The UK's largest equal parenting and fathers rights group Fathers 4 Justice (F4J) will Monday morning (Monday 23rd) hold crisis talks with Lord Filkin, Minister for the Family Courts in a bid to avoid an escalation in the civil disruption caused by 'Superhero Dads' across the country in recent weeks...
The talks come just days after the government leaked plans for an 'early interventions pilot project' which has been condemned by F4J and just weeks before the Labour Party Spring Conference where the civil rights group is planning a rally and other possible action as tensions increase after the homes of 10 F4J members were raided in recent weeks by Police.
The group say that today's meeting is a last ditch effort to avoid all out civil disruption in the coming weeks and months as their numbers swell as a result of recent publicity. The group say they are evaluating the effects of the protests on February 2nd which saw travel chaos across the country and catching up with processing over 2,000 new members before taking further action.
Said F4J Founder Matt O'Connor 'We are, every single one of us, prepared and ready in our resolve to stand and fight for our children's right to see both parents, be it on bridges, roads, gantry's, railways, ports. Every person in F4J knows the burden of responsibility for changing the law now lies on their shoulders. If the government don't act we will, and what you have seen to date is but a foretaste of things to come. We now have the critical mass necessary to implement a full scale national campaign of civil disruption and disobedience.'
F4J have also slammed the government's proposed 'early interventions' pilot project as a cynical exercise in family law fudge making. Said Matt O'Connor 'The much muted early interventions pilot has been kicking around for years and is based on the model used in Florida, except in Florida there are strong incentives to agree - i.e. there is enforcement of court orders - and the whole system is underpinned by a legal presumption to contact.'
'The government is simply cherry picking the easy bits of the Florida model and is cynically going to use 'guinea pig parents' in this project to try and stop them jamming up the London courts where there has been a year on year 50% increase in the number of cases going to court. It does nothing to address the fundamental issue of enforcement of contact orders.'
F4J say that Lord Filkin is on record as saying that 'To compel people to use mediation would undermine the basis on which mediation is founded.' Said O'Connor 'If that is the case, and they can't even enforce their own court orders, how the hell are they going to get people to go to mediation?'
'The government cannot keep saying that the courts are acting in the child's best interests when nigh on everybody agrees that the system is in crisis and desperately needs major reform. A government that is not taking immediate action to resolve this crisis is guilty of acting against the child's best interests.'
'The government must issue new practice directions about the enforcement of contact orders and start using either the 'short, sharp, shock' imprisonment of recalcitrant mothers for whole days, introduce community service or simply transfer residence from the mother to the father when faced with an implacably hostile parent who consistently flouts court orders.'
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