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The following statistics were provided by The Easton Alliance, (416) 691-1113,
Henton, Cate, Koval, Llyd, and Christopher (1983) discovered that 78 out of 644 high school students had experienced courtship violence. A closer examination of 70 students revealed that 50 students (71.4%) reported that at some time, each partner had assumed the role of both victim and aggressor. Of the remaining 28.6%, the relationships were described as follows: 1.4% - male abuser only; 5.7% - female abuser only; 8.6% - abused male only; and 12.9% - abused female only.

Henton, Cate, Koval, Lloyd, and Christopher (1982) found that their sample of 355 college students yeilded 79 who had experienced premarital violence. Once again, nearly 70% (53 of 79) were involved in relationships in which the abuse was mutual. O f the remaining students, 10% were in relationships where the male was the only abuser, while 22% said that the female was the sole abuser. These studies indicate that much of courtship violence is mutual, but when it is not, the female is just as likely to be the sole abuser as the male.

Straus et al. (1980) reported that out of a nationally representative sample of 2,143 couples in 1975, 28% had experienced violence at some point in their marriage, and 16% had experienced violence within the past year. In nearly half of those fami lies, the abuse was mutual (i.e., both spouses had committed a violent act). Of the remaining couples, the husband alone was violent in 27.7% of the cases, while the wife alone was violent in 22.7%. Only slight differences between husbands and wives were found in the annua incidence rates of overall violence - 12.1 per 100 husbands compared to 11.6 per 100 wives. The mean frequency of violent acts in 1975 for men was 8.8 and 10.3 for women. When examining severe violence, women were more violent than men. Severe wife-to-husband violence occured in 4.6 out of 100 families, while the rate for severe husband-to-wife violence was 3.8 out of 100 families

Ten years later, the overall rate of violence by husbands had declined slightly, but violence by wives showed a small increase. Straus and Gelles (1986) in a telephone survey of 3,520 households, discovered that the rate of overall violence by husb ands dropped to 11.3 (from 12.1), while wife-to-husband violence rose to 12.1 (from 11.6). The rate of severe violence by men in 1985 was 3.0, down from 3.8, and the rate of women was 4.4, down from 4.6.

An unquestioned belief about human behaviour is that men are more aggressive than women. Yet when Frodi, Ropert-Thome, and Macauley (1977) surveyed the empirical literature on aggression, they found that 61 percent of all studies reviewed did not s how men to be more aggressive than women, and that "....women [did not show] consistantly lower tendancies than men to be physically aggressive. "

The intergenerational transmission of violence by abusive wives to their children has been demonstrated by Walker (1984). In her study of over 400 battered wives, 29% of the wives and 35% of the battering husbands had witnessed their mother inflict ing violence upon their father during childhood.

Reena Sommer, Gordon E. Barnes and Robert P. Murray (1991) in a study of 1257 (615 male and 642 females) Winnipeg residents, found that approximately 39 percent (39.1%) of married or cohabiting females participated in at least one form of spouse ab use with their current partner.

The following stats provided by The Men`s Television Network (905)898-1107

M. McLeod, researcher, found violence against men is more destructive than violence against women. Her study revealed that women utilized weapons in 80% of cases. M. McLeod, "Women Against Men", Justice Quarterly, 1, 1984

A study of 150 Quaker families found the incidence of severe wife-to-husband violence to be three times that of husband-to-wife violence Brutz and Ingoldsby, 1984

Research confirms that male victims of severe violence by female partners encounter widespread bias if they try to get the authorities involved. Anson Shupe, Indiana University/Purdue University, 1994

In a 1986 study, Professor Eugen Lupri found the overall violence index was 17.8% for men and 23.3% for women. Eugen Lupri, University of Calgary, 1986

False Allegations

Most cases of false allegations suggest that most involve mothers falsely accusing fathers. Dullea, 1987 (New York Times), Zweig, 1987 (Los Angeles Times)

Enough anecdotal and case study evidence has been collected to ascertain that parents may accuse one another of sexual molestation of their children during child custody battles. Benedek & Shetky 1984, 1985, deJong 1986, Murray 1987, Green 1986, Kl ajner-Diamond, Wehrspann & Steinhauser 1987, Jaffe et al., 1987, Kaplan & Kaplan 1981

The alleging parent is often a delusional or vindictive woman seeking revenge against her ex-husband. A. Green, child psychologist, Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry.

61-65% of child abuse accusations are found to be unfounded or false. In contested divorce cases with issues of child custody, the false accusation rate has reached 80%. David S. Gil, Brandeis University, Massachusetts, 1985

A study released by the Institute for the Prevention of Child Abuse (I.P.C.A.) found 42% of reported cases of abuse in Ontario to be unfounded. I.P.C.A. Toronto, 1993.

