When did divorcing parents become so toxic?
A friend remembers how, growing up in Ceausescu's Romania, she and her classmates were encouraged by teachers to spy on their parents for dissenting opinions or unpatriotic behaviour. Such monstrous behaviour would never be countenanced here, right?
Wrong. In the poisonous atmosphere of the family courts, quarrelling parents are known to plant devices on their children to covertly record their rows to then put before a judge as evidence. The practice has become so routine it prompted the Family Justice Council to issue guidance against it last month.
The majority of divorcing rows focus on money
The phenomenon of parents using children as pawns in divorce proceedings is neither new nor rare: In 2023, there were 80,000 children caught up in family court proceedings, according to court statistics. Although fewer couples are divorcing, more of them are having to go through the courts to sort out their acrimonious split.
Divorce is widely recognised as an adverse childhood experience (ACE), which is why recent findings about almost half (45 per cent) of teenagers living with one parent alarmed children's charities. Some of those teens will have witnessed a civilised separation, but too many will now suffer through their parents' bitter divorce: analysis by the Ministry of Justice found that 10,300 financial remedy orders were contested in the family courts last year – a 66 per cent rise over two years.
Julia Margo, director at the domestic violence advocacy group Fair Hearing, has mentored more than 100 mothers through their family court hearings. 'Family court' sounds like a kind and gentle annexe of our justice system, where benevolent magistrates dot the i's and cross the t's of domestic arrangements. In reality these courts are battlegrounds where warring parents tear strips off each other, usually about who will have care of the children and sometimes who can have any contact with them. Julia herself was dragged through the courts 37 times by her ex-partner who, despite being a convicted paedophile, sought unsupervised contact with their children. She warns:
Even when there are no allegations of domestic abuse, many parents now struggle to negotiate separation and co-parenting without a court order: in the UK, more than 10 per cent of separating families end up in the family courts, far higher than in previous decades.
The acrimony she has found in court exposed couples incapable of conflict resolution, emotional articulacy, or just plain respect. This has no resemblance to the 'conscious uncoupling' of Gwyneth Paltrow – whose friendly take on separation strikes one as the wisdom of Solomon by contrast.
The majority of divorcing rows focus on money. But new ingredients – online pornography addiction, cost of living stress, surging infertility – also risk fraying relationships in an unprecedented way. Our 'selfie' culture has infected too many parents, who regrettably share their psychodramas on X, Instagram and TikTok.
Once it goes public, it goes nuclear, with families torn apart and children (even grown up ones) traumatised. Worse, they risk re-enacting the relational model they grew up with.
Families function as petri dishes where children first experiment with relationships. They learn whether their tears bring parents rushing over to comfort them or have no impact on the grown-up glued to their phones. They learn, too, whether screaming obscenities at each other over an unpaid bill or coming to blows over an affair is the best way to resolve an argument.
Children's copy-cat behaviour makes the latest Office for National Statistics figures – one in four women and one in five men have been subject to domestic abuse – truly alarming: how many of the younger generation will abuse their partners? Or, as one senior judge explains, anyone who has sat as a judge for more than 20 years will find themselves at some point face-to-face in court with a domestic abuse perpetrator whom they recognise from years before: the child of an abusive parent, taken into care.
Carey Philpott, CEO of the Kent-based charity SATEDA, says that 'Breaking these cycles is a key focus for our specialist interventions'. The SATEDA programme is one-on-one, or in small groups, offered in schools, to pupils referred to the charity by parents, teachers or specialist organisations. Julia argues:
Given parents' inability to forge healthy relationships and the detrimental impact this has on children, instilling relationship skills in the next generation feels like a national priority.
This chimes with young people's own wishes. When the Children's Commissioner ran her recent 'Big Ask' national survey of children and young people 4 to 17, they put 'family' as their number one priority and poor family relationships as the root of their unhappiness.
Parents' separation too often exposes villains and victims – and those victims too often are their children. Even when they are not tasked with spying on a parent, children risk an emotional tug of war that for some casts a long shadow over their lives.
No one would wish to return to the days when two people would stay locked in a bitter, sometimes abusive, relationship. 'For the sake of the children' is no reason to stay bound to a vicious spouse or partner, but those children's welfare should be at the heart of family relationships – when they break down as well as when they stay strong. Those who ask a child to spy on their other parent seem to forget this. We are not living in the era of Nicolae Ceausescu, thank goodness, so let's not adopt any of that dictator's strategies.
