PBS STATEMENT RE: BTS

Breaking The Silence: Children’s Stories (BTS) chronicles the impact of domestic violence on children and the recurring failings of family courts across the country to protect them from their abusers. In stark and often poignant interviews, children and battered mothers tell their stories of abuse at home and continued trauma within the courts. The producers approached the topic with the open mindedness and commitment to fairness that we require of our journalists. Their research was extensive and supports the conclusions drawn in the program. Funding from the Mary Kay Ash Charitable Foundation met PBS’s underwriting guidelines; the Foundation had no editorial influence on program content.

However, the program would have benefited from more in-depth treatment of the complex issues surrounding child custody and the role of family courts and most specifically the provocative topic of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS). Additionally, the documentary’s “first-person story telling approach” did not allow the depth of the producers’ research to be as evident to the viewer as it could have been.

PBS has received a substantial body of analysis and documentation from both supporters of the documentary and its critics.

It is clear to us that this complex and important issue would benefit from further examination. To that end, PBS will commission an hour-long documentary for that purpose. Plans call for the documentary to be produced and broadcast in Spring 2006. We expect that the hour-long treatment of the subject will allow ample opportunity for doctors, psychologists, judges, parent advocates and victims of abuse to have their perspectives shared, challenged and debated.

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“Breaking The Silence” is continuing to get airings in front of legislators and at conferences. Here is my Breaking The Silence page. I suggest you read it.

And all I’m saying is that “family” means more than you’re letting on. You can’t chuck your husband out of the house and then complain that he’s not doing enough to support “his” family. When you chuck him out, you make it less his family than it was. And that’s your decision.

> suppose the husband left his faithful wife and 2 kids for the newer sporty model at the office.

Then fuck him. Let his jilted ex screw him in court for every penny he’s ever earned. If the debt drives him to suicide, I sympathise not one bit.
If the fathers who can’t afford to raise their new children and step-children were all unfaithful philanderers, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. But the fathers who are chucked out of their families are treated by the courts in exactly the same way as those who break up their families.
Here’s an example. Two couples: Wife A chucks out Husband A and keeps the kids, shacking up with Bloke C; Husband B chucks out wife B and sends the kids with her. Wife B and Husband A later meet, marry, and set up house with Wife B’s kids. (This actually happens fairly regularly, as being chucked out of a marriage gives people something in common to kick-start the relationship.) According to you, Husband A is being “irresponsible” by taking on these kids who’ve been chucked out of their homwe by their father. According to you and the courts, he should fund his kids’ upkeep regardless of Bloke C’s and Wife A’s income and he should put their needs ahead of his step-children’s. According to the courts, Bloke C is not financially liable for the children whose family he has destroyed and into whose house he has come to live. How does this amount to anything other than a state-sponsored financial defense of adultery and infidelity?

No, that’s not what I’m proposing. What I’m proposing is that you can’t rob your existing family to pay for your new one without their aquiescence. If you can afford to maintain your existing child, and also support your new family, your ex-wife need not trouble herself.

Let’s turn your example around - suppose the husband left his faithful wife and 2 kids for the newer sporty model at the office. Would you consider it just for our errant husband to tell his ex-wife to put the kids on lentils and rice because his new girlfriend is expecting?

Who said “requires”? Not me.

Even if I had, though, that would still be errant nonsense, flying in the face of the experiences of millions of people throughout history. Like I said, you make ends meet.

> How, then, is it living up to your responsibilities to unilaterally decide that you’re going to have more children with a new partner, and so your existing children will have to put up with short rations?

Let’s just be clear about what you’re proposing here. If a woman dumps her husband and runs off with another man, and if her husband, heartbroken, eventually manages to put his life back together and find a new girlfriend or wife, that new wife isn’t allowed to have children until the ex-wife gives her permission.

If the husband runs off and has more kids, you have a point. My problem is that your opinion seems to be applied to all cases, no matter who leaves the marriage, and that the law appears to be based on your view of the world.

Obviously there is no magic source of extra money. If your first child requires 90% of your disposable income, you can’t afford another child.

If you decide as a family that you want another child, and that having that child is worth making economies, you are free to do so. It would not be responsible for one of you to come home one day with another child, and say “This is Charlie. I’ve just adopted him.” would it?

