Greg Ellis’s advocacy of family life makes him rather unique among Hollywood actors.
His “quest,” as he referred to it, reaches beyond support for age-old marital roles for husbands and wives. Ellis seeks to reform the nation’s family law system, which he claimed is biased against men and is responsible for leaving many children without fathers.
Ellis, a British-born American actor who portrayed Theodore Groves in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and has held numerous roles in TV series and films, began his crusade against the family law regime after he said he was falsely accused in 2015 of threatening to harm his two young boys, over whom his ex-wife was subsequently granted custody following a judge’s verdict that found Ellis guilty of domestic violence.
“It’s happened to so many parents, particularly if you look at the statistics, men and fathers, good men, loving fathers who are no longer with us because, in many ways, there is no escape from the Kafka trap of our family law system,” Ellis told the Washington Examiner, referring to fathers’ imprisonments, estrangements, and suicides that follow post-divorce legal arrangements.
The genesis of the problem, Ellis said, is a low burden of proof for allegations against fathers litigated in the family law system, a series of law firms, interest groups, and courts that Ellis said are “incentivized to alienate children from their parents, erase families, and pay no mind to the rule of law and people’s rights.”
“This is the strategy that many petitioners and particularly mothers and women use, and it’s the false allegation of domestic violence,” Ellis said. “It’s a win. It’s a win-win. How can you disprove what hasn’t happened, but it’s hearsay evidence, and it’s believed in the court of public opinion?”
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The Respondent, a multimedia project that includes video interviews with experts and a book of the same title, is the manifestation of Ellis’s push against the practice of family law and is named for the individual called to respond to allegations made against that person in court.
It’s an effort to spur conversations about legal reform and the need to “reimagine masculinity” as a quality with advantages, Ellis said.
“We’ve had this #MeToo monologue, and what we should be having is a #MeToo dialogue,” said Ellis, who also detailed his experience in his book The Respondent: Exposing the Cartel of Family Law, set for release June 29. “I looked around, and I saw so many men who weren’t — these conversations, they didn’t include men in them.”
The cultural and legal putsch against men is tied to efforts among fourth-wave feminists who set their sights on destroying the “patriarchy” and overcoming “toxic masculinity,” Ellis said.
“They want to do away with men and the father and make the family unit extinct and don’t believe there is any value whatsoever in mothers staying at home or bearing children or just having agency over their choices,” Ellis said.
The objective of The Respondent project complements Ellis’s charity, Children and Parents United.
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“That crusade is on many battlefronts, but the main one is to introduce fairness, justice, and the presumption of innocence into the lives of parents and children within family law,” Ellis said.
“Isn’t this America?” Ellis added. “What’s happened to America? The world looks to America for fairness, justice, and our legal system is broken.”