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The Guardian
40 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘It's thieving': impersonators steal elderly people's TikToks to hawk mass-produced goods
In April of this year, Daisy Yelichek was scrolling TikTok when something unusual appeared in her feed: a video of her 84-year-old father, George Tsaftarides, who runs an account sharing sewing videos from his small tailoring business in Ohio. But the video Yelichek was seeing was not from Tsaftarides' actual page, which has nearly 41,000 followers – but instead originated from a profile of someone claiming to be a 'sad old man' whose cat sanctuary was at risk of shutting down. 'Please stay 8 seconds so I don't have to shut down my cat shelter I poured my love into,' the text on the video said, adding that the sanctuary would be selling slippers to raise additional funds. The bid for sympathy worked on many viewers, garnering millions of views and tens of thousands of users leaving concerned comments. 'Just ordered two! Sending love to these kittens,' wrote one. Another commenter said: 'thank you for all you do for these babies.' Others even asked if there was a GoFundMe link to donate directly to the cat shelter. Yelichek and her father were shocked. Tsaftarides does not run a shelter. The account posting the plea for funds appears to be a front for a scheme seeking to sell mass-produced slippers. Several of Tsaftarides' followers who actually ordered slippers complained that the fuzzy footwear came with 'made in China' tags and did not, in fact, appear to be handmade by an elderly man with a struggling cat sanctuary. 'These people are using my identity to make money and I don't understand why,' Tsaftarides said. 'It's thieving, it's stealing, and it's not right.' Tsaftarides is not the only TikTok user who has had his likeness hijacked by such accounts. Charles Ray, an 85-year-old retiree based in Michigan, has also been targeted by accounts using doctored videos of his likeness. He started his actual TikTok account in January and uses it to share jokes with his followers. 'Earlier this year, my pastor told me a joke about a frog, and I thought, 'that ought to make people smile,' so I figured out how to make an account and told the joke, and it took off from there,' he said. Ray's videos all follow a similar template: filmed in selfie mode, he tells a short joke. He was frustrated to learn his content, which he makes only to 'share joy' and not to earn money, was being lifted and edited to scam people. In one video, Ray is rubbing his eye, and the repost seems to imply he is crying. Another video uses a clip from a woman crying on TikTok about an unrelated issue, and another includes a user in a hospital bed. Since she first discovered the proliferation and manipulation of her father's face, Yelichek has identified more than 100 accounts splicing his videos with other, unrelated users to sell mass-produced goods including slippers, headphone cases and blankets – all under the guise of independent sellers that need help. Some two dozen Instagram accounts and YouTube as well as a handful were pulling the same trick, according to a list compiled by Yelichek and a review of the accounts by the Guardian. At one point, Yelichek even made contact with the account manipulating her father's likeness over direct message and pleaded with its owner to stop. The person behind the account claimed to be a poor 17-year-old boy based in Greece trying to make money for his family. 'I totally understand your situation but I also want you to understand mine,' he said, proceeding to post more stolen videos. The con replicates a recurring genre of video on TikTok that has boosted sales for some small businesses: user makes a heartfelt post about a local store or restaurant that is struggling, and online followers are moved to support it. One typical post mimicking a local plea for help reads: 'Please just stay 15 seconds to save my pawpaw's slipper small business.' In the case of videos Yelichek is seeing, many commenters who are moved by the fake story try to boost it by commenting names of celebrities and creating other engagement they believe TikTok prioritizes. 'Fun fact,' a comment on one video of the type reads, this one using the same formula but claiming to be a struggling cow sanctuary. 'Liking and replying to comments boosts more! Referencing popular things like Chappell Roan and Taylor Swift puts this video on the [for you page] of more people.' The video pulled in 1.4 million likes and 26,000 comments before being taken down. Yelichek says these accounts lift videos from other TikTok users as well and recontextualize them to create a false narrative. Tsaftarides said his content being used to sell mass-produced goods is particularly frustrating, as he started his account to promote small businesses, including his own, and to encourage people to shop locally. 'All we want to do is show people our store and teach them about sewing,' he said. 'We don't make money off of our TikTok account.' Yelichek said she and her father filed a police report to Jackson township police in Ohio, where their store is based, for identity theft and have made great efforts to get social networks to take the stolen content down – often to no avail. Yelichek said that while Instagram has removed a few of the profiles she reported, TikTok – the platform where the issue is more widespread – has been less responsive. Sign up to TechScape A weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives after newsletter promotion 'If we comment on [these videos] saying they're spam, our comments often get deleted right away, with TikTok saying it's against their community guidelines,' Yelichek said, sharing screenshots of the messages. 