Okay, so maybe this is breaking ILP rules, but if it’s REALLY shutting down, there’s no problem. If it’s not, then cut me some slack because…well…JUST BECAUSE!!! <please?>
Below is something I wrote about: kids being taken away from father and country where they lived their ENTIRE LIVES, save one year in that hell-hole/armpit they call England <relax…I keeeed…I keeeeeed…>. Even though they are old enough to make a decision (they want to STAY in CANADA with their FATHER–who wouldn’t???), have REFUSED a court order TWICE to go back to their mother–kicking and screaming the whole way, and have threatened to KILL THEMSELVES if forced to leave the best country in the world (the suicide threat part is true, the latter part is embellishment just to try to alienate as many ppl as possible… ), the judge said she’s acting in their own best interest…fucking judge!!!
When I write a report for children’s services, the judge almost always heeds my report and makes his/her decision based largely on that. There have been only a tiny handful of times that a judge has NOT gone with my reports (usually b/c the lawyer for the agency screwed up and let the parents’ lawyer take things out of context), and in EACH case, the decision blew up in the judge’s face. So, I consider myself an expert on parenting/childcare situations (and so do the courts…) and, from what I’ve read about this case, the judge is making a huge fucking mistake. Yes, they are only following the Hague convention, but in this case it should be over-ruled. Poor kids…
[i]Has anyone else heard of this story in Canada?
thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Conten … alogin=yes
Here’s the summary (at the very bottom is a quote that could start off another debate):
Despite an international treaty and a Chatham judge’s ruling earlier this month that they must go to Britain for their custody hearings, the girls have adamantly refused, winning precious extra days with their father…It’s all been sparked by the Hague Convention on international child abduction, a treaty incorporated into Canadian law that says custody battles must be fought in the country where a family makes its “habitual residence.”
And since the Englands had been living in the U.K. for a year when their marriage fell apart, it was determined to be their home.
That, despite the fact that all involved — Jonathan, then-wife Marla and their three daughters — are Canadian-born and had been in England only a little more than 12 months while he worked as a special-needs teacher.
The marriage ended last September when Marla revealed she was having an affair with a woman.
Jonathan, 41, returned to Canada with the girls that same month to visit his sick mother and decided to stay. But Marla wanted her daughters back, ultimately employing the Hague Convention to force the girls back to England to have the custody dispute settled in British courts…Twice in the past two weeks, the girls have been bundled into a minivan and taken to a police station to be delivered to their mother and twice they loudly refused to leave the vehicle…
[father:]"They’re Canadian children, of Canadian parents, out of the country for just over a year and they want to stay in their own country where they identify themselves as Canadians…
[one daughter:]"I was born here and everybody — except for my mom — all of my family is here. I’ve made more friends and better friends in the six months that I’ve been here than the whole year when I was in England. Overall, it wasn’t a very nice place to live.
“I’m just trying as hard as I can to convince everyone how much I don’t want to go back to England,” she says, admitting it’s hard to have to act like an adult when you’re still just a kid.
“Without any hesitations or anything, I’d say that I want to live here with my dad in Canada with all my family.”
And here is my favourite quote, from a neighbour:
“I find it strange that you can deport three kids born here in Canada, yet we can’t get rid of people who are Al Qaeda supporters or who come here to take advantage of our health-care system” [/i]