Latest news with #childcustody
News.com.au
4 days ago
- Health
- News.com.au
Sydney mum speaking out after horrific domestic violence assaults
WARNING: Disturbing images and descriptions of violence Rhiannon Purcell had an impossible choice to make. She had been arguing over the phone with her estranged ex-husband as she was driving to collect her twin daughters, aged 3, from his home in southwest Sydney. She pulled over, fearing that when she arrived he would take his anger out on her physically. But she could not leave her kids with him, either. In an act of selflessness and bravery on that night in March, 2023, Ms Purcell drove on. Her ex-husband made his intentions clear in the driveway of the home when he turned off the outside lights and walked to her car. 'I was assuming he did that so no-one could see anything. I was terrified,' Ms Purcell told He put the girls in the back and sat beside Ms Purcell in the front passenger seat. 'He just started saying, 'Who are you to talk to me like that?' It was really aggressive. I knew straight away that I was going to be attacked so I went for the door to run. He snatched her phone off her before attacking her, according to court documents seen by ABC News, which first reported Ms Purcell's harrowing story. 'As I went to get out, I felt a blow to the side of my head,' Ms Purcell told 'My girls had got out and were standing there screaming.' A passing car might have saved her life. She flagged it down only to realise it was a member of her ex-husband's family. Her attacker fled, leaving a window of opportunity for her to collect the children and drive to safety. 'As I was driving home, I didn't actually realise the extent of my injuries but I could feel something warm and wet dripping down my body. When I got home, I looked down and was literally covered in blood. Her ex-husband was convicted over the assault and jailed for nine months with a non-parole period of just four. According to court documents seen by the ABC, the man has 'an extensive history of violent offending including domestic violence offences and personal violence offences.' An apprehended domestic violence order (ADVO) was taken out in July of 2023. In 50 days, it expires. Ms Purcell says that with the help of police she hopes to get the extension granted. She says it should be for an indefinite period to adequately protect her. has approached NSW Police for comment. 'The ongoing fear I live in' On social media, Ms Purcell is speaking up. She is sharing the graphic images of her injuries from the night in March, 2023, as well as pictures of the aftermath of other acts of violence inside her home. On one image showing a freezer door ripped off its hinges and a hole in a timber door, she writes: 'After his measly 5 month sentence and he was released from jail, I was offered the decision of (him) having an ankle monitor. It was only active for the remaining 4 months of his sentence. The day that ended, my anxiety was through the roof.' Speaking to Ms Purcell said the decision to speak up and show the reality of domestic violence was not an easy one. But it was important. 'I did that for my family and my kids but also for all women of Australia and all women that have died since last year,' she said. 'I'm speaking out for my daughters and their daughters and all future women of Australia. Not many women speak out or show their face. I was also discouraged from doing that. 'But I just thought, you know what, I need to speak up. I just wanted to highlight the flaws in the system and show people why women are dying. It is not going to stop until there is real change.' Part of that change is explored in a petition Ms Purcell titled: Protect Women and Children: Demand for Stronger Domestic Violence Laws & Penalties. 'Too many women and children are being failed by a broken system,' she writes in the petition. 'So far this year 28 women have been killed in Australia, 131 women have been killed since the 1st of January 2024. These aren't just numbers, they are people. They are mothers, daughters and sisters.'
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Mickey Huang and Summer Meng quietly end their marriage?
23 May - It was reported that Mickey Huang and Summer Meng have called it quits on their marriage amid his appeal case for possession of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Taiwanese news outlets reported that the couple have quietly ended their five-year marriage. It was said that in the divorce agreement, the custody of their daughter was given to Summer, while Mickey was responsible for paying child support. The court's arrangement did not only take into account the growth environment of the daughter, but also allows the two parents to find a new beginning in their respective lives. When asked about the matter, Mickey's rep responded, "Thank you for your concern but it is not convenient for Mr. Huang to respond. You need to ask my client, but the couple currently consider their daughter's peace as the first priority." It is noted that Summer's career has been deeply affected by Mickey's case, which started with an allegation of sexual harassment by multiple women in June 2023. The actress was also cut out from her drama, "The World Between Us 2" after viewers threatened boycott following paparazzi photos of her going out and spending family time with Mickey and their daughter amid his appeal for possession of CSAM case. (Photo Source: Taipei Times, SINA)
Daily Mail
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Post Malone utilizes brutal legal loophole for shock twist in custody battle with ex-fiancee
In the latest development surrounding Post Malone 's custody case, the musical artist has petitioned a court to hold the proceedings in Utah. The Congratulations rapper, 29, said in legal docs submit by his attorney Laura Wasser (and reviewed by TMZ) that he is raising the child in the state of Utah. The child's mother Jamie Park filed a similar request in Los Angeles County court, petitioning the court for primary custody of the three-year-old, with the rapper getting nominal time, the outlet reported after reviewing legal docs. The Grammy-nominated artist, whose weight loss has been a topic of discussion among fans, told the court the child's mother only filed in Los Angeles for perceived strategic advantages among the court battle. Wasser pointed out to the court that the female child already has a number of essential ties to Utah. They include her nanny, pediatrician, as well as classes she's been enrolled in for music, physical education and swimming, the attorney told the court in legal docs. has reached out to Malone's reps for comment on the report. The Grapevine, Texas native, whose real name is Austin Post, announced the birth of his child in June 2022 without disclosing her name. At the same time, he revealed he was engaged to the baby's mother but kept his fiancée's identity private, with fans taking to calling her 'Jamie.' It emerged in March that the Circles rapper and 'Jamie' had split, and he has recently been seen on multiple dates with a 20-year-old influencer called Christy Lee, with whom he indulged in a public display of affection in Paris this month. Last week, 'Jamie' revealed that her real name is Hee Sung Park, in a legal filing asking for sole physical custody of her daughter, according to Page Six. Now it is alleged that Park had Post located and served with papers in the parking garage of an upscale Los Angeles apartment building just two days before he was meant to play Coachella, in court documents cited by In Touch Weekly. The Rockstar performer was allegedly served at an building in downtown Los Angeles in which the penthouse apartment rents out for a staggering $22,995 a month. The process server supposedly claims to have personally approached Post and handed him the papers around 1pm this past Friday. Post headlined both Sunday night shows at the Coachella this year - Easter and the preceding weekend - and during his final gig, he brought Ed Sheeran and Jelly Roll onstage. In Park's legal documents, submitted last month to the Los Angeles Superior Court's family law division, she refers to her and Post's daughter simply as DDP. The two-year-old's mother filed for full physical custody, but she only requested joint legal custody and is also open to giving Post visitation rights, aka 'parenting time.' Park, who reportedly split from Post near the end of 2024, alleged in her new legal documents that DDP has lived with her since November, via TMZ. Her court filing, in which she demands that her ex cover her legal costs, also revealed that their daughter was born in May 2022. As for child support, she said: 'The court may make orders for support of the children and issue an earnings assignment without further notice to either party.' Post reportedly recently submitted sealed custody documents of his own in Utah, where he keeps his primary residence, but he has yet to give a response to Park's new filing. Last month, TMZ reported that Post's filing in Utah preceded Park's, which could help him save a considerable amount of money. Sources said the rapper-turned-country star filed in Utah because he and Park had previously been splitting custody down the middle in the state, but it's also to his financial benefit, as Utah is far stingier with child-support payments than California. Despite Park's efforts to have the case heard in California, sources said the case would remain in Utah. The sources alleged that Park had only moved to the Golden State earlier this year in an attempt to obtain residency and find more favorable conditions in California's court system. However, Post's initial filing is under seal, so details about it are scarce. Last month — one day after Park submitted her request for full physical custody — Post was seen illegally holding an open bottle of Bud Light in the backseat of a black SUV in Los Angeles. California law prohibits persons from carrying an open — or even unsealed — container of alcohol in a vehicle's passenger compartment, which is to say any place in reach of somebody in the car, such as a cupholder or glovebox. In recent weeks, Post has been repeatedly spotted enjoying public dates with his new 20-year-old girlfriend Christy Lee, who studied at Parsons School Of Design and has reportedly interned for celebrity stylist Kristina Askerova. Post announced his daughter's birth and his own engagement to Park in June 2022, during an interview on The Howard Stern Show. In 2023, he revealed that he and Park — whom he did not name at the time — had in fact gotten engaged two years earlier in Las Vegas, though she turned down his drunken first proposal and instructed him to ask again the next day. 'I had lost a significant amount of money at the table,' he shared on Call Her Daddy. 'We go upstairs and I'm off my rocker hammered and I was like: "Hey, you wanna marry me?" I got a ring and all this stuff. And she said: "No." She's like: "Ask me tomorrow," and I was like: "All right." And then I did and I was sober and it was nice.' He showered praise on Park, saying that he knew that she was the 'right' woman for him because of how 'massive' her heart was. 'I've always wanted kids and a big family, and I could tell she was going to be a really good mama,' he said. 'And she's like, number one mom in the f***ing universe.'
The Guardian
15-05-2025
- The Guardian
Women driven to unregulated sperm donors by high treatment costs, experts say
The high costs of having a child using a sperm donor are driving poor and marginalised women in the UK to use unregulated online services rife with 'weirdos' and misogynists in order to have a child, experts have said. In a ruling released on Wednesday, a Middlesbrough family court judge said a man who claimed to have fathered more than 180 children across the world as an unregistered sperm donor could not have custody of one of the children. The three-year-old girl from Durham is the fourth child in the UK that Robert Albon has used the courts to attempt to have contact with, despite initially telling the women he provided sperm to that he did not need to be involved in the child's life. Albon, a US national who goes by the name Joe Donor, had sex with the woman in 2021, the day she first contacted him on Facebook, after travelling 250 miles to her home. As part of the same family court case, he also attempted to have contact with a two-year-old girl he fathered with a different mother in the north-east a year later. Albon, 54, has also attempted to gain parental rights of a child born to a same-sex couple in Wales, one of whom described his involvement as a 'nightmare and a horror story'. In a court judgment released in February, a judge took the highly unusual step in the family court of naming Albon in the hopes of protecting women who might have sought his services. The case has brought into focus the problem of predatory men advertising themselves online as sperm donors. Many are looking for sex, to have control over women or have an obsession with producing offspring. Clare Ettinghausen, the director of strategy and corporate affairs at the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the UK's independent regulator of fertility treatment and research using human embryos, said: 'In all those cases, it's my job to ring huge alarm bells.' She advised women to go down the regulated route, though acknowledged for lots of women the cost of fertility treatment – something the HFEA has no involvement in – was prohibitive, while waiting times could be lengthy and there was a shortage of donors of particular ethnicities and religious backgrounds. Costs can run into tens of thousands of pounds. Registered donors are screened for health problems, including genetic diseases and STIs, as well as psychological issues. In the UK, donors are allowed to donate to only 10 families to reduce the risk of children meeting as adults and accidentally entering into incestuous relationships. Registered donors also do not have parental rights, are not required to pay child support and are contactable only by the child when they reach adulthood, with no obligation to respond. 'Overall we would really caution against [using donors found online] because of the things we see and hear,' Ettinghausen said. Dr Francesca Taylor-Phillips, a postdoctoral researcher at Leeds Beckett University whose research focuses on women and couples who choose unregulated sperm donors, said she had found cost was one of the main reasons women chose to go down the unregistered route. 'So because they couldn't afford the clinical treatment or because they weren't entitled to NHS funding,' she said. 'A lot of people do feel like they're pushed into it.' While heterosexual couples just need to tell their doctor they are struggling to conceive in order to get help, single women and those in same-sex relationships are usually required to have six cycles of intrauterine insemination, at a cost of about £3,000 each time, before they are entitled to any help from the NHS. Although some women believed there were 'significant benefits' of using an unregulated donor, such as being able to meet the person and decide together the level of knowledge and contact a child might have with them, women are forced to sift through problematic men and are left with no legal protection, said Taylor-Phillips. 'The main issues that we see are issues of dishonesty on the part of the donor when they're speaking online. So people catfishing people, or verbally abusing people online, or harassing for sex, is really quite common. Lots of people spoke about filtering through the weirdos online before they found the right donor. 'For the most part, those people were able to deal with that and move on. But it's still a horrible thing to have to go through when you're trying to have a child that's supposed to be this nice, beautiful thing, and it can become this sort of seedy thing.'
Daily Mail
14-05-2025
- Daily Mail
Sperm donor by post who fathered more than 180 children 'lacks empathy' and 'seeks to control others', High Court judge rules
A sperm donor who claims to have fathered more than 180 children 'lacks empathy', 'seeks to control people' and targets 'vulnerable women' to get his way, a High Court judge has said. Unregulated donor Robert Albon, who advertises his services on social media under the name 'Joe Donor', claims to have fathered children in countries as far away as Argentina and Australia. Mr Albon, 54, originally from the United States, started acting as an unregulated sperm donor in 2013 and came to England in 2020. In recent years, he has attempted to gain custody or parental rights over at least three of his children in England, with a judge previously ruling he had advocated for himself to be named as a father on a birth certificate in order to shore up his immigration status. Despite the legal disputes, he continues to advertise himself as a global sperm donor through social media while criticising mainstream donation clinics. He boasts of 'success stories' online by posting photographs of children who he proudly says have 'blonde hair and blue eyes'. In the ruling posted today, the judge described Mr Albon as a man who has 'sought to control' five of the six women with whom he has had children in England, adding: 'He uses others' vulnerability and naivety to suit his own ends.' At a hearing in March, the family court in Middlesbrough considered arrangements for a girl born in early 2023, known as CA, after her mother contacted him to be a donor. Mr Albon, who calls himself Joe Donor online, was the subject of a warning from a judge earlier this year after he sued a lesbian couple for parental rights in what a court found to be a bid to sure up his immigration status The local authority in the case and the child's mother supported limited indirect contact with Mr Albon, while he opposed the proposals and asked a judge to give him parental responsibility for the child, as well as either face-to-face contact or more extensive indirect contact. The court also heard the case of a girl fathered by Mr Albon, who was born in 2022 and known as CB. The local authority asked for a care order with indirect contact after adoption or long-term fostering, while Mr Albon asked for her to be placed in his care. But in a 51-page judgment published on Wednesday, Mr Justice Poole refused Mr Albon's bids for increased contact or placement. The High Court judge said women who use Mr Albon as a sperm donor are mostly single women or in same-sex relationships, adding it appeared that a high proportion of women in the UK who used his services are 'vulnerable in one way or another'. Mr Albon told the court that he charges £100 to deliver his sperm by post, after putting his semen into a syringe and packaging it with frozen tomato puree, to keep it at a suitable temperature, before sending the parcel. In the UK, it is illegal to sell or procure sperm for profit, and registered donation clinics are only able to cover men's expenses for any donations, usually limited to £45 per visit. Mr Justice Poole said Mr Albon uses light-hearted terms while advertising his services online, including referring to his semen as 'Joe's Juice' or 'baby batter'. The children in the two cases were conceived through sexual intercourse, described as 'natural insemination', the court was told. The judge said: 'The evidence before the court shows that Mr Albon will have sex with, or provide his sperm for artificial insemination, to just about anyone who asks.' Mr Justice Poole later said that Mr Albon's motives for acting as a donor had been questioned during the proceedings, adding: 'Is he motivated by the desire to have sex with many different women? Is he compelled to reproduce? 'Does he enjoy gratification from knowing that there are scores of his children on the earth? Is he simply attention-seeking? 'Does he want to secure his immigration status? It is difficult to look into the mind of Mr Albon because he is not self-reflective.' The judge later said that the risks of using the prolific unregulated sperm donor are obvious, including the risk of Mr Albon seeking parental responsibility or other court orders, as well as unknown potential health issues. Mr Justice Poole said that Mr Albon is 'ambiguous' about his future involvement when he is first contacted by the potential mothers, giving him the ability to decide at a later date whether or not to become involved. 'When he needs a roof over his head he has crept into the lives of women to his advantage,' the judge said, adding: 'He uses others' vulnerability and naivety to suit his own ends.' The judge found that Mr Albon had tried to control five of the six women in England and Wales known to have carried his biological children, including using litigation as a way of control. Mr Justice Poole ruled: 'He lacks empathy and only has superficial relationships with others... he is dismissive of those who do not agree with him or who question his behaviour and beliefs. 'He seeks to control others to prove that he is right, to secure recognition, to get his own way, and to serve his own ends.' The judge said that CB can be adopted, finding that placing CB with Mr Albon would not be in her best interests and that there was a 'substantial risk' she would be cast aside. He said: 'His only friends appear to be fellow unregulated sperm donors. That is his world.' Mr Justice Poole also found that while Mr Albon can be declared as CA's father on a re-registered birth certificate, he refused the bid to grant the donor parental responsibility or increased contact. 'I have no confidence that Mr Albon would commit to contact and find it likely that he would move on to another family when it suited him, as he has done previously,' the judge said. Mr Albon will be allowed to send a letter or card once a year to CA, to be passed on once CA's mother thinks it is appropriate. Mr Justice Poole also ordered that a copy of his judgment should be sent to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the regulator for fertility clinics, and the Home Office. MailOnline previously reported how Mr Albon lied to a judge by claiming he had had sex with the biological mother of a child he had fathered, and sued for rights over the child. He attempted to change the child's name and demanded their other mother be referred to as 'auntie', despite both women acting as parents from birth. Cardiff Family Court heard that the child had been conceived via syringe, with Judge Jonathan Furness KC dismissing Albon's claims he had secretly had sex with the biological mother in the back of a car. The judge was told Albon, who is in his fifties, was a total stranger to the child, and had only met them for ten minutes when they were a few weeks old. In the newly published ruling from the 2023 case, Judge Furness issued a warning to all women considering sperm donation and in a rare departure from standard practice, ruled it was in the public interest for Albon to be named. 'In reality he is a man who seeks to control,' said Judge Furness, adding that 'women and children appear to be almost a commodity to him'. 'He is a man who, in my judgment, once he believes that he is right, cannot even contemplate an alternative view,' the judge continued. 'The impression is of a man who has a complete absence of sensitivity or empathy, is wholly self-centred and will stop at nothing to obtain what he wants.' Rejecting his bid, the judge also ruled Albon, who is originally from the US but lives in northeast England, started the family court proceedings in an effort to support his immigration status. The judge said there was a risk Albon would be arrested if he returned to the US due to outstanding 'periodical payments' - usually related to debts, divorce payments or personal injury.
