Children Never Seen Again
When the state removes a child, families expect protection — not permanent silence. This investigation exposes how NSW's child protection system has become a machine for irreversible family separation.
Delivering Dads Back to Their Children
In the coming weeks and months, we as mothers, fathers, children, grandparents and families await the Government’s answers to the proposed reforms within Family Law and within the Child Support Scheme. We have been waiting patiently, even though we have been experiencing the very same thing this grandmother (below) so ...
Another Humble Lesson in Life
I was travelling through Queensland a few weeks ago opening new Dads in Distress groups, and was convening a meeting that was being held in the back of a new church that had been established in an industrial estate. It was a new meeting and so we didn't know what ...
The Cry of a Single Father
Please read this attached e-mail that I sent to 60 Minutes in an effort to try and get any help or understanding. It is hard to find a reason to go on when even your cry for help is told to be quiet. Dear Sixty Minutes, Please, you have got ...
Men’s Suicide – Tragedy of Our Nation
Today, the Sydney paper carried a story of a well-known identity, Rene Rivkin, who suicided weeks after splitting from his wife of 32 years. It was front-page news in most of the major papers. A local newspaper here carried a similar sad story of death. It was a well-known local ...
So Little Time
Tonight is the start of the school holidays; I am allowed to pick up my son. I feel extremely emotional about this, because I know only too well what it feels like when these times come for men who are deprived of the opportunity to spend time with their little ...
Last Night I Had a Passenger
I'm tired. Last night I had just driven from Coffs Harbour to hold a DIDs (Dads in Distress) meeting in Forster, and returned in the early hours of the morning. I am on the road a lot. My car is my office, often it's also my dressing room, and often ...
Divorce – Find Solace in God
It is not the actual divorce that hurts families. It is the pain of finding guilt in one another as divorcing couples. The fighting, the yelling, the attacking of one another's character is what causes trauma in children and friends. Some people’s mistake is to either marry the wrong person ...
Christmas – A Lonely Time for Single Dads
The Attorney General has released a discussion paper on Family Law Reform. Take the time, read it and put a submission in to: www.ag.gov.au Think about parallel parenting. Why can't it work here? We are coming up to Christmas. Many dads won't be seeing their kids for Christmas -- someone else ...
The Fight for Justice (Part 2): How Wilberforce Achieved Success
That which has been is that which will be, And that which has been done is that which will be done, So, there is nothing new under the sun. This observation was written in about 935 BC. It is as true today as it was then. Its modern equivalent is ...
The Fight for Justice (Part 1)
Mahatma Gandhi once said that when facing adversaries, they first ignore you, then they fight you and then you win. Those people who despair at the apparent lack of progress in the fight for social justice for separated families need to take heart from Gandhi's observation. We have successfully accomplished ...
Delinquent Dads?
The best decisions about the care, welfare and support of children are those made by their parents. However, the Child Support Agency has decided that it should take over this role. As a result, I know plenty of non-custodial fathers (and one mother) who not only have no intention of ...
Change Don’t Come Easy
Many people have a solid, ingrained resistance to change, particularly when that change doesn’t align with the way they think. Our understanding and perception of the world around us is, to a large degree moulded by the culture of our age. When we look back to another age, another time ...
A natural way to put men into mentoring
The subbie was a weathered man in his late 50s with big, calloused hands and knobbly knees. His offsider was a skinny, tearaway kid with wraparound sunglasses and a hotted-up Holden. Watching them work at our house over a few weeks was an instructive experience. They were obviously on good ...
Child Support and Deadbeat Dads – Myth Versus Fact (Part 2)
(continued from part 1) The next question then becomes, why doesn't this hard core group just pay up? Well of course, just as there are some taxpayers who will go to any lengths to avoid paying taxation, there will always be some who will adopt a similar attitude towards payment ...
Child Support and the Deadbeat Dad – Myth Versus Fact (Part 1)
It was fascinating to watch the media recently making a complete botch of facts (as per usual) in order to generate reader interest. This mangling of fact in favour of 'readability appeal' (fiction) happens all too frequently in our media -- something that is costing us dearly as a society, ...
A Harsh Statistic: Child Support and Unemployment
A harsh statistic, which should be sobering and alarming to both legislators and their advisors, but has been largely ignored, is that about 40% of all payer clients held captive by the Child Support Agency (CSA) are effectively unemployed. Another statistic that appears to have also made no impact on ...
When They Are Very Young
I was 27 years old when, on my first day of teaching, I was presented with a class full of ten-year-old children. I remember thinking that I hadn’t seen or spoken to a ten-year-old since I was ten. I felt equally inadequate a few years later when I was handed ...
Teachers versus Fathers
The observation that separated couples rarely get along with each other would come as no revelation to anyone. It is generally relationship problems that lead to the separation in the first place. Yet these relationship difficulties are often used by the Family Court as the basis for refusing shared parenting ...
ANZAC Day: For the Fallen
While attending ANZAC Day dawn ceremonies just now, I was reminded of how little people understand the unknown/absent/single father from the poems that are read on ANZAC Day. I have re-written the originals slightly below, for those who are battling and those who have gone before, and for those who ...
Inspiring Single Dads
Here we go again -- my second Single Dads article in almost 1½ years of the FathersOnline newsletter. I always said the first article wouldn’t be the last. What has brought on this sudden burst of ‘single father inspiration? Read Peter Duncan’s email in the News & Info section before ...
Equal Parenting
Letter to the Prime Minister from The Lone Fathers Association of Australia Part Two The best interests of the child With a legal presumption of equal shared physical custody, a clear message would be sent by the Australian community to the divorce industry that a child is a human being ...
Shared Physical Custody
Letter to the Prime Minister from The Lone Fathers Association of Australia Part One General comments The LFAA, as the national peak body representing separated fathers and their children, wishes to inform you of our extreme disappointment with the Report on “Shared Custody” by the House of Representatives Committee on ...
On Christmas Day
All going well, I will receive access to my children sometime on Christmas Day. I don't know whether for 1 hour, 1 day or 1 week. I have no court orders, choosing not to put my kids through it, and knowing by experience they are not worth the paper they ...
Holiday Joy
Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea Joy to you and me! Here we come, into the holidays. My two independent elder children will be off with their friends. I will see little of them. My youngest will be at his mother's this Christmas. I am grateful it ...
The Heart of the Matter
Here's a nice message that comes from the Bible. It went the email rounds but was anonymous, so I can't credit the scholar. In the very centre of the Bible, Psalm 118:8, it says (I like the Amplified version translated by Jewish scholars): It is better to trust and take ...
