Outrage when a man uses the system against a woman

So here's an interesting (and sad) story about a woman who isn't able to travel outside Australia because her ex put her on a family flight watch list.

The watch list is designed to prevent divorced partners leaving the country in custody disputes, yet there's outrage when a man uses it to prevent his ex taking their children overseas.

The reality is that women leaving the country with children and never coming back (otherwise known as 'International Child Abduction') make up the majority of cases, which is why I think this isn't considered a crime (it's usually a breach of court ordered visitation rights, but not a crime).  Many sites like to claim that every one of those women are doing so to flee domestic violence, but that isn't always the case, and they rarely have anything more than anecdotal evidence to back it up.  But if a man does the same thing, he's portrayed as an evil man.

I paid particular notice when they go into the details that she's spending thousands of dollars on legal fees to fight this, but "he's getting legal aid".  How many men have to pay thousands of dollars on legal fees in custody battles when their former partners get legal aid?  Apparently there's outrage when the genders are reversed.  Maybe she's got lots of money (maybe she got the lot in the divorce) and he's left broke.  Legal aid isn't available to people who have money, so stating that he's using it when she has to pay is indicative that she has money and he doesn't.

When the media starts reporting on all the divorced fathers who can't afford to mount a challenge to visitation rights because their ex is using legal aid but they have to find thousands just to appeal what they consider unfair access, then I'll feel sorry for this woman.

In closing, I'm not saying that this particular guy is or isn't guilty, but if there's one thing we've learned in the last year, it's that the media chooses which stories to report and which ones to hold back, which stories to beef up the details and which stories to leave out what they consider 'unimportant details' and which groups to hold up as the 'usual suspects and bad guys' and which groups should be given a free pass.

Given my recently acquired (in the last couple of years) skepticism of the media, I'm not inclined to take any case at face value until they start reporting crimes between men and women equally.  They can pretend all women are great and all men are evil all they like, but those of us who live in the real world know that both men and women exist at all ends of the good/evil spectrum.