Moving to Substack

Over the past year I have taken what I initially thought was a side-step from my usual work in foreign affairs to research the behaviour — and failings — of family courts. Yet what I have discovered is that instead of venturing outside of my field I’ve actually come to…

Earlier this month I made a presentation at a conference, organised by the University of California, Irvine’s Initiative To End Family Violence, in conjunction with California Protective Parents. In my presentation I made some brief points about what can be called the “Facilitating System” in and around family courts that…

This article was written with Sigrún Sif Jóelsdóttir and was originally published in Icelandic in Kjarninn. In late-May the Supreme Court (Hæstiréttur) took the rare initiative to hear a child custody case. In doing so it presented an opportunity for the court to gain an understanding of the problems that…

I wrote a song for America, they told me it was clever There is a unique Canadian symbiosis with America. While other countries may feel the United States as a constant presence — in various positive and negative ways — arguably no-one feels it in such a daily, all-pervasive manner…

In the early hours of 1 February 1995, Richey Edwards, lyricist and guitarist with Manic Street Preachers, left London’s Embassy Hotel and vanished. Two weeks later his car was found next to the Severn Bridge, the major crossing between England and Edwards’ native south Wales. Edwards and the band’s singer…

Last week I published an article titled How The Family Court’s Purpose To Protect Children Became Inverted. The article sought to explain what has occurred in family courts throughout the West over the past three decades, and the ideas that are driving it to make consistently irrational and dangerous decisions. …

An updated version of this essay was published in the journal Family & Intimate Partner Violence Quarterly, Spring 2021. In the early 1980s in Sydney, Australia, the family court suffered a series of brutal and ideologically driven attacks. A judge was shot dead on his doorstep, and bombs were exploded…