Family Court Hell

With special guests:

• Mark Harris
• Jolly Stansby
• Damon and
• Ted Donnelly.

Mark Harris is an English father who was jailed for waving at his daughters as they drove past in the family car, and author of a new book “Family Court Hell”, a rare and unique insight into the secret British family court system.

Family Court Hell is one man’s harrowing story of frustration and determination as he battled for access rights to his young daughters following the bitter break-up of his marriage. Incredibly, his was a journey that spanned almost ten years, with 133 hearings by 33 judges, and which reportedly cost the taxpayer over GBP1 million. What should have been a “simple contact dispute” somehow resulted in this innocent family man effectively being criminalized by the family courts, resulting in a stretch on the A Wing of the infamous Pentonville prison, which housed convicted murderers, terrorists, gun runners and drug dealers. Mark Harris eventually took his case public and the campaign for fathers’ rights took off - with the formation of Fathers 4 Justice. This is a shocking story that deserves to be heard. Mark says “Any father who’s got nowhere in the family courts when trying to maintain his relationship with his children may well think he lost out for a variety of reasons: because his case was not put properly, the judge did not listen, the welfare report was biased or some other likely reason for why the injustice took place. By reading ‘Family Court Hell’ it should become apparent that farce and injustice is dished out routinely in the family courts - if your children’s mother simply opposes you seeing them. Fathers up against a mother’s hostility will usually get nowhere at all especially when young children are involved - as the courts avoid being put in the position of having to enforce any order upon a mother. They would rather demonise the father instead and pick him off as an individual troublemaker. Truth, justice or even the children’s welfare is simply not on the agenda. You are not alone, this is just the way they operate. Here’s a passage from the Dads on the Air interview with Mark Harris, to be broadcast tomorrow:

HARRIS: Eventually I got done for contempt of court in 97, when I got cut off from the kids by the mum, not the courts, but the mum just refused to comply with the court order. They put an injunction on me because I started waving to the kids when she was driving them to school in the mornings. I was on foot, she’d drive by and I’d wave to them just to keep in touch while I was hopefully waiting for the courts to resolve the broken contact order. She got an injunction to stop me waving and I said “well, that’s really good if she can have an injunction to stop me waving when I’ve got a contact order you won’t enforce!”. So they took the contact order away and said that they’d enforce an injunction on me. I ignored it and carried on waving. And the first time around I got four months in prison for waving to the kids.

DOTA: You got got put in jail for four months for waving to your own children?

HARRIS: That’s right, yep. And I was waving to kids that were waving back and wanted to see me, but the mum didn’t want it. And that was the only reasons the judge cut me off, sent me to prison and gave me a no contact order. And I can remember his words clearly even 10 years on. He said he was going against the wishes of three intelligent children aged, at the time, 6, 8 and 10, who wanted to see their father, and he actually said they had a yearning to see their father, but he said the effect of me seeing the kids on the mother would be catastrophic because she hated it so much. So he cut me off and banged me up in prison.

DOTA: You’d think this was a farce. I mean you would not believe this was a true story.

HARRIS: It made a comedy show.

DOTA: You couldn’t have written a worse script.

HARRIS: We used to have a show years ago in Britain called Monty Python where things were an absolute farce. Well, you know, we have people doing that. They call themselves judges but they wear wigs and fancy tights and they send you to prison for waving to your own kids while they accept that the mother’s boyfriend’s been knocking your kids around and abusing them, and they send him back home to live with the kids and send you off to prison for waving! That actually happened in my case.

You can read more about Mark Harris here. Family Court Hell is available for purchase for just $AU19.95 including shipping at our bookstore.

Jolly Stansby, activist from the UK’s Fathers 4 Justice, is most famous for dressing up as a superhero and scaling public buildings to bring awareness to the injustice within the secret British family courts. Jolly spent seven days on Tamar Bridge in Plymouth, England, refusing to come down from his freezing perch despite being told “you could die up there,” and then enraging British police by cleverly eluding capture. Stansby is a registered child care provider and is thus allowed to care for any child in England except his own, whom he was barred from calling and was originally allowed to see only four days a month. Stansby, who became a registered child minder in the hope he could spend more time with his five year-old daughter, made news as the “Ms. Doubtfire Dad” who appeared in court dressed as a woman in the hope that switching genders would bring him justice. Jolly was most recently arrested in the USA for scaling the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. Here’s a passage from the upcoming Dads on the Air interview where Jolly tells the story of one of his Fathers 4 Justice stunts, climbing a crane:

“I went up there about three or half past three in the morning, and after about three trips up and down, you know, bottle of water and then your backpack and then your banner, it was about half past six in the morning when I actually finished getting up there. I was a bit exhausted and it started getting daylight, and I can’t stand heights! And of course once you could see the distance I just froze. It was the combination of being tired and all the rest of it and I didn’t know what to do. I just froze there, and then a little while later I heard the crane driver coming up and he got up to the top and obviously said “What do you think you’re doing?”. And I said “well, I’m protesting!”. Meanwhile all my stuff was in bags around me and he said “Well, I don’t know what you’re doing but you’re not doing it on my crane!”. And that just spurred me on enough to get the banner, and I shuffled it along to the end. We talked a little bit and then I explained to him what I was doing and in the end he said, “Well, actually thinking about it, good on you! I’m going to get paid anyway. Stick it up here as long as you possibly can. I’ll open the cab up. There’s a heater in there. I’ll put the heater on for you and there’s a radio. They’re going to turn the electric off eventually but enjoy it while it’s there.” And I’ve got the banner out and I’ve kept it up and stayed up there for about three days!”

Also on Tuesday’s show we talk with Damon (not his real name), an Aussie dad who has been fortunate enough to receive 50-50 shared care of his children. We’ll also chat with Ted Donnelly from the Lane Cove Men’s Shed about the 2nd National Men’s Shed Conference, to be held in Manly this Thursday and Friday.

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