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Access Denied
David meets Meg. They fall in love and, despite a turbulent relationship, have a child together fulfilling David's dream to be a father.
After they separate, David has to fight the mother and Family Courts to see his daughter and also battles against the incompetence and lies of the Child Support Agency who seem hell-bent on ruining him, emotionally and financially.
A must-read for ANY parent.
For anyone who has had to deal with the CSA/CMS and the Family Courts, this is compelling reading. Thought-provoking, honest, extraordinary, revealing. A damning indictment of the Child Support Agency and Family Courts.
If the measure of a good book is it's after burn, Access Denied is a great book.
When you've nothing left to lose, what else can you give?
A quite extraordinary true story.
"Thought provoking but brilliant read." - Vanessa
"I couldn't put it down!" - Lisa Roberts (CSA Rip-offs Support Group)
"A well told, quite extraordinary true story that stays with you." - Jane Austin
"Amazingly jaw dropping story!" - Linda Conlon
"Captivating Story." - Lanre Oke
After they separate, David has to fight the mother and Family Courts to see his daughter and also battles against the incompetence and lies of the Child Support Agency who seem hell-bent on ruining him, emotionally and financially.
A must-read for ANY parent.
For anyone who has had to deal with the CSA/CMS and the Family Courts, this is compelling reading. Thought-provoking, honest, extraordinary, revealing. A damning indictment of the Child Support Agency and Family Courts.
If the measure of a good book is it's after burn, Access Denied is a great book.
When you've nothing left to lose, what else can you give?
A quite extraordinary true story.
"Thought provoking but brilliant read." - Vanessa
"I couldn't put it down!" - Lisa Roberts (CSA Rip-offs Support Group)
"A well told, quite extraordinary true story that stays with you." - Jane Austin
"Amazingly jaw dropping story!" - Linda Conlon
"Captivating Story." - Lanre Oke
ebook
First published November 24, 2013
96 people want to read
About the author
David E. Gates
30 books5 followersDavid E. Gates has published several books and short-stories.
His first book, Access Denied, is a true story. A deeply personal and heart-wrenching account of becoming a father and then battling the Child Support Agency and Family Courts to get access to his daughter and fighting for justice against these corrupted and dishonest organisations. It has garnered 100% positive reviews.
The Roots of Evil, his first horror novel, is a graphic, violent, intense and gore-laden horror story.
His second fictional novel, The Wretched, is an original horror story set in and around Portsmouth.
Another, fully illustrated, memoir, Motorcycle Man, has been flying off the shelves during 2020. A joyful reminiscence of his days of motorcycling, it’s a memoir for bikers, and bike-likers, of all ages, everywhere.
His latest book, UFO: The Edinburg Incident and Other UFO Stories – a selection of stories, investigative reports and testimonies from witnesses and investigators from the wealth of material available, most notably that from recently retired or declassified records currently in the custody of the US National Archives and other sources is getting great coverage.
David has made a documentary film about the battlefield memorials in Ypres, Belgium called Ypres – The Battlefield Tours and previously wrote film reviews for Starburst and Samhain magazines and interviewed the likes of Clive Barker, Terry Pratchett, James Herbert and many others.
He has also written many short stories and poems, a full-length motion picture screenplay, the screenplay to a short film and previously hosted a rock radio show.
David is currently working on a full-length novel called The Climbing Frame and developing the second sequel to The Roots of Evil, as well as putting together another collection of short stories and poems. His newest release, Cinema, is a memoir of his cinema-going.
His first book, Access Denied, is a true story. A deeply personal and heart-wrenching account of becoming a father and then battling the Child Support Agency and Family Courts to get access to his daughter and fighting for justice against these corrupted and dishonest organisations. It has garnered 100% positive reviews.
The Roots of Evil, his first horror novel, is a graphic, violent, intense and gore-laden horror story.
His second fictional novel, The Wretched, is an original horror story set in and around Portsmouth.
Another, fully illustrated, memoir, Motorcycle Man, has been flying off the shelves during 2020. A joyful reminiscence of his days of motorcycling, it’s a memoir for bikers, and bike-likers, of all ages, everywhere.
His latest book, UFO: The Edinburg Incident and Other UFO Stories – a selection of stories, investigative reports and testimonies from witnesses and investigators from the wealth of material available, most notably that from recently retired or declassified records currently in the custody of the US National Archives and other sources is getting great coverage.
David has made a documentary film about the battlefield memorials in Ypres, Belgium called Ypres – The Battlefield Tours and previously wrote film reviews for Starburst and Samhain magazines and interviewed the likes of Clive Barker, Terry Pratchett, James Herbert and many others.
