Newsletter: Week 19, 2023
Newsletter: Week 19, 2023
The United Nations reports on brute family court failures, Australia's new family law bill makes progress, and the BJP loses government in Karnataka
Positive UN Report On Family Courts
This week the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, released her report into the concept of “parental alienation” and how it has captured family courts globally. The report is built from submissions from a range of child advocacy groups, women’s groups, academics and legal experts throughout the world who have collectively understood how this concept has bastardised family law proceedings and is endangering the lives of children. It is massively positive that the UN are paying close attention to this.
For those unfamiliar with family court systems, since the late-1980s and early-1990s the go-to defence for men accused of child abuse has been to launch a counter-accusation of “parental alienation.” The concept was originally invented as “Parental Alienation Syndrome” in the early 1980s by a man called Richard Gardner as a legal tactic to prevent men who had sexually abused their children from facing any consequences for their actions. Gardner claimed that rather than being victims of child abuse, children were instead being brainwashed by their mothers to hate their fathers. It is a classic DARVO tactic - Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender (a key part of the authoritarian psychology, whether on an individual or political level).
Gardner’s “syndrome” has never gained any professional credibility within the field of psychology, however it has gained massive traction – and success – as a legal tactic within family court systems. Its use has extended out from being a counter-accusation to child sexual abuse to now being used for all forms of child and partner abuse. It has lead to the horrific revictimisation of women and children by family courts, with women often losing custody themselves for raising child abuse.
As I’ve written previously, the economic incentives within family court systems for lawyers and therapists is to service the demand of abusive men seeking to avoid consequences for their behaviour. I’ve also written about the professional incentives for other actors within the system to also claim that “something more complex” is taking place than the evidence of child abuse.
The Special Rapporteur’s report is an important inquiry into how this concept has created a bizarro world within family courts – where love is punished and abuse is rewarded. The report concludes that “…the discredited and unscientific pseudo-concept of parental alienation is used in family law proceedings by abusers as a tool to continue their abuse and coercion and to undermine and discredit allegations of domestic violence made by mothers who are trying to keep their children safe.”
Among a series of recommendations in the report is that states prohibit accusations of “parental alienation” in family law proceedings, as well as the use of witnesses who claim to be experts in the concept. The report also recommends the banning of “reunification camps” – legally enforced attempts to convince children to accept fathers they are frightened of. These camps are an actual brutal form of child brainwashing, and part of the lucrative industry that preys upon child abuse.
And in Australia…
This week also saw the Family Law Amendment Bill being debated in the Australian House of Representatives. The central element of this bill is to remove the presumption of “equal shared parental responsibility” from the court’s considerations. This presumption is what “parental alienation” has sought to exploit. Equal shared parental responsibility – with “responsibility” being overlooked – embedded the idea within family courts that lack of normalised contact with a father is more damaging to a child than any violence he could commit. The idea shifts the court’s suspicion towards mothers who insist that their children are in danger. Passing this bill will be a significant step in reforming the family court system in Australia away from its current indifference to the welfare of children and its hostility towards mothers.
Congress Victory in Karnataka
A quick mention of a significant state election in India. Karnataka is a state of around 70 million people in southern India, home to the tech hub of Bangalore. This week’s election proved a very solid win for the Congress Party, and a significant loss for the BJP. With Congress winning 135 of the legislature’s 224 seats.
Indian politics can never be reduced to a binary, and in particular its state politics, which often have highly distinct party systems and very strong local parties that do not have national reach. However, Karnataka is one state where there is a direct contest between the BJP and Congress, alongside a reasonably strong third party, the Janata Dal (Secular).
Commentators love to speculate about whether elections such as this will give an indication of a threat to the BJPs power at federal level, and the re-emergence of the Congress as a viable political force. While this is a very positive win for the Congress, the unique conditions in India’s south make it difficult to draw any federal conclusions. Karnataka is the only one of the five southern states where the BJP has been able to gain any traction, but one of the reasons why it may have lost this election could be their attempt to import northern Indian style communal politics into the state (banning Muslim girls from school if they wear the hijab being one example).
There are three state elections later in the year across the northern Hindi-belt – Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh that may give a better indication of the political terrain going into next year’s federal election. Although, there is also the probability that people distinguish between state and federal politics and vote accordingly –making state voting trends effectively useless for drawing wider conclusions. Although as a much needed boost in confidence, this victory in Karnataka will be good for Congress.
This Week’s Reading (a little less than usual)
Australia and India’s Relations Are Flourishing—With an Eye on China
Stuti Bhatnagar - World Politics Review
But despite the mutual enthusiasm to deepen the bilateral relationship between Australia and India, there are challenges in their developing partnership that must be addressed. There is a major emphasis on “shared interests” and “shared values” when discussing Australia-India relations, including from the two governments. The shared interests are evident and exemplified by the desire to build a strong economic and security partnership amid both sides’ respective tensions with China. But there are noticeable differences in values, and they have come to light in the two sides’ dissimilar positions on Russia’s war in Ukraine. India’s refusal to condemn Russian aggression, in particular, has caused concern in Australia.
