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June 17 is Father’s Day. 2 days after the one year anniversary of Thomas James Ball’s self immolation. The 58 year old soldier set himself on fire in front of a New Hampshire courthouse on June 15, 2011 to protest the crooked child support and custody laws in North America. To all my male friends, please read his story below regardless of your opinions of the men’s rights movement. After all, his becoming of an MRA (Men’s rights activist) started with his desire to preserve his rights as a father…
Thomas was an involved and loving father with no prior track record of domestic violence, as his ex-wife and three children have testified several times in court. April 2001, trying to put his then 4 year old daughter to bed after a 14 hour work day, Thomas lost patience and slapped the child causing a cut on her upper lip. His wife called the local family help line where a female operator threatened her that if she didn’t call the police, she would be the one accused of child abuse. Thomas James ball was arrested the following morning.
Thomas was acquitted of all the charges based on his prior track record but denied unsupervised visitation to the children. This dragged on for 10 years where he was presented with one legal barrier after another just to be able to see his own children. In 2009, at the peak of the global economic recession, Thomas lost his job. Now he started to struggle with the child support payments and lost touch with his children completely. Thomas James Ball, after serving 21 years in the army, was facing a prison sentence for his inability to pay a $3000 child support payment as charged by his ex wife. He sat on a park bench and wrote the following shortly before the suicide:
“It was clear the legal community was in fear of these feminist groups…It had been fifteen months since this first started. Now I was at the end of my DEFENSIVE game. I was free to go on the offensive. I wonder if this would just be wishful thinking, another dream that quietly dies from INACTION. I knew I should go after those who messed with me and my family. The myth that they were protecting my kids had long evaporated from my thoughts. I could have rolled over and played dead that the legal system wanted me to do. But I would have spent the rest of my life wondering, “What if?”
“Nah. Time for me to be the JERK.”
Women initiate 90% of divorces in North America. Women get sole custody of the children 84% of the time. 1 in 5 children under 15 years old (Roughly 38 million) are growing up fatherless.
• 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes
• 80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes
• 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes
• 85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in a fatherless
“I ain’t never seen a calf following a bull. They always follow the cow. So I always give custody to the mammas.” (Robert Noland, family court Judge, Georgia, USA)
On June 15, 2011 the self proclaimed “Jerk”, Sergeant Thomas James Ball set himself on fire and left his fatherless children a note. Let me share his note with the 38 Million fatherless of North America.
“I have three things to say to my children. First, Daddy loves you. Second, you are my three most favorite people in the world. And last, that you are to stick together no matter how old you get or how far apart you live. Because it is like Grandma always said. The only thing you really have in this world is your family.”
JUNE 15 IS INTERNATIONAL FATHERLESS DAY
JUNE 15 IS THE DAY TO…STAND UP > SPEAK UP > EDUCATE > AGITATE > ORGANIZE > CHANGE.
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