By Eugene Narrett 

June 10--The May 27 plea-bargain of Stephen Fagan briefly put family court bias in the news but a more informative event was mostly ignored. On May 18, more than 100 parents came to the State House to testify before the Judiciary Committee about the routine abuse of  “restraining orders,” a.k.a. GL209A. Having prepared for months, a few of the parents were given a little time to tell how their lives had been destroyed by judicial contempt and cruelty. 

Response so far indicates that Gov. Paul Cellucci intends to expand the restraining-order war on due process, thus harming tens of thousands more children by encouraging the courts to destroy their ties to their fathers. 
 
Writing in Woman’s Quarterly (Winter 1999), Prof. Stephen Baskerville of Howard University describes a typical restraining-order case. A man comes home to find the locks changed and his belongings in the street. He can’t see his children. If he doesn’t leave soon, the police will take him away. He will likely find his bank account emptied out. 

“With the exception of convicted criminals, no one today has fewer rights than fathers,” Baskerville writes. “Feminist vilification in the media and the machinations of lawyers have left fathers helpless against confiscation of their children.” Kidnapping, fraud and theft fuel today’s legal system. 

Rev. Harry Stewart was one of those who testified last month.  He faces 10 years in jail for the following “crimes.” Helping his 5-year old son open a door to an apartment building so he could ring the bell. Getting out of his car to greet his children when he picked them up at school. Helping his son lift a package out of the car after a visit. Leaving Christmas presents for his children 50 feet from his former home. 

The Norfolk County bureaucrats and state politicians who want to put Rev. Stewart away and deprive his children of their father often pontificate about compassion and caring. Cellucci’s secretary of Public Safety (so called), Jane Perlov, wants restraining orders made tougher and even easier to get, perhaps flowing like tap water. A woman can get one without any evidence of violence, past or present, merely a claim of being “in fear” that abuse might occur in future. Perlov pretends 209A’s are not mis-used. 
  
“She doesn’t have a clue,” Stewart’s lawyer, Phyllis Field, told Massachusetts News. “She should follow me through the courts. These are not isolated cases.” 

Crippling children by destroying their relationships with their fathers is big business for lawyers, judges, psychologists and social workers. Dr. Abigail Maxton testified that restraining orders often are used to compel a father to enter or continue “therapy,” or his children can’t see him. Divorce Lawyers counsel women to abrogate father-child visits by getting the court to appoint psychologists to “investigate personal issues.” Judges gladly go along. It’s profitable and popular to crush fathers. 
 
Prof. Baskerville noted the phony statistics about “dead beat dads” and how they are used to justify “mass incarcerations without charge, trial or counsel, while the media and civil libertarians look the other way.” The ACLU has betrayed its mission letting this carnage proceed. “The Attorney General, Cabinet Secretaries, leading politicians in both parties publicly vilify fathers who have been convicted of nothing and have no ability to reply,” he writes. “The smug self-righteousness of judges, lawyers and child-support bureaucrats rubs salt in the wounds of fathers bereft of their children.” 

Paul Cellucci need not end his public service in disgrace, adding to this damage. He and your state representative can support H.3504, a bill that would return due process to restraining orders and divorce law. Call them today and tell them to support it. And speak up every time you hear some one vilifying men; show them you want the reality not the rhetoric of compassion and justice for children and fathers. 

Dr. Eugene Narrett teaches English at Boston University and UMass-Lowell.