'They've actually put strikes on my dad's account for me commenting on these videos to say that they are spam and scamming people.' TikTok users who have gotten wise to the scheme have commented on videos calling out the scam. Like Yelichek, some comments say that TikTok responds to their reports of a video by saying it does not violate its community guidelines. TikTok said in a statement that its community guidelines do, in fact, prohibit impersonation accounts and content that violates others' intellectual property rights. Reports of copyright infringement concerns may require proof of ownership, including links to the original content and links to infringing content. Meta similarly stated its Instagram terms of use do not allow posting content that violates someone else's intellectual property rights, including copyright and trademarks, and that violations can be reported on Instagram's help page. Ray, the 85-year-old jokester, said he tried reporting the videos to TikTok but got responses that the content he had flagged did not violate TikTok's community standards. Like Yelichek, he said his comments on the videos alerting followers to the scam were frequently removed, and that he gets 'no help from TikTok' and does not know how to further communicate with the company. TikTok said in a statement that it continuously takes action against such copyright violations. It added that 94% of all content removed for violating community guidelines on fake engagement in the fourth quarter of last year was removed proactively rather than in response to reports. Meanwhile, some users are catching on to this particular kind of sadness bait – with recent videos going viral alerting people to the fact that the posts begging for help with failing cat shelters, cow farms and other heart-wrenching fictions are not real. Though awareness may spread, the impersonating videos remain available. In lieu of takedowns, Ray said he has decided to continue to make his videos because many of his 13,000 followers have told him they look forward to his posts each day. 'With everything that's going on nowadays, people need to smile,' he said. 'If my followers smile, even for a minute, they've forgotten their troubles for a minute. So that's all I try to do – to make people smile. This is not going to stop me.'
Spectator
8 hours ago
- Spectator
When did divorcing parents become so toxic?
A friend remembers how, growing up in Ceausescu's Romania, she and her classmates were encouraged by teachers to spy on their parents for dissenting opinions or unpatriotic behaviour. Such monstrous behaviour would never be countenanced here, right? Wrong. In the poisonous atmosphere of the family courts, quarrelling parents are known to plant devices on their children to covertly record their rows to then put before a judge as evidence. The practice has become so routine it prompted the Family Justice Council to issue guidance against it last month. The majority of divorcing rows focus on money The phenomenon of parents using children as pawns in divorce proceedings is neither new nor rare: In 2023, there were 80,000 children caught up in family court proceedings, according to court statistics. Although fewer couples are divorcing, more of them are having to go through the courts to sort out their acrimonious split. Divorce is widely recognised as an adverse childhood experience (ACE), which is why recent findings about almost half (45 per cent) of teenagers living with one parent alarmed children's charities. Some of those teens will have witnessed a civilised separation, but too many will now suffer through their parents' bitter divorce: analysis by the Ministry of Justice found that 10,300 financial remedy orders were contested in the family courts last year – a 66 per cent rise over two years. Julia Margo, director at the domestic violence advocacy group Fair Hearing, has mentored more than 100 mothers through their family court hearings. 'Family court' sounds like a kind and gentle annexe of our justice system, where benevolent magistrates dot the i's and cross the t's of domestic arrangements. In reality these courts are battlegrounds where warring parents tear strips off each other, usually about who will have care of the children and sometimes who can have any contact with them. Julia herself was dragged through the courts 37 times by her ex-partner who, despite being a convicted paedophile, sought unsupervised contact with their children. She warns: Even when there are no allegations of domestic abuse, many parents now struggle to negotiate separation and co-parenting without a court order: in the UK, more than 10 per cent of separating families end up in the family courts, far higher than in previous decades. The acrimony she has found in court exposed couples incapable of conflict resolution, emotional articulacy, or just plain respect. This has no resemblance to the 'conscious uncoupling' of Gwyneth Paltrow – whose friendly take on separation strikes one as the wisdom of Solomon by contrast. The majority of divorcing rows focus on money. But new ingredients – online pornography addiction, cost of living stress, surging infertility – also risk fraying relationships in an unprecedented way. Our 'selfie' culture has infected too many