Men Talk August/September 2011

– © 2011 by Bill Ronan, Lic.S.W.

Family courts routinely deprive divorced fathers not only of their own children, but even many constitutional rights.

For example, do you think judges should have the power to decide to which religion your children must belong and which churches they may be prohibited from attending? In December 2009 a Chicago judge did exactly that.

Cook County Circuit Judge Edward Jordan issued a restraining order to prohibit Joseph Reyes from taking his three-year-old daughter to any non-Jewish religious activities because his ex-wife argued that would contribute to "the emotional detriment of the child." Mrs. Rebecca Reyes wants to raise her daughter in the Jewish religion, and the judge sided with the mother. Joseph Reyes' divorce attorney, Joel Brodsky, when he saw the judge's restraining order, said, "I almost fell off my chair. I thought maybe we were in Afghanistan and this was the Taliban."