TRIGGERnometry - From Hollywood to Homeless with Greg Ellis

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

Greg Ellis is a British actor who has appeared in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series, Star Trek, Forsaken, Titanic, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, as well as Hawaii Five-0, 24 and Dexter. He is the author of 'The Respondent: Exposing the Cartel of Family Law' (2021) - "a first-person account of family breakdown and the social, political, and legal forces that are fuelling a national health emergency". Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ | Channel ID: UCo_8zzSxKeL3arKWVuP8wdQ Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount. Storage discount. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. My crazy but true harrowing tale, I guess, of how a father can be removed from his home in handcuffs,

put in jail, forced through five incarcerations and permanently separated from his sons, all because of one false allegation. In family law, there is no due process. There is no presumption of innocence. That the burden of proof should be on the accused rather than the accuser. We have a system of the Salem witch trials. 4,000 children every day lose a parent in family law courts in America.

And when you look at the states being incentivized, they get $6,000 for every child they place into foster care. There are bonuses awarded if they move their. those children through to adoption. We have to take the incentives away. You know, we hear a lot about prenuptial agreements, but we don't hear anyone talking about prenuptial custody agreements. We put more cachet on our material possessions and our financial estate than we do our children. We need to look at these systems that are in place and really try to call out those on the other side who are incentivized and make all of the money, the tens and tens of millions of pounds

in the UK and dollars in America to further their agenda, which is to keep the money in family court and keep separating parents from their children. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisser. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

Our brilliant guest today is a best-selling author, TV director and Emmy-nominated actor. Greg Ellis, welcome to Trigonometry. It's great to be here, chaps. How are you? We're very well, mate. It's great to have you on the show. Let's get straight into it. You have a very interesting story to tell in some ways a tragic one, I would say. So tell everybody, how are you where you are? What's been your journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us? Gosh, that's a great profound question. Well, I was raised and toughen, I guess, in the seaside fish and chip shops and smoky video game arcades of Rough and Tumble Southport in

Northwest England, mastered the Rubik's Cube at 12, held the record for Pac-Man at 13, and then at 14, 15, did a broad, not a West End musical, and, you know, my journey through the entertainment business,

four decades in the entertainment has included acting, voice over, I've done over 130 video games, cartoon animation, directing, and then authoring three books and my third book,

the respondent was born out of a personal situation, a personal tragedy, uh, 2015, March 5th. Um, my crazy but true, uh, harrowing tale, I guess, of how a father can be removed from his home in handcuffs, put in jail, forced through, um, five incarcerations and permanently separated from his sons, all because of one false allegation. So in essence, the, what I call the cartel of family law, my book, the respondent, uh, exposing the cartel of family law, showed up on my doorstep on March 5th, stole my freedom, kidnapped my children, or father napped me, and in essence, destroyed or murdered my family. And it sounds like a Hollywood movie trailer for a psychological thriller, but it's not. It's real life. And what I discovered through

my journey, through my dystopian Kafka trap journey through family law, was that it's happened to me, and it's been happening to hundreds of thousands of people for decades, decent law-abiding citizens across America, the UK, Australia, South America, Canada, and judges, attorneys, state bar associations, mediators, psychologists, none of them want their dirty little secret to get out, which in America here, it's a hundred billion dollar a year industry. So that really is the kind of grounding place for the respondent.com, my book, my show, The Respondent, the movie that we're going to be making, the documentary series we've started making, to just really have an impact and maybe improve this system that doesn't afford a presumption of innocence in the one area

of our legal system that really should have it first and primarily, and that's family law. And the fascinating thing about it was, and I said tragic as well, is when I was reading it, I became a father for the first time, like six months ago. I cannot imagine that pain that you had to deal with being separated from your children. And that's just one aspect of it. And your credits were Pirates of the Caribbean, Titanic. You worked on some huge things, and you are defenestrated in public, too, in prison, et cetera, or incarcerated. You know, just tell us more about, first of all, how did that happen?

Like, what was it like? What happened? Yeah, I was at home. I'd actually taken the afternoon off. It was a Thursday. I was reading books for my sons in the playroom of my house. in Hollywood, and the doorbell rang. And it was that simple, the doorbell rang.

And I walked down the stairs. I told my boys would be back up. We had a little puppy at the time, and I opened the door. And little did I know that that would be the last time that I would open the door in my own house. And what had happened was a 10-word false allegation

that was made on an anonymous hotline, which I've since discovered this tactic of what's called the quote-unquote welfare check is what's used across America. Anyone can call anonymously and say, by hearsay, that someone has threatened to take their own life or they're threatened to hurt themselves

or their children. And the police not only are legally bound to show up, they're legally bound without a warrant to enter the home and violate privacy and due process rights, there are no Miranda rights,

nothing. And so that was the beginning of my dystopian odyssey, if you will, of how I was handcuffed, removed from my home, incarcerated, the sudden and shocking removal from everything in my life. My livelihood, my money, my car, I didn't even have a phone. And within the space of a few hours, I became homeless and almost destitute.

