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Shelter for newly separated husbands opens in Switzerland
Submitted by johndias on Fri, 2010-09-10 22:57
Article here. It's not a DV shelter for men, but rather a shelter for men who have essentially been evicted from their homes by their wives (and probably also by the State). It's also not free ($166 USD per week), but they make it a point to foster camaraderie between the male residents by limiting the numbers of residents living in a given facility, and they also provide rooms for the children of fathers to stay in order to foster an uninterrupted relationship. What impresses me is that they are recognizing that male pain exists and are also identifying the cause of that pain -- family breakup, an outcome sought by wives 80 percent of the time according to this article. Excerpt:
'GENEVA (Reuters) – A trickle of newly separated Swiss fathers looking for shelter and help after marital breakdown have been finding a warm bed and a sympathetic ear from a pilot project on the shores of Lake Zurich.
Protestant pastor Andreas Cabalzar has founded Switzerland's first shelter for newly separated fathers in the Swiss village of Erlenbach, not far from Geneva.
Unique in Switzerland, the project has seen the numbers of applications to stay in the house increasing every week.'
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Comments
It's a widespread problem.
My understanding is that things are even worse in most European nations than they are here in the USA (and they are plenty bad here); but, the basic problems over in Switzerland are the same ones as here. This shelter they have is a palliative -- and not even a very good one. The divorce and custody system needs to be drastically overhauled. It should not favor women, and it should not favor the person who initiates divorce. In most places though the divorce system strongly favors women and whoever initiates the process (and women most often initiate the process). That's messed up.
I'd really like to see a bigger push for a rebuttable presumption that children remain with the respondent in a divorce. I probably won't see it in my lifetime though.