On Sunday, November 25, 2012 the Australian 60 minutes program examined the case of the Italian family that has been in the news in Australia for more than a year. Amazingly, the reporter Tara Brown did not jump on the present media bandwagon of regurgitating the mother’s claims of abuse while ignoring her shenanigans in and out of court (60 Minutes, 2012).
For the first time ever a major news team actually spent more than five minutes looking for the story instead of sycophantically following the feminist agenda. What they showed was not so much that the father should be believed, but more that the mother and the other members of her family definitely should not.
The real difficulty of this story is that there is so much madness in it that you sound mad yourself. Those who have had a psychopath in their life will understand. My ex was one such nutbag.
Let me explain. Before the program went to air, the mother’s mother took Channel Nine to court to stop the broadcast (Deery, 2012). She claims that she was harassed into the interview. The quote that got my attention was this:
She [the grandmother] said after originally declining to take part in the segment the director had demanded a medical certificate from her doctor.
Now, for those of you who have not had a nutter in your life, your brain will do the same thing is does with optical illusions. It will read that sentence and try to somehow bend and twist it into the real world.
With the nutter in my life, this type of nonsensical statement was common. There was no truth in them. No such conversation actually took place. These were spur-of-the-moment digressions with two ulterior motives.
The first is camouflage. The answer to a simple question like, “Did you consent to the interview?” becomes a series of questions about medical doctors, certification, the legal powers of TV directors, and that’s only the beginning. Try to follow any one of those threads and soon you’ll be thrashing out what kind of medical conditions could actually prevent an otherwise willing adult from participating in a interview. And if that’s not working for her she’ll suddenly switch to Aunt Myrtle’s dispute with the telephone company or some unrelated event in 1990.
Rational dialogue becomes impossible, and the truth shrivels and dies in a miasma of lies and illogical conclusions.
The second is that the conversation becomes so absurd that you’ll stop asking questions. At that point you’ve just accepted that she was coerced into the interview.
Even if you shoot the logic down in a master display of perseverance, logic and memory there will always be others who lose track. At some point, usually much later and in response to the next set of camouflage, they’ll pipe up, “But wasn’t she forced to do the interview?” And around you go again.
The whole story is peppered with this madness. Consider this summary:
The mother, who could tell the Australian embassy of abuse, did not mention it in the Italian Family Courts. Instead she consented to shared custody.
But practically straight away she, and her mother in Australia, started telling the Australian Office of Foreign Affairs and the Australian embassy in Italy that the father was abusive and they had to get her out of Italy. This went on for three years.
For three years. No deaths, no hospitals, no doctors, no arrests, no charges, no witnesses. Nothing.
She claimed she went to the Italian police about the father. The Italian police say they have no record of any such complaints. The doctor, whom the mother claimed could testify that she had been abused, denied that she had any such information. The man whom she befriended, met in secret, kissed, but did not have an affair with, didn’t come forward with any information.
And, of course, if you’re not going to swallow any of that, she claims the father had known all along that they were going to live in Australia. He actually consented and then changed his mind.
It’s not limited to the mother and grandmother either. Consider this summary of the Australian embassy staff’s actions in Italy.
For three years, while this alleged abuse was continuing, the embassy staff saw no reason to involve the Italian authorities. They went twice to her home in Italy to check out her claims of poverty. Both times they found her claims to be false. Yet apparently that was no reason to doubt the claims of abuse.
They knew that she had duped the husband into signing for the children’s passports, but still accepted the application. They never warned her of the ramifications of the Hague Convention. They also never warned him, even though they understood the criminality of the act.
The mother might have been surprised by the two year ordeal of courts and the children being forced to return to Italy, but the embassy staff would have known better.
It seems that they were relying on the ruse that, if he was dumb enough to sign the papers, then it’s not the embassy’s fault that they assisted in what turned out to be a crime.
If they believed her, how could the embassy think that leaving the children with the abuser for three years, having them go through an ordeal in a foreign country’s courts, and then be dragged back to live with the abuser, was much better than reporting the matter to the Italian police.
If they didn’t believe her, why didn’t they report it to the police?
And if only the madness would stop there. As previously reported on AVfM, the reason for the nationwide hunt in Australia for the children was because the children’s grandmother had threatened to murder them (Blueface, Grandma threatens to murder children, 2012). Yes, the nice lady on the couch who kept interrupting but didn’t want to participate in the interview. Yes, she who was forced to participate because she lacked the necessary medical certificates.
Despite this being the most sensational part of the story, not one word of this threat was publicised in the Australian media.
Consider, also, the Family Court sending a clear message to Australian mothers for many years that this type of behaviour will get results. Two recent examples of this are Summerby & Cadogen (Family Court of Australia, 2011) and Gaylard & Cain (Family Court of Australia, 2012).
In both cases it was crystal clear that no abuse took place; the courts issued orders that the children should see their father; and the mothers unreasonably refused to comply with these orders.
