Dads in Distress Inc

Phone: 1300 853 437
Email: didsadmin@bigpond.com
Internet: www.dadsindistress.asn.au
Postal Address: PO Box 2333, Coffs Harbour NSW 2450, Australia

29 June 2007
Attorney-General of Australia
Media Release

Australia and Greece Work Together on Recognition of Family Law Orders

The Australian Government will work with Greece towards introducing mutual recognition of family law orders, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock announced today.

"An agreement with Greece would ensure that divorce certificates and family law orders regarding children would be recognised in the courts of both countries," Mr Ruddock said.

Australia and Greece are to set-up a joint working party to explore ways to introduce recognition of family law orders between the two countries.

"With 125,000 Greek-born people living in Australia and extensive migration from Greece during the 1950s and 1960s, an agreement with Greece would help the two countries continue to enjoy a close cultural relationship," Mr Ruddock said.

The need for a mutual agreement was discussed between Prime Minister John Howard and Greek Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis during his visit to Canberra on 23 May 2007.

Media Contact: Media Adviser
Attorney-General of Australia
Parliament House Canberra
Tel: 02 6277 7300

26 June 2007
The Times (Britain)

Father jailed for refusing to pay child maintenance despite ex-wife's support
By Frances Gibb, Legal Editor

A lawyer was jailed yesterday for refusing to pay child support to his former wife, despite her pleas that he should not be given a custodial sentence.

Michael Cox, 43, had argued that their three children spent half their lives with him and that he should not therefore have to pay the Child Support Agency (CSA) for the time that they spent with their mother. Cox a legal adviser to the campaign group Fathers 4 Justice called the system "oppressive, unjust and discriminatory" towards men.

The court was told yesterday that Cox was required to pay £365 a month in maintenance to his former wife, Lesley Peach, 39, but she did not have to pay anything to him. In March, Cox, who has five children, was given a 42-day prison sentence for failing to pay the charge, but the sentence was suspended on condition that he began to pay monthly instalments.

Yesterday he heavily criticised the CSA as he was jailed for 42 days. A letter from Ms Peach was read out in court begging magistrates not to give Cox a custodial sentence because of the impact on her family. Prosecutors said that his former wife would appreciate more financial support.

Cox, who represented himself, told Southampton Magistrates' Court: "I have been referred to as an absent father, but that's not what I am. I'm a father who well knows the obligation to his children and I discharge that obligation. I feed all of my children, I clothe them, I house them that's what I spend my money on. The Child Support Agency gives me no assistance for that and requires me to spend the money twice.

"I say that makes it oppressive, unjust and discriminatory in its action. In this case you have two established families living in equilibrium."

"My ex-wife lives a mile away from me and the children pass easily between the two households. They spend half of the time with me and half of the time with their mother.

"My ex-wife is not a little old lady living in a shoe, reaching in the back of a cupboard for the last tin of beans. This is not about the law. According to the law I'm dead in the water I'm bang to rights."

Cox asked magistrates to show discretion and spare him jail so that he could continue to earn money to pay for the care of his children.

Tom Concannon, for the prosecution, said that since the couple separated in 1994 Cox had amassed debts to the CSA of £45,000.

The court was told that Cox was required to pay because the children were officially resident with their mother.

In a letter to magistrates, Ms Peach said that if her former husband were sent to jail, she would have to give up her job to look after the children.

Reacting to the sentence, Cox, of Hythe, Southampton, said: "It is outrageous that people are released early from prison for serious crimes and yet I'm being locked up as a caring father."

Cox, of Hythe, Southampton, was supported in court by his current wife, Beth Cox, 32, who sobbed as he was jailed.

The junior school teacher had sat next to him taking notes as a "McKenzie Friend" an adviser the family court allows defendants without lawyers.

Cox shook hands with Mr Concannon and quietly congratulated him. He at first refused to be handcuffed, saying that it was "unnecessary and undignified", but a female security officer insisted and locked cuffs on his wrists. She explained that she was following "Home Office rules".

