Your Stories
This page contains a collection of thoughts and reflections on experiences within the Family Court. These events have all occurred within the past few years.
These stories are introduced only by the first couple of sentences. All have been greatly annonymised, but the feelings and experiences remain the same.
All the while the silence,
no impact statement here.
No chance to say my words,
no chance to correct what has altered
through the filter of legal ‘expertise’.
How cold, how quiet, coffin like or funeral.
breathing - deep breaths,
whispers - do not disturb HIM,
HIM the executioner, the jury the judge
the decider of our fate.
My babies - I've lost them.
How quiet –
my children now silenced.
He writes HE writes - mixing the poison,
ensuring it's effective.
Every second drips the poison ink.
Awaiting execution in the court room coffin.
Family Court is not equipped to handle child abuse cases
Chief Justice Alistair Nicholson is on record as saying that child abuse cases should not be heard in the Family Court. I have to agree. The Court is ill equipped to make decisions about children's safety.The father was granted continuous access and, subsequently custody of the child.
Interestingly, the Judge described his sex offending as “trivial” and irrelevant. There have been numerous reports to the Child Abuse Helpline that my daughter has been physically, sexually and emotionally abused and neglected by her father and sexually abused by her half-brother.
Victims of an unreal court system
A man who kicked is own son in the balls with workboots on, punched him in bed in the chest, threw him on the couch and then put pillows over him and sat on him so he couldn't breath as he screamed die you little f**ker, chased him down the street, stumbling drunk and screaming at him I'm gonna kill you. My son's only protector was his dog who bit him to try and stop the father from hurting him anymore and was kicked in the guts. This man has gone from having supervised contact at a contact centre for 4 hours fortnightly to 3 weekends out of 4 per month contact from Friday night to Monday morning. My son is ten. What of his sports? His friends? His feelings about all of this? No count - father wants contact. And its the weekends when he drank the most.
“I wish mother nature would send fairies and I could wish for a good daddy. I wish they would grant my wish”
No justice for Jessica, despite a great solicitor, despite an independent child lawyer, despite the court subpoenaing NSW police records. Its all just a circuit of futility, good people doing nothing so that bad things can happen. Despite a lovely intelligent child who trusted me enough to tell me of her betrayal. Jessica’s words mean nothing. Nothing. It is not hard to know who is speaking the truth. It is clear the Court, hiding behind academic abstractions, deliberately makes the protection of children almost impossible. Jessica has a right to be heard, a right to be believed and a right to be protected. The Court and its staff will see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. They turn their collective backs on Jessica and choose to favour a malicious, lying, nasty, coward of a man who is her biological father. The Court is aligned with a paedophile.
When no one listens
My experiences have taught me a lot about the child protection system. First, children are falling in a gap between State funded child protection services and the federally funded Family Court. This problem has long been recognised but it’s yet to be addressed State Child Protection authorities are not investigating reports when cases are in the Family Court and I wonder how long it will be before a child is killed by a violent parent because our statutory child protection service turned its back.
Aren't the children supposed to be heard?
The main reason it took me so long to leave was the dilemma over how they would continue to have a relationship and it be safe and sane. The fact that I wouldn't be present freaked her out. She wanted her own solicitor. She wanted to go to Court. She felt so angry and scared and upset that no one would listen to her (except me) and that she would have to spend time alone with her father, increasingly, every time she asked for less. At the Final Hearing, I realized, feeling broken and defeated and outraged, that I had no option but to agree with the father’s requests, to keep us out of court, and have my one condition he was willing to agree with - that a court appointed counsellor be the one to determine when our daughter was ready for overnight stays.
