Sparkling Adventures Pt 10 - David Pleads Guilty - Merge

[alexandracabot]

The article refers to her as his "now-ex wife."

[hoipolloi]

She does call herself a "single" woman so I assume she does not consider herself to be married to David any more.

The news article describes Lauren as his "ex-wife."

[ladyaudley]

I wonder what, if anything, she is telling the girls. 

[AngelGirl8811]

I wonder what, if anything, she is telling the girls. 

I would imagine she's not saying a thing. She doesn't seem to like to actually deal with things. 

[Cheetah]

 

They're staying in regional Victoria, not out in the sticks, and they all have wifi enabled iPads.

They're in Victoria now?  I thought she'd more or less settled in Tasmania.  Of course, 'settled' and Lauren don't really go together, do they.  

[ViolaSebastian]

I wonder what her custody agreement with David is...would he have a chance of getting custody of the girls when he gets out?  Did he sign away parental rights to Lauren?  It is a sad day when your choice is between a former mescaline user that's a convicted killer and a criminally irresponsible and neglectful mother...damn, those poor girls.

[lilith]

I'm very curious about how Lauren will respond and if he'll have contact with the children. Does anyone know how that might play out? Would (or could) he have supervised visits with them? Or if Lauren, with her sparkling forgiveness and neutrality, decided to take him back, would that be allowed? Would probation confine him to one area of Australia, or would he be allowed to move freely about the country?

He seemed so much more involved in the girls' lives than Lauren did, before the horrors.  It would be lovely if the girls had a therapist to speak with. 

The girls have visited David in the facility he's been in since Elijah's death. I would assume that he would be allowed supervised visits upon release. I don't know how Lauren would be about facilitating them though - when paroled David will likely be banned from leaving the state of QLD and the sparkling red gypsy seems firmly ensconced in the South east of the country

[Grimalkin]

If he is sober and is getting help for his mental health issues and has a good support system he could actually be a better parent to those kids......as fucked up as that is.

[AngelGirl8811]

If he is sober and is getting help for his mental health issues and has a good support system he could actually be a better parent to those kids......as fucked up as that is.

That is sad but true. Lauren doesn't seem to be in touch with realty a lot. 

[blessalessi]

I'd say the biggest danger to the children is for David and Laren to have joint custody of them.  Elijah died as part of David's reaction to their relationship difficulties.  Who knows what could happen if they start to play the old games again.

Antipsychotic meds don't cure anything, they just sedate and dampen down the symptoms.  David's breakdown was years in the making and yet, within months of being found "fit" to plead, he will be released?

I have compassion for his situation but I hope he will not be given a position of trust with his children ever again.

I don't see how Lauren's "forgiveness" comes into the sentencing. She was as fucked up in the relationship as him, and is a worse parent. Elijah was a person, not a piece of property.

David killed a child, and the potential impact of his freedom on the remaining children is the factor that concerns me most.   I see them as massively vulnerable still.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[princessmahina]

I hope David doesn't get any kind of custody over the kids, or anything more than supervised visits. Imagine how scared they would be to spend long periods of time alone with the man who killed their little brother 

[Grimalkin]

I hope David doesn't get any kind of custody over the kids, or anything more than supervised visits. Imagine how scared they would be to spend long periods of time alone with the man who killed their little brother 

I know you are right. I have a lot of experience dealing with addicts and mental illness and its so freaking heartbreaking. We snark on Lauren and have seen her neglect her kids to a horrific extent. We get the sparkly version of little snippets of those kids daily lives. She sparkelfied leaving her daughter with a strange man for hours. Imagine the stuff we don't hear about, imagine everyday life with a mom like Lauren. Those kids don't even have a friend or neighbor's house to find solace or peace. They don't get to go to school for a few hours a day to escape the madness, no kindly teachers encouraging them. Its all day everyday with Lauren and whatever stranger she meets. Didn't she leave those kids with a complete stranger for one of her trips.

[Gossamer1]

I suspect what the article means by 'forgiveness' and what Lauren means by it are very different things.

Forgiveness is a strange thing. A little over 9 years ago a drunk driver killed a friend of mine. She was sentenced to 6 years in prison. Three or so years into her sentence our newspaper published an article about a woman who made homemade stationery for the women's prison so the inmates could send cards and letters home. There was a photo with the article.  It happened to be the drunk who killed my friend.  She was laughing while holding up one of the cards. 