He has also written many short stories and poems, a full-length motion picture screenplay, the screenplay to a short film and previously hosted a rock radio show.
David is currently working on a full-length novel called The Climbing Frame and developing the second sequel to The Roots of Evil, as well as putting together another collection of short stories and poems. His newest release, Cinema, is a memoir of his cinema-going.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 1, 2023
This is so dreadful that, I gave up after a few pages! Don't ask me about the plot. From what I have read so far, here's the fictionalised 'true story' of a man in his thirties dating an under age girl, before having a child with her. From what I gathered from the blurb, their relationship will then go sour after they separate, as he will supposedly get ripped off by the Child Maintenance Agency while being denied access to his child. Meh?
Don't get me wrong: I'm really interested in fathers telling their ordeal when it comes to access to their children following divorce/ separation. When it comes to parenting indeed, we still live in a deeply gynocentric society (despite dads being no less important and capable to care for a child), plagued by staunchly entrenched sexist prejudices that remains highly obnoxious when men have to go to court merely to remain in contact with their own children. We talk a great deal about deadbeat fathers and domestic violence perpetrated by men (rightly so!); we don't talk enough about deadbeat mothers using children as pawns in custody battles, when not making contact very difficult and/ or plainly denying it to otherwise loving men, even going as far as to engage in alienating behaviours if need be (child abuse perpetrated by women, including by proxy, remains a taboo topic, it shouldn't be). As it is, there are many fathers' support groups out there campaigning against such zeitgeist, and I, for one, are fully onboard when it comes to their cause. So what?
The problem with this book, though, is not only that it's badly written (it clearly hasn't been edited, and it shows in bad grammar and tiring repetitions). The problem is that, first impressions matter, and my first impression of its author, right after reading a few pages, is that he is not a sympathetic guy. I might be judgemental, but if there are plenty to said against the CSA (used as much by abusive mothers cashing it in while indulging in toxic, alienating co-parenting strategies to abusive fathers manipulating the system to don't pay it or not paying as much as they should) I'm nevertheless warry of people aggressively condemning it.
Is it fair for fathers unfairly deprived of contact to be legally compelled to pay child maintenance? To each their own opinion, and it's a tricky ethical question indeed. What got me, however, was him dating a 17 years old girl while being 30 (he didn't know she was 17 at first). Well: thank you, but no thank you.
As I said, the topic is not the problem. From child abuse and domestic abuse (including post-separation) perpetrated by mothers to fathers being widely treated as second class parents, and from far too many loving and caring dads being cruelly cut off from the lives of their children post-divorce/ separation to an inept family court system, there are societal issues that needs reckoning. But: this is not the type of man nor the type of book to do it. For whose interested, I highly recommend instead The War on Dads and Children: how to fight it, and win
by Vincent McGovern (an angry book too, but clearly denouncing the corruption of a whole system);
Please... Let Me See My Son - A father's fight with parental alienation & the Family Law process by Thomas Moore and THE INVISIBLE PARENT: The Dark Art of Parental Alienation (for personal testimonies of dads who've been there when it comes to the injustices of the court system); or, again, Family Court Hell by Mark Harris, the founding member of Fathers4Justice. Do not get this.
Don't get me wrong: I'm really interested in fathers telling their ordeal when it comes to access to their children following divorce/ separation. When it comes to parenting indeed, we still live in a deeply gynocentric society (despite dads being no less important and capable to care for a child), plagued by staunchly entrenched sexist prejudices that remains highly obnoxious when men have to go to court merely to remain in contact with their own children. We talk a great deal about deadbeat fathers and domestic violence perpetrated by men (rightly so!); we don't talk enough about deadbeat mothers using children as pawns in custody battles, when not making contact very difficult and/ or plainly denying it to otherwise loving men, even going as far as to engage in alienating behaviours if need be (child abuse perpetrated by women, including by proxy, remains a taboo topic, it shouldn't be). As it is, there are many fathers' support groups out there campaigning against such zeitgeist, and I, for one, are fully onboard when it comes to their cause. So what?
The problem with this book, though, is not only that it's badly written (it clearly hasn't been edited, and it shows in bad grammar and tiring repetitions). The problem is that, first impressions matter, and my first impression of its author, right after reading a few pages, is that he is not a sympathetic guy. I might be judgemental, but if there are plenty to said against the CSA (used as much by abusive mothers cashing it in while indulging in toxic, alienating co-parenting strategies to abusive fathers manipulating the system to don't pay it or not paying as much as they should) I'm nevertheless warry of people aggressively condemning it.
