Judge James Munby

This judge imprisoned Mark Harris. We give a newspaper report and a press release from Tony Coe of Equal Parenting Council to explain the background and what Munby has done and said.

Mark Harris is a man who asked a court to protect his interests against the malevolance of others. Instead of obtaining protection, as with so many other honest decent men, he received systematic persecution.

We believe that the best that could possibly be said about Munby is that he is badly informed, or not at all informed, while being paid extremely well to ensure that he is appropriately informed.

Further, we believe that whatever are the facts, it is time that our Government took decisive action, restored justice, and compensated Mark Harris.

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Judge brands 'martyr' father as a charlatan By Joshua Rozenberg, Legal Editor

A FATHER who "cast himself as a martyr" in a high-profile legal battle over his three daughters was described by a High Court judge yesterday as an "unprincipled charlatan" who should have no direct contact with them. Mr Justice Munby said the children's welfare was best served by them having no direct contact with Mark Harris, 42, a driving instructor from Plymouth. He referred to one of a number of demonstrations by supporters of Mr Harris outside the homes of various judges. The demonstrations were publicised on the internet.

Posters were displayed criticising Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, president of the Family Division. One read: "If BSE-infected meat is bad for kids . . . why is this mad cow in charge of Family Courts?"

Mr Justice Munby, sitting in the Family Division in London, said: "No amount of intimidation, whether demonstrating outside their homes, vilifying them on the internet or bombarding them with offensive letters, will have any effect on the judges or their families, or deflect the judges from their sworn duty to do right to all manner of people without fear or favour affection or ill-will, or alter their approaches to the cases they are called upon to try."

The judge said Mr Harris's daughters lived with their mother following her divorce from him. The daughters wanted and enjoyed contact with their father. The judge said that the mother did not significantly oppose contact, but "all three daughters have ended up opposed to and refusing to participate".

He said: "Mr Harris is the author of his own immense misfortune. He is also, even though he probably cannot recognise it, the cause of the blighting of his daughters' lives." The mother and children have been left, he said, with a "beleaguered feeling of being stalked and harassed".

The judge said one reason he was giving his ruling in open court was that the case had been promoted as a cause celebre both by Mr Harris and by a number of campaigning organisations, including Families Need Fathers, the Equal Parenting Council, the UK Men's Movement and the group set up by Mr Harris himself, Dads Against Discrimination.

Mr Justice Munby said: "Mr Harris has cheerfully cast himself and allowed and encouraged others to cast him in the role of martyr. I believe there is a public interest in the members of these organisations knowing just how they have been bamboozled and cynically manipulated by a man, devoid of all moral scruple, who is singularly ill-suited either to assume the martyr's crown or to act as an ambassador for such organisations.

"Mr Harris has manipulated the press by feeding it tendentious accounts of these proceedings, enabled to do so because he has been able hypocritically to shelter behind the very privacy of the proceedings which hitherto has prevented anyone correcting his misrepresentations."

Mr Harris, who is serving a 10-month sentence for contempt of court, was in court for the ruling, as were a number of his supporters. The judge rejected an application by Mr Harris to "purge" his contempt and release him from prison "to start with a clean sheet".

Acknowledgement : The Daily Telegraph Saturday 28 April 2001

In response to the international outcry against the 10-month imprisonment of Mark (45) for contempt of court, Judge Munby issued a public Judgment last Friday, 27 April, in an attempt to justify the continued imprisonment of this devoted father.

The Judgment amounts to a comprehensive assassination of Mark's character. It suggests that the parenting organizations and their members that have spoken out on Mark's behalf have been "bamboozled" by "an unprincipled charlatan". People who take the trouble to read this lengthy Judgment (which is the size of a manuscript for a short book) are likely to form a distinctly unfavourable opinion of Mark. This was the intention.

People who have direct experience of the unbelievable bias in the family courts against non-custodial parents are unlikely to be so convinced. Mark's case has been described in the media as BRITAIN'S WORST ACCESS CASE. He has been struggling for over 7 years to parent his 3 daughters against impossible odds. He has been to court some 115 times. His persistence is unprecedented. Most parents give up thoroughly disillusioned after the first few court appearances. Some commit suicide.

Judge Munby describes his Judgment as setting out the truth which the public has the right to know. (What is interesting is that outraged parents are banned, on pain of severe penalties, from talking to the media because it may harm the children. But when a Judge comes in for public criticism, this rule is easily and summarily brushed aside because "the public has the right to know the truth".)

