It's 11:10 am on Nov 27, and a woman is standing in front of a judge in courtroom 26 at the Elgin Street courthouse. "This is a settlement hearing. Settle it. Give me back my kids. Now!"

I'm the only spectator in the room, marvelling at how far she has come. She's been fighting the system for seven years, and by her count, this is the forty-fifth judge she has appeared before.

It started with a telephone call in 1991, made by a babysitter with a vested interest. The parents were out of the country. She whispered the words sex abuse and became the paid foster parent of their three children, and still is. At the time, the oldest was four. Best guess is that they are worth between $60 and $100 a day to her, tax free.

Seated beside the woman in the courtroom is her husband. At their feet are two huge legal file carriers. For five years they've allowed me to scan each piece of evidence as they sorted it. Like quick-draw artists, they can flick a hand into those cases and prove every claim they make.

The files reveal the loopy logic that too often drives the child protection industry. They document problems that horrify responsible social workers. The field isn't licensed, but a social worker has powers similar to those of a police officer. There's little accountability when someone makes an error.

Because it's a Children's Aid Society case, the couple can't be identified. Lawyer Bob Morrow is representing the CAS. He asks for a delay of at least 20 days. He gets seven. The next step is to present the court with lists of witnesses. Then comes a trial management session. Then more court proceedings.

Three sheets of paper in one of those cases show how far off the logic trail the system has wandered. First is an application to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board of Ontario, made by a CAS caseworker on behalf of three of the couple's children in its care. The compensation is for alleged criminal assault. A second shows $18,000 was paid to the children, to be held in trust by the CAS. The third is a letter to the father from the compensation board, demanding that he repay the board.

He has never been charged with that crime, and there is no evidence to suggest that he should have been. The children were taken into custody through family court processes, where there is no burden of proof and personal opinion and hearsay from caseworkers and psychologists may be accepted as evidence.

If allowed to proceed -- and it appears they can't be stopped -- this couple will prove that we, as a society, went wrong when we allowed family courts to abandon the concept that people are innocent until proven guilty. The result is that the rights of parents have been suspended when dealing with child protection agencies.

If the CAS in this case had been required to follow rules of evidence demanded in other courts, taxpayers would have saved a fortune. Instead, the state is supporting four of the couple's children in foster care, and spending a bundle in lawyers' fees.

In 1993, the couple's five-hour-old daughter was taken out of the nursery at the Civic Hospital by a caseworker exercising her power to take into custody a child she considered to be in a dangerous environment.

A hospital nursery? Dangerous?

Another example of loopy logic: Mother gave birth to twins Jan. 17 at the Grace Hospital. The CAS has now applied to family court for a protection order for the twins. When a caseworker makes such an application, the court must be assured the children are currently in a safe place. The application gives that assurance, saying they are with their parents.

These are the kinds of actions that discredit the child protection system. These are also the actions of people who don't know when to give up, and that is the definition of fanatic.

One judge is on record as saying it no longer matters why the children were taken into custody. All that matters now is that the courts act in the best interests of the children. Interpretation: If we admit an error you might be able to sue the system.

At first, the parents tried to get their children back by co-operating with the CAS. They offered to open their home to inspection but couldn't get a social worker to come to the house.

Three years into their struggle, the couple abandoned lawyers. Lawyers are trained to operate within a system, even if the system is flawed. With family and friends supporting them, the couple set up a state-of-the-art photo copier in their living room, got a fax machine, and counter attacked. They used the same ammunition that had been used against them; endless paperwork and legal processes.

Court records show the foster mother denying that she called the child protectors. She told a lawyer, who told a caseworker. That's followed by the lawyer denying that she made such a call. That's followed by a judge saying: "It must have been Caesar's ghost."

The couple is now preparing subpoenas for many of the people whose names appear in their files. They want to cross-examine the psychologist who submitted a strange report to the courts. He examined their then four-year-old son and, among other things, had him play with a toy snake. From the way the boy held the snake, and from the look on his face, the psychologist concluded there was some kind of sexual release. In the weird logic that permeates the whole system, it was entered as proof the child had been sexually abused.

The parents want to cross-examine dozens of caseworkers, lawyers, and "experts." They are after those who, in court records, have branded the mother a prostitute, drug addict and alcoholic. The father is in records as a pimp, child sex abuser, pornographer and other things that could sway the opinion of a family court judge.

Not one of those accusations has been proven, and after knowing the couple for five years, I know they are untrue.

Their counter-attack has panicked the child protectors. They have been dragged into too many different courts too many times, and have left a paper trail of what is being pursued as perjury. Records show caseworkers answering yes in one courtroom, and no to the same question in another.

Those with the most to fear are social workers; dozens of them. They have created a maze of paperwork they won't be able to find their way out of. One problem will be finding these people. Not one of those who gave opinions against the parents or drove the system that took away their children, is still in the child protection business.

While listening to the judge scold both parties for failing to meet deadlines, my mind drifted back to Feb. 3, 1989.