And my entire life was turned upside down. I was very grateful that a few people, you know, stuck in there and helped me through that, journey because it was psychologically, physically and emotionally just terrifying. It was like living on the edge of existential angst, really. And, you know, I talk about this on my show, the living grief of alienation from one's own children when they are the meaning of your life and you love them so much and you are so connected to them and you would die for them and to suddenly and shockingly be removed and deal with that pain. And also, I think the pain of knowing that your sons or your children or your daughter are removed from me.

their connectivity to the meaning of their life, their parent, particularly such an emotionally connected parent as I was. And Greg, what were these 10 words that you were, that made up the accusation? Am I allowed to swear? Yes. You're allowed to say whatever you want. Oh, great. The 10 words were, I'm sick of this shit. I'm going to harm the children. And they were the 10 words that were reported to the police that I had reported allegedly said, which I hadn't, I would never say those words, and even if I did, I wouldn't say them that way. And those 10 words became the kind of the gateway to, you know, welcome to family law. And I thought as well, those 10, after I was incarcerated and this went to court and I entered the legal system, I ignorantly thought that I would

get some justice. Finally, you know, the establishment of justice would provide some fairness. And what I found was it was the Star Chamber. It was the wild west of family law. What do you mean by that, the wild west of family law? Because I've had friends actually who've been in similar situations to you, not as extreme, but certainly similar. And you're using terms of wild west of family law, there's a few people who are probably thinking, I don't know what that means. So just explain it to us, please, Greg. Sure. So, you know, in family law, there is no due process. There is no presumption of innocence. Parents are found guilty to all proven. innocent or usually guilty to all proven more guilty, particularly fathers. It happens to mothers as

well. And criminals get more rights than children and parents, terrorists, murderers, paedophiles. So if we have a legal system that doesn't afford due process that says that the burden of proof should be on the accused rather than the accuser, we have a system of the Salem witch trials and the Spanish Inquisition in 2002. So how did that play out in your case, great, because I think that, forgive me, but for someone from your perspective with your experiences, to put it mildly, to you, you kind of get all this. But I think the average person, and I include myself on this, by the way, we're all walking around with absolutely no fucking idea what you're talking about. I genuinely think that, right? So you, people come to

your home because your now ex-wife has made this false allegation against you. The Police take you away. What happened? How does the whole system work? Well, basically, what happened with me is, and I, first of all, I want to say, yes, absolutely, I agree. I had no idea. And I say this to my, you know, I founded a charity, CPU, Children and Parents United.

And I say to my team and the volunteers who work with me on the respondent movement, that we have to get the message out to the people who, the versions of us before we got hit by this system, the people who don't really I didn't really know and I didn't really care because I didn't know three days before it happened to me on March 2nd I was putting my boys to sleep as I did every night

and my elder said you know so and so at school's parents are getting divorced you'll never get divorced were you daddy and I said no of course not I mean it was 20 years I was mad never expected or blindsided

but in terms of the question which I forget because I went off on a tangent what was the question The question was, once the police are at your door, they take you away. Because this is my point is, I don't think anyone really knows what happens then. You talk about lack of due process, and these are all legalistic terms. Like, what happens?

So basically, the reason why they can get away with doing this is, number one, it's a welfare check. In essence, it's a fake welfare check that's called in anonymously. The police arrive. They know they're entering the home, regardless of. regardless of what you say or do. And I was stood at the threshold of my own for about 90 minutes trying to have a polite conversation with these two police officers that became three, four, five,

and eventually a garrison, and they entered the home. Then the smart team, the psychological Gestapo of the social workers in California came to interview me and determine not knowing me, not knowing my history, whether I was of sound mind and body. And that was while I was in handcuffs with the, curtains wide open and all the lights blaring so all the neighbors walking by and looking in. Then I was removed in the back of a unmarked police car with my 10-year-old son looking down

from the bedroom window seeing his father being dragged away in handcuffs for the last time that I would be at home. I was taken to UCLA Reg and Medical Center, which is like hospital. No one was given, no one gave me any information as to what was going on. I kept asking. It was a harrowing ride. I was forced to do a drug test, which was negative. I remember looking in the mirror of the hospital restroom and just I was so overcome, I guess, that I collapsed and I'm lying in the pool of blood on the floor.

And then I got re-transported by the smart team, the back of the hospital, to these two big, burly men who handcuffed me into a gurney and put me in the back of a, what I call an ambulatory, rehearsed, but it was just another kind of ambulance that wasn't connected to the hotel, to the hospital. And the doors were slammed. And then for the next, I guess it was about 75 minutes in the dark, I was just lying there in a gown, handcuffed to a gurney, not knowing why I was there, where I was going, and what would happen. And then, I mean, I could go through the whole story,

but it's in the book. But then you realize, you know, I look. You know, I look. look back, I've never been arrested. So it's a detainment. It's a legal detainment. And they can determine whether you go, it's called a 5150 hold, which is three days. And you get, you get incarcerated. You get put away in a psychiatric hospital. And people who know nothing about it. Just to clarify, Greg, this can literally happen to anybody. You can be taken because of an allegation made anonymously by telephone. And overnight, your life literally changes. You're put in a handcuffs and you can be detained in a psychiatric unit. Correct.

And it was, so it's three days initially. Now, that's if you are calm and compliant like I was. You know, in that conflict situation where law enforcement are entering your home, violating your privacy, you could be doing anything. It's your own home. So the forced conflict of the welfare check can cause people to be agitated, frustrated, Sometimes people get violent. So some people can get arrested and they can just get put in the system and it can ruin their life.

Well, in my situation, it was three days. But then three days became 14 because my ex-wife and mother-in-law came and they talked with the doctors. And the psychiatrist said after a conversation with them, we've decided to extend your stay to 14 days. That's when I started to get. What's my plan to get out of here? How can I get my freedom back? Because I'm stuck in this psychiatric hospital. hospital. And what reason did they give you, Greg, for being stuck in that psychiatric hospital?

