Arthur Freeman throws Darcey Freeman off Westgate
Melbourne is in the middle of an excruciating heatwave, but that does not excuse fathers throwing their five year olds off bridges.
Sadly I’m not joking, I wish I were.
A Melbourne man is in custody after throwing his five year old girl off the Westgate bridge this morning. I was lying on my couch bitching and moaning to my cat about how freaking hot it is, and this guy was was out there, on the bridge throwing his daughter off.
The Age has reported that the family was involved in the Federal Magistrates Court earlier this week in which a shared custody agreement was reached. My own parents are divorced and went through the whole shared custody thing. While it’s initial impact is huge you do eventually get over it and move on with life.
When I first read about this case my initial reaction after they caught him was ‘mental disorder defense in 3…2…1′ and sure enough he was ruled not fit for a hearing and in an ‘acute psychiatric state’.
Now I’m not arguing that throwing kids off bridges is normal behavior by any stretch, but I would put forth that the guy is most likely in shock coming to grips with what he’s actually done.
I mean sitting at home all pissed off at your wife plotting revenge schemes in your head is all very well but if you then carry them out you kinda realise pretty quickly your kid is gone and life isn’t a revenge movie. There’s no dramatic music to sooth the pain and certainly no ending credits to take it all away.
It hasn’t come to light yet but I’m guessing the Family court must have ruled in favour of the mother custody wise. It seems to happen 99.9% of the time and surely 99.9% of fathers can’t be incapabable of raising their kids with majority custody?
After a marriage breakdown I can only imagine what it must feel like to be slapped on the face by a court and told you can only see your kids every other weekend or worse still, not at all ‘because it’s in the best interest of the child’ (read: your ex wife is an evil harpy bitch having her own fantasy revenge through your kids); oh and you’ve also got to forgo the bulk of your salary to kids you’re now legally not entitled to see either.
In all honesty that’d drive anyone mad, but killing your kids is clearly not the solution. Sadly, i’m buggered if I know what IS the solution to stuff like this. More often then not the plight of the father and kids is swept under the carpet and hundreds if not thousands of men each year lose that close bond with their kids.
Some of them deserve it and some of them are just victims to a biased family legal system or worse still manipulative females who play an already stacked system to their advantage for all it’s worth. Men can be downright bastards towards their wives or partners, but when is using their kids an appropriate way to punish them?
Right now Arthur Freeman is in remand until a hearing in May, he’s up for murder and I sincerely hope they get him and he doesn’t get away with some bullshit mental problems reduced sentence.
What I also hope for is after we’re done condemning him and rightly so, somebody goes one step further and has a look at why this happened. This particular case is clearly on the inexcuseable extreme, but what about all those cases where dad’s are left feeling short changed and left to experience what must at times feel like just going through the motions of losing their kids altogether and being powerless to stop it?
…. won’t somebody think of their children?
September 11th, 2009 at 10:29 am Megan(Quote)
While 99.9% of men might not be incapable of caring for a child, many of them, like my ex husband, engaged in his parenting in 15 minute bursts – between more important things like watching TV, blogging on car forums, or researching pieces of technology that we could little afford nor did we need. While under the same roof, he was content to let me (even though I worked full time also) do all the cooking, washing, cleaning, shopping, doing the dinner/bath/bed routine, playing games, doing puzzles and reading books.
Given that 99.9% of the time on the very, very odd occasion when I asked him to do something he would forget, or he would forget her medication, her favourite toy, forget to pack her spare clothes in her kindy bag (sorry, my job, isn’t it?), why on earth should he be able to beat his chest now and claim to be a 50% parent, or even a 30% one???
Courts are NOT ruling in favour of the mother 99.9% of the time, thanks to these stupid shared custody laws. What they are doing is creating a generation of children who don’t live anywhere. What do they put down as their home address? I used to travel a lot for work – after a couple of years, the gloss wore off living out of a suitcase and yet we are asking kids to live a nomadic life permanently?? That is just irresponsible.
The answer is simple. Mandate some shared residency on both weekends and weekdays (ie every second weekend and every Wed night) and increased other short duration access. If my ex really wanted to see his daughter, he would be offering to take her to the park after work, to her extra curricular activities, to birthday parties on the weekend when he doesn’t have access, but instead, he doesn’t even call her when she’s with me. Instead, he wants 50% custody, so that he can reduce his child support burden.
Pathetic.
September 15th, 2009 at 10:23 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
From the sounds of it your ex is a deadbeat. Your divorce put your kids into the nomadic position, of which you and your ex are a party of.
I’m not saying you should have stuck with someone who clearly didn’t care but I’m betting he wasn’t captain awesome before you had kids and maybe you should have thought about that before having kids with him.
As for the access you want him to fund your life and have nothing to do with his kids? Unless he chooses this it’s utterly unfair for you to think the courts should grant this.
Why is it some women think it’s fine for a father to cough up the money to pay for everything but then expect him to have nothing to do with their kids?