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The Forum > Article Comments > Darcey Freeman: high emotions that lead to tragedies > Comments

Darcey Freeman: high emotions that lead to tragedies : Comments

By Barbara Biggs, published 3/2/2009

There should be a review of Family Court procedures as a result of Darcey Freeman’s fall to her death at the hands of her father.

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For once I agree with SJF.
Posted by Antiseptic, Sunday, 8 February 2009 1:55:54 PM
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Justice for Kids, you say “Men are treated as if they are the saviours of children.” I thought mothers held that status which seems to be affirmed by yourself when you talk about “examples of protective parents treatment – usually mothers.”

You also say “Less than 1% of all final judgements result in a no-contact order for the father.” SO WHAT?

Very few fathers take custody disputes to a final hearing. Against a resistant mother it can lead a father to financial ruin and what’s the point in achieving a pyrrhic victory if your depleted recourses doesn’t allow you to have meaningful access to your child/ren? It is an exercise only for the very well healed. Besides, from all reports the FC doesn’t enforce its own orders anyway.
Posted by Roscop, Sunday, 8 February 2009 2:03:02 PM
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It appears clear to me that BOTH mothers AND fathers are shafted by the current system, and many make the mistake of aiming their arguments against the other gender as if all the lawyers, "experts" and judges supported only the other gender.

WAKE UP PEOPLE.

Both genders are being shafted equally by the various lawyers, judges and experts who handle your cases. I hear about more cases where the 'experts' get it wrong than when they got it right. Yet parents are told not to complain about those lying under-experienced, biased, personal agenda seeking, overpaid 'experts' "because the judge will see you as a whinger and rule against you".

Alternately you are told that if you reveal your concern about the effect of the actions of the other parent on your child but they have no criminal conviction for those actions, you will be labeled unfriendly and will have less time so you have to just put up with the antics of the other parent and say nothing while your kids are damaged. So the wrongs and injustices perpetrated on families by the system is allowed to go on and on and on. Children lose out every time.

This is a system designed to conceal the truth and mete out punishment, not establish the truth and work within that context. Everyday, normal sane rational people of each gender who mistakenly thought that the system would reveal the truth and reward the honest decent person have that illusion shattered.

Doctors have confided in me that the stress of FC proceedings send many of their patients OF BOTH GENDERS into depression requiring medication and long term support.

This sick adversarial system damages parents and leaves them hostile and shattered and broke, while the lawyers (many of whom benefit by ensuring proceedings are protracted) remain both insulated from the results of and enriched by the experience.

to be continued...
Posted by ChildAdvocate, Sunday, 8 February 2009 2:51:50 PM
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continued...

There are other far cheaper and successful models of family law available to us, utilising specialists in family dynamics, DV, child welfare and separation counceling NOT adversarial lawyers and their equally adversarial social workers and mediators. Why are we not banding together as parents and demanding a just, truth seeking, inquisitorial system. A progressive society has the need for LESS liars oops I mean lawyers, not more.

Working together and demanding the dismantling of the sick, destructive system and replacement with a truth seeking and healing one would be a far better way of utilising our energies, methinks.
Posted by ChildAdvocate, Sunday, 8 February 2009 2:55:27 PM
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Thanks for the acknowledgement, Antiseptic. I appreciate it.

Child Advocate, Justice for Kids (and others)

My indirect, but very close, experience with the truly harrowing divorces of two of my closest (female) friends in recent years has shown me that many family lawyers are as frustrated by the system as their clients are. Yes, the honest ones do acknowledge that they make money out of human misery (or at least their firms and the Law Courts do) but anyone's sense of professionalism would get worn down by constantly having years of hard work ignored by final judgements that put expediency before justice.
Posted by SJF, Monday, 9 February 2009 10:20:15 AM
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In the Courier Mail today February 11, 2009 is the sad story of a mother who tried to kill her children. The report stated that the woman, who cannot be named, was upset by a marriage break-up and a sudden change in schooling arrangements for the girls, aged 11 and 6.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25038756-1248,00.html

Excepting that these little mites were lucky enough to live, there is a strong similarity with the Darcey Freeman case.

There is a critical difference too. In the case of the mother there will be outpourings of sympathy because we are socialised into believing that it is 'impossible' for a woman, much less a mother, to harm children.

It is precisely because it is unthinkable that a woman could harm a child that many women who suspect (or know) they are risks to their children do not come forward for assistance and treatment. How can a mother make an admission to others (eg her friends) or medical staff that she is harming or neglecting her child and risk the possibility of strong censure and being sent to Coventry by her friends and family? Such distrust could last a lifetime. How many women are sentenced to live in constant fear and pain because they cannot come forward?

As I re-read the (mean) spirited attacks and defences by some of the gender warriors on OLO it strikes me that some of them must be entirely blinkered to the damage that they do in reducing everything to an issue of gender.
Posted by Cornflower, Wednesday, 11 February 2009 5:58:59 AM
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