Family court Judge Garry Guzzo furiously threatened CAS officials for disobeying and changing his court orders.

I was there because a man called me for help. The single father had voluntarily placed his son in CAS care, and his visits were being cut. Yet the most recent court order in his file was from Judge Guzzo ordering the CAS to allow more visits.

The man was illiterate but not stupid. He didn't qualify for legal aid, so I did the paperwork that got him back in front of the judge. There was an explosion from Judge Guzzo. He threatened to issue an arrest order for the deputy minister of the Ontario Department of Community and Social Services. "Someday, somebody who knows what he's doing is going to come along," he told the CAS lawyer, "and I warn you now, the suit is going to be astronomical."

It was in courtroom 26.

Tomorrow: Feeding the foster care industry.

The Children's Aid Society is allowing an Ottawa couple to see their three children for three hours, once every three weeks. In exchange, they must provide enough groceries to keep the children fed in foster care between visits. They have been told no groceries, no visit.

Because it's a CAS case, the couple can't be identified. For the past year and a half the protectors have, in familiar fashion, slowly and agonizingly pulled the children away from the parents. They had a court date last week, and there are more to come, but the outcome is inevitable. The CAS will get Crown wardship, and the parents will no longer have to pay with groceries to see their children.

They will never see them again.

There is no abuse involved. Father has a drinking problem, and in the opinion of the protectors, it would be in the best interests of the children to keep them away from a man who drinks. The mother was offered the children back if she would abandon the father, but she's still with him. She says he's a good man and a good father, and together they're working on the drinking problem.

The grandparents cry in outrage, supporting the claim that their son is not abusive. He has a criminal record for impaired driving. The grocery order is part of the deal because the couple is still drawing social assistance for a family of five.

Social workers became involved when there was a report that a man in charge of children was drunk. Many parents drink too much, but a phone call to CAS scooped this family into the system.

Now three sisters, ages nine, eight and six, are living in three separate group homes. For each of them, it's the third foster home in the past year and a half. The nine-year-old has had four if you include the time she has spent being treated at the Royal Ottawa Hospital. Factor in, as well, the cost of hospitalizing the stressed-out parents several times.

It's a familiar pattern that unfolds virtually in secret, through family courts, where there's no burden of proof, and decisions may be based on opinions and hearsay.

The parents have been keeping me updated, step by step, as it grinds on. At each step in the long and painful court process, the CAS is in a stronger position to show that the children shouldn't be in the care of emotionally wrecked parents. It's a cycle I've watched before.

This case is made worse because the mother is herself a survivor of foster care and a group home that kept both boys and girls. She reported sex abuse and believes she helped bring about segregated group homes. Her dread for her children's futures is based on personal experience. Foster homes can be dangerous.

Ask the parents what they want for Christmas, and they cry for their kids. Their children have disappeared into the system and can't be asked, or their answers heard. I'll take a chance and bet they want to go home.

Any day at the courthouse you'll find a criminal lawyer making a pre-sentence plea on behalf of a guilty client, claiming that he or she never had a chance, because he or she was raised in the "the system." But child protectors are demanding more money to protect more children in more foster homes.

While tracking the drinking dad case, I dropped into one of the hearings but was ordered out by Judge Alan Sheffield. To get into family court in the past, I have had to use lawyers to argue me in. In this case the lawyer for the parents is Ross Stewart, who has seen a lawyer argue me into another case he was working on. I expected Mr. Stewart to argue me into this one. Would it not help his clients if the system knew the case was being watched by a reporter? That he didn't react surprised me.

"I would have needed clear instructions from my clients," he said later. The clients had earlier instructed him to co-operate with me.

Judge Sheffield and I have had dealings before. He refused to take my call in 1990 when I tried to tell him an order he had issued to Lanark Child and Family Services had been ignored. On Feb. 2, 1989, he issued a "plan of care" ordering the agency to "examine options for care within the extended family" as an alternative to adoption.

On May 3, 1990, Judge J-P Michel gave Crown wardship to the agency and the adoption proceeded. The extended family in New Brunswick had a room decorated and waiting for a baby boy they knew and loved. I surveyed the extended family. Nobody else did. Among its members was a child protection worker, the mother's brother. He said what happened was wrong, but could think of no way to correct it.

Adoption records are sealed and secret, but the reporter in me cries for somebody with authority to go into records and answer a question. There are costs involved. Were they fed back to the adoptive parents, and if so, how much did they pay?

Passing messages back and forth through a secretary, Judge Sheffield's final thought on the subject was: "He says you'll have to find another avenue."

There is no other avenue. Child protectors take the view that when they get Crown wardship they have all the rights of parents, and can make decisions that overrule judges' orders. If we were talking about a criminal court case, that would be like a judge shrugging off the news that the man he sent to jail for a week had been hanged because the jailers thought it was best.

Family court processes that take children into state care lack continuity of judges. The judicial distancing spreads the responsibility.

