Legal political correctness plumbs new uncharted and dangerous depths

[sullivan]

Jaws drop as Quebec judge backs girl grounded by dad

Don Butler, Canwest News Service

Published: Wednesday, June 18, 2008

OTTAWA - If you deny your children access to TV or withhold their allowance, can they take you to court? And win?

That implausible scenario emerged after a judge in Gatineau, Que., sided with a 12-year-old girl who challenged her father after he refused to let her go on a school trip for disobeying his orders to stay off the Internet.

Experts in family law and child welfare say they were dumbfounded by last Friday's ruling by Superior Court Justice Suzanne Tessier.

"As a lawyer and as a parent," said Ottawa family lawyer Fred Cogan, "I think it's state interference where the court shouldn't be interfering.

"I've got six kids," Cogan said. "I certainly wouldn't want a judge watching over everything that I do, and I wouldn't want my kids being able to run to the judge."

But there are few signs Canadian courts are likely to follow Tessier's lead.

"Family court judges are sort of loathe and reluctant to enter into the sphere of parental discipline," said Peter Dunning, executive director of the Child Welfare League of Canada.

Joan Durrant, a child clinical psychologist and professor of family social sciences at the University of Manitoba, said the courts usually take a hands-off approach to parental discipline, even when it involves physical maltreatment.

"Some pretty severe cases have been acquitted because it was determined that it was the parents' right to decide."

In the few cases where children have taken their parents to court, there's often a history of family conflict, she said. "It's usually not an isolated incident in the family interaction."

Cheryl Milne, a lawyer at the Canadian Foundation for Children, Youth and the Law, said the scenario in the Gatineau case may be unique to Quebec because of its civil code. "I can't imagine a similar case being brought in Ontario."

Even in Quebec, the decision is virtually without precedent. Kim Beaudoin, who represented the girl's father - he can't be named to protect the girl's identity - said she's been unable to find any similar rulings.

The father, who is divorced but has legal custody of his daughter, cut off her Internet access after she chatted on websites he had tried to block. She then used a friend's Internet connection to post inappropriate pictures of herself, Beaudoin said.

After discovering that, the father told his daughter she couldn't go on the three-day school trip. According to Beaudoin, the daughter "slammed the door" and went to live with her mother, who was willing to let her take the trip.

However, the school wouldn't allow the girl to go unless both parents consented or she obtained a court order. That prompted the girl, with her mother's support, to take legal action against her father, culminating in Friday's ruling.

According to Beaudoin, Tessier found that denying the trip was unduly severe punishment. The fact that the girl is now living with her mother also factored into the judge's ruling, she said.

The father, who is appealing the decision, was "devastated" by the ruling, Beaudoin said. He is refusing to take his daughter back "because he has no authority over her."

[Anonymous]

The father, who is divorced but has legal custody of his daughter, cut off her Internet access after she chatted on websites he had tried to block. She then used a friend's Internet connection to post inappropriate pictures of herself, Beaudoin said.

After discovering that, the father told his daughter she couldn't go on the three-day school trip. According to Beaudoin, the daughter "slammed the door" and went to live with her mother, who was willing to let her take the trip.

However, the school wouldn't allow the girl to go unless both parents consented or she obtained a court order. That prompted the girl, with her mother's support, to take legal action against her father, culminating in Friday's ruling.

Father knows how to raise a kid to not get off scott free with bad behavior, but mother dearest just wants to gain favor with her daughter so accepts her defiance and encourages her to drive a rift between herself and her father.  The mother is a psycho bitch, and she is making her temper tantrum 12 year old into a future psycho bitch!  This shit is pathetic.  The mother is totally unfit to allow such a thing to occur.  You don't give 12 year old this much power!!!  She will continue to be a loose canon from now on, you get what you deserve you evil mother, take care of her now!  We're going to get another rotten self-centered adult from this, while the father could have prevented the degeneration of a human being.