Fathers' Rights Advocates Protest
Domestic Violence Hysteria in Boston
by Mark Charalambous <mchar@jyacc.com> -- Attendees to the Association
of Family and Conciliation Courts conference: "Facing up to the complexities
of Family Violence," got more than they bargained for in Boston. In
the past, conferences on domestic violence issues have been little more
than psycho-babble, victim-feminist love- fests. But this time, the OTHER
victims of the domestic violence "issue" --fathers who have lost
their children due to fraudulent allegations of domestic abuse and violence--were
there to greet them on the way in to the conference, and inside the conference
itself.
CPF - The Fatherhood Coalition, and member association DADD - Dads Against
Divorce Discrimination, staged a two-hour protest rally outside the conference
hotel. Replete with equipment snafus, disputations with traffic and police
officers, the protest got off to a late start at 9 AM. Mark Charalambous
of CPF, the organizer of the protest, welcomed the dozens of protest participants
and sympathizers. Alluding to the recent discovery of 300-year-old court
documents in Essex County, Massachusetts, Charalambous drew parallels between
the Salem witch trials and the current hysteria surrounding domestic violence.
According to Charalambous, we are in the midst of a witch hunt that will
appear prominently in historical records three hundred years from now,
when our ancestors examine the courts documents of today.
A featured speaker was George T. Gilliland of the Domestic Rights Coalition
in St. Paul Minnesota. Gilliland founded the only domestic violence shelter
for male victims of domestic violence. He spoke eloquently, drawing from
his considerable experience in the fathers rights movement.
Other speakers included CPF co-chairman Jan Spinazzola, Terrance Meehan
of DADD, who spoke with vigor concerning his trials and tribulations with
Worcester County Probate Court Judge Arline Rotman--herself an AFCC member
in attendance at the conference--and several others.
A highlight of the rally was a short play dramatizing the ease in which
a woman can criminalize a man and cripple his relationship with his children
simply by requesting an order for protection based on nothing more than
a statement that she is afraid.
Paul Corey, current CPF Legislative Director, closed the event with
a rendition of his song "Balloons and a Rose." The song, drawn
from a true event, is a heartfelt, emotional song, sung from the point
of view of a daughter who questions why her father is not able to attend
her pre-school graduation.
It is uncertain what affect the rally had on the conference participants,
but if nothing else, it served to put them on notice that the domestic
violence industry is no longer operating in a vacuum. No longer can they
ignore the fact that their work is causing such harm to the father-child
relationship that it has spawned a visible and vocal opposition that intends
to challenge them from here on out, whenever they appear in Boston.
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