Consider this story from the Herald Sun in Australia.

Excerpt:

A mother found by the Family Court to be violent, untruthful, lacking moral values and responsible for the psychological and emotional abuse of her children has been given custody of them.

The father, deemed “principled” and with “much to offer his children”, has been effectively banned from seeing his daughters.

[…]The father… is described by a Family Court judge as no threat to his daughters, a successful parent who is “courteous” and “intelligent”.

The same judge found the mother… abandoned her first daughter at two and spurned the child’s subsequent attempts at reconciliation, had displayed “dreadful”, “cruel” and “malicious” behaviour.

But the judge still ruled that because of time spent apart, the children had become estranged from their father and it was in their interests that “the children spend no time with the father”.

Time spent apart? Why would a loving father willingly spend time apart from his own children?

Bill has not seen his daughters since April and has not spent extended time with them since August 2005.

He says the estrangement was largely a result of false allegations of sexual abuse of the children made against him by his former wife.

The custody ruling in the Family Court last month came after a seven-year battle over access to the girls, now aged nine and 11.

It followed a criminal trial in 2007, when Bill, 55, was cleared of the sexual abuse allegations. The trial judge found them totally false and threw the case out.

The ordeal has cost Bill his home, his job and about $450,000 in lost income and legal costs. He has faced court 70 times to clear his name and try for some form of access to his children.

“It has been a nightmare. All I wanted was to be part of my children’s lives – to try to give them a good start in life,” Bill said.

“But I am denied that because of the malicious way in which my ex-wife has acted and because of the credence the legal system has given her lies and falsehoods.

“The family law system needs wholesale change. There appears to be no testing of evidence in court and it seems that often lies and fabrications are immediately accepted as fact.

“It’s a disgrace and, as far as I know, it doesn’t happen in any other legal sphere.”

Bill’s case follows the case of “Steve” last year, in which the court accepted his good character, but banned him from seeing his daughter for seven years because it was believed the mother would “shut down” emotionally if he were allowed to see her.

In another case last year, a father, “Mick”, was jailed for sending a birthday card to his daughter in breach of a court order and was locked up again for taking a walk in a park – near where, unknown to him, his daughter was playing.

False allegations of sexual abuse are standard operating procedure in divorce courts in order to get custody of the children, and the child support payments that go with the children. The legal stakeholders in the divorce racket have every reason to help to the woman to make these false charges, because the father usually fights for custody, which is what keeps them all employed.

Further study

To find out more about the horrors of feminism and unilateral divorce, consider reading something by Stephen Baskerville and something by Jennifer Roback Morse. This podcast by Jennifer Roback Morse explains some of the threats to traditional marriage – it’s my favorite podcast ever. Women need to do a better job of understanding men, and understanding what has to change to make marriage attractive and appealing to men. That may involve changing laws to make these unfair divorce courts stop doing what they are doing.

One last thing. Most of my readers know that I am chaste, and so I have never been married or divorced. My parents are have been married for 40+ years. None of my immediate family is divorced. And none of my Christian friends are divorced. In fact, I have never experienced a divorce even vicariously by being friends with someone who was going through a divorce. And the point of this is to show you how Christians can become sensitive to an issue just by studying it. And this is what marriage-minded Christians need to do.

Christians need to study to understand the many serious problems that divorce causes for men and children. We should understand how marriage acts as a buffer to state power, thus protecting religious liberty. We should know how feminist policies weaken marriage and parenting. And we should understand how a stable marriage benefits children, and ultimately, society. When Christians inform themselves about these issues, it becomes easier to put ourselves second and act to preserve the marriage. Knowledge binds the will.