Did they diagnose you with anything? Did they say you had some type of personality disorder? No, they don't have to give you a reason. They don't have to give you any reason whatsoever. And no, there was no diagnosis. I mean, I actually, in my book, I put this two psychological evaluations by psychiatrists that the court ordered me to go through independent evaluations. I actually published them in my book, one from 2015 and one from 2000. So that it would be fully transparent that I was not psychologically disturbed. I am not a mentally imbalanced person. In fact, part of my work is to help people going through this who are having psychological

and mental health challenges. So that happens. What happens after that? You're in there for 14 days. Obviously, you're not in a good state. You're not in a positive frame of mind. You can imagine. Just say the least.

Put that mildly. If anything's going to induce some kind of negative psychological state, it's the experiences that you've been put through. Exactly. And just to clarify, I wasn't in there for 14. They extended my stay to 14 days. I managed to get out of to six days. So not going through all the stories that are in the book, deep diving.

In essence, what happened was there was a very friendly nurse that I managed to speak to. And she gave me the kind of pathway out, two options. You can apply to have a hearing in front of a judge that could take two. weeks, et cetera, et cetera, or an immediate hearing. So I had an immediate hearing. And it was basically just like sitting with, you know, communist China, really, because they'd already determined that they were going to keep me there. The social worker who was part of the psychiatric facility just repeated the words that I was reported to have said, which were anonymously said as a false allegation.

But I made a decent enough case that I was told if I could find an address, they would let me out. And of course, then I had no money to make a phone call. I didn't have access to money. I didn't have a phone. There was one pay phone. Thankfully, the patients there actually had a whip round because the doctors would do these classes and then I would talk and try and help some of the patients there while

I was inside to find something positive and productive from being in there. So I managed to, I mean, look, the phone calls I made. I didn't have a phone number. So I had these coins and there was a pay phone. And I'm thinking, well, I don't have a phone number to call. So my ex-wife inadvertently and mistakenly brought a script because I was at the time looking at movies to direct. And this script had my agency phone number at the bottom.

And I was like, oh, I'll call them. And it was late at night. And I spoke to the, bless this assistant. I mean, I called the agency, spoke to him. and I convinced him to go into my eye cloud and go get find my contacts. And so I'm grabbing a pencil, a piece of paper, and I'm literally scribbling down

while the money's running out on one phone to get phone numbers. Then I start the phone calls to a few people, and there were two paying phones. So I'm just kind of juggling one and hang on, so-and-so's calling. And I must have sounded absolutely nuts as people are picking up the phone that haven't heard from me in a week.

And I've got, there's false segregation. I've been, I know, psychiatrifice, I mean, that's what it does to you, to your point. It just, it makes you nuts. Wow. Wow. So, I mean, to me, that is, that's like you say, it's something out of a dystopian thriller. So how do you get out of that impossible situation that you find yourself in? Well, it's, you know, the book kind of really goes into detail on that.

But, you know, to give you an idea of how I eventually managed to get out of that facility or hospital. And that was after six days. And then, of course, you know. How did your friends react? Because this is one thing that I always think about in this situation. Because, look, if Francis or our producer, Anton calls me up, I'm like, I know these guys so well, like, whatever. But a more distant friendship, you're going, well, how do I know what's happened? You know, you're telling me it's a false allegation.

I wasn't there. Maybe you are about to, you know, murder your children. I don't want to be giving you a, I don't want to be putting you in the spare bedroom next to my kids. Well, that's the thing, is that you don't get the opportunity to tell people when you're locked away and have no access and communication to the outside world is completely and utterly shut down. I mean, I came out after six days. And I was, I went to a neighbor's home who agreed to let me stay and I stayed. And as I left, it was like, well, I didn't even leave. I was on the phone to my ex-wife, and it was a ruse to keep me on the phone.

Unbeknownst to me, there were like 10 or 12 police officers outside as if I was some kind of international terrorist. Banging at the door, I opened the door. I get dragged out, handcuffed again. My mother-in-law at the time marched down the street, my street where my house was down the road, and served me a restraining order. And I walked into homelessness.

And there was a slight twist there in terms of I was handcuffed, and I think they were going to take me away because I had one of those, the sergeant was one of those sergeants, you know what I mean? And this big six-foot-three hulking massive black man stepped out from the bushes and said, and I talked to you, and I was like, what's going on? And they had a couple of minutes chat,

and then the sergeant came back and released me, and I walked into homelessness, and this guy sort of lumbers down the street, and someone's looking out for you. They've been watching you. You have to come with me, I was so in a daze I kept walking.

I was all I was thinking about Park Bench. Oh my God, I'm here. I'd worn the same clothes for six days. I didn't have a phone. I didn't have money. I didn't have credit cards or a wallet. I didn't have a car. And I looked, smelled and was homeless.

And I'm going, I'm going to be sleeping in the streets. And there's like, guys, no, you've got to come with me, you've got to come with me. And it turns out that I had one, I mean, I had a few friends that stuck by me because, you know, you find out who your friends are. Integrity is earned in turmoil, not merely asserted in comfort. And it was a wonderful fellow called Adam Fogelson, who happened to be at the time, the chairman of Universal Studios, a very, very powerful fellow in Hollywood, but he knew who I was. He knew my character. I, I, I, I knew

known his family for years and taught his daughter when she was five, six, seven years old how to, um, I could, we'd go over as a family every Sunday morning and, um, I'd teach how to play piano and write songs and perform and it was just kind of like a friendly family thing. And he, I arrived at his, his house around 5.30 in the morning looking just a mess. And, um, I think, uh, he had, he had actually employed a security company to, um, to track the police scanners, uh, because they knew at some point, I would find a way to get out. And they also knew that the police and what my ex-wife and her mother and her mother's ex-husband who was a federal marshal.