Even more frightening was that a child protection agency could do this with full knowledge that a journalist was watching. I watched Elizabeth Peterson being turned into an emotional wreck as her son Joshua was slowly pulled away. The visits with her baby became further apart and shorter as a family court issued one order after another. She can be named because Joshua ceased to exist the moment he was adopted. He became another person with another name. She still calls, and she still cries.

She came to the attention of the CAS when she asked for its help. The baby's father had abandoned them and she was unable to cope. On the advice of her family doctor, she asked the agency to care for her baby while she checked herself into the Royal Ottawa Hospital. When she checked out, she bumped into a child protector's opinion that her baby was at risk. After all, she had just been in an institution that treated mental ailments. The decision was made. Joshua needed protection from his mother.

The Lanark County agency refused to return calls or faxed messages. At least the Children's Aid Society of Ottawa-Carleton is more courteous. Over the years that I've tracked similar cases, it has always called back, always with the same answer: "We can't comment on cases that are before the courts."

That the child protection industry is out of control isn't peculiar to Ontario. It's a North American epidemic. As far back as 1986, American author Mary Pride wrote a book titled The Child Abuse Industry. The subtitle: "Outrageous facts about child abuse and everyday rebellions against a system that threatens every North American family." It's filled with stories like the ones I'm telling here. Nothing has changed, and if anything, it's getting worse.

There is a better way. It's a system introduced in Hawaii in the mid-'80s, which has reduced child abuse and neglect by 99 per cent. Many stories have been written about Hawaii's Healthy Start program, but it's bumping into the established interests of the abuse industry.

In North America, universities grind out social work degrees at about $40,000 a pop. Those people are then fed into the child protection industry, generating the raw material to keep more judges on more benches and more lawyers in more courtrooms. They in turn feed a growing underground industry called foster care.

Hawaii put a stop to it. Social workers have been replaced by parents. People with proven parenting skills are factored into potential abuse cases right at the hospital nursery. Hospital staff know which babies are at risk. Psychiatrists know the human animal forms its character in the first three years. The professional parent joins the family and shows them how to mould a good character. It's done with love and supervision.

Meanwhile, we live with a bad idea -- social workers with their own courts -- and it's getting worse. We are hiring more social workers to feed more children into more foster homes through more family courts, and all of them need more funding.

The frightening thing is that they're getting it.

In 1996 Carleton University's School of Social Work graduated 29 students. In 1997 the number jumped to 60. The number of master's degrees in social work jumped from 43 to 59 during the same period.

We should look back at the previous generation and ask how they raised such rotten children -- us. Their children weren't being pulled away to be state-stored at anywhere near the rate that ours are.

As for the drinking father case, the court's decision is a foregone conclusion. If the children are not made Crown wards, it would be an admission that three children have been traumatized by the very people who are paid to protect them.

Tomorrow: The SWAT-team effect.

On Oct. 18 last year Katey John, in the middle of what she calls "one of my hissy fits," called police. "All I wanted was for somebody to come here and talk to us."

What she got was a SWAT team in battle fatigues with machine-guns and all the accompanying shouts and threats. Over her objections, she watched as her husband Chris was handcuffed and hauled off to jail.

"I no longer had input. Nobody would listen to me. When I tried to talk to anybody, I felt totally intimidated. The police and prosecutors took over my marriage and my life."

Chris and Katey John were celebrating on Dec 2. It marked the end of his year as a convicted criminal, when he was pegged as a wife-beater, and his restoration as the gentle man he always has been. He still doesn't feel totally safe in his wife's company, but he's working at it. They have been living apart since the raid.

Mrs John is one of a dozen women who have complained to me about their experiences in the new domestic court system. Chris John calls it "women's court." After the SWAT team handcuffed him and placed him in a police cruiser, he says, "everybody I talked to after that, with the exception of my lawyer, was a woman."

Louise Dupont is one of the court's two prosecutors. Since its startup in February, she says domestic court has proved itself as an effective way to control male violence. She rejects the suggestion that her role as prosecutor is to prove the charge, not help the couple. "My job is to present the evidence, fairly, to a judge."

Defence lawyer Karen Ann Reid works the same court. Her view? "It's an insult to women everywhere to assume that they are always victims."

The state, in a well-intentioned move to stop violence against women, has taken over the domestic dispute. Zero tolerance has become the battle cry, and although Staff Sgt Tim Armour, head of the Ottawa-Carleton police spousal assault unit, says arrests are not made without reasonable and probable grounds, many disagree.

One of those is lawyer Reid, who says she sees many cases where grounds for arrest were, "let's say, suspect."

Police officers not connected to the spousal assault unit say when they answer a domestic call, they go with the intention of arresting the man. They ask for anonymity because their jobs would be at risk. The safe course, they believe, is to bring the man in and let the detectives in the special unit sort it out.

It almost always means that the man is going to spend a night in jail, and that has to be justified. Moving them to court and formally charging them provides that justification.

"He threatened me" is probable grounds for arrest if said by a woman. If a man tells an officer that another man threatened him, and he denies it, the officer doesn't have reasonable and probable grounds unless there are witnesses.

An argument can be made that the Charter rights of half the population are being violated.

Katey John called the police general number and wanted to talk to an officer. "Chris isn't a violent man. He's the opposite. He refuses to fight. We were arguing and he went to a room and wouldn't open the door. I didn't know what he was doing there, except it was his way of fighting, and I wanted somebody to come and help end the fight."

She says she doesn't remember details in full, because she was upset and angry. She realizes now she answered questions that triggered the armed response. In the over-protective temper of the '90s, the dynamics changed from a request for a referee in a domestic dispute to justifying a full-fledged armed raid that terrified the John family, including their three children.

The tactical unit that hit the home searched it and removed anything that could be considered a weapon, including camping equipment. Chris owns a bow, and it would appear in records twice as a "crossbow."

Chris was off to spend a night in a police cell. "I was in my bike shorts and freezing. I didn't get a blanket or mattress. I was supposed to sleep on a sheet of steel."

Meanwhile, back at the Bayshore home, Const. Kim Brigden sat with Katey and helped her get it all down on paper. "I was blathering," says Katey. When finished, there was enough to lay five charges, including assault (with a deodorant stick) and being a public danger with a "crossbow."

During the blathering, Katey mentioned an earlier incident when Chris, backing out of an argument, went into a room and pumped up the volume on the stereo system. She went into the room and cranked up the volume beyond capacity, trashing the system. He then threw a deodorant stick that hit her hand. That's assault.

There were delays in getting Chris in front of a judge, and he had to make a second trip to the courthouse. As a teacher, a computer whiz and a man never in trouble before, the ride in the police wagon was his only experience around real bad guys.

What he remembers most is the smell. "There were six of us jammed in and the huge guy beside me had fought with five police officers." The man had worked up a sweat and hadn't had access to deodorant.

When asked about this case, Sgt. Armour replied: "Be careful. You're dealing with a man who pleaded guilty to a criminal charge of assault."

Chris John says he had no choice. His lawyer was able to get the charges down to one of assault. The choice now was a trial that would cost $5,000, or a guilty plea that would get him out and home with an unconditional discharge. The cost would be $1, 200. "My guts were in knots and I was living on antacids. I had to get it over with."

Six weeks later, on Dec. 2, 1997, he stood before Judge Jean-Marie Bordeleau and was given an unconditional discharge. The judge took the unusual step of eliminating one of the conditions. He said Chris John was obviously not in need of the usual mandatory anger management courses.

Up to this point he was under a restraining order and had to stay away from his home and family. It was lifted, but he was afraid to go home. For one year he would carry a criminal record for assault. It would be struck from the record after a year.

Another hissy fit and he could expect an even tougher response, because a police computer check would see a violent man.

"When you've had a machine-gun aimed right at your face by an angry man screaming at you -- well, it leaves an impression."

He's still not comfortable. Although the criminal record disappeared Dec. 2, he knows it's likely he's still in police computers. He's afraid of another over-reaction.

Part of the domestic court plan is the Partner Assault Support Team (PAST). When we talked, neither Chris nor Katey had heard the term, or were aware they had dealt with it. Its members include the two prosecutors who work that court, Ms. Dupont and Cathy Kehoe, and Cossette Chaffe, who heads the victim assistance program. The couple says each was individually advised to seek counselling, but not together.

Says Katey: "Cathy Kehoe told me we could not be in the same room together and if we were, we could expect further charges. I was beginning to see the whole process as something intended to make my husband, a wonderful guy, look like a monster, and tear apart our marriage."

"We found our own counsellor," says Chris. "I learned my method of walking away from a dispute was passive-aggressive. In any marriage there are bound to be flare-ups, and I think we've learned how to handle them. Number 1 is stay away from the telephone."

They also went through medical examinations and believe an adjustment to Katey's prescription drugs will ease or eliminate the hissy fits.

Now that he's officially no longer a criminal, Chris admits they broke the restraining order that was supposed to keep them apart until the court process concluded. The night of the day he got out of jail, using an intermediary, they met in a dark playground. They decided then to work through the crisis.

There's one more step to take. Chris is looking for a new job in a new city. His criteria: "Any place that doesn't have a women's court and zero tolerance."

Prosecutor Dupont says the domestic court is just like any other court. The same rules apply.

What nobody in the system seems to see is that if men want to go home, they must plead guilty. It saves time and money and lifts the restraining order. That guilty plea will go into statistics as another case of male violence against women.

- - -

The Johns weren't the first family to be raided by a SWAT team. Sept. 17, 1997, I was invited to a home on Northwestern Avenue by an angry mother who asked me to "come and see what they (CAS) have done to my daughter." The girl wasn't in the room when I arrived at 8:30 p.m., and her mother outlined the problem.

