This is a disgraceful piece of propaganda. I urge anyone not familiar with the real facts of the case to read the court transcripts which are available on line through the family court website or austlii.

Look up the posting history of ChazP on this site and all will be revealed.

"The selective use/misuse of information is part and parcel of any debate." http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12255&page=0#212833

As a forensic psychologist who frequently conducts risk assessments for child safety officers in Southern Queensland and northern NSW and for Family Court cases I can vouch for two facts: (1) It is quite possible to conduct a research-based, objective and independent risk assessment in a cost-effective way and provide reliable conclusions to guide court decisions. I'm writing up another one today. (2) Our reports are generally well accepted and regarded as helpful by the courts and, I believe, contribute to the making of decisions that are first and foremost in the interests of the children involved, while taking into reasonable consideration the wishes and rights of the adults. I do occasionally strike Federal and State Magistrates and Judges who, in my opinion, have allowed their judicial authority to go to their heads to the point they believe their personal opinions and attitudes have more validity than the findings of properly conducted scientific research, but in that regard they are no different from other prejudiced members of the community. Perhaps this writer has encountered one of them. Hopefully they will be persuaded by the educational campaigns being conducted by myself and some of my colleagues in both the psychology and law professions. If not, then perhaps by successful appeals against their sometimes unwise and potentially harmful decisions.
Dr Bob.

Antiseptic,

Good to see you back on board--stick around.
OLO is in dire need of someone with your wit and wisdom.

"they allege that the protective parent (and the children) are lying about the abuse allegations; and/or that the protective parent has `coached' the children in making the allegations; and/or that the protective parent is "Deluded" in believing the abuse has occurred or has a non-specific `Personality Disorder", and it is suggested that this has been done by the protective parent in order to "alienate" the children from the other parent."

But this does in fact happen - to read this article one would think that the area of family law is cut and dry but that couldn't be further from the truth. It is a difficult and problematic area filled with hightened emotions and the debris of failed relationships. Finding a good solution is hard, made even harder by having to operate within the bounds of laws written by people looking to and caring only of being re-elected.

I can't help wondering if Arthur N. is also speaking from his own unfortunate experience, in which case he has my sympathy. But it is simply not the case that adults can successfully coach children to lie and easily get away with it. First, research has firmly established that children, from quite a young age, when interviewed with appropriate techniques (i.e. friendly, supportive, with no attempt to lead, just to elicit the child's free narrative) are just as reliable witnesses as adults are, notwithstanding the British legal tradition of regarding children as unreliable witnesses. A growing number of Queensland Police have been trained in these interview techniques and their records of interview survive even my very sceptical review. Second, there are interview techniques and assessment strategies that will reliably identify when a person is not being truthful (not the same as lying, because people may be untruthful for reasons other than intending to deceive). They won't necessarily tell us when what the truth in a matter may be but they will reliably tell us that what this person is saying is not truthful. For example, in a recent case I did in NSW the two long-separated parents, fighting each other for custody of their young child, each accused the other of having alcohol and drug problems while denying they had any themselves. The test I used found, with a research-established 94% level of accuracy, that they both had on-going alcohol and drug problems, information that I hope guided that court's decision-making in the interests of the child as someone needing a responsible adult intent on providing good parenting, not to be treated as the prize for beating your ex-partner in a lying competition.

We have facial recognition technology and thermal imaging cameras, which used in tandem; but, in a completely non invasive way, can positively confirm and validate truthful testimony!
So, it's not just courts that are out of step, but so called experts, used to pour derision on, or challenge this or that evidence.
In the barely veiled referred to case, the wishes of the children were routinely ignored?
Why?
Because we have an international agreement/covenant, that prevents one parent from kidnapping their own children!
I can't understand why the Mother did not pursue the matter through the Italian courts?
Where she and her girls may well have received a fairer more compassionate hearing, and full unchallengeable legal custody.
Reportedly, given she seems not to have chosen this option, her decision seems to have weighed very heavily against her in our court system, where the actual facts/truth; seemingly, became a secondary issue?
At the end of the day, true justice is only ever served by the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, rather than clever lawyers and or evasive witnesses, who seem to go out of their way to subvert it.
We have space age lie detection, that not even polished psychotic compulsive liars can deceive!
Therefore, it strikes me as passing strange, that in 21st century, we don't use it to find and punish deliberate and knowing perjury or intended/attempted perversion of justice!
If only patently egoistic experts weren't so sure, that they can tell when a person is being untruthful, we would not have incarcerated Lyndy Chambalin or Dr Haneef, and indeed, many others.
Nor would there be as many guilty individuals be walking our streets! Particularly those guilty of the most heinous; or, multi-million dollar, white collar crimes?
Rhrosty.

