Estranged father's victory over family court blanket of secrecy

To all,

Amazing story. A shot in the arm and a reminder for all of us not to give up.

How's this bit;

"On his release, in December 2003, Mr Clayton faced a further custody battle to gain access to his daughter. It did not come to court until April 2004, when he was finally allowed to see Esti again. But the shared access agreed upon by the couple still needed official court approval. By July 2005, the status quo was formalised. Esti now spends alternate weeks with each parent and the couple share their tax credits. Relations between the two are cordial and, at Esti's instigation, they occasionally meet up for family meals."

An example of the 2% (or is it less) of cases where the court orders shared parenting. Christ you have to fight for it even if both of you - the mother and father - agree to it.

I've no doubt that the tiny percentage of shared custody arrangements our Australian (so called) Family courts claim it makes are in fact cases where it merely allows parents to make this decision themselves.

Hows that? two parents can't decide to both be involved with their child without the all secret all powerful and horribly evil and curupt Family Law Courts first giving you an order to say its OK ..after listening to the arguments.

This is why we our children must be protected from the secrecy of the Family Court. The fact of the matter is that their is no greater power to be wielded than the power to stop a loving parent from seeing their child.

I know they've done it to me and my child. They've done it because I was objecting to the sharp practice of the practitioners. Because the Courts protect their practitioners. They punish people that attempt to blow the lid on the cruelty. They hurt you by hurting your kid.

I know. They've done it to me. They hurt my daughter knowingly to hurt me.

Simon
"WE SHALL OVERCOME "


Telegraph.com.Uk

Estranged father's victory over family court blanket of secrecy
By Joshua Rozenberg, Legal Editor
(Filed: 28/06/2006)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/06/28/nfam428.xml

A small corner of the blanket of secrecy covering family cases was lifted yesterday when the Court of Appeal allowed an estranged father to discuss a ruling involving his daughter.


The outcome was a victory for Simon Clayton, from Hay-on-Wye, Herefordshire, who will be allowed to put pictures of his seven-year-old daughter, Esti, on his website and discuss the agreement he had reached with her mother for sharing their daughter's care.


However, the court banned him from involving Esti in a film he wanted to make about how he had abducted her to Portugal in 2003. Three appeal judges decided that, on matters affecting her welfare, the child's right to respect for her private life under Article 8 of the Human Rights Convention outweighed her father's right to freedom of expression under Article 10.


In an unusual move, Sir Mark Potter, who presided over the appeal, issued a press release saying that he and his fellow judges regarded their decision "as a small step towards greater transparency and rebutting the slur inherent in the charge that the family courts administer 'secret' justice".


Mr Clayton, who campaigns for fathers' rights in the family courts, said of the ruling: "Today the Court of Appeal has allowed me to speak freely."

He added: "I see the judgment as a big step forward. Until today I was not allowed to publish this information." Mr Clayton and his wife, Aneta, married in 1997 and separated in 2000, sharing the care of their daughter.


But when Mrs Clayton began court proceedings for contact and residence orders, her husband abducted Esti, living in a camper van in Portugal for five and a half weeks until he was arrested. He pleaded guilty to child abduction and spent six months in prison.


A BBC documentary about his case, Simon Says, was broadcast in January 2004. Three months later, Mr Clayton was allowed renewed contact with his daughter.


Mrs Clayton took out an injunction when she heard that her estranged husband was intending to discuss the case and revisit Portugal to make a film about their daughter's experiences.


Sir Mark said the practical effect of allowing the appeal would be that every court would have to justify continuing an order for anonymity after concluding a case. But he said this did not mean parents were free to "draw their children into an ongoing public debate about their welfare or other wider issues".


Telegraph.com.Uk

'My daughter is my life. But I fought not just for myself. I had to go on for all the men, like me, who have lost their hope.’


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/07/02/ndad02.xml


Monday 3 July 2006


A dozen children, dressed in a jumble of white gym kit and plimsolls, are racing along a stretch of freshly mown grass to shrieks of encouragement from their classmates. It is sports day at Llangorse Church in Wales primary school and Simon Clayton is looking for his seven-year-old daughter, Esti.


A digital camera hangs around his neck. He scans the children's faces. "I can't see her anywhere," he says, his blue eyes blinking rapidly. "At times like this, when I can't find her, my immediate thought is, 'Oh God, they've taken her into care. Some judge has come along and just taken her away'."


The fear of losing Esti lurks constantly in her father's mind. For the past three years, Mr Clayton, 44, has been engaged in a legal battle to gain access to his child. It has cost him his job, his lifestyle and more than £20,000. He is, he says, one of countless men caught up in the bureaucracy and extraordinary secrecy of the family court system, which conducts all custody hearings behind closed doors. Until a successful appeal by Mr Clayton, last week, he was forbidden by a High Court injunction from disclosing any details of the case, or even discussing his daughter's care in public.


It is a landmark ruling, achieved only through Mr Clayton's terrier-like determination. "I was fighting not just for myself," he says, "but for all parents denied access to their child. Anything that obstructs reasonable access should be as socially unacceptable as drink-driving."


Little wonder then, that the small, but memorable goalposts in a child's life that other parents can sometimes take for granted - sports days, birthdays, the loss of a first tooth - are, to Mr Clayton, fragile. "I am pleased about the Court of Appeal decision - not elated, because I've been living with this for so long, but it's a victory and it's very satisfying," he says, in his first newspaper interview since the ruling.


Although the law has not been changed by the court action, the ruling means that judges will now consider long-term anonymity orders - Mr Clayton's was imposed until Esti reached 18 - more cautiously. The judgment will have an effect not only on parental-contact disputes, but also on cases involving children taken into care or adoption decisions. In each case, the balance between an entitlement to anonymity and the right to freedom of expression will have to be weighed.