The family's 15-year-old daughter had announced she was pregnant and wanted her boyfriend to move in. After a stormy shouting match, she went to the CAS and reported she was being abused.

A social worker passed that information to police. The father has a criminal record. At 11 a.m. July 17, two SWAT teams hit the house, front and back, and dragged out dad.

After an interview at police headquarters, detectives accepted his explanation and released him. He was home two hours after the full bore raid. Nobody said oops, sorry about that. He wasn't even offered a ride.

The fact that police couldn't make a case didn't deter the social worker. On Sept. 5, he went to the children's school and picked up the six-year-old daughter. Teachers and the social worker assured her she was just going for a little ride, but she went into a foster shelter for four days.

Her 13-year-old brother recognized the CAS worker and got chippy. He said, in effect: Nuts. If he needed help he would ask for it.

He refused to go. It took two uniformed police officers to wrestle him down and cuff him in the busy lunch-break school yard. He too was home in four days.

After giving me that information, mother told her son to get his younger sister. When the girl walked into the room and saw a strange man, she flew sobbing into her mother's arms.

The CAS has declined an invitation to open and discuss this file.

With Ottawa-Carleton police feeding 120 men a month into the domestic court process, and with restraining orders keeping them away from their homes, the flow of women in need of shelters should be slowing down.

Instead, shelters are reporting they are busier than ever. But who checks that information?

Tomorrow: A peek inside a shelter.

There's a trigger in us all when the subject of women's shelters comes up. It makes men uneasy and women defensive. That there's a need for them is abhorrent to all.

Those triggers also protect shelters from normal scrutiny. Ottawa's new domestic court is taking men out of their homes at the rate of 120 a month. The zero-tolerance approach to domestic violence includes, for most men, a restraining order meaning they can't go home, or near their homes, until calm is restored.

One would think that this would be taking some of the pressure off shelters. But the shelter movement continues to plead for more money to protect more women from more abusers who are becoming more violent. These claims can be made with impunity, because of the secrecy that surrounds shelters.

As a reporter and a skeptic, this offends my check-it-out impulse because I can't go near them. Even the suggestion of checking one out, or challenging the claims they make, pulls triggers. Particularly in women.

To most women, there are some things that have to be taken on faith, and one of them is that the number of men becoming violent against women is increasing. The facts prove it, and the facts are coming from shelters. Challenge them, and you can hear the trigger click.

I heard the click in June when Senator Anne Cools challenged a shelter lobbyist appearing before the Special Joint Senate-Commons Committee on Child Custody and Access. Immediately, a female member of the committee jumped to the shelter worker's defence and tempers flared. Ms Cools left the room. Ms Cools, a founder of the shelter movement, is now an outspoken opponent of it.

To get the inside story, I had to find a volunteer. The one I found is a prominent Ottawa businessperson who doesn't want to be identified. We didn't tie up a bed. The idea was to check out the service being provided and get a look at the inside of a shelter.

She made her first call on a recent Tuesday at 8:30 pm, to Nelson House. My agent was told, sorry, all shelter beds in the Ottawa area were filled. I listened as she pleaded. She said she didn't want to go home. She hadn't been abused, she was just afraid. She put on an impressive display of somebody in need of help. She was told to call back in an hour.

Her report to me after the call: "Not a very warm response. She didn't seem to care. She didn't ask questions. She just kept telling me I was out of luck. She seemed to want me to go away."

In the next call, she was told to go to Interval House. She found the reception there cool. She asked for a tour of the house, saying it would make her more comfortable. The answer was no. She asked to use a bathroom, and in that way got a look at some of the ground floor. She described the building as huge. Including the woman on duty in the office, she saw five women. She didn't see or hear children. It was 9:45 pm. The house was quiet.

"I felt unwelcome. I was told I could stay overnight and arrangements would be made in the morning to get me a lawyer and a place to stay. I had been told women could stay up to 10 weeks, and when I asked why I had to move out so quickly, there was no answer. I was asked to sign an agreement saying I would never divulge the address, and I left. All of the women I saw were members of visible minorities."

I asked my agent why she had agreed to help me. She said it was her business sense. Things don't add up, and she feels that she, as a taxpayer and an honest person, should help uncover abuses of systems. Also, she has a brother who can't see his children because his wife went through the shelter system, and he was branded as abusive without a hearing.

My reporter instincts tell me the explosion in male violence is a myth perpetrated by shelters. They need it to be believed to increase their funding. Our lawmakers have believed them, and things like the new domestic court are one result. Women who report abuse can no longer recant -- at least not without difficulty and time. Domestic squabbles are being mixed in with abuse, and the easiest, fastest and least expensive way for a couple to get back together is for the man to plead guilty. The violent-male statistics are exploding.

One of the driving forces behind the formation of the new court was Carroll Holland, liaison co-ordinator for the Gay, Lesbian, Transsexual and Trans Gender Support Group of Ottawa-Carleton. When she heard I was nosing around domestic court she delivered a large package of male-bashing material, with a warning note.

"The Citizen has been very negligent in its lack of coverage of this topic. It would be irresponsible to address this topic now in anything less than a comprehensive fashion."

Among her list of accomplishments, Ms Holland is a special adviser to the police hate-crimes unit. If similar unsolicited material had been sent to a minority group, including hers, Ms Holland would have told the posse to saddle up.

Earlier this month I attended a meeting in the office of Crown Attorney Andrejs Berzins to outline some of the growing number of complaints reaching my desk, mainly from women who believe the new system is harmful. Being unable to speak to their partners meant they were unable to resolve disputes. There were six Partner Assault Support Team (PAST) members in Mr Berzins' office. Among many items discussed was my agent's shelter experience.

Police officers who answered domestic calls used to act as mediators and calming agents. Now most say their hands are tied and their safest move in the zero-tolerance atmosphere is to take the man in. Marriages are being torn apart.

The day after my meeting with the PAST group, I called Lyallen Hayes, spokeswoman for Interval House, and told her the woman who dropped in Tuesday night was my agent. "I know," she said. "I was told yesterday."

She said Interval House currently houses 22 people, nine women and 13 children. Most are long term. "They can stay 10 weeks, or longer if there are problems." She repeated that shelters are unable to keep up with the increasing flow of victims.

No wonder, said my agent. Ten weeks isn't sheltering. That's storage.

Shelters are publicly funded. I asked Ms Hayes if there were ever any spot audits. Did bureaucratic bean-counters ever drop around to check out who, how many, why, and for how long?

She said that was information I would have to get from the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services. I read that as a no. She also warned that my agent had signed an agreement of confidentiality. "That includes not speaking about anything that goes on in here." If found, she warned, my agent could be in trouble.

If I'd been thinking faster, I would have asked for some blank copies of that confidentiality agreement. Mr Berzins could use some in his office.

Tomorrow: Marriage under attack

With a degree in communications, Wendy Woodcock has learned to get directly to the point.

"Because I called police during a domestic fight, my husband is now with another woman and filing for divorce. Once we were taken into the new (domestic court) system our marriage didn't have a chance. A 24-year relationship was brought to an end by decisions made by others. I wasn't allowed to think for myself."

The "incident" is no longer the issue, she says. "Let's just say tempers were lost and there was slapping. Nobody was seriously hurt."

Had they been separated for a while to cool down, she believes they could have worked things out. "We needed some adjustments, and after the incident, some new promises. He was the man I chose 24 years ago, and fully intended to grow old with."

Cathy Kehoe is the Crown attorney in charge of domestic court and a member of the Partner Assault Support Team (PAST). Any suggestion that the new system has hidden dangers, she argues, would be irresponsible on my part. "If it caused one woman to hesitate in calling for help, and that woman was hurt, how would you feel?"

Ms Kehoe believes she is providing an essential service in the field of domestic violence. As a user of that service, Mrs Woodcock is just as outspoken about its dangers.

"Women have to understand that involving police in domestic disputes is not what it used to be. The minute you touch that phone, your partner is going to jail. A phalanx of police and lawyers will be placed between you. Unless the man pleads guilty, it could be months before you can speak to each other."

A week after her husband's removal from the home, Mrs Woodcock received a letter from a mediator, proposing that she and her husband try to work things out with the specialist.

"If I had it to do over again, I would have replied in writing that it was a good idea. Just give me a little more time to settle down. I would have said I was sure we could work through it. I would have told him I loved him.

"But I was intimidated by police and lawyers, and warned that he wasn't allowed to communicate even in writing and could go to jail if we were caught talking. I was afraid to do anything, so I did nothing. He read my silence as total rejection. By the time we got into court months later, he had found a new relationship."

Mrs Woodcock also sees a problem in the way evidence is collected. A frightened and angry woman, stretched to her emotional limit, does not make a good witness. Yet everything she says while in that state goes into the record to help ensure a conviction.

She suggests that the PAST team remove the word "support" from the name. "Once a man is taken into the system, the emphasis is on getting a conviction. It isn't difficult. The most sensible way for a man to get out of the system is to plead guilty. Support, in my view, would be an effort to help keep marriages together."

For her part, Ms Kehoe says the complaints reaching me tell only one side of the story; many women are grateful such policies and courts are there to help them. While zero tolerance may appear to mean scooping up people who don't know the steps and plead guilty to get it over with, Ms Kehoe says there's no excuse for that. An accused has a right to speak to a lawyer or duty counsel. "I guess to a lot of them that sounds like a breakfast cereal," she adds.

Duty counsel a breakfast cereal? That's a sign that good men are being pulled into the system; men inexperienced at being before a court. Bad guys have court experience and know the difference between lawyers and Fruit Loops.

Ontario's Ministry of the Attorney General is preparing a survey on how well the new system is working. It's certain the AG will be impressed by the high conviction rate. Men may not be forced to plead guilty, but they are certainly squeezed.

Systems tend to defend themselves. If information is provided by or filtered through a body under review, the material can be tainted. With that in mind, Wendy Woodcock has volunteered to do some research.

Those who have been through the domestic court process can contact her, and she will prepare a report, a consumers' satisfaction survey. Confidentiality is guaranteed, but she must have names and if possible, case numbers. To maintain accuracy, names will be checked against files.

She can be reached at 824-3943.

In telling her story, Mrs Woodcock wants to publicly praise the involvement of the Children's Aid Society. "They were there when I needed them. They took my son into care at a time when I just couldn't cope."

Mrs Woodcock has been a member of REAL Women almost from its inception. REAL Women has long protested that small, powerful groups, many with public funding, are working to undermine the family unit. For almost two decades I've been watching areas the media mostly ignore -- family courts, and now domestic court. I too have come to believe the family is under attack.

Those who designed the domestic court system believe it gives men a break. If they plead guilty and promise to take anger management courses, they can go home, and after a year their record for criminal assault will be expunged. Those guilty pleas will cause the violent-male statistics to skyrocket. Also, the temporary criminal record is enough to get most men fired if their boss learns about it. And men who have to travel would be in deep trouble if caught lying about a criminal record in another country.

Interestingly, most complaints to me have come from women. One dialed 911 because her husband told her to as a joke. He had his back to her, washing dishes, and she was throwing a temper tantrum. Where was she supposed to get help, she asked. He wasn't offering any. Call 911, he replied. She hit the numbers and he walked over, disconnected the call and gave her a hug.

At the other end, an operator heard a woman crying and then the connection was cut. The operator, correctly, hit the panic button. Police came in hard and fast, and he hardly had time to take off his apron.

The man didn't appear in domestic court, but spent two weeks in a hotel running up costs that his young family could ill afford. It took time for a lawyer to get the restraining order lifted and charges withdrawn. The woman was called by a PAST team member who offered to give her a tour of the courthouse, so she would feel less intimidated by the process. She didn't want a tour, but said it would be nice if somebody would babysit for a day because she couldn't cope without her husband's help. That, she said, would be real support. The idea didn't fly.

Another woman told me she was angry and lied to police. When she tried to confess, she couldn't. It's called recanting, and women can't do that any more.

Ottawa Crown Attorney Andrejs Berzins defends that by pointing to a case where a woman recanted, let the man back into her life, and he killed her.

"Don't you think it's worth trying anything to prevent that from happening again?"

Tomorrow: Secrets of social workers.

Accountability -- a word long missing from Ontario's child protection industry -- was added to the mix this week when the Social Work Act received third and final reading in the legislature. Once it is proclaimed, it will require the province's estimated 15,000 social workers to be licensed.

For more than two generations, social workers have been allowed to work in almost complete secrecy, making life-altering decisions. The move to more accountability was spearheaded by 3,000 responsible social workers who have voluntarily joined the 16-year-old Ontario College of Certified Social Workers.

The bill had all-party support in the legislature. The main opposition came from a small but vocal group of social workers who argued that the move to a college and licensing was elitist. They claimed that only front-line workers know what the problems are, and how to handle them.

It will take about a year for the act to come into force, but Shannon McCorquadale, registrar and founding member of the college, says social workers will then need to be licensed. Much like doctors, they will be subject to professional standards and complaint reviews.

A social worker wields enormous power. If she represents the child protection industry, she has the power to change your life. If she decides that taking your children into custody is in their best interests, you immediately disappear. The moment you become involved with the child protection system, you can't be identified.

I use the pronoun "she" because 80 per cent of the province's social workers are women. Most are from the middle class and don't understand the poor. When they encounter a child in poverty, it is clear to many of them that a placement in a middle-class home is in the child's best interest.

The moment a caseworker makes a decision to apprehend a child, the system locks up. An apprehension, or arrest, is a serious step; if wrong, the door can be open to a lawsuit. The priority switches from protecting a child to protecting the agency.

A classic case is that of a southern Ontario clergyman who battled the child protection industry and won. But it took 11 years and ruined him financially. By the time an angry judge told the CAS to stop appealing court decisions and pay the man, his children had grown up poor because the family had no disposable income. All money was going to the legal battle.

When the CAS finally gave up, it turned the mess over to its insurer, and the clergyman had to fight that new player. The social worker who made the original bad decision still works in the industry and has even been promoted.

Early in this series, an unidentifiable Ottawa couple was featured. They are seven years into their fight to get back children taken into custody while they were out of the country. The awful words "sex abuse" were whispered, and a caseworker apprehended the children. Now nobody admits to doing the whispering. But the children remain in foster care.

My files are filled with stories about a system of intake that sometimes seems bizarre. Almost eight years ago a developmentally delayed grade sixer went into foster care when she became confused about love and sex. Her mother asked the family doctor for a referral to a child psychologist because the girl confused heart, love, penis and daddy. The doctor, by law, had to report that to CAS. The girl is still in foster care.

