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State promoted parental alienation | Bettina Arndt | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: State promoted parental alienation
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When I look at what is parental
alienation, I think it's simply what it
says it is. It's a deliberate attempt by
one parent to alienate the children from
the other parent, poisoning or
attempting to destroy that relationship.
I mean, I it's a waste of time to fuss
over definitions. The community knows
exactly what we're talking about if we
use this common sense term. Um, so going
on to I'm going to actually just
incorporate the questions JD into Yeah,
here. So, as to my my position on
parental alienation and what do I base
that on, I actually had experience of
parental alienation an awfully long time
ago, nearly half a century ago when I
was in my first marriage. My um and
became a stepmother and watched my
husband going through the absolute agony
of dealing with being alienated from his
children, being not allowed to see them.
Um, I hear this him crying in the night,
calling out for them. The misery of not
being able to even see them at Christmas
when he was able to deliver the presents
at night, including this train set he'd
worked on for months for his little boy.
Uh, I was out of anguish for him and and
also just living with with him through
all that. We were really lucky. Things
moved on. We ended up with joint
custody. So that was a long time ago.
But since then, probably for the last 40
years, I've spent most of my time
talking to men and talked to so many
men, hundreds of men who've got gone
through all of this. And I now receive
dozens of letters every week from men
who are desparing at the whole
experience of being cut off from their
children. And as Glenn said, I mean,
we've got this this very clear link now,
data showing this clear link between
suicide rates and relationship breakup.
Um, you know, and and it's an issue that
unfortunately hasn't received nearly as
much attention as it should have. Of
course, as everybody's saying, women
suffer ventilation, too. There are men
who actively seek to punish their
partners by destroying their
relationships with their children. And
you know, women in that situation, the
anguish is just as real. Um, but what
really concerns me is the broader
societal aspect of this absolutely
dreadful issue. The fact that we have
state sanctioned alienation of children
and that's a consequence of the
weaponization of our justice system
against men. We have
a children growing up with their fathers
and with all the proven risks of kids of
growing up in fatherless families. And
that's the result in my view of this
distinct and increasing bias in our
justice system against
men. As you said, a few months ago, I
made a uh I was very lucky. I was able
to do an interview with a former family
court judge Stuart Lindsay uh for
YouTube and he was very outspoken about
what's going on here saying that the
family court system is in enormous
trouble because of promotion of feminist
ideology in the family law act and at
the heart of this issue is domestic
violence namely this feminist claim that
all other considerations regarding the
best interests of children must be slept
swept aside by the need to protect
youngsters from dangerous dads. And of
course, what this does is it
incentivizes false allegations of
violence because it gives women immense
power throughout the family law process.
Oh, to have dad removed from the home,
denied contact with the children,
sometimes for years before the matter is
resolved in the family court. And what
Lindsay told me is that judges are
enormous under enormous pressure to bend
the knee to the notion that there is
this huge risk to children from their
fathers. And there's simply no good
evidence to support the idea that this
is the case for the majority of
Australian families. We have a the best
survey on domestic violence in this
country comes from the Bureau of
Statistics personal safety survey and which
which finds
finds
only.7% of women say they've had been
physically assaulted had physical
violence from their partner exartner in
the last year but it means 99% of
Australian men aren't violent aren't
physically violent towards their partner
and what we see in our community. In the
public narrative is this greatly
inflated figures which are based on the
notion of the epidemic of violence using
definitions of violence that endlessly
expanded to include emotional abuse,
psychological abuse, financial abuse,
spiritual abuse, and of course now coercive
coercive
control. And it's really it's obvious
that our justice system protects must
protect women from uh dangerous men,
women and children from dangerous men.
Most cases involving violence protection
orders are now based on these much less
serious behaviors that I've just
mentioned or on false
allegations. All the evidence shows that
women are just as likely to be
perpetrators of this behavior as men
are. We've had 50 years now of
international research showing this.