I thought I had forgiven the woman but the rage that filled me when I saw her smiling actually scared me. All I wanted to do was scream at her that she was NEVER allowed to be happy about anything ever again. 

I guess my pont is that what we think we feel and what we actually feel when confronted with a situation can be very different.

[Trudestar]

I can't imagine David ever being allowed unsupervised visits with the girls.

Family Court always work on the premise of what is best for the child/children. Usually that means aiming for a meaningful relationship with BOTH parents. 

But in the case of one of those parents having killed (albeit unintentional due to mental health issues) one of the children, well, I just don't know how the ruling would go. The girls may well miss their Dad, and need/want his influence in their life, but their safety is paramount. 

I wouldn't like to be the person who has the responsibility of making that decision. But, I don't think he'll ever get COURT SANCTIONED unsupervised access. Lauren may see it differently though....

It's all just so sad and messy. Davids Mum was on the TV news, so very tragic. I'll see if I can post a link if I can find one.

[haras1972]

I saw that interview, 

 

http://media.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/qld-news/my-son-is-in-deep-grief-6977927.html

[Trudestar]

Ooops, didn't realise the video was in the above link

[haras1972]

https://au.news.yahoo.com/qld/a/29975322/david-fisher-father-who-drowned-six-month-old-son-elijah-fisher-in-logan-river-in-2012-could-be-free-by-christmas/#play

 

this has a lot more info - confirms the divorce, and contains more details about how intentional the crime was - I feel sick now knowing that after David surfaced, he again deliberately pushed Elijah away - I realise that I had hoped that he regretted his crime as soon as he hit the water. 

[PeterRabbit]

they do live in Tasmania. In a shed in the Geeveston area, on a block of land. I asked around after spotting someone else driving the bus last weekend. Apparently she left the girls with a friend and went to Victoria for the weekend.
She's purchased property in southern Tasmania so hopefully the girls have some stability now.

[blessalessi]

She left the girls with a friend the weekend before their Dad was due for sentencing for the killing of their baby brother? 

Well, I'm glad they have a property to live in now, but I think stability is sadly a long way off.

[chaotic life]

David Fisher with solid mental health services and a job living with his mother, the most consistent and stable caregiver those girls ever had, could be a powerful force to bring safety and stability to those girls.

That man had a mental illness. He used drugs to sedate it. Drugs that caused psychosis and made his mental illness far worse.

So...a woman investigated and cleared by social services as being mentally stable herself stood by while her husband sunk into mental illness and took psychotropic drugs that made his condition worse. Mere months before he killed their son, she took off in NZ and left him completely alone with those girls in a broken vehicle and no support system. And somehow he managed to procure those drugs.

It's all chillingly consistent if she is a Narcissist which her behaviors certainly look like one.

David Fisher may not be safe for those girls. What he has been through may have broken him completely. But with the support of his family and his mother and with ongoing mental health care and returning back to normal society, the life he can offer them is a hell of a lot better than what their mother has done over the last three years in his absence.

I have no clue about Australia laws but in the US upon release he would have full legal rights to his children same as their mother. While ordinarily becoming primary custodian would be unlikely in this case Lauren hasn't made a life or given stability in the years he's been gone and has instead cut off their community and family entirely and behaved irresponsibly as if no one in the world can touch her authority as their parent.

I honestly hope this may be the start of healing for those girls now that there is about to be something beyond Lauren's whims controlling their entire world. At the very least she will have to have his consent and justify her continued behavior to their father in ways she appears to have cut off both of their families for questioning.

If Iceland and Australia are anything like the US, the divorce would have been absolutely necessary to prevent David bring the presumed legal father of Daniel, a fact easily corrected by filing with the courts where surrogacy is legal and certain to bring attention to your illegal activity when functioning where surrogacy is illegal.

[apandaaries]

I can't imagine David ever being allowed unsupervised visits with the girls.

Family Court always work on the premise of what is best for the child/children. Usually that means aiming for a meaningful relationship with BOTH parents. 

But in the case of one of those parents having killed (albeit unintentional due to mental health issues) one of the children, well, I just don't know how the ruling would go. The girls may well miss their Dad, and need/want his influence in their life, but their safety is paramount. 

