Usual suspect, "I find it very hard to believe that this is the default position and no investigation is entered into".

As I said - the truth is unbelievable, and the public and people such as yourself are living in the illusion of a 'just' society or are some people picking the knowledge of others in order to use it to advantage 'dads in distress'?

The Family Court does not investigate, the State Protection System is highly unlikely to investigate. Each expects the other to do something and each has refused to do anything about this situation for years. They have different ideologies and the two systems are incompatible.

I suspect that neither Federal or State want to fund investigation. If the State does bother to investigate and miracle of miracle substantiate abuse the Family Court often over rides this.

This is true, check kids in distress web site and read. Read the Family Law Council Report 2002.

If a genuine investigation were carried out and I mean a genuine investigation not the current shambles that exists, then an alleged abused child could be 'heard' and none of us need to be on this forum.

The claim that abuse allegations are a tactical move is nonsense and I challenge anyone to cite a single judgement where the child or protective parent have reported sexual or physical abuse and this has been taken seriously enough to result in supervision or no contact.

Usual Suspect - ` I find it very hard to believe that this is the defaut position, and no investigation is entered into.”
I can confirm that to my knowledge of a large number of cases, this is the prevailing attitude among many FRs and CP workers. It saves them the bother of having to carry out a thorough and comprehensive investigation. As has also been reported, I can also confirm decisions regarding whether or not abuse has occurred are made by some FRs solely on the basis of one hour clinical interviews with both parents. One accusing and the other denying – the default position lies with the denier.

` In the end, it still seems you would like all allegations to be treated as truth, and the burden of proof on the accused?”
- it has to be, at the intial stages of an investigation, in the same way the police accept a complaint that an offence has been committed. Only a thorough and competent investigation can determine whether or not the complaint is truthful and whether there is corroborative evidence. Rarely are thorough investigations carried out in FC Proceedings therefore the default position above, is applied.

“There has to be some disincentive for false accusations.”
– there are, it is called perjury and misleading a Court and the punishments can be severe . Only such situations are not looked at that the Court Procedures have been breached, but that the person making the false accusations is attacking the respondent and the punishment for doing that is the removal of the children from the care of that person. A Draconian measure by any standards for what is a breach of Court procedures and legal principles.

From what I can gather, the judge who will be hearing the case in Austria, of the father who allegedly locked up his daughter in a subterranean dungeon, for decades, allegedly raped her and allegedly caused her to give birth to I think, two or three of his children, is very, very highly trained in Child Sexual Abuse/ Accommodation / the process of disclosure of abuse / PTSD / the mechanims of operation of sociopaths /narcissists /paedophiles /manipulation and so on.
That judge will, I understand, be supported throughout the process by top,extremely well quailified and experienced child /psychiatrists, as will all parties.

That clearly demonstrates to me that there is a very clear understanding and acceptance in that country that all these matters are extremely well understood by the judiciary and that top experts are engaged by the court to give evidence in these matters ; not as I am repeatedly told by lawyers, judges and others, those "experts" who can't find work anywhere else,that is what I am told, I don't know if it is true.

The mere fact that so many true experts in these matters and I hear it all the time from them, absolutely refuse to give evidence in the FCA courtrooms is a factor here.

Let's all hope feverishly for the day when this country sees fit to pour those sorts of resources, time, committment, truth and love into its own Children.

There will be a time when, as they say, all good people come to the party..let's trust that it'sooner rather than later.

"In the state I live in, 85% of deaths of babies under one occur in households which child protection has identifed as domestic violence."

The NEW Child Death Review Team publishs a variety of material around child death including fatal assault.

http://www.kids.nsw.gov.au/uploads/documents/fatalassault2008.pdf
"• There was no evidence of an increase in the likelihood of the deaths of children from assault in recent years
• The deaths of children from assault are relatively rare The number of children who die from assault is small accounting for only 1.4 per cent of all the deaths of children over the ten year period 1996 to 2005.
• Nearly 60 per cent of children come from families with a child who had been the subject of a report to Department of Community Services within three years prior to the death
This means that, while the majority of families whose children die from assault come into contact with the child protection system, more than one assault death in three occurs in a family with no contact with that system.
• The greatest difference in incident rates was found for age and Aboriginality
We found that the risk of death by assault for children less than one year old is 16 times more likely than for those aged five years or older; for those children aged one year old death is six times more likely; and for those children aged two to four years old death is four times more likely. The risk of death by assault for Aboriginal children is four times greater than that of non-Aboriginal children."

From the 2006 study http://www.kids.nsw.gov.au/uploads/documents/CDRT_annual_2007.pdf

"In all nine of the incidents involving children under 15 years old, the perpetrator was known to the child. The perpetrator was the child’s biological father in three incidents, biological mother in three incidents and the mother’s partner in two incidents. The other matter remains under investigation. In the incident involving the
15-17 year old, the relationship between the young person and the perpetrator was unknown."

R0bert

Family Court of Australia
Re W and W : (Abuse allegations; Expert evidence] [2001] FamCA 216 (14 March 2001)

in summary of appeal to the Full Court:

I am of the opinion the expert has demonstrated bias and thus little, if any weight, should be attached to his opinion. He has stepped out of the role of an expert witness and assumed the role of advocate for the husband. These comments should not be interpreted as necessarily involving a personal attack upon the expert but rather as a criticism of the system of calling expert witnesses as it presently operates in this jurisdiction.
It appears likely that the husband and his advisers saw that there were a number of substantial weaknesses in his case. These included the fact that he had made damaging albeit inadmissible admissions. They also included the fact that no expert witness was able to form any conclusion as to why the child should have made unwarranted allegations of sexual abuse.
In these circumstances, the husband faced a substantial risk that the Court, even if it found that the allegations of sexual abuse had not been made out, would still find that there was an unacceptable risk to the child ....except in a supervised fashion, because of the possibility that abuse might have occurred.
The stakes were high and the obvious forensic solution lay in the selection of an appropriate forensic expert who might redress the balance in the husband’s favour. In the context of normal adversarial litigation, this is a well recognised and perhaps acceptable approach. In a jurisdiction where the best interests of the child are the paramount consideration, such an approach is less satisfactory. This (and more) “was” said in relation to a
case which involved many of the notions outlined above

I note that this subject seems to have disappeared from the "articles" section of OLO. I had to find it by checking my posts. Is there a reason for that?

The discussion seems to have come down to "I care for kids and you don't" in the minds of some contributors. The rights of parents to a fair hearing are dismissed as pandering to 'dads in distress' and the thought that some parents may tell lies and teach their children to tell lies is dismissed as somehow fanciful. Men are demonised and women sanctified in this view of the world. It's hardly surprising that a dutiful judge may not agree with this particular viewpoint.