Well, hello ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and anybody else who’s reading and listening (yes you can do both on here!) … welcome to Leigh’s New World.
It may be a world of chaos and disorder but it is also a world of campaigns and fights, a world of news and shining lights in the beds of the corrupt … Here is the entrance to a world of literature, laughter, music and love.
It opens doors for everybody except liars, cheats, thieves and bullies…
So, let’s preserve the village green, let’s preserve Desperate Dan, let’s preserve vaudeville and variety. And most of all let’s preserve integrity.
As the Kinks crooned: “Preserving the old ways from being abused Protecting the new ways, for me and for you What more can we do?“
PETER DAVIES, from NAAP and D.A.D.s, writes … beware of tricksters, blustering obfuscation and egos like bloated cadavers…
Recently, it has been necessary to take time out from swimming in the noxious cesspool of the ‘UK PA’ world.
I made the decision for me to focus on things close to home and prioritise them over and above my activities helping the real victims of alienation.
Time away from the ‘UK PA’ coal face has been no bad thing.
A good thing about Covid-induced isolation is that it has given many of us the first opportunity in a while to step back, take stock and reconsider our view of the landscape we live in.
After being shamelessly hijacked and mischaracterised, the terms ‘parental alienation’ or PA have become toxic and unnecessary brands which have been creatively adapted by too many spivs, abusers and tricksters.
The fact is that most INDIVIDUAL alienating behaviours have been found to be abusive by the courts.
What is the point of bunching several of these behaviours together: in a way that no two people can agree upon, giving a disputed list of abusive behaviours, a controversial label and campaigning for that label — which does not accurately describe the problem anyway — to be accepted by all three branches of government?
Meanwhile, the courts have already found that each of the most common alienating behaviours are abusive in their own right! Why obsess about proving a list of behaviours when just one will do? The case Re: L (A child) EWHC 867 (Fam) needs to be read and understood by all alienated parents because it is a fine example to illustrate my point. In this case, judged by Sir Andrew MacFarlane sitting in the High Court of the family division, the residence of a 9 year old boy was changed from the Midlands to Northern Ireland.
The principal justification for the change of residence in Re L was the emotional harm caused by just one alienating behaviour — a campaign of denigration — which was perpetrated mainly by the maternal grandmother. It did not need proof of PA, implacable hostility, any other list of behaviours or any other collective term. Parents do not need to prove these psychological constructs either. In its first paragraph the judgment remarked:
‘The appeal concerns the approach to be taken in a case which, on the judge’s finding, falls short of attracting the labels “intractable hostility” or “parental alienation”.’
In other words a change of residence was triggered at a much lower level than a finding of PA. The child was still able to enjoy time with his father at this time. At para 33 the judgment states:
‘…I have already summarised the Guardian’s observation as to L’s stated response about his father, which is wholly negative when with his mother, and, in contrast, his behaviour, which was entirely positive when father and son were seen together.’
In other words the court did not wait for PA to become established to the extent that the child was also negative about the targeted parent during contact with them. To do so would clearly be subjecting children to an avoidable and elevated risk of harm. The court acted relatively swiftly and decisively. In cases where there are alienating behaviours, early and positive court interventions are essential. Another point worth stressing is that the guardian deliberately avoided seeking the child’s, obviously conflicted and troubled, wishes and feelings. The judge reported. Also at para 33:
The Guardian did not directly ask L about the proposal that he should move to live with his father in Northern Ireland. In oral evidence, in response to a question from the judge, the Guardian explained that, although she had begun to investigate wishes and feelings using worksheets with L, she had not directly asked him about a move to Northern Ireland because she considered that it would be harmful to do so.
It is relatively common for courts and Cafcass to regard the views of deeply conflicted children as determinative. It is also common for courts to use the expressed wishes and feelings of troubled children as a human shield and an excuse for doing nothing. But, in Re L, we now have a clear view from an enlightened guardian telling us clearly that probing the voice of a child at such an emotionally fraught time for them is obviously harmful. Obtaining children’s views at such times is also utterly pointless because they are indistinguishable from the views of the alienating parent.