And I mean, it was all stacked against me. They'd come and get me. And I'd be served. And I would be going down, whatever way I'd go down in the Kafka trap. And he was able, actually, his wife was able to negotiate my wallet. and my car and phone from my ex-wife because he felt it was just inhumane to leave me homeless. Oh, right, so she kept hold of literally your card, your wallet, all the rest of it.

So she had possession of it when you were taken away? Yeah, I had nothing. I had absolutely nothing. Can I ask you, well, I'm sure is a very unpleasant question, but it's a question that a lot of people listening to this will be at some level thinking about when we're having this conversation. Like, you know how people are. There's no smoke without fire. What did you do? You know, because that's how people are, right? People assume that you had, so why did your ex-wife do this? So why did your ex-wife do this?

You know, that's a really good, an important question as well. And as much as I've, you know, thought this through, I think that she suffered from panic disorder. She was diagnosed with panic disorder. It would rear its ugly head occasionally, and for anyone who has to endure that, very painful diagnosis. There's an irrationality about things that come up. I remember one time taking it to the airport, and what should have been a 35-minute drive, took two and a half hours, and we never made it to the airport. You know, irritable bowel syndrome, go home, the irrational fear. So I know for a fact that she'd been off her, she'd not taken her medication for a while.

And I think, and she was out of town, and I think this fear just came up instilled in her from maybe from a few coincidental events. And she made that call. And, you know, one of the things that I'm really clear about, even though even to this day, she's on a mission to ruin me. seven and a half years later is that I don't have any hatred towards her for what she did and what she continued to do you know I say this a lot

you know we forgive others because they sometimes because they not because they deserve forgiveness but we deserve peace and forgiveness is not a line that we take a road that we cross it's not necessarily I forgive her actions but she's the mother of my sons and you know they will eventually

come to realize after their psyches were split between mom and dad and they were told all these horrific stories about the dad that they knew up until the ages of 8 and 10 that was a you know a connected loving playing volunteering emotionally supportive dad and then just got eviscerated and I think after the fact look to be full disclosure it's all in the book you know I don't paint myself out to be some kind of you know brilliant um husband I was a brilliant father. I can say that without hesitation.

I was a brilliant and am a brilliant father. I was a good husband, but I was a little flawed. And I think after the fact, what compounded it was that I disclosed and in my book too that I wasn't a faithful husband. And that I think probably compounded or gave reason for more vengeance. and revenge and anger, you know, so. And what was the impact on the children? Because this, I mean, what they must have been going through

must have been absolutely awful, particularly at such a tender and young age. Yeah, this is one of the things. I mean, I talk a lot about the false allegation of domestic violence, which is, I call it the silver bullet of high conflict divorce and the magic ballistics of family law or family law war. But what children endure, even when it's not so acrimonious, is parental alienation. And parental alienation is, aka child abuse.

It's also known as turning the children. It's an umbrella term that details a series of actions, if you will, or behaviors, with the malicious intent to have the children hate a once beloved parent. And there are signs of that, isolation and gatekeeping and psychological splitting, like the presence of a prior positive relationship between the child and the now rejected parent. There's, you look at the absence of maltreatment or seriously deficient parenting

on the part of the now rejected parent or the lack of ambivalence in the child's view or seeing one parent is all good and the other is all bad. I mean, simple things like criticizing the other parent in front of the children or limiting contact by interfering with the other parent's time, there is a divorce or there are two homes. So this aspect of it, this aspect of the psychological,

a very challenging aspect of any divorce with children involved, particularly minor children, but any children, is something that isn't talked about. And in the UK, none of these are not talked about. It's a whole movement and lobbying group of radical feminists who deny the existence of parental alienation, who want to bring laws through. I heard about a law a couple of years ago,

maybe 18 months ago I was going through the House of Lords, that was domestic violence against women and girls, so it wouldn't protect baby boys or five-year-old boys or men. You know, and the rates of IPV intimate partner violence are clear when you look at the statistics. It's 52-48-men on women and 48-52 women on men. So it's almost even there, you know, domestic violence and abuse has no gender, but we very rarely talk about it with men because, or violence on men,

because, well, men are kind of devalued and expendable, for the most part, smash the patriarchy. You know, they're toxic. Don't you think, Greg, to be fair as well, is that we, you know, we have, you know, we can cause more damage to women physically than they can cause to us. Therefore, it's not taken as seriously when a woman is physically violent or abusive. Yeah, I absolutely agree. I mean, you know, relationship I was in after my marriage, you know, there was some physical abuse connected. I think, you know, Nikki Crick did a study at the Minnesota, Minnesota University on, on behaviors and movements towards, quote-unquote, violence.

And yes, men have a tendency to move to violence quickly, and it's physical. And, you know, go to any pub in England or most pubs in England on a Friday night. And there might be, or when I was growing up, there'd be the fights. And then, you know, 10 minutes later, you could be sitting at the bar having a drink and getting over it. Whereas what she deemed, she actually deemed the term reputation savaging, which is what I use a lot. I know other people say reputation destroying, but she said women move towards a reputation savaging of violence with the words, gossip, the spoken word, the hint to gadankan,

the thought in the back of the mind that comes out through that gossiping about someone and sharing stories about people. So I'll say all women, don't want to be, you know. Yeah, I mean, the problem is that you then put the court system, which is not only a drain emotionally, but it's also a drain financially. And listening to you and reading your book, the odds are stacked against men.

