While watching much of the Kavanaugh Supreme Court Senate hearing we couldn’t but help see the comparisons between what he is enduring and the plight of fathers in (anti) family and matrimonial court. Indeed, many posts on men, father, and family sites generally agreed with this perspective, most stating they couldn’t make an informed decision based on the lack of evidence and political circus, but the hostile and unjust treatment of Kavanaugh was the same as they endured in (anti) family court.
People are beginning to recognize that false allegations are occurring and ruining men’s lives, even the President mentions it. Unfortunately the fact this has been occurring in family courts for the past 40 years, and is an accepted practice, has not reached the consciousness of the nation. This is an opportunity for advocates to bring the issue of false allegations and the denigration of fathers in family court to light. Advocates need to contact politicians with their personal horror stories and say #HimToo.
Kavanaugh entered this hearing like most men enter (anti) family court, they are generally honest and caring individuals who hold their children most dear and would do anything to protect them. Like fathers entering family court he entered this system of hearings believing:
- That the system is fair,
- That the truth will prevail,
- That the small human faults and frailties common to us all will be accepted under the time, place, and circumstance they are in,
- That we are all treated equal in the processes and with respect,
- And we swear before our God to these believing honest statements with evidence will prevail.
And to our dismay we find it all to be opposite of that. It is a gynocentric unjust system which treats women with dignity and men with disdain. The truth is ignored and perjury and false allegations become the norm. Any small character flaw, even from years before, is blown out of proportion and exaggerated. Your demands to be timely heard are ignored while your name is further dragged through the mud. And when victimized your anger at injustice is then used as proof you are an “angry man” capable of harming others. The perjurer is treated as the victim, supported, believed, and pampered while you the real victim of a false allegation are treated as a perpetrator, liar, attacked, and made to defend yourself and prove your innocence.
The rules of evidence are plain in that uncorroborated statements are not to be taken as fact. Absent evidence a “he said-she said” is a wash as it can neither be confirmed true or confirmed false. The fact is that liars lie because they are good at it and are believable. Also persons who mistake and misinterpret facts believe the mistake and as such appear to be telling the truth for it is as they see it, especially those with any mental health issues. If justice is blind it would not see a victimized female and a perpetrating male until the evidence was presented. But just like a father in family court Kavanaugh was considered guilty until he proved his innocence and Ford, like women in family court, considered truthful without corroboration.
Like fathers walking into court Kavanaugh walked into this hearing expecting an adversarial but fair process. When faced with public allegations he demanded a timely hearing to clear his name. Just like most fathers he didn’t make grand, misleading, and false allegations against the opposing party to counter those made against him nor attack the credibility of the opposing party. Just like fathers he had to wait for justice, which when delayed is denied, while he was further excoriated.
Just like fathers he told his side and presented evidence in support of it only to have it dismissed. Just like fathers he was bullied, beaten, and attacked under questioning while she was treated with polite conversation and allowed to take a break when “upset” by the soft pitch questions, and obvious discrepancies in the opposing story were ignored. Questioning under oath is an adversarial process if it is to derive the truth yet there was no adversarial questioning of Dr. Ford, just like occurs in family court.
Just like fathers entering family court, Kavanaugh showed righteous indignation at the character assassination and the unjust system. And like fathers this was turned against him to show he “lacked demeanor” and was certainly an “angry man” capable of “angry violent actions” and not deserving of the position. The politically correct method to stop a Supreme Court Judge is the same as it is to remove a father from his children. High rhetoric and denial of due process.
After suffering the inquisition of the minutia of his life, defending embarrassing sophomore actions when a sophomore, he thought it all over. And just like fathers entering family court, Kavanaugh sees another delay in the process. More time to look into the further allegations, this in spite of the fact that they become more ludicrous and numerous as the days pass. He, like a father in family court, is learning it will never end. It isn’t about adjudication, it is about winning a war of attrition.
False allegations and slander are a form of relational violence and when government systems respond to it and treat one party with bias based upon the relational violence then we have institutional violence. This is what fathers suffer every day in (anti) family courts. It is not only emotional violence, damaging the psyche, the repercussions of the institution which acts on it often results in physical violence against the falsely accused in the form of fines and incarceration.
Our system of justice in the U.S. is based on the fact that the guilty will sometimes go free but that is far superior to the innocent suffering persecution by prosecution. Judge Kavanaugh is finding out the hard way that this is not how it is working today. One need only look at the Innocence Project to see the hundreds of falsely accused men who were convicted and now exonerated of sex crimes. But how many fathers in (anti) family court suffer the loss of children and the plundering of assets by an unjust system which allows perjury and treats them as deadbeats, guilty before walking in the door?
NY MAN has been complaining about the lack of due process for fathers and men in our justice system, now for 20 years. The pleas to return justice and due process to our court systems have fallen on deaf ears. Perhaps now people within the court system will recognize that a system based upon biases, false allegations, and perjury can at any time grab an innocent person and oppress them with the tyranny of false allegations, even them.
Unlike Kavanaugh fathers don’t have a powerful senate bloc supporting them. If the provably false allegations against Kavanaugh are investigated and charged and if the unproven allegations against Kavanaugh are set aside and he is appointed to the Supreme Court, perhaps then Lindsay Graham, Kavanaugh, and others will realize that the reason the unethical sham of false allegations works in politics is because they, all 3 branches of government at the state and federal level, failed to correct it in family court as good fathers were removed from their children without cause. As Martin Luther King said, “Justice denied anywhere diminishes justice everywhere”, a fact I suspect that Judge Kavanaugh now knows.