Mihi Puriri speaks - Algerian child custody battle

The man mediating a custody battle between a New Zealand woman and her Algerian husband over their three children hopes to have the whole family back in New Zealand within a fortnight.

Following a seven-month dispute over the children, he said both parents wanted a resolution and they were "considering leaving Algeria with the children and returning to New Zealand or Australia".

"I'm hoping to get Mihi and Mohamed and the kids home, hopefully in a week to a fortnight," said the London-based mediator and family spokesman, who did not wish to be named.

However, he said he needed more support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to be able to carry out the negotiation, "but to date it hasn't been forthcoming".

Before they travelled to Algeria last August, Northland woman Mihi Puriri, 33, and her husband Mohamed Azzaoui, a former boxing champion, had a "perfect marriage".

It was Ms Puriri's seventh trip to her husband's home country "and that's why she was so comfortable going this time", he said.

However, this time was different.

"She loves for life, she took those marriage vows seriously. She wears her heart on her sleeve. We're talking a very, very smart young woman here. The only thing we could accuse her of is being over-trusting."

The couple and their three children travelled to Mr Azzaoui's native Algeria because she thought his father was gravely ill.

She alleges that soon after they arrived Mr Azzaoui took the family passports and then held their daughters Iman, 5, Assiya, 2, and son Zakaria, 11 months, captive in the family home in Mostaganem.

"Upon arrival Mihi realised that the paternal grandfather was not ill.

"It does appear that Mohamed did have this planned for some time, it certainly wasn't a spur of the moment thing. I would say that my knowledge of it is that he had this planned for some weeks ..."

The family shared the two-bedroom apartment with up to 14 Azzaoui family members, showered once a week at most and there was little entertainment for the children, said the spokesman.

Ms Puriri has not seen or spoken to her children since she managed to escape to Algiers on February 27 following a tense stand-off between a New Zealand diplomat and dozens of police, soldiers and Algerian locals.

"It was felt it was too tenuous a position to leave Mihi there any longer, and she thought it was better for everyone including the children if she left at the moment."

Mohamed Azzaoui, 36, has accused the New Zealand diplomat involved of lying about who she was.

He spoke to BBC correspondent Chloe Arnold, who told National Radio today (Tue) that she spoke to a "very belligerent" Mr Azzaoui last week.

"He said this is a matter only for him and his wife, and he was very angry that the media was getting involved. On the telephone he said this was absolutely nothing to do with anyone but him and his wife," she told Radio New Zealand.

The retired boxer said he didn't believe New Zealand Consul Barbara Welton, who had travelled from Cairo to the apartment with a full gendarme escort to carry out a welfare visit, was who she said she was.

"... he said this was just a New Zealander who had stolen this woman's business card and pretended to be the consul and come to his home and tried to steal the children".

Ms Welton was reportedly involved in a tense stand-off over the three children, and sat on the floor refusing to leave the property "without my citizens".

Legal experts say that because Algeria is not a signatory to the Hague Convention, she is at the mercy of the Algerian legal system in the fight for her children.

The family spokesman agreed, saying Ms Puriri's only options were through the Algerian courts or through mediation with her husband.

The spokesman was in contact with her daily, and said while the situation had been very distressing for her and her New Zealand family, she was staying strong for her children.

She was particularly upset she would miss the first birthday of her son, who she had been breastfeeding, when he had his birthday later this week.

The three children spoke English, Arabic and French, were "wonderful", "highly intelligent" and a credit to both parents, said the spokesman.

James W. Schumacher, Tired of Verbal Abuse, Kills Wife with Hatchet

​After 46 years of marriage, Bellevue's James W. Schumacher, 71, apparently reached a breaking point last week - murdering his longtime wife with a hatchet Wednesday morning while she was in bed, locking the door to the room, waiting two days, then walking into Bellevue police headquarters Friday afternoon and turning himself in for committing the grisly crime. Schumacher told authorities he was tired of his wife's verbal abuse.