I wouldn't like to be the person who has the responsibility of making that decision. But, I don't think he'll ever get COURT SANCTIONED unsupervised access. Lauren may see it differently though....

It's all just so sad and messy. Davids Mum was on the TV news, so very tragic. I'll see if I can post a link if I can find one.

One would hope that their safety is paramount, and one would hope that Australia would do better than the US about protecting minors...but given the wealth of information freely and publicly available about their neglect and instability, it sounds like Australia is on par with the US for protecting children.  

I honestly cannot imagine trying to live even an hour in David's shoes.  He killed his son thinking who knows what, and lives with the memory of deliberately pushing him away when he could have saved him.  How horrific in every way possible.  I'm reminded of Andrea Yates -- what's better: to be in a psychotic state and not fully comprehend one's actions, or to be sane and know what one did in a psychotic haze?  But I assume if they're considering releasing him soon, then he must not be a suicide risk.  

 

David Fisher may not be safe for those girls. What he has been through may have broken him completely. But with the support of his family and his mother and with ongoing mental health care and returning back to normal society, the life he can offer them is a hell of a lot better than what their mother has done over the last three years in his absence.

 

I have no clue about Australia laws but in the US upon release he would have full legal rights to his children same as their mother. While ordinarily becoming primary custodian would be unlikely in this case Lauren hasn't made a life or given stability in the years he's been gone and has instead cut off their community and family entirely and behaved irresponsibly as if no one in the world can touch her authority as their parent.

 

I honestly hope this may be the start of healing for those girls now that there is about to be something beyond Lauren's whims controlling their entire world. At the very least she will have to have his consent and justify her continued behavior to their father in ways she appears to have cut off both of their families for questioning.

 

Will Australia force him to continue with mental health care?  I certainly hope so.  And I also hope that his mother and family stay stubbornly involved and are able to assert some kind of voice for those girls.  It's astonishing to think that a man who killed his son (albeit while mentally ill and self-medicating on the wrong kinds of drugs) could be considered a safer parental influence than the less-murderous spouse, but here we are.  

I have a lot of faith in the power of loving grandmothers.  Those are some strong women.  I hope she's able to help David advocate for the girls and establish some stability in their lives, along with allowing them space away from Lauren and time to finally grieve.  

[Cheetah]

It's Daniel's birthday and Lauren has updated her blog for the first time in a while with his birth story post!  

http://www.sparklingadventures.com/index.php?id=2061

It's detailed with lots of photos, and includes this admonition to the reader:  Birthing a boy for his fathers in Iceland is not comparable to losing Elijah — not for me, and not for my daughters. Is that clear?

 

[ViolaSebastian]

The courts have found that in a severe psychosis and delusional episode influenced by chemical substances, my then-husband fell off a bridge while holding Elijah and released him to drown in the water.

No, he did not "fall off a bridge."  Her wording makes it sound like an accident, which it was not.  

Just a reminder of what the railing on that bridge looks like:

Also, because my relationship with the boys was irregular, I thought a homebirth would protect us from outsiders who wouldn’t necessarily understand that although the baby was coming out of my body, it wasn’t mine.

Yes, those pesky people that have to pay attention to laws and the like.  How unsparkling.  

[chaotic life]

Wow....she finally found a way to be the ABSOLUTE center of attention. That has got to be the single more disturbing thing I have ever read in my life.

Rarely, not birth mothers NOR surrogates do I EVER encounter that level of detachment from a child you carry and birth, and the very rare times I have seen it, other surrogates and birth mothers tend to step away slowly because it's so deeply disturbing. But to pair it with the bizarre LOVE AFFAIR she wax poetic between herself and a gay couple, it is the ultimate Daddy complex.

Furthermore, Lauren, since you clearly read your haters, darling when you write a post WHILE events are occurring with the clear intention to post it to totally humble brag and scream LOOK AT ME, clean up your verb tenses when you chicken out and wait a year to post it.

And editing of present tense passages that betray most of it was written a year ago will commence in 3....2.....1.......

[AliceInFundyland]

"Fell"???

She's really fucked up. I very very rarely feel like confronting strangers on the internet. I want to post on her blog. 

But seriously? Lauren! You are deluding yourself!        This is is a matter of public record. It happened. Your ex-husband JUMPED off the bridge! He wasn't in his right mind, but that is what happened and you cannot rewrite it or make it "neutral"!

For fuck's sake.