Children disappear daily
Families Apart Require Equality (FARE)
"Every day children are not returned to one of their parents and this never makes the news. Is this because it is
invariably their fathers that they are not returned to?" FARE spokesperson Darryl Ward asked today. He was commenting on
the case of Stella Henley.
"We wonder why, when during one of the comparatively rare occasions that a father fails to return a child, the police
rush in and the media have a field day."
"If a father complains to the police about his children not being returned, he is told to try the family court and shown
the door. He certainly would not expect his children's plight to become national news."
"We understand how Laura Choat must have felt, as this is the experience of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of New
Zealand fathers. However, these fathers and their children have to suffer in silence".
"Every year our adversarial family court system sees approximately 20,000 children lose contact with one of their
parents, usually their father. By comparison, only 3,000 New Zealand children lost their fathers during the entire
Second World War. This makes the family court New Zealand's leading child abductor."
"This case is clear evidence that mothers have rights as parents that fathers do not have. It is time that the
government conceded that family law and the family court are not the gender-neutral entities that they would have us
believe they are," he concluded.