In both cases the courts subsequently made the mother’s illegal behaviour legal by banning the father from their children’s lives.
In Summerby & Cadogen the magistrate offers this non-explanation:
It may be thought that the result arrived at demonstrates either an acceptance of the mother’s position, or a surrender to her unreasonable refusal to permit a relationship between the child and her father. Neither of those conclusions is correct.
He goes on to say:
The orders [which stopped the father from seeing his daughter] should not be seen as any vindication of the mother’s actions.
It’s a bit like listening to a more sophisticated version of the grandmother, isn’t it?
In his world, it is purely coincidental that mother’s plans to punish the father are completed by the court’s decision. In his world, the mother who lied about the abuse won’t see an un-vindicated verdict as a victory. In his world, the mother won’t teach the child to hate the father because of this lack of vindication.
And in his world the next crazy won’t use the same tactic because, although the father was punished, it lacked vindication.
How much this type of verdict influences the next crazy can be seen in Gaylard & Cain. The mother was warned by a psychic (and no, I did not misspell psychologist) that the father would abuse his daughter. With this logic she simply refused to let the father see his children, defying court orders time and time again. She got her way in the end.
In June this year I gave seven reasons why this case showed the Family Court is corrupt (Blueface, Altobelli’s Dilemma: The Failure of Australian Family Law, 2012).
Yes, this was the case where the psychiatrist reckoned that the mother had a special distorted lens. This lens was only distorted when she looked at the father. In all other aspects her lens worked just fine. He reckoned that somehow this lens would repair all by itself if the court gave her the children and backed off.
And of course getting your own way to repair your distorted lenses is not the same as a surrender to your unreasonable position.
In this Italian case, the Australian courts hands were tied by the Hague Convention. Unless there was clear evidence of abuse the children had to go back. Nonetheless, they insisted that the father gave an undertaking that he would not pursue charges back in Italy before allowing the children to return.
That’s right! The court that decided she behaved illegally didn’t want the matter to go to court in Italy just in case they thought she behaved illegally. Because that, obviously, would be wrong.
In most cases like these the fathers back off. Sometimes it’s the emotional pressure put on the kids. Sometimes it’s the emotional pressure put on themselves. Sometimes it’s the crippling legal costs. Mostly it’s some combination of these. They then do the “noble” thing and walk away, knowing that their ex will use this as evidence to the children that he never really loved them.
The Australian media hoped this was the case when the Italian man returned to Italy in August this year before the final hearing.
The Italian father embroiled in an international custody battle has left Australia after giving up hope he will win his legal fight to get his daughters back to Italy.
crowed the Sydney Morning Herald (Marriner, 2012). The report explains that the father faced, at that time, yet another hearing and yet another expert to examine the children. According to the paper:
It is understood that the father has spent €120,000 ($142,000) on the custody fight and has been on unpaid leave from his job for months.
Given that the father now has his children the obvious conclusion is that the Sydney Morning Herald was at least buying if not peddling this dishonesty.
There can be little doubt that had this case been played out in Australia without the international dimension, the man would banned from seeing his children. For example, if she moved them from Melbourne to Brisbane, and played the exact same games she would have won, albeit un-vindicated.
The same father who now has his children at his home in Italy would be sitting on the court steps with his head in his hands wondering how this could have happened to him. Meanwhile, his children would be taught to hate him even more.
And that is exactly how this mother, her family, the Australian embassy, the Australian courts and the Australia media wanted it to end.
Madness.
Bibliography
60 Minutes. (2012, November 25). 60 Minutes interview: Australian government helps in abduction of children from their father. Retrieved December 2, 2012, from You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF4I_gBfdp4
Blueface. (2012, June 24). Altobelli’s Dilemma: The Failure of Australian Family Law. Retrieved December 1, 2012, from A Voice for Men: http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/family-courts/altobellis-dilemma-the-failure-of-australian-family-law/
Blueface. (2012, August 21). Grandma threatens to murder children. Retrieved December 1, 2012, from A Voice for Men: http://www.avoiceformen.com/misandry/grandma-threatens-to-murder-children/
Deery, S. (2012, November 23). Custody girls’ grandmother tries to stop 60 Minutes interview going to air. Retrieved November 30, 2012, from The Australian: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/custody-girls-grandmother-tries-to-stop-60-minutes-interview-fears-for-life/story-e6frg6n6-1226522982409
Family Court of Australia. (2012, May 30). Gaylard & Cain. Retrieved December 1, 2012, from Australian Legal Information Institute: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FMCAfam/2012/501.html
Family Court of Australia. (2011, October 25). Summerby & Cadogen. Retrieved December 1, 2012, from Australian Legal Information Institute: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FamCAFC/2011/205.html
Marriner, C. (2012, August 19). Father gives up custody battle. Retrieved December 2, 2012, from The Sydney Morning Herald.