The courts have put this guidance on a plate for the benefit of all of us. We ignore such strong guidance at our peril. Clearly, no alienated parent in possession of their critical faculties, would ignore this advice either for the benefit of themselves or their children. Importantly, the judgment has since been cited by the Court of Appeal in Re S and the principle that a change of residence is NOT a measure of last resort was also firmly supported by the court of appeal.
These are all issues which we will be exploring shortly. The senior judiciary have given some very clear hints and guidance upon how to approach cases involving alienating behaviours. Only the hardest of thinking would ignore such advise and obsess about a pet idea instead. However, that is precisely what some are doing. By any standards it is absolutely bonkers and of no use whatsoever to genuinely alienated parents.
Therefore, those obsessing about a now toxic brand do so for a number of reasons and helping parents is most definitely NOT one of them.
For anyone that thinks of my impression of the ‘UK PA’ world as an exaggeration, jaded, or, that all people who claim to be alienated parents are actually being truthful, I would encourage them to take a look at the various pages of social media and twitter in particular. Before doing this I must warn readers that you will need a strong stomach because there are plenty of examples of behaviour which is truly sickening.
Whilst those who know me will attest to the fact that I am no fan of militant feminism or any other militant ‘-ism’ for that matter, it is a fact that some of these female campaigners against domestic abuse, have endured some dreadful examples of subjugation, coercion, bullying and unimaginable depths of human behaviour. Similarly, as a reward for simply being born on the wrong side of the tracks, we will all know of others who have also endured some of the worst abuse imaginable.
Having worked in the mental health system and seen the horrific consequences of childhood trauma, at first hand, I can appreciate how profoundly abuse affects the lives of its many victims. Thankfully, my own childhood was idyllic by comparison with what I have seen and heard of since. However, as a child, I was not very old before I had my first insight into the horrendous circumstances which others endured as children. I quickly realised how fortunate I was. Like most people, I know this teaches us something about understanding and appreciating the feelings of others. Also, like most others, it taught me that — no matter how sorry I felt about what others had endured — there were limits to my empathy because what had happened to others lay outside my own frame of reference. I could only imagine how it felt for them. Likewise, unless you are a truly alienated you cannot fully empathise with what it feels like to be alienated. First hand experience is invaluable: without it, we can ony guess.
Nonetheless, it does not take much emotional intelligence or empathetic ability to understand how abusive behaviour online could easily mirror and remind victims of the past abuse and trauma they experienced. Abusive behaviour also has the capacity to trigger painful reactions in these victims. Most of us understand and appreciate how horrid this could be because it triggers our core instincts. Without a frame of reference it is bad enough. Within a frame of reference it must be unimaginably awful: like a worst nightmare.
However, when we see the same parent ‘victims’ repeatedly and abusively hounding, hectoring and haranguing clearly damaged and recovering victims of domestic abuse it is truly stomach churning because we also realise that when people habitually go out of their way to do something it is usually because it does something for them, they obtain perverse gratification from it and they enjoy it. We realise that some sick minds actually get thrills, pleasure, kicks and even the occasional frisson of excitement from relentlessly goading and baiting victims of abuse. They may even derive some sort of reassurance or a superior feeling from it but, to most of us, such behaviour is as repugnant and abhorrent as outlawed ‘sports’ such as pig sticking, bearbaiting and dog fighting. How utterly worthless and inadequate must a person be to sink to targeting fellow human beings that have suffered awful abuse and have been horribly and permanently wounded? Frankly, how could such cruel and blood-lusting animals be even remotely capable of being even a good-enough parent? There are indeed instances where the court makes the right decision by limiting contact with unfit parents. The courts do not always get it wrong. They sometimes get it 100% correct.
In some further articles, which will soon follow, we will be explaining what being a truly alienated parent feels like besides explaining exactly why some of the popular campaigns regarding ‘UK PA’ are actually damaging to alienated children and parents. We urge you to read this information carefully, use your brains and refuse to behave like sheep or like magpies attracted to shiny objects.
Make up your own minds, and vote with your feet.
P.S We were relieved to hear that the house of Lords declined to support Baroness Meyer’s amendment to the domestic abuse bill which referred to ‘parental alienation’ as,
’… a parent’s behaviour deliberately designed to damage the relationship between a child of the parent and the other parent.’