A mom, a registered nurse, who swatted her 12-year-old son with a broom spent a weekend in jail after the incident was reported to CAS.

Maria Bieber is the name that most often pops up in my files. For 10 years she has fought the system after losing her daughter. Originally she turned to CAS for help during a period of turmoil. Her husband abandoned her. The daughter she voluntarily gave into temporary custody became a Crown ward and was adopted.

To illustrate the strange logic of the child protectors, for more than five years Ms. Bieber raised a sister's daughter the same age as her own "former daughter" (the term showed up in CAS letters) without being challenged. Yet her own daughter had to be saved from her.

She searched for her former daughter and more than once went to jail when she got too close. She's still searching.

We have failed to learn from the past. Troublesome boys were sent to corrective facilities run by religious orders. We've forgotten the millions paid to First Nations people who, as children, were turned over to the tender mercies of clergy running Indian schools. It was in their best interests, according to social workers of the day.

All it will take is for one of the 12,000 children now in foster care in Ontario to come out of the system smart and angry. He or she will go back through records, asking the question: Why was I denied my parents? In many cases, the answers won't be good enough.

Social workers have also become tied to the divorce industry, and their opinions are accepted by judges when issuing things like restraining orders. After two decades of hearing men complain about losing access to their children when wives left a marriage through the shelter system, I focused on one man who fought back. It cost Norman Christie 18 months and $35,000 in legal bills to prove he was a loving father.

Most men would look at the prohibitive legal costs and give up. Mr. Christie, an engineer by training, historian by choice, and a determined dad, fought back.

One thing that ran up his costs was a written opinion from Sally Gose, used to convince a judge to issue a restraining order. When she wrote it she was a member of the board of a women's shelter, spokeswoman for the Women's Monument which commemorates local women killed by their spouses, and a social worker with the Family Service Centre. It's an agency with some 80 staff members, funded by the province and the United Way.

Discrediting the Gose letter cost Mr. Christie's more than $10,000 in legal bills. In that document, Ms. Gose claimed to know that Mr. Christie was a potentially violent and dangerous man. Evidence would later show that she never met him or his children.

It began when Mr. Christie came home on the day of his twins' birthday and found his children and many of his possessions gone. His wife got the shelter movement involved, not because there had been violence, but because she feared it was possible.

He would say later: "I fought because I love my children and couldn't bear to see them harmed by the people claiming to save them." Those who didn't fight have left behind an unforgiving legacy. Every time a man walked away in defeat, he became another statistic on the violent-male list.

Although Mr. Christie proved beyond a reasonable doubt he was a good father and not violent, there was an angry reaction to his story when it appeared. I wrote he was an "honourable" man.

Objections to that word were so long and strong, I wrote a clarification to get back the use of my phone. To fight for his right to father, he had to get past a court-ordered assessment, which cost $5,000. This caused him to fall behind in his support payments, and in the view of a vocal minority, a man in support arrears could never be honourable. That he had been wronged didn't factor into their thinking.

How often has the Family Service Centre helped push fathers away from their children? When asked to explain the Gose report, centre director Tim Simboli went superlogical. It's a name I invented for verbal deflectors. Ask a logical question and you get a superlogical answer. Over the years I've learned to find the answers not through what is said, but by listening to what isn't said.

Mr. Simboli gave me a history of the centre. (It was the original Ottawa welfare department.) What he didn't do was condemn the document filed by Ms. Gose, or go back to it. My conclusion was that the Gose report was not unusual.

To check this, I'd like readers to send to me copies of social workers' reports damaging to them, written by people they never met or talked to. Please include your name and phone number.

This week, the receptionist at the Family Service Centre said Ms. Gose no longer worked there. No telephone number or forwarding address was available.

Most of these systems fall under the Ministry of Community and Social Services, which has grown into a monster with too many heads and tails, and not enough controls.

When men can't afford to fight an accusation of violent behaviour, they show up in the records as another violent male. With the new "domestic court" pulling in men in the capital area at the rate of 120 a month, and making a guilty plea an attractive option, the statistics are exploding.

In the Dec 11 edition of this paper, a woman letter-writer asked what was happening to men. She believed they were starting to avoid women.

Who can blame men if they're feeling uneasy? Only a few weeks apart, an Ottawa court sent to jail a woman who abused animals. Another court sent home a woman who shot and killed her husband while he slept.

Our species has always had bad people in the mix, but they are far outnumbered by the good. No matter how hard the state tries to protect all, some are going to be hurt.

Parents of sons should be demanding a return to the first self-evident truth of the Constitution of the United States of America. All persons are equal. All are entitled to a fair trial in a court with hard rules of evidence. All are free from arrest without solid cause. The state should not fund gender-based activist groups. Until some of these changes start happening, caring parents should advise their sons:

Don't marry. Don't have children.