Fathers' Rights Movement in The United Kingdom - "Safety"

"Safety"

One thesis is that children should only remain resident with one parent if it is considered safe to do so; otherwise it is generally better to have both parents involved in bringing up their children. Whilst this might seem to be reasonable, it is unfortunately turned around by some influential politicians to mean that the children should remain exclusively under the control of the mother unless the father can prove that he is "safe", i.e. that he has not had accusations of domestic violence levelled against him. If he has, then he is considered "unsafe" until a finding of fact can be made in his favour, i.e. that the allegations were unfounded.

And, there is considerable confusion surrounding the issue of "safety" by politicians in the context that is used to deny parental access, particularly as it is a fact that most children's injuries occur in the living room at home, according to statistics published by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), and fewer malicious injuries to children are done by fathers than by mothers, according to an NSPCC report in 2000 called Child Maltreatment in the United Kingdom: A Study of the Prevalence of Child Abuse and Neglect, which stated that "most violence occurred at home (78 per cent) with mothers being primarily responsible in 49 per cent of cases and fathers in 40 per cent of cases".