There was a major meta analysis. This
was the partners of use state of
knowledge project based on 1700
peer-reviewed studies and that showed
most physical violence is two-way. The
women just as likely to instigate it as
the men. Of course, when physical
violence does occur, there's no question
that women are more likely to be harmed
due to men's greater strength. But this
two-way violence is what our police are
seeing when they go into violent homes.
And they're now under enormous pressure
to ignore the female violence and only
charge men or to issue violence
protection orders to women even when the
evidence is suggesting that they might
be exaggerating or making things up.
I've done an bunch of interviews
recently with police with police
prosecutors talking about how unhappy
they are to be put into a situation
where they're forced to ignore the truth
that they see before them and only
believe women. And what Stuart Lindsy
told me was that when these cases are
properly examined in court, most of the
allegations are either withdrawn or fall
apart. But the real point is that these
allegations have been really
successfully used to deny men contact
with their children often for years. Um
which means that children that the
fathers are unbelievably disadvantaged
when it comes to arguing before the
family court about meaningful share of
the children. You know the status quo
argument is what we hear all the time
and that car carries huge weight. The
children barely know that. They haven't
seen him for years. Oh, of course he
must the children must now stay with
mom. Must mom must have most of the
care. I mean, it's a very effective
means of driving men out of children's
lives. This is state sponsored parental
alienation and it's a really easy route
to shut men out. If men are really
lucky, they are allowed to pay for
supervised contact with their children
where every interaction is monitored and
can be used against them in court. I
mean, I've talked to men about this
system. I mean, utterly outrageous
system and most men don't last the
distance. It pushes most men further out
of the children's lives and they give up.
up.
What we've seen over the last few
decades is governments, particularly our
Labor government, as Stuart Lindsay
pointed out, very actively promoting
this process. Last year, we saw an
outrageous assault on our family law
act, which removed almost all the
provisions that have made Australia a
world leader in supporting children's
rights to have two parents involved in
their care after divorce. I mean I I
remember for years we'd see people come
to Australia to look at our system which
enshrined that right for children and it
all was pushed out the door when they
removed almost all mention of fathers
from the family law act and what have
they done since then they've decided to
give more assets to to victims of
domestic violence and Lindsay talked to
me at length about that that this sets
the judges an impossible task, he said,
trying to find evidence of the impact of
domestic violence often over decades of
a marriage. Only result of all of this,
he says, is going to be not trials
needlessly extended, more billable hours
for expensive lawyers and more pain the
family's concerned. And all of this
amounts to massive state enforced
parental alienation on an enormous scale.
scale.
What really scares me is no one is
allowed to talk about this and if you do
talk about this you get into a hell of a
lot of trouble as our found. Um the last
few years there was a few years ago you
survey showing Australia has the second
highest rate of false allegations in the
world mainly relating to custody
matters. We have an utterly
dysfunctional family law system which
has always refused to enforce parenting
orders. Every mother knows that she can
blatantly flaunt a parenting order. Dad
can drive halfway across Australia, turn
up on her door to see the kids, you can
say, "Sorry, you're not seeing them."
And nothing will happen to him. uh
Stuart Lindsay described actually
deciding to send a woman in that
situation who flawed orders again and
again and again. She decided he decided
to send her to prison and in fact did
this in a Twitter because no one had
ever done it before and they didn't know
quite what the procedure would be which
says a great deal to me. Uh the other
issue that he raised with me is the
issue of the failure of the court to
give penalties for for false allegations
for proven cases of perjury. And there
is a system in place. These cases can be
referred to the attorney general's
department and what happens the attorney
general's partner refuses to act. I just
want to mention of course along with the
domest the the uh domestic violence
accusations we've also got
sexual and there was a classic case of
this I talked about recently uh a man
called Adrien Granger that's the the
name the family court gave it to him
really interesting story his wife
accused him of sexual sexual assault on
their young daughter and she the
daughter was immediately awarded a
$10,000 uh victim's compensation. And
even though there were three subsequent
family court cases where three judges
determined that those claims are
fabricated, Granger is unable to get our
state to remove that decision to give
this woman to give the child when she
turns 18 this $10,000. as Graes said and
that means the state is telling the
daughter that he's an abuser
uh and the system is supporting this.
