Regarding adversial systems in the Family Court, please consider informing yourselves:

http://www.familycourt.gov.au/wps/wcm/connect/FCOA/home/about/Media_Centre/Fact+sheets/FCOA_mc_Less_Adversarial_Trial

would be a good place to start.

Hamlet: Even this half-hearted measure of moving towards an inquisitorial system seems to be showing considerable benefits. It does not however address the issues of how children's views and wishes are directly presented and considered in the decision-making processes and therefore does not satisfy the spirit and intent of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and it does not seem to have addressed the issue of how allegations of abuse and exploitation can be competently and thoroughly investigated.

But at least it is a move toward a more humane system.

It might be informative to have a look at the following on the abject failures of the Family Court of Australia in Child Protection and its complicity in Child Abuse :

1.Jonanthan Humphrey's paper,presented to the former Australian Attoreny -General Philip Ruddock in November 2005 and entitled
"PAS, "Unacceptable Risk" and the culture of the Australian Family Court : How current Judicial paradigms are violating CROC and failing to protect Abused Children".

2.Courageous Kids' Network : NB: Not Australian based, but USA based.

3."PAS : A Paradigm for Child Abuse in Australian Family Law" by Dr. Elspeth McInnes.

4.Charles Pragnell on PAS.

5."Children at Risk" by Peter Ellingson, The Sunday Age :3 /10 /2004.

The Chief Justice of the Family Court, the Deputy CJ of the FC and the former CJ of the FC may choose to continue looking the other way, but thay can never again say that they were not told (Wilberforce).

Sunita, I followed your recommendations and found the references you mentioned on a site called http://www.kidsindistress.org.au/parentalalienation.php. May I be so bold as to suggest that this site is not an entirely balanced reference if you wish to convince skeptics? It is a partisan effort filled with links to various "feminist" (not my word, theirs) organisations; surely you can do better than that?

Having said all that, I did read the papers you referred to, and I have the following comments:

1. From Jonathon Humphreys's submission:"Although child abuse
cases represent only a small amount (<5%) of total cases concerning children each year, they do not resolve at comparable rates to other disputes." and

"interim orders denying contact have become much more infrequent in the wake of the reforms [to the FLA] dropping to under 5 percent of cases."
That would seem to be consistent, don't you think? If not, why not?

2.Courageous kid's network is essentially a site devoted to encouraging children to report abuse, which is well and good. It's interesting, though, that nearly all their links are either dead, lead to a site devoted to single mothers or go to a site advertising the services of a particular lawyer...

3. Elspeth McInnes - former convenor of the National Council for Singlr Mothers and their Children and a strident and vocal agitator for the primacy of maternal rights and denial of any rights to fathers. She now has a doctorate, does she? Nice to see my tax dollars at rest. I didn't really bother with Elspeth's paper. If you regard Gardner as unreliable, you're not doing yourself any favours quoting Elspeth. As always, her main focus is seeking more money.

4. Charles Pragnell's piece is long and I've not yet digested it properly. I will come back to you with my thoughts when I do

5. Peter Ellingsen's piece is a rehash of all the other stuff you cited.

(cont.)

You didn't mention Dr Brent Water's excellent piece "AMBIGUOUS CSA EVIDENCE IN FAMILY COURT MATTERS", which speaks directly to the issue of worried mothers jumping to conclusions: "The second player is a mother who is anxious about the child's contact with the other party.
Often this is a well founded anxiety, based on her experience of a relationship in which she felt that her husband dominated family life at best, or at worst abused and victimised her. The abuse may have been verbal, or physical or even sexual. There may be a subjective element to this, but there may also be a compelling objective element as well. These women are so distrustful that they worry that since the father was the way he was to them, he may go a step further and sexually abuse their child. This of course is amplified if they feel that the father has attempted to continue some exploitation of them in the course of the Family Law proceedings.
The father may deal with the accusations in a dismissive way which the mother perceives as indifference. They may even parody the mother's concerns in such a way that the mother feels that he is laughing at her powerlessness"

Note that this is all about Mum and Dad's relationship, not the kids. Why do you find his scenario so difficult to accept?

As I said Sunita, no one claims that abuse doesn't exist, merely that it does not exist to the degree that some vested interests would have us believe. Your references don't change that, in fact they reinforce my own sense that this subject is all about giving women more power in FLA proceedings and very little to do with the welfare of children. Frankly, that's a disgraceful abuse of children in its own right, especially given the fact that some abused children will be missed because of the high volume of false claims.

Hamlet, thanks for the link to LAT. It seems a worthwhile initiative.

Its regrettable and revealing that certain parties keep trying to make this a "mens" and "womens" issue, instead of focussing on our Children and the research on CSA and CA

Wrigley has ben disciplined for using PAS, the FC has used and accpeted PAS, ergo the FC'S alleged experts are not as highly qualified as the CJ wold like the public to believe that they are.It's a breathtaking statement from the CJ which doesn't bear scrutiny.
If the court in this land, which is supposed to deal with families and child protection and child abuse is incapable of setting acceptable and recognised standards for the professionals who give evidence in their courtrooms on CSA and CA.. what does it really say about the competency and accountability of that system ?