Convicted of "Parental Alienation"
I write as the mother of two Children, who were aged 4 and 8 at the time their fate was determined by the Family Court of Australia. In brief, my Children, whom I have cared for since their birth, were removed from my care, by Order of the Family Court following a long Trial which has been described by many as a horrendous miscarriage of Justice because I was "found" in the Family Court of Australia to be suffering from a psychological disorder called "Parental Alienation Syndrome". No evidence was presented for that, in fact evidence to the contrary was presented. My concerns with regards to my Children were supported by eminent and well respected child welfare experts
A childs letter to her mum
This is the 'truth' part of all equations - we are all accountable for our action or inaction.
A personal experience
The fact that a child is disclosing and alleging sexual abuse will not be disputed. What the child wants will be considered inconsequential. A mother's attempt to protect her child from being sexually abused (alleging abuse, seeking to reduce the father's contact, carefully documenting the child's complaints, going to the police etc) will be viewed by the court and court workers as prima facie evidence of alienation by the mother against the father.
I’m 3, why won’t someone help me?
" You won’t put your fingers in my bottom, like Daddy does, will you Gran? " She’s three. She’d been complaining of having a sore bottom and asked me to look at it. The odd way she posed herself showed me she expected an internal examination. I unknowingly started an ongoing process by ‘reporting suspected child sexual abuse’ of what she told me, and what she showed me. Nothing happened. She disclosed to her Child Care Centre and although they have mandatory reporting, they did not report. Since then she has clearly and in detail reported ongoing abuse, both sexual and physical to two doctors, DOCS, a social worker, a psychiatrist, family friends, myself and other family members. Police in two states were notified but never interviewed her.
Injustice to a child may be OK
On assurances that they would be interviewed by a child abuse expert, if take into the police station, X arrived at the station where there was no expert. The child again disclosed details of abuse. Police told the child they had to go with the father, the child was then manhandled, kicking and screaming into the fathers car.
At the court hearing, the Judge said, or words to the effect- "Although we may be doing a young child an injustice, X cannot have really been concerned about the child's safety or X would not have gone to hand the child over to the father", therefore he had difficulty believing X’s account of abuse.
From a social welfare worker – disgusted and despairing.
What’s to be done about this recurring situation where a woman using state services can be treated in such demeaning ways for doing so? In some cases the police, AVO’s, use of assistance services are all being used against women – as if they are all in some type of collusion to stop good dads having free, unfettered access to their children – and all of then taken in by those wicked, lying women.
Such cases are particularly problematic, but not limited to, ones where because money is unavailable and Legal Aid limited, women are self-representing. Women are being eaten alive. Not so men self representing from my observance. They are usually being treated with every assistance possible.
One case the husband PUNCHED the solicitor in court, then sacked him, and took over. Judge thought he was a just bit stirred up! Imagine that!
My husband's niece has not seen her two daughters for over five years now.
I witnessed her abuse by her husband, I heard him tell her "don't even think of leaving me because I will take the kids and you
will never see them again. I can and will do it".Her two daughters were placed in her ex's care, her eldest remained with her and the DCS, as it was known then, investigated the allegations thoroughly. The ex repeatedly refused to present the two girls in his care to counselling session, to court ordered access visits with their mother and refused telephone access; the court consistently ignored the fact that he was continuously in contempt of court.
Injustice to protective mothers
My daughter and I were unfairly and badly treated in your current system. The judge sided with the father immediately, although I was originally told that Judge X was opposed to violence and aggression, especially in front of the children. He surely didn't prove this to be the case during my court cases. My daughters father, yelled and abused me whenever it was my turn to speak although these were questions directly asked of me by the judge himself. He was never made accountable, and no one took any notice of his outbursts and sometimes attempts at a threat.
Judge X didn't listen to me, he condemned me before I was finished speaking and branded me a liar. This was just because I am female and a mother and I was telling him something against the father.
Government ignores child abuse - the son of TD (above)
I am a twenty year old male and can stand up for myself, unlike my four year old sister when she is on unsupervised contact, each alternate weekend. I fear greatly for her safety, but no one will listen to us. My mother has been treated unfairly by this court system and our right to protect our family has been taken away from us.
