Barbara, don’t be too disappointed about the lack of interest shown by the judiciary. The male dominated legal club is more comfortable in the role of lecturer. Your reference to a judge who suggested that women and children are more prone to lie than men contrasts nicely with a retired judge who has been forced to take out full page newspaper ads offering money for anyone willing to say they were driving his car.

Barbara, yourself and Dr Taylor are brave souls for daring to understand the Byzantine rules and judgments of the Family Court. You can expect an admonishment if you look too hard.
Your article details perfectly the minutiae of what is laughingly referred to as our legal system. You ask a question of two female judicial figures and acting like marionettes they turn to their male patriarch to see if an answer is allowed.

Perhaps a few demonstrations outside some judges’ residences featuring mock rape and child molestation might express our lack of confidence in our legal system. And imagine your delight if a red-faced judge runs out to plead with you to stop embarrassing his family. You could turn to the judge and say with a high level of schadenfreude: ‘No one has ejaculated your honour.; so the demo is not unduly harmful’

Thanks for your article Barbara.

The mind boggles at the thought processes of the judge that permitted the father who had confessed to sodomising his 11 year old son to have 80 days access per year. You have to imagine the judge likes little boys and one can argue that he is not a fit person to be in the family court.

"Then, in a coup de grace, a mother approached the microphone. She said her former partner had been awarded 80 days a year access to his 11-year-old son he had admitted sexually abusing. “Experts” in the case, men, had testified that since the father had not ejaculated, and therefore had not derived any satisfaction from the abuse, it was not unduly harmful."

Newsflash experts - its the penetrating that hurts not the ejaculation.

The law does seem to get it wrong in some of those extreme cases. Anybody who is a genuine ongoing risk to their child of abuse and neglect should not have unsupervised access to their children.

Now perhaps the author could have a look at the stats on family types where substantiated abuse and neglect occurs on the Child Abuse Trust website (http://www.abusedchildtrust.com.au/facts.htm#3) or the Child Abuse Clearing House.

The author might also consider the part that "innocent unless proven guilty" plays in our legal system.

Perhaps the author should consider the financial implications of gaining residency prior to the property settlement (as well as the power involved in getting back at that bastard) when she dismisses the idea that women may have motivation to lie about abuse at a higher rate than men.

She could have a look at the proportion of substantiated abuse and neglect that is sexual compared to other categories. She could have a look at the proportion that is committed by father compared to other significant adults - hard to find that one but from what I've heard fathers commit a very small proportion of child sexual abuse.

Mums new boyfriend is a much bigger risk. The auther might also consider that a notable proportion of child sexual abuse is committed by women. Estimates I've seen put it at between 25% and 35% but I can't substantiate that.

Perhaps the author should save her anger for those who use the family law system to line their own pockets. For the child protection campaigners who continue to ignore child abuse committed by women. For the child protection campaigners who act as though the only child abuse worth our concern is child sexual abuse.

R0bert

The difference between judges and yourself is that judges try to apply the law in an impartial way.

You, on the other hand, are not a judge but an advocate. Advocates don't worry about impartiality or truth; they simply try to push a political agenda.

If you made even the smallest mention that, perhaps, there'd been documented cases where false allegations of child abuse have been made, then perhaps you'd have some credibility. From the Kern County satanic abuse allegations in 1980s California ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kern_county_child_abuse_cases) to the spectacular collapse of the Outreau case in France (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4314309.stm) to the numerous cases of 'recovered memory syndrome’. There are too many horrifying examples.

It's unsurprising that social workers and psychologists working in this field have been comprehensively discredited too. It's unsurprising because they're not professionals like judges - they're advocates like you. They have a preconceived idea (in this case that all men are child abusers) and then they set about to prove it. So we get cases where social workers give ‘anatomically correct’ dolls to children and then lead them into conversations about sex. The child wants to please this ‘special adult’ and so readily agrees to the most horrible suggestions.

The sad thing about all this is the enormous damage people like you are doing to our society. Hysterics like you have robbed a generation of children of a healthy and active outdoors childhood, in a country with one of the best climates in the world, because of fear of abuse. That’s not to mention the direct victims of malicious accusations – the lost jobs, the families broken, the lives destroyed. All because of man-hating fanatics like you.

continued..

It unlikely you will have read this far because people like you don’t want to hear anything that might contradict your ‘belief’. But if you have, then please know I thank god for judges that protect us from the menace you impose, and please take my criticisms personally, because you are a threat to us all.

Fair comments eet, but quite frankly if you realised how much police time was occupied with domestic violence cases, and how few of them are resolved, you may have a different view of the effectiveness of the law.

Personally, I tend to think there are some very flawed precepts upon which our legal system is based, and whilst I can see the logic behind a system which is so heavily skewed in favour of the defendant in any given criminal case, I can't help but lament how crippled the prosecution tend to be. The system is not designed to be a fair fight, and judges are far from the unbiased arbiters you believe them to be.

Sadly, these deficiencies are clearly manifested in cases of rape and sexual abuse.
The process of cross examination these days, has become more about damaging the credibility of a witness - in many cases, the victim - than it is about establishing any facts.
A competent cross examination can have just about any witness contradicting themselves, then when the jury is asked to decide upon reasonable doubt, it is all too easy for the perpetrators to get away with it. What's more, these kinds of trials are behind closed doors - I wouldn't suggest otherwise, but it does make it difficult to ascertain whether or not justice is being done.

Add to that the fact that very few sexual assault cases ever make it to trial.