However, this Judgment is not necessarily "the truth". It is certainly far short of THE WHOLE TRUTH. It is this Judge's self-serving view of what the truth is.

Certainly, it is a study in how the family courts and their servants regard a parent who is trying to remain involved in raising his children against unrelenting opposition from a custodial parent who wants him out the picture.

Any non-custodial parent who has been in this position will know that, in the eyes of the family courts, they can't do right for doing wrong. If they go to court, they are harassing the custodial parent and emotionally pressurizing the children. If they withdraw, they are deserting the children. If they send gifts, it is emotional blackmail; or it was the wrong gift; or they gave too much to one and not enough to the other. If they don't send gifts, they clearly don't care about the children. If they try and see the children when they don't have a court order for access, they are criticized. If they try and get a court order, they are criticized. If they write letters to the children, they will be scrutinized with a view to finding ammunition that can be used in court. If they phone their children, they are wrong; if they don't phone they are also wrong, and so on.

What ever a non-custodial parent does or does not do, can and will be used against him or her, to justify restricting parental involvement or total exclusion.

Those who pursue reasonable parenting time with their children by continuing to go to court, will, in time, be described as "obsessive". They will be accused of harassment, of putting their own needs before their children's. Judge Munby has added a new one - he describes Mark as someone who "stalks" his children.

Mark is simply a father who has refused to accept that the courts could do this to him and his children. He has refused to go quietly. He has protested about the way he has been treated in all sorts of colourful and unorthodox ways. But he is a loving, devoted father who has had his children taken away from him and their minds poisoned against him.

Unlike members of the judiciary and the multitude of family court practitioners who feed off these tragic cases, Mark was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

He does not have all the advantages of wealth and an expensive education to draw on. He simply says, "I want to see my kids." Munby and his ilk have turned this natural parental aspiration into something quite sinister, relying on psychobabble instead of addressing the core issue in these cases on a common-sense basis.

Judge Munby should have asked how we ever reached this point, something which is entirely absent from his huge volume which purports to tell the world "the truth". His so-called investigation of this case only scratched the surface, but failed to peel back the layers that lay beneath.

Mark had good access to his children after the separation. They wanted to live with him. But, when his access was obstructed, in typical fashion, the family courts system comprehensively failed to do anything about it.

This was not a case where there was any question that Mark should be excluded - his children loved being with him, and court professionals observed this at the time. But not a finger was lifted to SUPPORT and maintain his access when he complained.

As so often happens, the family courts allowed the situation to deteriorate to the point where the children themselves withdrew, thereby dooming Mark's paternal position.

Understandably, Mark protested in the strongest terms against the family courts and refused to let the matter drop. He lost all confidence in the courts and unwisely (but some might think understandably) disregarded court orders that had accumulated over the passage of the litigation. For example, he greeted his children when he saw them, and gave one a birthday gift when she visited him without first having it vetted by social services. He sought out opportunities to catch a glimpse of his children.

For doing these entirely understandable, human things, Mark has been jailed for 10 months. He has tried apologizing to Judge Munby (to "purge his contempt" in legalese) by letter and in person.

Mark points out, as he did in court last Friday, that the mother persistently ignored access orders, and nothing was done about it.

Mark's protests outside courts and Judges' houses and his breaches of orders, gave the family courts the perfect opportunity to blame Mark for turning his own children against him. "It's all his own fault. No wonder his children don't want to see him!", they would have us believe.

Fortunately we have enough experience of these cases not to buy that argument for one second. It is the family courts that are failing the children and parents concerned on a massive scale. The calibre of the people who protested outside Judge Munby's house last weekend is the clearest indication of the rightness of our campaign - lawyers, company directors, doctors, surgeons, mothers and grandparents - all demanding the resignation of the Lord Chancellor, Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, and Judge Munby for failing to implement SHARED PARENTING in accordance with Parliament's wishes and intentions. Such people have to be pushed a long way before taking to the streets in protest!

Munby sent him back to Pentonville in handcuffs, insisting that 10 months was the appropriate sentence. Mark's distraught mother, believing he would leave the court with her, a free man, was left to speak to the media alone on camera on the steps of the High Court.

The Court of Appeal will hear Mark's appeal against sentence on Wednesday, 2 May 2001.