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Judge allows father parenting time with six-year-old despite ‘unorthodox beliefs’

Mar 19, 2018 | 12:30 PM

HALIFAX — A Nova Scotia judge has allowed a Halifax-area father unsupervised parenting time with his child, despite the mother’s objections over his “unorthodox beliefs” on white pride and other racial matters.

In a written decision, Justice Carole Beaton of the provincial Supreme Court’s family division said it’s in the six-year-old’s best interest to have contact with the father.

But she said the father is not to engage in discussions in the child’s presence that would expose the youngster to his controversial political, historical and world views.

The full extent of the father’s beliefs were not explained in the ruling. Beaton said the father clarified on cross-examination that he is not a white supremacist, but rather an Asian supremacist with unorthodox views on “white European pride.”

The judge said the father “maintained he would not discuss these adult topics with a six-year-old as they would not be of interest to a young child.”

Beaton also said the father indicated “he would not want the child to be exposed to the sort of ridicule he is aware such views can attract.”

She admitted that placing limitations on what the father can talk about in the presence of the child is “arguably difficult to police.”

But Beaton said if the child begins to discuss or express “like views” in the future, the father will risk a reassessment of his parenting time.

Meanwhile, the mother also took issue with the father’s criminal record, which included older violent crimes and more recent property-related offences of dishonesty, according to the decision, which was released Monday.

But the judge found the mother’s concerns about the father’s world views and his criminal past were only raised after a breakdown of their relationship.

She said many parents with criminal records and unconventional views enjoy time with their children, and to sever the relationship between the father and the child would confuse the six-year-old. 

“Parents are not perfect,” Beaton wrote. “The (father) is not the first parent with a troublesome or unseemly past who has been granted parenting time by a court.”

The judge laid out a transitional schedule to allow the father increasing time with the child over the coming months, but declined to order overnight access.

She said the child needs time to adapt to longer periods before overnight stays could be contemplated, and that the court was not provided sufficient detail to make that decision.

The parenting time will be unsupervised, as Beaton said she was not persuaded concerns about the father’s criminal record or personal beliefs “present a compromise to the child’s best interests such that supervised contact between the two is necessary.”

She also ordered the father to pay child support.

She based the monthly support payments of $165 on the province’s minimum wage, and also ordered retroactive payments for outstanding amounts.

The Canadian Press