Pynchme,
Its easy.

Go to any woman who has been to a family law solicitor, and ask them if they were asked by their solicitor if they had been abused.

What? Every one of them.

Also, go to any man who has been to a family law solicitor, and ask them if they were asked by their solicitor if they had been abused.

What? Hardly any of them.

Once the claim by the woman of abuse by the man is in place, the man may have to attend up to 71 court cases, and lose up to $450,000, and lose his job and lose his house to defend himself against the claims of abuse.

Most men don’t want to lose that much, so they end up paying the child support, see the children every second weekend, and give the woman between 60% and 80% of assets.

Of course the solicitors take their cut.

Its been a good scam, but I think it is now coming to an end, with the Family Law court being more compelled to properly investigate allegations of abuse. The next step should be jail sentences for those making false allegations, carrying out perjury and wasting taxpayer money.

I think a lot of allegations of abuse being made by women will then cease.

The step after that should be getting the Family Law court to carry out Risk Management legislation, and visit the children to see if they are being properly looked after, and any decisions made by the Family Court have not actually put the children at risk.

This is something the Family Law court has yet to do.

Suzononline,
Why not ask the children what they would prefer. The feminist system where the children have to live with “mummy's new boyfriend” every 6 months, or living with their natural father.

Benk, you said (Saturday, 27 March 2010 9:30:24 PM)“Many men just get upset by the assumption that protecting kids means keeping them from their fathers.”

The Family Court is a court where it has been found that the child abuse is real, serious and severe (Brown et al, 2000).
Of course men who are accused in the Family Court will be upset. For that matter, women who are accused of child abuse will also be upset, regardless of whether they did it or not. It should come as no surprise that a father or mother who is accused of child abuse in the Family Court is not going to admit that ‘he or she didn't do it.’ The fact that they claim that they didn’t do it is no measure of its truth.
Empirically the results of one of the biggest study done into the question of actual true and false allegations in the context of family law proceedings are that:
“Results of this analysis show that neglect is the most common form of intentionally fabricated maltreatment, while anonymous reporters and non-custodial parents (usually fathers) most frequently prompt intentionally false reports. Of the intentionally false allegations of maltreatment tracked by the CIS-98, custodial parents (usually mothers) and victimized children were least likely to fabricate reports of abuse or neglect.”
Trocme N, Bala N, ‘False allegations of abuse and neglect when parents separate’ Child Abuse and Neglect, (2005) Vol. 29, at p. 1333.
Therefore, in Family Court, where it is more likely that non-custodial fathers are the ones most responsible for making the bulk of the false allegations of child abuse, and where custodial mothers and their children are more likely to be making true allegations of child abuse, the law should reflect the empirical findings and be amended to remove shared responsibility (there is no actual presumption of shared care) as the presumption. Protection of the children against false denials should be the priority.
That's not based on assumptions. It's based on evidence.

Pelican, kudos on your post, I totally agree that shared parenting is a no-brainer that should be the starting point or premise of custody decisions because it is in the best interests for children to have positive interaction with both parents. In some cases, harsh decisions will have to be made as you say. Reasonable people agree on these points as would most father's rights advocates.

Unfortunately, the radical feminists on this forum, appear to totally disagree with you. According to samiam and pynchme, we have an EPIDEMIC of unreported sexual abuse going on in families (as high as 1 in 3 girls), almost exclusively perpetrated by male family members and subject to a cone of silence. The only obvious course is to remove all males from contact with children. To which I say, BOLLOCKS!

P.S. It's always intrigued me that psychiatric workers often need more clinical help than their patients.

vanna/HRS/Timkins/Timithy et al: << Why not ask the children what they would prefer. >>

In the case that is the focus of the article, the children were asked and the Family Court overruled their wishes in favour of the father, who had been convicted of poseessing and producing child porn, and who had been found to have inappropriately invited one of his daughters into his bed, where he "badgered" her.

Clearly, the Family Court got it wrong in this case. It seems to me that the question is whether it did so because of political pressure to go easier on fathers, despite proven capacity for sexual abuse of children.

From what I understand, in a court, judgements are at least theortically suppose to be based on the evidence presented.

There is some difficulty with this, in that not all the information/ details are presented to the court.

This is partly because parties involved do not have all the details. Secondly some claims can create a smoke screen that will hide other details.

CJMorgan:"the children were asked and the Family Court overruled their wishes"

No, it didn't. The evidence was that the children had had a strong relationship with their father, which the Court deemed should continue.