[Deleted for abuse.]

I wonder if Dane notices the irony of his abusive response to the author. Clearly a man who is so intuitively comfortable with verbal abuse is going to object...

Hmmmm, let me also summarize 'dane's' take on these things-

1. Children must have a relationship with a father, no matter how bad a parent he is. If he has been disrespectful, abusive and or violent in any way other than severely physically violent - he's just being “a man” and as such, he still makes a “good” father;
2. Fathers, i.e. all fathers have provided the sperm and therefore gives them the “right” to be fathers and the right to continually complain about child support.
Interestingly dane, you betray your own colours by calling Dr McInnes “vile”. That is a put-down deliberately intended to personally attack a person you don’t even know. That dane, is a clear example of the tactics used by people that use verbal violence when they don’t get what they want.
Dr McInnes didn’t agree with you, so you responded by attacking her character. However, resorting to a verbal personal putdown is also the only strategy left to someone who in a battle of reason is unarmed.

An excellent article, a pleasure to read from someone who is so well informed about the issues in Australia's Family Courts. The new laws are welcomed but still do not go far enough to protect our children. And that is one of the issues, isn't it? General public perception is that the Family Court is primarily about child protection. But the reality is that it is not. Our political leaders want us to believe that they have "zero tolerance" to child abuse, and this is how it should be. Again, the reality is that a certain level of child abuse, as defined by contemporary perceptions of what constitues child abuse, is accepted in Family Court. This is easily identified by the comments in final orders that explain that past behaviour does not hold as much weight in considerations when weighed with promises of future parenting practices.

Excellent article Elspeth well done on highlighting the serious deficits in the current Famoily Law system that cause accumalative harm to those escaping domestic violence. Child safety First!

Excellent article, thank-you. We need to accept - and embed within the legal response - that attitudes which lend themselves towards abuse are inconsistent with positive parenting. That should be the starting point.

Agreed that there are some big flaws but I doubt that we will see Elspeth and her supporters working to reduce a whole bunch of risks where resolution would not result in more power or money to women.

They don't seem to want to work at reducing the adversarial nature of family law and child support. They don't want to work at getting rid of the winner takes all issues around child residency that leave parents figting over residency because the stakes in outcomes are way too high.

They don't seem to want to talk about safeguards for dads with an ex versed in playing the system regardless of any concepts of right and wrong.

They do want to perpetuate and play on the perception that its almost only mums and children at risk from abusers.

They do want to ignore a lot of the realities of the dynamics that lead to family breakdown in persuit of agenda's that in reality have little to do with child protection and a lot to do with their own agendas.

If they were or are in any way serious about helping kids then start working to lower the stakes for people when relationships go bad, work towards some protections for the accussed so that they can't have their lives devestated by the flow on effects of false or unsubstantiated allegations. Start including some examples that don't always imply the baddynis the male when you write.

In the mean time it looks like more of the self serving sexist rubbish of people trying to use kids to gain an unfair advantage for themselves in the aftermath of family breakdown.

Wolf,wolf, wolf they cry then wonder why when there is a wolf its not always believed.

R0bert

This is the modern world we live in.

When women consult clairvoyants, and that is accepted in court, to deny children their right to a father it is nothing short of vile.

When will women grow up and start putting the needs of children first not their own narcissistic desire to punish men?

Happy, you come across as smug as can be. And I understand why. You and people like you have successfully cut men out of the lives of their children just to satisfy your own sociopathic egos.

Your comment about fathers having no rights to their children is chilling. If you have children, I feel sorry for them.

Then when someone calls it for what it is - absolutely vile - the comment gets deleted because it offends the egos of the narcissistic sociopaths who feel children don't need a father.

I think it's time men started to stand up to people like you and Dr. Jekylls here.

dane I saw your earlier comment, I doubt very much that it was deleted "because it offends the egos of the narcissistic sociopaths who feel children don't need a father" rather it was straight out abusive.

Whilst I don't have any liking for the spin, lies, misdirection and using kids that the mum's first lobby use to push their agenda's and I have some sympathy for the frustration generated by dealing with that sneaky form of abuse responding the way you did is not an approach that's ever going to work to make your point in a public forum.

I don't really know what does work, I was very tempted to leave the sisterhood to it but silence in the face of wrong never seems like a good tactic either.

We will never convince the cheering crowd of gender warriors but with a reminder other will notice the things that Elspeth and others won't address, the causes of tension for separated families that all their activities are likely to increase rather than decrease and some will see the problem. Some will see how self serving it all is, well I hope so anyway.