They're fundamentally biased, aren't they? Yeah, I mean, there's no two ways about it. If you are a man, if you are a father, it's harder. If you're a father who's the respondent, in family law, they have, you know, what you would call a petitioner and a respondent. The respondent's really the defendant. if you are a father respondent

and you become the respondent if you don't file first and if the petitioner files first and gets and is represented retains an attorney you are forced into what I call the divorce trap where you will go bankrupt you have no ability to stop

it becomes worse because you have two attorneys who are trained to make arguments against each other in America you can't have one attorney it's illegal to have one attorney and two people come together to negotiate through and find settlement. It's why with my charity, we're looking at things like we have a tech team that's looking at an app to bifurcate and shift the jurisdiction away from family law into contract law,

in essence, microcontracts along the way and the pathway and the history of a relationship that can basically contract these mini contracts along the way so that if there is a fallout disagreement and divorce is imminent, it can be dealt with in contract law as a business rather than the wild west of family law. But look, there's going to be people listening to this going, your story is awful, it's tragic, no one should have to go through that. But there are also cases, and we witness them all the time.

It happens in the UK. It happens in the States where a dad, for whatever reason, has some kind of psychological break, kills a wife, kills the kids, awful. hear about those stories all the time. Do we not need to be extra cautious in order to therefore protect and to ensure that that event doesn't happen in order to protect the lives of children? Yeah, we absolutely do. Absolutely, we do. And we also have to hear about that when it's mothers who do that. And there are many stories there, not in the news as much. When mothers do that, human beings, parents have pressure, everyone's struggling with something and many people live in lives

acquired desperation. And when that happens, we need to be aware. And the legal system, look, I have someone who works with my charity who 22 years ago was falsely accused and sat in court and held his wrists up to the judge and said, Your Honor, please arrest me. Have the bailiff arrest me and charge me with a criminal offense. And the judge said, are you crazy? And what he went on to explain was he gets more rights as a criminal. He wanted to be arrested. He wanted to have the right to have an attorney. Domestic violence should be tried in criminal courts, an extremely serious offense, and the allegation of which should be taken seriously, but just like not believing any group of people just because they make an accusation, like believe all women, preposterous. We should

listen to people, take them seriously, and authorities and law enforcement should investigate and interview and take statements. But unfortunately, the immediacy of what happens, if there is an incident where it used to be, you know, we'll let it blow over, there's a cooling off period. Now that doesn't happen, particularly in places like California and the cost to our children and cost to us is crazy. And when you look at family law, 4,000 children a day, 4,000 children every day lose a parent in family law courts in America. And when you look at the states being incentivized, they get $6,000 for every child they place into foster care. There are bonuses awarded. if they move those children through to adoption,

we have to take the incentives away. And we really have to, I think, address what was school shootings and incarceration rates with men and drug abuse and teen pregnancies. We have to look at the fatherless crisis and the dad deprivation crisis, I think, that's going on because one in three American kids live without their biological father in the home

and they're at greater risk of having more difficulty in their lives according to just about every metric out there. And Greg, I was going to ask you because I think I don't know how the family law system became this way and I don't understand the intricacies of it. But one thing I've noticed culturally is we had an organization, I'm sure maybe still exists called Fathers for Justice here in the UK. And the only reason I know about it is it was a punchline

in every comedian's set a few years ago. And that is kind of how we treat it. And I have always thought, you know, I do cringe a little bit when you get sort of men's rights movements and whatever. And that's because I think and see what you think about it. Look, statistically speaking, men are less important biologically, right? If you have a tribe of 10 women and 10 men and you lose half the men, it's not a big deal. You lose half the women, your ability to reproduce the tribe is significantly impacted, right? So biologically speaking, men are more disposable.

And therefore, I think as people, we don't have the same empathy for men and their problems as we do for women. Now, what does that mean? That means that victimhood is not going to work for men, right? It just isn't. I think you'd agree with me on that. Absolutely. Well, this is the new social currency and its economy is booming. But not for men.

If you try to say, look, this is a male problem. and we all accept that the problems that women face and they do need to be tackled, that automatically means that there will be problems that men face, invariably, right? But we don't think about it like that in our society. We think we've got these victims on the one hand. And men, well, you know, they've got privilege and their abuses and their threat and all of this and they're disposable. So I suppose the question for me is, how do you overcome that? Because raising awareness of the fact that there are people like you who've gone

through the awful experiences that you've gone through, eventually vindicated after a terrible ordeal. Well, how do you do that? Well, you know, from a personal perspective, you do the recovery work. Of course. You know, you look in the mirror of self. You have that inevitable appointment with yourself. But, you look, I'm a Caucasian, middle-aged, somewhat heterosexual male actor from, you know,

England who's worked in Hollywood for nearly three decades. What are your pronouns, Greg? I'm not, no comment. So, you know, I get, you know, I knew going into this that there would be a lot of attacks and there'd be a lot of vitriol and, you know, man hated, or me being a mansplainer. You know, we'd hear a lot about equality. To your point, it's like we don't hear the, you know, woman spliner. We don't hear, like, we should have, anyway, I'm not going to go there. It's a great question.

