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Court ruling on parental discipline stuns, raises questions
of right to raise children 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 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. "It sounds unbelievable," sputtered Gene Colman, a veteran Toronto family lawyer who founded the Canadian Journal of Family Law. "I've never heard of this before." "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," Mr. 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 maybe everyone should take a Valium. There are few signs that Canadian courts are likely to follow Judge Tessier's lead. "Family court judges are sort of loath 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 in which 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, Ms. Beaudoin said. After discovering that, the father told his daughter she couldn't go on the three-day school trip, which ended yesterday. According to Ms. 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 the ruling. According to Ms. Beaudoin, Judge 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. he father, who is appealing the decision, was "devastated" by the ruling, Ms. Beaudoin said. He is refusing to take his daughter back "because he has no authority over her." Ms. Beaudoin said she was "really, really surprised" by the decision. "The mother should have been encouraged to respect the father's decision. Instead, the court has encouraged this family game, where you can use the child to gain points." But Ms. Beaudoin said she didn't want to overstate the case's impact.
"I don't think most children will sue their parents." However, Dave Quist, executive director of the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, thinks the shift to a rights-based society is undermining parental authority. "When the state, or a court as an adjudicator of the state, takes away a parent's right to raise their child in the way they see fit, I think that's a scary proposition," he said. Four years ago, the Supreme Court banned corporal punishment of teenagers and children under two. But it upheld the so-called "spanking law" for children of other ages. Ms. Milne was the lawyer who tried to convince the Supreme Court to ban corporal punishment in 2004. On that issue, she said, "we err on the side of protecting parents as opposed to protecting children." Mr. Quist worries that we've lost sight of parents' right to raise and discipline children within certain boundaries. "If the courts start to interfere in that, I think that pulls children out of the family and more into a pretty generic, cold world of the state. "When a child can go to court to demand that they go on a school trip, where does that end? It becomes a little bit ridiculous at some point." Mr. Quist said overzealous intervention by child-welfare authorities is a growing problem. "There have been many families ruined or hurt by state intervention as opposed to protection of the family as a whole." Mr. Dunning said child-welfare agencies began taking more children into care after a few high-profile inquests in the 1990s. In a period of about six years, the number in care in Ontario went from about 10,000 to nearly 20,000, he said. In the past couple of years, the pendulum has begun to shift toward keeping families together and getting them help to address their problems, he said. Mark Zarecki, executive director of Jewish Family Services of Ottawa, said the state sometimes doesn't intervene enough to protect children. "Many times we've referred cases to the Children's Aid Society when we think there's a danger to the child, and they're not always able to intervene because of legal constraints."
Judge lifts 12-year-old's grounding The Gatineau father of a 12-year-old girl who won a court decision overruling a paternal punishment is appealing the decision, his lawyer said yesterday. The girl took her father to Quebec Superior Court after he said she couldn't go on a school trip for disobeying his orders to stay off the Internet. The man's lawyer, Kim Beaudoin, said the issue is about restoring paternal
authority and should have been dismissed by Justice Suzanne Tessier, who
told the girl Friday she could make the trip. "If a parent goes too far, there's youth court," Ms. Beaudoin said. "I don't think this tribunal was the proper forum for a decision like this one." In any event, the child had broken a number of house rules, she noted. After the father cut her access to the Internet for chatting on websites he tried to block, she used a friend's Internet connection to post pictures of herself in clothing "inappropriate for a child her age," Ms. Beaudoin said. "It's for her protection," she said of the father's disciplinary measures, mentioning the arrest of a Belgian man in Montreal found in a hotel with a 13-year-old girl last weekend. "If we don't learn at the age of 12 there are rules to follow, when do we?" Ms. Beaudoin said.
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