Soon after the confession, police found Jean Schumacher, also 71, dead in the couple's home, located in the 100 block of 159th Avenue Southeast in the Lake Hills neighborhood of Bellevue. Police say James Schumacher - who worked 17 years at Boeing and 17 years at U.S. Steel - struck his wife repeatedly in the head with a hatchet Wednesday morning, though it wasn't immediately clear whether she was asleep at the time of the attack.

The Schumachers had been married for going on five decades, but local media outlets paint a (varying) picture of long-term abuse.

In 2010 Jean Schumacher, who suffered from severe arthritis, filed for and received a protection order against her husband. The protection order was dropped last May, at Jean Schumacher's request, about the time Jim Schumacher moved back in to the couple's home after an eight-month estrangement. These facts make every account of the story.

The rest we're left to piece together.

A neighbor tells The Times the couple had relationship problems for decades and that Jean Schumacher told him about a year ago, "If I end up dead, he did it." The Times spoke with neighbor Brad Dutson who was quoted as saying:

"She's mentioned that he's hit her and he's thrown her down the stairs."

Dutson also tells The Times that the Schumachers' son told him at some point that his father had a drinking problem and a long history of violence toward his mother.

Q13 Fox cites court documents related to the 2010 protection order. According to those documents, Jean Schumacher feared for her life because her husband had threatened to kill her.

Q13 also talks to Mary Farrell, described as a neighbor and friend of the Schumachers, who's quoted as saying:

"He wasn`t very nice to her a lot of the times. I talked to her. She told me a few things that made their marriage very difficult."

And ...

"He knocked her down a few times. ... The last he pushed her and she fell with her arthritis. She ended up in the hospital for a few days."

Strangely, KOMO News quotes presumably the same Mary Farrell, writing:

Neighbor Mary Farrell said the couple had been living apart for the past six to eight months, and the husband only recently moved back to the home.

She said the couple had a troubled marriage, but nothing that would have suggested this kind of violence.

"I just can't believe he killed her, though," Farrell said. "I just didn't think he was that violent."

Turns out he was.

On Saturday a King County judge found probable cause to hold James Schumacher in lieu of $1 million bail for investigation of first-degree homicide. 

http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2012/03/james_w_schumacher_tired_of_ve.php

Australian mother gets child custody in Northern Ireland legal battle

A five-year-old girl at the centre of a parental tug-of-war can leave Northern Ireland to live with her scientist mother in Australia, a High Court judge has ruled.

Mr Justice Weir ruled in favour of the woman taking her daughter, identified only as K, with her in a relocation based on her struggle to find work in Northern Ireland.

He also criticised the girl's father for the "mean" act of giving his ex-partner a dozen eggs a week and some firewood in response to her financial predicament.

The judge said: "I have no confidence that they would mend their ways in this or any other respect if K continued to live in Northern Ireland with her mother."

The child's Australian mother holds a doctorate in a specialist scientific area.

She came to Northern Ireland to take up a university post, later beginning a relationship with the girl's father.

After the child was born they lived together on a farm close to the man's parents, the court heard.

But the woman then lost her job and has since been unable to obtain any further full-time employment in Northern Ireland.

Eventually she moved out of the home and began to explore the option of returning to Australia with her daughter.

With her ex-partner opposed to the child being taken, a series of court battles ensued.

In her evidence, the woman told the court she had relied on income support, child benefit and some making of children's clothes and handbags from which she earned around £2,000 a year.

Conflicting messages

The eggs and firewood from the farm are the only form of material help she receives from the father or his parents, she said.

In November 2011 she had received a job offer with an Australian company with a starting date of last month.

She was prepared to ensure her daughter maintained contact with her father, according to her evidence.

The girl's father acknowledged the advantage of his ex-partner going to work in Australia but claimed it would not benefit his daughter.

He accepted that the mother had facilitated contact for him and his family and did not dispute that her track record backed the view that she would maintain contact.

If the applications to relocate were accepted he said he would have to use the online Skype service to communicate with his daughter.

In a judgment delivered last month but only now published, Mr Justice Weir said he could see no prospect of improved relations between the two sides if the child remains in Northern Ireland.