"Unforgettably shameful scenes..." Yes, very much so on the part of the mother who created those scenes.

The court was satisfied that the mother had abducted the children from their home in Italy by not returning them to there, was it not?

Why should the Family Court accommodate so called "expert witnesses" who demonstrably are unable to present a balanced story according to the facts?

...Family Law Courts are an integral part of a “Capitalists dogs breakfast” and forever remain the “Toothless Tiger” by design.

"The judge said the children loved their father and he had not heard evidence to support allegations he was abusive."

Justice Forest noted the mother's public campaign was very disturbing.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-04/father-relieved-four-sisters-returning-to-italy/4295398

What academic qualifications does the author possess?

It would be interesting to know for sure if Charles is ChazP, the presentation style matches. For those interested in the background to the reference Anti provided.
"Children and domestic and family violence- Why the proposed changes are urgently necessary.
Almost one in four children in Australia have witnessed violence against their mothers or stepmothers (Crime Research Centre and Donovan Research, 2001, from National Plan Background Paper pg 20). " ChazP http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12255#212254

I then asked in the next post "Just to complete the picture - how many kid's have witnessed violence committed against their father's or stepfathers? How many are in homes where the mother lashes out physically or emotionally at her male partner even with kid's around?"

ChazP follows with "If there are such figures to support what you claim, Robert, then I'm quite sure you will be only too willing to provide them. Unless of course you are willing to pay me a substantial reward for doing your research for you but then, I would not be willing to go on a wild goose chase. It would be rather like searching for squid on Uluhru."

and a couple of posts later "Robert - if you had read and understood my posting you would have seen the highly credible source of the statistics. The reasons it does not include the figures you `suspect' is because they are at best negligible, and more accurately non-existent. You will find consistently that my postings begin with pointing out the harm caused to children who experience domestic violence and the long-lasting effects on those children. It is only when I am attacked as gender-biased by males who speculate and `suspect' the evidence, that I respond in a gender preferential way. It serves the purposes of male contributors to turn this debate into a high-conflict gender issue and to evade the issues regarding children's suffering."

TBC

R0bert

Part 2

Houellebecq subsequently find the report quoted by ChazP http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12255#212507

"In this report it states '23% of young people between the ages of 12 and 20 years had witnessed an incident of physical violence against their mother/stepmother'

In the very same report, it also states,

'and 22% against their father/stepfather'."

Eg after ChazP who made the original reference to the report claimed that the figure would be so low as to be non existent we find it's in the same part of the report and that there is a 1% difference.

Sometime later after numerous post which ignore being caught out ChazP comes up with possibly the most honest thing he or she has ever posted on OLO

"The selective use/misuse of information is part and parcel of any debate"

The article looks like more of the same.

Robert

There's no doubt that ChazP is Charles Pragnell. His twitter handle is Chaz3931 if anyone is remotely interested. I'm sure he'd appreciate a tweet to discuss his flexible attitude toward the truth.

R0bert, was the violence witnessed by the children identified as parent against parent? I ask merely because a child I knew at a local primary school sometimes used to report that the adults at his house had got drunk at the weekend and fought, once to the point of throwing his Uncle through a glass door, so he had clearly witnessed a lot of violence, but as far as I know none of it was between his parents.

Candie, I don't know if that's specified either way. If I can find the link to the report I'll have a look.

The point I was trying to make is that Charles (and others pushing the same anti father agenda) has runs on the board for only telling part of the story (and in fact pretending that the other part of the story did not exist).

There is plenty of evidence to show that initiation of family violence is not gendered to any significant degree. The gendered part of only comes in when you look at serious direct injury and reports of physical fear felt (and that generally ignores the other impacts an abusive female spouse can have a on her male partner).

Those who want to play the it's mostly men who abuse ignore the material on rates of substantiated child abuse (where women look worse but probably because they more often have prime care).

Family violence is not a gender issue regardless of how Charles and other try and play it, it's far more to do with other factors such as substance abuse, poverty, stress, unemployment etc than gender.

While people keep trying to make it about gender it's taking the focus off reducing the real risks to kids.

R0bert

Charles Pragnell seems to be fond of the words "protective parent". Could those words be code for "possessive and vindictive parent" in a lot of cases?

They're code for "parent who attracts Government funding for going to Court", Rosco.

We could save billions of dollars by one very simple measure: introduce sanctions for false allegations of child abuse.

Problem solved. Suddenly this 'sea' of abuse would start to dry up.

After all, how better to show that we take child abuse seriously than to punish false or malicious allegations severely.

But, of course that would deprive groups like the National Council for Children Post Separation their piece of the millions and billions pie. OMG!

