Dads get laws, not justice

Fathers' rights advocate takes show on road

Toronto Sun - March 30, 2003 - PAGE 12, By MARK BONOKOSKI --

Tomorrow morning, about the time all the high-priced lawyers begin to arrive in their black silks to thrash out divorce and custody battles, Stacy Robb will pull up to the University Ave. courthouse in a mobile home.

It's unlikely that he'll go unnoticed.

"Mediate, don't litigate," reads some of the lettering on the side panel of Robb's "portable office."

"We support joint custody and equal access," reads another message.

It's a mission statement, no question about it, and Stacy Robb, founder of a non-profit fathers' rights group called Dads Canada, has been on that mission for almost a decade.

Only now he's taking it on the road.

One courthouse one day; another the next.

For the last few years, home base has been his apartment at the top end of Kingston Rd., so chock-a-block with court documents, computers, scanners, portable printers and law books that there is little room to move.

It's a pack rat kind of place.

"There is no way I am in this for the money, put it that way," said Robb, pointing to an old taxi fare box sitting in the corner, given to him by a client he guided through the quagmire of family court but who had no wherewithal to pay his fee.

"I charge $60 an hour, when I can get it," he said. "And, when I don't ... well, I just don't. I am not into getting blood from a stone."

Stacy Robb, 47, once made his living as a truck driver but left it all behind when "one too many judges and one too many lawyers pissed me off" during his own marital meltdown and the custody battle which soon followed.

Since then, he has been involved in "hundreds of cases, helping hundreds of fathers" who were wrongly accused of being deadbeat dads.

He's provided information to the Senate committee debating Bill C-22 which is bringing change to the Divorce Act -- negative changes, to Robb's way of thinking, because it puts an unjust financial burden on the back of the non-custodial parent who is usually the father -- and has received a letter of support from Liberal Senator Anne Cools.

"The public groundswell of support, met largely by your actions, was confirming and humbling," wrote Cools. "Divorce legislation should be even-handed, and should reduce the negative consequences of broken relationships so as to permit both parents to know and raise their children, and for the children to know and love both parents."

He has appeared on the Women's Television Network and on CPAC. He has played tit-for-tat and has held public rallies against deadbeat moms.

And he has even picketed courthouses over deadbeat judges -- those jurists who fail to read their files and then rule in favour of the mother when there was solid evidence supporting the father.

All of which got him more press.

Family court, as too many thousands can attest, can be a truly ugly place.

Last November, in a column headlined "Dads are dying," I wrote of how a suicide note became a grim reminder that our family laws are flawed.

It was the story of A. T. Renouf, a Markham man who took his own life seven years ago after the Family Support Plan (now the Family Responsibility Office) left him penniless.

That suicide note makes the rounds every year on the anniversary of his death, and Stacy Robb remembers it well because Renouf called his organization on a day Robb happened to be away.

The garbled message on Robb's answering machine was a mystery until two friends of Renouf's showed up two days later to tell him of Renouf's demise.

It was a catalyst for Robb to do more.

The mobile home which Robb will drive tomorrow to the city's main courthouse was donated to Dads Canada by a father who had sought Robb's help with a custody issue.

The lettering, too, was done for free -- by another father who sought Robb's expertise.

Tomorrow, as a starter, Robb will be handing out leaflets describing what he considers the "dire consequences" of Bill C-22 becoming law. "It will set fathers' rights back 10 years," he said. "In virtually every case that will come before the courts, the woman will be responsible for keeping the child at her home, and the father will have the responsibility of paying every penny.

"When lawyers get involved, it generally tends to get ugly," said Robb. "That's why we believe in mediation rather than litigation.

"No child deserves to have a court drive a wedge between his or her parents.

"Sole custody is the child's loss."