The Reveal broadcast focused on two custody cases in which the judge ordered children placed against their will with the parent that they claimed was abusive. In one case, the judge sent a teenage boy to juvenile detention because he was not making sufficient efforts to get along with his mother. He and his sister were then sent to live with their father and allowed no contact with their mother for a period of three years. In the other case, a fourteen-year old girl who said her mother was emotionally abuse and wanted to live with her father was sent to a “reunification camp” for ten months at her parents’ expense. Her mother was given full custody and the teen was separated from her father father for four years. The judges in both cases based their decisions on a theory called “parental alienation.”
'Reasonable fear of violence' unreasonable
- Details
- Category: Court Ordered Abuse
- Created: Thursday, 30 March 2006 22:39
- Written by Patricia Merkin, Barrister
In the classic To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout recounts how her father explained, “… you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them”. In the politics of divorce and the government’s response, a masculine perspective drives reforms. These reflect a persistent attitude by a federal government that refuses to “walk in the shoes of victims of family violence”. Overwhelmingly, these are women and their children.
This is exposed in the new family law amendment by changes to the definition of family violence. It is proposed that the wording will be changed from the victim’s “fear” of violence to a “reasonable fear” of violence when considering evidence presented to the court.
The current climate in family court is fraught with disturbing cases where children have paid a gut-wrenching price when judges have overlooked or trivialised violence and abuse to mothers. The deaths of three brothers last September during a court ordered access visit, and the deaths of Jesse and Patrick Dalton at the hands of their father, placed in his care by the family court are forgotten, swept under the carpet and ignored. Instead, the government continues to bend to the pressure by father’s rights advocates.