“If you put impediments in the way of men seeing their children – making them jump through all sorts of humiliating hoops – the kids become a weapon, a sword and a shield simultaneously… Eventually, no person can take that and the kids lose a father.”–Bob Geldof
British philanthropic leader Bob Geldof (pictured to the right of rock star Bono above) is speaking out again on the way divorced fathers are mistreated, and how their relationships with their children are often destroyed.
Geldof: My grief at losing my girls
Daily Mail [U.K.]
5/14/07
Bob Geldof has launched an emotional attack on custody laws that forced him to “jump through humiliating hoops” during his bitter divorce from his late wife Paula Yates. The poverty campaigner and musician complains in a forthcoming TV interview that he was subjected to anti-male bias when he sought custody of his three daughters after Big Breakfast star Yates left him for her doomed romance with singer Michael Hutchence.
In an interview with American TV host Daphne Barak, airing on the eve of next month’s G8 summit, he says the discovery that the law was “skewed” in Yates’s favour – just because she was a woman – plunged him into an “ocean of grief.”
“It freaked me out,” he told Barak. “I could not live without my kids. I missed the sound of them turning in their sleep. I just wanted to go to some dark, grey corner of the world and howl into the void.
“The key in my pocket still fit in the door, but I was no longer allowed (to put) this key in the door and go into my home.
“It’s very hard to get your head around that. I went to the door, and I was too humiliated to knock on my own front door.
“That’s my house, my home, my children. I could hear them laughing in there. I was too scared of (knocking) and one of my kids opening the door and saying ‘Hi Dad’ and not being allowed to let me in.
“I didn’t want to impose that on them. I didn’t want it to happen to me. I didn’t want her to come to the door and say, ‘What are you doing here? You’re not allowed to come here.’”
“So, I went back out, and I sat in the car and I just cried. I just stayed and watched their bedroom lights go off, and I went home. That shouldn’t happen to anyone.
“If you put impediments in the way of men seeing their children – making them jump through all sorts of humiliating hoops – the kids become a weapon, a sword and a shield simultaneously.
“You’re suffering so much. Eventually, no person can take that and the kids lose a father. It is hurtful.”
Read the full article here.
|
