In The Name Of The Fathers

Sunday, Sep. 19, 2004 By JAMES GEARY AND BOBBY GHOSH
ACTION MAN: Hatch put dads' rights in the headlines by perching near Buckingham Palace's balcony dressed as Batman
AP PHOTO
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The balcony of Buckingham Palace is normally reserved for photo ops of Queen Elizabeth and the royal family. But last week, it was a man dressed in a Batman suit who was waving regally to the crowds. Perched on a ledge next to Britain's most famous balcony, Jason Hatch, a 32-year-old painter and decorator from Cheltenham, unfurled a banner — superdads of Fathers 4 Justice fighting for your right to see your kids — and settled in for a six-hour-long photo op of his own. His protest was designed to draw attention to the plight of fathers who are shut out of their children's lives by their former or estranged wives — and by a legal system they say discriminates against men in custody and visitation cases. "It is abuse to deny a child the love of a father," Hatch told Time after his caped crusade had ended. "That's what we're fighting to stop, and we're going to keep on doing stunts like this and embarrassing [the government] until things change."

Hatch is an imperfect messenger for a very real problem. He has been married and divorced twice. He and his first ex-wife lost contact (their son lives with her), and he has fought a bitter, protracted battle for the right to see the children from his second marriage. That crusade drove him to the ledge outside Buckingham Palace — and led his current girlfriend, with whom he has a seven-month-old daughter, to leave him because, she says, his activism took too much time away from her and the baby.

Hatch and his second wife were divorced in 2001. She declines to speak to the press, citing ongoing court proceedings. He says she prevented him from seeing the children for at least a year and did not respond to his calls. After being taken to court for threatening his wife — he admits to harassing her — another 18 months passed before he was allowed supervised visits with his kids. He says his ex found excuses to cancel the meetings. Even though she now lives nearby, he says he has only seen his kids a few times in the past three years.

In desperation, he turned to Families Need Fathers, an organization that offers support and counseling, but soon became frustrated with what he saw as the group's inaction. He joined the more radical Fathers 4 Justice (F4J) about a year ago, signing up as a grade 5 member: someone willing to engage in direct action and risk arrest for the cause. That's how he ended up on the Buckingham Palace ledge, a stunt that led to a security shakeup and got F4J global press coverage, though many media outlets ignored Batman's message and focused on the potential threat to the Queen. "If you want to go to a pub and watch a load of grown men cry, then go to [Families Need Fathers]," Hatch says. "If you want to get off your arse and get this law changed, go to F4J."

Dads across Europe are taking Hatch's advice, banding together in activist groups and lobbying for legal and social change. They're keeping the fight for dad's rights in the public eye with a mix of humor and guerrilla tactics. In Britain, daredevil dads have donned superhero costumes to occupy the roof of the Royal Courts of Justice and the top of the London Eye ferris wheel. Their most brazen stunt came in May, when two F4J members hurled purple flour bombs at Prime Minister Tony Blair from the visitors' gallery in the House of Commons. In October 2002 in Madrid, two members of SOS Papa, a divorced-dads protest group, doused themselves with gasoline and set themselves alight outside the Cortes, the Spanish parliament building. (The men were wearing fireproof suits, so they weren't injured.) At the Colosseum in Rome last Saturday, a group called Papà Separati (Separated Fathers) held a small demonstration; some members turned up in Batman costumes in salute to Hatch. The French chapter of SOS Papa is more restrained, avoiding direct action but organizing marches every Father's Day.

The impact of these protests is mixed. "There is wide public sympathy for the plight of fathers who are maliciously denied access to their children," columnist Deborah Orr wrote in Britain's The Independent in May. "But there is also an uncomfortable recognition that if a former couple are so unable to decide between themselves what is best for their children, then the courts have little prospect of doing it for them." But custody statistics suggest that the disgruntled dads have a legitimate gripe. In most European countries, the law is supposed to be gender neutral and custody can be awarded to either parent, depending on the best interests of the children. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, the mother gets custody — and activists claim that discriminates against fathers. Even in Germany, where joint custody is the legal norm, 85% of children of divorced or separated parents live with the mother. In France, the percentage is the same. In Italy, mothers get custody in 90% of cases; in Britain, the figure is 93%. Many divorcing fathers don't seek custody. But activists say the state should not presume that. And if a mother decides to relocate with the children, they say, the father has no recourse.

As a result, thousands of divorced or separated fathers are denied access to their children by the courts or an embittered ex-wife. In Britain, government statistics show, 713 fathers were refused contact with their kids by the courts in 2001, and 518 in 2002. But those extreme cases — many involving fathers who were barred from seeing their children for good reason — aren't the measure of this problem. Divorced dads say custody rules granting them only a handful of visits per month don't let them develop meaningful relationships with their children. And many accuse their ex-wives of flouting visitation agreements — but how many such cases there are is unknowable, not least because the courts tend not to enforce the agreements. "There has been a trend over the past two or three decades in favor of women's rights in relation to their children," says Catherine Hakim, a sociologist who specializes in family and women's issues at the London School of Economics, "so it's actually become necessary to reassert fathers' rights."