But for now, Australia’s desire to court India as a security partner has prevailed, and India’s partners in the Quad—including Australia—have accepted, or at least not objected to, New Delhi’s arguments regarding its strategic autonomy. But those claims have left lingering concerns about India’s stance in future conflicts in the region. For instance, what would a potential contingency operation in Taiwan mean for this current era of convergence? While India would not be expected to engage militarily, how would it reconcile its claims to strategic autonomy with the economic costs that such a conflict would impose on the broader Indo-Pacific region? Closer to home, it is unclear if India would accept assistance from its new partners if its border disputes with China potentially escalate.
Natalie Sambhi - Brookings
“From Indonesia’s perspective, if South Korea were serious about building a “free, peaceful, and prosperous” Indo-Pacific and supporting ASEAN, a significant step would be to strengthen ASEAN centrality. The grouping is currently facing an existential crisis due to the situation in Myanmar and the glaring lack of progress on ASEAN’s Five-Point Consensus, which call for, among other things, “an immediate cessation of violence.” Unlike Indonesia, non-ASEAN members like South Korea can take immediate and tangible steps like supporting diplomatic measures in the United Nations that strengthen the National Unity Government in Myanmar or weaken the junta’s ability to wield violence on its people. As the current ASEAN chair, Jakarta is well-placed to explore this with Seoul.
Of specific interest to Canberra is the strategy’s intent to increase engagement with the Pacific Islands, a region where Australia considers itself to be part of “a strong and unified Pacific family.” Seoul’s planned investment in climate change, health, oceans and fisheries, and renewable energy dovetails with Australia’s foreign policy priorities in the Pacific Islands.”
You Are Not Destined to Live in Quiet Times
Walter Russell Mead - Tablet
“For thousands of years, the pace of humanity’s growing technological prowess and social complexity was almost unnoticeable over an individual lifespan. Archeologists can trace the spread of new techniques for chipping flints and making tools through prehistoric human society; historians and archeologists can work together to understand the spread of new metalworking techniques in the Bronze and Iron ages. But change was slow, and many people around the world never saw a tool or had an idea that would not have been familiar to their grandparents. And even when change happened, it was usually seen as an exceptional development, a stone falling into a pool that would, after the ripples died down, resume its previous and natural calm.
But over the last 700 years, the rate of human progress began perceptibly to pick up steam. Starting in Western Europe, the rate of technological and social change accelerated as a new kind of dynamism made itself felt. Windmills, double-entry bookkeeping, cannons, printing presses: World-changing inventions poured forth at an unprecedented rate.
This acceleration changed the way that history works. The Neolithic Revolution, associated with settled agriculture and the invention of writing, came thousands of years before the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution was only about two centuries old when the Information Revolution started to hit late in the 20th century. Increasingly, especially with advances in genetics and the science of the brain coming so quickly, it looks as if we are entering an age of permanent revolution in which radical technological and social changes cascade across the world largely nonstop. For people in our time, rapid and accelerating change is the norm; we hardly know anymore what stability feels like.”
Charly Salonius-Pasternak - Engelsberg Ideas
“In October 1939, a long train left the station at Vallila in Helsinki, heading towards Kuolemanjärvi (Death Lake). Aboard was the 2,900-soldier-strong JR 11, an infantry regiment composed of people from Kallio, Vallila and Sörnäis, all legendary workers’ districts. Many were politically left leaning, some perhaps with fathers who had fought on the red side during the civil war some two decades earlier; the scars of that particularly nasty war were still in the process of healing. Nonetheless, while their fathers had fought for a worker’s paradise, what these men abhorred was the idea that someone from the outside – namely Stalin – could come to tell them how Finnish society should be structured. To a man, all had seen and understood the importance of changes that were occurring in Finland. Changes that would in the coming decades – when Finland had maintained its freedom – contribute to the country becoming the most stable in the world (according to the Fund for Peace Fragile State Index), and the happiest too.
In the case of that JR 11 regiment, the human cost of defending Finland’s liberty, and also their own, was high. After four months of conflict, of those 2,900 soldiers, only 850 would be left. While these men undoubtedly fought for each other in the foxholes, they also had a collective sense that Finland’s existence and survival was important, that progress and safety were intimately tied to each other. A limitation on personal freedom – in the form of national service – was necessary to guarantee that national liberty. Because there needed to be a Finland and a Finnish political system that was free to make its own decisions, to build and maintain a social system with high quality schooling, from daycare through university, social services and health care, and so on, all the things that ultimately liberate the individual and allow them to flourish, irrespective of their social background. But only if Finland is free.”