1. Arna Björk Halldórsdóttir and the Dutch F4J-Purple Hearts
Story of an Icelandic nonresidential mother staying in the Netherlands and her binational children living with their Dutch residential father
By PETER TROMP (*), Sunday, 5 November 2006
(*) Peter Tromp is a child psychologist from the Netherlands and coördinator of the European Forum Familyrights4Europe on equal parenting issues in Europe.
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It is not only fathers who fall victim to the injustices and inequalities of the sole custody practice prevalent today in family law and family courts. Allthough by far the mayority of injustices and inequalities relate to divorced fathers and their children, also more and more women and nonresidential mothers are now falling victim to sole custody practices of family courts. Read the story of Icelandic nonresidential mother Arna Björk Halldórsdóttir in the Netherlands on it below.
Present family court practices of issuing sole residency orders
With the dominant family court practice of standardly issuing post-separational sole physical custody and residency orders, the family courts are handing over by far the majority of children of divorce into the care of only one of their parents, to the exclusion of their other parent. In the Netherlands the family courts order sole residency to 96% of the children of divorce. In so doing the family courts are not only effectively depriving children of divorce from one of their loving parents. They are also depriving divorce children from half of their families, including grandparents and other familymembers from the familyside of the excluded parent. Court-disparented “nonresidential” parents, are then given a courtordered minimal access or contact arrangement with their children. These court contact orders are usually meant to limit all contact between the children and the nonresidential parent to one weekend of contact in every two weeks.
At present there are 1.1 million children of divorce – 1 in 3 of all Dutch children - who are now growing up in a sole-residency-situation with only one of their parents - usually their mothers. And there are 445.000 – predominantly female-headed - oneparent families in the Netherlands and their numbers are rapidly increasing with each year.
Non-reinforcement of contact orders by the courts
The above however is not yet all of the problem. Access or contact orders issued by family courts to nonresident parents, are also not being reinforced by the courts. Caused by the 50% of uncoöperative residential parents, this family court policy of non-interference additionally results in the complete postdivorce exclusion and isolation from all contacts with their nonresidential parents and families for half of all divorce-children who were first being subjected to a sole residency order by the family court, i.e. half of 96% of all divorce children.
Non-coöperative residential parents - who are fully capacitated by the family courts policies of non-reinforcement of contact and access orders - are willingly encouraged and allowed by the courts to instrumentally abuse the children granted in their care as instruments of power and partner violence in their unresolved divorce battles with the other parent as their ex-spouses.
The kids involved are living a live of complete exclusion from half of their families. What the family courts have left these 560.000 Dutch children with is a socially isolated and deprived live with only one of their parents. A desastrous situation taking into consideration the well-documented adverse effects that this has on the children involved. Children need both their parents and extended families, also and especially after the separation of their parents which in itself is allready constituting a severe crisis for all children involved.
Arna Björk Halldórsdóttir: an Icelandic nonresidential mother in the Netherlands
In the gender biased family court system, it are still the fathers who by majority end up being treated as second class parents and made redundant to their children with non-reinforced access arrangements. At the same time mothers are empowered by the courts to be the primal residential parents of the children and - by the non-reinforcement policies related to contact orders - capacitated to abuse the children as instruments of power and partner violence against the other parent, being mainly the fathers.
But it are no longer only fathers who fall victim to the sole custody practices of the family courts. Recently also more and more non-residential mothers are falling victim to the sole custody practice of the family courts. One of these non-residential mothers is Arna Björk Halldórsdóttir.
Arna Björk Halldórsdóttir is an Icelandic divorced mother living in the Netherlands. She is the non-residential mother of three binational Dutch-Icelandic children, living with their Dutch custody father in the Dutch city of Arnhem. Arna also lives in the Dutch city of Arnhem but she has little contact with her alienated children. She now campaigns with the “F4J-Purple Hearts”. The F4J-Purple Hearts are the women4justice who are with the Dutch branch of Fathers4Justice. They are campaigning for postdivorce equal parenting family law reform in the Netherlands and for better enforcement of Dutch courtordered access and contact arrangements in present sole custody situations.
Below is my translation of an interview with Arna Björk Halldórsdóttir on her situation. An interview that was published this summer in the Dutch regional newspaper “De Gelderlander”.
F4J-Purple Hearts
Besides reading her interview below, you can also watch Arna speak on her situation in the Dutch Report documentary (video) broadcasted on 10 November 2005 on the "F4J-Purple Hearts", the group that she is campaigning with for family law reform in the Netherlands.
The Report documentary contains a long interview with Arna Björk Halldórsdóttir talking on her personal situation. She also adresses the issues of women and mothers, who are now equally affected by present sole residency court practices granting the children exclusively to one parent while practically excluding the other parent by contact order. Combined with (criminal) reinforcement policies strongly upholding the court's residency orders, while at the same time practising a laissez-faire policy of non-reinforcement when contact orders are not complied with, the family courts now also leave non-residential mothers unprotected when it comes to upholding a relationship with their children as a non-residential parent.