Outside court, Beth Cox said: "When dangerous criminals are going free from prison because of overcrowding, to jail Michael for being a good father is unbelievable.

"I am simply gutted. I love Michael, and I love him exactly because he is such a good father, and this is simply wrong."

"It just defies all logic and sense. The sentence has impoverished two families on both sides both him and his ex-wife and the taxpayer will now spend £40,000 jailing him."

Outside court, members of Fathers 4 Justice reacted angrily to the sentence. The group's founder, Matt O'Connor, said: "It is utterly disgusting to jail a very courageous and brave individual and a loving father.

"He is the first person from Fathers 4 Justice to go to prison on this very noble principle of standing against the CSA. But I think he has shown how the CSA persecutes good fathers.

"He has also shown up the utter incompetence of the family courts."

Agency woes

- The CSA was set up by the Tories under Margaret Thatcher in 1990 but did not come into force until 1993

- In 1998 an NAO report showed that a quarter of all CSA estimates were wrong and the errors cost children £15.8 million a year in missed contributions

- In November 2003 the Government apologised to parents over problems with the new computer system, which cost an estimated £456 million

- In 2004 its chief executive, Doug Smith, announced that he was resigning, admitting that he was "seriously disappointed" with the CSA's performance

- Last year, it was said the agency had an estimated £3 billion in unrecovered debt and a backlog of 333,000 cases. It was taking an average of 26 weeks to process a child-support claim

Source: Times Database

25 June 2007
Daily Mail (Britain)

Jailed for waving at my daughter
By Jenny Johnston and Rachel Halliwell

Denied access to his three children after his divorce, Mark was jailed for standing outside his house to wave to them. It took ten years and 133 hearings before they were reunited.

How CAN the Government insist cases like his are kept secret?

Every day there is some reminder of what Mark Harris calls 'the lost years'.

It could be his daughter's reference to a particular birthday party or a family holiday. It could be talk of exams sat, dentists visited or pop stars worshipped.

Each time it happens, he feels a stab of regret. 'I missed so much,' he reveals, with understandable bitterness. 'They took my daughter's childhood, her formative years, from me. Lisa is 20 now. I didn't see her between the ages of ten and 16. An awful lot happens in a child's life in that time, and I missed it all.'

Lisa missed a lot, too. She sits by Mark's side as he talks, a beautiful and assured young woman, but one still coming to terms with the fact that her father simply wasn't there when she needed him - and for an entire decade she did not know why.

'There were times when I needed a father figure - for reassurance and advice,' she says, with quiet restraint. 'There just wasn't one there.'

But the story of what happened to the Harris family isn't just another tragic case of broken homes and estrangement. Mark, Lisa and her two younger sisters were wrenched apart by the state.

Mark was not a feckless, irresponsible father. He did not walk out of his children's lives. Rather, he was ordered out by the family courts, and when he objected - insisting it was his right to see them - he was dealt with in a scandalous way.

Mark Harris went to prison for his girls. He was jailed for waving to them after a court order demanded he sever all contact. It was the most shameful chapter in an extraordinary ten-year custody battle.

He has now 'won' - today, two of his daughters live with him - only because they shared their father's determination to re-establish their relationship.

He has lived every father's worst nightmare, and every miserable step is etched on his face. 'It took ten years, 133 court appearances before 33 different judges, two prison sentences and a hunger strike before I was given permission to be with my daughters again,' he says quietly.

'What happened to my family is unforgivable. And that it was all sanctioned - ordered - by a system that is supposed to help families is outrageous.'

The controversial family court system has much to answer for in this case. Mark Harris isn't the first father who has questioned how it operates. Family court proceedings are notoriously secretive, and campaigners have long appealed for the proceedings to be more open and judges more accountable.

That is not to be, however. Last week the Lord Chancellor ruled that proceedings must remain secret - something that horrifies Mark and his girls.

