You are so right there ChazP, but I have never been game enough to say it!
I often wondered whether these militant Fathers groups have ever thought that the nasty step-fathers or single mother's male partners they vilify were also biological fathers to other women's children?

Doesn't this make all those guys hard done by the 'feminazis' as well?
Aren't many of these men also embroiled in Family Court disputes of their own?

Why aren't these men worthy of protection and support by the militant father's groups as well?
By saying that most child sex abuse is not committed by the 'biological' fathers, but by the step-fathers or defacto husbands of the nasty single women, they are shooting themselves in the foot.

Many of these men are also biological fathers to other children.

Yes SuzeOnline [Deleted for abuse].
1. PAS is dead and buried.
2. 'Mothers abuse kids more than Dads' ~ only by neglecting them (except the rare case of physical abuse by a mother which is seized on as a great prize)because those `Good Dads' evade child maintenance.
3. `Ogling photos and downloading child porn are not child abuse and first stage paedophilia' ~ so why else do they buy such photos to ogle?. Do they not consider that children have been abused to satisfy their sick fetish.
4. 'We are not abusing our kids, its all those Step-Dads and Live-in lovers' ~ the `Good Dads' (biological fathers) ARE the Step-Dads and Live-in lovers and are the biological fathers who've already abused their own kids.
5. "Its only a small number of kids who are abused and killed after being ordered into contact/residency with `Good Dads'". No!. there are hundreds every year and increasing as Family Courts uphold father's rights and force kids into contact with them. The Father's Rights to further abuse their kids and kill them. The Father's Rights to continue to harrass and abuse their former partners and make life hell for them because their ex-partners rejected them.
6. "All Mums who allege domestic violence and child abuse are mad". Well this is the latest which must be put back in its box. Mums are suffering Post Traumatic Stress after years of being physically, emotionally, sexually, and financially abused but hired guns psychiatrists/psychologists misdiagnose this as `Personality Disorders'. Well the first of these hired gun psychiatrists will fall soon for professional malpractice l.e. failing to assess according to professional standards and by misdiagnosing.
The Walls of Jericho are falling [Deleted for abuse].

A belated response to Chaz...

"perfect illustration is the hysteria in the shrill voices of Father’s Rights groups regarding the proposals to bring changes to the Family Law Act"

You would have to give me specific examples of hysteria because suggesting a change in shared care based on an elevated risk of abuse from biological fathers has been shown to have no factual basis in the NIS4 data.

Re: custody - I'm not sure what you emotive outburst against the term 'custody' was meant to achieve (with its "abhorrently detestable connotations"). That is currently the term used in my jurisdiction - why don't you take the terminology up with them?

Re: 500K out of 4.5m - is that an epidemic of abuse or an epidemic of reporting? - are you really suggesting that the average child will have 2 reported cases of abuse against them in their childhood? Who knew childhood was such a dangerous place! P.S. How many of these cases are unsubstantiated?

Re: coaching vs. leading questions - I brought the ritual abuse cases up as evidence that children DO lie during testimony. There is absolutely no doubt that the children concocted total fantasies during these trials. For instance, that abusers entered through secret tunnels under the preschool that were never found by investigators. That's because there were no tunnels! According to you, "Leading questions occur after the fact, whilst `coaching’ is said to occur before the fact. " Um...the problem is that there were NO facts. Your coaching/leading distinction is utterly irrelevant.

Re: Science must be acceptable in law. See next post.

Re: Sexual Abuse Statistics - please provide some hard evidence of your claims in this paragraph as they differ dramatically from the numbers in the NIS4 study quoted earlier.

Re: Parental alienation must be recognized in law for it to be 'good' science.

Um...there are a multitude of cases where the science preceded its recognition in law, the Scopes monkey trial being perhaps the most famous example. Tourette's syndrome also took 90 years after its discovery to enter the DSM-IV.