The statutory guidance already refers to a list of individual and SPECIFIC alienating behaviours whilst avoiding bunching them together under an umbrella label. The amendment, if adopted would therefore have been a retrograde step. In addition the word ‘deliberately’ means that it would have become necessary to prove intent whereas the most recent case of Re S (Parental Alienation: Cult) [2020] Ewca Civ 568, at para 8 clearly states:
‘…the manipulation of the child by the other parent need not be malicious or even deliberate. It is the process that matters, not the motive. ‘
Besides undermining what had already been achieved by Philip Davies MP, the amendment would have made life far more difficult, for already struggling alienated parents, than the position already established in caselaw. On 24th March 2021 the bill had its 3rd reading in the House of Lords and only one amendment — to correct a drafting error – was made. We can therefore breath a sigh of relief that common sense and reason has prevailed over an obsession with PA and pet ideas.
Reading Between The Lines is a new section where readers can share memories of their hometowns… here Dorothy Banks shares a poem about Moston, a small suburb of Manchester.
Dorothy says: “I was born in Bute Street and lived in Moston for the rest of a very long life. Moston and Manchester are in my genes. Mother and grandmother lived their lives here too. One long rainy day some of that realization turned into memories and ultimately into ‘Pulse of our City’. A lot of our history has been torn down, carelessly – yes, without care, over the years – but you can’t bulldoze memories. This is what it was like.”
The brother of ‘lost boy’ Keith Bennett has posed the question – how can police be denied access to secret documents about a murder case?
Alan Bennett said: “How can any information be seen as anything other than essential to an investigation?”
He recently met with the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, to discuss the new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill which is designed to force people and organisations to reveal all relevant information to police.
Alan and many others have been battling for years to get Liverpool solicitor Robin Makin to open two briefcases entrusted to him by Moors murderer Ian Brady just before he died.
It is possible the briefcases, kept securely in storage, could contain clues to where Brady and his monstrous lover Myra Hindley buried the body of Keith, who was 12 when he was snatched by the pair in Ashton-u-Lyne,
Backing the move, Alan said: “I am really confident that the part of the Bill that is of specific interest to me – and will be to other victims and their families in the future – regarding the case of Keith will not be challenged.”
Relatives have demanded that the cases should be opened and access to the hidden papers given.
Police say they want access to the Samsonite briefcases which Brady kept locked in the bedroom at high security hospital Ashworth Prison in Maghull.
He spent most of his life locked up.
Solicitor Mr Makin rarely comments on the cases.. But a district judge sitting at Manchester Magistrates’ Court had refused a police appeal to access the cases because Brady and Hindley are dead so there is no chance of a prosecution.
I have an update after contacting the Home Office again today for answers as to what happens next after the Police, Crime, Sentencing And Courts Bill was passed after the second reading yesterday.
Alan said: “The Bill will move on for more detailed scrutiny and MP’s will be able to propose amendments and some may be voted on in later debates.
“It is hoped the Bill will receive Royal Assent by the end of the year.
“I have to admit that the timescale is longer than I expected/hoped for but at least things are in motion and moving in the right direction after years of arguing for justice for victims and families as opposed to the perpetrators and their representatives having more rights than the victims and families.”
Alan said: “Keith’s story will be known to many, but what may not be known is the struggle which our family has gone through to try and seek closure.
“I have fought long and hard on behalf of my brother to bring about the necessary changes and to ensure his case is not forgotten.
“I want to ensure a positive legacy for Keith, so I was pleased to meet with the Home Secretary and to hear about the work being done to support my endeavours.”
Priti Patel said: “I can only imagine the years of pain and turmoil that the Bennett family have faced following Keith’s tragic murder – no family should have to suffer the heartache of not knowing where their loved ones are buried.
“I am determined to give police the powers they need to access all available evidence and hopefully bring some closure to families in cases like these.”
Today Britain was silent as the Queen lead a sad salute to the 126,172 of us who died from Covid. We have just marked the first anniversary of national lockdown. Boris Johnson also offered his condolences to families who lost loved ones to the virus
What a tragedy this has become for the world. But this is not a time for recriminations and blame and spouting of conspiracies and lies … it’s a time to reflect on something manufactured or natural which has almost certainly changed our lives forever.