So angry is he about his experiences that he has written a book, Family Court Hell. 'Surely my story is evidence enough that the system needs to change.

'If it doesn't, the family courts are open to abuse by unaccountable judges and social workers with their own agendas, whose word is taken as law and who almost invariably favour the mother.

'It's a scandal which has left hundreds of fathers like me in desperation. The only solution is to have a court system that's transparent. Otherwise it is simply not fair to fathers or, more importantly, to the children it is supposed to protect.'

When Lisa was born in 1988, Mark felt 'like the happiest man alive'. He had been married to his wife - whom we cannot name even now for legal reasons - for three-and-a-half years, and he had longed for fatherhood. Over the next four years, two more daughters followed.

MARK says: 'I remember thinking how lucky I was because I had a job that I could organise around the children. I'm a driving instructor, so my work was flexible. I loved the time I spent with Lisa. Not every father could read their children stories, bath them or take them out for walks in their pram.'

Mark thought he had a happy marriage, too. The only difficulty was his strained relationship with his mother-inlaw. Yet it didn't concern him much.

'Looking back, we rowed constantly about my mother-in-law, but I never thought it would lead to drastic action,' he says. Perhaps he will never know exactly what was wrong in his marriage, but his wife was clearly unhappy.

One day in 1993, Mark returned from a football match to find the house 'looking as though it had been ransacked'. Almost all the furniture had disappeared. So, too, had his wife and children, and he had no clue where they had gone.

'I went to the police,' he says. 'I was beside myself, distraught.

They said my wife was in a rented house nearby, but that I shouldn't go round until the next day. When I did, she told me she no longer loved me, but said I could see the children whenever I wanted. I was bereft.

'I took the children home for a few hours and they spent the time crying - they were only six, four and two, and it must have been horrific for them to see their parents like that. They wanted to know when we'd all be at home together again, and I didn't know what to say. I was as shocked and bewildered as them.'

Over the next few weeks, Mark stumbled through life in a daze. He saw his girls every day he wasn't working, but his anger towards his wife was building up.

Two months after she left, she asked if he would take her back. Mark was too hurt to contemplate that. Instead, he launched divorce proceedings.

'At that point, it didn't even occur to me that access to the children would be an issue. I was granted unrestricted access - but later I discovered that even then my wife was seeing a solicitor, with a view to having my time with them reduced. She said it was confusing for them to see me.'

THE FAMILY court agreed, and his access was reduced to three times a week, then to once a week and finally to once a fortnight. Mark was stunned to discover he was powerless to resist. 'I petitioned the judge every time, but there was nothing I could do,' he says.

A year after they had separated, the couple divorced. Again, Mark made a bid to see more of his girls, and asked the court if they could live with him. His wife retaliated, claiming that seeing him at all was unsettling them. The court's reaction? It banned him from any contact at all with his daughters.

'I was just floored, disgusted. On my wife's word, the judge simply severed all my rights of access. When I protested, no one listened. I was devastated, but there was no way I was going to turn my back on my children. How could a court order stop me from being a father?'

Every morning, while he waited for a court date to argue against this judgment, Mark saw his children being driven past his house to school by their mother. He'd wave - angry that he couldn't say hello, but grateful for their smiles.

Then his former wife was granted an injunction stopping him even gesturing to his children as they passed. 'It was incredible. She said it was harassment, and the court believed her. But I carried on waving. I was looking for a job and I'd walk to the Jobcentre every morning - knowing how to time it so they would come past.

'I was damned if I was going to be prevented from waving at my own children. Naively, maybe, I assumed the whole business would be cleared up at the next court hearing.'

It wasn't. Instead, Mark left that courtroom in handcuffs, sentenced to four months, having been told that waving was tantamount to stalking his ex. He couldn't believe what was happening.

'On my first night in jail I shared a cell with a murderer,' he says. 'It was so intimidating. The next few weeks just blurred into one long nightmare. Every waking hour I pined for my girls, wondering if I would ever see them again.