60-85% of child abuse accusations are found to be false or unfounded. V.O.C.A.L., U.S.A. (Victims of Child Abuse Legislation)

Access Denial and Parental Alienation Syndrome

Increased suicidal tendencies were found in people who had experienced the loss of the father. Bron, Strack & Rudolph, Univ. of Gottingen, Germany, 1991

Children showed the most behaviour problems if their parents were in a legal conflict and the visitation was not frequent or regular. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 1990

British researchers have found adults who suffer parent loss due to separation or divorce have significantly higher risk of developing agoraphobia with panic attacks and panic disorder. British Journal of Psychiatry, 1989

Scandinavian research has found a significantly higher number of adults who attempted suicide had lost a parent through divorce in childhood. Acta Psychiatrica, Scandinavia, 1990, 1993

Children who were separated from their father for a period of three months or longer and between the ages of 6 months to 5 years old, suffer a higher risk (2.5 to 5 times higher) of hysteria, emotional disorders and conduct disorder than other children. < b>Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 1988

Stories

THE WAR AGAINST BOYS

By Christina Hoff Sommers

Johnathan Prevette, the 6-year-old punished for kissing a classmate, is not alone. When a Worcester mother picked up her son from school recently, the teacher told her that he had been made to sit in the "time-out chair." He had violated the behavior code by hugging other students. "He's a toucher," the teacher said. "We are not going to put up with it."

The mother was startled, not by her son, who is loving and likes to hug, but by the school for punishing him. Her son is 3.

For the past 10 years, feminist groups, such as the American Association of University Women, the Ms. Foundation for Women and the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund have been successfully lobbying the federal government to impose strict harassment codes in the schools. In August, the US Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights issued a 26-page guideline on the subject of "peer harassment." No age limits were specified.

As Norma Cantu, an assistant secretary of education, explains, "What our regulation anticipates is that harassment could occur at any age."

A spokeswoman for the National School Boards Association complained that the OCR's guidelines "appear to be more involved with trying to help plaintiffs' attorneys win cases against school districts." Fearful of lawsuits, schools feel they have no choice but to punish 6-year-old "harassers" like Jonathan Prevette or even toddler "harassers" like the 3-year-old Worcester boy.

The young boys are casualties of a movement that scapegoats men and boys and seeks to protect women and girls from what Gloria Steinem calls the "jockocracy." Such feminists as Patricia Ireland and Gloria Steinem believe that ours is a sexist society that wages an "undeclared war against women" (Susan Faludi's subtitle to Backlash). Such feminists think most adult males are incorrigibly sexist and that boys must be retrained the earlier the better.

Nan Stein, a director at the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, refers to boys who chase girls in the playground and flip their skirts as "perpetrators" and "gender terrorists." Sue Satell, a sex equity expert in Minnesota, justifies strong harassment policies for children as young as 5 because "serial killers tell interviewers they started sexually harassing at age 10 and got away with it."

While the boys need re-education, the girls need all the help they can get to survive in the "patriarchy." Consider the girls-only holiday "Take Our Daughters to Work Day," an annual event organized and run by the Ms. Foundation.

Reacting to growing protests over the boys' exclusion, the Ms. people decided to initiate "Son's Day," an annual holiday for boys. Among the suggested activities for "Son's Day" are:

* Take your son to an event that focuses on ... ending men's violence against women. Call the Family Violence Prevention fund at 800 END-ABUSE for information.
* Make sure your son is involved in preparing the family for the work and school week ahead. This means: helping lay out clothes for siblings [and] making lunches ...

In short, this punitive little holiday was contrived by women who are convinced that what our male children need most is indoctrination.

The facts do not support the idea that sexual harassment is just something boys do to girls. In a survey conducted by the Louis Harris polling firm, a random sample of 1,500 boys and girls (grades 8-11), "85 percent of girls and 76 percent of boys surveyed say they have experienced unwanted and unwelcome sexual behavior that interferes with their lives."

The solution does not call for a gender-divisive policy that regards girls as members of a victimized class and boys as culprits, but a policy that protects boys as well as girls by giving the schools greater power to control antisocial behavior of all kinds. Instead of encouraging litigation against the schools by doing the bidding of NOW and the AAUW, Secretary of Education Richard Riley should be looking for ways to make schools places of safety and respect for all children.

Embarrassed by the negative reaction to the Prevette episode, feminist activists are seeking to distance themselves from the case. "Clearly Title IX doesn't reach a little boy kissing a girl," says Verna Williams of the National Women's Law Center. Nan Stein of Wellesley says, "Those of us involved in research and law would never call this sexual harassment."

Wouldn't they? It was the Women's Law Center's support of "peer harassment" lawsuits and Stein's incendiary descriptions of little schoolboys as perpetrators and gender terrorists that have brought us to this sorry pass. As long as Stein, Williams and others in the flourishing gender-bias industry exert their anti-male influence on government policy and the schools, male children will continue to be targeted.

