Barbara Biggs OLO 040210

What is the sense of a Family Law when the family is no more?

This is what Attorney General Lionel Murphy, who drafted the present legislation, could not understand and no one since has had the will to do understand.

He was warned by a delegation from the Divorce Law Reform Association of which I was a delegate, when we saw him in Canberra in 1975 that, if he did simplify divorce proceedings without holding on the children of the marriage, divorce numbers would have steely increased and a lot, a great lot of children would be scarified.

When a family, that is, the union of two adults fractures, it is the duty and the interest of the State to protect the resultant children lest these be used as weapons by parents at war or by other perversions.

If this seems too harsh to parents, the other, the trusting of custody to any of the parents, is greatly crueler to the child. Do I need to mention the horrors of cruelty to children reported in the two generations since Mr. Murphy’s 1975 law?

Wouldn’t it be wise and just to make the parents equally pay for and service an Asylum for their children who are de facto dejected by their belligerence to each other?

But Mr. Murphy was eminently a Lawyer and an astute Politician who would not keep out of a good feed his brethrens, Solicitors, Barristers and Judges

partTimeParent,

I saw a story about that case. I think it was on 7 Brisbane - it was a classic. The news reader said something like, 'two Australian children were found dead in Canada today. They were found drowned in a bath by their father. Their mother is being treated in hospital after FALLING off a bridge'

Can you believe it? That's what they actually said!

She killed her kids then didn't even have the courage to do the job properly on herself. If this were a man no one would hold back, but when it comes to a woman we can't even bring ourselves to tell the truth. How did we get so anti-male?

I took a look at PTP's link.

The article is very clear that the woman was alleged to have killed her two boys and attempted suicide. There is no attempt to claim as Dane did, that she had fallen off a bridge. Nor is there an attempt to blame the father for the killing.

Did Dane even READ the article?

<<<< An Australian woman suspected of drowning her two young children in a bathtub was trying to take them away from their home in a small town in Canada, her estranged husband feared.

Husband Curtis McConnell even took away their passports and hid them, court documents show.

But the 31-year-old confronted a far more terrible scenario yesterday when he found the infant children dead in the bathroom of their family home in the town of Millet, Alberta.

The mother, Allyson Louise McConnell, also 31, had already fled the scene, leaving the bodies for her husband to find.

She drove herself to a nearby Toys'R'Us car park and then jumped from a bridge onto a busy freeway in an apparent suicide attempt.

She survived and remains in hospital. It is believed police have spoken to her but no charges have been laid.

Investigators today expect to get results of autopsies on the two boys.

It has now emerged that their parents were in the middle of a divorce and custody battle. >>>>

Children require a stable loving environment where they are not used as pawns between warring parents, as the above article so sadly illustrates.

Severin ~ in effect it would appear that this mother and her children were being held captive in a foreign country and probably isolated from her friends and family in her home country, to whom she may have been considering returning. That is not to excuse what she may have done, but to offer a possible explanation. It is not an unusual scenario for a mother and children to be held in this way, although it is more common for them to be held by threats of killing her, and/or her children and/or her relatives, if she should leave. This certainly happens with unconscionable frequency in Australia. The most extreme form of such imprisonments were the two girls, one in Austria and the other in the U.S.A., who were held physical captives for 29 and 18 yrs respectively and were frequently raped and bore children to their captors. Male power and control of females and children is still a scourge in many `civilised' societies but is still excused as a male right.

How many of these allegations of abuse are referred to the police? If one parent alleges the other has been violent towards, or in front of children then shouldnt that be investigated, and if necessary acted upon? Does the police reluctance (still) to involve themselves in domestics play a part? What about the sadly common prospect of abused partners refusing to co-operate with police after a domestic? Is calling it "a domestic" discounting the seriousness which people here seem to be taking this issue?

Violence is violence and it is especially abhorrent in a family setting. If it really is happening as much as is made out in the family court then there needs to be some sort of serious investigation and crackdown.

A very good reason not to smack your kids at least. You never know when it might be brought up against you in a future family courtroom.

Ho hum, more of the usual "all men are bastards cos I have a uterus" guff. Do try to get over yourselves, dears. Prtsonally, I have testicles and without at least one of those your money-maker dosn't make much except trouble.

Mikk:"If it really is happening as much as is made out in the family court then there needs to be some sort of serious investigation and crackdown."

The Family Court doesn't see a lot of allegation of violence except when divorces and expecially custody matters are contested. The CJ has claimed that over 50% of contested matters involve an early allegation of violence, which is then quietly never mentioned again after the man has been duly issued with his "acceptanve without admission" DVO. She is making the point that such allegations are rarely actually tested and rarely have any third-party substantiation, such as a police report. Further, self-reporting of violence is very high among women, especially with the enormously broad definitions that are used today.

IOW, she's saying they're mostly made up or the "violence" (often just mutual arguing) is situational, not on-going. I agree, if my own experiences are any guide. The period around a marriage breakdown is highly stressful and both parties do and say things they may wish later they hadn't. Left to themselves most people sort this conflict out and get on with their lives, regretful or otherwise. Unfortunately, there has grown a large industry based on securing an advantage for "Single mothers and their children" to quote Ms Biggs and that indystry is in large part staffed ny women who, like Ms Biggs, are themselves damaged individuals, having suffered some form of real or perceived abuse. It is hardly surprising that such people see violence at every turn, jusy as Redgum's returned soldier in "Only 19" says "the channel 7 chopper chilled me to my feet".

While their experiences are not to be minimised, they should not be used as a principal source informing law, just as the cyclist who has been a road accident victim does not write the road laws.