'When I got out, the nightmare continued. It took another year for me to convince the courts I should be allowed to see them at all. Life was an endless round of court hearings. It was a wretched existence. Time and again I'd be facing a new judge and having to re-tell the story. To me, it was a matter of life and death, but to them, it seemed I was just another pushy, undeserving father who was trying to interfere in his former wife's life.

'I was so messed up by it all that I had a vasectomy to ensure I couldn't find myself in that position again.'

Finally, five years after the separation, Mark was granted permission to see his daughters. He was excited about the planned date - but devastated-when Lisa didn't turn up. 'By then I was livid at the system. It was destroying my life. I know it was a foolish thing to do, but I started picketing the homes of the judges who had denied me contact, hoping they would take pity on me.'

His protests were to no avail. Instead, in 2001, he was sentenced to ten months in prison for contempt of court for driving past his girls' house to catch a glimpse of them. By then spiralling into depression, he went on hunger strike. For two weeks he refused food and water. 'I stopped only when I realised that if I died I would never see my precious daughters again,' Mark says.

Who knows how this desperate fight to be a father would have ended had Lisa, then 16, not intervened. 'After a row with her mother, she called Mark and told him she and one of her sisters wanted to live with him.

'I got this call saying they had packed their bags and were at a bus stop. Would I pick them up? In breach of all court orders, I got in the car and brought them home. Seeing Lisa again, for the first time in six years, was incredible. I didn't know how to speak to, or look at, this young woman before me. She was wearing make-up. She had her 6ft boyfriend in tow. It was surreal, but in the end we fell into each other's arms and sobbed.'

It was only then that the family court system seemed to consider Mark's rights. He called the High Court emergency hotline and eventually spoke to a 'decent, humane judge'.

Ten minutes after their conversation-he was faxed a temporary residency order. In court the following week, every previous court order was set aside. 'It took ten minutes to put right and ten years of injustice, which made me realise just what power those judges have,' says Mark.

The ruling meant that Lisa and her sisters could choose which parent they lived with. Lisa and her youngest sister - who, again, we can't name for legal reasons - now live with him.

Lisa is studying to be a legal secretary. Her story is even more poignant. She tells of the confusion that has blighted most of her life, and you cannot help but wonder what long-term damage has been inflicted on her and her sisters.

'One minute we were normal children. The next we were in a rented house with Dad hammering on the door demanding to be allowed to see us,' she says. 'We were scared. None of it made sense. Sometimes we'd be allowed to see Dad regularly, then there were times with no contact at all.

'When Dad disappeared out of our lives, we just thought he had stopped loving us. I was certain I'd done something wrong. 'The first time we saw him waving to us as we went to school, I was thrilled. I remember thinking: "He still cares."

'Every morning, Mum would tell us we shouldn't look at him - that he was a bad man - yet we couldn't help but grin when we saw him. It made our day.' It was impossible for Lisa's mother to go a different route.

WHEN her father went to prison, no one explained to Lisa why. 'Mum said: "You see - I told you he was bad." I was ten years old. As far as I knew, you had to do something pretty awful to go to prison.'

She turned against her father, telling social workers she didn't want to see him. Yet with hindsight she explains she was simply trying to gain control over the horrific situation.

'There was this endless pantomime with social workers wanting to know what I thought. All I wanted was to be allowed to love both my parents, but I knew that was never going to happen.

'Mum's hatred for Dad was so deep that to keep her happy, and to get them off my back, I said I wouldn't see him. Turning love to hate made that easier. I told myself that my dad had been wicked, so he deserved it.'

When the courts finally granted access, Lisa was so tortured that she often didn't turn up to see her father. She thought she was protecting her mother by siding with her.

However, when she fell out with her mother during a phase of teenage rebellion, it was to her father that she fled - and when she discovered he had never stopped loving her, she was left reeling.

'I'd never forgotten Dad's number. I know I was only ringing him then to get back at Mum, but when I heard his voice, I wanted to cry. I told him I loved him and that I wanted to see him. Everything just flooded out.'

