There is slowly emerging evidence that there is more than mischief in the family law system - there is also a number of professionals in the system with their own charges and convictions for child abuse who are able to (a) discount allegations of abuse and claim they are mother's delusions or revenge (b) ensure children are placed with child sex offenders in preference to protective parents (c) become part of the sharing of digitally recorded child sexs abuse through peer to peer files. Those with knowledge and evidence of these practices have reported them to police, identified specific children and specific professionals, showed recordings of children describing their abuse and naming other children. Behind the perpetrators are the ranks of legal system professioanls supporting the perpetrators and their conduct. Judges are placing children with convicted child sex offenders and the consequences are horrifying. If you doubt whether children are being ordered into convicted child sex abuse perpetrator care, use the terms 'unacceptable risk' and case after case will come up on a search of family court and federal magistrates courts judgements.

"*2011 - toddler died after father gave her horrific brain injuries
* A mother strapped her baby to herself and jumped off a bridge, an event referred to in this discussion.

2011? As I indicated, it happened on June 4, 2008. If you can't even get that right, why would anyone trust your "stats"?

I doubt your list is definitive - it is at the least restricted. Comprehensive research published in 2009 by Nielsen et al in the Medical Journal of Australia examined in detail all cases of child homicide in NSW between 1991 and 2005. It found that, in cases of family homicide/revenge/homicide-suicide like the tragic recent Kyla Rogers case, men were the perpetrators of child homicide in 10 cases, while women were the perpetrators in seven cases.

Without diminishing the seriousness and horror of a woman like Garcia killing her child (why did not that truly horrible person just kill herself? She is even worse than Freeman because she planned it while he had a brainsnap. I'm not excusing him - off with his head), very few children are killed (far, far more die in accidents and medical mishaps) and non-fatal abuse is, IMO, more relevant to the issue.

Because a few children die is not adequate reason to exclude hundreds of thousands of children from the love, discipline and protection of fathers (they are natural protectors of children, not mothers' boyfriends).

Fathers' girlfriends abuse at a far lesser rate than mothers' boyfriends, presumably because, like my case, mothers are more inclined to allow it. Look at the horrible recent SA torture of 5 children described by the Judge as ‘beyond comprehension’, and the QLD "boy in the box".

The same old tactic's. The author makes the issue of child abuse about men, a couple of us point out that's not the case, someone else get's upset because men are trying to make it about gender instead of the kids (ignoring that the author had already made it about gender) then comes in with either outright lies or a demonstration of how little she actually knows of the evidence.

Evidence that fathers kill their own kid's at a statistically significantly higher rate than than mothers (or abuse their kid's at statistically significantly higher rates) would require more than a small selected sample. It would require some backing from comprehensive studies by groups with some independence on the issue. An example would be the NSW Child Death Review team (http://kids.nsw.gov.au/kids/resources/publications/childdeathreview.cfm) annual reports which cover all child deaths in NSW. NSW is big enough that the patterns there should give some indication of national trends.

The National Child Protection Clearinghouse (http://www.aifs.gov.au/nch/) also provides independant coverage of child abuse stats.

Go for it Ruthie, have a look at actual stats and see if your claim holds in any meaningful manner. While you are at it you might also have a look at trends in substantiated child abuse in Australia over the period that corresponds to the changes in family law. Not suggesting cause and effect but it's hard to argue an increase in abuse resulting from those changes.

The reality is despite how the maternal bias advocates may try and play it gender is not a significant factor in substantiated child abuse or child deaths. Issues such as substance abuse, mental illness, unemployment and other factors associated with disadvantage, family stress (eg marriage breakdown) etc are all significant factors, gender is not.

R0bert

"Fathers' girlfriends abuse at a far lesser rate than mothers' boyfriends, presumably because, like my case, mothers are more inclined to allow it."

So more boyfriends abuse children but fathers (also male) don't. Love this twisted logic when it suits an argument. Mothers are no more inclined to allow it than men would be if girlfriends indeed commit abuse. Why would they? Fathers are no better or worse than mothers. Why can't some people get it into their heads that it is individuals that abuse and very often it is men. If you cannot accept that we may as well take the ball and go home now. Ego is not more imporant that child protection.

Fact is both woman and men are capable of abuse and the benchmark should be shared parenting unless one partner is abusive or neglectful.

These spurious gender wars are not adding to the debate around family violence, merely creating more fear and suspicion between men and women allowing abusers to ride high on a PC agenda.

1) The incident at the West Gate Bridge sounds like the Darcy Freeman case. The facts are that it was never alleged in family court that the dad was a risk to his kids. Allegations about him were made to community services.

2) Claims about the "gendered nature of domestic violence" are simply wrong and cannot go unquestioned. At least a third and probanly closer to a half of DV is aimed at men. See the one in three website for more information.

3) The fact that some true allegations about men have been disregarded doesn't disprove that many unfounded allegations have been believed.

4) Many concocted allegations are made by men. Women who read this need to consider that false allegations can affect them too. No-one should be seperated from their kids on the basis of unproven allegations.

The list I provided came from the national newspapers. These are (most) of the children who have died as a result of the way the Family Law Act currently operates. I am not surprised by this, I know a mother who, attempting to protect her infant, was told “the court is only interested if the child is in hospital.” I would think that this would be a problem for a parent of any sex or gender. Children ought not to be hospitalised before the law considers them worth protecting.

I am of the opinion that the immediate cries of "women do violence too!" or "Men suffer too!" which accompany any effort to discuss issues relating to violence or indeed any aspect of life in which women in particular suffer, mischievously evade issues that underlie the problem. The use of various kinds of what seem to be reductio ad absurdum arguments (for example saying “women do it too!), pushes participants to begin discussing the women who do it too, attempting to prove their inclusiveness of men, leaving untouched the issue of women's suffering that is a result of entrenched, systemic dysfunction.

In this case the assumptions surround the problems faced by women in the face of the Family Law Act 2006, and the deaths of children that have arisen as a result of the created family law system. The fact that sometimes men are abused, or that sometimes women hurt children, does not excuse the dismissal of the fact that the family law system is failing women and children, where they face abuse. It does not prove that the system ought not to change. As far as I know, reductio ad absurdum proves nothing