_________________________________________________________________ Christina Hoff Sommers is a philosopher and well-known writer on feminism. This article appeared in the Boston Globe on October 24, 1996.

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I am Your Child

I am a child of divorce. My parent`s divorce became finalized in 1969 when I was six years old. My mother was granted sole custody and my father never fought it.

I am writing this because I wish to see change. Change in a system that helped to alter my relationship with my father for the duration of our lives. Our lives, he being 600 miles away at 52 years old, seem all to short.

We started out fairly normal. I remember watching a football game with him, smelling my mom`s pot roast in the air, being carried around on his shoulders, waiting for him to come home from work. A father-daughter relationship fir mly rooted for growth.

As months went by, the climate in our house became tense. I felt impending doom. It finally erupted, and then a deathly lull settled. A tiny six-year-old followed her father around the house while he packed his suitcases, taking the personal belongings my mother would let him have, which did not include me. As I begged him to stay, he held me for a long time; finally he pulled me away as he left our house.

And so began my father`s weekend visits. In his absence, he was a stranger to me, a curiosity. No more leisurely afternoons in front of the TV. We now embarked on the most exciting trips appropriate for our ages - bowling alleys, movies, malls and toy stores. I never came home empty-handed. Then back to his motel room, his new living quarters, to sit and spend time with him until he dropped us off at home, never sure I would see him until next weekend arrived.

A new set of rules was imposed on our house. My mother took a job and went to school. My sister became my mother, cooking, cleaning and disciplining me. My brother, the eldest, became the man of the house, who also disciplined me but offered me affection. My father was spoken of very little; I only heard his name as he was being chastised for not visiting or blamed for a cheque that never arrived or came too late.

Several times I would burst into tears, overwhelmed by his absence and feeling a great sense of loss. Each time, I was scolded, told to be strong, to wise up and quit feeling sorry for myself. I was certainly not to shed tears in front of my father. How ironic. I was told not to display grief while I was told by my mother what a lousy father I had. At this point our relationship had changed considerably. The man who came to pick me up on weekends was no longer the stong, stable f ather I had known. I sensed panic, helplessness and guilt emanating from my father. I pitied him for his guilt and helplessness, loving and idolizing him intensely: my daddy who would come home and defend himself to my mother and siblings and be strong ag ain. All these perceptions from a six-year-old.

My father and I lost so much time. Ordinary routine moments that will never occur again. Moments a father and a child both have a right to, things a father should be able to see and share with his children.

At 21, I am still the grieving child of six who aches for her father. I am an adult who bears the scars and festering wounds of separation and divorce. I do not offer specific solutions for this problem; I am only articulating wh at children caught in the divorce process are experiencing and cannot voice themselves.

To the fathers who read this---
I AM YOUR CHILD WHO LOVES YOU AND NEEDS YOU! FIGHT FOR ME!

Today, tomorrow, I wake up with no hope, no future. My dreams have faded away, and at 46 years old, all I have ever worked for is gone. I just received a notice in the mail from the Family Responsibility Office demanding that I pay the over $10,000 in child support I owe or face further penalties of the Canadian Legal System. Today, I am what women's groups say is a menace to our society - I am what they call a Deadbeat Dad!

Six years ago, I had a $48,000 a year job. I had a wife, two children, a new car, and was hoping to buy a house for my family very soon with the extra money I made working overtime. My wife kept pleading with me she wanted me to buy a house right away so that we could settle our family into our new home. I had everything I thought a man could have going for him - but I was terribly wrong.

While I was working long hours to earn the down payment for the house, my wife was having an affair behind my back with a police officer who was well aware of how the family court system would benefit his lover and ultimately him as well. Little did I know then, that she was planning to leave and to take as much of our assets as she could get her hands on. What I found out too late was that my wife did not want me to buy the house for our family but only wanted me to buy the house so that the assets could be tied up making it easier for her to seize. Her real plan was to build up our family assets prior to walking out on me.

I bought the house, looking forward to moving my family into our new home. Within a month of the purchase of the house my wife told me that the marriage was over and that she was leaving me to be with another man. My pleading with her to end her affair went on deaf ears as she knew that Canadian legal system would ensure that she became the winner. Why resolve problems when you automatically get the money and the kids in court and then trade in the children's father for another man? Before the year was out, we were hammering out a verbal agreement for separation. In short, the children and their mother would move, (sharing joint custody, with myself paying child support) I would remain and attempt to sell the house. A month later my job was lost to emotional and economic pressure and shortly thereafter, the house to power of sale. I informed my ex of my situation, and explained that as soon as I found a new source of income, child support would continue.