Let me go there before you answer. great because I had an interesting experience a few years ago where my wife, who was, she was really into breakdancing at the time. And she went to a breakdancing class. And there's one of the things that they were doing, she need herself in the face. And she had a black eye for two weeks. And I tell you what, man, walking around with her for two weeks in public completely changed my perception of this issue. Because I guarantee you the looks I got. And some of the shit that people would openly say. You know, we went to a restaurant and this woman looked at us and went,

well, you didn't do that to you, did he? But, you know, and the look, people would look at her, then look at me with an angry face and then walk away. It's like, you don't know anything about me. You've just, you've jumped to that conclusion because it's a stereotype. But it's okay because some people are okay to stereotype. Yeah, there's a great short film. I forget, it's from a charity in the,

UK, actually. And I've played it a couple of times on my show. It's only about three minutes long, but it was a social experiment. And it's out in a park and it's very busy, lots of people. And the man starts berating the woman. And you see people coming up and, you know, talking to this blow. What do you think you're doing? Leave her alone. And then they do the same thing, role reversal with the woman doing the same thing to the man and pushing him up against the fence and berating him. And it snickers and last. And after and derision. So, but I do think there is a slight cultural shift. I don't think there'll ever be a full cultural shift. In terms of what I do, look, I talk about men and women, fathers and mothers, the extended family, how it affects that, how alienation, you know, I've spoken to a lot of grandparents, you know, they're truly innocent. Suddenly when there's a divorce and there's alienation, it's acrimonious, they're removed from access to their grandchildren in the, you know, the latter stages of their lives and the effect that it's having on our children

look I don't know if we'll be able to reform family law in my lifetime we can we can improve it we're making strides to improve it and you know I'll get the attacks but ultimately the victories come very meaningful and in terms of boys I think that's for me you know don't don't girls and women want boys to be you know better off and more well-being

and socially, you know, in a good place. And I look at schools. I mean, that to me is the education system. I mean, it's predominantly populated by female teachers these days. And it's morphed over the past 30 years to cater to the natural behavior of girls. And that boy behavior that maybe we were more into growing up, like playing war and being more rambunctious that was considered boyish, is now considered problematic.

And, you know, I think psychology and child development expert, I think his name's Michael Thompson. Yeah, he says that girl behavior is the gold standard now in schools. And boys are treated like defective girls. So, you know, I had Christine, Christina Hoffsommers on my show. She's the American Institute, American Enterprise Institute, philosopher. And she wrote an article, School has become too hostile for boys. I think it was for Time magazine. And she mentioned elementary and high school zero tolerance regimes.

mean boys account for 70% of suspensions from kindergarten through 12th grade. So no one's really getting out there and talking to people like Dr. Warren Farrell and others. You know, you mentioned the men's rights movement as well. You know, I had a few of those groups contact me early on when I was beginning my quest to see how I could put together this project, this multimedia project. And there is a sense sometimes, and I get where it comes from, when you look at what some men go through and fathers go through, of anger. and resentment and this inner rage, you know.

And I don't think that works when we're having the conversation out there. We've got to include mothers and daughters as well as, you know, fathers and sons. Well, you talk about father absence. And by the way, Warren Farrell is a guy who we've had on the show. And I think his book The Boy Crisis and many other other things he talks about. And particularly given his own background of being like one of the first male feminists in America, whatever it was, like he's got a lot of credibility. and I think the things that he says are very apt.

But the boy crisis, the fatherhood absence, all of that, that is a bigger thing than even the conversation we're having here because the impact on society out of that is just, we all know, I mean, we all know the statistics of the impact that that has on children, particularly boys, but also on girls. And I suppose the question is where you think that comes from, because if you take, you know, take Thomas Sol, Thomas Sol says, well, it's, you know, the welfare state and the 60s.

But I don't think that's necessarily the only explanation because it's not just happening in America, right? You talk to someone like our former guest, Louise Perry. I think she'd probably say, well, the breakdown of the family comes from the sexual revolution. You change the roles of men and women around the same time. That's what happens. What is your take on where you think, you know, the breakdown of the family at the scale that we are seeing now is just unprecedented. Where does it come from? Well, that's a big question. I mean, you know, Professor Janice Fiamingo talks about feminism. She says feminism is a reason for it,

you know, in its entirety. I'm not saying that. I think there's probably in enough trouble as it is. I think there's many reasons. I think, you know, if you look at the marriage and divorce statistics, you know, 41% of all marriages will end up in divorce. course. We talk about, you know, we hear a lot about prenuptial agreements, but we don't hear anyone talking about prenuptial custody agreements. We put more cachet on our material possessions and our financial estate than we do our children. You know, 43% of children grow up without their fathers. 90% of divorced mothers are awarded or have custody. So until we start valuing the male, the patriarch and the matriarch, and, you know,

I've said it for a while now. I think the greatest threat to Western civilization is the breakdown of the family unit. And we hear about these, and I'm not particularly some, you know, right-wing, you know, Republican, like gung-ho. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, you are now.

Don't worry about it. There's no point pretending. Once you start having any wrong opinion about any issue, you become right-wing. It's like us, neither of us is right-wing. But you start talking about controversial stuff, you become right-wing. So just get a gun.

start eating red meat, you know, whatever else you're supposed. Move to Alabama. Yeah, exactly. Get the best. Well, just, you know, I didn't leave the left, the left left, left me. But yeah, in answer to your question, I think one of them is child support, okay? I call it the child support hustle. And it's the size of the machine.

