My View: Parental Alienation and the South African Law

I tried to phone Xaynee yesterday.

When Johan answered the phone, he was immediately on the attack. I could hardly get a word in as he was going on about how rude it was of me to put down the phone on him the other day. I interrupted him and asked if I could please speak to Xaynee, so he told me "No, you can't."

I just said "Ok.", then I put down the phone and continued with the ironing. Then I thought, well, ok then...just another thing I am going to make a note of, but I wanted to know WHY I couldn't speak to her.

I phoned him again and again he was shouting at me, again I interrupted and asked him for a reason. He replied that it was because I was rude to him and started going on about the fact that I'm not giving him any money for her, I just put the phone down on him again.

I'm sorry, I just don't need that treatment any longer. I don't HAVE to talk to him, I only want to speak to my child.

After that I started chatting with my dad on MSN. Yeah... I decided that it's better to make peace with my parents, although they don't offer me the kind of support that I really need, at least they want me to be happy.

Exactly 20:00 SA time I phoned Dolf's cellphone to speak to Lili. It was off.
Tried again, off.
So I tried phoning the house phone, twice, no answer.
I was getting worked up, I realized I wasn't going to talk to Lili, again.
Then I phoned her stepmom's number, here they kept pressing the 'ignore' button or something because I got the same message 3 times that "The other person has cleared."
I tried phoning the other numbers again and finally gave up.

I got back on MSN and my dad said that he will try to phone from his number.

This was between 20:15 and 20:30.

After a while my dad came back and told me that my mom phoned from one of his other cellphone numbers.

Dolf's mother picked up the phone and told my mom that Dolf and Elsabe were visiting them for the weekend, but that Lili was already asleep and that Dolf said my mom can phone on Monday at 20:00. So my mom asked if she couldn't just phone the next day (which is today), and Dolf's mom replied that Dolf is refusing that Lili be bothered during a weekend. She also made the following comments to my mom: "You phone from strange numbers hey?" and "There is a new agreement between Renata and Dolf's attorney now".

To be honest, this type of thing doesn't even surprise me anymore.

My dad said to me that he's sure Lili knows what they're doing, but she can't do anything about it. That made me feel better, I remember how Lili told me that she knew and I mentioned it to my dad. I also explained to him that I am going to sue Dolf for the total amount of the maintenance that he is in arrears with.

I also told my dad that there is no agreement with an attorney and that I'm only working through the social worker, because mediation is her work.

I just need to ask my dad which number he phoned Elsabe's phone from. This time I'm making notes of every damn thing. I am not going to let them get away with doing this. In my point of view, all they care about is THEM, not Lili. Their actions are out of spite, not caring. I'm kind of getting the feeling that they are starting to panic, but I may be imagining things.

I know I'm young and I still have so much to learn about life, but I also know that I have expererience in alot of things, like judging people. I have worked with many different kinds of people in my work and I gained knowledge through my experiences. I is still shocking to see how downright stupid some people can be though.

By answering that phone call from my dad, after ignoring my phone calls, they just proved how stupid they really are. I don't believe Lili was asleep, but if they didn't lie, they would also have admitted to deliberately refusing me to have contact with her. These are just my thoughts on it, and I might be wrong because I am sad, but it makes me angry that South Africa has a system which allows parents to actually do this to their children, despite the fact that there are actually laws that is supposed to prevent it.

Laws like:

General Law Further Amendment Act, No 93 of 1962 Section One provides criminal sanctions for a parent who fails to comply with an order of court relating to access to children: “(1) Any parent having custody of his or her minor child in terms of an order of court, who contrary to such order and without reasonable cause, refuses the child’s other parent access to such child or prevents such other parent from having such access, shall be guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to a fine or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding one year or to such imprisonment without the option of a fine.”

Mediation services seems to be governing the law and there is nothing I can do about it, except make another phone call on Monday morning to the social worker and tell her about this.

As I mentioned earlier, I think they are getting paranoid. I kept staying one step ahead of them and they didn't expect that. Like when they moved to Bloemfontein, they didn't expect me to find out about it OR find out what their telephone number is etc. In the end my constant emails to the Department of Social Development and my complaints paid off, because that kept me that one step ahead. Dolf didn't expect me to contact a social worker either, that explains his phone call to me the day he phoned and shouted at me for "...putting the welfare on his case...".

Now, I don't know much about the law and the way I see things might not even be right, but I was never planning on letting this go. I am a mother and I love my child, it's natural to only want the best for her. In SA I didn't have access to the information on the internet the way I do now and even now that I do, it is shocking to see that most sites are focused on children being kept away from fathers, not mothers. Make no mistake, it helped me to gain alot of information about the issue and I really sympathize with these fathers as Andy is in the same type of situation.

In South Africa I did apply for legal aid, I never got any. After a while it felt like either you need the money to fight the system, or you have to be like Dolf and Johan (and their families), and be able to manipulate the people in the right places.

I did not have the money, and I am not manipulative. So the system allow the WRONG people to get away with the RIGHT things. You can't blame the system though, so how do you solve something like this?

I know now that (from what I can understand anyway), I still have custody. Dolf's problem is that he wants custody, because he wants maintenance. The Children's Court could only place Lili in his foster care, they didn't grant him any money and knowing him, I think he expected them to. The Children's Court can only place a child in foster care for a period of two years, after which the matter has to go back to court. During the two years, mediation services are supposed to monitor the situation and IDEALLY try to place the child in the parent's care who has custody. If this is not in the best interest of the child, the matter will go back to court EVERY to years, unless custody is granted to the other parent by the High Court, so for Dolf to get custody though, he will have to go to the High Court.

That is a problem for him. He doesn't have the money and trying to get custody in a court of law can get quite expensive. I know by this time that if I couldn't even get legal aid, he sure as hell won't. Not for custody.

What really bugs the living shit out of me though is all the questions I have. Questions that, if you don't have the right attorney (when I think in terms of an attorney, I panic because I know they are expensive), you will never have answered. If you ask the social worker, they only talk your question away or simply say "Yeah... but you see, we don't really work with the law..." and then they start explaining to you that they only have to look at what is best for the child blah.. blah..

I also mentioned to my dad then that the social worker on Xaynee's case said it's ok that Johan won't allow me to speak to her and that I am going to report her. I contacted the SACSSP during the week and they sent me the forms, but I first have to complain to the social worker's organisation she is working for's head office. I tried to contact them on Friday, but there was no answer, so I'll do it tomorrow.

Ah well... That's it from me for today.

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend :o)