Court Overrules Father’s Grounding of Daughter
It may sound like something out of the Onion, but in fact it’s only Canada:
A Canadian court has lifted a 12-year-old girl’s grounding, overturning her father’s punishment for disobeying his orders to stay off the Internet, his lawyer said Wednesday.
The girl had taken her father to Quebec Superior Court after he refused to allow her to go on a school trip for chatting on websites he tried to block, and then posting “inappropriate” pictures of herself online using a friend’s computer.
The father’s lawyer Kim Beaudoin said the disciplinary measures were for the girl’s “own protection” and is appealing the ruling.
“She’s a child,” Beaudoin told AFP. “At her age, children test their limits and it’s up to their parents to set boundaries.”
According to court documents, the girl’s Internet transgression was just the latest in a string of broken house rules. Even so, Justice Suzanne Tessier found her punishment too severe.
Beaudoin noted the girl used a court-appointed lawyer in her parents’ 10-year custody dispute to launch her landmark case against dear old dad.
Actually, one shouldn’t blame Canada too much for this. I’m sure that many similar, silly (if not similarly silly) decisions have issued from U.S. family courts as well, and once the government gets involved deciding marital and custody disputes, this sort of intrusion and interference with parental authority is all but inevitable. Which is the main reason why lovers of liberty ought to favor stable, traditional families, and hate divorce.
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Canada is a beautiful land with wonderful people and traditions, but its government and judiciary have run amok. Too bad they don’t have a tradition of rising up and throwing off tyrants.
I don’t think you would see this in the US at all. If you did, Hannity of Fox network would be using such an incident as a constant career move and we’d be spared the Rev. Wright obsession but we would be exchanging a headache for an upset stomach. But he or Dobbs of CNN would have informed us of that kind of thing. Canada simply sounds scary regarding freedom of religion. Unforetunately we have protestors e.g. who hold placards at gay events which read: “God hates fags”. Such people would be arrested in Canada. Here they are not but they do much damage to Christianity. Also as to children, one cannot imagine any US parent being blamed by the courts for simply throwing out the computer itself in order to prevent the ills to one’s children. Her we have real problems like excessive beatings for which one can be arrested and internet questions pale in comparison. Canada probably does not have our physical abuse rate and so has time for intellectual abuse problems.
Since a lof of the stories aren’t making the case clear, I will add a little bit.
Mom and Dad are divorced. Daughter is with Mom presently. Incident and punishment happened at Dad’s. Mom consented for field trip. School said they needed both parents to consent. Mom consented to daughter petitioning court.
As Blackadder said, nothing like dysfunctional families.
Canada simply sounds scary regarding freedom of religion.
You’re right. The united states — the country currently obsessed with the question “What if Obama was a Muslim?!?” — is far, far superior when it comes to freedom of religion.
Too bad they don’t have a tradition of rising up and throwing off tyrants.
Yes, if only they had some foundational act of violence to inspire their behavior today!
Geez, whatever happened to old fashioned family fisticuffs?
Michael, do not confuse the echo chamber of the internet for mood of the country.
I am sorry but some of the stuff that is going on up there is frightning especially as to the supposed Human Rights Commission. I am shocked that the National News has not made much more of a ruckus over this
That is patently false. Especially when it comes to custody disputes. What if one of the parents is abusive? Its absolutely appropriate for the government to intervene then. And that’s just one example.
It isn’t a stark line between anarchy and totalitarianism. We have other choices.
The united states — the country currently obsessed with the question “What if Obama was a Muslim?!?” — is far, far superior when it comes to freedom of religion.
This obviously conflates mass media fads with coercive action by the government; probably best to assume you were just making a flippant and inane joke.
Dan,
If you are going to refer to a statement as patently false, you might at least say something that contradicts it. Nowhere did I say that it was wrong for the government to intervene in custody disputes.
Lovers of liberty ought to peacefully revolt, toss out their ‘representatives’, and institute a new government that isn’t tyrannical.
“Tyranny” must have acquired some meaning other than the one I learned in civics.