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Tavares: fathers’ rights advocates to demonstrate

Eddie Tavares, a campaigner for fathers’ rights in the group Childwatch (File photograph)

A fathers’ rights activist is to demonstrate outside the police and court building tomorrow ahead of international Falsely Accused Day on Saturday.

Eddie Tavares, cofounder of the child advocacy group Childwatch, will join disgruntled fathers in protest outside the Dame Lois Browne-Evans Building on Court Street.

Mr Tavares said they were coming together to highlight what he called the unfair treatment of men, who end up frozen out of seeing their children when couples separate.

Mr Tavares told The Royal Gazette he had written to Rena Lalgie, the Governor, on August 30, with David Burt, the Premier, and Narinder Hargun, the Chief Justice, copied in.

“We will be there on behalf of children and fathers,” he said.

“When we are falsely accused, we are removed from our children and not allowed to have relationships with them — we end up blocked.

“It’s very prevalent and these false allegations happen not just here in Bermuda but worldwide.”

Mr Tavares said the demonstration from 9.30am at the court entrance would be the first marking of Falsely Accused Day, which Childwatch hopes to observe annually.

The September 9 commemoration was created in 2020 in Britain to “raise public awareness about the failing justice system in the United Kingdom, which is not only allowing, but encouraging false accusations”, according to its website.

The group plans its own peaceful demonstration outside the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police at New Scotland Yard in London.

Mr Tavares said Bermuda’s courts awarded custody to mothers 85 per cent of the time after parents separated.

“Usually there are false accusations that block fathers’ access to children,” he said.

“These issues are not being investigated but are just left hanging.”

He said when accusations were looked into, the process was too lengthy.

“It causes parental alienation and children are traumatised.”

The letter to Ms Lalgie and to Mr Burt calls for “more equitable laws, such as shared parenting” and “clarity into the real issues pertaining to families”.

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Published September 07, 2023 at 1:09 pm (Updated September 07, 2023 at 5:33 pm)

Tavares: fathers’ rights advocates to demonstrate

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