R0bert

...There lurks, mostly unheeded a “simplicity” in separation, too easily and often overlooked by all parties involved: The right to personal happiness.

...If people could grasp the simple logic associated with happiness, as the intended outcome in all aspects and individual issues associated in divorce cases, what a happy world it would be; for children and adults alike.

...At what point in the developmental cycle does the priority of happiness warp into an overpowering need for hatred and vindictive counter attack?

...I pondered on this point again a few months ago, when the young neighbour (40 YO) swung by the neck on a rope, no more than 20 meters away, for two days, before discovery by his poor bewildered Mother: This was the culmination of a messy divorce, where he was excluded from access to his own children.

...I know this to be true, Brian occasionally alluded to the problem, in discussions over the common fence before the sad event.

So now the interpretations of family violence have been widened. Hmmmm. Witholding of CS payments is now considered to be family violence. So i presume if a MOTHER spends the CS on getting her nails and hair done and going out to hotels etc (as happened in my own case)instead of spending it on the child, then it follows that the mother is perpetrating family violence on the child. It is now considered to be family violence if a husband/father tries to dissuade his partner from seeing her friends. So i presume that if a woman complains constantly about her partner going for drinks with his friends after work, then that must also be family violence. Similarly if a wife/partner threatens to leave and take the children, then that must also be family violence. IF the family court EVER treats both genders equally then people like Ms Mcinnes have really opened a Pandora's box here. While most would agree that it is men who perpetrate most, but not all, physical violence, women are equally, if not more, adept at emotional blackmail and the like.

ok so now the argument is that stopping children from being forced to spend time with an abuser is going to make the abuser kill themselves? Abusers tend to direct their violence towards others. Some kill themselves as well as their partners and/or children but many don't. People who kill themselves are often suffering a mental illness. The appropriate care is a mental health service,not care of children. Mental health services in this country are very poor and I know a number of people discharged from acute care who killed themselves. If you want to support suicide prevention then advocate for more services, better access, longer supported care.

Or abusers given excessive power to hurt an ex through a gendered family law system can drive good people to suicide just by the sheer hopelessness of their situation.

Abusers come in both genders and use a range of techniques, playing the victim and relying on gender stereotypes being one of those techniques.

None of us here have any way of knowing if the man mentioned earlier was an abuser or not, better mental health facilities might help to prevent some suicides but they wont solve the very real problems some people face when an abusive ex aided by the sista's and CSA is doing their worst.

Time to stop the gender wars and work towards a sytem that reduces conflict whenever possible rather than one that rewards it.

R0bert

...Here is a simple view: A new rule. Children of divorcees must be held in custody by a third party. Access to the children will be issued to both parents, on a presumption of no fault. (As is the rule in divorce cases, since Goff Whitlam era).

...The role of the court will be to assess the third party for suitability. A further role of the court, will be to assess a time and a place where total security of the child is guaranteed, and which is neutral to both parties, for parental access.

...The buckets of money saved, can now be redirected to the entire welfare of the child. Obviously custody cases have fallen into the old paradigm, once the horrific preserve in divorce cases, prior to the Whitlam era changes to no fault divorce.

...Whitlams reforms, forged a new road of peace in such family matters, and will be (as I see it), the only answer for the future, with any likely possibility of achieving a peaceful settlement in child custody issues into the future.

After achieving step 1 which would be the gender neutral expression of all laws pertaining to Family Law... what else?

I've offered these thoughts before, R0bert:

'How best to minimise the problems?

Is a compulsory prenuptial agreement about any post nuptial circumstance too simplistic?

A bit like building into a marriage contract the parties' agreement (before psychopathy sets in) of the provisions for a 'divorce contract'.

Or else a version of my grandmother's method of settling arguments between my brother and me over a piece of cake – "he cuts, you choose."

In a disputed divorce the court draws random lots and one party writes two complete settlements including provisions for custody and maintenance each of which applies to a single parent, and

The other party selects which one they want for themselves!

However this would not alter the fact that the only people responsible for a breakdown of the marriage are the man and woman involved – both of whom should have made a better decision in the first place.'

Trevor I agree in part, I tried a variation of the agreement part when my ex and I were discussing property value, she was running a campaign of massively over valuing stuff that I was likely to keep and and setting a very low values for the bit's she wanted to keep. I suggested that we work to a plan where a nominated value implied a responsibility to take the item at that value or allow the other to have it at that value - she was not very keen on that idea.

