Hunger strike references

YOU'VE never heard of Len Miskulin, but this 49-year-old engineer for British Telecom is on so severe a hunger strike that his friends and relatives are beginning to fear for his health.

 But Len refuses to listen to their pleas to eat because he thinks it is his only chance of seeing his sons, Matthew, ten, and Steven, seven.

 For Len is one of countless thousands of divorced men who are prevented from seeing their children by their former wives. Very often their wife has left against their wishes but it is the women we traditionally pity. Only now is society beginning to appreciate that there are male victims, too.

 They, like Len, will have spent Christmas alone. For all, it was the bleakest day of their year.

 'I miss my sons dreadfully and the worst of it is that I did nothing to deserve them being taken away from me,' says Len, who lives in Loughton Essex. Indeed he did not.

 On July 8 this year, [first name blanked], his partner of 13 years, walked out on him, taking their sons with her. He later discovered that she was having an affair with an older man.  Although [son's first name blanked] and [other son's first name blanked] are with [mother's first name blanked] at her parents' house in [suburb name blanked], only four miles away from his home, Len has not seen his sons since October 5.

His wife has taken out a court order forbidding him from contacting them until access is agreed legally.

Len is beside himself with grief and, as a mark of the extremity of his feelings, has been on hunger strike since Saturday, December 16.

 As the rest of us tucked into turkey and trimmings, Len had nothing.

 It was, he insists, torture, but he is determined to prove his point.

 'I think I have been treated with gross unfairness and I want to draw attention to the fact that the legal system is as biased as it is against fathers.

 'I loved [mother's first name blanked] with all my heart and the 13 years we spent together were the happiest of my life,' he says, his eyes filling with tears.

 'I raised those boys, loved them played with them, changed their nappies and got up for them in the night. I was just as much of a carer and parent to them as Helen but suddenly she has the power to prevent me from seeing them.

 'I cannot believe that the courts will not let me be with them. It is so unfair.'

 A maelstrom of emotion betrayal, loneliness, despair has shaken this normally quiet man to his very core. He truly cannot cope with the fact that the mother of his children has chosen to destroy their family and he is, he admits, scarcely thinking rationally.

 'I miss my sons so much. Everything in my life is in ruins and I have decided to go on hunger strike to try to show Helen and the courts just how desperate I am.

 'A lot of men would just accept this situation, but I cannot, I simply cannot.'

NEEDLESS to say, his Christmas Day was bleak alone at the former family home with just water to sustain him. Even if one does not condone the extremity of his actions one cannot help but sympathise with him.

 Len has been e-mailed by fathers in similar situations from all over Britain and as far afield as America, Canada and New Zealand.

 Most, naturally, advise him to stop the hunger strike and pursue his campaign by less drastic means, but, above all, the strength of feeling his case has provoked is one that cannot be gainsayed.

 As one man — David from Liverpool—wrote to Len yesterday: 'I, too, spent Christmas on my own with nothing but the television and a microwave meal for company, while my daughters were Just ten miles away but unable to see me.

 'I wish you the very best of luck. It's time people realised that men have feelings, too.'

 Whether Len's hunger strike is successful remains to be seen. What cannot be denied, however IS that, in these days of soaring divorce rates,

Christmas is, for many, no longer a straightforward day of family celebration. Indeed, for Len and many other men like him it was one of the most difficult experiences they have ever faced as a father.

 The agony of divorce and its aftermath has been well documented from the point of view of the wives and children involved, but all too often men have been forgotten.

 Traditionally, reluctant to speak out about their feelings of loss and abandonment, society is happy to turn a blind eye to their anguish.

HOWEVER, increasingly, divorced fathers are beginning to speak out about their pain at being separated from their children—particularly at this time of year, when the prospect of spending the festive season alone is almost too painful to bear.

 Three years ago, Tyrone Rajack 37, a successful banker in the Treasury Department of Lloyds Bank, spent his first Christmas away from his then three-year-old son, Mathew, after his wife left him for another man.

He admits now that he came within an ace of committing suicide on his lonely Christmas evening slumped in front of the television.

 'I'd had dinner with my parents, then went home to a cold, empty house. Everyone l knew seemed to be spending the day with a partner and their children.

 'I'm normally a cheerful, outgoing person but that evening I hit rock bottom.

 'I sat there watching the jolly family programmes on television feeling worse and worse, helping myself repeatedly to a bottle of Baileys.

 'At three in the morning I was still sitting there, feeling worse than ever, desperately missing my wife and son. We'd had so much going for us—a lovely house, good jobs and a beautiful baby boy.

 I'd thought we had the perfect life but, unknown to me, my wife was having an affair with a much older, wealthier work colleague.

 'When she'd said she was leaving I did everything to persuade her to stay but my pleas fell on deaf ears. Later, when I found out about the affair, it suddenly all made sense.

