With Special Guests:
- Barbara Biggs and
- concerned citizens.
Barbara Biggs has become the new “poster girl” for the anti-shared-parenting movement. While many fathers have been disturbed by her comments in the media against shared and co-operative parenting after divorce, this is the first opportunity for many to actually hear what she has to say. Barbara Biggs spoke at a Fellowship of the Roundtable forum at NSW Parliament House on the subject of Family Law - Is The Man The Loser? This week we will broadcast the speech she gave followed by her answers to questions from the floor.
Family law reformers around the country have been alarmed at the scurillous campaign, including a number of demonstrations outside family courts and other locations, to return family law to the dark ages when more than half of all children entering the Family Court arena rarely if ever saw their fathers again and almost no fathers were ever given any substantial time with their children. The campaign is being conducted under the guise of preventing domestic violence against women and sexual abuse against children. Biggs claims that the shared parenting laws have forced children to spend time with abusive parents, but her target is clearly fathers. One simple point reformers make is that child abuse is committed by both genders and is a crime, it is a police matter, but Biggs only focuses on sexual abuse of children ignoring homicide, infanticide, neglect, emotional and physical abuse where women make up the majority of perpetrators. Most sexual abuse of children occurs at the hands of other siblings, step parents, mother’s boyfriends/defactos and other relatives. Fathers are the least likely to sexually abuse their children. For the vast majority of family law cases, the research is clear: children benefit from a continued relationship with both parents after separation.
Barbara Biggs has made a career out of her colourful life, including alleging she was sold as a sex slave by her grandmother at 14 as well doing stints as a prostitue, mental health patient and property developer. Her books include: In Moral Danger, The Journey Home, The Accidental Renovator and Money and Sex: How To Get More. Whether Biggs is a dangerous hysteric promoting irrational hatred against men or a true champion of the nation’s abused children, you can decide for yourself.
Surprisingly Barbara Biggs said at the forum the Child Support Agency should be abolished as it causes more trouble than it’s worth. Most fathers would agree! As well, interesting for a feminist advocate, she claims that about 30% of all child sexual abuse cases are perpetrated by women. At last a leading feminist figure is admitting that abuse is perpetrated by both genders.
Ms Biggs claimed that she wanted to work with fathers and fathers groups in her campaign for safer family law. But within 24 hours the most virilent of the anti-father websites, Anonymoms, with which Biggs appears closely linked, was frothing at the mouth that men would dare speak at parliament and inviting readers to click on a link to the song Who Let The Dogs Out? May we gently suggest that if you really want to work with fathers, the first step might be not to call them dogs.
Many of her critics are concerned about the anti-male tone which permeates Ms Bigg’s work and the hatred displayed in her campaigning. Here is a sample from In Moral Danger:
“I am still staring guys back but I can’t help buying into what I know is in their heads about me. I am trying to assert myself on behalf of women but when I see the look in their eyes and the whole thing fucks with my head. The more I have to look away the worse I feel. Then I start noticing how guys sit on the bus with their legs wide apart like they own the place when we women are all squished up being polite making room for other passengers. The more I hate guys for taking up so much space in the world the more I hate myself for being such a worm about not meeting their eyes in the street.”
As an example of the protests Barbara Biggs has been organising, a group of “blood-stained” and bandaged mothers paraded outside NSW Parliament House in Sydney last week, calling on the Family Court to stop ordering children to see abusive parents. Why she was demonstrating outside a state parliament over federal legislation is anybody’s guess. With arms in fake slings, artificially bruised faces and broken dolls in prams, about 30 mums took part in the “Bandage Parade” hoping to highlight the danger of giving unsupervised custody of children to abusive parents after separation.
“We have a systemic failure when more than 15,000 Australian children are ordered into ongoing contact with parents the court itself has deemed violent and abusive,” Barbara Biggs claimed in her role as spokesperson for the National Council for Children Post-Separation. “This has happened because of hastily written shared-parenting laws and the Family Court turning a blind eye to abuse when it comes to its duty of care for Australian children.”
Ms Biggs said NCCPS would continue marching until December, when the family law would be reviewed. Amazingly the Labor government apparently has the appetite to overthrow the modest reforms of the Howard government which encouraged fathers to be in their children’s lives after divorce.
Father’s groups have dismissed Ms Biggs claims as dangerous, hysterical and wildly inaccurate nonsense and point out that they could equally parade any number of fathers before the cameras who have spent months if not years fighting desperately to rescue their children from terrible situations. The Family Court, with no investigative capabilities beyond its own coterie of highly suspect psychs, is the last place for genuine cases of abuse to be determined. In the meanwhile, the collatoral damage of these vicious campaigns could be the destruction of thousands upon thousands of children’s relationships with their fathers. Wherever you stand, whatever you think, the coming months will no doubt be chaotic as the campaign against fathers escalates.
Anonymums website: www.anonymum.bravehost.com
Next week: THE CASE FOR SHARED PARENTING. With special guests Maurice Vellacott, the Canadian MP who is introducing shared parenting legislation into the Canadian Parliament, Michael Green QC author of the book Shared Parenting, Sue Price from the Men’s Rights Agency, one of the country’s staunchest defenders of children and their fathers, as well as an Australian father who was jailed for a month for inadvertently playing golf next to a sporting field where his son, unbeknownst to him, was playing soccer.