The Report documentary can be seen on the Dutch F4J-website: Report documentary on Dutch F4J-Purple Hearts; 10 November 2005 (videolink)
More information on the F4J-Purple Hearts on the Dutch F4J website (see under the header "Vrouwen4J" meaning "women4justice")
The flight route always remains open
Interview with Arna Björk Halldórsdóttir
Dutch regional newspaper De Gelderlander; Written in Dutch by ROB BERENDS; Translated from Dutch to English by PETER TROMP (European Platform Familyrights4Europe); Saturday, 26 August 2006
The Netherlands were a true fairy tale country for Arna Björk Halldórsdóttir, when, in 1982, she arrived from Iceland in the Netherlands for the first time: „The biggest difference were all those trees.”
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Arna Björk Halldórsdóttir. Photograph: Jan Wamelink |
„On Iceland you also have trees, but not those large ones that you can hide behind. They gave me the feeling to have arrived in the woods of the fairy tales of the Grimm brothers, she tells us.
But living in the Netherlands did not remain fairy-like. Halldórsdóttir separated from her Dutch husband a couple of years ago. Their three children now live with him, she only sees them sometimes. She has now associated herself with the “F4J-Purple Hearts” of the Dutch branch of Fathers4Justice and fights with them for better enforcement of Dutch court access and contact orders. „I must admit to have been asking myself: How was it possible that the children were given in his care and residency? Without taking into consideration my motherhood, it feels wrong this way. It did previously cross my mind that this is because I am a foreigner.“
Did you also get the idea of being treated differently on other occasions because you are from a foreign country?
„Yes, I will always remain a foreigner here. When I came to the Netherlands, I planned for myself to learn to speak Dutch as the Dutch do. I am a perfectionist. I succeeded well, only in my tone you can still hear some of my mothers tongue. The pronunciation of the Icelandic “r” for example. You can’t change that, it belongs to me. So people notice it. Albeit because they fall over the correct pronunciation of my name. I am the ‘woman from Iceland.’
Is that terrible?
„No, it is not always bad. But previously I have never wanted to profile myself as a foreigner. That has now changed on my part. Because when I am nevertheless seen this way anyway, then everyone may also know of it.“
Do you have a Dutch passport?
„No. I kept my Icelandic nationality. Why? Thus I keep my flight route open. If something happens here, war or something else, I am allways able to go back to my country, safely in the midst of the ocean. And I am still very much in doubt if I should remain and stay here. I terribly miss my family.“
What keeps you here?
„My children. It somehow feels like they are taken hostage. And because I still love the Netherlands. And the Dutch city of Arnhem where I live. Nature here is really terrific. I am entirely happy when I run through the woods with my dog. Do you know what the name of the city of Arnhem stands for? It means the house of the eagle. My first name, Arna, also means female eagle. Sometimes I say: “It had to be this way, I cannot leave here.“
Do you feel free in your flat at the Arnhem Gelder Square?
„Certainly. I am very involved in my neighboorhood, I try to come into contact with the people around. This is a somewhat unconnected neighboorhood which doesn’t really belong anywhere. I try to change that. I clear the rubbish from the adjerning wood sites. And I advocate for a neighboorhood meeting space.“
You also have your own vegetable and flower garden. More “Dutch” is not imaginable.
„Well, my parents also had a potatofield. And I do find my own vegetable and flower garden terrific. Here really everything grows. I can see my vegetable garden looking down from my balcony. I do not grow that much vegetables, but I do grow many flowers. Everyone in the flat can see it and it makes other people joyfull.“
Has the attitude of the Dutch changed towards foreigners?
„Yes, it changed from nonchalance to animosity. I personally am not the target of that, being a Westerner myself, but I did notice changes happening . In the Netherlands a strong living-in-a-box-mentality dominates. One speaks here of all sorts and types of people: Dutch and foreigners/expatriates. That was new to me: it does not exist in Iceland. There are no classes, ethnic or religious differences there. In the Netherlands much of those differences have also disappeared with the disappearance of the typically Dutch phenomenon of the “verzuiling” (*). But a need for dividing people along social group lines has stayed with the Dutch.“
Did you became so “Dutch” that you also do that yourself?
„No, I don’t want to fall for that trap. I consider myself to be a world citizen. Iceland is an island and we are very open and oriented to the outside world. My sister just returned from living six years in Norway, and I have family in America and the United Kingdom. My parents lived here in Arnhem for five years. They were pensioners and found it a nice idea to come and live here. They originally wanted to stay for two years, but those two years ended up becoming five. So I originate from an adventurous den.
(*) “Verzuiling” is the Dutch word adressing a typical Dutch phenomenon, being that of a social division along social religious lines – catholics, protestants, public neutrals - that was previously very dominant in Dutch society. Translated the Dutch word “verzuiling” means something like “statued social grouping”, in which all of societies functions and institutions (schools, hospitals, social welfare etc.) were provided and organised along divisional social religious group lines, so they were all there three times, one especially for catholics, one for protestants, and one for the religiously unattached public.
posted by Peter Tromp (Fathercare) @ Sunday, November 05, 2006
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