 'Everything I'd worked for in the 13 years Susan and I were together lay in tatters and that Christmas Day it felt as if I would never get over it.

 'I went into the bathroom and picked up a family-sized tub of paracetamol and brought it into the living room.

 'The only thing that stopped me swallowing the lot was the photograph of my son on the shelf beside me. He seemed to be looking into my eyes, and his arms seemed to be reaching towards me. As I looked into the face I loved so much, I realised I had a duty to pull myself together.

 'I picked up the photograph and took it to bed with me. The next morning I woke up feeling tired and hungover, but, as I looked once again at the photograph of my son, I also felt profoundly glad to be alive.

 'Even if it only meant seeing him once a year, that was enough to keep me going.'

FROM the minute Tyrone's wife left him, she was reluctant to allow him access to their son. As relations soured between the couple still further, Mathew's visits dwindled from twice a week to once a fortnight, with Tyrone barred from speaking to him on the telephone.  Tyrone felt he had no option but to resort to legal action and the couple now communicate only through solicitors' letters.  After a bitter legal battle it was finally agreed this year that Tyrone could see Mathew on alternate weekends and Monday evenings with four full weeks a year access and every other Christmas.  This year was his first December 25 with his son in four years and he was determined it would be perfect.

 He shopped for and cooked a full Christmas dinner for Mathew and eight other relatives and even banned television for the day, he was so determined to wring every ounce of pleasure out of being with his son. 'I wanted this to be the most perfect Christmas ever for Mathew. He's six years old now, just at the age when Father Christmas seems real and everything is completely magical.  'I wanted to give him a day he'll look back on and remember for the whole of his life and I think I did. We played old-fashioned board games and charades and the look on his face when he opened his present—a soldier's dressing-up outfit—will stay with me for the rest of the year.

 'But though the day was a wonderful one I could not help but dread having to hand him back to my wife again on Boxing Day, and, when the time came, it was all I could do not to cry.

 'As I watched them drive away I thought back to that dreadful Christmas three years ago and cursed the misery we have all been put through.

 'People assume men don't care about their children as much as mothers do but that's simply not true. I'd lay down my life for Mathew if necessary.

 'That's why I had to fight for access. Standing up before the judge and trying to convince him I was a good father was nothing short of humiliating but it was my only option. Luckily, the outcome was a fair one.'

 Tyrone has managed to use the law to enforce reasonable access to his son but many men are not so fortunate.

 Another father who spent a lonely Christmas was engineer Fairless Masterman, 47, who lives in a smart mansion block in Maida Vale, West London.

 His daughter, Oceana, 11, lives in Wisconsin, U.S. with her American mother Dennison, 36, and her second husband.

 Like Tyrone, Fairless did not want to get divorced and says that he and his wife split at her instigation after three years of marriage.

 There was no one else involved but the couple had, he says now simply grown apart. Since then he has made huge efforts and sacrifices to stay in touch with his daughter.

 'I telephone every week and talk to both her and her mother and we have come to an arrangement by which Oceana spends most of every school holiday with me here in England.

 'I was working as a engineer designing the Concorde flight control system and earning £1,000 a week when we divorced, but I changed to become a sound engineer—something much less lucrative and low-key—so that I could take large chunks of time off to look after Oceana when she visits.  'It's a reasonably amicable arrangement, as I've made a great effort to be civilised and keep all lines of communication open.

BUT the hard facts are that Oceana cannot be in two places at once at Christmas. I accept that she cannot be with me but it doesn't make the day itself any easier.

 'My mother is 82 and has just been through a course of chemotherapy, so is very frail.

Obviously she misses her granddaughter, too, and there is nothing I would have liked more than for Oceana to be with her this year.

 'As it was, the two of us spent a lonely day watching television. Last year I invited nine friends and relatives round to give Oceana a big, merry, family Christmas and we had a wonderful day. This year the contrast was marked, to say the least.

 'The sad truth is that a family break-up is like a car crash. The damage has been done and all that you can do is pick up the pieces and make the best of what is left.

 'My daughter knows my thoughts are always with her, even if I cannot be. But, the truth is, I have to live with the inevitable fact that she will be damaged by what we, her parents, have done.

 'I am convinced it is far better for a child to grow up, as I did, with two parents who are together. I can't even begin to imagine what it would have been like to be allowed only to spend Christmas with one of them.'

 Speaking to Len, Tyrone and Fairless about their childless Christmasses, the overwhelming emotion is one of sadness and loss.

 Their stories provide a harsh lesson, if one were needed, that there is no such thing as a damage-free divorce. All three men speak in terms of bewilderment and shock about their wives' decisions to leave and all wish they had been given more of a chance to rescue their marriages.