So here's a radical solution: defund the whole abuse industry. We would save billions, families wouldn't be torn apart by vexatious claims, society wouldn't have to deal with the social detritus that this industry creates, and best of all we wouldn't have the pernicious influence of groups like the National Council for the Destruction of Civil Society (or something like that) and their rent seekers like Mr. Pragnell.

The links I could find to the original report seemed to be broken however a link I'd posted to a summary of the report still works http://www.science.uwa.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/118532/Australian_Institue_of_Criminology-Trends_and_Issues_No195-Yound_Australians_And_Domestic_Violence.pdf

As far as I can tell the witnessing of violence is between a parent and partner, not violence involving strangers. The references seem to be around DV although broader in other spots.

"The rate of witnessing varied considerably depending on the nature of household living arrangements. For example, the witnessing of male to female parental violence ranged from 14 per cent for those young people living with both parents to 41 per cent for those living with “mum and her partner”. Young people of lower socioeconomic status were about one and a half times more likely to be aware of violence towards their mothers or fathers than those from upper socioeconomic households. Indigenous youth were significantly more likely to have experienced physical domestic violence amongst their parents or parents’ partners. In the case of male to female violence, the rate was 42 per cent compared to 23 per cent for all respondents, and for female to male violence the rate was 33 per cent compared to 22 per cent."

R0bert

R0bert, you might want to try the Attorney-General's Department Crime Prevention Archived Publications webpage under Y for the three parts of the Young People and Domestic Violence report:

http://www.crimeprevention.gov.au/Archivedpublications/Pages/default.aspx#YY

The third section contains the data:

http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/21248/20070722-0007/www.ag.gov.au/agd/www/rwpattach.nsf/viewasattachmentPersonal/%28E24C1D4325451B61DE7F4F2B1E155715%29_ypadv25-201.pdf/$file/ypadv25-201.pdf

Good link to the Pandora archive.

A couple of quotes:

"
From a written task conducted at the start of each group, it was clear that ‘bashings’
(street, pub and school fights) were the most significant (salient) forms of violence known to the
participants. Such violence was mostly perceived as involving only males, although some mention
was made (by older females) of girls fighting when drunk, over a boy. Verbal aggression (between
people known to each other, including friends) was cited as a form of violence, particularly by younger females. This involved name calling, bullying, ‘bitching’ and back-stabbing, and was
seen by both sexes to be very much the domain of females."

and

"Other types of violence cited,
but not to any great extent, included some mention by older girls of rape — by strangers. This
would tend to indicate fear of that type of violence rather than direct experience (which would
be more likely to involve someone known to them)."

and

"The reasons given for the
use of violence related predominantly to why
males
used violence."

Propaganda trumps experience.

Dane, good post!

The thing about introducing sanctions for false allegations, considering that it would be mainly females the sanctions would be imposed upon, they are likely to be only very light.

This week a story was reported in the UK, about a compulsive liar who cried rape 11 times. On the 11th occasion the police arrested the man and questioned him for 9 hours before being released without charge. "When the man heard Jones had been jailed for 16 months ‘he was disappointed and felt that the time wasn’t long enough after what she put him through’".

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2284677/Compulsive-liar-Elizabeth-Jones-cried-rape-11-times-jailed.html

Charles Pragnell is exactly right. My daughter was forced to reside with her abusing and neglecting MOTHER for 3 years. It almost destroyed her young life. Of course Charles ONLY supports mothers not fathers, so no doubt he would be happy about that. Beats me how he can tout himself as an expert witness when he is so obviously biased against men/fathers. He seems to mostly hang around mothers and feminist groups, i have never seen him support a father anywhere, ever. What formal qualifications does he have anyway. BTW had an interesting chat with Julie Bishop late last year when she visited our town. She said that John Howards family law reforms were introduced to combat the bias towards mothers in the family court. Sadly they have been destroyed by the Gillard gov't. She said that the coalition WOULD be reviewing family law if they get into office. I can only hope she is right.

Funny how Charles forgets to mention the children being kidnapped and held in breach of family court orders and then the GM threatens to kill them if they are given back to the father. Also fails to mention that the GM falsely accused the father of watching his daughters undress in the shower (thankfully the mother at least had the decency to debunk this).Hey Dr Bob, hope you do a better job than the Psychologist who did my own family report when i was fighting for my own child. Her report was to blame as much as anything in forcing my daughter to live with her abusing and neglecting mother for 3 years, best interests of the child my arse. Thanks to the so called professionals like yourself, she ended up a sickly underweight child in a class for slow children when i finally gained custody. No surprise that she now has a psychology degree with 1st class honours and is well into a PHD in Forensic Psychology, but no thanks to people like yourself.