Human rights activist Lemuria Rainbow has posted an important petition to the European Parliament seeking a review of the human rights of mothers and their children based on her own dramatic story experienced in the Netherlands.

Sadly, there are many similar cases to hers in the Netherlands and other EU countries where unnecessary suffering results from family breakdowns.

Rainbow makes a number of important points in her petition:

1) You should not leave any woman alone without help, when she is asking for it and you should not disconnect her from her very young children under any conditions, if she does not harm them. Reason of nationality and social situation should not take a place and she always should have social rights to be taken to safe place with her kids and she should get social and mental support to get new start.

2) Not always parental rights should be equal for men and women - this idea is not quite compatible to nature and biology. Women can’t survive in the same way like men being disconnected from children. It is the same for the kids, especially babies – they can’t survive in the same way being disconnected from mother like it could be from father.

3) You should not intervene into private life of family, if they don’t ask for that and if there is no physical violence or crime, because it can bring more bad than good things, especially when parents are in the beginning of parenthood and they need to learn some things by nature and self-experience. The best help here is finding some supports group, good individual therapy and good environment and solutions for improvement of financial situation and then parents can get out of crisis situation naturally. Any control, pressure, filming, evaluations, reports and observations can take whole self-esteem and power out from the parents and it can take whole dignity from them.

4) Make better training and education for social workers, because if they make mistakes, they can destroy somebody’s life. They should have bigger knowledge about the law and they should be trained to get this knowledge, if they miss something.

5) Make better care in hospitals for women, who are giving birth – not only social or psychiatric, but also psychological and mental. Women in extreme crisis life situations need good contact with psychologist and life adviser, who knows more about the rules and opportunities to get out of the crisis.

6) Rebuild the program of Cardea and Jeugdzorg by transfer from control, observation and giving parents the cue to the real support and listening about what help they really need, understanding their problems and looking for quick and practical solutions to improve life situation of the family. And first of all – concentrate on prevention. Its better to start special educational programs in schools, where there is more natural to teach and to train young people about psychology and creating happy relationships and families.

7) Treat people more individually and don’t put quite opposite kind of people to the same training group like it is in Cardea office. It can’t work for people from quite different social groups and mental levels. When I was with my children there, I was afraid of some people, whom I met and I was scared if something wrong could happen to my children.

8) Change the law concerning the signing the documents about finance, because if people, who signs something under pressure and threat have no chance to turn it back, then everybody can forced anybody to sign whatever. It should be some short period like a few days to turn it back. It is the chance for victims of violence to get out of trouble and it can prevent people from similar abuses in the future.

9) Give a mediator to the parents even if one of them doesn’t want it. It is for the best goodness of children and it can rescue for one of the parents, who is weaker and abused by another and in consequence it can save the family.

10) Make softer law about the rights of foster parents. If children come back to their real family, but they still want to see their foster parents – let them for that, because separation against their will can be very harmful and more harmful then conflict between some parent and foster family.

11) Stop Jeugdzorg from “scientific” , cold and logical evaluations and reports and if it is not possible, at least don’t let them send it to the parents, because it can be very harmful and it does not bring anything good, only fear, humiliation and taking whole power away from the parents. They are humans, who make mistakes like everybody and you don’t have right to decide, which way of care and raising children is best. This kind of actions only make people confused and more broken.

12) Make trials in family courts faster, if there is urgent situation – in case of very young children every month is like one year for adults.

13) Treat people more individually – if you know that they have neurological problems or physical illnesses, don’t treat them like mentally sick or mentally disabled, but give them professional health support assistant and consultant. And in these kind of cases any control and pressure only can damage everything and there is no space for help.

14) Children are not a property of any country, even if they are born there. It means that in some individual cases mothers should have right to leave the stranger country with their children to have a chance to come back to original country and to create normal home and life for each other, if it is not really good or possible in the country, where children were born and even if father does not agree for that. By nature children should have the first opportunity to stay with mother.

15) Judges and clerks should look more carefully at the parents, who make the same hard and dramatic actions with their partners like they did it in the past with previous ones – it shows that there can be something wrong with them and not with their partners. And when you can see it like that , you can make more objective and responsible decisions about children.

16) Train in new way workers of the police, social care and children care to observe, research and to react about such cases like mine, when woman is crying, going to panic and screaming and she asks for help and man is calm and sensible and he says that she is ill, aggressive and dangerous – many times it is the scheme of relation between sociopathic man and his victim.

She has made the following request to readers and supporters regarding her petition:

Please, read it, sign it, and send it away. Even if you do not believe that the government will do anything with that, please make the action - because most important here is the fact that the petition with more signatures can be sent to the European Parliament demonstrating its validity and support to provide to expanded awareness about certain things among the people, what will lead to some change one way or another.

And for me every signature is a great support.

Thank you
Lemuria Rainbow

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Story by GoPetition

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