I am pleased to read so many comments supporting fathers rights and condemning the inhumane treatment they receive through the family court system. The whole family court system as far as I am concerned can go to hell!

@ happy (aka Patricia), Sunday, 28 March 2010 7:06:17 PM

"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"

Way to completely ignore my post of Saturday, 27 March 2010 8:27:09 PM and continue to misrepresent the findings of Trocme, Bala, and Brown as somehow supportive of an epidemic of child abuse.

"Way to completely ignore my post of Saturday, 27 March 2010 8:27:09 PM and continue to misrepresent the findings of Trocme, Bala, and Brown as somehow supportive of an epidemic of child abuse."

I didn't say their findings support "an epidemic of child abuse."

I said their findings show that
a) child abuse in the Family Court is "real, serious and severe" (Brown et al, 2000)and the core of the Family Court's business is dealing with these cases;

and

the most likely parent to make a deliberately false allegation of child abuse in Family Court was an anonymous reporter and a non-custodial parent;

the most likely person to make a true allegation of child abuse in the Family Court was a custodial mother and her children.

They didn't look into child abuse in general.

The child didn't want to stay overnight or spend time alone with him.

She'told a number of adults: mother, police and counsellors. I wonder how many adults does this child have to express her wishes to before her need to feel safe take precedence over her father's demands.

From the court report:

6. In the interview with me [A] did not volunteer any facts about the
incident to us. She indicated that she loves her father and does not want to upset him, but she was not comfortable staying at her father’s house at night, particularly on her own. She stated that she was happy with the current situation and her wish was that it remains as it was.
7. When I asked her if she would like to talk about the thing that happened to her with her father she got extremely distressed.
8. She had her teddy bear with her and she started feeding lollies to him furiously. She was very anxious and implored us “please don’t tell
Dad”. “Don’t tell anybody anything”.
9. She indicated that she did not want to spend time alone with her father. We asked her why she didn’t and she said “because of what I told the police”. “I do not like it. It makes me feel weird”. “I don’t want to be alone with him”. She kept repeating “please don’t tell Dad”. (p.16)and p. 24.

"I am satisfied that the father invited A into his bed and that A felt
uncomfortable and that the father demonstrated affection towards her, in a way which was in all the circumstances inappropriate for a child of that age and in those circumstances. Accordingly I am satisfied there needs to be a measure of protection put in place for these children in terms of their time with the father". (p.19)

Father is described as manipulative, disingenuous, opportunistic, poor self control". (p.23)

The children love their father. If he loved them as much h would respect their need to feel safe and limit himself to day visits with someone else around.

http://www.familycourt.gov.au/wps/wcm/resources/file/ebfeb74aa88d192/2010_FamCA_35.pdf

Patricia (happy), your argument is a non sequitur.

Some non-custodial fathers make false allegations of abuse therefore we should dispense with a presumption of shared parenting in ALL custody cases.

How on earth does one follow from the other? (Not to mention that non-custodial implies custody has already been adjudicated).

Similarly, a very small proportion of fathers are pedophiles therefore we should dispense with a presumption of shared parenting in ALL cases. Once again, how does one follow from the other?

Please enlighten me if I am misrepresenting your positions in any way.

Some of your supporters even seem to suggest that we should dispense with all male involvement with children because the risk of abuse is so high. Hard to imagine how the human race possibly managed to survive for so long if this is the natural state of affairs.

Antiseptic, I was responding to vanna et al's unusually astute assertion that children should have a say in these matters. Clearly, in this case at least one of the children's obvious reluctance to spend time overnight with her father was overridden by the Court. Many thanks to Pynchme for providing the relevant evidence.

So you're wrong.

If there's a pendulum effect operating here, I think it's swung too far the other way - unless this case is the aberration I hope it is.