The first meeting was as hard for her as it was for him. 'The last time I'd seen him I'd been ten and carrying a skipping rope. When I walked into my old bedroom - and saw it was as I had left it - I wanted to sob. I didn't dare do so, though, because I knew if I did I'd never stop.'

Four years on, Lisa and Mark are only just beginning to rebuild their relationship. Every day, more gaps are filled, and more trust regained.

Meanwhile, Lisa rarely sees her mother, and she is angry at her mother's behaviour. It is a desperately sorry story, with no real winners. But then, as Lisa points out, it was never supposed to be a contest.

'I wish to God that my parents had avoided the courts from day one, and simply shared us, the children they created together,' she says.

'Instead, complete strangers were allowed to get involved in our lives to such an extent that everyone lost sight of the needs of us children.

'I love both my parents; I always will. But I will never get my childhood back. It is gone for ever.'

21 June 2007
School of Psychology, Deakin University

Fathering study being undertaken by Robert McGregor and Dr Jan Stewart

Project Title: Attachment style, fathering behaviour, and emotional wellbeing following marital separation.

This study seeks to uncover some of the factors that influence how fathers parent following separation. The study also examines ways of fathering and how that may relate to fathers' wellbeing.

To participate you must be:

1. Male
2. 18 years or older
3. Separated for at least 1 year
4. Have dependant children

Participation is a unique opportunity for us to help others understand how fathering behaviour is affected by separation and the impact different fathering behaviour has on our mental wellbeing.

An online survey form is available at http://www.deakin.edu.au/psychology/research/fatheringstudy

If you need any further information, please feel free to contact Jan or Robert on 03 556 33 360 or on their email addresses below

Robert McGregor rkmc@deakin.edu.au
Dr Jan Stewart jans@deakin.edu.au

15 June 2007
Daily Mail (UK)

How a family court stole my family
By Corinna Honan

Millionaire lifestyle. Holiday home in Provence. Four beautiful children... on the surface this film producer's life was idyllic.

Then his wife set in train a cataclysmic legal action that plunged him into the nightmarish, secretive world of the family courts.

That night, after the children had been put to bed, George and his wife had a row.

Ignited by something trivial, it was one of those quarrels that owe more to everyday strains than anything fundamentally wrong in a marriage.

In fact, he can't even remember what they were squabbling about, though he has a clear memory of Kate suddenly lobbing in: "I want a divorce."

Well, of course she didn't really mean it, thought George later. But next morning, as he was getting the children ready for school, a letter arrived from Kate's solicitor.

Clearly written before the row, it confirmed her intention to end their ten-year marriage.

Such was the opening sally in a divorce case that would, within a matter of months, leave George jobless, penniless and effectively homeless.

During the course of it, he would be deprived of the right to see his three youngest children until they were grown-up. He would regularly be threatened with imprisonment.

And he would lose his eldest son, Alex, who was physically dragged out of his bedroom by a court official, handed to the police and then taken into care.

At this point, you may well be thinking that the awesome might of British justice is not triggered without good cause.

But, as the Mail has verified from legal sources, George has never been accused of being a bad father.

Conventional, solid and hardworking, he was committed to his marriage and imagined that he would grow old with Kate.

If he was guilty of anything, he reflects without irony, it was of not being more solicitous of her happiness.

It is a measure of George's remarkable strength of character that, from the moment he realised divorce was inevitable, he refused to accept that he should be cut out of his children's lives.

There could, he felt, be only one solution: shared custody, with the children spending equal time with each parent in adjoining houses.

For three years, he put everything else in his life on hold to battle for more time with his three sons and one daughter - aged between five and nine at the start of proceedings - through more than 40 court hearings before 20 different judges.

And, finally, when most men would long since have accepted the inevitable and moved on, he won.

Amazingly, the children are now all back with him for good, making him that extreme rarity: the father who triumphed within a system that nearly always sides with the mother.