parents, who regrettably share their psychodramas on X, Instagram and TikTok. Once it goes public, it goes nuclear, with families torn apart and children (even grown up ones) traumatised. Worse, they risk re-enacting the relational model they grew up with. Families function as petri dishes where children first experiment with relationships. They learn whether their tears bring parents rushing over to comfort them or have no impact on the grown-up glued to their phones. They learn, too, whether screaming obscenities at each other over an unpaid bill or coming to blows over an affair is the best way to resolve an argument. Children's copy-cat behaviour makes the latest Office for National Statistics figures – one in four women and one in five men have been subject to domestic abuse – truly alarming: how many of the younger generation will abuse their partners? Or, as one senior judge explains, anyone who has sat as a judge for more than 20 years will find themselves at some point face-to-face in court with a domestic abuse perpetrator whom they recognise from years before: the child of an abusive parent, taken into care. Carey Philpott, CEO of the Kent-based charity SATEDA, says that 'Breaking these cycles is a key focus for our specialist interventions'. The SATEDA programme is one-on-one, or in small groups, offered in schools, to pupils referred to the charity by parents, teachers or specialist organisations. Julia argues: Given parents' inability to forge healthy relationships and the detrimental impact this has on children, instilling relationship skills in the next generation feels like a national priority. This chimes with young people's own wishes. When the Children's Commissioner ran her recent 'Big Ask' national survey of children and young people 4 to 17, they put 'family' as their number one priority and poor family relationships as the root of their unhappiness. Parents' separation too often exposes villains and victims – and those victims too often are their children. Even when they are not tasked with spying on a parent, children risk an emotional tug of war that for some casts a long shadow over their lives. No one would wish to return to the days when two people would stay locked in a bitter, sometimes abusive, relationship. 'For the sake of the children' is no reason to stay bound to a vicious spouse or partner, but those children's welfare should be at the heart of family relationships – when they break down as well as when they stay strong. Those who ask a child to spy on their other parent seem to forget this. We are not living in the era of Nicolae Ceausescu, thank goodness, so let's not adopt any of that dictator's strategies.
Scottish Sun
17 hours ago
- Scottish Sun
Shock moment two brazen tourists are caught in disrespectful sex act outside church at Brit hols hotspot
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) THIS is the disgusting moment two brazen tourists were caught in a sexual act in front of a church at a popular Brit tourist hotspot. Locals in Sóller, Majorca, were left outraged by the lawless behaviour after the frisky clip went viral. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 2 Footage showed the couple engaging in a sexual act Credit: Instagram/ 2 The couple were filmed in front of the Sant Bartomeu Church at the town square of Soller Credit: Getty The clip showed a partially-naked man wearing what looked like a blue suit jacket standing in the middle of the road. A topless woman can be seen on her knees close to the man. Both of them are said to be tourists, according to local news outlet Utima Hora. The man with a phone in his hand appeared to record a video as they engaged in the raunchy act. A huge church can be seen right behind where the couple were filmed during nighttime. There is no information on whether they faced any police investigation after the clip went viral. A fuming local said: "For years, people have talked about bringing in high-quality tourism to avoid all this incivility, but in the end, we're faced with reality, and this is what we have." It comes after a gob-smacking video shows two cops romping up against a police car in broad daylight. A local caught the lawless behaviour on camera in Cyprus, and the frisky footage has left the holiday island stunned. Their video shows a cop car parked up in full view after ploughing through the crops - clearly in a hurry. Shocking moment two brazen cops are caught romping in field propped against their police car in broad daylight clinch The front passenger door is open and one party is bending over the seat. The other appears to be going at it hammer-and-tongs behind. Vehicles stream past on another road just a stone's throw away, also with a clear view of the car. The local force confirmed it was probing a video of 'a man and woman". Two officers have been identified in relation to the clip and temporarily dismissed from their posts until the inquiry is wrapped up. The investigation was said to be focused on ascertaining whether the vehicle belonged to the force. One member of the local police said: 'We are not ruling anything out. 'There is a possibility that this is a fake video, footage that has been deliberately manipulated and we are investigating that too." Commenters said it had 'humiliated' a police force already under stress from the escalating conflict in the nearby Middle East. One source told The Sun: 'If this video is for real it is deeply offensive but we will not let it get in the way of our good name and good work."
