FAD – Fathers Against Discrimination asbl
“Both Parents for All Children”
29, Boulevard Prince Henri
L-1724 Luxembourg
Luxembourg

8 April, 2020 Luxembourg

RTL Radio Lëtzebuerg
Mr. Eric EWALD
Attn: Mr. Guy WEBER
45, boulevard Pierre Frieden
L-1543 Luxembourg
Luxembourg

Dear Mr. EWALD,

My name is Patryk P. RYBIŃSKI and I am the President of FAD – Fathers Against Discrimination a.s.b.l., a non-profit organization based in Luxembourg. You can find more information about our association on our website – www.FAD.lu.

Our organization has been created to become a platform of dialog to promote gender equality of chance for both parents, to raise awareness of gender inequality and parental discrimination of fathers in Luxembourg institutions but most importantly to stop violation of children’s rights in Luxembourg courts during custody proceedings and to assure their well-being.

As an association we believe a child should never be deprived of his natural human right to family life and equal access to both parents. Nor does anyone have the right to decide which of his parents’ love has more value.

Considering the above we seek equal treatment of both parents during custody hearings in Luxembourg family courts. We support the rights of fathers and mothers to equal parenthood and
successful professional career. We address the importance of family values promoting the positive impact a full and healthy family has on the upbringing of children.

FAD monitors articles published by Luxembourg media. It is unfortunately more than evident that vast majority of newspapers such as Luxemburger Wort, its English on-line version Luxembourg Times and a few others are very eager to present short tabloid like news relating to domestic violence against women. Presumably following information acquired from sources such as FeD, ONE or SCAS. Approach omitting solid fact-checking procedures, studying the details of the statistics provided to fully understand the nature of it, neglecting information how the data is collected and how each of the mentioned organizations functions, what is the source of their funding, what do they must do to sustain their budgets and justify their existence and finally why there is no objective view regarding the problem that is not gender based.

Numerous and continuous periodic articles covering monotonic one side of the story and nearly no articles raising awareness of the issues men and teenage boys in Luxembourg face on a daily basis. Challenges including but not limiting to parental discrimination of fathers in family courts, children’s rights violations during custody hearings, the fact that there are 10 shelters for women, girls and mothers with children and not a single one for men, boys and fathers with children victims of domestic violence. The fact Ministry of Equal Rights between Women and Men openly misleads the public on their official website that such shelters exist has also escaped media’s attention.

We have gone into more details about this in our letter to Mr. Douwe MIEDEMA, Editor-in-Chief of Luxembourg Times sent earlier this year following his scandalous accusations presented in his email sent to us in January, 2020. We encourage you to read our correspondence as it is exposing your journalist colleague’s nonchalant approach and lack of professionalism. The letter can be found on FAD.lu under ”Info & Documents” and then by clicking on ”Our letters & Documents” or download the letter directly by clicking on the following Link. While visiting our webpage you can also find another correspondence recently sent to Mr. Roland ARNES. The letter can be downloaded by clicking on the following Link.  Should you be interested to learn more about the most recent yet unacceptable letter this time sent by a judge to all family lawyers in Luxembourg I suggest to read FAD’s letter to all prominent Luxembourg figures including Prime Minister BETTEL – Link.

We are contacting you because of the article publicized by RTL.lu “Home quarantine has not led to an increase in reported domestic violence”. We are not here to question your integrity as a journalist but considering that in accordance to official annual reports presented at least 1 in 3 of reported victims of violence in Luxembourg is men (more details below) we would like to kindly ask you to be a little more cautious with the narrative of your articles and when choosing photos for them.

As you may see below the statistical data from the Official Reports on Domestic Violence in Luxembourg in 2015 indicates there were 66,66% reported male perpetrators and 33,33% reported female perpetrators. There were 242 evictions, and in 91% of the cases, the male was evicted which makes 220 men. Would you have an explanation for this? Wouldn’t you agree that the number should be closer to 66% and not 91%?.

Are you interested to further investigate the Luxembourg Domestic Violence Reports from the last 4-5 years and take a closer look why male evictions greatly exceed number of male reported perpetrators and write an article about it?

2018 Official Report of Domestic Violence in Luxembourg concludes:
739 domestic violence incidents reported
66,1% reported female victims
33,9% reported male victims
69,46% reported male perpetrators
30,54% reported females perpetrators

2017 Official Report of Domestic Violence in Luxembourg concludes:
715 domestic violence incidents
64,64% reported female victims
35,37% reported male victims
68,60% reported male perpetrators
31,40% reported female perpetrators

2016 Official Report of Domestic Violence in Luxembourg concludes:
789 domestic violence incidents
62,37% reported female victims
37,63% reported male victims
68,08% reported male perpetrators
31,92% reported female perpetrators

2015 Official Report of Domestic Violence in Luxembourg concludes:
802 domestic violence incidents
62,36% reported female victims
37,64% reported male victims
66,66% reported male perpetrators
33,33% reported female perpetrators

Please take our comments into consideration when writing future articles in order to avoid the same footsteps taken by some of your colleagues when covering gender bias stories. Articles following the same rhetoric and discriminatory narrative commonly presented by the current Luxembourg government coalition (especially the Ministry of Equal Rights between Women and Men) disrespecting thousands of Luxembourg fathers and adding to the profound misrepresentation of facts insinuating that men are the only cause of domestic violence and women are the only victims of it.

I remain available for any questions or inquiries you may have. We are also available for a meeting should there be need for it.

Most respectfully,

Patryk P. RYBIŃSKI
President
FAD – Fathers Against Discrimination asbl