But what can we do at the moment? Riot? Set police cars on fire? Anarchy over everything ‘mainstream’? Refuse to wear masks as a personal protest? Refuse vaccines? Like headless-chicken Europe turn a true crisis into a political Viking’s head to be booted while millions wait for a jab of hope?
No. None of those are the way forward at the moment. But the Great Debate over the Great Reset must begin soon.
We are teetering on the edge of that mythological state of dystopia … Dystopia ‘an imagined state or society where there is great suffering or injustice’.
Dystopia is a society bereft of reason … and certainly, without conspiracies and Biblical prophecy, Covid is bereft of reason. But it is here in any form you imagine.
Let’s try for an instant to find something beautiful in our crumbling lives … we did last march when we published this pohtopgraph by Alexander Petrosyan, probably one of the best photographers working in Russia today.
He was born
in the Ukraine in 1965 but has lived in St Petersburg for almost half
a century. And it shows … he knows his city warts and all.
Lonely Planet said ‘the
sheer grandeur and history of Russia’s imperial capital never fail
to amaze, but this is also a city with a revolutionary spirit’.
And Alexander’s
photographs capture not only the grandeur but the squalor and despair
of this city of five million souls… he also captures the city’s
pride and its memories of revolution.
Alexander, who worked for
his local newspaper for many years, has been published in the best
publications across the world … and he agreed to us publishing his
work… we will be returning often.
Did ex-child boss Anne ignore parental alienation as she told Boris to end institutional bias?
Former Children’s Commissioner for England Anne Longfield has talked openly about the reasons the government regularly fails to help our vulnerable children.
She also pointed out an ‘institutional bias against children and families’, particularly in the Treasury.
This means, she said, resources are not where spent where they should be to create the most impact on life.
Sadly, she did not mention Parental Alienation directly when she delivered her final speech as commissioner online and challenged the Prime Minister to be is serious about children.
But she demanded has put children at the heart of future plans, including the country’s Covid future.
Meanwhile, recent research headed by Longfield, attacked the disruption to children who are forced to relocate miles from their families and homes and schools by Family Courts.
More extreme cases of abuse and criminality, of a kind which most people hoped belonged to the past, happen with frightening frequency, she said.
Longfield said the government is guilty of ‘deep-rooted institutional ambivalence’ to the 78,150 children it obliged to look after.
Meanwhile, the number of children in care continues to rise – by 21% since 2010 – but council budgets are being constantly squeezed..
As the report came out the County Councils Network admitted that 27% of its members were planning reductions in children’s services.
In 2018, 5,400 children were moved more than 50 miles from their homes; 8,000 children had at least three placements in a single year.
Leigh G Banks is a journalist and broadcaster and spent many years investigating child sex abuse in the UK. He worked on the Rochdale and Cleveland abuse scandals, has investigated paedophiles in churches, Satanic abuse and exposed politicians and celebrity perverts.
Here he takes a look at the racist myth that Britain’s child sex grooming gangs are predominantly Asian.
Leigh’s explosive new book, Ravine, investigates British journalism and analyses the decades he spent hunting down high profile paedophiles and low-life perverts. It will be published soon.
A Home Office report a few months ago exposed the stereotyping of ‘grooming gangs’ exploiting white girls in the UK.
The horror of grooming gangs has been used for more than a decade as a major part of a silver-bullet arsenal of hatred against the Asian population of the British Isles.
Last year’s report has been ignored by right-wing propagandists who believe their own vicious agendas and insult any truth that tries to get in their way.
The Home Office report, while not addressing all issues of grooming, gives verified evidence that makes it clear there is nothing credible in claiming that any particular ethnic group is mainly responsible for child sex exploitation.
It culled its data from police forces across the UK, local authorities and many reputable organisations.
And, damningly to the right-wing racist claims, Home Office researchers have found ‘that group-based offenders are most commonly white’.
The mythology that Asian men were responsible for exploiting white girls began in 2011 when The Times said it was exposing an establishment cover-up of sex abuse.