Is it fair for fathers unfairly deprived of contact to be legally compelled to pay child maintenance? To each their own opinion, and it's a tricky ethical question indeed. What got me, however, was him dating a 17 years old girl while being 30 (he didn't know she was 17 at first). Well: thank you, but no thank you.
As I said, the topic is not the problem. From child abuse and domestic abuse (including post-separation) perpetrated by mothers to fathers being widely treated as second class parents, and from far too many loving and caring dads being cruelly cut off from the lives of their children post-divorce/ separation to an inept family court system, there are societal issues that needs reckoning. But: this is not the type of man nor the type of book to do it. For whose interested, I highly recommend instead The War on Dads and Children: how to fight it, and win
by Vincent McGovern (an angry book too, but clearly denouncing the corruption of a whole system);
Please... Let Me See My Son - A father's fight with parental alienation & the Family Law process by Thomas Moore and THE INVISIBLE PARENT: The Dark Art of Parental Alienation (for personal testimonies of dads who've been there when it comes to the injustices of the court system); or, again, Family Court Hell by Mark Harris, the founding member of Fathers4Justice. Do not get this.
February 7, 2017
My original Access Denied audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.
David met Meg at work and they soon started dating. After some time of ups and downs Meg gets pregnant, which fills David with joy. But Meg and David start having problems and decide to separate, which will cause multiple issues to their relationship with their child, especially to David. He will start to live a nightmare in which the CSA is involved, just to find out that Kelly is not his daughter but someone else's. Instead of apologizing, Meg and the CSA appear to mock David and he will have to suffer the consequences for several years.
I did not want to disclose that Kelly was not David's child, but as the blurb clearly states this out, I did not see why I should not. Nevertheless, I think it would be better for the reader not to know this detail, which is revealed in the second half of the book.
The story in this book is terribly heartbreaking and one can only imagine what David had to suffer in order to try to have a semi-normal life. I do not like to judge the character's actions when reviewing memoirs, but I find that it is almost unavoidable, especially in unfair situations like this one. It is true that David may have also made mistakes, but in this story it is clear that he was the losing party.
The story is very powerful but I think it would have benefited from having an editor. There were a lot of meaningless details (not to David I am sure, but meaningless to the reader) that just contributed to the fact that David was running in circles with the CSA. For me those parts were a bit confusing and I got lost among acronyms, letter to and fro, and other details.
The book is read by David himself, and I am sure this has to be a quite hard but liberating experience. It is clear that he is not a professional narrator but in this way we get all the powerful feelings transmitted by the same person who lived this story. There is a break in the narration at point 1:51:07, where there is something missing. Nevertheless it does not affect the comprehension of the story.
I just would like to end this review clarifying that the reader should not expect a polished literary novel but a real testimony about a very delicate situation and how organisms like the CSA can make things more difficult and unfair, having the individual little possibility of making a difference in the short-run.
David met Meg at work and they soon started dating. After some time of ups and downs Meg gets pregnant, which fills David with joy. But Meg and David start having problems and decide to separate, which will cause multiple issues to their relationship with their child, especially to David. He will start to live a nightmare in which the CSA is involved, just to find out that Kelly is not his daughter but someone else's. Instead of apologizing, Meg and the CSA appear to mock David and he will have to suffer the consequences for several years.
I did not want to disclose that Kelly was not David's child, but as the blurb clearly states this out, I did not see why I should not. Nevertheless, I think it would be better for the reader not to know this detail, which is revealed in the second half of the book.
The story in this book is terribly heartbreaking and one can only imagine what David had to suffer in order to try to have a semi-normal life. I do not like to judge the character's actions when reviewing memoirs, but I find that it is almost unavoidable, especially in unfair situations like this one. It is true that David may have also made mistakes, but in this story it is clear that he was the losing party.
The story is very powerful but I think it would have benefited from having an editor. There were a lot of meaningless details (not to David I am sure, but meaningless to the reader) that just contributed to the fact that David was running in circles with the CSA. For me those parts were a bit confusing and I got lost among acronyms, letter to and fro, and other details.
The book is read by David himself, and I am sure this has to be a quite hard but liberating experience. It is clear that he is not a professional narrator but in this way we get all the powerful feelings transmitted by the same person who lived this story. There is a break in the narration at point 1:51:07, where there is something missing. Nevertheless it does not affect the comprehension of the story.
I just would like to end this review clarifying that the reader should not expect a polished literary novel but a real testimony about a very delicate situation and how organisms like the CSA can make things more difficult and unfair, having the individual little possibility of making a difference in the short-run.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews