temporary protection orders

Imagine waking up one morning with the New Zealand Police banging at your door. They have come to tell you that your children are no longer your children. Can you wrap your head around that? Emotionally and mentally as far as the courts are concerned you are no longer part of their lives. They are essentially dead to you. 

They remove you from your home and tell you that you are not allowed back, not even to collect photographs of your children or anything that belongs to them. You're desperate to have something that reminds you of your babies, something that you can hold onto and keep their memories alive, but you have been deemed unfit, due to an unjustified and unsubstantiated claim.
 

You'll never spend another Christmas, Easter or birthday with your children. That privilege was removed in a heartbeat. The New Zealand Police could not arrest you for anything because you have not broken any law. You have been caught in a system that assumes the worst of one type of person. There are no checks in place to ensure that all claims are legitimate. It’s a blanket ban that immediately removes the rights of a loving and caring father.
 

Here's what being issued with a Temporary Protection Order means, you cannot communicate or make contact with any of your friends, you cannot grieve the loss of your children, you were the parent one minute and not the next, you cannot turn to anyone for support, because any contact, even in-direct contact, is against the Temporary Protection Order and you'll be arrested. 

New Zealand Family Court decided that you are an unfit parent, without seeing you, meeting you, or even listening to you. Even though you spent every day of your children’s lives with them, supporting them, loving them, caring for them. Even though, when they were babies, you fed them, changed them, bathed them, and got up in the middle of the night, you were the one who picked them up when they cried, even though you drove them around in the early hours of the morning trying to get them to go back to sleep. None of that matters anymore. 

Now, without notice, without just process, without the presumption of innocence, you are proclaimed guilty, and you're stripped of your rights as a parent, the right to dignity, the right to equality, the right to live free from discrimination. 
 

This is the real-life experience of thousands of New Zealand fathers facing the most inhumane Family Court system in the World. 
 

The Temporary Protection Order