I am appalled and disgusted about the way my mother was treated in The Family Law Court. I couldn't believe the way the Judge spoke to her and accused her of lying and trying to obstruct contact with the father of her daughter, my little sister.
My name is Peter
I would like you to take the time to read my story.
I am writing this letter to you for some help. Because I have had enough. Enough of listening to my mother cry. Enough of no one listening to my brothers, little sister and I. Enough of the law and the law being unjust.
Child representatives, family reporters, lawyers and judges all leave children to be abused so they can keep their filthy little jobs. To get the big pay packet they think they are entitled to.
Who drives a new BMW, while I walk to school?
Who lives in a large house, while I live in a two bedroom unit?
My mum has given her life savings and home to this professional lie and court system, to fight for he welfare of her children. How many lawyers work for free, work for the heart of it. Work to help the less fortunate.
Parental Alienation or Paternal Alienation?
One night Dad took me to get dinner where he downed plenty of beers. A warning came with each one ‘Don't tell mum’. I was so scared. I know I know what dad is like when he drinks that’s why mum hates it. (I remember one night when dad lost his license DUI, he came into my bedroom drunk with the car keys in his hand and said ‘Tell your mum, I'm going out!’ He had just been arguing with her and put his fist through the wall. He terrifies me. The next morning he bagged mum out for ages to me).
That night he took me on the biggest bungy ride. A 12 storey free fall, he was swearing and cursing all the way down. When we got off he complained that he had paid too much. I felt like I shouldn't have even been there. Then he took me to a PUB for more drinks. This was now around 10.30pm at night. I felt very unsafe. Dad left me by myself at a table with a very drunk man about 1 metre away from me, he could barely walk and was blabbering about something. I had never prayed so much in my life! There were drunks all around, a security guard had to come and stand with me, thank God! When dad got back we had to finish our drinks fast and go, the security guard had told dad that kids had to be out by 6pm and by now it was almost midnight. Dad just walked on ahead and left me trying to catch up metres behind, strutting and puffing out his chest. I realized I was on a 10-day holiday on my own; Dad was on his own agenda.
Mediation Centres ignore Domestic Violence
Mediators have a job to perform. That is to get the parties to mediate, to work out their differences and to settle. It seems that this is being done by underhanded tactics in some cases. In once instance a mediator locked the door and said if the mother did not sign final orders for 50/50 share residency - they would think he was doing a bad job - he would loose his memory and say she was unreasonable and unwilling to foster a meaningful relationship with the father, about whom, the mother had genuine fears due to ongoing domestic violence towards her and the children of the marriage.
Dragonfly Whispers
This is the part where it is really difficult to speak, you know? There seems to be this thought that if any of us women say there is domestic violence then somehow we are doing it to better our position in the Family Court. But how would it better you, I ask you? The Family Court really doesn't care about violence unless it happened to the children and it was proven in the criminal courts. I don't care what the literature says, that is how it is. And the more I say, the worse it is for me. They call me a liar, they look at me like I am one of those women.
When history is revisited,
the madness of the Nazi terror in the Second World War is remembered with shudders down our spines. How could this depravity have happened? What would we have done? We reassure ourselves that this will never happen again. To date, the bodies of babies and children killed at the hands of those who should have protected them continue to mount up, and children are forced to contact with violence and abusive parents, at all costs.
The consequences of bad decisions
XXXXXX's daughter is still with her dad. She reached puberty and has never been allowed to have a single private conversation with mum.
Bub
Bub (4yrs) had her interview with Police investigators & he made absolutely no disclosures to them what so ever. The investigation has been dropped. Based on Bub’s age, it is virtually impossible for them to get enough detail to warrant any sort of investigation. Although the CPS (child protection services) part of Police Investigation was very quick to point out that she also thought that because I videoed Bub that It was verging on me abusing Bub, the police part of Police Investigation appeared to be nice to me.