Divorce and Family Courts Panel
CAFE hosted MOMENTUM: The 2019 Canadian National Men’s Issues Conference, in Toronto August 2-3. For more information and the full speaker line up visit https://www.equalitycanada.com/NationalConference
Brian Ludmer
Founder, Lawyers for Shared Parenting
Christine Giancarlo
Anthropologist, Mount Royal University, and Author, Parentectomy
Oren Amitay
Registered Psychologist, Instructor at Ryerson University, expert witness in Ontario courts and a media personality on radio and television.
Brian Ludmer is a prominent Toronto family law lawyer and founder of LudmerLaw. He is a Canadian authority on parental alienation. He is one of the drafters of Bill C-560, which would have enshrined equal shared parenting in law. Brian is a founder of Lawyers for Shared Parenting, an advisory board member to the Parental Alienation Awareness Organization and the International Support Network for Alienated Families
Dr. Giancarlo is author of the recent book, Parentectomy, which tells the stories of 30 capable, loving parents who became alienated from their children’s lives. Parentectomy is based on Christine’s peer-reviewed study, Kids Come Last: The Effect of Family Law Involvement in Parental Alienation. She is also an Anthropology lecturer and researcher at Mount Royal University in Calgary. Dr. Giancarlo’s research sheds light on an urgent and widespread social crisis, currently enabled by our broken family law system. Christine brings three decades of experience with parental alienation through interaction with young adults and her own personal journey. Today, Christine will explore the origins of gender imbalance with parental alienation as one consequence.
Until the advent of agriculture approximately 10,000 years ago, all humans were foragers (i.e., hunter-gatherers).They lived egalitarian lives, cooperating to survive in kinship-based bands. Men and women overlapped their roles without strict, gender-based expectations in occupation. Since everyone relied on everyone else, the proverbial village raised the child. As with all other primate species, sociality provided safety and support for each individual. Fathers and mothers were equally important for the social learning and protection of their children. Extended families of both parents added wisdom, perspective, and additional resources. Then farming changed the rules. Land ownership meant defense of that land and the resources within it. Humankind was transformed into a breeding and a killing machine, via control over women’s reproduction in order to produce future warriors and soldiers. Patriarchy was born and an unspoken deal was struck: Leaders would be men, decision-making became men’s work, but men also became disposable. This critical analysis explores the intersectionality of men’s disposability, women’s subjugation and the welfare of children. Parental alienation is one consequence of this global cultural evolution from autonomous band to village to patriarchal state. The resultant gender power imbalance that began 10,000 years ago is currently reinforced by a family law system that perceives fathers as abusers and mothers as helpless victims.
Dr. Amitay is a registered psychologist who has been trained in, and uses, eight orientations and therapies. These therapies include: cognitive-behavioural (CBT), psychodynamic, acceptance (and commitment to change), humanistic/client centred, emotion focused, interpersonal (IPT), object-relations, and process experiential. He has worked with a diverse group of clients or patients, ranging from late teens to seniors, in both hospitals and his private clinic. His practice includes individual, couples, family and group psychotherapy, and he conducts psychological, personality, intelligence and parenting capacity assessments. He is recognized as an expert witness in Ontario courts, he has taught at five universities, and he has been sought out for TV, radio, newspaper and internet interviews on a regular basis.
Dr. Amitay will discuss the realities of parental alienation, as well as the do’s and don’ts of parents fighting for parental rights. He will discuss the fact that yes, men do often get screwed over in Family Court; he will allude to some of his cases as a psychologist who has a) helped both male and female patients go through Family Court, b) conducted over 500 Parenting Capacity Assessments and Custody & Access reports, and c) critiqued other Custody & Access reports. He will also explain what men (and women) have done wrong both as participants in the Family Court system, but also as parents of children who are being subjected to the process of separation/divorce. In short, he will implore men to represent themselves as men and fathers to be admired and respected by their children and by society.
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