I meet George, a former film producer, on one of those bright days when the English countryside is at its most luminous and all seems right with the world.

But as his story unfolds, it is hard to dispute his conclusion that the family court - mired in antiquated practice and shielded from public view - can be the source of untold misery and injustice.

His ex-wife - who chose not to return my calls - may well have different perceptions. But even allowing for the heat and smoke of an acrimonious divorce, George's testimony raises crucial questions about how the courts deal with custody disputes.

Still furious - in a quiet, steely way - at its treatment of his family, he has contributed many of the details of his nightmarish experience to a guide-book for divorcing fathers (I Want to See My Kids!, published this week).

"Any father who's relaxing in his comfortable home with the babble of his children in the background," he warns, "needs to be aware that in a few weeks, he could lose the lot."

Now in his 50s, George is a softly spoken man who would no more dress as Batman or scale the roof of Buckingham Palace than would the average vicar.

Like many middle-class men of his generation, he is uncomfortable speaking about emotions. Kate, on the other hand, was "highly-strung" and 12 years younger - "the same age difference as between Charles and Diana," says George, and one readily imagines that this was not the only parallel.

They had met in Asia, where George was producing a film in which Kate - then an actress - had a part. Love ripened quickly in this exotic setting, and marriage followed five years later.

When the first of their children was born, Kate gave up work.

George, for his part, had set up a production company, and was earning £150,000 a year until foreign rivals started undercutting him.

Not unnaturally, he became increasingly anxious as he tried to scrape together enough for school fees and two mortgages - on their £1 million five-bedroom London mews house (in fact, two joined together) and a £250,000 holiday home in Provence.

The marriage, which had never quite regained its momentum after the birth of their fourth child, began to falter: they spent more time apart and George admits that he could be uncommunicative.

However, once he realised that Kate was in earnest about a divorce, he resolved to do anything he could to change her mind.

They tried marriage guidance counselling for three months, but Kate attended the sessions with little enthusiasm.

Indeed, says George, her behaviour changed so dramatically that he could barely comprehend the new reality.

"I think she just wanted the counsellors to convince me the marriage was over," he says. "At home, I felt like an unwanted guest. She'd frequently describe me to the children as 'your f***ing father' - which horrified me.

"But I'd already sought advice from a lawyer and been told not to rise to the bait - because once you leave the family home, you will be portrayed as having walked out on your family."

Six years ago, around the time of their first appearance before a judge - at which George argued for shared custody - he had an unexpected phone call from a neighbour in whom Kate had confided her problems.

In all fairness, said the man from across the street, it was time George knew what was going on. Not only had Kate been having an affair with a solicitor for the past two years, but she had also told the neighbour and his wife that she was hoping to get the London house.

"It was a pretty awful phone call. I couldn't believe it, really. I felt punch-drunk," says George. (As it turned out, Kate broke up with her lover soon afterwards.)

Next, the family was visited by its first court-appointed welfare officer, whose brief was to look after the interests of the children. Both of the older boys told her they wanted to live with their father.

To his amazement, George discovered that welfare officers are not required to have any qualifications beyond a two-day training course - and yet judges almost always follow their advice.

In the vast majority of cases, this means the mother is awarded custody.

Which is exactly what happened. "No reason was really given by the judge, except that Kate had looked after them more as babies than I had," says George.

He was ordered to leave his house within 28 days - but, in fact, was ejected without notice. (This was the result of a spurious allegation, which the law forbids us from reporting.)

With only the clothes on his back, he was taken in by his brother and sister-in-law, who live in a sizeable house in the Home Counties and have no children of their own.

The company he had fought so hard to save was in ruins. Money from the eventual sale of the French holiday home would be eaten up by expenses, and all the profit from one of the conjoined mews houses used to pay off the mortgage on the other.

George had lost everything - even, it seemed, a chance to have a normal relationship with his children. Without consultation, the judge decreed that he could have them for just one overnight stay a fortnight - and for two hours on Wednesdays.

There had been no thought given to the practicalities of picking up four children who finished school at different times and then delivering them through rush-hour traffic to Kate.

Often, when George drove the children back, they refused to leave the car. "I never quizzed them about that. But I gathered that Kate was finding it hard to cope.

"By then, she had no nanny. She was on her own, she was struggling financially and the children were being uncooperative. They'd refuse to go to school and she'd scream at them."

Kate's reaction on the two occasions that he phoned ahead to say he'd be late bringing them home was to call the police and claim he was abducting her children.

Over the next year, there was a procession of hearings about adjustments in the amount of contact he could have, with inconsequent victories for both sides.

"'But I was made to feel like a baddie. I was even called a vexatious litigant by Kate's barrister because I wanted more time with my children," says George.

With dawning horror, he began to realise that he could never win. The mother, as far as the family courts were concerned, was always right. And even when she was patently in the wrong, she could never be penalised because that would not be in the interests of the children.

Which meant that when Kate told him that the children were ill or too busy to see him, the courts had no inclination to intervene.

Worse still, if the children were playing up and she claimed that was due to seeing him, then contact could be reduced still further.

"Like most of the fathers I know, I'm completely absorbed in my children," says George. "But having contact every other weekend reduces a father overnight to being a distant relative.

"And if the divorce is acrimonious, other contact is curtailed: phone calls are permitted only at certain times, the mother can stop your contact with your children's school, she can stop you having access to their medical records. You're swept out of their lives overnight."

Week by week, inch by inch, George was losing his children.

Then, two years into the proceedings, his eldest son, Alex, started running away from home. The first time, he called his father from a railway station and was duly collected and returned to Kate.

The second, Alex turned up at the building where George's sister-in-law worked and refused to leave. Again, George had to take the weeping 11-year-old home to his mother.

The third time, George could bear the boy's misery no longer and went back to court to apply for temporary custody.

"The judge, who didn't seem to take much interest in the case, refused and ordered me to bring Alex to court the next day. But I knew very well that if I did, Alex would be handed back to his mother by force - so I went back alone.

"The judge found me guilty of contempt of court and threatened to send me to prison."

After that, Alex decided to live like a fugitive. Every time he heard a car coming up his aunt and uncle's drive, he locked his bedroom door and barricaded it with a chest of drawers.

The first official sent by the court to prise him out left empty-handed. But the judge - who announced that he was "not prepared to be dictated to by a young boy" - planned the next attempt carefully: while George was in court yet again, he sent two tipstaffs (court officials) and two police officers to remove Alex by force.

"Alex's aunt let them in. She was told to stay in the kitchen or she'd be arrested. Then, while the police guarded her, the tipstaffs kicked down the bedroom door - it was in splinters - and drove Alex off to a police station.

"My sister-in-law said he was crying and his legs were like jelly as they brought him down the stairs.

"She has never really recovered from this brutal invasion of her home and her devastation at being unable to do anything for him.

"Meanwhile, I was held in court for hours, not knowing what was going on. Then the same judge came back and said:

'I'm sure we're all pleased to hear that Alex has been removed from his father's house [in fact, his uncle's] and is now in a safe place.' He said it with a sort of sneer. He had no interest in what Alex wanted: he was punishing the boy in order to punish me."

For days, George could not find out where his son had been taken. "Eventually, I was told he was in a foster home, under lock and key. I don't want to be snobbish, but it was a rough home, an alien environment.

"There were about six other children, including a 16-year-old who'd just been released from prison. To start with, Alex wouldn't even eat - but he refused to go back to his mother. This went on for three months."

At this stage, the custody battle took a surreal twist. A new court welfare officer went to see each child in turn and asked them to draw pictures of their mother.

And when George's daughter, then aged nine, sketched Kate's body as a circle, the officer pounced. Look, she told the judge: the drawing showed that Kate was fat - whereas, in fact, she was slim!

Therefore, concluded the officer, Dad must have described Mum to the children in unflattering terms, and this clearly amounted to "abuse".

"I couldn't believe it," says George. "Here was an unqualified person interpreting a picture, which is a highly specialised skill. It was a joke.

"But the judge made a finding that my daughter was at risk of significant harm because I must be alienating her from her mother.' In fact, George says, he has never criticised his wife in the children's presence.

As the coup de grace, the judge banned him from seeing his three younger children at all.

Hope arrived from an unexpected quarter: a pair of social workers who initially seemed just as biased as everyone else.

Indeed, said one of them, it's always better for children to be with their mother, even if she's a drug addict.

But at least these social workers, who had become involved when Alex was placed under a supervision order, were not part of the labyrinthine family court structure.

After interviewing Alex, one of them even confessed to George that the boy's story had made her weep.

Cautiously, they arranged for George to see Alex for brief periods at a family centre, where father and son were observed behind a two-way mirror.

"I hadn't seen Alex for about a month," recalls George, "and he more or less jumped into my arms. He was puffy-faced and obviously disturbed.

"And when it was time to go back to the foster home, he became very distressed, crying and clinging to me."

Later, after a three-month separation, the other children were allowed to see George at the family centre, too. The social workers' conclusion?

That Alex clearly needed to be with his father - and, furthermore, that the circumstances of the other children needed investigation.

But George, by now, was no favourite of the courts. When he bought his traumatised eldest son a puppy for Christmas - the Labrador he'd always wanted - the judge interpreted the gift as an attempt to manipulate Alex's affections.

The social workers now formed an ingenious plan: the quickest way of getting Alex back, they said, was for George's brother and sister-in law to become the boy's foster parents.

"They had to go through the vetting procedure. Absurd. But it worked," recalls George.

Under the auspices of the social services, a qualified psychologist was asked to interview the children - all now adamant that they wanted to be with their father and showing physical signs of distress, such as eczema and bed-wetting.

Finally, says George, "the court didn't have a choice': he was given shared residence for the three younger children and full residence for Alex. It was over.

Today, Kate still has the family house - but the children refuse to visit her.

So they live with George at the home of his brother and sister-in-law, where he is trying to write a book in the gaps between cooking, housework and school runs.

At 3.30pm, I join him (and Alex's patient Labrador) for the second run of the day. As we wind through dazzling-green woods, up and down country-lanes, we scoop up one child after another, decanting a couple to pursue after-school activities.

They are polite, good-looking children who are all doing well at their private schools (paid for by a legacy from George's mother).

Occasionally, Kate comes to sports days: a sad figure who brings chocolates and hovers uncertainly on the edge of the playing-field.

The children don't really talk to her, says George. But he continues to "make overtures", hoping they will one day be reconciled.

Disturbingly, he says, the children seem to have blotted out their past. "They almost can't remember their early childhood. It's almost as if there is a year zero for them, and they can only remember things from then on."

There's no chance, though, that their father will blot out the past few years. "I'm still single," he says. "and I think I'll remain single.

"The children are my focus, now I've got them back, and I wouldn't want anything to divert from that."

All he ever wanted, he says wearily, was shared custody - but the system encourages women to fight for a bigger slice of the financial cake rather than work things out for the sake of the children.

And almost everyone involved, from the " case-hardened" judges downwards, he believes, starts from the premise that children are always, always better off with their mothers.

"I just want people to know what can happen," he says. "What that judge did to Alex was cruel beyond words, and it's inexcusable that this kind of thing goes on in secrecy in a civilised country."

Not long ago, he roughly totted up the cost of the custody case: the judges, the social workers, the police, the foster care, the care centre, the lawyers (mostly paid for by Legal Aid), the court staff, social security for the entire family.

It came to £1 million of taxpayers' money.

Had he and Kate been permitted to share the children, it wouldn't have cost more than a few thousand to divide their mews home back into two.

The children would still have a mother, George would still have a career, and years of anguish and heartbreak would have been avoided.

Dads In Distress is funded by the Australian Federal Government.