How, then, is it living up to your responsibilities to unilaterally decide that you’re going to have more children with a new partner, and so your existing children will have to put up with short rations?

You don’t just “have another child” you know - you don’t get up one morning and find that the stork has left one squawlling by your door.

I think the implementation has been flawed enough for long enough for us to conclude that there’s something up with the principles upon which it’s based.

The distinction that matters is who breaks the marriage vows first. A woman who breaks her vows to a man who never honored his is guilty of nothing.

> I’m not really sure what you mean by “courts appear not to be interested”

When deciding who pays whom how much for child support, the courts appear not to be interested in the issue of who put the child in this situation by breaking up the marriage in the first place. And they should. For instance, if a woman leaves her husband for another man, taking the children with her, that other man should be paying some child support. Or did he think taking another man’s family came with no responsibilities?

You brought up responsibility. What I’m saying is that it is ridiculous that a woman can deliberately break up her marriage just because she fancies someone else and then have the courts back her up when she accuses her ex-husband of irresponsibility.

> The precedent set by your case 2 is absurd.

Agreed.

> acquiring other children, whether of your body or step-children, should not be a magic “pay less child support” card.

On which planet? Of course it is, though there’s nothing magic about it. If my wife and I have three kids, each will get less than if we have only one. This is simply a matter of making ends meet, which is the opposite of deserting one’s responsibilities. If I spend 90% of my disposable income on my first child, then I have another child, according to you, I have either to spend only 10% of my disposable income on my second child or, to be fair to them, spend 180% of my disposable income on them both. Where does this extra money come from?

I’m sure you know as well as I that “wife leaves husband” covers a lot of ground, from “wife ran off with milkman” through “wife wan’t going to put up with husband having multiple affairs” to “wife was being beaten up by husband and escaped”. I’m not really sure what you mean by “courts appear not to be interested” - do you want them to drag her back to the marital home and chain her up in the kitchen?

The precedent set by your case 2 is absurd. Whilst it should be open to the man in that case to claim the child and take responsibility, there is no possible justification for the action taken. The woman in that case has effectively raped the man. Our man should take care, though - condoms aren’t 100% effective - they do occasionally split, and should that happen and a child results, our man is firmly on the hook.

Without going into too much detail into your personal situation, I’ll make a few general comments:

a. The duty of a parent to support his child should not be affected by anything that happens later. Specifically, acquiring other children, whether of your body or step-children, should not be a magic “pay less child support” card. If you want to take on new, additional responsibilities, that’s fine, but you don’t get to desert the ones you’ve already got.

b. The child support calculations are daft. There is no justice in the case where parent A has the child 49% of the time and parent B 51%, so B is deemed to be the custodial parent and A owes lots of money. This is a problem with the implementation rather than with the principle, though. I’m certainly not here to defend the CSA.

I’m not letting women of the hook here either - for every man who isn’t meeting his responsibilities financially, there’s a woman somewhere who is playing games with visitation rights, “accidently” being at the shops when Dad comes to collect the kids and so on. Well, listen up, ladies! I don’t care how much you hate him, and I don’t care if he slept with your sister. Unless he’s actually a danger, if he was good enough for you to have sex with, he’s good enough to see his kids. Deal with it.

That argument is scuppered by three points.

Firstly, I’m all for people meeting their responsibilities. Remember the phrase “till death us do part”? When my wife & I said it, we meant it. But a lot of people these days regard the words as essentially meaningless. When a man says those words and means them, he is promising to meet his responsibilities. If his wife then leaves him, it is she, not he, who has abandoned her responsibilities, both to her husband and to her children. That isn’t all cases, but it is some of them, and the courts appear not to be interested.

Secondly, a court recently ruled that a man had to pay for the upkeep of a child after his one-night-stand partner waited for him to fall asleep, retrieved the condom, and impregnated herself. The legal precedent is set: it’s not deciding to create a child that makes a man liable, but producing sperm.

Thirdly, in my parents’ case, my mother had a child, a large house, and a good job, while my father had a child, a small house, a good job, and a mortgage. As far as the courts were concerned, my father had to pay my mother. The cost of raising a child clearly isn’t the only issue.