earlier this week, i was asked to link to various posts on trish wilson's blog about the jaks abduction case. to be honest, it was the first i had heard of the story. i read trish's posts, thought they were compelling and posted several link to trish's blog about the case. i didn't make any comment because it happened to be a crunch at work, but trish seemed to be fighting the good fight and i was happy to do my little part to help out.
what i didn't expect was the spike in my hits from that post. it seems there are a lot of people googling about the jaks case. as business at work eased up, i started reading more about the case and the murky world of the "father's rights" movement. it's really its own little weird world of frustrated men coming out of bad divorces railing at the "feminized court system" that they claim has conspired against them. i am lucky to have had little first hand experience with the divorce system in this country, although i am a lawyer and my mother is a lawyer who handles divorce cases. but when i read some of these sites, they ooze bitterness and hostility to women but seem to be utterly without any real argument or evidence that the system is biased against them other than their own anectdotes. it is hard to see how they can ever hope to win over anyone who isn't already predisposed to see their point of view.
as for lowell jaks. over the years, he has apparently claimed to be an advocate for the father's rights movement. but when someone is an advocate for a movement, that generally means that they are advocating for a cause, not just for themselves. when lowell kidnapped his son, he showed his true colors. kidnapping did nothing to aid his cause. if anything, it set the "father's rights" crowd back. the more fathers that kidnap their non-custodial children, the more scrutiny non-custodial parents will get from the courts. lowell has not helped non-custial fathers at all, he has helped to make their lives worse. mensnewsdaily's sympathetic coverage of lowell only confirms that lowell's group is not interested in advocating any constructive changes to family law, but are simply interested in making sure that father's are allowed to take their children from their mothers whenever they want.
