Clair Wiederholt

Crossing Medea: My Fight to Remain a Dad Clair Wiederholt

A mid-career college professor in idyllic southern Wisconsin was jarred from his tranquil life into one marked by chaos and opposition from nearly every angle. His crime: loving his kids.

This devoted dad saw his children turned into weapons and used against him by a mom willing to poison her own kids to avenge. Undaunted, he fought for 16 years, determined never to give up on them. His kids needed him; he needed them. In his way stood an unsympathetic and often hostile court system, incompetent psychologists, antagonistic family members, and our most cherished cultural belief in the sacrosanct relationship of mother and child.

His challenges: to see beyond his children's hostility, cope with the indignities hurled his way, manage an out-of-control situation without losing himself, and take on the legal system itself. Will raw determination pay off?

From Kirkus Review

The author?s custody battle highlights the oppression of divorced fathers in this rancorous memoir. Wesley Weiss, hero of this slightly fictionalized account of the author?s hideous mid-1980s divorce and its aftermath, finds himself in a war for the hearts and presence of his three young daughters. His adversary is his ex, ?Dea,? whose vengefulness approaches that of her mythic namesake. The main front is Dea?s efforts to curtail Wes? access to their kids through tactics manifold and devious?sudden changes in visitation schedules, frosty hand-overs that make every outing between father and daughters feel like a prisoner exchange at the Berlin Wall, the cutting off of phone and mail contact, false charges of child abuse over a skinned knee. Every detail of Wes? paternal doings is governed by fraught (and often eye-glazing) negotiations and judicial proceedings supervised by expensive lawyers and court-appointed therapists. Worst of all is the ?parental alienation? caused by Dea?s poisoning of the kids? feelings toward Wes; every estranged dad will feel a pang of recognition at his awkward relationship with his once-loving daughters, who grow so sullen, aloof and militantly resistant to his overtures that bystanders mistake him for a predator stalking them. The author, a psychology professor and fathers?-rights activist, hangs on this narrative a lengthy indictment of Wisconsin divorce law and society?s disparagement of the male parental role.

Wiederholt crafts a moving evocation of a divorced father?s feelings of anguish and ostracism. A vivid, if one-sided, saga of familial disaffection and twisted justice.