NO JUSTICE FOR MEN

I was recently in a provincial District Court defending an application for a safety order brought against my client who, unfortunately for him, is a man. Quite incredibly there were 121 cases to be heard that day. 121! At 5 minutes per case, only about 60 cases were going to be dealt with. It’s a good job the rest of the cases weren’t important. The judge was getting through them at an extraordinarily rapid rate and then my case was called.

I explained to the judge that all the issues in the case were in the process of being dealt with by the Circuit Court in Dublin and I asked him to refuse to hear it and allow the case be dealt with by the Circuit Court. The mother objected and said she was in fear of my client and needed the safety order. Quite incredibly, the judge then said that on the strength of this information before him, he was going to grant a safety order for six months.

I was completely taken aback and I objected and said that the judge could not make such an order having not heard any evidence from my client. The judge was clearly angry and he said to me that he would put the case back to hear it later in the day after he had dealt with his other cases. The mother then said that she had to collect her daughter from school in a few hours and could she have the whole case heard now and the judge immediately relented and said that he would allow both sides to give evidence.

I will not go into detail but suffice to say that when both parties had given evidence, I sat down knowing with 95% certainty that the case would be thrown out because there was no substantial evidence against the father. The case wasn’t dismissed. The mother got her 6 month Safety Order. I asked the judge to explain why he made his order and he said it was on the basis of a copy letter he received from the child’s school, which referred to an incident which the mother did not refer to once in her evidence. You will have to take my word for it -but this incident was not serious.

What is my client to do? I have advised him that technically he would be entitled to apply for a judicial review of the order quashing it. This would probably take a year and a half and would cost many thousands of euro. The alternative is to appeal the order, which is what he will do.

My client has joint custody of his daughter. He has not seen her now for four months. She rings him when she needs money and her mother will not pay. She taunts him by saying that she doesn’t have to comply with the court order, which granted him joint custody.

This is as bad a case of parental alienation as I have ever come across and I am absolutely certain that if the position were reversed and this lady was a man, she would not even have given a second thought to the possibility of applying for a safety order in these circumstances, because she would have known there would not have been the remotest chance she would have obtained such an order.

And they say it’s a man’s world!

Kevin Brophy

Brophy Solicitors