They feel caught in the middle of disputes about custody and access.
PART 3: DADS DENIED: Kids unsettled by bickering between divorced folks
Kathy Rumleski
The London Free Press
Ryan Riczu, 23, still holds a grudge that started when he was a boy and his parents split up.
Sixteen years later, the Londoner isn’t on speaking terms with his mother.
He said he basically raised himself as his mom denied his father access to him, his brother and sister, and as his dad didn’t always pay child support.
“She should have let him see us. He always wanted to see us, but she never let us go.”
Riczu had a falling out with his mother after she remarried and asked the kids to change their names. He refused. “I was a more or less outcast. I more or less had to grow up on my own.”
After a couple of years without seeing his father at all, Riczu was able to spend some time with his dad.
Riczu said his father continues to pay money to his mother now for back payments owed.
His advice to parents going through a divorce now: “Just think about the kids. It should be equal visitation unless one parent is into drugs and stuff like that.”
Heidi Nabert, a director with a fathers’ support group, said she grew up without her father in her life and that pushed her to get involved in fathers’ advocacy work.
“Part of my goal is to ensure that kids can continue to have a relationship with their dad,” said Nabert, who added by the time she was old enough to ask her mother questions about her father, he was dead.
“I always take the stance of the child. To hell with the adults. What about the child?”
Fourteen-year-old Eric lives with his mother in London and spends time with his father every other weekend.
He has heard his parents cutting up each other and he doesn’t like it. He believes children shouldn’t have to listen to parents bicker, either.
“Kids (should be) kept out of what parents are saying. They talk, but at the end of their conversation, it’s loud and serious. I wish they’d just get along better,” the teen said.
Former Sarnia-Lambton MP Roger Gallaway was a member of a special parliamentary committee examining child custody and access issues that held meetings around the country in 1997.
“There were huge crowds, the largest crowds, I’m told, of any parliamentary committee ever,” he said.
Gallaway saw kids caught in the middle of disputes who were suffering.
“I use this term flippantly, but they’re damaged goods. They’re being pushed and pulled.”
His committee’s recommendations — including shared parenting — were ignored, Gallaway said.
He said the legal system is “exceedingly broken” and, “in terms of fathers and children, it’s grossly unfair.
“Parliament needs to remove from the courts the magnitude of discretion that they are currently allowed,” in custody rulings, he said.
In 2003, Bill C-22, an act to amend the Divorce Act, introduced criteria to support the best interests of the child. But it died when Parliament ended that November.
Gallaway said it was “merciful” it died because it would have enacted the opposite of what the special joint committee recommended.
“It essentially goes back to the fact it’s a litigious system, which requires that one party, to be the winner, shows that they’re better than the other.”
Gallaway, who was a four-term MP before he was defeated in last January’s election, used to field 200 calls a day from men talking about their access battles. “I still get calls,” he said. “They want somebody to talk to who won’t think they’re crazy.”
Doug of St. Thomas wants the public to know how broken parents become when they can’t see their kids.
“I think about the children every single day.”
Doug continues to pay child support for his two children — a son, 17, and daughter, 12 — but he hasn’t seen them in four years even though he has a court order.
Doug said he and his wife had a couple of “minor” disputes about the children’s diet and seeing his parents. Problems “spiralled” from there. He hired a lawyer but couldn’t resolve anything.
“At the very end, I ran out of money,” he said. “Deep down, the resentment I have is much more for the government. As you go through the process, you realize nobody is willing to enforce any court order.”
It’s especially tough for Doug as the holidays approach.
“There are thousands of hard-working, loving, law-abiding parents and grandparents . . . who will endure the pain of a Christmas season without seeing their children.”
Doug’s father died in October and the very last person his dad asked to see was his grandson. “He was heartbroken for years” about not seeing his grandchildren.
Doug phoned his son to let him know his grandfather was dying and his son hung up.
“I don’t feel there’s much hope,” Doug said when asked if he believed a reconciliation with his children is possible.
In the meantime, Gallaway said men like Doug will continue to suffer, emotionally and financially.
“It’s status quo. Fathers will continue to shell out millions of dollars annually across the country to, in some way, be players in the courts, in which we know they can’t win.”