Even so, you will be disappointed to learn that the Florida Circuit Court gave legal force to parental alienation syndrome (PAS) in 2000 having ruled that it passed the Frye Test that states "for scientific evidence to be admissible in court it must be gathered using techniques that have gained general acceptance in their field".

See Kilgore v. Boyd, Circuit Court of the 13th Judicial Circuit of the State of Florida, Hillsborough County, Family Law Division, Case No. 94-7573, Div. D.

Or perhaps you would prefer a Canadian case (Reeves v Reeves 2001), later cited by a judge in a 2008 case:

"Based on a significant number of studies and case law in this area, any support or encouragement by one parent that the children not have a relationship with the other parent simply demonstrates the irresponsibility of the parent who has the children and demonstrates
that parent’s inability to act in the best interests of their children. Children do not always want to go to school or want to go to the dentist’s or doctor’s. It is the responsibility of good parents to manage their children’s health and safety issues without necessarily the consent or joy of their children. A healthy relationship with both parents is a health and safety issue that good parents ensure takes place."

Let me summarize Chaz's last argument:

"Men bad, women good"

There is literally nothing that a woman can do that won't get her a pass from Chaz. Child abuse and neglect - there has to be a man behind it all, personality disorder - also a man's fault. A woman's partner abusing the child? Clearly nothing the mother could have done.

If anyone is still reading this thread, you might want to note that the Australian Institute of Criminology reports that 25 children per year are killed by their parents - 63% by men and 37% by women. Around 1 in 5 of these homicides were linked to a family breakdown (i.e. about 5 cases per year). See http://www.aic.gov.au/documents/9/C/B/%7B9CBFDFE5-F9B2-4FEB-A14A-3166810B564F%7Dtandi255.pdf

So Chaz's claim that "Its only a small number of kids who are abused and killed after being ordered into contact/residency with `Good Dads'". No!. there are hundreds every year and increasing as Family Courts uphold father's rights and force kids into contact with them" is deserving of censure.

Of course, Chaz and Suze's great revelation is that non-biological fathers might also be biological fathers. So the tortured logic is:
a) non-biological parents are 10 times more likely to abuse children
b) all of these abusers are male
c) all of the male abusers have fathered their own children
d) therefore all biological fathers abuse children.
e) therefore all biological fathers should be kept as far away as possible from children
QED.
A gold star for the first person who sees a problem with the logic.

The reality however, is:
a) non-biological parents are 10 times more likely to abuse children
b) mothers are more likely to physically abuse children and much more likely to neglect them
c) homicide and child sexual abuse are extremely rare events and 20% of sexual abuse and 40% of homicides are perpetrated by women.

Stev:

- and you'll be disappointed to learn that despite the parent alienation syndrome being used in several cases, that it has been more frequently rejected. Further, it doesn't need to pass the Frye standard to be admitted - any expert testimony is acceptable as long as the expert's credentials pass muster and the court accepts them. Sometimes courts get it wrong, especially when the more financially viable non-resident parent can afford private legal representation.

- The old creep Gardner himself stated that PAS doesn't apply where abuse actually occurs. The problem therefore is that PAS is used to cloud inquiries into allegations, which the family court is not equipped to investigate anyway. PAS does NOT explain away allegations - the allegations still require independent consideration and where possible, investigation.

- If in the unlikely event that PAS was accepted as a (pffft) "syndrome"; the remedy proposed by Gardner remains an outrageous cruelty.

- and nothing that happens in court is going to make it plausible scientifically until it goes through a proper process, which it hasn't. It is most unlikely to gain credibility amongst credible clinical practitioners or theorists. Credible practitioners regard it as the junk work that it is.

http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~kwaits/dv_parental_alienation_syndrome.pdf

BTW: Statistics gleaned from personal safety surveys; where adults report on abuses perpetrated against them have 4% males and about 8% females stating that they were sexually abused as children, with the perpetrator in more than 3/4 of cases being a close male relative or parent.

BTW: EXACTLY what do you propose as a way of protecting children who have experienced sexual abuse. What mechanisms are in place to ensure that they are safe?