A corner of the blanket of secrecy, says Mr Clayton, has thus been lifted. "There's got to be much more openness about what goes on in the family courts. These courts can, and frequently do, permanently remove children from their parents and regularly send people to jail. Yet their decisions and proceedings take place behind completely sealed doors and receive virtually no coverage in the media. These courts have to be scrutinised, so that people know what's going on, so that people can see the evidence against them."


Mr Clayton has long been determined that he should be able to talk freely about his case, both to highlight the inner workings of the family justice system and to promote the concept of "shared care"- whereby children spend equal amounts of time with each parent. His doggedness is evident: even after a hard-won court battle for shared access of his daughter in 2005, he felt the injustice of family court secrecy so strongly that he kept on fighting for the right to talk about his case.


He is not alone in calling for greater openness. Earlier this year, Harriet Harman, the Minister for Constitutional Affairs, announced a consultation on opening up the family courts to increased scrutiny. On Thursday, Lord Justice Wall, a senior Court of Appeal judge, suggested that the media should be admitted to proceedings to shake off "the canard of secret justice".


Such secrecy has led to a lack of confidence in the family courts and an increasing sense that the system has something to hide, fuelled by pressure groups such as Fathers4Justice and Families Need Fathers. In a criminal court, a defendant can be convicted only if their guilt is beyond reasonable doubt. A family court takes its decisions - sometimes involving the removal of a child from parental care - on a balance of probabilities, and few judges allow parents to call experts in their defence.


"There came a stage when, every time I saw Esti, I was asking myself, 'Is this the last time I will see my child?' " says Mr Clayton. "Society believes that a man should not show his emotions, that a man does not have that natural bond with his child that a woman possesses. I find that insulting. Esti is my life. I had to keep on fighting for all the men like me, men who have lost their hope."


Back at the school sports day, Esti has been found, sitting cross-legged on the grass, chatting happily with friends. She spots her father and runs up to him, hugging his legs. "There's a dads' race soon," she says, prompting a theatrical groan from Mr Clayton. She giggles. For a child who has been at the centre of a protracted custody battle, Esti is remarkably well-adjusted and cheerful.


"The absurd thing is that it was just an ordinary little case," says Mr Clayton, after we have driven back to his grey-stone farmhouse set against the lush hills and valleys of the Herefordshire countryside, just outside Hay-on-Wye. "My ex-wife and I separated in 2000 and had already worked out an arrangement whereby Esti spent alternate weeks with each of us [Mr Clayton's Polish-born former wife, Aneta, whom he married in 1998, lives a short drive away in Brecon, mid-Wales]. Then my wife, for no real reason, ended up getting a solicitor involved. He sent me a letter, and once you've started family court proceedings, that's it, you end up in Mr Kafka's world. It's like throwing petrol on the fire. Suddenly, this case develops and the lawyers are egging you on to make more money from you and prolong it as long as possible."


The case dragged on. Mr Clayton, who had formerly been a bookseller in Hay-on-Wye after several years as a charter pilot, gave up his job to concentrate on mounting his own legal defence. The paperwork, he says, was "horrific". "I had to write out so many statements that my handwriting became completely illegible. I was under a lot of stress. I wasn't sleeping, my lips were bleeding with stress. My personality changed, because you're stuck in this adversarial system. I became somebody I liked less because I was having to fight, having to get unpleasant because people were being unpleasant to me."


By April 2003, Mr Clayton felt he could take the pressure no longer. During a routine visit from Esti, days before a custody hearing, he took his daughter "on holiday". They drove in a camper van to Portugal where, beset by engine trouble, they came to a halt and spent several days on the beach. Back home, their disappearance had sparked a police inquiry. "They said I abducted her," he says. "It was blown out of proportion. We had been on several trips abroad before then and there wasn't anything wrong with it. Esti was well used to it."


Did she miss her mother? "If she was upset, I diverted her attention, I took her emotions in another direction," he says blithely. Six weeks later, Mr Clayton was recognised by a passerby and arrested. He spent 40 days in a Portuguese jail before being extradited to Britain and serving a further four-and-a-half months. "It wasn't my lowest point. That was in the run-up: that uncertainty, where you have no idea of what you're meant to do.


"At least when you're in jail you've got no legal letters coming through the door. You also have people to talk to who can understand how evil the state could be. Most of my fellow inmates were very supportive," he says, pausing as he runs his fingers through greying hair. "I don't think a mother would have been treated like that. It broke my heart."


On his release, in December 2003, Mr Clayton faced a further custody battle to gain access to his daughter. It did not come to court until April 2004, when he was finally allowed to see Esti again. But the shared access agreed upon by the couple still needed official court approval. By July 2005, the status quo was formalised. Esti now spends alternate weeks with each parent and the couple share their tax credits. Relations between the two are cordial and, at Esti's instigation, they occasionally meet up for family meals.


Although the arrangement sounds straightforward, it is rare in British courts, which favour the mother as prime carer. "That attitude is retrograde," says Mr Clayton. "I think there should be a presumption of shared care in custody battles. I am an utterly devoted parent. I don't think you can build up a proper relationship if you're only allowed to see your child every other weekend. Our relationship is constantly growing and you develop this fundamental, unconditional love. She's an incredibly beguiling, spiritful child with a great wit."


So beguiling, in fact, that she did manage to persuade her father to run in the "dads' race". We watched as Mr Clayton lined up alongside all the other fathers. A teacher blew the starting whistle and he sprinted for all he's worth, crossing the finish line with a broad grin on his face. He didn't win or even earn a place. For Simon Clayton, simply taking part was prize enough.