Pre-nups etc can't cover issues like child residency where there is genuine abuse involved. Nor can the swappable plan approach, how do you write a pair of plans when it's clear that child residency just can't be picked from a hat.

Agreed that those of us who have horrible marriages should have done better at picking partners, I hope I've learned from my fist experience but I think it's also clear that enough of the human race has made mistakes in that area that it's not a clear cut thing. Nor is the state and society free of responsibility, it involves itself enough in aspects of relationships that it can't wash it's hands entirely. I don't know that there are any groupings of people who've never made a mistake on who they have put trust in.

The reality is that there are some people of both genders who treat their partners and or kids abusively, some are upfront violent thugs, others run campaigns of psychological warfare against partners and or kids. The first are relatively easy to deal with when identified, the tricky bit with physical violence is picking the violent bully from someone who has reacted badly to the ongoing psychological bullying of the second type.

TBC
R0bert

Pt 2
Those who want to portray isolated incidents occurring during the breakdown of a relationship as reason to destroy someone's life whilst ignoring the family terrorist actions don't help protect anyone. The family terrorist can get at a partner in almost every aspect of their lives, leaving them no safe place of retreat. Walking away can mean the loss of almost everything and keep it going for a long time if there are kids involved.

We do need protections in place against the genuinely abusive but we can't afford to allow those protections to become yet another tool in the arsenal of the family terrorist, backed by the power of the state and gender stereotypes to hurt people who have tried their best to do the right thing and not done any genuine harm.

R0bert

I appreciate the personal complexities you describe, R0bert… though the swappable plans has some merit in that it worked in the SALT treaties between the Soviets and the USA – though not all game theory is ever going to work in the real world – and I'm increasingly of the opinion that nothing will in respect of some failed marriages. Mostly because in these (minority of) cases the parties concerned have lost respect of the other and/or themselves and/or the children.

Nor was I trying to address the case of genuine child abuse issues – where there are they should be treated as 'criminal' matters.

Dealing with the 'family terrorist' is never going to be straightforward since their psychopathy has become total selfishness in motivation.

Humans have a nasty habit of almost never voluntarily yielding any power of whatever sort that they believe they have over others – and that's when things are going well!

Interesting and well-constructed article Elspeth, and essentially I agree with your conclusion that despite the potential of this new structure of laws to promote a better focus on children’s welfare, the capacity of the Family Court to manage family violence is lacking.

However I’d like to suggest that the way you characterise family violence and the “false beliefs” associated with it, is a little simplistic, as it denies the possibility that the ambiguities and flexibilities in the conventions surrounding court process have arisen for very good reasons – ie the ubiquitously high level of doubt surrounding what is actually going on… which in part is a result of the Court’s lack of capacity!

As you rightly point out, family violence is often conducted behind closed doors, victims are reluctant to disclose, and systems designed to prevent family violence often unintentionally give rise to new opportunities for it to occur.

However despite this noted difficulty in understanding the dynamics underlying family violence, you appear to be steamrolling over the questions that this difficulty raises, and advocating for solutions that systematically deny any representation of the complexities that exist. That is, you are jumping the gun: you are saying that there is a false belief that “parents who abuse the other parent can be a safe parent to their child”, while at the same time affirming that the systems in place for substantiating that family violence has occurred, and what the nature of that violence is, are insufficient for the purposes of establishing whether any or both of the parents are abusive or not

[cont]

Family violence is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If an accusation is made, then if true it is family violence, but if it is false then the act of making the accusation is also family violence. That is to say, if an accusation is made, then this is sufficient to establish that family violence has occurred whether or not there is any evidence to suggest whether the actual perpetrator is the accused or the accuser. However unless there is clear evidence that violence has occurred and who is responsible for it, in the form of physical harm or documented evidence of emotional abuse and the harm it has caused, there will always be enough doubt to ensure that an absolute judgement is impossible. The perspectives of outsiders to family violence simply cannot be taken to be complete or infalliable… and yet if they get it wrong, it will ultimately result in a miscarriage of justice, lives made miserable, and kids being placed in a dysfunctional situation.

