UK: The Norgrove Report reviewed

Via email from a reader:

Yesterday the Norgrove report was published in the UK. It will define family policy for years to come and will describe the guiding principles of how fathers will be valued in the family:

http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/publications/policy/moj/family-justice-review-final-report.pdf

It's fair to say this is one of darkest days in English civil rights history. The report seeks to wipe away any claims fathers might have to a right to “family”. The new priority is to focus on minimising conflict at the cost of parental contact (read fathers' contact) in the case of entrenched and continued conflict. So ultimately all a mother need do to exclude a father is to refuse to agree to any of his “requests” to see his children and any access to family can be summarily removed from him on the grounds that further conflict in the matter is only going to harm the children. Needless to say the report was required to do a little shuffling around the subject of maintenance payments. I include a couple of telling excerpts from the report by way of demonstration should anyone not have the stomach to read the whole thing, and who could blame you.

If anyone doubted the gender discrimination of this report they need only compare sections:

[ Section 109]

"The child's welfare should be the courts paramount consideration,..."

"... no legislation should be introduced that creates or risks creating the perception that there is a parental right to substantially shared or equal time for both parents. "

So when it comes to custody the issue of excluding one parent from contact with their children has no significant impact on the child's welfare worthy of comment.

[ Section 129 ]

"Parents often make in their own minds a link between contact and maintenance...

"The focus should be on the right of children to be supported by both their parents emotionally, financially and practically, and parents have a responsibility to provide this."

Now when he wants to underline the need for fathers to pay-up, the report leads with the importance of emotional support before mentioning the finances. Sandwiching the word financially between emotionally and practically to ease it's palatability.

Spin, purely and simply, a report which in its conception was supposed to have an unbiased analysis how best to serve the needs and the rights of the people of the country with relation to family law is worded to manipulate the issue and deliver a pre-selected message that the rights of children and their fathers' are secondary to those of women.