Birth rights,

A small but vocal group : of estranged fathers is fighting for fairness and equality

March 1, 1997, BY: PETER CHENEY STAR REPORTER

As Stacy Robb sees it, the battle of DADS Canada is an up hill one against the combined forces of radical feminism, legal apathy and cash flow. The current bank balance is $15.39 and headquarters is the basement of an Etobicoke bungalow.

But austerity doesn't faze Robb, a 41-year old unemployed trucker and founder' of DADS Canada-- "Justice has to prevail," he says. Right now there is none. Many tiny splinter groups have sprouted in the battle-fields of the divorce wars.

DADS (Divorce And Defence Strategies) is one of more than a dozen men's rights groups that operate in the Metro area alone. No one knows exactly how many men belong but it's clear their numbers are relatively small. DADS, for example, has taken calls from more than 1,000 people in the past two years and has become actively involved in about 150 cases.

Not everyone sees things Robb's way. Women's organizations, in particular, view his group and others like it as something akin to terrorists. "They're fanatics," says Carole Curtis, a Toronto lawyer who specializes in family law. "They make an already difficult process impossible..... They turn it into war."

Despite their small numbers, men's rights groups have been surprisingly effective in some ways. Most notably, they mounted a successful lobby against a bill that would change the way child support payments are taxed. Bill C41, which would affect more than 350,000 divorced and separated parents in Canada, was recently passed by the Senate, which held it up after extensive lobbying by groups like DADS, who says it would unfairly punish non-custodial parents (most of them men).

Under C41, which is expected to be passed by the House of Commons by May 1, parents paying support payments could not deduct them from their income for tax purposes, as they do now. And parents receiving those payments would no longer be taxed on them. In the view of men's rights groups, the bill increases support payments by non-custodial parents without taking into account the income of custodial parents.

As well, they say the bill makes no provisions for a reduction in child-support payments by fathers who spend time with their children and spend money on them during that time. Like virtually everyone else in the men's rights movement, Robb became involved alter a nasty marital breakup:

He and his wife split in 1991 and have battled ever since over custody and support., Robb's experience left him bitter, poor and convinced that something had to change. He moved back into his parents' house, stone broke, carrying nothing but his guitar, a computer and a few clothes.

On Fathers' Day, 1993, Robb started DADS by printing labels on his computer and sticking them up in the bathrooms at courthouses across the city. The stickers read: "Real Crime Starts At Family Court."

Today, DADS is virtually a full-time operation. Robb researches case law, helps members draft legal documents and maintains the DADS Web site, which includes everything from tips on divorce law to a list of the 10 U.S. states that do not co-operate with Canadian authorities trying to collect unpaid support payments.

Robb is quick to point out that he doesn't advise men to flee the province to escape custody payments: "The best thing is for parents to sit down and work out an agreement," he says. "But that doesn't always work ... Some guys, the only way out they see is to bugger off. And that sucks.

That's not a good way to do it." Robb and others in the men's rights movement believe that women's groups have made it seem like deadbeat dads are the biggest problem in the field of family law, while avoiding the issue of fathers who are denied access to their children. "No one seems to talk about that much," Robb says. "But it's a huge problem."

In early January, DADS scored its biggest publicity coup yet when a Hamilton woman went to jail after DADS member Wayne Allen won a contempt of court motion in family court. Allen argued that his former girlfriend, the mother of their 2-year old daughter, had broken a court order by refusing to let him see their child.

Allen, a high school dropout who boned up on the law through DADS and private research, represented himself in court. When his ex was jailed for six days on Jan. 6, DADS called the media, presenting the case as a landmark "That hasn't happened in 20 years," Robb said. "Guys go to jail all the time. But a woman? It doesn't happen."

For Deborah Grenier, the woman who went to jail, the event was anything but a landmark She is bitter that she has been used as a publicity tool by the men's rights movement. Sitting in a Hamilton restaurant, Grenier is angry as she talks about what happened. "What I can't stand is that my case got presented like it was some big victory for Wayne and that group he's in. It's not! The whole thing was a mess. No body won here. Nobody."

Grenier, 33, blames DADS for making a bad situation worse. She says Allen became a fanatic after hooking up with DADS. "As far as I'm concerned, they're just bullies who hang out at family court all the time. They make comments - it's designed to intimidate you. They're obsessed."

The relationship that began Grenier and Allen's titanic legal battle was surprisingly brief -they dated only a few times after meeting at a wedding in 1994. They quickly realized they were not an ideal couple, but the real troubles came after Grenier found out she was pregnant. By the time baby Jenna was born in the fall of 1994, Grenier and Allen were barely speaking. At the time, Allen worked on the assembly line at the Ford plant in Oakville.

After the courts ordered him to pay $600 a month in support, the two battled over payments and access - she said he wasn't paying, he said she wouldn't let him see Jenna. Soon after, Allen quit his job at Ford. He says it was because the job was "going nowhere." Grenier says it was because he wanted to escape his support payments.

In the meantime, Allen discovered DADS Canada. Grenier says DADS encouraged Allen to wage a vindictive court battle that has made it impossible to achieve the kind of compromise necessary for their daughter's well-being. An unlikely legal pioneer, Wayne Allen sits in the living room of the small Hamilton two-story he shares with his parents, smoking a series of Players Filters as he savors what he sees as his moment of triumph. "Why is it that it took a layman to put a woman behind bars?" he asks.

"All those lawyers out there who went to school for seven years, and a high school dropout changes legal history." As Allen, 33, sees it, the entire legal system is stacked against men when it comes to custody and child support "Are women protected under the law? Sure - does the sun rise in the east?"

Upstairs, Allen has a room outfitted with a crib and toys. For now, he has his daughter three days a week. What will happen next in his legal battle with Grenier is anyone's guess. Their case is scheduled to go to court in the spring. Allen wants joint custody of Jenna - each of them would get her half the time, and no support would be paid. Grenier wants to be named as custodial parent, with visitation rights for Allen, She also wants Allen to pay support, and plans to file a contempt motion of her own if he refuses. Allen's supposed victory over fairness .

The men's rights movement believes women's groups, such as Mothers Against Fathers In Arrears headed by Kaarina Pakka, have made it seem like deadbeat dads are the biggest problem in the field of family law. Grenier doesn't cut much ice with family law specialist Carole Curtis. "This was a case that got completely out of hand. A lot of lawyers would have talked him into a better solution. If he wants a finding of contempt, fine. But jail was not the answer."

Curtis is dismissive of men's rights groups, which she thinks have done nothing but make an already difficult problem even worse: " They are polarizing. They throw gas on the fire. " The amount of disputed access cases is far lower than these fathers' rights groups would lead you to believe. They have created the impression that this is epidemic. It's not. It's not nearly the problem that support payments are: 98 percent of payors are men and there is a high level of payments in arrears."

On the other side of the divorce wars are women's groups devoted to fighting deadbeat dads. One of the best known is Mothers Against Fathers In Arrears, which was started by Kaarina Pakka, a flight attendant who had a dispute over support payments with her former partner, a fashion magnate. Pakka made headlines when she and other MAFIA members came up with an attention-grabbing strategy: they picketed his company. Pakka takes issue with the idea that children can be split 50-50 between parents, a view that is often expressed by men's rights groups as a way to resolve disputed custody. "A child has to have one home," Paka says. "They can't maintain friendships or schooling. And there are a lot of other factors, too. It's an unrealistic position." Pakka says the fact that women are granted custody more often than men reflects the fact that women still, in most cases, take the brunt of responsibility for child care. Monday: The high price of bitter custody battles.

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