressed as Spiderman because he
is his two year-old daughter's favorite comic book character,
Chick says his daughter's mother has not allowed him to see his
girl for eight months and has tried to alienate her from him.
Interviewed by English newspapers, the ex-girlfriend admits
blocking the standard yet paltry twice a month visitation which
English courts have granted Chick. To date, she has declined to
offer a reason publicly.
Chick is one of hundreds of thousands of English fathers who
have been cut off from their children after divorce or
separation. Their voices have crystallized into a widely popular
campaign by the activist group Fathers 4 Justice. This campaign
seeks to reform the family law system to allow divorced and
unwed fathers to play a meaningful role in their children's
lives.
The English Lord Chancellor's Department admits that mothers win
custody in about four-fifths of all cases in English and Welsh
courts, and English courts are notorious for their failure to
enforce fathers' visitation rights. According to Daily Mail
columnist Melanie Phillips, "some senior judges recently
acknowledged that with so many contact [visitation] orders being
flouted by mothers, the law is being brought into disrepute."
When one judge recently did transfer care of a child from the
child's alienating mother to the father, it was such an event
that it merited inclusion in Phillips' column. In reality, these
types of transfers should be more common, and would no doubt
have a salutary effect on the behavior of parents who try to
prevent their children from seeing their exes.
Chick's plight will sound familiar to many American fathers.
According to the Children's Rights Council, a Washington-based
advocacy group, more than five million American children each
year have their access to their noncustodial parents interfered
with or blocked by custodial parents. And while politicians and
the media hammer away at absent fathers on both sides of the
Atlantic, they too often fail to examine the critical role that
family courts and vengeful exes play in creating the problem.
To the minimal extent that defenders of the current system have
been forced to justify mothers' actions, they claim--as the
mayor of London now does--that these men often should not have
access to their children.
This is no doubt true on occasion, but is inaccurate in most
cases of access and visitation denial. Those opposing fathers'
rights claim they are defending women and children from abusive
fathers. However, according to the US Department of Health and
Human Services, the vast majority of child abuse, parental
murder of children, child neglect, and child endangerment are
committed by mothers, not fathers. In addition, decades of
research, including that carried out by the National Institute
of Mental Health, show that women are just as likely to be
violent towards their spouses as men are.
According to Carol Plummer, Chick's sister, "David would never
harm his daughter or Jo [the ex-girlfriend]. He doesn't want
custody of his daughter, he just wants to see her. But Jo is
making him suffer by depriving him of seeing his daughter, who
is his life."
Though one can sense a smear campaign against Chick on the
horizon, two weeks of digging for dirt on him have turned up
little. He was convicted of cannabis possession three years ago
and of public indecency (for consensual sexual activity) while a
teenager. According to Chick's brother Steven Reed, in the
cannabis conviction David took the rap for his ex-girlfriend.
Chick says:
"[My daughter] is the most precious thing in my world. I was
there for the scans when she was still in the womb, I was there
for her birth. I fed her, bathed her, got up in the night with
her, cuddled her when she cried.
"Now I'm just another statistic--another dad who has no part in
his daughter's life. For me, it is a living bereavement."
Today fathers in England, America and most of the Western world
stand upon a foundation of sand, knowing that our loved ones can
be ripped away from us and there is often little we can do about
it. We invest our lives in the children we love and tell them
that we will always be there for them. But in the back of our
minds we can't help but think of a question which Spiderman no
doubt considered before he began his ascent up that crane
hanging over Tower Bridge: will we be allowed to?
This column first appeared on Cybercast News Service
(11/11/03).
Note: David Chick went on trial
for the Tower Bridge protest in May, 2004. During the trial it
was revealed that he had been to court 25 times and spent the
equivalent of $30,000 in unsuccessful attempts to get English
courts to enforce his visitation rights. He was acquitted
by the English jury, some of whom were reportedly moved to tears
by his testimony.
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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