"I have no doubt that the mother's desire to relocate to Australia is motivated by two principal factors, namely a desire to obtain employment at the level for which she is eminently qualified and to put an end to the depressing series of court cases that have rained incessantly about her head and that of K," he said.

"The sad reality of all relocation cases is that there will always be a parent who regards him or herself as having 'lost' since the child cannot live in two countries at once so that that outcome is inevitable.

"However, if the child were to relocate I am satisfied that both by way of visits by the mother with K to Northern Ireland and by the father to Australia and regular intervening Skype contact the effect of the separation would be mitigated though not of course avoided."

The judge stressed that the child deserved a happy, carefree life without conflicting messages and on-going family battles.

"Of that I consider there is no prospect if she continues to live in Northern Ireland," he said.

"On the other hand, in Australia she would have the benefit of a materially comfortable existence with a mother who feels fulfilled in her work and enlivened by the lack of on-going disputes and would have the compensatory benefit of contact with her maternal grandmother and wider family."

Father's Rights at it again now in Arizona...

Nothing surprises me anymore with these groups.

http://www.timesunion.com/business/press-releases/article/Joel-Bernheim-Praises-New-Arizona-Bill-Expanding-3417463.php

Joel Bernheim Praises New Arizona Bill, Expanding Father’s Custody Rights

PRWeb

Published 01:00 p.m., Monday, March 19, 2012

While mothers have historically received fuller child custody rights than fathers, new Arizona legislation is seeking to expand the rights of birth fathers—drawing the praise of activists like Joel Bernheim.

Chicago, IL (PRWEB) March 19, 2012

Traditionally, mothers have often received fuller custody rights than fathers, both in matters of divorce and matters of children born out of wedlock. A new bill from the Arizona Legislature is seeking to change that. The bill in question, which has already passed the State Senate and is now moving toward a vote in the House, will upend existing Arizona legislature concerning out-of-wedlock custody disputes. Currently, mothers in Arizona have full custody until paternity is established and a court decides to grant rights to the father. The new bill will grant full custody rights to the father, so long as his name is on the child’s birth certificate or both parents acknowledged his paternity. The bill has drawn the attention of various members of the father’s rights movement, including Joel Bernheim.

Joel Bernheim has long been an outspoken advocate of birthfathers’ rights. “There is no way to predict what challenges fatherless children may face in their lives,” he says, with regard to the Arizona legislation. “But statistics prove children who do not have a father in their lives are more susceptible to problems across the board. Fathers’ rights have historically been an afterthought, yet they are vital to ensuring the proper growth and maturity of young children.”

Joel Bernheim is not the only one to feel so strongly about the issue. His comments are echoed by Arizona Senator Rick Murphy, who commented, “It is important for children not to be whipsawed in cases where just because they are out of wedlock and a mother gets upset with the father, she has total control.”

There has arisen some opposition to the Arizona bill, largely on the grounds that it complicates existing legal precedence, which awards custody to whichever parent the child has lived with the longest. However, the bill finds enthusiastic support among Joel Bernheim’s peers in the father’s rights movement. Meanwhile, Sen. Murphy and the bill’s supporters say they will tweak and revise the bill before it goes before the governor, ensuring that all of its unintended legal consequences are “fixed.”

The father’s rights movement is comprised largely of men who desire equal child custody with their ex-wives following a divorce. The movement also takes an interest in cases related to out-of-wedlock children, however, with the Arizona legislation serving as a prime example.

ABOUT:

Joel Bernheim is a professional within the asset receivables management industry, and currently serves as Executive Vice-President of Operations at the Illinois Company Asset Recovery Solutions, LLC. He is also an outspoken activist and philanthropist, with much of his activism centered on the father’s rights movement.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prwebJoelBernheim/03/prweb9294454.htm

Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/business/press-releases/article/Joel-Bernheim-Praises-New-Arizona-Bill-Expanding-3417463.php#ixzz1pc02dUZj

A fathers ultimate revenge...