It's become, they are debtors prisons where abolished, you know, the debtors prisons were abolished over 100 years ago. Yeah, child support arrears can incarcerate a parent. Walter Scott, I think it was a case of Walter Scott, maybe eight, 10 years ago. I wrote about this. He was a guy who was shot in the back eight times by a white police officer. And, you know, no one in the press talks about what led to why he was pulled over with a broken tail light and ran.

He was running because five, I think four or five times he'd been put in prison for child support arrears. He couldn't afford to pay that $3,000 for a man on, you know, $30,000 a year maybe earning that on the poverty line, the real poverty line. Then he gets hit with that by the same. estate. And then there's interest on top of that. And then you look at 30% of men paying child support and not the biological father. So I think there's the child support hustle where poor non-custodial parents who lack the ability to pay child support end up in this modern day debt is prison.

And the system of punishing parents works for the courts. It works for the legal system, the attorneys, and the cottage industry of people who work within it, what it doesn't work for is our families, our future generations, our parents. Our parents' parents, our extended families, and particularly our children. It's conflict-oriented. It's about abuse, argument, and alienation.

It's about prizes, the cash prizes, putting cash and profit over parents and children, It's about money, control and hatred and acrimony, rather than really truly understanding a family first model, which is the best interest of the child and parents, love and co-parenting, child-centered, and providing more of a peaceful future. And I think we have to look at the CPS as well,

the child protection services. I don't say it lightly when I ask the question, who's kidnapping children to sell into foster care? I call the CPS racketeers, you know, that they, for decades now, and it's startling when I found this out, for decades, children have been removed intentionally from their homes, seized from their families and parents, snatched, kidnapped, legally trafficked for profit, all due to legislation introduced in 1974. It's the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which offers financial incentives to the states that increase adoption numbers. So tens,

literally tens of thousands of children are and have been and will continue to, to be taken from homes that are safe for the purposes of garnering federal funding and state funding. And that fraud, and of course it's usually the parents who can least afford to

retain an attorney or don't have the financial wherewithal or the smarts to be able to navigate the system. We need to look at these systems that are in place and really try to call out those on the other side. who are incentivised and make all of the money,

the tens and tens of millions of pounds in the UK and dollars in America, to further their agenda, which is to keep the money in family court and keep separating parents from their children. Greg, I'm sure that there are people who are listening to this or watching this, and they're in this situation, they're going through this. What advice would you give to them? Gosh, well, first of all, I'd say,

I relate, you're not alone. I mean, I wrote my book for a multitude of reasons and started this project for a multitude of reasons. If you are listening or watching and you're going through this, you're not alone, you're not crazy, you're not mad, and I try not to give advice in a general sense. I've written a compendium free downloadable ebook called The Code for those who want to go to the respondent.com,

and that is for immediate interventions into well-being. and it offers some psychological tips, I guess somatic remedies for individuals who are suffering through the trauma of this system because it's so traumatic. It just rips the very meaning of your life away, your children. It's extreme, it's shocking, it's unrelenting, it's inescapable, this divorce trap.

And how people can endure what I call a living grief. I mean, I've spoken to a few and know a few people. I call it suicide by living grief. There is a finality when someone dies and we go through the grieving process. But parental alienation and suddenly being removed from one's own children is a living grief that is difficult to describe if you haven't been through it. So all I would say is, you know, there are programs that my charity is, you know, offering and building out. part of that is communication programs, workshops and programs to promote and improve interpersonal relating, how we can better communicate with each other, mediation, solutions-oriented intervention experts that help resolve conflict and not propagate it and rack up billable hours to keep people out of the court system.

So if you're thinking of getting divorced, if you're thinking of retaining an attorney, If you're thinking that you need to go to war, don't. That's what I would say. And if you are stuck in the system, there is hope and there is a way out. It may take a while that hopefully people will find the respondent and find ways to get relief. Families need relief from being shipwrecked in this horrific system. And Greg, we left your journey at you getting help from an influential, powerful friend. how did you yourself get to a point where you are now, where you're doing all this work?

And I can tell from the way that you are that emotionally you've processed all of this as well. And you've got to a place that is now constructive and you are out in the world doing things rather than stewing on the experiences that you had. What was the process from where we left you? how did you how did you manage to you know get get not you didn't get justice but vindication at least and freedom and so on well that's a great question i think in terms of the details of the kind of dramatic inciting incidents by the book i know i know no no i'm not no no i'm not no i'm not doing it to kind of you know to promote it i'm saying because we'd be here too long we're talking about it no i appreciate but yeah but no the answer i would give is basically a year more or less a year

after I was, you know, because it went on for about five and a half, six years. It was that long. Wow. I sat down one night. I mean, I did a lot of self-reflection work and I studied with people. I had mentors. I studied affect theory, phenomenology, psychology, and got to know myself and this system a lot better. But I sat down and I asked myself the proverbial Socrates question, who am I? I wrote it in my notes on my iPhone. And I went into a deep dive dialectic and I'd never done that before. and I asked a meaningful question, got a meaningful answer, and it was kind of thesis, antithesis, and then synthesis, and each synthesis gave me a new meaningful question.

I had 1,100 notes and meaningful answers within an hour. It was like, you know, biohack brain flow that the artist goes into, I guess. And that really helped kind of solidify where I wanted to go, who I was, how I was going to become a better human being, a better man, an even better, more improved version, a way more improved version than myself, and transcend who I used to be, break through those commonly held belief systems that I had before

and enlighten myself. And, you know, to share my story as the vessel, really, for so many other stories that are out there, for people to be able to, and I still do the daily work. You know, there are rituals that I have. I talk to people about, yawning, which isn't because you're tired, you yawn to release emotional energy from the emotional container of the body, you give yourself a hug and you rub yourself because that's somatic.

