Madam, - A letter by Muredach Doherty published on December 2nd contained an extraordinary and quite gratuitous personal attack on me, which I cannot leave unanswered. Mr Doherty is a lawyer and, in the course of a defence of his profession in the matter of family law, wrote: "As for Amen and John Waters, they just create a male dreamland where everyone is at fault except men. We all know that when a marriage breaks up, most women have greater dedication, commitment, have a better support network, and pick up the pieces and the nappies, while most men moan and aggress into their pints".
Firstly, the letter purported to be a response to a previous letter, from Michael Stephens, published on November 26th. This letter, however, had made no mention of me. Unaware of the energies invested by some members of the legal profession in seeking to discredit my contributions to the debate about family law, readers may have been at a loss as to why my name was being dragged into this particular exchange.
Secondly, the attack on my character as a parent and advocate on behalf of other parents was constructed to present me as someone who hangs around public houses plotting against women and lawyers. I am a single parent, who spends much of his time caring for a young child. I do not drink and rarely go to public houses. I aggress no more than the next man or woman. Nor do I encounter men who conform in the least to the type sketched by Mr Doherty.
I propose to leave Mr Doherty's defence of his business to the intuition of the reader, though I am moved to remark on how comprehensively his denial that the family law system could be biased against men is satirised by his own manifest prejudices. For my part, I have for many years now been concerned with defending not aggressive and bitter swillers of bitter beer, but decent, loving fathers whose human rights have been trampled upon by members of Mr Doherty's profession. One of my objectives in doing so has been to pose a challenge to what "we all know" about "most" women and "most" men. - Yours, etc.,
JOHN WATERS, Dalkey, Co Dublin.