February 6, 2012 5:52 PM

Authorities: Josh Powell planned deadly fire

GRAHAM, Wash. - Authorities say Josh Powell planned the deadly house fire that killed him and his young sons for some time, dropping toys at charities and sending final emails to multiple acquaintances.


Powell, the husband of missing Utah woman Susan Powell, died along with his children Sunday.


Authorities say they found 10 gallons of gasoline inside the home. A five-gallon can was spread throughout the house and used as an accelerant in the huge blaze. Another can was found by the bodies.


They say Josh Powell did send longer emails to some people, including his cousin and pastor, with instructions such as where to find his money and how to shut off his utilities.

But none of the emails said anything about what happened to his wife.


Lawyer: Powell boy spoke of mommy "in the trunk"
Josh Powell, kids die in alleged murder-suicide
Did authorities do enough to protect Powell boys?
Video: Helicopter footage of explosion scene (KIRO)


The maternal grandparents of Josh Powell's two sons said Monday that the boys played happily and didn't want to visit their father when the time came for their weekly Sunday visit.

But Charles and Judy Cox told KIRO-TV that the grandmother talked them into a court-ordered, supervised child custody visit with their father — a decision she now regrets.


When the boys arrived at Powell's Washington state home, their father barred a social worker from entering and then torched the house. All three died.


"Look what happened," Judy Cox tearfully told the station. "But I knew that they're supposed to be able to see their dad."


Charles Cox said he didn't think there was any more the court could have done legally to protect his grandchildren, but he wished there had been.


"There were too many warning signs that I feel were known, but due to legal limitations were unable to be acted upon," he said.


The Coxes opened their home to news reporters Monday to give a glimpse of the boys' life with them. Charlie, 7, and Braden, 5, had been living with them since last fall, when the state removed them from their father's custody.


Josh Powell had long been a person of interest in his wife's disappearance from their home in West Valley City, Utah, two years ago. He claimed he had taken the boys on a midnight camping trip in freezing temperatures when she vanished.

"I would never even hurt her," a tearful, red-eyed Josh Powell told CBS' Early Show in August. "People who know me know that I could never hurt Susan." (Watch the August interview at left.)

Police who arrived at the home to look for the family found two fans pointed at a damp spot on the floor, but no trace of Susan. Her body has never been found, despite intensive searches in Utah and Nevada.


Powell maintained custody of the boys as the scrutiny upon him intensified over the years. He moved to his father Steve Powell's home in Puyallup. Last fall, when the elder Powell was arrested in a voyeurism and child pornography case, the state turned the boys over to the Coxes.


On Monday, authorities continued sifting through the smoking rubble of the home looking for evidence, and the medical examiner's office was working to determine cause of death.

It remained unclear how the deaths might affect the investigation into Susan's disappearance. The Pierce County Sheriff's Office planned an afternoon news conference.

38 Photos

Missing Utah mom's kids, husband die in alleged murder-suicide

View the Full Gallery »

   

On Sunday, the lawyer for Susan Powell's parents said the children had started talking to their grandparents about things they remembered from the night their mother vanished.


"They were beginning to verbalize more," said attorney Steve Downing, whose clients had custody of the children. "The oldest boy talked about that they went camping and that mommy was in the trunk. Mom and dad got out of the car and mom disappeared."

© 2012 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57372198/authorities-josh-powell-planned-deadly-fire/#ixzz1legm2g2f

Mother's fears over custody battle

A Co Tyrone mother whose child is trapped in an in international custody battle has told UTV she fears she will never see her son again.

Thursday, 05 January 2012

TAGS:

• LOCAL NEWS
 
• COURT

Tracey McCay's six-year-old son Sean was taken to Singapore last week by his father David.

The couple split acrimoniously while holidaying in Indonesia, but when Tracey returned to Singapore she realised the terms under which she had entered the country meant she had little or no parental rights.

"I was in a foreign country. I had no friends, no family. I was really scared and I just felt I should have done my research," she said.

