LAW KICKS NORMIE.
Piers Akerman Sunday Telegraph 11/4/99
Justice has failed Normie Rowe.
It has weighed parental concern and the niceties
of black letter law and decided that the admirable and wholly understandable
concerns of the Rowe family for the welfare of one of their children must
take second place to the interests of a young man who had earlier been banned
from the Rowe family home.
It has effectively undermined the value of parental responsibility in
favour of a petty legalistic argument.
The entertainer has been fined $500
for whacking his daughter's 19 year-old boyfriend with a broomstick after
chasing him from the family home, the family home where Rowe and his wife
were helping their daughter escape a well publicised brush with heroin
addiction.
Rowe. who admitted taking the broomstick
to Geoffrey Bailey. had previously warned the youth that he was never to
return to the house before finding him on his daughter's bed on the morning
the incident occurred.
In his defence, Rowe claimed he used
a broomstick because he was scared of Bailey's kickboxing
skills.
Magistrate Laurie Lawson however found against
Rowe, who had claimed he had acted in self defence, saying none of the blows
was struck in self-defence.
Self-defence? What about Rowe's spirited
defence of his child? Doesn't that count for
anything?
Any father who first warns an unwanted visitor
whom he believes to be an unsavoury influence that his presence won't be
tolerated, then acts against that person when he refuses to heed the warning
deserves the support of our society, not its
condemnation.
Parents across the country will be profoundly
disturbed by Magistrate Lawson's decision to convict and fine
Rowe.
As a father, the entertainer should have
had the law on his side in banishing Bailey from his home and in using whatever
force necessary to support that ban because Bailey, having been warned, proceeded
to abuse Rowe's natural rights and privileges as a householder and a
parent.
It is Rowe and his ex-wife who bear the primary
responsibility for their daughter’s upbringing, not the state,
which too often is seen to entertain and uphold bizarre notions of the rights
of children as opposed to the traditional obligations of parental
care.
It is Rowe and his ex-wife observed their
daughter day-to-day, who witnessed the effect of her liasons with Bailey
and who took the decision that it was not in her interests to encourage
it.
That should be their right and the state
should have sent a signal supporting their position. Unfortunately, Magistrate
Lawson appears to have fallen back on legalisms not commonsense to find against
Rowe.
In doing so, he supports the spurious arguments
put by well-meaning welfare who seek to expand the numbers of young people
placed under the state's control without providing a great deal of evidence
that agents of the state are any better to provide care than the majority
of parents.
As Rowe explained in an interview with the
Daily Telegraph, the Department of Community Services had advised him that
the best thing to do for his daughter was "divorce" her as he and his ex
wife had no rights to remove her from the streets.
Such a view apparently widely held
among bureaucrats, is positively anti-family but is reported all to frequently
by parents who have had the unpleasant experience of having to deal with
the agency.
When his daughter, who was 13 at the time,
ran away from home. Mr. Rowe and his family immediately contacted DOCS but
despite knowing where she was, Mr Rowe said his hands were tied.
"I wanted them to give us the right to go in and have
a look at the squalid conditions in which she was living." He told the
ABC.
"We just couldn't get her back, we weren't allowed
to go and take her out of there."
Mr. Rowe urged all parents
who, find themselves in the same situation to contact their local MP and
demand they not be afraid to represent their constituents.
He said the current laws did not support
parents.
It's terribly sad because parents just feel totally
unable to do anything about the demise of their kids.
"The ability for parents to deal with it has been
rescinded on a constant basis by people, social engineers, who have developed
these policies of child rights and all this sort of thing." He said.
"They're hampered in every way by government and
rotten bureaucrats that I just think should all lose their damn job as far
as I'm concerned.
DOCS' failure to recognise that parents have a
fundamental right to know where their children are, even when they are being
housed in the department's own so-called refuges, has long been recognised
as a flaw.
But apart from his justified grievance against
the politically correct bureaucracy, the reality is Rowe not only should
have been permitted to toss Bailey out of his home, having earlier warned
him against entering, but he should have been allowed to whack him with the
broomstick and give him a kick in the pants as he exited.
Another entertainer, Willy Nelson, who had a daughter fighting a drug
problem, used to boast that he flung her boyfriend out of the backdoor of
his house and down the back stairs.
"Now, that's a 12-step program for you," Nelson
said to loud applause.
Rowe deserves the same support should his appeal
against Magistrate Lawson's fine and conviction