So before making the claims you do about what “false beliefs” exist, I think you should be asking yourself why you believe these to be true, and what the consequences of acting on these beliefs might be. And I should note that I do agree that in the majority of cases these “false beliefs” don’t hold up, however the reasons for this simply don’t follow from your argument – and this renders what you’re saying political, divisive, and nothing but an example of bad faith which does your perspective no credit

Sam Janwich asks on what basis does the author believe the court has false beliefs. I can't answer for the author but have read many cases where judges have stated that a father has been violent to a mother but is nevertheless a suitable parent to care for the child. Go to Austlii.ed.au and read and you will find. Try Ganley v Ganley. With regard to children's disclosures being viewed as coaching - this is the discredited theory of Richard Gardiner, child sex offender supporter and self-published founder of PAS. Actual research into forensic child abuse investigation identifies that children lack the sophistication and necessary knowledge to reproduce false claims coherently and best practice is to ensure the child is safe. The 'coaching' story is a lawyer's story of plausible alternative explanations for children's disclosures rather than any exhaustive test of truth. The coaching claims are speculated but never proved. The third cited false belief that supervision is an effective solution is manifest in the number of orders for supervised time when a parent is identified as an 'unacceptable risk'. See for example Robins & Ruddock, where father is a convicted user of child pornography and on the sex offender register and the children have to stay awake and together to be safe. The case notes read the child saying she is afraid of her father which the judge translates into 'a loving relationship'. Claims of violence and abuse need to be properly investigated but the outcomes need to unequivocally support children's safety ahead of parent's rights.

Thanks for that elaboration and references mog. Again, I don’t dispute that these “beliefs” are false in probably a large majority of cases; I just don’t think it’s sound to assert that courts are somehow beholden to their “dominance” to the exclusion of the contrary-wise positions ie that parents who abuse other parents can *never* provide adequate care, that coaching never occurs, and that abusive parents can never be managed through supervision.

Or to put it another way, I don’t think it’s correct to characterise these things as “beliefs”. I would say rather that they are “unknowns” or as you put it, “plausible alternative explanations”.

It goes back to the question of whether the family court has the ability to fully test these “false beliefs” during the formulation of a judgement… From reading through Ganley v Ganley for example I think you’d have to conclude that it does not - and on the strength of Dr McInnes’ article I think you’d have to say that she is of a similar view. However until such time as the court does have that ability, then it is bound to consider the possibility that alternative interpretations exist – hence the non-sequitur in characterising such alternatives a “false beliefs”, as to do so effectively means asking the court to make judgements on these issues before even having the chance to consider them.

The author mentioned child protection services a being an influence… and I suppose that I should declare here that this is the perspective I’m coming from, because that’s the field I work in. I’ll be the first to admit that this is still a relatively new field and we are still a long way from having all the answers, or even solid ideas on “what works”, and “what doesn’t”. What I will say is that child protection services do have slightly less exclusionary views on what the “best interests of the child” consist of. Dr McInnes points out that under the new framework “child safety is to be prioritised ahead of a ‘meaningful relationship with both parents’”…

[cont]

however the conventional wisdom in the child protection field, partly arrived at through the investigations into the Stolen Generations and the Forgotten Australians, is that the two aren’t mutually exclusive, and when a long-term, whole-of-life view is taken, it is arguable that the maintenance of a properly-supervised relationship with a potentially abusive parent can often be preferable to estrangement. And it’s a wildly inexact science, so we’ll never know for sure, but by the same token it’s disingenuous to discount the possibility.

And here we go, this is my contribution to figuring out what’s really going on: Reading between the lines both of Ganley v Ganley, as well as Dr McInnes’s article, I think that one, if not “false” then certainly unspoken belief at work within the courts is a tendency to imagine that there are often, shall we say, alternative thinking styles being employed by the party making the accusations. The claim that the child has an “enmeshed” relationship with the mother sounds to me very much as though the judge believes the mother to be borderline personality disordered, but without stating us much explicitly. This is another highly problematic conceptualisation, given a) the psychiatry profession still hasn’t really settled on the validity of this diagnosis and b) there are good arguments to suggest that the so-called “borderline” approach to life is a perfectly natural, even rational reaction to the experience of chronic, repeated trauma, and that “sufferers’” perspectives are just as valid as anyone else’s. Nonetheless it seems to me that a major, un-acknowledged factor here is that in their semi-ignorant, semi-enlightened state (viz the court’s “limits of professionally qualified expertise in family violence dynamics, trauma and child development”), judges and courts face great difficulty when presented with an idea of “truth” which is different from their own, and so they err on the side of convention. I stand to be corrected on this, but I think it’s a possible avenue for analysing these issues further and I somewhat suspect it might shed some light on Dr Mcinnes’ concerns.