• FelixCress@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    This law is the cart before the horse if the goal is protecting children and maintaining their rights to physical safety

    This is what abductors may claim. They may claim they are “protecting the children” when in fact they are depriving the other parent any and all contact with their children, just because they don’t like their ex. Do a quick Google search, there are plenty of stories like that.

    There should be an exception for people fleeing violence

    If one of the parents have a criminal conviction for domestic abuse, i. e. the abuse is a fact rather than a claim, sure.

    Otherwise abduction remains abduction. Children are not a property and they do not “belong” to one of the parents. Both of the parents have equal rights to raise their children.

    • celeste@kbin.earth
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      1 day ago

      The problem is that the isolated victim has to navigate a hostile legal system. Look around the internet, as you said. You’ll see all sorts of stories about abuse being ignored by the legal system because the system failed them.

      But there does need to be evidence and process, especially since abduction is a form of abuse as well. It harms the child to be removed from a safe parent, so it is a legal, social, and ethical responsibilty we have to make sure the parent is actually dangerous.

      (And we should take DV seriously enough to devote resources to actually investigate these cases with everyone involved having a thorough knowledge of what DV is and isn’t. And we should also devote resources to having a safe foster care system for when neither parent is safe, and we should transform social work into a desirable career with good pay, benefits, and acceptable work life balance, so cases are investigated before in a timely manner so victims are mostly all informed of who they can contact to escape within the country when they need to)

      Someone legitimately fearing bodily harm or death for them or their child needs to be allowed to flee that harm. This should not be criminalized. DV needs to be an exception, until such a point that the safety net within the country is easy to find and access for everyone who needs it. And until such a time as the legal system considers domestic violence a serious crime even when it’s perpetrated by people they like and want to believe against people they don’t (against men, immigrants, the mentally ill, the marginalized, drug addicts, sex workers, etc)

      Outside of the law, if someone fears harm to their child, they should flee as fast and far as they can, and are morally correct to do so. The law should support the morally correct position as best it can.

      • FelixCress@lemmy.world
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        24 hours ago

        Do you accept that both parents have identical rights to raise and decide about their children?

          • FelixCress@lemmy.world
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            23 hours ago

            So, do you accept that both parents have identical rights to raise and decide about their children?

            Parents who do not have their parental rights taken away by the lawful judgement of the courts of course.

            • celeste@kbin.earth
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              22 hours ago

              Are you talking legally? I believe parents should legally lose all rights to their child when (at the moment) they use violence against them, and if it turns out they were violent, there was no abduction because the safe parent had the right to travel with their child. Since this is not how the law works, currently, DV should be an exception to the proposed law in order to keep abusive parents from using the law as against their victims. Resources should be devoted to ensuring the abuse happened, so false accusations can’t be used by the abductor to justify kidnapping.

              • FelixCress@lemmy.world
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                20 hours ago

                You still haven’t answered my question.

                Or rather, you have. By not answering 🙄

                • celeste@kbin.earth
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                  18 hours ago

                  Each parent has the same legal right as the other, but neither is allowed to harm their kids, or they lose those rights.

                  Again, the right of a child to live free from abuse is greater than either parents’ right to have them around. If it is illegal to protect a child from harm, or remove them from harm, it should not be. Courts should be equipped to figure out if the parents are safe for the child, and act accordingly. Removing a child from a parent who is harming them is good and correct, even if the parent who does it doesn’t know english well enough to follow correct protocol. Removing a child from a safe parent through abduction is bad. The parent who does this is harming the child and should not have access to that child to prevent them from doing it again. The best interests of the child far, far outweigh parental rights. Parental rights are nothing, if they don’t benefit the child. This is my answer. Did you get your gotcha yet?

                  • FelixCress@lemmy.world
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                    12 hours ago

                    Each parent has the same legal right as the other, but neither is allowed to harm their kids, or they lose those rights

                    Yes. At the point when they lose their rights, they no longer can stop the other parent from permanently taking children abroad so it is a non issue.

                    This legislation is to stop one parent taking the children away without consent of the other parent, abducting them - and I am delighted it has been introduced.