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Ten-year hell is over for a loving father
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"Max Burke" wrote in message ... Ten-year hell is over for a loving father http://www.observer.co.uk/uk_news/st...982508,00.html Email: Fax: +44 (0)207 713 4250/4286 The Observer Sunday June 22, 2003 " Ten-year hell is over for a loving father " After going to jail, a hunger strike and 130 court appearances, Mark Harris finally has his family back By Amelia Hill Mark Harris has made 130 court appearances in 10 years, before 33 judges. He has picketed judges' houses and spent more than three months in jail. His crime? He wanted access to his three young daughters. Last week, in a ruling seized on by an army of militant fathers, Harris learnt that he had triumphed. 'The last decade has been absolute hell and devastation,' said Harris, a driving instructor from Devon, in an exclusive interview with The Observer. 'My kids have missed their father being part of their childhood and I've missed watching them grow.' His battle has become a cause célèbre for divorced and separated fathers who claim their relationships with their children have been torn apart by a legal system that is automatically prejudiced against them. Harris's nightmare began in 1993, when his wife of 10 years left the family home with their children as he was watching a football match in a local pub. The girls were two, four and six at the time. 'I still saw my children, dropping them off at school and picking them up most days, like I'd always done,' he said. But the arrangement deteriorated and Harris's visits were blocked. The situation improved in 1994 after a court granted him unrestricted access, but by October 1996 the girls complained that they weren't getting on with their mother's new partner and asked to live with their father. After this request, all access with Harris was severed by the court. He appealed, but the earliest date a hearing was granted was the following April. 'In the meantime, I wasn't allowed anywhere near my children,' he said. 'I was reduced to standing on the corner when they were being driven to school so I could wave at them. It was the only way I could let them know I still existed and be sure that they were still all right.' When the case came to court, Harris found that his former wife had complained that his attempts to maintain contact constituted harassment. The judge set an injunction preventing him from 'harassing, pestering or upsetting' his ex-wife and froze all contact between him and his children until a new hearing in July. When the case came back to court, the judge accepted that the 'deep wishes of three intelligent girls' was to have contact with their father. Yet, in a 65-page judgment, he found that Harris's former wife had been left with a 'feeling of being stalked and harassed' by his attempts to contact his children, and jailed him for four months. When Harris was released after 45 days, he determined to keep to the letter of the law, but then his children contacted a mutual friend and asked him to ring them. 'They didn't understand why I had dropped all contact. What was I supposed to do?' Because Harris replied to his children's request, when the case came back to court contact was again refused. By November 1998 tentative contact was restored for the first time in two and a half years. 'It was a complete shock, seeing them again,' he said. 'They behaved like complete strangers.' Still, the meetings went well and at the next court hearing the court welfare officer suggested upping the number of visits. Harris's ex-wife, however, disagreed, saying that the meetings were too disruptive. 'She didn't have to give examples of what was disruptive and no one listened to what the children said about wanting to see me,' said Harris. Visits were reduced to one every two months. Faced with seeing their father for just six days a year, the girls gradually stopped visiting. 'That's just not enough contact to hold the interest of small children,' said Harris. 'I was completely devastated.' So he started protesting. At first, this consisted of a small handful of passionately determined fathers targeting the homes of judges who had denied them contact with their children. 'It was extreme, but my life had been ripped apart and my relationships with the three people I loved more than anything in the world had been stretched to the point of collapse,' he said. In January 2001 Harris attended a hearing designed to build the number of visits up again. His barrister told him to expect a fine and a telling-off for the protests. Instead, Mr Justice Munby gave Harris 10 months in Pentonville Prison, where he went on a short hunger strike. Released after 84 days, he was told to employ a court-approved psychologist to represent him at £100 a day. The psychologist backed Harris and in January he saw his youngest daughter, now 12 years old, for the first time in more than six years. 'My other daughters said they wanted nothing to do with me, which hurt desperately, but they had been through hell and I understood that,' he said. On 22 March, the last supervised visit took place and Harris was optimistic that the next court hearing would find in his favour. Then he received a phone call from his eldest daughter, now 16, saying she loved him and wanted to live with him. 'She had packed her stuff and that of my youngest daughter and wanted me to pick them up,' said Harris. In breach of all orders, Harris agreed to collect them. Once back at his home, he contacted a High Court emergency hotline. A judge returned his call and granted a temporary order followed by a three-month trial period of residency, which last week became permanent. Now Harris's eldest daughter lives with him, his youngest daughter moves between both parents, and his middle daughter visits twice a week. 'I have been completely vindicated,' he said. 'But although we are a family again we have deep scars and traumas that we will never entirely get over.' # When men have children, there's really no such thing as the freedom to be a father for their children; On the practical level, men realise that *even in death* they can only be the father their children's mother is prepared to let them be.... -- Replace the obvious with paradise to email me. See Found Images at: http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~mlvburke |
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