"What people don't realise is that obviously although you're residents of a foreign country you're not entitled to the same laws as what you're used to back home."

After a month battling her former partner, Tracey saw her son and she said her little boy was "confused and excited" at the same time.

"Once he saw me he just went 'Mummy!'. He was just so excited to see me and I was so excited to see him and I just had to hold back tears," she explained, "but it was just really nice and we just cuddled and kissed and just stuff like that, and he said 'Mummy, I really miss you and where have you been?'"

"I've never been away from him for that long. I've always been with him and then Sean left and not knowing when I would see him again."

Tracey began custody proceedings in Northern Ireland when she returned home and although Sean was in the region for Christmas he was taken away again by two police officers on Christmas Eve after the Lord Chief Justice ruled against Tracey because of the ongoing legal issues in Singapore.

She said it "broke [her] heart" when she had to give him back before Christmas Day.

"We kissed and we cuddled. It was just really, really nice. But when the police came I had to make it nice for Sean. I didn't want him to be scared and when he was getting into the police car I was just saying goodbye to him and cuddling him."

Although Sean has been taken back to Singapore by his father, Tracey said she will fight on for her rights as a mother.

"I have to go back to Singapore and fight in Singapore. And then I've been told by my lawyer in Singapore that I have to fight over here. So I'm left with no options at all where to fight."

She told UTV her greatest fear is "that I'll never see Sean again".

The solicitor acting for Sean's father, David McCay, issued a statement which reads:

"The Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland returned the child to our client's care and custody on Christmas Eve.

"As arranged our client and the child returned to Singapore on the 28th December. As the parents and child reside in Singapore, all issues we understand are being dealt with there.

"Our client strongly refutes any suggestion he has acted improperly."

Suicide talk scrambles custody fight

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-01-09/news/30605687_1_custody-case-strauss-custody-change


Senior court officials abruptly yanked a custody case from a Queens judge amid claims that a boy became suicidal after meeting with him, the Daily News has learned. Though neither side asked for it, the long drawn-out case before Supreme Court Justice Sidney Strauss was ordered to an emergency trial that began in Brooklyn last week. “The transcripts are scary,” said a source familiar with the reasoning behind the highly unusual change of venue. In a September hearing, the boy’s mother and his lawyer told Strauss that the 10-year-old — who was ordered to live with his father in 2007 — was distraught after the judge told him he would not change that order.

The boy’s mental state has “gotten progressively worse” since the sitdown with Strauss, said his mom, Annemarie McAvoy, a Fordham University professor and frequent TV commentator.

“He talked about how he’d kill himself or his father,” she said.

The judge was unmoved by stories of the boy’s distress.

“I guess I’m the one that created the suicidal ideation, then,” Strauss said, according to court records. “I didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear.”

The same judge made another controversial custody switch in 2007, placing a toddler with her dad against the recommendations of all involved.

The girl’s distraught mother, Mazoltuv Borukhova, then had the father killed. The custody change was presented as her motive at her murder trial.

The judge called the custody arrangement in the McAvoy case temporary, but the case has been stalled ever since.

Strauss recently indicated that a final ruling won’t come before 2014, records show.

McAvoy separated from John Hannigan in 2002 and signed an agreement making her the main caretaker of their son.

But the couple sparred over the boy’s diagnosis of mild autism, with the mother insisting he needs special care and the father contending he’s normal.

The judge changed custody from mother to father without a hearing in 2007, based on one opinion disputing autism and a doctor’s report saying the boy is “slightly underweight” and “his teeth appeared to be discolored.”

The state’s deputy chief administrative judge ordered the case transferred after “serious questions about the child’s welfare were brought to [her] attention,” said David Bookstaver, spokesman for the court system.

Following an evaluation whether there’s an imminent risk to the boy, he added, the case will return to Queens.

Even then, sources said, Strauss, who’s no longer assigned to matrimonial cases, is not likely to get it back.

Audrey Sager, lawyer for the boy’s father, blasted the decision to move the trial to Brooklyn as unnecessary interference.

“No one asked, no one filed a motion,” she said.