Shortly after that, I received a notice to appear in family court. I was given only two day’s notice so that I would have little time to defend myself. My wife's lawyer knew that the legal system would favor the mother so that there was no reason to help our family find solutions which would truly benefit the children. The mother would win more by going to court than through an agreement. I appeared without a lawyer, and was completely unprepared for the living hell called the family court system that I was about to enter.

In court I did not argue against my wife's request for custody, as my situation did not afford me to give the children the living conditions they deserved. As my wife was claiming to be a poor single parent with two dependants, child support was the next issue. I explained to the Judge that I was currently unemployed, could not find a job, but was contemplating falling back on my computer skills to start my own business. I stated that as soon as I had an income I would gladly pay support for my kids. This fell on the deaf and unsympathetic ears of the court and I was ordered to pay several hundred dollars a month effective immediately - money which I clearly did not have. The judge did not care what my financial situation was but just ordered I pay. My wife went on to collect family assistance and was given all the money she needed to live on. While collecting her welfare money, she concealed the fact that her boyfriend and lover had moved in with her. He was earning about $50,000 per year. On top of this she was given free legal work by lawyers under legal aid at the expense of the taxpayers.

Due to stress, my next problem was severe lower back problems. Unaware of a degenerative condition in my lower spine, I continued to attempt to etch out a very small living on my own. Not enough to get ahead, but it kept me busy. Eventually I required surgery, but this condition would prove to be chronic and permanent, and would later completely disable my ability to work.

Several requested court appearances on my part, failed to convince the system that I was telling the truth and that I had no money. My health was failing, and each time child support was either stayed or increased due to the fact her lawyer said that I was lying and in his opinion looked very healthy and could probably afford the child support comfortably. I was only trying to get out of paying child support was his argument. Without legal defence and no money, I gave up.

Today, I am completely destroyed and have lost everything. I am considered disabled, and have no hope for any kind of a comfortable future. At the time of this writing, the Salvation Army is helping me to find a place to live as I am being evicted from the apartment I live in now.

I have a companion whose life is also affected by all of this. If not for her love and support, I would have been out on the street a long time ago. My children tell me they miss me and cannot understand how the courts have allowed their father to be destroyed. They ask why they had no say in any of this and why have they been denied living with me right from the beginning. Their mother continues to alienate them from me and tells them that they really don’t want to live with their dad and that I am evil.

My ex has now married her lover and they live in a comfortable house they have purchased using money saved while she collected welfare and he lived with her rent free. While I was being destroyed by the system, my wife and her boyfriend cheated the system and sucked out as much as they could from the Canadian taxpayers. My children's lives have been forever effected by what the legal system has done to my family.

I am a Deadbeat Dad, not by choice, but by design of the system.

My children are unhappy, not by choice, but by design of the system.

My ex traded honour, respect and truth for personal gain,

Completely by choice, and with help by design of the system

My children have lost their Dad, not by choice, but by design of the system!

Hi I`m Dave Foster, I live in Toronto. My child, Ashley, was born, out of wedlock on Aug.18 1985. Her mother is Joanne Hammond, who lives in Toronto. Ashley lived with me for the first 3 1/2 years of her life, as Joanne was unstable, in her lifestyle. In 1988, she moved in with Micheal Gillis,who now resides in East Bay, Nova Scotia. She asked for and was given custody of Ashley. I was allowed visitation every 2 weeks, I now realise giving Ashley to her was a mistake. In Nov of 1989, I was abruptly denied access, Joanne wanted to marry Mike and have Ashley believe that he was her Father. I went to Family Court and applied for a court order. Professionals were called in and it seemed that everyone was favorable to my having access. On the day of trial, I was informed that Joanne had moved to Nova Scotia, with Mike, taking Ashley. I recieved no advice on what to do. In 1993, I discovered Joanne living in Toronto. I attempted to discuss the situation with Joanne, and had the police called on me! I optained an apartment close by, and started litigation. This time the professionals were against me, Ashley had been told about how "bad" I was, and didn t want to see me. Joanne denied that I was the father, so I asked for a blood test to confirm that I was Ashley`s dad, this was refused by Judge Jones because "it was irrelevant to the outcome of the case" I went to trial, representing myself, Joanne had a lawyer, Mr Steven Sands, payed for by the Ontario Legal Aid plan. Needless to say, I lost, I was denied access, and ordered not to go within 1500' of Ashley`s school, or her home by The Corrupt David Robert Main, of 311 Jarvis St. Telephone (416) 327-6871, or FAX: 327-6979 ( let him know what you think) I have not given up hope, Ashley has seen me several times, I have joined Fathers Are Capable Too, I have started this web site, and I hope that someone will see the inhumanity of the present law, and the people who run it. Please leave me your story, dave (AT) canadian.net. and check out my business website, for webhosting

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