A FORMER Birmingham civil servant who occupied a church roof dressed as Spider-Man has been arrested on suspicion of harassing his ex-wife (according to story in Britain).
Fathers’ rights activist Ray Barry, who worked at Jobcentre Plus, in Hagley Road, Edgbaston, was quizzed after distributing a leaflet containing details of his marriage split.
He twice scaled St Peter’s Church, Wolverhampton, in 2005, as part of the Fathers 4 Justice campaign and now plans to stand for election on a family law reform ticket.
“The leaflet details my belief that the family courts do not deliver justice and so I have to seek it differently, through the public,” Mr Barry said. “The leaflet was not much different to one I had been using for the past four or five years.
“The questions I was asked by the police seemed really rather innocuous.”
Mr Barry, of Windsor Gardens, Castlecroft, Wolverhampton, distributed the leaflet around Tettenhall in the city, near his ex-wife Liz’s home. The 58-year-old claimed not to have seen two of his three children for eight years and had only fortnightly access to the other.
He said he planned to stand in this year’s Wolverhampton City Council elections for the Equal Parenting Alliance, which campaigns to reform family law.
Mr Barry now runs an insurance and personal injury consultancy is demanding greater openness in family court proceedings.
West Midlands Police said a 58-year-old man had been arrested and bailed on suspicion of harassment.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Riemers // Mar 20, 2008 at 7:32 am
Good for Spiderman. I wonder though if he was bitten by a radioactive spider or just bitten on the ass by a rabid lawyer?
Roland Riemers of ND
2 Merck // Apr 22, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Just imagine what future generations will probably think of all this.
There’s not much doubt in my mind that they’ll be completely dumbfounded by this type of discrimination.
They’ll feel sad that some men felt it necessary to go to such extremes and puzzled as to why most people didn’t care.
Sort of like us looking at past injustice.
3 MAY1208 // May 10, 2008 at 6:55 pm
good on him, 10 years since i had any contact with my son, 4 x judges and seven years in court, New Zealand is just as much as a disgrace as what Britain is, when it comes to children.
4 payne1220 // May 20, 2008 at 10:30 am
I am a Divorced father of a 9 year old son. I had 35% physical custody for the first 8 years and have not had even 1 phone conversation in the past 6 months merely because the mother chose to quit her job and be a stay at home mom in her new relationship. She felt that it would be best if she were able to reduce or eliminate my time in order to obtain a larger amount of support. She simply filed an “Order To Show Cause” listing several non-factual, third party comments/accusations as the reason and was awarded full custody eliminating any contact between myself and my son without any due process! I have spent $11,000.00 so far on attorney fees and we have attended 6 court hearings since 11/19/2007. As was the case when the order was initially signed by the judge, there was, is not and never will be any legal, moral or ethical justification for her or the family court to perpetuate this lie and destroy this child. Unfortunately it occurs daily in this country. In addition, I was obligated to pay $52,000 in child support between 9/1/2001 and 5/1/2008. Not only did I pay the obligated amount, but I had paid an excess of $3,845 during this period. I was informed last week by the Child Support Department that I am not entitled to credit for the overage because the system considers any extra payments to be a gift! If you are a father in the U.S. and you believe that this can not happen to you, stand by because the odds are your time is coming. It is time that fathers stand up and do what is necessary to restore justice and protect our children’s right to equal time with both biological parents.
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