It's just crazy. What what was
fascinating about that particular case
is the mother relocated to the UK during
CO with the daughter and even though
there was a hate convention case and
ordered to return to the with the child
to Australia which an order she defied a
number of times. Um what what happened
instead is the the family court has
ruled that she can actually relocate now
permanently to the UK with a child. And
so the mother has been rewarded for
actively engaging in in alienation of
that father from the child particularly
with those false
allegations. I mean it drives me crazy.
We have a system which is totally out of
control. Queensland police are
responding to a domestic violence order
now. domestic violence call every three
minutes. Up to 90% of police time
according to the police union union is
spent on domestic
violence. And what they're doing now is
seeking orders which will enable them to
not even need to go near a court. They
can just hand out domestic violence
protection orders like parking tickets.
Uh, and probably the most frightening
thing for me is also the fact that it's
so easy to set up breaches of domestic
violence orders. Um, you know, if you
know what if if you know whether your
husband or ex-husband works or whatever,
you can just turn up in near to where he
will be and that can be a breach of the
order and a couple of those breaches and
he gets sent to prison.
42% of prisoners in New South Wales are
on remand which means they h are locked
up without a trial and most of them are
domestic violence cases. I was talking
to a man the other day who was
imprisoned over a false allegation. He's
been let out now and he's his cellmate
was in prison for sending his daughter a birthday
birthday
card. So moving on, what questions are
required? What changes are required? And
why um to me what happens in these
battles over individual couples dealing
with this really vexed issue aren't
nearly as important as state what I've
been talking about tonight state
sponsored alienation. That's what's
causing most damage to children in this
country. And we need start talking about
this. We need to start exposing what's
going on here. Most people don't even
know the sort of facts I've been
discussing tonight. Our media does a
terrific job censoring public discussion
of this issue and promoting the believe
all women
narrative. We need to lobby politicians
and we have to change the laws. But do
we really want to live in a society
where police are responding to spending
90% of their time on what are often
false allegations or accusations based
on really minor misbehavior that
certainly doesn't need police
intervention? Every week I have lawyers
come to me wanting to talk about these
issues who are really concerned about
what's going on here. And last year we
had a conference on restoring the
presumption of innocence.
We I'm doing my best and my followers I
have hundreds of people wanting to get
involved in trying to change what's
going on here. And so when when the
question is what what can you do if
you're interested in this issue that
concerns me state sponsored parential
alienation maybe you'd like to help me
with this process of change to trying to
change the public narrative and do
something about this very dangerous
situation where our justice system have
been so weaponized against men. I have a
a new system I call the armed army of
volunteers working in various areas,
lawyers working together to try to
change the con the way that the laws are
being implemented, police officers
working together. There's lots you can
do. So, if you'd like to get involved
involved, have a look at my I have a
Substack blog and you can learn all
about the art army. Thanks very much. Am
I I was thinking I'm probably one of
Speaking with passion, Patina, and um
thank you. I'm an angry actress. I
didn't used to be. I used to do this
really carefully. And the older I've
got, the crankier.
It's very interesting, Patina, because
we've got both professionals and parents
that are joining us online. There's a
lot of professionals in the room there
in Perth with Pete and Glenn. And
there's it I've got a lot of follow-up
questions in the Q&A for both yourself
and Glenn that have come from this. But
what's interesting particularly is a
couple of moms have actually made
comments saying it's very hard to hear
what you've just said. But I can
actually relate to a lot of what you've
said, Patina, because I've been through
some of it, but it hurts to hear how
much that's being turned against dads
because I can understand it from what
I've been through. So I think Glenn
mentioned that also this happens to to
moms as well, but it's very interesting
when we stand in the middle and we
address what we're seeing. So, thank you
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