Times doyen Andrew Norfolk claimed that we had a ‘secret problem’ of Muslims being sexual predators of white girls. It became a firm fixture in the catalogue of grievances of the extreme far-right.
It is also a claim perpetuated by the British Press for many years. The remedy, as usual, was to publish the report last year with no real comment.
The report makes it crystal clear that this is a scandal with absolutely no substance at all.
It took two years to put together and concludes there is no legitimacy in claiming that Muslims, Asians, Pakistanis or any other ethnic group, are disproportionately involved ‘group-based child sexual exploitation’.
The common denominator is not immigration, race, culture or Islam. It is in fact to do with power, exploitation, patriarchy and opportunity.
And a complete disregard for children.
It really is time to call off this outrageous demonisation of cultures. We need finally to accept what credible research has been telling us for years: that child sexual abuse is not a ‘Muslim problem’ but is the shame of all our communities.
An estimated one in 13 adults in England has been sexually abused as a child. In 2019/20, police across the UK recorded more than 73,518 sexual offences .
The simple and appalling truth is that children have been – and are being – raped and sexually assaulted, often by family members and other trusted figures like teachers.
We have to stop fixating on the lurid and false distraction of ‘Muslim grooming gangs’.
How are those unsubstantiated claims helping our children?
Don’t shoot the messengers, join in the rant… do Europe’s politicians need a jab to the nose for refusing 746,000,000 people a shot in the arm? And what about euthanasia? Do we have a right to say when our time is done? Can it ever by kinder for our friends, family and society in general to call the shots on when you leave this life? And don’t forget the tunnel under the Irish Sea.
Last night – well 3am this morning actually – I was feeling a bit despondent, so I was flicking through YouTube looking for music to lift my mood … I went through the usuals, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave and of course His Royal Bobness.
Then I rekindled my relationship with the lumpy bumpy Pork Pie hat-wearing happy hippy baggy jeans-wearing, overweight, scraggy haired Darryl Hannah pulling, goofy looking wild god of rock’n’roll Neil Young. Wow!
In fact we’d just watched Hannah’s strange film Paradox, about Neil and his band, the Outlaws.
Paradox? Rather B*ll*x! A throw-back to 60s and 70s Grateful Dead happenings without any real charm – except for Neil and the Outlaws, particularly the central section when they play an extended version of a song I’d not heard before and have forgotten the title of. Something like Seeds of Life.
Stunning! Incredible! Outrageous! Powerful! Worth watching the whole film for…
Anyway, it got me thinking… what are people doing to our world?
Neil arrives 3 mins 50 secs in … amazing!
All my life, it’s been my job to expose cant and criminality, lies and the lairs of corruption, power and politics, abuse and control.
And today, as I sit locked down in my penthouse prison high above my chosen mountain city of Poprad in Slovakia, I started to think about the European politicians playing with the lives of 746 million people, playing Russian roulette with Covid-19 and the jabs which might save us.
Who do they think they are?
Well, I’ll tell you – they are the very people I’ve spent my life exposing: Self-serving, controlling, lying, cheating, pocket-filling bl**dy clots who don’t give a flying Zeneca f*!k about me and you hiding like clean thieves behind moronic masks!
And then I started to think about all the New Age keyboard warriors who think they are pundits who deny the truth in the Free Press and devour the idiotic agenda-driven lies and dangerousness of social media and Donald Trump without a thought.
Those who had the chance at free speech but thought that just meant you were free to spout obscenities and insults at anybody and anything in a recrafting of languages that are an insult to our writers, historians, publishers and readers. By the inarticulate patwah now used as hieroglyphics they are literally rewriting the very basics of communication. Their very own language.
So, as I surfed through Neil Young vids on Youtube, I suddenly I heard the first notes of Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World … I flicked it full-screen.
It was Eddie Vidor and his band… then 3 minutes 50 secs later (stick with it) Neil Young strode on stage and took over.
He played the life out of a song going back to the Eighties as the Berlin Wall came down. It became an anthem of politics in Europe – an anthem of honesty in power and the struggle for all kinds of freedoms we all deserve.
Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World.
Well, let’s us all keep on doing that as the world is reset, as we face dystopia and potential death.