I talk about Peter Levine's work, waking the tiger, getting into a conversation with the organism and the body, getting outside of cognition because affect theory teaches us that there are things happening in the biology of the body that inform the biography of the stories that we tell ourselves and make up. And so we can reshape and redraft those narratives that we've, grown up with from an early age and become a more mature, I guess, more consistently mature human being. Greg, I'm going to ask a question. It's going to sound provocative, but I think it needs to be asked. Would you ever get married again? Gosh, that's a really great question. I think for a while. This episode is brought to you by Netflix's remarkably bright creatures. What if a Pacific

Octopus held the key to a mystery that could heal your heart? Well, that's Tova's reality, An elderly widow working at an aquarium, Tova forms an unlikely friendship with their crumudgeonly, Marcellus, whose remarkable intelligence leads her to a life-changing discovery. Watch remarkably bright creatures with your remarkable moms this Mother's Day weekend, only on Netflix May 8th. For a long while, it was no in terms of contractual marriage. I believe that the union, if you will, and the vow that one makes and the commitment to another is so important. So whatever religion,

whatever spiritual practice, whatever belief system you have, like do that. But in terms of the legal marriage contract, I don't think that I've looked at this. There was nothing to be gained and everything to be lost from the contractual part of that.

So the simple answer is yes. I mean, I bought seven years ago, I bought a really nice white shirt. when I had some money again. And it's still in the wrapping seven years later. And that's the white shirt that I hopefully one day will wear for my wedding ceremony of union to whoever and whomever that person is if and when I find.

Well, let me tell you as a man who's about to enter my 40s, you're going to need to go to the gym quite a lot just to be able to fit into that shirt after all these years, my friend. Greg, listen, it's been great to have you on. And thank you for sharing your story with us. Like I say, for me as a new parent, particularly, it's just imagining what you went through. I can't.

And it's crazy. And I really commend you for being able to talk about it in a healed way. I can tell that you've really processed it. And that's why you're able to talk about it the way you do. So tell everybody. before we ask you our last question for the main interview and before we do our locals only bit, tell us where we can, where people can buy the book, where they can follow your show, where they can find your work.

Great, yeah. And in response, thank you for having me on. I mean, you guys do a great show and, you know, you are all about the civil discourse. Welcome to the right wing, great. You alt-right nutters. What is it? I forget. the terminology, all right, neo-Nazi, like, oh, whatever.

We're all that. I'm a Jewish Nazi. I mean, it's great. You are? That's an oxymor. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, it doesn't stop people from saying that. Yeah. Well, I appreciate it. Yeah. No, the respondent.com is the kind of home of the respondent, where there's a lot of information. Information on the charity CPU is at the respondent.com as well. Children and Parents United is the charity. There's also my book, the audio book of the of the book. There's the respondent community, which is a safe space for parents who are going through this or who have gone through this or grandparents or family members. And that's on the mighty networks. And there's also, I haven't really made the announcement yet, but there is,

we're going to have the Respondent World Convention on April 21st in Las Vegas. And we're going to bring together some great experts and practitioners, as well as some great entertainment, to come together and bring a little joy back into people's lives as well as some information and remedies. Dr. Warren Farrell's going to be there as well as many other people and trauma specialists. So looking forward to that. Fantastic, Greg. And the last question we always ask is the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be?

Well, I think we've just talked about it. But, you know, really, I think this conversation about family law and our familial bonds, our familial tapestry, is so vital in this day and age with the age of modernity and technology and how we're kind of the device dependency and the reverse psychology of the algorithm of social media is how we can more, particularly for younger generations, because it's not their responsibility, we're the ones that raised them, we are the older generation,

how we can find those remedies and reliefs from, I'm not suggesting people tune out from your show, obviously, from your typical social media dopamine hits and addictions so I think if I were to select one thing within that kind of umbrella because to your point it's if we improve family law

I think we'd improve every part of our physical health mental health incarceration rates drug rates team pregnancies online teen porn addiction etc etc is well I'm in America so I would say school shooting I think we talk a lot about the horrific sadness and the gun debate and when it enters our school with our children, that's safe space as parents where we leave our children for the day,

every day for many days and many weeks of the year. What's causing that? And for me, it's lack of fathers, it's lack of mentoring, bringing back the mytho-poetic, talking more about the rich qualities of men the masculine fathers and that hunter-gatherer and bringing back those rites of passage that seems so lost, they're still there in so many great religions. I mean, the Catholicism, Judaism, they're there.

But with the crisis of meaning and the crisis of faith, I think, that's been going on, we really just need to start championing men a little more and boys rather than vilifying them. I couldn't agree with you more. the fact that men and women have somehow, I talk about this in my book as well to some extent, the fact that men and women have been positioned as enemies as opposed to people who have to collaborate as they have done throughout the entirety of human history to build and create things together in harmony. It's mind-boggling and it's like you say, it's one of the biggest

threads to Western civilization. So it's been a real pleasure to have you on. We're going to ask you one or two questions from our local supporters that only they will get to see the answer to. But for now, Greg Ellis, thank you so much for coming on the show. And thank you all for watching and listening. We will see you very soon with another brilliant episode like this one or Raw Show. All of them go out at 7pm UK time. And for those of you who like your Trigonometry on the Go, it's also available as a podcast. Take care and see you soon, guys.

What's going on with the movies, Greg? Why are they all crap now?